Online supplier showcases

Online supplier showcases provide the most cost effective way of meeting school leaders from around the UK.  After completing your 13 minute presentation to 20 senior leaders, we collate your leads and detailed product feedback and share this with you within 12 hours.

BlueCow Education delivers 60 online supplier showcases each year to primary and secondary SLT (Heads, Deputy Heads and Assistant Heads) and SENCOs.

Key features

• Each showcase is attended by around 20 SLT. Our guaranteed minimum is 14, but there can be as many as 25.
• Companies participating for the first time receive free consultancy to help them get the most from this opportunity. We have seen - literally - thousands of presentations and we can genuinely help you to have success.
• The events are not themed and we try to ensure as far as possible that competitor companies do not pitch against each other.
• You receive a list of attending school leaders (job title, school, trust name (if applicable), postcode) five days in advance of your event so that you can do your preparatory research.
• The school leaders are completely different at each event that you attend.
• Each showcase takes place between 1930 and 2100 on weekday evenings and you have 13 minutes to present.
• The school leaders have their cameras switched on throughout your presentation and are able to ask questions. They also share detailed feedback about your product and indicate if they would like further conversations with you.
• All leads and feedback is shared with you the following morning

frequently asked questions

• Why do you run these events in the evening rather than straight after school?
There are a number of reasons for this. Running the sessions later in the evening means that more leaders are able to attend and we can more accurately predict / control the numbers. School leaders also aren't being distracted by end of day issues, so also stay on the call for the duration of the showcase and are not called away. Having a gap between the end of the school day and a showcase also means that the school leaders are much more relaxed and focused, and this leads to higher quality feedback.

• What are the benefits of an online showcase as opposed to meeting school leaders in person?
There are a number of advantages to participating in an online showcase. Here is a quick (and not exhaustive) list:
1. You are guaranteed to meet a fixed amount of school leaders.
2. You are given detailed feedback by each attendee, so you know exactly what they think of your product and how strong each lead is.
3. In-person conversations can be forced or truncated at in-person events. At our showcases, you are able to control your message, you know how much time you have to deliver the message and the session is much less intense and more enjoyable because you are presenting to a small group, rather than repeating the message individually. All of the school leaders are there because they want to find out about new products that can benefit their school. They aren't there to kill time or are because they have been badgered to speak to suppliers by conference organisers!
4. You save enormous amounts of time. As the events are online, you don't have to set up stands, travel overnight or commit to a couple of days. You simply spend around twenty minutes logged on, during which time you'll be presenting for thirteen minutes. You then get your data and leads compiled and shared with you by email.
5. Online showcases are typically around half the price of smaller regional physical events and a fraction of the price of the larger events. There are also huge cost savings involved with travel, accommodation and salaries.
6. Committing to more, lower cost online showcases, you can easily generate a year-round sales pipeline and constant, real-time product feedback.
7. Online showcases are a valid tool to use as a way of evaluating the effectiveness of your sales team. As it's a controlled - and almost identical - environment each time, you can quickly see which members of your team generate the most leads and most positive feedback.
8. Larger companies with products that have a high degree of market penetration report that they have better retention rates as a result of attending online showcases. This is because school leaders share any issues that they are having in the feedback; often, companies aren't otherwise aware of problems until it is too late.

• Why aren't the events themed - for example, around individual subjects or SEND?
Themed events simply aren't as effective. From a school leader perspective, it becomes very tedious watching lots of similar presentations. In addition to this, the leads from these events are shared between the competitor suppliers, making it far more challenging to make sales. Counterintuitively, we consistently find that there is no correlation between what schools have told us they are interested in and what they actually end up buying at these online events! As such, the showcases are positioned to the school leaders as a way of finding out about new products that they may not have previously considered and that can benefit their school - and this has proven to be the most successful approach.

• Are the school leaders incentivised to attend?
School leaders are not incentivised to attend, but we do incentivise them to complete the online feedback form. This quality assures the post-event feedback and leads that we give you. This incentive is often cited as the reason why school leaders attend showcases in the first instance, but the quality of the presentations (92% of school leaders say these showcases are actually valuable professional development) is the main reason that they return when we invite them to watch new presentations from different companies.

• How many leads can I expect?
This can vary enormously by product type, product cost, how established a product is and the quality of the presentation. The average number of 'warm' leads (a meeting request or request for further information via email) is just over six. Most companies can also reasonably expect a further half-a-dozen requests to be added to their mailing list. The most warm leads any company has ever received from an online showcase is twenty-two!

• How quickly will I make sales?
Again, a range of factors can influence this from price to the complexity of embedding the product in the school (to name just two!) Currently, the sales cycle for the suppliers we work with seems to be around 3-4 months from the showcase. The shortest product contract signing has been the next day, the current longest was 2 and a half years! The sales cycle is longer in the Autumn compared to the Spring and Summer. Fundamentally, selling to UK schools is very difficult at the moment, but again, we can help you increase your chances of success and shorten yours sales cycle as we will share best practice and what is working for other companies with you. 

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