What if we were selling knowledge?

Pretty well my favourite blog post is where I asked what would you do differently if you got a £1 every time someone downloaded the pdf of your report. Quite a lot I expect.

As they say in behaviour change circles, the ‘nudge’ would be a strong elbow in the ribs.

But what are we actually selling? My glib response is NAO knowledge and insights which I think is true unless I am missing something?

So what if we got hold of a salesman on commission and asked for his advice on selling NAO reports what do you think they would say?

‘Well sir, not too keen on your current packaging, that PDF format is a bit old hat. You could think about and ‘easy open’ format (full text) or a bit more eye catching (snazzy graphics) to draw in the punters.’

‘I do not mean to be rude but I really am not clear what you are doing with press notices. We use them to announce a new product, then the product landing page describes what the product is about and encourages users by a call to action – you know ‘buy now or add to shopping cart’. Whereas you have the press notice on the landing page but do not say anything about the product and how it will benefit the user – odd’.

‘I think you are missing another trick as Amazon have a ‘I just bought the latest Dan Brown’ why not have a ‘I just downloaded the NAO HS2 report?’

‘Do you get the idea sir?’ Possibly some nodding of heads takes place…

I suspect he (or her) would then say ‘of course these are just the obvious points, for a percentage of future sales I could give you my really good ideas, my retainer is quite modest’.

Anyone want to club together for that retainer?

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