K-12Leads and Youth Service Market Report is our weekly listing of grant and contract RFPs from the federal, state and local government agencies with web-based procurement activities.

With four years of direct experience researching leads in the business of school improvement (and another decade in the business itself), we can safely say that on any given week, between 75 and 200 new RFPs are issued, and perhaps 600 more remain open.

It's a much smaller number than most marketing professionals would like. And if that number is divided by the various product lines, a small number of real opportunities present themselves to any given provider in the school improvement business over the course of a year.

This requires an information service that finds every single opportunity a firm has decided to seek. More important, it places a premium on a service that identifies all the opportunities a firm should follow but hasn't designated.

Moreover, at a time when investment capital is hard to find, firms should be looking to government grant opportunities for product development, program evaluation and capacity building. The ability to access non-dilutive investment capital is a competitive advantage.

K-12Leads is for firms that take government grants and RFPs very seriously, and have adopted a strategic intent to mine every available opportunity.

Each weekend an expert conducts an "eyeball review" of every site to identify business opportunities missed by our competitor's computer-based word searches. (A computer program is fine if the object of the search is "chicken parts" or "paving", but not so helpful if it is a "k-3 reading program" listed by the agency as professional development, "program evalution" called technical assistance, or "professional development" called Project XYZ. There is simply no substitute for  human review.)

Every Monday we report our findings to clients in a web-enabled report delivered by email. The new RFPs are in red, the open RFPs in black. We also provide relevant government-issued market information in blue.

A site license to K-12Leads allows you to put this tool in the hands of every employee@youremailaddress.com.

After your first review of the entire report, your weekly update will take about 30 minutes.  In that time, you will know everything on the table and can spend the rest of the week pursuing leads rather than looking for them.

If you have a question or problem or just want some healp to think through market research - call or email an expert for prompt support.

It's an entirely different way of performing marketing research and, with one $1500 payment covering every employee in your firm - a bargain by any measure.

Download the Monday April 2 issue here.