If you’ve been trying to sell to schools over the past 12 months, you’ve probably felt it.

Campaigns that once worked now fall flat. Funnels move slower. Conversions are harder to win. The education sector has become more cautious, more complex, and more cost-conscious.

You’re not imagining it. Many education businesses I’ve spoken to have experienced the same issue, a drop in sales performance that feels out of their control. Never one to feel comfortable with an unexplained trend in the education sector, I wanted to understand why.

What’s Changed?

At Sprint Education, we’re immersed in the school sales environment every day. When we noticed this downturn wasn’t just a one-off, with more and more education businesses reaching out for help, it became clear this was part of a much broader shift in the market.

So we set out to investigate.

We spoke to education businesses, marketers, and sales teams. We reviewed data, examined campaign performance, and looked closely at how decision-making inside schools has evolved.

What we found was both fascinating and revealing.

You can read the full findings and recommendations in our research report:

Download our full report: Why Schools Aren’t Buying:

A few key insights:

• Schools are busier than ever
• Budgets are tighter
• Purchases are being delayed or scaled back
• Buying decisions involve more people
• Reaching the right person at the right time is more difficult

But just as we were mapping these challenges, something surprising stood out. Some brands weren’t struggling. In fact, a few were growing, significantly.

What Were the Best-Performing Brands Doing?

We identified a group of education businesses that were not only surviving but actively thriving in this tougher climate.

Curious to understand how, we spoke to their teams, examined their sales operations, and dug deep into their campaign approaches.

We didn’t find a dozen different tactics. Instead, we discovered one consistent structure, a shared strategic foundation.

Every one of these high-performing businesses was investing in three key components of their marketing and sales strategy.

From here on, we’ll refer to them as the three pillars.

The Three Pillars of Selling to Schools Successfully

Every thriving education brand we studied used all three of these pillars:

1. Outreach Marketing This is the foundation most education businesses already know. It builds brand awareness, drives traffic to your website, and educates your audience. Without outreach marketing, you’re invisible. But on its own, it rarely results in fast-moving sales conversations.

2. Target Account Campaigns Rather than waiting passively for schools to reach out, these businesses built handpicked lists of their dream-fit schools and targeted them with laser-focused messaging. Each campaign was uniquely crafted for that school, that contact, and that context. The result? Better engagement, faster conversions, and fewer wasted opportunities.

3. Sales Development This is where real momentum begins. Sales development is focused on creating personalised, one-to-one interactions that directly lead to meetings, demos, or quote requests. It requires research, precision, and tailored messaging. But it also needs scale, and that’s where many businesses get stuck.

To generate results, you must cast a wide net while engaging individuals with relevance and precision. Doing that well usually requires an expensive in-house SDR team, a dedicated tech stack, and deep expertise, which puts it out of reach for most education companies.

Our Role in Supporting Education Businesses

At Sprint Education, we’ve supported pillars one and two for years:

• Our done-for-you outreach marketing service covers pillar #1.
• Our Campus software helps education businesses run both broad marketing campaigns and highly targeted account-based strategies, covering pillars #1 and #2.

But pillar #3, sales development, was a clear gap. Not just in our offering, but in many of our clients’ own strategies.

So, we set out to fix it.

Introducing Sprint.IQ

At the end of 2024, we quietly launched Sprint.IQ to a small group of education businesses that were ready to reignite their sales pipelines.

What they gained was far more than just another campaign. They accessed a fully managed sales development system that, until now, was only feasible for large brands with dedicated sales teams and technical infrastructure.

Sprint.IQ replicates the impact of hiring three experienced Sales Development Representatives and a full email infrastructure engineering team. But instead of the £100,000+ annual investment required to build that internally, Sprint.IQ starts from just £699 per month.

This levels the playing field.

For the first time, education companies of all sizes can access the same high-powered sales development capability once reserved for large enterprise players.

Sprint.IQ is designed to deliver results, without the complexity, the staffing overheads, or the steep learning curve.

Here's what Sprint.IQ will do for you:

• Identify the right-fit schools for your products or services
• Build a dedicated email infrastructure to enhance inbox placement
• Craft and execute strategic, tailored campaigns that spark replies
• Deliver sales-qualified leads directly to your inbox

No guesswork. No wasted time. No missed opportunities. Just a steady, reliable flow of ready-to-buy schools.

Apply Now

From our customers’ position Sprint.IQ is a plug-and-play solution, but behind the scenes it’s a, high-involvement complex project, therefore we can only offer a limited number of places in each cohort.

We’re opening just seven places for our September 2025 cohort.

We’re not looking for volume. We’re looking for the right education businesses. Those who:

• Are feeling the pressure and need a stronger, more consistent sales pipeline
• Are ready to invest in lead generation that brings real, measurable outcomes
• Understand that sales development is a growth engine, not a corner to cut
• Are prepared to invest in a 12-month solution to the their sales lead generation

If that sounds like your business, apply now. Demand is already building, and once this cohort is full, onboarding will close until the next phase.

To speak with one of our go-to-education experts get in touch at info@sprint-education.co.uk.

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How to Sell to Schools How to Sell to Teachers Selling to Schools Selling to Teachers

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