How to Build a 90-Day Sales Plan for the New Academic Year
It’s late May. Half-term is coming. Then six weeks of sports days, transition meetings, and last-day assemblies. Then summer.
And somewhere around the second week of September, most suppliers selling into education will look at their pipeline and wonder where the year went.
I see it every single year. Smart people with good products who spend June reacting, July hoping, and August on holiday — then land in September with nothing lined up and start scrambling.
September is when budgets are confirmed. When new heads start. When schools decide what they’re buying and who they’re buying it from. If you’re not in the conversation by then, you’re not in the conversation.
The next 90 days are where that gets decided. Not September. Now.
Why most suppliers don’t plan
Because the end of the academic year feels like wind-down. Schools are wrapping up. Heads are distracted. Nobody’s buying anything in July.
That last bit is true. Nobody is buying in July.
But they are thinking. They’re reviewing what worked this year. They’re writing improvement plans. They’re flagging budget priorities for September. The decisions that will shape their spending next year are being made quietly, in staffrooms and SLT meetings and MAT board rooms, right now.
If you wait until September to start selling, you’re arriving at a conversation that started without you.
The 90-day framework
This isn’t a complicated strategy document. It’s three phases, each with a clear purpose. You could plan this on the back of a napkin. What matters is that you actually do it.
Phase 1: Audit
Before you plan forward, look back. Most suppliers skip this because it’s uncomfortable. Do it anyway.
- Which schools renewed this year and which didn’t? If you don’t know why for each one, you’re guessing your way into next year.
- Where did your deals stall? Was it budget, timing, stakeholder buy-in, or something else? Be honest.
- What does your actual pipeline look like? Not your CRM spreadsheet. Your real relationships. The schools where someone would take your call tomorrow.
- Which conversations died that shouldn’t have? Sometimes a deal goes quiet because the timing was wrong, not because the interest was. These are your warmest re-engagement opportunities.
This audit should take you a day. If it takes longer, your CRM isn’t doing its job.
Al Kingsley chairs three MAT boards. When I spoke to him for B2Education Unpacked, he told me what actually lands on a MAT board agenda: recruitment and retention, reputational risk, results, estates, and cyber security. Not product features. Not your demo. If your pipeline doesn’t connect to one of those five things, you’re not in the conversation that matters.
Phase 1 is where you get honest about whether your pitch actually speaks to what schools are trying to solve. Not what you want to sell them.
Phase 2: Position
July is when most suppliers go quiet. Schools are winding down. Nobody’s answering emails. So the instinct is to wait.
Don’t wait. Prepare.
- Write your September outreach now. Not a template — actual personalised messages for your top 20 target schools. Reference their improvement plan. Reference their context. Make it obvious you’ve done the work.
- Build your content. Case studies, one-pagers, and a clear articulation of the problem you solve — not the product you sell. If your case studies aren’t converting, that’s worth fixing before September, not after.
- Map your stakeholders. For every target school or MAT, know who the decision-maker is, who influences them, and who will actually use your product day to day. These are different people with different concerns.
- Book your September meetings now. This sounds aggressive but it works. “I know you’re wrapping up for summer — could we get 30 minutes in the diary for the second week of September? Happy to work around your schedule.” People book things in July that they’d never find time for in September.
This is the phase most suppliers skip entirely. And it’s the one that makes the biggest difference.
Patrick McGrath at Everway told me that when a school says they don’t have the budget, it’s almost never actually about money. It’s about culture. About whether the school believes the change is worth the effort. If you’re spending July building a pitch that leads with price, you’re going to hit that wall in September. Spend July building a pitch that leads with the problem instead.
Phase 3: Execute
Schools come back in the last week of August or first week of September. The window between “we’re back” and “we’re drowning” is about two weeks. Be ready.
- Send your pre-written outreach in the first week. Not the second. The first. Before inboxes fill up and diaries close.
- Follow up with value, not with chasing. If you don’t know the difference, read the Follow-Up Formula.
- Have your discovery questions ready. “What are the biggest challenges your school is facing this year?” is still the best opener I know. Ask it and sit in the silence.
- Track everything properly. If a conversation happens and it doesn’t go into your CRM the same day, it might as well not have happened.
By the end of September, you should have a clear picture of which schools are moving forward, which are interested but not yet ready, and which are a no. That clarity is worth more than any pipeline report.
What this plan doesn’t include
Cold emails to schools you’ve never spoken to, asking for 15 minutes of their time. If that’s your September strategy, you don’t need a 90-day plan. You need a fundamentally different approach.
Schools are drowning in cold outreach. Every supplier with a mailing list is emailing them in September. You cannot out-volume that. What you can do is out-prepare it.
The suppliers who get meetings in September are the ones who were already useful before schools went on holiday. Who sent something relevant in June. Who didn’t disappear in July. Who showed up in September with a conversation, not a pitch.
Start this week
Open your CRM. Pull up every school you spoke to this academic year. Sort them into three buckets: renewed, stalled, or lost. Then ask yourself why for each one.
That’s your Phase 1. It takes an afternoon. And it’s worth more than anything else you’ll do this week.
September is coming whether you’re ready or not. Ninety days. Three phases. No excuses.
🎧 Al Kingsley MBE (NetSupport, 3 MAT boards) and Patrick McGrath (Everway) both feature in Series One of B2Education Unpacked. Al’s episode covers what MAT boards actually care about and why most supplier pitches miss the mark. Patrick’s covers why “we don’t have budget” is almost never the real objection.
