Struggling to Sell to Schools or Universities? (An Expert in HigherEd Tells You How to do it Right)

Selling into education institutions—whether K–12 or higher ed—isn’t just about having a great product.

It’s about understanding how those institutions work: how decisions are made, what roadblocks slow things down, and how to position yourself as a trusted partner—not just another vendor.

In this special live episode recorded at IFE in Monterrey, Mexico, I sit down with Michael Fung, Executive Director of the Institute for the Future of Education at Tecnológico de Monterrey, to break down:

• Why so many education companies fail when selling into schools and universities.
• How to align your messaging with how institutional buyers think.
• Why confidence and clarity matter more than features and flash.
• The power of understanding governance, policy, and internal processes before you pitch.
• Global and local opportunities in education—whether you're working in underserved markets like Latin America or navigating school districts in the U.S., speaking the language of decision-makers is key.

Michael’s experience in education policy, innovation, and navigating complex institutions is a masterclass in how to sell smarter, not harder.

🎯 Even if you typically sell only to universities or only to K–12 schools, the strategies we explore in this episode apply across the board. Institutions may vary, but the approach to building trust and gaining traction is universal.

🎯 If you’ve ever walked into a district meeting or university pitch and felt like you weren’t speaking their language—this episode is for you.

Want traction? Stop selling. Start positioning yourself and listening.

#EdSales #EducationBusiness #LeadGeneration #InstitutionalSales #MessagingStrategy #BreakingTheGrade

Transcript

Josh Chernikoff (00:01) Our students are the future. How we advance innovation and impact and approach equity in their classrooms will determine how we thrive as a world community. The status quo just won't cut it. That's why we're here to break the grade. Hello, breakers and difference makers. I'm Josh Chernikoff, host of How I Broke That. I'm a two-time entrepreneur in the education space, and I've successfully exited 
 
both of those companies. I've experienced my fair share of breaks in my life and I'm here to bring my signature approach to my new show, Breaking the Grave. I'm embarking on this special journey alongside my good friend and mentor, John Gamba, Director of Innovative Programs and Entrepreneurial Residence at Penn GSE. In our podcast, you'll hear from emerging business owners in the education space who are working to transform education 
 
as we know it. Tune in as we hear about industry trends, unique principles and practices, and the attempts that have and haven't worked for our grade breaking guests. So fellow entrepreneurs and educators, what do you think? Are you ready to take a hammer to the education space and break the grade? Welcome to a special live edition of Breaking the Grade. I recorded this show. 
 
at the Institute for the Future of Education and their conference in Monterrey, Mexico at Monterrey Tech. So I ditched the studio for a real-time chat with the incredible Michael Fung. He's the executive director of IFE. In this episode, you're going to learn how to navigate the complexities of selling into higher education. And I'm sure you can apply it to K-12. 
 
the unique opportunities and challenges in Latin American education innovation and the importance of mission-driven ed tech in underserved communities. I'd like you to stick around. You're going to get to meet Michael Fung. This man has done it all. He is a global leader in education innovation. He's dedicated to transforming education and the guy is a lifelong learner. I really hope you enjoy this show. 
 
Welcome to breaking the grade 
 
Welcome to the show, Michael. Tell everybody what you do here at IFE and a little bit of your background that has taken you all over the world. 
 
Michael Fung (02:41) My name is Michael Fung. I'm the executive director leading the Institute for the Future Education here at the Technological Demonstration. Here at the Institute for the Future Education, we are transforming higher education and lifelong learning models to improve the way that people learn across a range of age groups as a way to improve their employability and employment. 
 
and to have better lives. And we do that around the world. We conduct research, we have a number of high impact projects, we work with tech companies, and we disseminate information about educational innovation. What's effective, what works in different contexts and settings. What got me here? Well, I have had, maybe in the last two and a half decades, I've been focused on higher education, workforce skills development, education and training in that space. 

 And the IFE, the Institute for Future Education, provides me with a platform to make a global impact in what I do. Immediately prior to this, I was developing workforce skills development system in Singapore and also worked in a number of higher education institutions, universities in Hong Kong and in Singapore as well. So this has been a very interesting journey because I think lifelong learning and the way higher education needs to transform to disruptions. 
 
like technology and artificial intelligence, is going to be so important in terms of keeping our population upscaled, rescaled, and adequately educated throughout the careers and lives. 
 
Josh Chernikoff (04:16) Got 
 
you. Before we get into some nitty-gritty questions, our audience is mainly based in the United States. And sometimes I think us in the United States, although I spend a lot of time Mexico, we just think within those borders. Can you talk to our audience about how important a conference like IFE is for them personally, for their business, for their growth? 
 
Michael Fung (04:41) Well, there's a lot of innovation going on in the US for many years. That's an obvious point because it's a very large market and mature markets. And so it is natural for that to happen. And there's a deep funding pool for startups or for tech companies and so on. But some of the most interesting problems and experiments occur outside the United States. Here in Mexico and Latin America, 
 
given the different context of different countries and the gaps in education, they're actually really interesting opportunities that you wouldn't quite typically see if you're coming from just a US lens. So a conference like the IFE conference provides the opportunity for companies, whether they are investors, whether they're startup companies, to really engage with the context and opportunities in the wider Americas. 
 
And I think maybe that's the biggest value. Now of course there are challenges because if the VCs are not focused on this market, if they're not able to get supporting products and services from companies and the supply chain, those are challenges. But I think when you think about interesting problem sets, plenty of them. And if you can make an innovative, take an innovative approach to addressing some of those problems, I think you can strike it big in terms of. 
 
Josh Chernikoff (06:04) I know that obviously you're spending a lot of time speaking and meeting with folks. Right now we're in this area which is the tech prize. And I know that when you walked in you were very impressed. So talk about please the value for a company that is getting going or that has made some money to be a part of a tech prize and to put themselves out there in a competition. 
 
Michael Fung (06:34) 
You know what really excites me about TechPrize? It's not just about how big and how much money the companies make. Well, don't get me wrong, that's important. But how mission-driven these companies are. When we launch a TechPrize challenge every year, we work with a wide group of stakeholders to define in education a learning problem that is relevant to the region. And many times these problems revolve around 
 
the lack of access, underprivileged groups, trying to scale up in an unfavorable environment in terms of educational impact, trying to bring about greater development of technological capabilities, again, in a less than favorable context. So when we invite these companies to come forward and pitch their solutions, what really excites me is how innovative these companies are in dealing with 
 
overcoming all the challenges and barriers and yet finding successful models that could help them to grow in scale. Grow in scale in terms of financials but also grow in scale in terms of impact. And so when I sit into some of these, listen to some of these pictures and I watch the founders, the energy they have, I almost want to cry. It's like you're going against all odds to try to serve a community that is forgotten by the rest of... 
 
the global community especially from advanced economies and you find solutions that we can potentially scale and make that big impact. And I want to find all kinds of ways to support these ideas to become real successes in terms of state. 
 
Josh Chernikoff (08:16) One of the ways that I see, I'm a big fan, supporter, sponsor, judge of the Penn GSE Milken competition. And can you talk more... 
 
about how companies in education, again, I don't care if you've made no money to millions of dollars, how you can leverage universities and the opportunities they provide. Are you guys actively involved in that? And again, like, how can we get these companies to recognize you can do this too? 
 
Michael Fung (08:48) Yeah, it's interesting you bring up the Milken Institute and the competition in the earlier keynote that Michael Golden just delivered at the Arena of Borregos. He was talking about the Milken competition. And if you look at the Milken Prize award winners, the business plan award winners, you know, they are very good ideas. But again, they come from a context that's different from the context here in Latin America, but by extension. 
 
developing economies. And so I think universities can play a role to really support that kind of innovation in education that goes beyond traditional markets. There's a lot of research innovation for traditional students with traditional universities and we need to continue improving disabilities with underserved and non-traditional learnings that I think universities can play a role. 
 
You know, let me give you an example. When we think about the future education at the Institute for the Future Education, we think about four pillars. That the future education needs to be fit for purpose, it needs to be adaptive, it needs to be inclusive, it needs to be 
responsive. And it forms a nice acronym, Future Education Needs to Be Fair. As you note, there is a big focus on inclusion because we shouldn't live in a world... 
 
where education is only, or educational opportunities is only limited to a select few. We need to find ways to make the best use of technology, innovation, approaches to reach these underserved groups. And so we actively support and promote projects that reach out to these groups of learners. And in this past year, we've been piloting a program that takes a very high-end. 
 
artificial intelligence banking delivering to very low-end 2G, 3G cell phones using WhatsApp messages, pictures, and voice to deliver micro-learning, adaptive learning to youths from marginalized communities. We're trying to develop a model that can potentially scale to minutes. 
 
Josh Chernikoff (11:00) That's exciting. There's so much opportunity in education. 
 
There's also a lot of challenges for the entrepreneurs who are trying to build these businesses. And I see a lot of that in the ones that I work with them. And it could be clarity in your messaging, your offer, your credibility, your own confidence. So what would you say to some of these entrepreneurs that might be facing some of these challenges so that they find themselves here next year and then they find themselves moving up? 
 
in a global opportunity on the education stage. 
 
Michael Fung (11:44) You know, I realize I've been talking a lot about inclusion, know, and the underserved markets. But of course, there's a big mainstream market which is existing universities within established ecosystems. My message to, you know, companies, technology companies, companies that focus on education, especially when you think about higher education and beyond, is to develop a really deep understanding. 
 
of how education institutions work. It's, you know, unlike, let's say, the FMCG, the fast moving consumer goods market, it's not like you create a product and it flies off the shelves. People come and compare colors and they just, you know, they just buy it off the shelf. Driving adoption and change within an institution is very complex because the institution is largely based on the strengths of its people. 
 
faculty and administrators and staff. And it's also very much based on the governance and the processes that it has. So on one hand, these governance approaches and processes bring stability and predictable growth for the institution. They also create barriers, innovation and change. So if you're coming to an institution and saying that, you you got it all wrong, here's the big shiny product, adopt it, all your problems dissolved. 
 
Number one, they don't believe it, right? Number two, they say it's not made in here syndrome. If I'm a university, I should be able to create a product myself, so why should I buy it from you? Unless you understand how they work inside, and unless you can tell them 
not only the solution has all the features that you need, I have an implementation approach that dovetails, that flows with... 
 
your internal work processes. We're going to drive innovation, but we're going to work with your constraints, your processes, and we're going to be walking alongside with you. We're not just trying to your products. We're going to help you through this process. I think companies that are able to take that kind of perspective would be much more successful selling into educational institutions. 
 
Josh Chernikoff (13:59) Selling into education at the higher education level, K-12, pre-K-3, it's all the same. You know, in the sense of you need to listen, you need to be able to adapt, and in terms of adapting, you know, I had a conversation with a client today about what's going on in Washington, you know, in terms of the changes that are coming in with the new administration, whether you like them or not. 
 
A lot of my clients are going to have to adapt because funding sources are changing, know, SEL programs are going to have to react to what's going on inside those schools. So, you know, I just find it very interesting. My wheelhouse and a lot of my clients is K-12. We do work with higher ed and we do work with pre-K-3. But to hear your perspective from that higher ed, to me it sounds like it's a very similar approach. 
 
Michael Fung (14:52) Yes, to some extent, but let me share a few perspectives about K12, which you probably know much better than I do, having spoken to many people. The way I see K12 systems is, you know, in that space, it tends to be much more tightly regulated. In many countries, the K12 system falls under a large public ministry or department of education. And to move in those systems... 
 
require alignments with the Department of Education, or in some cases in US, maybe with a school district. If you were a chartered school, maybe you have a little bit more flexibility, but to scale across chartered school, that's like selling to 10 different individuals if you're to 10 chartered schools. the challenge of achieving scale in the K-12 market is that you have to work with really difficult centralized state leaders, which is not easy because... 
 
there are many other considerations. But if you're working with autonomous, high education institutions, and many high education institutions have a good degree of autonomy, whether they're private or public, and that gets easier in terms of self-determination on the part of the university. And that becomes a good beachhead reference point for selling into other universities. I think in the K-12 market, there's an augmentation model. Here's your K-12 system. It has all these flaws and problems. 
 
Let's not try to fix it directly because you have to jump through major hoops and hopefully you still have a breath left in you after jumping through them. Yes. How about creating an augmentation model that can be subscribed to by parents, students, or maybe individuals or small groups of people who truly believe in a new model of that approach could be less challenging. 
 
than trying to change the system as well. 
 
Josh Chernikoff (16:52) I often talk about washing windows to my clients. And say you're a window washer and you walk up to two buildings and one has clean windows and one has dirty windows. And are you going to try and sell to the person with dirty windows or clean windows? My theory is that you're going to try and sell to the person with clean windows. Because they value what you do. 
 
Michael Fung (17:16) Great question, that's a great observation. 
 
Josh Chernikoff (17:20) they like the clean windows. They like that smell. They like that feeling of clean windows. So I, your point is totally taken. and on the flip side, you know, I, talked to a lot of my clients and say, go find somebody who, who already believes in what you do, but that you can do it better for them, that you can hear them and really adapt to their needs of that school district, that particular school in Northeast Washington, DC versus Southeast Washington, DC. So, you know, 
 
There is no right answer, but I absolutely appreciate your perspective on K-12 and obviously you've seen this from around the world. 
 
Michael Fung (17:58) Yeah, I think it's a common challenge trying to break into the education markets all around the world, whether K-12 universities. Maybe, perhaps, know, I have the privilege of having insights of working within educational institutions in different settings in different parts of world. I do observe some common threads, trends, you know, across these institutions that led me to have this perspective. 
 
And again, many times I see companies, especially those that started because of some shiny technological advancement, not speaking the same language and hitting walls with institutions. But again, this is not unique to education. If you want to be successful in changing any organization, we better be observing how the organization moves. We better be looking at what people are saying. 
 
really understand your customer very very well and when you crack that code that's where I think you're going to get success. 
 
Josh Chernikoff (19:03) I appreciate your time. know you've probably got a million things to do now in the next five minutes, in the next couple of days. The event is wonderful. You have a fantastic team. This is my second year. I can't wait for my third year and I thank you for being here. 
 
Michael Fung (19:20) You're very welcome and thank you for being part of the IFE conference. As you know, we've become one of the most prominent international conferences in the Americas and we continue to aspire to provide a platform for innovators, for champions, for people who want 
to change education, whether you are from government, you're from industry, you're other from the education field to come together, discuss deliberate upon some of the most pressing problems. 
 
facing education and finding solutions together. That's the whole reason that we're here. So thank you for your support and we welcome you and others to join us in the coming years. Thank you, Josh. 
 
Josh Chernikoff (19:59) Thank you very much 
 
Keep on breaking you lead gen legends.