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Go Figure :: Numbers to Do Business By

1/1/2009

Targeting Prospects by AIM

Plotting a sales strategy around the instructional materials pot

What we see here is a bar graph representing the national average for all instructional materials (AIM) spending per student across a spectrum of county public school enrollments. What might these numbers tell you about your sales strategy? On average, US counties with public school enrollments between 5,000 and 74,999 students spend around $250 per student on instructional materials (the range is $237-$258). How a county spends that money differs-- initiatives will vary from district to district-- but your product is still only going to get a percentage of that $250. That's not bad news-- these middle enrollment counties represent well over half the market, and knowing that there's this kind of consistency on a national basis is a great help in planning sales strategy. If you know that most of your customers have $250 to spend, you can develop a well-argued sales initiative for your piece of that $250. Now, if we look at the outlier counties (enrollments below 5,000 and above 75,000) the average per student spending on instructional materials climbs upwards from $250 (with the exception of counties in the 100,000 to 249,999 enrollment range). So that's a bigger per-student pot you're starting with, which from a sales point of view could mean anything from a broader range of instructional initiatives that are being funded (which might include your products) to your product getting a better price per student. Of course, the largest districts have the longest sales cycles (but offer the biggest payoffs), and the smallest districts result in, well, the smallest total sales (but can be great targets if you are concerned about time to market for your product). So where do you place your bets? AIM per student is just one data point. To learn about using data to strategically drive sales, see this month's cover story, beginning on page 16.

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Data Source: These statistics are provided by MDR, a leading US provider of marketing information and services for the K-12, higher education, library, early childhood, and related education markets. For more information, contact MDR at schooldata.com.