What is the Best Way to Approach a District?

I love this question so much, because when you’re trying to reach a district, you don’t necessarily need to go straight to the top boss in the district, you actually want to reach out to the influencers of the district and build a pipeline of leads. 

For example, let’s think on a smaller scale of a school. If you want to reach the principal you might think of just finding a way straight to the principal, when in reality, you want to find who is influential in the principal’s decision making. That could be teachers, counselors, social workers, or anyone else in the school’s ecosystem because even if they aren’t decision makers, they can still hold a lot of informal power and authority. 

And if you think that sounds counterintuitive, let me tell you, when I was a principal and it came to actually spending funds for social and emotional needs and resources, I wasn’t making that decision. I was looking at my counselors and my social worker and asking, "What y'all need? Tell me and I'll spend the money." So they were heavy influencers when it came to spending funds.

That is why you want to be building a pipeline of leads, because you never know where your entry point could be. If you are consistently building relationships with leads then when it comes time to spend the money, your lead could mention you for a service and then you have a school or a district seeking you out. 

I want to share with you a business term that is also used for this phrase. It’s called a funnel, and in my experience, I found that while a funnel can be a very powerful tool in your business, most people don’t actually know what it is! 

Now a business funnel is just that, a funnel that your clients go through to become paid clients. Now to build a sustainable funnel (and business) you need to nurture your funnel, because if people are consistently hearing about you, your business, and what services and value you can provide, you are more likely to be at the top of their mind when they need a service you can provide. And, I’m gonna be honest, nurturing your funnel is all about marketing. 

There are two types of marketing that I want to discuss when it pertains to nurturing your funnel. The first is interruption marketing and the second is permission marketing.

1. Interruption Marketing: Interruption marketing is basically any action you take that would literally interrupt, or create an interruption for your client. So when you just send an email to someone you don't know, that would be an example of interruption-based marketing "Hey, my name is Erica. This is what I do. Can we talk?" When someone's slides into your DMs, that's interruption-based marketing. So that's one approach.

2. Permission-Based Marketing: Permission-based marketing is where people are actually opting into learning more about you and your services. So an example of this could be if someone sees you at a conference and at the end of the conference you name the opportunity for them to stay connected with you by joining your email list, that's permission-based because you're seeking their permission to stay connected. And they can opt in or out of that.

Now, I’ll mention that most of my strategies are focused on permission-based marketing. For me, this style is more focused on relationship building (as opposed to sliding into the DM’s of anyone with an Instagram account), which can lead to higher conversion rates. 

I know some people who utilize interruption based marketing and it works for them, but that just isn’t the strategy I use. A portion of that is because when I was a principal and received cold emails, I would get frustrated that they weren’t taking the time to build a relationship with me. 

So those are just a few ways to market, and my suggested way to reach a district. It’s not always about the decision makers, but the influencers that can sway a decision maker. It is vital that you create a pipeline of leads or a funnel, and build a relationship with each and every one in your funnel, because you never really know where your entry point might be!

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