The Value of a Sales Relationship

Spending a many hours researching and writing about the transition taking place in B2B direct selling, I have found that the value of networking and relationships still remain paramount.  More than a few Decembers ago, I remember a specific deal where a relationship of my father-in-law helped me finish the year strongly.

After a promotion to a sales manager for a Manhattan-based team of savvy and seasoned pros, I was faced with a dilemma. My sales team was reluctant to share information about their prospects or bring me in to meet their large prospects. It seemed they were testing their new and young sales manager. At this time, members of my sales team were engaged in a very large sales opportunity at a prominent publishing company. Because of the size of the deal, it had high visibility in my company. My boss repeatedly quizzed me on the status of the prospect. An order here would immediately propel my sales team and me from mediocrity to stardom.

I understood we had a strong support and agreement from within the account. The barrier according to my salespeople was gaining agreement from a tough VP of Finance, a long-term employee who had a reputation akin to “Attila the Hun”.  Not only was my team terrified of him, but the account’s employees were as well. Nothing of significance was ever approved without a scrupulous and contentious review by this tyrannical VP. One member of my sales team suggested we wait until he retired.

Over a weekend, my retired father-in-law gave me an encouraging talk on his experiences dealing with tough decision makers. Years earlier as a printing salesman, he sold to the very same publishing company. He talked with great fondness about a print buyer who gave him his largest order. He viewed the order as a reward for persistence and professional selling.

Consequently, the buyer became his friend and they spend many hours together. My father-in-law described the buyer as a “wild man”. After his retirement, he lost track of the buyer. Upon hearing the man’s name, I was excited as I realized that his last name matched my invincible VP of Finance. The first name my father-in-law remembered was a nickname and was not the same as the formal first name we knew. We decided, given the disparity in first name and the apparent difference in personality, the man was probably not our VP of finance.

The year-end approached, we had our final meeting to defend our proposal and close the deal. I forced my reluctant sales team to bring me along. This was my first visit to the account. There wasn’t too much pressure, since no one expected us to win the deal. As I entered the conference room, I took a chance. I whispered my father-in-law’s name in the VP’s ear. The VP smiled broadly. He pulled me from the room and spent the next fifteen minutes asking about his old friend. As we re-entered, the meeting participants were stunned.

Although no one knew how I “broke the ice” with is reluctant buyer, we got the order. My sales team was impressed. I gained their confidence, and the VP and my father-in-law renewed their friendship.

Some things do not change. The value of relationships is very powerful.

An Often Missed Sales KPI That Drives Results

With the wide acceptance of CRM and sales performance reporting, we regularly see sales managers review a variety of performance indicators ranging from what’s in the pipeline to how many deals were won in a specific time frame.

Data readily available from salespeople can be a huge help for not only the sales staff but also the marketing and senior management teams.  For instance, if there are not enough deals in the pipeline, then an early alert is given to all in the organization that corrective actions must be taken or suffer the consequences of a missed sales or profit objective.

Now that the year end is near, it’s is a great time to take stock in the effectiveness of your sales program.

Based on our observations working with a variety of commercial printing companies and equipment manufacturers, there is one indicator that is rarely leveraged. It is deals won divided by proposals generated where customers actually made a decision to act. We use decisions where customers actually acted because we expect great salespeople to qualify opportunities before generating proposals.

The simple formula is:

Deals won/total deals where customers actually made a decision to act = sales effectiveness

5 deals won divided by 25 customer opportunities where the customer actually acted equals 20% effectiveness

We recommend using this KPI to give everyone in the organization a view of what is vital. Detailed analysis of sales effectiveness could lead to adjustments on sales coverage, skills, compensation, marketing and management.

Here are some key questions to ask

·       Of the proposals generated how many were a response to “blind” RFPs – That means situations where salespeople had no significant involvement prior to the RFP being developed?  Are these opportunities worth responding to?

·       How many proposals were enabled from leads generated by the company’s marketing e.g. SEO, social media, trade shows?  How many of those were won? Do we need to do more marketing? What role does the salesperson have in creating and developing leads?

·       How many proposals and wins were generated by salespeople where the lead was mainly enabled, developed and qualified by the hard work and skill of the salesperson? What can be done to create even more opportunities?

·       Are we in enough opportunities that are qualified and the customer is ready to act?

Organizations need to understand where opportunities come from, why some proposals are won and some are lost. Most importantly, how companies and salespeople can add more value to win more deals. The answers to questions can only be developed through using and managing the data that is readily available to marketing and management teams.

Joe Rickard is the President of Intellective Solutions

FUNNY WORDS THAT PRODUCE GREAT PRINTING

The printing industry, like most industries, has terms that can be misinterpreted by those outside the business. As a designer or print buyer, not knowing the proper intention of these words can spell disaster when talking to a print salesperson or customer service rep. This is especially true when discussing the specifications of a job.

There’s two different types of jargon that are commonly used in the printing industry. The first is technical jargon, which are those words and phrases that can be baffling to a nontechnical person. Many times technical jargon is used unintentionally by a salesperson or CSR, they just assume that what they are saying is understandable by everyone.

When a printing company CSR says something like “Just send us the PDF of the VDP and don’t forget to sort the XLS.” Very few human beings can honestly say that they totally understood that sentence!

The important thing is to stop and ask what is being said, in simple terms that YOU understand. The absolute worst thing to do is to nod your head and say “okay, I’ll pass that information along to my coworkers”. The meaning of technical instructions always tends to dilute even further as it passes from one person to another, just like a bad rumor.

The second type of jargon that you’ll run into are words that mean something entirely different in everyday life. These words are not meant to be confusing or mean spirited by the person who uses them, they’re just words that the printing industry uses to describe something. Some are inherited from the old days of printing, and others are used because they describe something very well. And a few are even kind of funny.

As with technical jargon, it’s important to ask for an explanation if something doesn’t quite make sense to you. There’s even a fair number of words which won’t be listed here because even though they are used often in the production areas, they are crude and offensive.

The following is a short list of the most commonly misunderstood words used in the printing industry.

Bleed – Ask a doctor what this means and they’ll tell you someone is cut, shot or ill. Ask a printer and they will tell you that since no printing process can print to the very edge of a sheet of paper, extra image must be included that will later be trimmed off. This gives the finished page an appearance that looks like the image is printed to the edge of the paper.

Two considerations to keep in mind when designing a page like this is to include an extra 1/8 of inch of image which will be later cut off and also the paper size must be larger than the final trimmed page size. Or, you can just say forget it, with the result being a rough white border around the page or have the job cut slightly smaller than what you originally intended.

Perfect – Yes, every printer in the world produces their work in a perfect fashion. In the printing world, perfecting a job essentially means printing both sides. Some people use the word duplex and the really smart people use the phrase “prints both sides”. There are even special presses that are called perfecting presses, which means that they simultaneously print both sides of the sheet and are incredibly efficient. When specifying a job to be printed, the key information to pass along is the total number of pages that have printing on them and also the total number of sheets of paper. For example, a book can have 128 printed pages, but a total of 256 pages. What this really translates to is that there is printing only on the front of each sheet of paper.

One other definition of the term perfect is when a specific type of binding is used for a book. A perfect bound book is constructed in a way that folded pages are stacked one on top of the other and glue is applied along the bound edge. You can easily tell if a book is perfect bound by examining the side of it.

Spine, face, head and foot – These four terms describe the orientation of a page or book. It’s really quite simple, the spine is the bound edge, the face is the edge opposite the spine, the head is the top and the foot is the bottom. When a printer asks you where you want page numbers added and you say at the bottom of the page instead of the foot, you’ve just announced that you’re a rookie in the printing world.

Booger Glue – Think like a 9 year old child and you have the common meaning of this word, giggles and all. In the printing industry, booger glue, sometimes known as fugitive glue, has many uses. A little dab is used to keep a booklet closed during mailing and can also be used to attach dimensional products like credit cards to a brochure. Don’t be grossed out when a salesperson offers to send you samples. 

Ream – This means 500 sheets of paper. Period. No further explanation needed. Although, this could also be a threat from the CSR if you don’t include bleeds in your job.

Flush – Flush left and flush right are two different ways of aligning text on a page.

The opposite of flush is runaround. This is a type of text treatment that allows lines of text to follow the contours of a graphic.

Flush also is a term that is used in the printing industry to describe the alignment of two elements. For example, “these two graphics are flush with each other”, meaning that they align perfectly.

The word flush is never used to describe the financial condition of most printing companies these days.

Gutter - The inside margins or blank space between two facing pages is the gutter. For some types of binding, extra space must be added. The phrase “stay out of the gutter” simply means to keep the area blank.

Signature – The three most important signatures in a printing company are when an order is signed, a proof is signed for approval and a signed check is received as payment for a job. The other time the word signature is used is to designate a large sheet of paper that contains multiple pages and is then folded into a smaller size to form a book.

Generally, a signature will contain 4, 8, 16 or 32 pages. Multiple signatures can be assembled to form a book that contains many pages. For example, a book that contains 64 pages may be constructed with 8 pages signatures, 16 page signatures or 32 page signatures. The deciding factor is the maximum size of the sheet of paper that the press can handle.

Imposition – In ordinary life, this describes when your in-laws are staying over at your house for the holidays. In the printing industry, this describes the positioning of pages onto a large sheet of paper. A chief reason for imposing a job is for efficiency. For example, if a project has 10 different business cards and a quantity of 1000 each, there are two options for production. Option number one is to repeat the same card 10 times on an 8.5 x 11 sheet and run 100 sheets of each card. Or, the 10 different cards can be placed on one 8.5 x 11 sheet and printed 1000 times.

Many times to maximize the real estate of a large press sheet, different jobs are imposed and sufficient quantities are run to satisfy the minimum quantity. It used to be an incredibly complex task to calculate these different scenarios. It’s relatively easy now by using special imposition software.

The other time that imposition becomes important is when a multi page book is being produced. Presses are classified as being able to print 2, 4, 8 or 16 pages onto a sheet of paper. These large sheets are folded into signatures and then bound in a variety of different ways. To maximize the efficiency of using the largest sheet available, there may be pages contained on the signature that are not printed and are blank. For example, a book that has 15 printed pages may contain 1 page that is blank since a signature always contains an even number of pages.

Most government publications will include the phrase “This page intentionally left blank” to dispel any type of conspiracy theories on what should have been printed on the blank page.

Hickey – A defect in print. Usually appears as a tiny white spot or sometimes will appear as a circle in a solid area of an image. When the solid areas of your print job looks like it has the measles, there are hickies and if there are enough of them, it may be a good reason to reject the job. Cleanliness in the pressroom is very important.

There have been horror stories of hickies appearing on a high quality job, especially in solid black areas. To save the job, the printer armed everyone in the shop with fine tip black sharpie markers and dabbed the hickie to make it disappear. Imagine doing that for 20,000 covers of an annual report.

This can also occur with digital presses and is a sign that the press needs a good cleaning on the inside. It is caused by loose fragments of paper dust inside the press.

Creep – This term generally refers to the practical joker that resides in the prepress department. When a book is being printed and will be saddle stitched, the folded signatures are inserted into each other. This causes a buildup of paper thickness at the spine and will cause the pages to uniformly move, or creep, from the center of the book towards the front and back covers.

This effect is exaggerated when a thick paper is used. To overcome this effect, the pages are slightly repositioned towards the center, with the pages closest to the fold moving the most. The project you submit doesn’t have to include this repositioning of every page, software that is used in prepress or built into most digital printers can accomplish this automatically. A tip to help this process is to not position page numbers close to the edge.

Orphan / Widow – An orphan or widow is that one word or line of text that flows onto the next page or into an adjacent column, or in the worst case, just disappears. It really looks unprofessional. And you may be asking yourself, how does this happen? The most common reason is that even though it looked good on your monitor or printed proof, a font substitution may have occurred. There are dozens of variations of Times fonts from different vendors. And if you are supplying original InDesign source files, you must include the fonts you used to create the job. If you used Times from vendor “A” and your printer uses Times from vendor “B”, there may a minute difference between the two that over the course of 4 pages of text, it may be just enough that it causes one additional line of text to appear, resulting in a widow.

Either supply the font you used to the printer or create a PDF file and submit that to the printer. And for goodness sakes, when the printer sends you proofs, go over them carefully to make sure that the text is all there.  

RIP – Usually, when a job is delayed, the salesperson will say that the job is still ripping. Or even worse they’ll say that your job choked their rip. The raster image processor (RIP) is the computer that takes all of the text, graphics, and color information in your job and converts it into a format that can be printed directly to a digital press or can be used to make plates for an offset press. The RIP is typically the most powerful computer in the printing company and it’s really amazing the amount of work it must do.

These are some of the most common and misunderstood terms in the printing world. And to quote an old seer, there is no such thing as a dumb question. If you’re not one hundred percent sure of what you’re being told or what they’re asking you to do, ask for clarification. The people that are throwing these words at you were in your shoes too at one point in their career. They want to help you understand since it can make a job flow a lot more smoothly through production and delivered to you on time and on budget.

Intellective Solutions can help you or your employees navigate through the printing industry world through our Intellective Essentials of Print Training Programs. Give us a call or email.

How Much Pressure Can Salespeople Stand?

The general thinking in managing salespeople is that the right amount pressure on salespeople is good for sales performance.

There have been countless articles on sales management and how to effectively manage sales performance without using undue pressure tactics. What about salespeople who put too much pressure on themselves when closing a large deal?

Recently, I read an abstract, The Impact of Pressure on Performance: Evidence from the PGA Tour February 2015 published in the Harvard Business Review written by Professors Daniel C. Hickman and Neil E. Metz. They used data analysis to determine the effect of pressure on making big money putts on the PGA golf tour. A key finding was that short putts that would result in winning significant amounts of money were not appreciably impacted by the pressure. But they did find that slightly longer putts of 6 to 10 feet were in fact impacted.

For salespeople and managers, an analogy to golf may be logical and no further discussion is needed. For me, the abstract reinforces the necessity for managers to ensure salespeople are working in environments that minimize mistakes and paralysis caused by pressure.

The takeaway is that large deals that are “more than short putts” and which will generate large rewards do result in a “choking” phenomenon for many salespeople.  Here are four recommendations to minimize pressure on large deals where there is a lot at stake.

1.      Match less experienced salespeople with seasoned pros. Experience salespeople will less likely be impacted by the pressure.

2.      Don’t leave a big deal to one person. Make it a team approach. The more support and help will alleviate the pressure on any one individual.

3.      Ensure the deal is sold before the close. Carefully review the sales and buying process to make sure each step was carefully executed.

4.      Test the proposal with the “customer champion” or a loyal supporter in the account to make sure everything has been covered before presenting.

By qualifying the account and thoroughly managing the sales process, longer putts become shorter putts. The shorter the putt; there is less pressure.

Joe Rickard is the founder of Intellective Solutions. Intellective Solutions (www.intellectives.com)  works with printing and technology organizations to improve their sales, marketing and operational effectiveness. The Intellective team enjoys providing Customer Event marketing services. Follow him on Twitter @joerickardIS

Three Must Do's Before Planning Your Customer Event

There is no better way to get closer to customers and prospects than a successful customer event or open house.

Many marketing pros and salespeople cringe at the idea of another customer event. This is because many events have failed to produce results. It can be a frustrating experience when a customer event ends up being an expensive party that produces no business.

A successful event depends on a number of variables. Yes, themes, story-lines and the invitation process are very important. We have worked with a variety of printing and in plant organizations to promote customer events and open houses. There are a few key than many organizations forget to complete before they even begin planning their event.

Here are three essential steps to take before planning and executing the details of a customer event.

1. Create a simple and specific objective for the event.

A broad sweeping goal such increase customer interest in our services or launch our new product is not good enough. As the planning process develops, it often becomes unclear why the organization is having the event in the first place. Objectives such as, increase our pipeline by 25% or 10 additional customers for our new solution helps keep everyone focused on the same objective.

2.  Get an approved budget before you start.

Knowing how much money and internal resources are available will help tailor the theme, size and scope of the event. There is nothing more frustrating than running out of money or internal resources prior to the completion of all the planning steps. Getting the budget requires a sign-off by management. Once the budget is approved then the task is managing it rigorously to ensure getting the greatest return for investment.

3.  Get everyone on the “bus”.

Before moving forward, it is vital to get every employee who will potentially influence and work on the event to be committed. No marketing or sales effort can be successful without the entire organization pulling the same direction. That means production people, finance, customer service in addition to management, marketing and sales must do their part. Getting a commitment from all before planning the details will ensure success.

A recommendation to all event planning managers, don’t start planning and executing until these three steps are completed.

For those who need marketing resources for their events, see our cross media invitation marketing services http://www.intellectives.com/open-house-cross-media-services/  

When to Train College New Hire Salespeople

We train a large number of salespeople within the graphic communications market. We still see companies formally training new salespeople in classroom settings on the very first day that they report. This is a common practice because most companies want to get salespeople out there and start selling as quickly as possible.

New College Hires Must Earn Training

Based on our experience, the traditional thinking may need to be adjusted. There has been change in the attitude from many coming out of school. Though we still see a great amount of talent and potential, many graduates view corporate education and training as an entitlement.

The percentage of students living at home, hustling, working a part time job and studying through the night to graduate college is not large. Consequently, many new college graduates expect training but don’t really value it.

Many recent graduates fail in their first year of sales and the training investment is also lost as well. Based on our experience, we have found it is a better practice to make new hires earn training. This way the employer will know within a few weeks if they made the right hiring decision.

How to Manage New Hire Sales Training

We recommend giving new hires tasks that they need to accomplish BEFORE they enter into a high value and high cost formal sales training program. For instance, have them work and produce in a production capacity for a week. Then have the current employees in that area evaluate the salesperson on work ethic, timeliness, ability to take constructive criticism, confidence, quality of work etc.

Another example would have new hires prepare a company presentation. Then have the salesperson present it to the team. Check for quality, attire, writing skills, confidence and persuasiveness. If they can’t do this well, they will not sell.

If the new hire fails in deliver outstanding results in these endeavors, make them do it over again or remove them from the team. Under no circumstances, should you let them go through any costly formal sales skills, product or industry training program without demonstrating they can deliver results first.

As a result, salespeople will be much more motivated in their formal training when they get it and management will have an employee who is much more likely to succeed.

How the Printing Industry and Retail is the same

This morning, I had the good fortune to hear retail senior executive Mark Cohen speak about a range of topics affecting the retail industry.  It was outstanding. Mark teaches at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business and also consults with leading retailers.

To an audience on the campus of Dominican College, he spoke specifically about the challenges, changes and opportunities facing the Retail Industry. Mark gave many examples about the rapid transformation that has taken place and some of the companies that will not survive. He emphasized that leadership and creativity is vital. He emphasized that no matter what changes take place over time, customers will always still search for value.

It struck me as a consultant and trainer who works within the Printing Industry that some of his advice and consul that he gave to the audience apply to the printing industry. Here are some key points that every printing business needs to pay close attention:

·       Short term pricing discounts that impact long term profitability is
        a prescription for disaster. Once you discount, it is impossible to  
        reverse the tactic with customers.

·       Consistent and large discounts are unsustainable and reduce 
        customer confidence in the brand.

·       Provide wonderful and high value products and services

·       Create exciting promotions that don’t rely on discounts

·       Participate with partners to support customer requirements

·       Provide great customer service

·       Move quickly to a multichannel system of delivery and marketing

With all the challenges facing printers, these bullets should be carefully considered. The commercial printing industry was built by small, regional and family businesses. Their core advantage is that they have been able to establish deep relationships with customers in a very personal business.  Keeping up with the times and knowing how to deliver high value products and services is the road map for long term success.

Four Marketing Ideas for a Tight Budget

For those who in small or medium sized companies, there always a question about how best to use tight marketing dollars and limited internal resources.

There are so many ways to market to customers. The challenge is to use strategies and tactics that don’t just generate looks at the Website but actually convert to sales. No matter what the approach is, nothing is forever. If something is not working then move on and try something else. Even SEO strategies should be varied.

Many small businesses will use outside consultants or freelancers to help. There is plenty of talent out there with specific expertise. Whatever the intent and budget, we suggest to always start with a set of objectives and a marketing plan. Revise it regularly and measure results.

Recently, we are often asked if there are advertising agencies for small companies. Yes, there are some. Unfortunately, it is very difficult for general agencies to make it with small business customers.

The best approach might is to use the resources that are readily available and can be done in a modest but scalable way. Here are some approaches we like and suggest to our clients.

1.     Pay-per-click (PPC) search advertising is a great way to get start. You can do that self-serve through Google.

2.     For print and digital media, reach out to some trade publications that might give the right targets, and see what the rates would be. Some might also want to try local newspapers if they're tied to a specific geography. These publications may have package print and digital deals.

3.     Whatever the approach is, plan to advertise consistently for several months.  Do not just do a one-off and think that will do the trick. Media will be a larger cost than the ads themselves, so start there to get a sense of how much it would cost to really advertise effectively.

4.     On the ad creative, work with a designer to get some brand ads developed. No need for an agency per se, but if there is an affordable one, that might be a good place to start. You might actually do well with posting a Craig's list ad for free-lance design work. You would be amazed at the quality of the freelance talent out there.