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How to increase print sales by mentoring your customers

Some years ago, I was a confident print young print buyer.  I was achieving good results for my company.  I was technically aware.  I thought I knew it all.

And then I met my new manager.

He had had a long career in purchasing.   He showed me just what I could be achieving.  Under his guidance I learned a lot and achieved much more than before.

Printers need to guide their customers on how they can achieve more

Printers who guide their clients will grow stronger relationships. They will have more control over what their clients buy. And they will find it easier to achieve sales targets that they need. In addition, they are more likely to have good quality, interesting jobs to print.

Printer companies who fail to guide their clients will be stuck with commodity jobs. That means commodity pricing and commodity relationships too.

Here are three messages that all printers should guide their clients with.

Print is green

There has been a lot of misinformation recently about the environmental impact of printing.  Lots of companies are telling their clients to go green by not using paper and print.  We know that this is a thinly veiled disguise to reduce their costs. Their clients may not realise this.

Here is an article I wrote about the true cost of email.  Make sure you spread this message to your prospects and clients. However, this is not the only message you should be giving them.  Here’s another.

Print is multi channel

Many people do not realise that print is an excellent way to drive prospects to a website. Nor do they realise the very tailored messages that print can create for interested prospects.  Have a look at this website to find out just how easily you can get print to interact with your other communication channels.

This sort of technology need not be expensive.  But it does help drive extra revenues from your clients’ customers. And this is the other message that you should be giving your clients.

Print improves response rates

In my article last week , I showed how direct mail had far better results than an email campaign.  Here is an article that shows how print combined with new technology improved customer response rates by over 500%!

Print companies needs to make sure that they are sharing such case studies with their prospects and clients. Everyone needs to know the excellent results that can be achieved by using print.

What we shouldn’t do is assume that people already know this.

But shouldn’t customers already be aware of these issues?

The sad fact is that many people just do not know the benefits of using print.  It is the print industry’s responsibility to make sure that this state of affairs is changed. Otherwise print companies will suffer.

I want to share a case study of the dangers of not promoting the benefits of print.

Here’s how one company benefited from guiding their prospects

This company was a small sheetfed magazine printer.  I met them when they were exhibiting at a publishing exhibition.  They told me how surprised they were at the number of internet publishers who now wanted a print magazine.

They immediately started a sales strategy contacting and educating internet publishers, with good results.  But how much potential business had they lost by not having a strategy like this before?

Make sure that you don’t lose print sales opportunities.

Here are three action points to start guiding your customers

1. Choose three important prospects
2. Create a presentation for each of these prospects explaining the advantages of using more print
3. Make a date to go and visit them to explain why they should be using more print

My manager was a mentor to me

Print companies need to take on that role too.  They should mentor their customers.
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P.S. Find out how other companies are successfully spreading the word about print.   Download your free copy of  “Ten Common Print Selling Errors and What To Do About Them” now.

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