Financial Strand

• 1:30 - 2:20 pm
  What's Your Niche?
  Conceptualizing and Defining the Product Need
  There are many factors that contribute to defining a market need: government compliance in NCLB, indicators of future employee shortfall, new technologies in other markets that are likely to infiltrate education are just a few. How do companies analyze this information to identify market opportunities? How do investors determine these opportunities are real AND these products or companies meet the market need? In this session we'll review some case studies of what has worked, and what has not. The presentation will include a discussion of tools and data points to assist a company in proving the need for a new product, and the challenges in being first to market.

  You will learn:

  • how investors look at a company's market position
  • how to look at a market so you can differentiate your company
  • how to articulate a unique selling proposition to potential investors

  Mitchell Weisburgh, Managing Partner, Academic Business Advisors
  Farimah Schuerman, Managing Partner, Academic Business Advisors

• 2:30 - 3:20 pm
  Radical Simplification:
  A Checklist for Developing Business Plans & Securing Investment Capital
  Get the critical information you need to develop a clear, concise and sensible business plan that attracts investment capital. This workshop is designed to help entrepreneurs to improve their business plan and increase their odds of winning investment capital. Business plans often reflect what entrepreneurs think is important about their businesses, rather than what an investor needs to know to make an investment decision.

  In addition to a checklist of critical questions that must be answered in a business plan, attendees will learn . . .

  • What are the three most important things that an investor looks for in a business plan?
  • What are the biggest mistakes that entrepreneurs make when developing their business plans?
  • How much attention do investors pay to the actual financial numbers vs. the financial assumptions?
  • What can entrepreneurs do to ensure that they are invited for an investor meeting?
  • How long should each section of a business plan be?

  Melissa Krinzman, Managing Director, Venture Architects

• 3:30 - 4:20 pm
  Doing the Deal:
  Successfully Negotiating the Terms and Closing It
  Jeff Fromm, Partner, Eiseman Levine Lehrhaupt & Kakoyiannis, P.C.

• 1:30 - 2:20 pm
  The Life-time Value of Customers:
  Calculating, Optimizing, and Maximizing the Value of your Customer Base
  This interactive session will discover practical strategies to enable you to get better results. Using examples from companies within the industry, you will see how to build accountability into the management process and how to track and measure for success. This is an interactive session offering practical solutions for how to increase your bottom line by up to 35%.
  • Basics of Calculating the Life-time Value of Customers
  • How your channel impacts the value of your customer base
  • Finding. developing and maximizing your "Angel" customers
  • How to apply these strategies to your business

  Kevin Custer, Founding Principal, ARC Capital Development
  Rita Ferrandino, Founding Princpal, Arc Capital Development
  Myron Pincomb, CEO-Founder, Educational Tools, Inc.

• 2:30 - 3:20 pm
  The Role of Effective Sales Teams in Full-Service Offerings
  This session will provide participants with clear steps to building, supporting and sustaining a high performance sales team. We will share observations collected from thousands of customer interactions. In addition, we will provide each seminar participant with a summary of the steps that they can take build, support and sustain a high performance sales team. In this session, participants will learn:
  • What educators say they look for when looking for products and services.
  • The four steps effective organizations use to build sales best practices.
  • The three steps effective organizations use to sustain a high performance sales culture.

  Kevin Dwyer, Senior Consultant, MarketingWorks Inc.

• 3:30 - 4:20 pm
  Distribution Strategies for K-12 and Post-Secondary Markets:
  How to Make Strategic Channel Partnerships Work
  Educational software and digital solutions developers are increasingly seeking partnerships to build distribution capacity. But research shows that 60-70% of business partnerships fail. What type of approach and process improves the odds? Session participants will be provided valuable partnering tools and learn how to use them to find the right distribution partners and how to manage partnerships for success. Session participants will gain critical knowledge and learning points in the session, including:
  • Why distribution partnerships fail.
  • Strategies for relationship management for typical forms of education market distribution partnerships
  • A reliable process for generating criteria for potential channel relationships

  Glenn McCandless, President, Focus Marketing