The people who loved the product could not release the money
A corporate strategy and planning function was building the case for entering the school group market, meaning the trusts and groups that run a number of schools together. Its plan was aimed at the people who use the product, which in a school is the head and the teaching staff. In a group, that is not where the money sits.
Spending is consolidated across the schools, budget cycles are fixed, and a bursar or an operations director signs. Everyone in the category knows who loves the product; far fewer know who funds it. The people who could describe how the money is released were unlikely to say it plainly to a supplier. They are operational and under pressure, and they speak candidly to an independent moderator.
We built the guide around the approval route
We wrote the discussion guide around how a purchase actually gets approved rather than around the product, then ran moderated calls with former bursars, who run a school’s finances, former trust operations directors and former supplier account leads. Follow up questions were asked live, which is how a described process turns into a calendar with a role written against each step.
Coverage spanned group sizes rather than whichever contacts were easiest to reach, because the approval route changes with scale: a small group and a large trust do not release money the same way. The calls covered who signs, when the budget window opens, and what happens to a request that arrives outside it.
The commercial model moved from the school to the group
The team came away with the approval route, the budget window and the signing seat, each named by role. What decides entry into this market is procedural, and that part came from people who had run it rather than from a market map.
The commercial model changed. Work already done had aimed the selling effort at the individual school, and the evidence moved it to the group, which shortened the sales cycle the plan expected and reduced the headcount it needed. The strategy lead kept the discussion guide and used it again on neighbouring public sector categories.
