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In building an effective sales team for your ed tech company, there are a number of questions you’ll need to answer. For instance, will you hire an inside sales team, an outside sales team, or both? What skills should you be looking for as you assemble your team?

To answer these questions, here are three key factors to consider.

Target audience

It’s important to consider the intended audience for your sales and marketing efforts. Are you trying to sell your product across the entire school district enterprise—or are you looking to target a particular segment of this enterprise?

For example, if you’re selling ELA curriculum software for students in Grades K-2, you’re going to have a completely different sales model and go-to-market strategy than if you’re selling a district-wide learning management system. The former is an example of a transactional sales model, while the latter is an example of an enterprise model.

In a transactional model, you might have a higher volume of clients and a smaller average sale price. This is because you might be targeting school sites as well as district administration that oversee literacy initiatives and product purchasing, such as federal program coordinators, Title I directors, and/or reading department heads. You’ll often be selling to people who have an allocated budget, allowing for more decentralized decision-making—and thus, many of these opportunities can be closed by phone. These sales reps will likely need to be literacy content experts and comfortable in a high-volume, transactional sales model.

In an enterprise model, you’ll have a smaller volume with a higher price point. Companies that have enterprise solutions affecting every child in a district are selling a product that might be more technically sophisticated. Their buyers will likely be a committee of district administrators and school board members. Not only might the technology be more sophisticated, but also the sales process will be more complex. There are more people whom you’ll have to convince that you can solve their problems, which will lead to improvement of teaching and learning.

Sales representatives in an enterprise model not only must be experts for each content area. They need to be able to speak to the technology side of the house as it relates to integration, data migration, and cleansing—as well as client success post-sale. Thus, enterprise sales representatives need to be more sophisticated and dynamic than the transactional or point-of-sale type of sales representative.

Maturity of your company and your runway

Consider where your company stands from an organizational life-cycle perspective. What resources do you have at your disposal, and how scalable is your operation?

Many early-stage organizations are strapped for funds; yet they have a great product that is market-ready. They are faced with how to scale their sales team on a limited budget. Should they go with independent, inside, or outside sales—or a combination of these?

One factor to consider is how much time you have to bring in X amount of revenue. Time is critical as it relates to positioning your company for funding or gaining a stronghold over your competition. How much runway do you have before other companies emerge in the same space? If you have a lot of runway, then you have more time and latitude to try to grow your business organically. But if you need to go to market quickly, then that changes your sales strategy.

Optimizing this window is critical, and starting with an inside sales team or an independent team can prove to be an effective solution while not breaking the bank.

Going the independent sales route can lessen your risk, but it also can be quite challenging, as independent salespeople are not actually employees—and often you are competing for their mindshare. When thinking about inside sales, you can find employees with industry experience or without. Just know that if you hire non-industry inside sales reps, you must budget time to educate them about the industry.

Hiring independent or inside sales reps also helps to seed the market so that you are better positioned to attract outside sales talent and set them up for success. Your organization must build its brand and be noticed in the market before you can be successful in hiring top outside sales representatives.

When the timing is right to start hiring outside sales reps, your budget will dictate how many you can afford—and your current installed base will influence where to put them geographically. Where are your early adopter districts, and where are your biggest advocates? Hiring outside sales reps in close proximity to your best clients will help you leverage those to win business with surrounding districts.

To further narrow the location for outside sales reps, you also need to consider specific regional initiatives and funding sources. This will help you maximize your return on investment. For example, if you have a solution specifically well suited for one-to-one initiatives and you happen to have a champion account in Virginia—and you also know the Virginia Department of Education has a new Virginia Digital Textbook Marketplace initiative—then you should strongly consider hiring an outside representative in Virginia.

Location

Many companies seek to build their inside sales force within the walls of their headquarters. Where your company is based plays a key role in determining the talent pool that is available for hiring.

For instance, if you’re located in the Bay Area, you face an incredibly competitive landscape, because you’re competing for talent not just with other ed tech companies but also with the many technology start-ups in the region. It’s also costly to live in the Bay Area, so you might face a challenge in recruiting people or enticing them to relocate.

In that case, you might be looking at growing and managing a virtual sales team. A virtual team is difficult to manage remotely, but it can be done with a sales manager who has experience managing a distributed team. One of the greatest skills managers of a virtual sales force can have is their ability to attract self-driven and motivated people.

Another option is to hire your inside sales manager in a city that is talent-rich, but that has a lower cost of living than where the headquarter is located, and allow for them to open an office for inside sales. This way there will only be one person who will need to be managed virtually.

As you can see, building an effective sales team relies on a number of important factors. The better you can understand these factors, the more effective your hiring decisions will be.