Doomsday Problem Reframers Returns

For every pound spent on something, how much ought that business expect to flow back their way?

It's an age-old way of viewing investment.

Supposedly easier in our new age of CapEx to OpEx switch to subs-style purchasing.

Yet it remains a tricky calc.

There's often so many variables at play that have no desire to be in any way controlled by what you provide.

Think for instance, about selling to salesteams. (As I pretty much do right now.) One standard currency here is around AOV; average order value. You guarantee you can bring in 'x' more of them. Push up such till-ring by 'y'. Cut the time it takes to make such deals by 'z'.

As tenuous, tangential or troublesome as it may be, we still must try and attribute success to what we contribute in some part.

Couple that with established wizened Finance weariness towards business cases suggesting they've backed the next dotcom/crypto/nft secret before it's out and you can kinda see why.

Which brings me to the ideas for fixing world problems through the toolkit of responsible capitalism, as opposed to the strictures of emotional socialism, of Bjorn Lomborg and Jordan Peterson.

A keystone of their pitch is to deliberately ignore the machination of componentry.

Instead, they focus on the big picture.

A recent pair of suggestions of theirs wished to build on the greater power of learning achieved when a child is not malnourished, and escape the race to the bottom that is one size fits all early years education which delivers unwelcome lowest common denominator results.

Here's the two punchlines they provide to justify why their ideas ought hold;

Each pound spent would deliver an astounding £38 of social benefit

This straightforward and practically implementable policy means that each pound so invested would deliver £65 in long-term benefits

Leaving aside the Sales point that grammatically for our usage, the sum should be the object - would deliver an astounding social benefit of £38 & would deliver long-term benefits of £65 - these figures are truly remarkable.

How can a proposed Return of 1:38 or 1:65 fail to excite?

Who wouldn't want to help make such massive difference to currently disadvantaged youngsters as well as global, societal uplift?

The details can be filled in later.

In our selling cases, it's highly unlikely the one single catalyst of buying from us can alone be responsible. But it can help align all the necessary levers.

As so here. With delivering essential nutrients to pregnant mothers and unleashing an extra hour's teaching which specifically 'adapts teaching exactly to the level of that child'.

And perhaps even more crucially, both avenues have been proven to work already.

Now it appears time to scale.

Can you help your prospect reframe in a similar way?