The Ten Ways - Price

The most common way of selling, and one of the least effective ways of selling books to schools, and the most likely to cost you a lot of money is selling on price.

Let's take this bit by bit.

"You have to sell books to school on price," says the publisher to me.

"How do you know?" says I.

"Just take a look," says he, "everyone sells on price.  Only way."

"Have you tried selling in any other way?" says I, in that persistent and annoying way that I have.

"No point - you have to sell on price."

And so it goes - everyone believes you have to sell on price because everyone else does it, and that proves you have to sell on price.   Travel companies selling to schools used to believe that too - until one day a couple of companies started to break ranks and suggested that yes, of course you can get it cheaper, but do you want to be able to reassure the parents that their children will be safe, or not?

Of course there are other problems with selling with price, apart from the fact that it is not as essential as everyone believes.  Take this scenario...

You say you are cheaper, you offer 70% off, and for a while you get some more sales.   At a lower price.

Then maybe you sit down and look at the profits and realise that having cut your prices by 10% you now need to sell 20% more than you were selling before - and meanwhile you see that your rivals have just put their prices down even lower.

The fact is that selling on price is so obvious everyone can do it - and if you claim to be the cheapest and suddenly you are not, no one believes any of your advertising any more.

But even then, when all this is pointed out, whenever we suggest to people that they should not sell on price, we are told "yes I can see that in many areas of business selling on price is not the only option but you don't really understand the Key Stage 2 History Book market.  For us it is the only way of selling..."

And so those doing the selling keep talking about price, so those doing the buying keep thinking about price.  If you start using one of the other methods of selling you will find that a completely new type of client with new expectations will turn up.

Compare this...

What's the easiest way to get every Key Stage 2 child so enthralled with the Romans and Celts, that they will complain when you move on to the next topic?

We all know that teaching history works much better when the children are excited, stimulated and enthralled by the subject.   When their minds feel the historical events as real and alive, then the experience of history begins.

Sadly not every history book manages to do engineer this transformation, and an endless desire to produce cheap and cheerful publications can mean lifeless illustrations and dry text that does nothing to grab the children's imagination and thrust them into the historical events.

Which is why, just occasionally it is worth spending a little more on the books to be used in the classroom.   The longer term savings, in terms of results, parental appreciation, Ofsted enthusiasm, and the admiration of colleagues will certainly make you feel it was worthy every extra penny.

With this...

NEW!!!     The Romans and Celts.   Key Stage 2

From just £2.50 per class book (free teacher notes with each set of 20+)

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