How edtech companies sell in South Africa
Two revenue lines, and they behave nothing alike
Most providers here run a learner business and a corporate business side by side. The learner business is fed by paid advertising, open days, referrals and search, and it moves in days: an enquiry, a consultation, an application, a payment arrangement, a registration. The corporate business is fed by employer relationships and skills development budgets, and it moves in quarters, through sponsors, budget holders, procurement and a purchase order.
A single pipeline cannot describe both. The most common symptom is a sales report where corporate opportunities have sat in the same stage for four months while learner enquiries churn through weekly, and nobody can tell whether either number means anything. Separating the two is the first hour of work in any sensible implementation.
Intake dates make the deadline real
Providers who run intakes have a genuine closing date, which is a considerable advantage if the pipeline is managed to it. Application deadlines, seat counts and start dates give consultants an honest reason to follow up and give learners an honest reason to decide. Where none of that is visible in the system consultants use, the urgency evaporates and the intake fills by luck.
How learners pay shapes the follow-up
Payment arrangements here vary widely: paid in full, monthly instalments collected by debit order, an employer settling directly, or a family member sponsoring. Each of those has a different failure mode, and each needs a different follow-up. What they share is that an incomplete arrangement is not a registration, and the gap between agreement and first payment is where a surprising number of enrolments quietly disappear.