Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, teachers were just ordinary folk like you and me. Sure, they occasionally received some marketing through the post; but what little there was, they were happy to treat with an open mind.

Then one day, the King of the land hooked them up to the World Wide Web and everything changed forever. Soon, they began receiving so much marketing that they had to develop super-human powers to help them separate the good from the bad.

Now, a mysterious virus has swept the land and corrupted these teachers’ powers. To survive in this landscape you will need to be able to recognise these malfunctioning superheroes and prescribe them the correct medicines in order to nurse them back to health.

Teaching Superhero 1: Mr Sniff

Superpower:

Mr Sniff uses his extraordinarily heightened sense to sniff out unscrupulous salespeople that are out to hoodwink his school.

Effect of virus:

Unfortunately the virus has meant that Mr Sniff’s super-sense is miss-firing badly and he now senses danger everywhere! When enquiring about your product/service he will appear suspicious and untrusting towards your offering, for fear of having the wool pulled over his eyes.

How to diagnose:

Mr Sniff’s suspicious nature will manifest itself in a stream of probing questions where he will want you to provide hard evidence to back up your claims. If you fail to provide him with the requisite information he will assume that his suspicions have been confirmed and the virus will take an even stronger hold. He will however end up going ahead with an order, but likely with one of your competitors that managed to satisfy his barrage of trivial questions and quizzes.

The perfect potion to cure him:

1. Quote facts and stats – quantitative data works best.

2. Direct him to the case studies page of your website.

3. Send him eBooks/resources that demonstrate your expertise.

In the most serious cases:

Mr Sniff will sometimes seek guarantees of performance. If these cannot be provided, invite him for a face-to-face meeting. He’ll almost certainly decline but it will show him you’ve got nothing to hide.

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Marketing to Schools Emailing Teachers Email Teachers Selling to Teachers How to Sell to Schools

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