I received an email from a friend asking my opinion. After many months of disillusion, she’s
recommitting to print sales with a brand new approach: she’s dedicated to
becoming a ‘resource’ for her current and future clients. She intends to focus
on everything her clients print; to go after their brochures and catalogs,
their working papers, and their packaging. Her intent is to capture all of her
clients’ print needs, become their ‘best resource’, and shut out all
competition.
As we sat down over coffee I explained that while I was excited for her recommitment, I was also a
little dubious. I recognized her need to gain a new perspective, but noted she
was still tethered to the old view of selling printing. I began my pilgrimage to
meet the same challenge about ten years ago while managing sales at a
litho/digital house. I came to learn that I wasn’t selling printing but,
rather, the dissemination of my clients’ message…whether it was ink on paper,
toner on paper, bytes on disks, PDFs online or in an entirely different
language. My clients’ information needed to be spread, in whatever fashion,
effectively and appear as one single message.
Collaborating with a client in this fashion opens the conversation to their processes – the purposes
of a printed piece, its usage, delivery and expected return. It gets you
involved in their planning, and then budgeting, to where your costs continue to
be a factor but price is never an issue.
I further explained that what printing has become – actually what it’s always been – is a service. And
as service providers, printers and ‘print salespeople’ must focus on the
success of our clients. The better I could accomplish this, the more treasured
a resource I was to my clients.
That last line caused her pause. My friend sat back, took a drink of her tea and quietly shared that her
head hurt. After a few minutes of silence, she looked at me, smiled and stated:
“So helping my clients plan their printing better, or do a better job of
coordinating their printing and, say, mailing, will help them become more successful.
And in turn, I will too.”
She got it. Frankly, I don’t know why more salespeople don’t.
