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WHY BUY?
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Why Bother With This Information?
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"Too many people will think this is a 'nice to have' not a 'need to have.'" Even as he made the purchase, those were the words of our first client, a recognized investor, entrepreneur, organizer and leader in the "new education economy" and the founder of one of its first consulting and research firms. In most markets, participants want to know everything they can about their industry. They follow the national politics that might affect its future. They review proposed regulations carefully. They want to know what their Washington trade groups are up to. They make sure they know what their peers and competitors are doing. If they are sellers, they are focused on everything affecting buyers’ needs and spending patterns. If they are buyers, they want to know everything they can about sellers' prices, results and capacity. If they are regulators, they want to understand trends in market practice. If they are analysts or investors, they want to know how and why the system works to explain its past and predict its future. K-12 education should be the same, but it has been different. It is still an emerging market. Competition is a new experience for school districts - whether we are discussing it "being done to them" by Supplemental Educational Services and charter schools, or the position they could leverage as buyers of school improvement services in the marketplace opened up by No Child Left Behind. And most providers are just focused on the "nitty gritty" details of selling. If you rely on traditional k-12 education media, you see that they barely recognize the emerging market, view it skeptically - at best, and don't have the expertise or experience to cover it well. If you take a "supply-side" perspective on the market, you know that the information you really need is plentiful but too atomized and scattered for you to gather and turn into actionable knowledge for strategy or operations. So you rely on the ad hoc, haphazard strategy of "keeping your eyes open." School Improvement Industry’s web-enabled publications change all that. All the information our clients need is in one place. They have the ability to go as deeply as they want into any news item - - right to the RFP, report or regulation being discussed, or just get the essence. Our publications are comprehensive, timely, reliable, and accurate. And this information is priced low enough for clients to make it available to everyone on staff. EXAMPLE: School Improvement Markets Report To assess the importance of this information and the value of School Improvement Industry publications, consider the example of a provider of school improvement programs and School Improvement Markets Report. If a firm has purchased a $1200.00 a site license to the publication, on Monday morning its managers and everyone involved in marketing and development across the country would have a copy of this web-enabled RFP report. Despite their dispersal, they share a common understanding of what every agency in the federal government that issues RFPs of relevance to their products and services, every state education agency, and the 350 largest school markets in America that announce RFPs over the internet, are ready, willing and able to buy to change teaching and learning. Moreover, they are directly connected to every state's basic information on each individual schools' academic performance, AYP and state accountability status, and funding profiles. For under $25.00 per week, the entire firm has the basis of an agenda for a directed discussion about marketing, sales and development efforts for the week. It is not the be-all and end-all, but it is a very good starting point for 10:00 am Monday. If the organization has a five-person management team and another five people involved in marketing and sales, the cost is about twenty-five cents per person per day, and it declines with scale. If you find School Improvement Markets Report hasn’t led to one sale you would have missed without it, or are dissatisfied in any other way as to its value, we'll refund your money. Period. You should want to know as much as you can about the whole school improvement industry because on that knowledge base rests your organization's future - and perhaps your career. School Improvement Industry Weekly is literally one or two steps removed from the marketing and sales process covered by P12 Markets Report. As part of a Combined Site License with P12 Markets Report, the means are available for everyone in your organization to know (most) everything about your industry for just pennies per day per person, simply by opening their Monday morning e-mail, hundreds of School Improvement Industry clients now have a competitive advantage. See if some of our clients are your peers. Once your competitor has become a client of School Improvement Industry, hasn't this information changed from "nice to have" to "need to have"? |
