Wouldn’t you like an independent look into the mind and purchasing decisions of the technology manager’s you sell to? At the NSCA’s Pivot to Profit 2019, attendees were given an opportunity to do just that.
Joshua Smith, technology director, Hudson Independent School District, TX, was kind enough to be the voice of technology managers everywhere at P2P 2019. Joshua and his team oversee technology for 3,000 students across five campuses that have deployed 5,000 network connected devices.
In an afternoon session Joshua held an hour-long Q&A where integrators could ask questions that he answered candidly. Below are some of the highlights of this informative session:
On School Districts
– Our school district is a property poor school district. We serve everything from early childhood through high school. We have some recovery programs. We have a nursing program where students can graduate with an LVN. It has animatronic dummies that do everything from cough to give birth. We’re in the midst of launching an aeronautics program.
– Our network is the core of everything, and people don’t even realize. Now we’ve got pieces of every department from the police to food services that we need to support. It gets wild sometimes.
– We’re a 4A school district. There’s little school districts and giant school districts that have twice as many people in a school as we have in our county. What works in one district may not work in another.
– We’ve had a single focus for a long time. It lets us do strategic planning. New superintendents that come in on a three-year gig will throw budget at it and they’re not there when the system burns down. Do some research on what you’re walking into.
On Selling to IT Pros
– A lot of our decision making, when it comes to our department being included, is reactive. [Integrators] come and sell to the maintenance department, and after the fact they say we should talk to the IT department because it’s PoE. You probably should have talked to the IT department a long time ago. So now we have a bad taste in our mouth.
– The best way to make an enemy of an IT department is to not include them when you’re selling things that, when you really look at it, is a connected device that’s in the IT department. We’ve been alienated from the decision-making process or any vetting. You’ve already cut a PO and now it has to work – that’s a bad deal.
– Sometimes you just go ahead and let it die and deal with the circumstances that come out of that. Sometimes the maintenance director is yelling at you because you didn’t do what you were supposed to do to make it work. Sometimes the superintendent is upset – I’ve gotten chewed out over the width of a screen before by a superintendent that didn’t understand that a wireless network requires wires.
– Ideally, we’re included from the beginning. We’ve been on a call with engineering and sales. There is very little that you go into a school district with that the IT department wouldn’t be appreciative of being invited. Let them sit in the room, and let the IT director go to the maintenance department and let that person know they aren’t needed. The other way around really screws up our day.
On Dealing with Integrators
– Put me in contact with your people that aren’t salespeople. I like salespeople, I’ve done sales before. But you have a tendency to sell things, and when the salesperson is off the phone the engineer says it’s not what this does. We’re going to try to help you out. If we know that we’re in it together with your engineering people, that’s a big help if that situation occurs.
– If the salesperson is not technical that’s fine. If they’re honest about it and have a technical resource that’s totally expected. I love to have the salesperson bring in Cletus Ray, and he speaks East Texas, and he’s an engineer. If you don’t know something, I have no problem with a salesperson deferring to the engineer. That tells me we’re on a level playing field and we’re all being honest here.
– Phased projects are good if I can keep the annual cost down. Some of the cloud and SaaS stuff is moving that way. On the hardware end, it is nice to have an end – having a phased project is fine, not a perpetual phased project. Give me an opportunity to either get out or reevaluate. Making a five-year plan in an IT environment is tough.
– Tell me the truth. Involve me. If you don’t know, say it. Have a resource to get an answer. But just include me. I’d like to be included in the process of selecting the product. There are red flags, where that product may not work on my network.
On Technology Manager Budgets
– I’m open with my budget, but I’m guarded in the fact that if I tell him the total budget then he will take it all. A lot of times I’ll show my cards just because you can’t have a stalemate.
– If you treat me right on that first project, there will be a second. We go off best price and best practice. You have to convince the district that the lowest price isn’t the best solution.
Related: Talking To IT Directors About the Networked AV Systems You Sell Them: 3 Tips
– We do a lot of things in-house that we shouldn’t have to do in-house because of lack of support from some integrators, or because of vast pricing differences.
– Schools run on annual budgets that are typically very similar from one year to the next. I am all for a project that is a phased project. I know that’s sometimes not the best way to
engineer an install. I can’t kill my budget on one project and have no room to do anything else.
On Future Technology
– I’m an IT person, a giant nerd, I read stuff. It’s terrifying and fascinating at the same time. As long as we’re included in the decision-making process it’s fine. It’s progress. Technology people like to look forward. When my department gets a chance to sit around and talk, we talk about what’s coming. We’ve been talking about PoE lighting for a long time.
– If you can have an answer to the question, that’s huge. If you can say you’re going to stand by us when it’s put in. I hate when something is dropped on us and left for the IT department to make it work. It’s a big deal. A lot of things have an unrealistic timeline. Our time is not budgeted to handle that. It may be a nine-month project, that’s fine. The timeline of how an installation goes is really important to us.
