NYT -- Service Plans to Sell Answers on Hoover's.
This sounds like one of the dumbest things I've ever heard.
So, maybe it will be a huge success ...
Jon.
*****************************************************************
November 11, 2002
Service Plans to Sell Answers on Hoover's
By DAVID F. GALLAGHER
Find/SVP, a consulting and research firm, plans to announce
today that it will offer an online research service to
users of Hoover's Online, a business information Web site
run by Hoover's Inc.
The service will allow Hoover's Online users who need
customized help with specific business questions to
communicate with Find/SVP's analysts by e-mail or
telephone. Fees will range from $60 for a single question
answered by e-mail within 24 hours to perhaps $15,000 for a
subscription package of consulting services, said Daniel S.
Fitzgerald, the executive vice president for business
development at Find/SVP.
The agreement with Find/SVP will give Hoover's Online a way
to offer its users information that is more personalized
than the site's standard company and industry profiles,
said Carl G. Shepherd, an executive vice president at
Hoover's. It could prove useful to a sales executive who
needed to know more about a potential client, for example,
or to someone who was looking for new markets for a
particular service, Mr. Shepherd said.
The companies would not disclose the terms of the deal, but
Mr. Shepherd said they would share revenue from the
service.
Mr. Fitzgerald said that although answering questions was
the company's business, offering answers online at a low
cost was fairly new territory for it.
[Low ??? !!! Are they kidding ?]
Find/SVP plans to offer the service at a range of fees,
depending on the complexity and number of queries involved.
The company says it hopes that some of the customers trying
out the less expensive options will later want to sign up
for fuller consultation. Find/SVP said it also hoped to
increase its online exposure by making similar deals with
other companies that offer business-related Web content.
When the new research service is introduced in a few weeks,
it will be promoted on the Hoover's site and given
prominent positioning on its popular company-capsule pages,
Mr. Fitzgerald said. According to Hoover's, the site had
more than 3.6 million unique users and 8,700 subscribers in
the third quarter.
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company. |
