He’s Just Not That Into You

Watch this trailer for full effect.

My wife made me sit through this movie last weekend. It was cute. The characters were funny and engaging and the storyline was amazingly unpredictable, but somewhere between my Juju Beans and second diet coke I started to get the feeling that I had seen the movie before. That’s when it hit me. I had. As a matter of fact, I had lived it.

In sales we are always chasing that one big customer. You know the one: the one who buys tons of stuff and transforms mediocre sales reps into superstars. Sometimes we actually get to meet them. We go in, pitch our stuff, and leave confidant we have a shot at the business. We go back to our managers with wild tales of buying signs and imminent POs. We wait for their call.

Silence…..

He doesn’t call. We call him, he doesn’t call back. We email and hear nothing. We try to friend him on Facebook. We even sit outside of his office looking for the competition. That’s when we realize he’s just not that into us.

Suck it up, it happens, but if it happens too often you might be doing something wrong. The sooner you acknowledge the problem, the sooner you can fix it. Ask more questions. Let him do the talking. Do more in meetings to educate and see what happens. He still might not call, but at least you will know that up front. Don’t waste time sitting around waiting for his call.

Print Sales and The Current Economy

The current economy has been tough on everyone, but with local printers dropping like flies it is obvious our industry has been hit especially hard. Companies are simply spending less on printing. The irony is that now is the time you should be printing more, not less, to better position yourself for the other side of this recession. That’s not likely to happen right away. Like most people I think it will get slightly worse before it gets better.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be printing, but you should be very careful how you spend your printing dollars. Now is the time to embrace variable-data and personalized print. Send highly targeted messages to your very best prospects and clients. Let them know you are still out there. Tell them how you can help solve their problems. Make it about the customer.

I remember the old days, back in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. Printers lined up with sample cases and pictures of iron and talked about speeds and feeds and paper samples. There was ritualistic process of getting three quotes, listening to pitches and picking the quote in the middle. Everyone knew the game.

Well, the game has changed. Look at the graveyard of household names that have gone under if you don’t believe me. As sales people we must understand that consumers deserve more than pictures of our presses. They expect information and we must deliver it quickly in ways that is relevant to them. It isn’t about us.

This economy is tough, but it will get better. It has too. The question is how we will be positioned when it does. Will we be solution providers, or will we revert back to our habits of old?

Building Brand Fanatics - Possibility or Myth?

I got a spam message today about “building brand fanatics”. I’m not sure what they were selling (note the spam part) but it got me thinking. Are customers fanatics for my brand?

One of the groups we work with is an all-girl, fast-track roller derby team, and asides from being really cool people to work with, they are really great marketers. Everything they hand out has their logo on it, but isn’t the same true about many organizations? The obvious answer is yes, but what makes them different is the attitude their brand conveys. People love wearing their stuff because of the perception that they are rough and tough, don’t take junk from anyone and aren’t afraid to take out their aggressions on each other. The reality is that they are all professionals with great day jobs and simply do roller derby for fun. Perception drives their brand! When was the last time we got excited about a golf towel with our bank’s logo on it?

Our business is the same way. At the end of the day we put ink on paper, just like countless other printers, but the difference is how we get from point A to point B. let me be clear, the purpose of this blog is not to promote my business, but as a consumer I know what I like. Companies must engage and excite me to the point I can’t help but buy if they want me to become fanatical about doing business with them! Our goal has to be creating the same experience for our customers if we expect to grow our business.

Digital Printing - Start with the Message!

Over the last ten years the traditional business letter has almost been replaced by email, and email is quickly losing ground to new social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter, but the basic premise of business writing remains the same: send people something they want to read and they will read it. The most challenging aspect of sales is new business development. As sales executives we identify prospects who may want our need our services and contact them in hopes of converting them into customers. Writing plays a critical role in that process. The challenge we face in today’s society is that consumers are bombarded with so many pieces of information that it has become virtually impossible to distinguish the good information from the junk mail. Think about credit card offers we get in the mail. I got three yesterday and didn’t open any of them. I’m not even sure they were credit card offers but I perceived them as such so it didn’t matter - they ended up in the trash. The same thing happens with our writings all of the time. If our audience perceives us as spammers we get blocked. So how do we get their attention and convince them to read what we are sending? We get their attention by sending them information that is relevant to them.