Multi-academy trusts can look like the obvious shortcut for suppliers selling to schools.
Instead of winning ten schools individually, why not speak to one central team and win all ten at once?
Sometimes that is exactly what happens. A trust may want one IT platform, one estates contractor, one HR system or one supplier agreement across every academy.
But MAT sales are rarely as simple as replacing ten school conversations with one conversation at head office.
A multi-academy trust is one legal organisation, and the trust board ultimately remains accountable for its finances. At the same time, individual academies may still have considerable influence over what they use, what problems need solving and, within delegated limits, what they buy.
The Department for Education's current Academy Trust Handbook 2026 requires trusts to have a written scheme of financial delegation. DfE governance guidance also says a MAT's scheme of delegation should make clear which powers remain centrally and which are delegated elsewhere in the organisation.
For suppliers, that creates an important distinction.
The trust may control the contract.
But the school may create the demand.
If you sell only to individual academies, you can repeatedly reach the point where somebody says, “This needs trust approval.”
If you sell only to the central trust, you may struggle to prove that anyone in its schools actually wants what you are offering.
The strongest strategy connects both levels.
Start by understanding how this particular trust actually buys
There is no single MAT purchasing structure.
That is the first thing suppliers need to accept.
One trust may centralise almost everything. Another may negotiate trust-wide agreements for major services but leave plenty of day-to-day spending with its headteachers. A large national MAT may have regional directors and regional operations teams sitting between individual academies and the central office.
Even within the same trust, different categories can be treated differently.
IT security might be centrally controlled because the trust wants one technical standard across its estate. Classroom resources might remain largely a school decision. Estates contracts might go through the trust's operations team, while a small local CPD purchase can be approved by an individual academy.
Contract value also changes the route. A £600 resource purchase and a £60,000 software agreement are unlikely to go through exactly the same approval process.
The Academy Trust Handbook requires trusts to apply internal delegation levels, demonstrate value for money, use appropriate competitive procurement procedures and follow applicable procurement law.
That is why research should come before outreach.
Before contacting a school in a MAT, check the trust it belongs to. Look at the trust website, leadership structure, annual accounts and any published governance or delegation documents. Then read the school's own website and understand its local context.
The aim is not to become an expert on the entire organisation before sending an email. It is simply to avoid treating an academy as though it were completely independent when it is not.
Our guide on how to research a school before contacting it covers the useful checks in more detail.
Follow the problem, not the job title
Suppliers targeting MATs often start by looking for the most senior person they can find.
The CEO then receives a message about classroom furniture, literacy software, playground equipment or a niche SEND service that somebody else in the organisation is far better placed to assess.
Seniority does not automatically make someone the right buyer.
If you sell network infrastructure, the trust IT director may be an obvious starting point. If you provide an intervention for pupils with speech and language needs, a trust SEND leader or individual academy SENCO may be more relevant. Estates services might belong with an operations or estates director. A small curriculum product may first gain traction with a subject leader or headteacher.
The key question is:
Who experiences the problem, who evaluates the solution and who has to approve the spending?
Those can be three different people.
This is especially important in a MAT because the person enthusiastic about your offer may not be the person who can sign a contract. A headteacher may want the product but need central IT approval. A trust director may approve the supplier but still need individual schools to choose whether to participate.
If you are unsure where to start, How to Find the Right Contact at a School and Who Buys Products and Services in UK Schools? are useful companion guides.
Individual schools can be your strongest route into a MAT
A central MAT conversation becomes much stronger when it begins with a real school problem.
Imagine approaching a trust and saying:
“We provide a reporting platform for schools and would love to discuss rolling it out across your academies.”
That is a fairly cold proposition.
Now compare it with:
“We are working with one of your academies on reducing the time staff spend compiling intervention reports. During that work, it became clear that several schools may be dealing with the same issue. Would it be useful to look at whether this is something the trust wants to standardise?”
The second conversation has context.
It has an internal problem, a real user and some evidence that the issue may extend beyond one site.
This does not mean manufacturing a trust-wide opportunity every time one teacher likes your product. One enthusiastic user is not evidence that twenty schools want it.
But individual academies can help you understand where the real friction sits. They can tell you what staff currently use, where existing suppliers are falling short, whether the trust is already trying to standardise something and who centrally needs to be involved.
They can also become powerful internal advocates if your product genuinely works.
That is why a carefully structured pilot can be useful. Instead of offering a free trial with no clear destination, agree what the school is testing, what success looks like and what should happen if the trial succeeds.
Our guide Should You Offer Schools a Free Trial or Pilot? explains how to avoid pilots becoming indefinite free usage with no buying decision.
But do not try to sell around central procurement
There is an important difference between building relationships with individual schools and encouraging them to bypass their own trust.
If an academy tells you that a purchase has to go through central procurement, take that seriously.
The wrong response is:
“Could you just buy it from your own budget?”
The better response is:
“Who should we involve centrally so that we can understand the approval process?”
A trust may already have a contract covering that category. There may be cybersecurity requirements, standard contract terms, approved-supplier arrangements or spending limits that the individual school cannot override.
Trying to work around those controls can make your business look difficult before you have even become a supplier.
Instead, use your school contact as a bridge.
If they genuinely want your service, help them make the internal case. Give them clear pricing. Explain implementation. Provide the relevant compliance material. Make it easy for them to introduce you to the person who needs to approve the next stage.
That is usually much more productive than repeatedly asking the original contact whether there has been “any update”.
Learn the difference between an internal champion and an actual buyer
One of the easiest ways to misread a school sales opportunity is to mistake enthusiasm for authority.
A teacher can love the product.
A headteacher can agree that the problem needs solving.
Neither necessarily means the purchase is ready to happen.
In a larger MAT opportunity, several people may influence the final decision.
Take an EdTech product as an example. Teachers may establish that the existing process is frustrating. The headteacher may support changing it. Trust IT may need to assess security and compatibility. Finance may look at the cost. Procurement may decide how the trust can legally and commercially buy it.
You do not need to force every person into the first sales call.
You do need to understand who eventually needs to be involved.
This is where good discovery questions matter. Instead of simply asking, “Do you have the budget?”, ask how a purchase like this is normally approved, whether the school can make the decision itself and who else would need confidence before it could proceed.
If a school has already enquired, our guide on turning a school enquiry into a clear next step is particularly relevant.
Research the trust's financial model, but do not overinterpret it
The public information available about MAT finances has improved.
The 2026 Academy Trust Handbook requires MATs to publish a summary explaining how funds are distributed across their schools. Trusts must also publish information about their governance structure, including their scheme of delegation.
For suppliers, these documents can reveal useful clues.
You may find that a trust pools significant amounts of funding centrally. Another may delegate more to academies. You may see a central-service model covering finance, HR, IT and estates. You may discover regional structures that are commercially more important to you than the national head office.
This can help you decide whether to lead with a trust-wide proposition or build demand academy by academy.
But public documents rarely tell you everything.
A scheme of delegation may show the broad financial structure without telling you exactly who decides whether to buy a particular type of literacy software.
Use documents to make your questions smarter, not to avoid asking them.
Make the trust-wide case without pretending every academy is identical
The attraction of a trust-wide supplier is often consistency.
One agreement can mean simpler procurement, common pricing, fewer suppliers to manage, consistent reporting and a single set of compliance checks.
For certain categories, that is a compelling argument.
But suppliers can take standardisation too far.
A MAT containing six primaries, two secondaries and a special school does not contain nine interchangeable sites.
The schools may have different pupil numbers, buildings, timetables, staffing structures and operational needs.
The best trust-wide offers often standardise what benefits from being standardised while leaving sensible flexibility locally.
You might have one trust contract and one pricing structure, for example, but allow individual academies to choose their implementation timetable or training format.
A software supplier might provide central reporting while letting schools configure workflows locally. A CPD provider might agree trust-wide commercial terms but adapt sessions for primary and secondary staff.
That distinction matters because local adoption is often where trust-wide deals succeed or fail.
A solution can look excellent to procurement and still frustrate schools if nobody has considered how it will actually work on the ground.
This is also why suppliers working across phases should understand the differences covered in Selling to Primary Schools vs Secondary Schools: What Changes?.
Be ready when the opportunity becomes a procurement process
A successful school conversation can eventually become a much more formal MAT opportunity.
That is usually good news.
It also means the standard of supplier preparation needs to rise.
The trust may want clear pricing across multiple academies, implementation details, insurance, references, data-protection information, safeguarding documentation where relevant and contract terms.
The Academy Trust Handbook requires academy trusts to demonstrate value for money, apply their internal delegation levels, maintain appropriate competitive procurement procedures and conduct suitable due diligence.
So when a trust says, “Procurement will need to look at this,” that should not feel like an unexpected obstacle.
It is a normal stage of many larger school sales.
Framework agreements can also become relevant, particularly for larger or commonly procured categories. If your business sells into areas where frameworks are widely used, read School Framework Agreements: A Plain-English Guide for Suppliers.
It also helps to have a simple supplier pack ready before anybody requests it. Our guide What Documents Should a School Supplier Have Ready? covers the common documents.
Central approval is not the same as local adoption
Getting onto a MAT's approved supplier list can feel like a major win.
Winning a trust-wide agreement feels even bigger.
Neither guarantees that the individual schools will actually use you well.
This is a particularly important lesson for software, training and other services where staff behaviour determines whether the product produces any value.
A central team can approve the contract.
It cannot automatically make teachers engage with a new platform.
That means the relationship with individual academies becomes more important after the sale, not less.
Each school may need an implementation contact. Staff may need training. One academy may be ready immediately while another needs a different start date. Problems that look small centrally can become significant locally if nobody owns them.
Suppliers sometimes disappear into account-management mode after winning the trust and communicate almost exclusively with the central contact.
That can leave individual schools feeling that the product has been imposed on them.
Keep talking to the people actually using it.
The same principle applies before a trust-wide contract exists. Being listed as an approved supplier removes one barrier, but it does not itself create demand. See What “Approved Supplier” Status Actually Means in a MAT.
So should you target the MAT or the individual schools?
Usually, the answer is both—but not with the same message and not always at the same time.
If you sell something obviously central, such as an MIS, cybersecurity service or trust-wide finance platform, beginning centrally may make sense.
If you provide something highly dependent on a particular school's pupils, curriculum or local priorities, school-level demand may be the more natural starting point.
Many opportunities sit somewhere between those two extremes.
A school may identify the need.
The trust may approve the supplier.
Another academy may then become interested.
Central procurement may realise that several separate purchases would be better handled through one agreement.
That is why MAT selling works best as a connected process rather than a choice between “central” and “local”.
There is a related comparison in MATs vs Individual Schools: Who Should Suppliers Target First?.
Frequently asked questions
Should I contact a MAT CEO first?
Only if the problem you solve genuinely sits at CEO level. For many products and services, another central director or an individual academy contact will be more relevant.
Can an academy buy independently from its MAT?
Sometimes. It depends on the trust's scheme of delegation, the category of purchase and its value. The trust board remains responsible for the trust's finances, while defined powers can be delegated internally.
Should I email every school in a MAT?
Not blindly. If you discover several schools belong to the same trust, coordinate your outreach. Contacting twelve academies with identical messages can make it obvious that you have not researched the organisation.
Can one academy become a route to a trust-wide contract?
Yes. A successful school relationship or pilot can provide strong evidence for a wider conversation. But do not assume one academy's enthusiasm automatically represents the rest of the trust.
Does approved supplier status mean all academies can buy from me?
It may make purchasing easier, but it does not necessarily guarantee work or remove every local approval step. Check how the trust actually operates its supplier arrangements.
What if the school wants our service but central procurement says no?
Find out why. There may be an existing contract, procurement issue, security concern, budget problem or strategic decision behind the refusal. Address that issue rather than trying to bypass it through the school.
Should MAT pricing be lower than individual-school pricing?
Not automatically. A wider agreement may create efficiencies that justify volume pricing, but it can also create additional implementation, reporting and account-management work. Price the actual delivery model.
Do MATs buy through frameworks?
They can. Frameworks are one possible procurement route, but whether a particular trust uses one depends on the purchase and its procurement arrangements.
Are MAT sales cycles longer?
They often can be because more stakeholders and procurement steps may be involved. The potential opportunity can also be much larger. See How Long Does It Take to Sell to a School?.
What is the biggest mistake suppliers make when targeting MATs?
Probably assuming that “the MAT” is one buyer. It is one organisation, but a real buying decision can involve central leaders, finance, procurement and people inside individual academies.
Selling to a multi-academy trust is not simply selling to a bigger school.
Nor is it a reason to stop speaking to individual schools.
The central trust provides governance, financial control and increasingly some shared purchasing. The academies provide much of the operational reality: the problems, users, implementation challenges and evidence that something is worth buying.
A supplier that understands only one side usually struggles with the other.
So learn how the trust is structured.
Find the people who experience the problem.
Understand who can approve the solution.
Use school-level relationships to build genuine evidence, then involve central teams when the opportunity requires them.
And if you do win trust-wide approval, keep investing in the individual schools that ultimately have to make the relationship work.
That is usually a much stronger MAT strategy than trying to choose between selling centrally and selling locally.
