Complimentary Revenue Infrastructure Workshops & SLED Sales Strategy for EdTech & GovTech Portfolio Companies & Accelerators

Melody McDonald
Jan 12
6 min read

EdTech revenue infrastructure workshops for venture portfolio companies and accelerator programs.

Building Scalable Revenue Engines for the Critical $1M-$10M ARR Inflection Point is an art.

I'm excited to announce three complimentary workshop offerings now available to EdTech and GovTech venture capital portfolios, accelerator programs, and growth-stage companies navigating the transition from founder-led

sales to predictable, scalable revenue operations.

After more than 25 years building revenue infrastructure across EdTech, GovTech, and FinTech, including scaling ClassWallet from zero to a $200 million valuation and supporting growth-stage companies, I have seen a consistent pattern. Most early-stage companies prove product market fit through founder-led selling. They then hit a critical bottleneck because they lack the strategy and revenue infrastructure required to scale beyond the founder.

These three workshops address the exact challenges portfolio companies face at this inflection point, delivering actionable frameworks and proven strategies that can be implemented immediately.

The Three Workshops - Revenue Infrastructure for Scale

1. Understanding K-12 Sales Cycles to Maximize Revenue Generation Success

Who This Is For: EdTech companies selling into K-12 school districts, state education agencies, and the broader SLED (State, Local, Education) market. Perfect for portfolio companies at #ReachCapital, #StartEd, #LearnLaunch, USC Rossier EdTech Accelerator, and similar programs focused on education innovation.

What You'll Learn: This 60-minute interactive session provides a clear framework for understanding the K-12 education sales cycle, including school district timing for planning, budgeting, purchasing, and reconciliation phases. Melody covers how districts make decisions and how to align outreach, messaging, and timing to each stage of the procurement cycle.

Participants gain practical guidance on optimizing sales timing for maximum wins, avoiding costly mistakes, and understanding the unique challenges of selling into education markets, from budget cycles and RFP timing to stakeholder alignment and pilot-to-purchase conversion.

Key Topics:

Quarterly breakdown of K-12 procurement calendar
Budget cycles and fiscal year timing (July 1 start for most states)
RFP response strategies and timing
Pilot-to-purchase conversion tactics
Common timing mistakes that kill EdTech deals

Why This Matters: Most early EdTech founders treat K-12 sales like B2B SaaS and wonder why deals die in Q4 or why nobody responds in July. This workshop translates complex district procurement behavior into an actionable playbook that improves pipeline timing, deal velocity, and close rates.

2. From Founder Led Sales to a Scalable Revenue Engine

Who This Is For: Seed to Series A companies at the $1M-$10M ARR inflection point. Ideal for portfolio companies working with venture firms focused on early-stage scaling, including firms like Reach Capital, #RethinkEducation, #GSVVentures, #OwlVentures, Learn Capital, and accelerator programs helping founders professionalize revenue operations.

What You'll Learn: This session provides a clear revenue roadmap for transitioning from founder-led selling to an initial sales hire and forward to high-performing sales team. We cover the exact profile to hire (hint: it's NOT a senior AE), how to extract founder knowledge into repeatable messaging, how to systematize demos so reps can close independently, and how to implement CRM accountability that produces predictable forecasting.

Participants learn the step-by-step system for building revenue infrastructure that scales beyond the founder, including hiring strategies, sales enablement frameworks, and metrics that matter.

Key Topics:

The hybrid sales profile you actually need
Extracting founder knowledge into documented messaging and battlecards
Building sales enablement assets (discovery frameworks, demo scripts, objection handling)
Systematizing demos so reps can close without founder involvement
CRM implementation and pipeline accountability

Why This Matters: The transition from founder-led to team-led revenue is where most companies stumble. Without systematic processes, new hires fail, pipelines become unpredictable, and founders burn out trying to close every deal personally. This workshop shows proven frameworks for building revenue infrastructure that works without the founder in every deal.

3. Building SLED Sales Strategies

State-by-State Revenue Strategy for EdTech and GovTech sales organizations.

Who This Is For: This course is designed for EdTech and GovTech companies selling into schools, K–12 school districts, state education agencies, and broader government markets. It is ideal for teams that want to move beyond unfocused outreach and adopt a disciplined, data-informed approach to growth.

The program is especially valuable for accelerator and investor portfolio companies operating in EdTech, GovTech, and education policy–adjacent markets that require clarity, timing, and alignment to sell effectively into the public sector.

Perfect for growth and mid sized portfolio companies at #USCRossierEdTechAccelerator, #ReachCapital, #LearnLaunch, #TechStars, #NewSchoolsVentureFund, #ImagineK12 (YCombinator EdTech), and similar programs focused on education innovation.

What You'll Learn: Participants learn a repeatable framework for building customized, state-by-state education and government sales strategies aligned to procurement cycles, funding sources, and decision-maker dynamics. This session goes deep on how to identify and prioritize target states, navigate multi-level customer architecture (school → district → consortium → state), and develop state-specific messaging aligned to policy priorities.

We cover how to find where your buyers congregate, how to extract pain points using their exact language, and how to use CRM tracking to optimize state-level performance and know what's working (and what's not).

Key Topics:

Framework for identifying and prioritizing target state markets
Multi-level sales strategy (when to sell at school vs district vs consortium vs state level)
State-specific messaging and policy alignment tactics
Procurement threshold navigation and compliance strategies
Finding niche buyer communities and congregation points (associations, conferences)
Pain point intelligence using their exact language

Why This Matters: Too often EdTech and GovTech companies waste 12-18 months pursuing the wrong states with generic messaging. This workshop compresses years of SLED expertise into an actionable framework that helps founders identify highest-probability states, speak the right language, and systematically test and optimize their approach. This is the most differentiated content because very few consultants can teach state-level strategic thinking at this depth.

Who These Workshops Are Designed For -

Venture Capital Firms & Corporate VCs who are engaged in supporting their EdTech and GovTech portfolio.

Accelerator & Incubator Programs.

Why These Workshops Exist: Filling the Revenue Infrastructure Gap

Most venture firms and accelerators provide phenomenal support around product development, go-to-market strategy, and fundraising. But there's a gap when it comes to the tactical, hands-on revenue infrastructure that companies at the $1M-$10M ARR stage desperately need.

Portfolio companies often struggle with:

Hiring the wrong sales profiles
Unpredictable pipelines and unreliable forecasting
Founder burnout from closing every deal personally
Generic B2B messaging that doesn't resonate in education or government markets
Lack of systematic sales processes and enablement materials
CRM systems that don't drive accountability or insights
Understanding the unique complexities of SLED procurement

These workshops address these gaps with actionable frameworks, proven strategies, and real-world examples from 25+ years building revenue engines in EdTech, GovTech, and FinTech.

What Makes This Different: Vertical-Specific Expertise

Most fractional revenue leaders come from traditional B2B SaaS. They understand generic sales processes but lack deep expertise in education and government markets.

I come from EdTech, GovTech, and FinTech with specialized SLED knowledge:

Built ClassWallet's revenue from $0 to $200M valuation ($95M+ raised) - I charged over $1B in new licensing fees for two consecutive years.
Deep expertise in K-12 procurement calendars and budget cycles
Mastery of state RFP processes and compliance requirements
Knowledge of Title I, Title IV, ESSER, IDEA, and Perkins funding mechanisms
Understanding of School Choice aka Education Savings Account ecosystems and state approval processes
Experience navigating 6-18 month sales cycles with multi-stakeholder buying committees

This vertical expertise is the difference between generic advice and strategies that actually work in education and government markets.

Workshop Delivery and Engagement Options

Format: Virtual, 60-minute interactive sessions.

Investment: Complimentary with no cost or obligation when multiple EdTech companies attend.

Approach: Focused on problem-solving and actionable takeaways. These sessions are educational and practical, not sales presentations.

Why This Is Offered at No Cost: These workshops are a way to demonstrate how I work and how I think. They allow investors and accelerators to evaluate my approach while giving portfolio companies immediate value. Portfolio companies may choose to engage me for fractional leadership or, when there is strong alignment across all parties, full-time employment.

How to Schedule These Workshops for Your Portfolio

If you're a venture capital firm, accelerator program, or portfolio company interested in these complimentary workshops, let's start with a conversation.

📧 Email: melody@melody-mcdonald.com 📞 Phone: 561-676-6892🔗 LinkedIn: Connect with me on LinkedIn🌐 Website: melody-mcdonald.com