In Dr. Ronnie Davis’ latest PIA Economic and Print Market and Flash Report, he points out two interesting marketing metrics.  First, our largest single customer accounts for nearly 19% of our total business and our largest 5 customers provide nearly 40% of our business.  And second, over 60% of printers in the US have a market focus of less than 100 miles.  So we continue to be an industry that does business fairly locally and where we rely on large accounts which are close to our manufacturing facilities.  But while our customers may still prefer to be near their print suppliers, how they want to manage their print communications and what we need to know about them is definitely not as it once was.

We all know the importance of having great customer service.  But today great customer service also means providing an easy way to store, design, change, order, and pay for print communications material with an online web-to-print capability that is easy for our customers to use.  I recently spoke with a VP of Sales and Marketing at a large NE printing company.  He said that they want their customers to call or email them about everything.  Ordering online was anathema to them as it eliminated the contact with their customers that they so religiously sought out.  But customers today, whether local or not, want to simplify their lives, reduce unnecessary communication, speed up the production process, and see results quicker.  Providing an online print products management solution for your best customers is part of the new definition of great customer service.

Second, in the past it was enough for us to understand the nature of the jobs that our largest customers wanted us to print: sizes, number of pages, stock, frequency, delivery requirements, etc.  Today we need to know not only what they want to print but why.  We should be learning first about the industries that our customers are in and second about how our customers do business in that industry.  How do they generate revenue, who is their competition, who are their customers and how do they find more of them, what is the nature and purpose of their marketing communications, etc.?  By becoming an expert in their businesses, we are then in a position to be not just an order-taking sales person but an advisor in providing the print and marketing solutions that we offer. 

While the metrics about our customers may not have changed, how we service them and what we need to know about them certainly has.  The companies who are growing today are those that recognize this and have developed the technology and the sales mindset to make these adaptations.  Their 5 largest customers have recognized this also and are providing them even more business than ever.

The Future of Printing Awards Shows

Last night I attended the PINE Annual Awards Gala, where the focus of the evening was on viewing the entries to the Awards of Excellence in Printing contest and then seeing the winners of each category announced to receive their awards.  There were hundreds of entries in about 30 categories, from annual reports to various types of books to catalogs to newsletters, all beautifully printed, well-designed and showing us that ink on paper still is appreciated in today’s digital world.  And yes there were three categories for digital printing as well: campaign, personalized/variable data, and on demand. 

But where are shows like this going?  Offset printing clearly continues to decline and the number of pieces produced that qualify for a show award will also diminish.  Meanwhile digitally printed work will continue to increase, but will they be the types of pieces that are award-suitable?  Perhaps it’s our categories that need to change to accommodate the multi-channel campaigns that our forward-thinking print communications companies are creating and producing today.  Developing marketing communications campaigns for our clients using pURL’s, QR codes, direct mail, video, email, and all social media should be our new categories, but will our printing industry shows even acknowledge them for recognition or do we enter these in our local Direct Marketing Association competition?  Only time will tell.

We all hear that with the change to become Marketing Service Providers or Print Communications Companies, our selling strategies need to change also.  Sales reps need to expect longer sales cycles because now we are selling projects, not jobs.  We need to sell to different people in our customers’ companies, not the print buyer but the marketing manager.  We’re told not to sell our equipment but our solutions.  And we’re told that the traditional print rep is a thing of the past.

 But many of us are still really commercial printers that are selling more services such as design, digital, mailing, and fulfillment, and aren’t ready to be Marketing Service Providers or Cross-Media Publishers.  What do our sales reps do now? 

 Traditional sales reps can be still be very successful but they do need to adopt some different selling strategies.  There is no future in being just an order taker selling a commodity based on price, but there is a solid future for the sales representative who recognizes how his or her buying world has changed. 

 Your goal needs to become a trusted advisor to your customers, not a sales person.  You do that by learning and understanding your customers’ business.  Then ask questions about their marketing communications, be able to understand their answers and help them improve their results:

            –Why are you producing this mailer?

            –Who is it going to and why?

            –What were the results of the last mailer?

            –Is it part of a larger cross-media promotion? And more…

 Tell your customers and prospects about innovative solutions you have made for other customers.  Become an expert in your field, whether it’s in mailing, personalized marketing, social media, database management or fulfillment.  Educate your customers in these areas to demonstrate how you are thinking on their behalf.

 Yes, it will take time to learn what you need to know and to position yourself as an expert advisor.  Your sales cycle may become longer and you will need to be talking to others besides the ‘print buyer’.  But you will have set yourself apart from your competition by being able to improve your customers’ business and provide them with solutions that work, not just take their orders.

Printing company leaders have certainly heard this phrase or a variant of it, but how many of us put it in practice? Our industry provides us with great financial data every year with the PIA Ratio Studies, and we can get industry benchmarks for sales growth, factory costs, profit per employee, payroll and benefits, etc., but what about benchmarking and measuring the performance of our operations?

Industry standards for operations performance may be hard to develop, but each company needs to create its own Key Performance Indicators to review those operations that are important to its business. These KPI’s must be established via a planning process and then they need to be measured on a regular basis, providing a dashboard for your key managers.

What you measure should be driven by your customers’ requirements and satisfaction. Some of these operational KPI’s that you may want to quantify and then determine the causes are:

• Late deliveries of proofs and jobs
• Bad or rejected proofs
• Bad or rejected plates
• Excessive makereadies
• Excessive material waste
• Jobs reprinted due to poor quality

You may have other operation activities that you want to measure, and that’s the point. What you measure should come out of a planning process involving team members who identify problems or areas for improvement in your company. To be most effective, put a dollar cost on the problem, and that will attract even more attention to the process.

Step one is identifying the activities to be measured and improved. Step two is determining how to measure them on a regular basis. Step three is analyzing the results and finding ways to improve the operation. And step four is continuing to measure to determine that your solution works. All of this should be done with a task force of associates from across the company which is responsible for identifying and improving your company’s operations.

You’ll get an automatic improvement when your associates understand that their work is being monitored. And by identifying your inefficient operations and improving their performance, you will see those financial ratios improve. A little measurement can go a long way.

You may think it’s you, the owner/president/chief cook and bottle washer. Or you may think it’s your star sales rep who has consistently sold $2 million for the last 3 years. But according viagra your customers, you’d be very wrong.

In a poll taken by Margie Dana, founder of Print Buyers International, 82.4% of experienced print buyers said their Customer Service Representative was either as or more important than their sales representative, and to them, the most important person in your company.

So we have much to consider about these people who play such a key role in our companies:

• How are they compensated and do we incent them properly?
• Do we give them additional training and educational opportunities to help them grow and learn.
• Do we monitor their performance and let them know how they can improve or  what they are doing well?
• Do we have standards for how our CSR’s communicate with our customers?
• What criteria do we use to assign a CSR to a sales rep and to a customer?

This list could go on, but the point is that we always need to look at our company from our customers’ points of view. And if our customers rely so heavily on our CSR’s, then we must give them all the tools, training, attention and focus they require to allow them to perform to the best of their abilities.