The problem may be in educating both sides. The constraints of for-profit corporations are not well understood by educators. Likewise, the decision-making and management process of school systems and universities are largely a mystery to corporate managers and field personnel. There is too little understanding about what drives each side of the equation. The other problem is that both sides of the equation are typically necessary to provide a single solution to the ultimate customer - a student.

Let’s start with the company’s side of the equation. The company needs sales. Everything is geared toward selling. To stay afloat or to prosper, companies need to trim off all the fat, and still effectively service one sale after the other. This leaves little time to provide special treatment or tweaking of software or content for a particular account. If the account is large enough and reliable enough, it is possible to bend the rules, but this is rare. Companies cannot tolerate much diversity in their product and remain profitable.

On the other hand, sales people and marketing materials are often fine-tuned to make the case that company X’s product or service will answer all their problems. The ad copy or marketing brochures are often quite cranked up to raise expectations and create excitement. The sales person, on the other hand, may not have all the answers and can seem disappointingly naive about the needs of an institution. So dilemma number one is raised expectations from marketing copy and lowered expectations from many sales encounters.

The company sees the institution as an entity with a stable funding base, not subject to the wild ups and downs that the corporate world experiences. They see a very frustrating and complex decision-making process that often even the buyers at the universities cannot clearly articulate. This is mysterious at best. In some cases, not that far back in time, the academic senates had to pass their blessing on certain technology decisions.

What happens inside the institution? Is this indecision built-in, put on, or is it a fact of university and school life? Dilemma number two can be stated as an inability for institutions to clearly understand the vendor landscape, coupled with these same institutions having a deep fear of making a bad decision. The halls of academia and school administrations are littered with some large blunders. The problem is that each institution or school administrative unit has to come to a decision that they are singularly satisfied with as non-profit fiduciaries. From the vendor’s perspective, this is maddening, because they see ten, 50, or 100 of the exactly same deliberations going on across their accounts.

Why can’t they all talk to each other, one might ask? As soon as the question is asked, it is answered. "We don’t want them all talking to each other!" If they did, these potential or current customers might compare prices and exert group leverage on the vendors. Basically, the inability for an institutional buyer to make a quick or clear decision is the reality of doing business in the education market.

What about the institution’s inability to clearly understand the vendor landscape or the vendor’s motivations? Here responsibility is slowly shifting as institutions learn more as time goes on about the solutions being sold to them. As the mystery of technology begins to wear off and the black box is not so daunting, more streamlined decision-making is possible.

Scaling the educational divide may not be as difficult as it seems. It requires both sides focusing together on the end-game - the student or the instructor who teaches the student. The job on both sides of the fence is to transfer knowledge and to create understanding. This means, like in a marriage, the actual constraints of both sides need to be understood by both sides. In today’s world, save one or two companies, existence alone is a struggle, and making the numbers is a chore. If a sales person can make a call to sell and, at the same time, take the opportunity to seek a genuine and complete understanding of the institution’s needs and circumstances, that sales person will not come away empty handed. Instead, the buyer will see a behavior that builds trust. The next time, they may think harder about working with the vendor who seems to actually understand their situation.

On the institution’s side of the equation, the young person in the well-cut suit with the colorful brochures needs be seen as a representative of a company that does not have endless resources. The buyer may need to ask questions that go beyond the product to try to determine whether the company is in business simply to make money or whether there is a commitment to education. If the buyer is not ready to buy, maybe they can learn more about the company and get a feel for its intentions and ability to partner.

The winners will work together successfully not by seeing differences across the table but by seeing similarities. If the mistrust can be replaced by knowledge between buyer and seller, the difference will be seen in the results - better educated people. So, the answer to both dilemmas is for buyer and seller to get an education about each other.