Why asking for quotes loses you printing sales
Here’s a sales approach that is guaranteed to create the wrong result for you “Dear Matthew, We are a printing company with an xx press, offering excellent quality and service. We wondered if you had any work we can quote for you?” I still receive a worryingly high number of approaches from printing companies along these lines, both by phone and e-mail.
Was 2015 a good year for print buying?
Two continents: US and UK. Two different buying backgrounds: procurement and agency. Two alternative ways of looking at things. I’m delighted to have teamed up with Deborah Corn from PrintMediaCentr to bring two extremely different views to some important print questions. So welcom e to Print Buying: #UKvUSA where Deborah and I share information about our experiences from both sides of the pond. At the end of this post I have linked to Deborah’s answer to the same question. We wrote our answers (each limited to 500 words) without any idea of what the other was writing. As Deborah says:…
How do you create a continuously improving sales team? (Why “small change” strategies can help you win more work)
“If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” is a dangerous strategy Surely, if something works well, you should carry on doing the same thing? If you carry on with this strategy, you may find that your results start tailing off. Let’s say you have a sales message that works particularly well with customers. After a while, the message will become less effective. Firstly, not all your prospects will be receptive to the message. So, assuming you convert a number of prospects to begin with, you will have a diminishing pool of potential prospects. Secondly, even the prospects that are receptive…
Three key business priorities to review for this year – especially if you are a printing company
Do you have a plan for the coming year? This is a time of year when budgets are often being set. I remember working at one company where a manager cheerfully admitted that her budgets were complete fiction. She simply made the numbers up to keep the directors happy! You are probably not surprised to learn that she had some uncomfortable budget review meetings later in the year… This year I have been sitting down with some of my clients to facilitate their planning for the coming months. We have been look at what they want to achieve. Then we…
7 ways to use pain to win more print business
Pain made me buy a new camera recently I’ve been taking more and more photographs over the past few months. Gradually, I’ve been using more and more of the features on my old compact. Recently I got to the point where I couldn’t actually get the results I wanted with my camera. It was time for a new one. There’s an important issue to recognize here. I didn’t buy a new camera because of all the features that it had. I bought it because my old camera didn’t have features that I needed. I bought the camera because I was…
#UKvUSA: Do Your Suppliers Suck?
Two continents: US and UK. Two different buying backgrounds: procurement and agency. Two alternative ways of looking at things. I’m delighted to have teamed up with Deborah Corn from PrintMediaCentr to bring two extremely different views to some important print questions. So welcom e to Print Buying: #UKvUSA where Deborah and I share information about our experiences from both sides of the pond At the end of this post I have linked to Deborah’s answer to the same question. We wrote our answers (each limited to 500 words) without any idea of what the other was writing. As Deborah says:…
How do you find new sales prospects? Here are 3 simple strategies
Today we suffer from too much information The average office worker now sends and receives an average of 121 e-mails every day (source: Radicati 2015). You would think that we were better informed than ever before. In fact, the opposite is true. These days we suffer from overwhelm. So much new information reaches us that it can be hard to take any of it in. That is bad news for sales people. It causes a major problem if you are looking for new business.
Why your social media profile can lose you a sale
What’s your social media profile like? A little while ago I received a request to connect on LinkedIn from someone in the print industry. They also followed me on Twitter. As normal, I went to check out their profiles to find out a little more about them. When it came to their Twitter profile I was rather surprised. Let’s just say that this person had a very racy lifestyle. And they weren’t afraid to Tweet about it explicitly. If I had been looking at this person as a supplier I would definitely have been put off using them.
Here’s one 10-minute task that will win you business on social media
Are you unconvinced that social media can in you business? Try this simple challenge Do you have any old clients that you have lost contact with over the years? Ones that you would like to ring, but you’ve lost their contact details. Or you know they’ve moved on but you’re not sure where they are
Printing companies: please stop selling print
What am I buying when I purchase business cards? It’s interesting seeing the reaction on the faces of print sales people when I ask them this question! Some people suggest that I am buying 4/4 print on 400gsm silk board, 85 x 55mm. But that’s not what I’m buying. That’s what the printing company is supplying. I buy business cards to achieve a purpose. I give them to people that I meet and I hope that they will transfer my details into the address book. Then, if they ever need help with selling or marketing print all with training their…
