sales | lead up

b2b handshake on the left, college committee meeting on the right

B2B vs B2HE: They’re not the same

Selling products or services to colleges and universities might look a lot like classic B2B marketing at first glance, but the similarities are often only skin deep. Many vendors new to the space underestimate the real differences involved in business to higher education, which I like to call B2HE. Attempting to apply a standard B2B playbook to higher ed institutions can backfire, leading to longer sales cycles, disengaged stakeholders, and partnerships that fizz out before real value is delivered.

If higher ed is on your radar or you’re struggling to get traction there, understanding what sets B2HE apart is crucial. Here are some of the main reasons why selling to higher education isn’t just business as usual. Decision-making, budgets, values, and communication styles differ in B2HE.

Understanding the unique dynamics of B2HE

Why B2HE is more than just another vertical

Traditional B2B models are built around organizational efficiency and scale. But higher education operates on a completely different foundation, and it shows up at every stage of the buying process. There are a few key factors that set B2HE apart.

Navigating complex decision-making structures

Multiple stakeholders and diverse priorities

While most corporate deals are managed by a clear decision-maker such as a CIO or procurement director, higher ed purchases rarely rest in one person’s hands. Instead, you’re engaging an intricate web of:

Marketing, communications, and accessibility experts
Enrollment
Advancement
Budget and finance administrators
IT leadership and administrative officers
Department heads

Consensus is essential, requiring more meetings, more documentation, and a heightened focus on inclusive communication. This results in longer sales cycles, but also increases the likelihood of deeply buy-in when the decision finally lands.

Prepare for a slower, collaborative process that honors multiple voices. Treat conciseness and transparency as your most valuable assets.

Budget structures require adaptation

Funding, grants, and endowments

Budgets at colleges and universities aren’t structured like those at most private companies. They’re organized around fiscal calendars, government funding cycles, and multi-year endowment allocations. Subscription models tied to headcount or monthly usage may not resonate. Instead, higher ed buyers prefer:

Predictable annual costs
Multi-year contracts that provide budgeting stability
Transparent pricing that fits within allocated grant or state funds

Flexibility and predictability win over complexity.

Mission over metrics

Values are just as important as, if not more important than, ROI

Corporate buyers place heavy emphasis on ROI, scalability, and efficiency. Higher ed buyers still care about those, but just as often prioritize mission-driven outcomes like:

Student success
Community impact
Equity, diversity, and inclusion
Academic integrity and compliance

When selling to higher ed, your story has to go beyond efficiency. It must show how your product actually helps fulfill the core educational mission.

Learning platforms that improve accessibility or support underserved students instantly stand out, even if their ROI story isn’t the strongest on paper.

The demand for customization and flexibility

No size fits all

B2B vendors often seek scalable, repeatable solutions. But every college has its own legacy systems, departmental independence, and varying technical skills. This means your product needs to be:

Flexible enough to support unique workflows
Highly configurable for decentralized department ownership
Compatible with legacy IT infrastructures

Rigid, one-size-fits-all solutions rarely stick. Institutions expect partners to accommodate the idiosyncrasies that make their campus unique.

Offer product demos that highlight customization. Be ready to discuss integration with legacy data systems and non-technical user support.

Building enduring relationships

Focus on long-term partnership

A tech startup might swap vendors every two years in search of the next advantage. By contrast, higher ed institutions expect solutions to last and evolve. Once they invest in you, they want assurance that you’ll:

Provide high-touch, ongoing support
Offer comprehensive onboarding and training
Grow and adapt as their needs change

Expect more focus on references, trust-building, and post-sale relationship management.

Invest in a Customer Success program dedicated to higher ed. Highlight case studies that show long-term, evolving partnerships with other institutions.

Community and peer advocacy drive adoption

Peer recommendations make the difference

The higher education space is highly networked. Professionals regularly trade insights at conferences, on listservs, and through formal consortia. A peer endorsement from another university can carry more weight than any marketing collateral you might send.

Tactics to boost credibility in higher ed:

Encourage reference calls or campus visits among current and prospective customers
Support user groups and online communities
Invest in customer success stories specific to peer institutions

Word-of-mouth among institutions can either accelerate your adoption or stunt it completely.

Communication styles matter more than you think

Formality, context, and respect

Corporate sales outreach often favors brevity, casual tone, and friendly assumptions. Higher ed professionals value something quite different:

Clear, context-rich subject lines (e.g., “Supporting accessible learning at [Institution Name]”)
Well-written, respectful, and grammatically correct messages
Personalization and reference to the institution’s educational mission
Respectful timing and considered follow-ups

“Quick question?” subject lines and pushy weekly nudges don’t land here. Quality outshines quantity.

Develop tailored, thoughtful messages that acknowledge the institution’s specific goals and challenges. Assume your reader is analytical, busy, and invested in their work.

How to succeed in B2HE

Rethink your playbook

Treating higher ed like a standard B2B client almost guarantees you’ll miss the nuances that matter most. To stand out, you need to:

Rethink your sales cycle for consensus-based decisions
Structure contracts for stability and transparency
Develop messaging tailored to mission-driven priorities
Feature solutions that are adaptable, configurable, and legacy-friendly
Build long-term, trust-driven relationships
Leverage peer advocacy and customer-led storytelling
Communicate with clarity, respect, and context

By truly understanding and adapting to the B2HE model, you position your company as a valued partner rather than just another vendor. That mindset shift will pay off in longer, richer relationships and stronger results for the institutions shaping our future.

Wrap-up

Unlocking higher ed as a growth channel isn’t about changing what you sell. It’s about honoring who you’re selling to and how they define success. Start by reevaluating your messaging, your pricing structures, and your approach to ongoing support. Listen closely to current customers and ask for feedback on your outreach style. Engage with the broader higher ed community and invest in building references and relationships.

If your solution supports educational missions and you’re ready to rethink your approach, the B2HE world can offer uniquely rewarding partnerships that last a decade or more.

Making customer count a prime metric

Net Revenue Retention (NRR) has been a key indicator of business health in SaaS for a long time, and for good reasons. It tells you how well you’re expanding within your existing customer base. But while NRR is a highly valuable metric, it can also be misleading, because it may mask challenges, especially when it comes to acquiring new customers. That’s why you may consider shifting your focus to something more fundamental: the number of (good-fit) customers.

Don’t over-rely on NRR as the main indicator of success

A high NRR can make a company look successful on paper, but if customer acquisition is stagnant, focusing too much on NRR might make you ignore signs of trouble. In addition, relying too heavily on expansion revenue within an existing customer base creates a ceiling on growth. Eventually, there’s only so much revenue you can farm from our current customers, no matter how much value you add.

While retaining and expanding within your customer base remains important (Hannon Hill‘s retention rate in the last two years exceeded 97%!), sustainable long-term growth depends on consistently bringing in new customers. By prioritizing customer count as a key metric, you ensure that your business remains viable and competitive.

Why customer count helps paint a truer picture

Of course, it’s not all about customer count, and we all know that getting a new customer signed just for the count without considering if they fit into your ideal customer profile is a flawed approach. However, let’s look at some of the benefits of identifying the number of customers as a key metric.

Driving new business and competitiveness
Expanding your customer base means actively selling your product to new organizations. This not only generates new revenue streams but also reinforces the value and relevance of your offering in the market.
Building a more expansive customer community
More customers mean a broader range of success stories, testimonials, and case studies. A thriving customer community adds credibility, strengthens brand advocacy, and enhances your ability to attract even more customers.
Enabling better product decisions with diverse feedback
A growing customer base provides a more diverse set of perspectives, use cases, and challenges. This variety helps you make more informed product decisions, ensuring your platform evolves in a way that benefits a wide range of users.
Ensuring long-term sustainability
A business that prioritizes new customer acquisition (again, only if the customer is a fit – don’t pursue bad fits, as this is a lose-lose scenario) is better positioned for long-term success. Over-relying on upsells and expansions can create an illusion of growth, but without a steady influx of new customers, churn and market saturation will eventually limit progress.

Of course, retention still matters – a lot

This shift in focus doesn’t mean retention no longer matters. Keeping existing customers happy is still critical. However, retention should support, rather than overshadow, the primary goal of increasing your customer count. A balanced approach ensures that you continue to provide value to your current customers while also expanding your reach.

At the end of the day…

Ultimately, long-term success in SaaS isn’t just about getting more revenue from your existing base by providing more value, but it’s about continuously bringing new organizations into your ecosystem. By making customer count a core metric, you may better position yourself for sustainable, scalable growth.

What are your thoughts?

How to use ChatGPT for your startup

There’s no content shortage regarding AI in general and ChatGPT in particular. And there certainly is a healthy level of skepticism and trepidation but also a sense of excitement about the possibilities. If you’re looking to leverage its capabilities for your startup, where you may need to be scrappy and don’t have the resources to buy all of the expensive enterprise software you want, ChatGPT can be a game-changer. Let’s take a look at some use cases.

Analyze sentiment

For the most part, prospects and customers are quite polite and not always easy to read. Your sales reps and customer success specialists might be optimistic by nature, report what they consider positive feedback, and might not want to dig deeper into the real sentiment of their prospects or customers. That’s why companies like Gong include AI-based tools that analyze sentiment. However, if you’re on a tight budget, ChatGPT can be a viable alternative. For example, you may get an email from a prospect telling you that the project has been delayed and to bear with them. Ask ChatGPT: “Look at this email from a prospect for [describe the product]. Is this prospect a serious buyer?”. Similarly, if you’re in Customer Success, you could ask, “Look at this email from my customer. Are they completely happy with our products and services?” It will give you an analysis that might help you get an objective view, which can help you make strategic decisions. You may even take it a step further by generating transcripts of your demo recordings or your meetings with existing customers and ask ChatGPT to analyze sentiment or even the distribution of talk time, which will likely provide good teaching moments.

Help with tone

One of ChatGPT’s biggest strengths is to analyze and write for a specific tone. For example, when you send a customer a response to a complaint or even if you just send them a renewal notice, you could ask the tool to write it in a friendly, empathetic tone. Compare your current version with ChatGPT’s response, and you may be pleasantly surprised. You may also use it for responding to Support tickets, inquiries from prospects, or for handling challenging communication with co-workers. Remember that you don’t want to rely on the tool to mimic your sincerity and personality. Use it as a learning tool to improve your interpersonal skills.

Create customer surveys

If you’re just getting started building your Customer Success department, you might need some help asking your customers the right questions that will give you action items. Be as specific in your ask as possible and include the type of persona that will receive the survey and the type of product or service you provide. Note that ChatGPT’s first response might be more generic than you would like, in which case you can ask it for either a more in-depth first questionnaire or a follow-up questionnaire, as seen below.

Generate content ideas

Coming up with fresh content ideas can be harder than actually writing a piece of collateral. ChatGPT can crack your writer’s block. You can simply ask, “Give me content ideas for…” or start with titles, add the desired characteristics, and go from there. The more specific you are, the more usable the results will be. For instance, instead of saying, “Give me titles for blog posts on marketing”, go deeper with “Give me humorous titles about email marketing. My target audience is the marketing manager of a small to medium-sized business”.

Generate content for demos

If your business requires any demonstration to customers or prospects, whether it’s a website, landing pages, or emails, you always want the content to be as realistic as possible and targeted to your prospect instead of relying on “lorem ipsum”. ChatGPT can save you a ton of time!

Practice your demos

If you have junior sales reps on your team, you will likely spend much time coaching them. You might know your target personas exceptionally well, but your reps may not. Why not empower them to practice their demos using ChatGPT? Teach them the right prompts, such as “Pretend that you are [describe the buyer persona]. I am showing you my product, which is [describe the product]. What would you like to know?”

These are just a few ideas on using ChatGPT to your benefit. The key is to be mindful of how you’re using it, to learn how to give it the right prompt for what you’re looking for, and to keep learning, just like ChatGPT keeps learning.

What about you? How are you using ChatGPT?

Everything you can do, I can do better… Do you obsess over your competition?

You’ve probably fallen into the same trap as everyone else when it comes to worrying about competitors. Have you looked at your competitors’ products to figure out if there’s something you want to copy? Have you checked out their reviews on Glassdoor to learn more about their company culture and the happiness of their employees? Do you have Google Alerts set up for mentions of their company or product name? Do you follow what they’re posting on social media? Well, while it’s good to know what your competition is up to, obsessing too much can be a colossal waste of time and can make you lose focus. Let’s take a few minutes to reflect on some of the things that you should and should not concern yourself with when it comes to your competition.

Features

There are many sources of inspiration for your product roadmap. Chances are that your sales reps, your support team, your professional services department, your client advocate, and basically every customer- and prospect-facing individual will bring their feedback to the table on a daily basis. As I mentioned in a previous post, the trick is to know when to say no to a certain request. So should you worry about product features of your competitors? My answer is “mostly no”. Obviously, you want to know how other products solve their customers’ problems, but hopefully, you are confident that you will find better ways to help your customers achieve their goals. Yes, you might hear from a prospect “But XYZ has this particular feature. That’s really what I was looking for”, or maybe your sales rep is convinced that “if only we had this feature that competitor ABC had, we would have won the deal”. But that doesn’t mean that you have to drop what you’re doing, change your roadmap, and create a replica of said feature. First of all, you only want to implement features which provide substantial value. Never build something gimmicky just because it “demos well”. Equip your sales reps with in depth knowledge about your product philosophy and with the right questions to ask a prospect. Always approach feature requests with a focus on solving the prospect’s problems and helping them achieve their goals. In other words, focus on the what when talking to a prospect before figuring out the how.

Pricing

Let’s face it – no matter what types of products or services you provide, there’s always someone who’ll do it cheaper. Trying to win a deal by starting a race to the bottom is not just bad business for you, but it ultimately harms your industry, and, as a result, the quality of the products available, and that is not in the best interest of your clients. Be sure you get compensated fairly and in a way that allows you to continue to innovate and to provide amazing customer service. Be sure that your prospects and customers understand the value they’re getting.

Intel strategies

Some companies are more aggressive than others when it comes to competitive intel. In fact, we’ve had competitors use fake names to sign up for our webinars (I’m looking at you, “Jim Legg”!), use their personal accounts to get demos of our product, and even recruit their own customers to ask for demos just for the intel. Is it annoying? Sure, since it’s a distraction. You definitely want to be aware of those instances, since you don’t want to give away too much information. More importantly, you don’t want to waste your sales reps’ time on prospects that really only do some work for your competitors. But ultimately, don’t let paranoia take up real estate in your head that you could use more wisely by focusing on your product.

What they say about you

Arguably the hardest thing to ignore, or at least to not get enraged over, is what your competitors say about your company and product when it’s not true. Obviously, your gut reaction is to call them out. In situations in which the prospect tells you about derogatory and false statements that your competitors made, be thankful that you’re given the chance to present the facts, but be sure to do so in a way that reflects your company values and that establishes trust. While it can certainly be helpful to find out what your competitors say about you, so that you can be adequately prepared, it’s best to primarily focus on your relationship with the prospect.

Logo count

What about your competitors’ customer lists? How much attention should you pay to those? It’s definitely helpful to know which customers who would be/would have been great fits for you ended up choosing one of your competitors. When you lose a deal, always do a post mortem in order to understand why this happened. In some instances, maybe it wasn’t a good fit from the beginning due to budget or unrealistic expectations. In this case, identify what could have been done to walk away earlier in the process. It’s a much tougher loss when an organization would have been a good or even ideal fit for you. Ask your team what they would have done differently in hindsight. Then, move on, but be sure that someone follows up with the prospect after a certain amount of time. When looking at your and your competition’s customers, don’t just count logos. Always think about fit.

Customer Service

From a price standpoint, there’s always someone who will be cheaper. There’s also always going to be a “bigger boat”. However, one of the things that is most within your control is the level of service that you provide to your customers and your prospects. As I mentioned previously, company culture is how people feel after interacting with anyone on your team. Note that you will be hard pressed to find a company who does not make the claim to deliver great service. Look at your competitors, but also look at other companies that are known for having amazing service, and do whatever you can to be better than any of them. If you don’t let anyone out-care you, you will prevail.

Knowing your competitive landscape is necessary, but don’t let it paralyze you. Learn and get inspired where possible, and focus on the things that you can control.

What about you? What do you concern or not concern yourself with when it comes to your competition?

Saying “no” for the greater good

Being responsible for the success of your company means that you strive to achieve maximum happiness levels for your customers, employees, and stakeholders. So of course, your first instinct tells you to say yes to each and every request. Saying no is so much harder, but there are many cases in which a “no” is indeed in the best interest of your company and, in the long run, for everyone involved, including your customer base. Let’s take a look at situations in which a “no” makes sense and really shouldn’t be this hard.

No to a feature

“If we only had this feature, we’d win every deal”. I’m sure you’ve heard similar statements from your sales reps. And yes, your reps are the ones who directly interact with your prospects, so it’s only natural for them to share a prospect’s comment during a demo with your product manager or leadership. Feedback from your reps is vitally important and you should always hear them out. But it’s equally crucial to teach your reps to ask questions with regard to the prospect’s objectives rather than about their preference of a specific feature. Sometimes, another vendor may have sold the prospect on a certain feature but there may be better ways to accomplish the prospect’s goals. Or maybe the flashy feature that your competitor made sound so appealing just doesn’t fit into your vision of your product and the future of the industry or isn’t even in the best interest of your customers. Understanding your prospects’ goals and identifying the ideal way to help them achieve those goals should be at the core of your road map. And that may very well mean saying no to a feature request. Take all feedback seriously but to stay true to your vision and always have the best interests of your customers at heart. Don’t dilute your product with features that might result in a quick win (as in increased sales) in the short term but that make your software hard to maintain, don’t drive the desired results for your customers, or prevent you from working on better, more impactful features.

No to customizations

Similarly, your prospects may approach you with customization requests. Typically, the younger your company and the more prestigious the potential customer is, the more inclined you are to say yes. Be cautious. Once again, consider the long term impact. How hard will it be to maintain the customization? Is a SaaS based model what you ultimately strive for? If so, how will you handle clients who have their own customized product? Does it even make sense for the client? Customization requests can spawn a lot of great ideas for your road map, so be sure to listen and ask questions. But don’t be afraid to say no to something that will hamstring your engineering and support team.

No to projects

At Hannon Hill, we’re lucky enough to have a thick pipeline of project requests from our customers, ranging from small implementations to content migrations and even large scale integrations. Occasionally, the scope of a request falls outside of what we typically provide. Clearly, we would never take on a project if we thought it to be a bad fit for our areas of expertise. We want to focus on what we do best. We will consider saying yes if a) we fully understand the scope and the risks, b) it’s something that will make future projects and helping other customers easier, and c) it helps our team members grow professionally. However, if the answer to those questions is no or if we believe that our partners are better suited and can deliver better results, it’s a no. After all, would you want your plumber to install your hardwood floors?

No to terms and conditions

Ah, contract negotiations. They sure can be tricky. As a software company, you protect yourself by having a license or subscription agreement in place which clearly states your and your users’ responsibilities. It defines warranties, liabilities and indemnification and outlines processes for remediation in case of a dispute. Sometimes, your potential customers want to negotiate the terms of your agreement or even provide their own contract. What do you do? You can either stand firm or negotiate. In certain circumstances, it may be okay to make a concession, while in other cases, you need to assess whether the level of risk of agreeing to a change is worth it. As you know, even the most rigorous QA process can only reveal the presence of bugs, but not their absence. If the potential customer’s terms specify warranties and liabilities that open your company up to a potential financial loss that is disproportionate to the value of the deal, saying “yes” would not make sense, but narrowing down the definitions of the terms would. At the end of the day, a customer who is a good fit will shy away from working with a vendor who will agree to just about anything to get the deal, even if that means jeopardizing the longevity of the business.

No to a prospect

Arguably the hardest “no” happens when you have to walk away from a potential customer. But sometimes, a prospect is simply not the right fit for your product, your service, or your company. This can have a variety of reasons. The prospect may not have the proper staff to be successful with your product. They may have unrealistic goals or expectations. They may actually need a completely different type of product. They may not even really understand their own needs or need something that is not your area of expertise. Regardless, reject the idea that any new customer is good for business. Wouldn’t you rather provide good guidance to your prospects by saying “no” than to lose them once they see for themselves that it wasn’t a good fit to begin with? The wrong fit is bad for all parties involved. It can have a negative impact on team morale and on your reputation (and thus, future business).

At the end of the day, you want to deliver the right product to the right customers under the right conditions in order to ensure long term success and happiness. And that’s why a quick yes isn’t always the right answer. Say no when it’s for the greater good.

What about you? When do you find it unnecessarily hard to say no?