Strategies for Sales Success in a Digitally Driven World

Working in sales today looks different than working in sales 10 or 15 years ago. In the past, a salesperson might have taken clients out to lunch, or they might have had a target number of cold calls to make each day. In a post-pandemic world where many people are hybrid or remote, sales strategies of the past might not translate to today’s digital age.

Here are some strategies from experts who have learned to adapt and thrive in today’s era of Zoom calls and emails.

Learn to Embrace AI

Linda Bishop, who is the founder and president of Thought Transformation and author of “The ChatGPT Sales Playbook: Revolutionizing Sales with AI,” believes that salespeople should be using artificial intelligence (AI) for more than just crafting emails.

“Right now what I see is most salespeople are using ChatGPT to help them write business development emails,” Bishop says. “But they’re not necessarily using it for all the other applicable ways that you can write things or brainstorm or do ideation [to come] up with an account strategy, or figuring out how to cross-sell. There’s so many different things you do in sales, which is why I love [it]. But ChatGPT can help you do all those [things] better.”

Bishop believes AI is a great tool that helps salespeople stay in front of clients, and she’s not alone in this.

Jorge Velasco, CEO of San Jose, California-based BR Printers, a PRINTING United Alliance member company, says his salesforce utilizes AI tools that allow you to take the name or website of a customer and plug it into the tool, and then it shoots back a report detailing who the buyers are, their phone numbers, who’s responsible for distribution, and more. He says BR Printers also utilizes HubSpot, an AI-powered customer platform that brings marketing, sales, service, and operations together in one place.

“We encourage the reps to register customer interactions, follow-up quotes, and hopefully wins,” he says. “So then on a regular basis, they get reports back from the system saying, ‘Hey, today is so-and-so’s birthday’ or ‘Don’t forget to call this person.’ So, on the transactional side, that is helping a lot and I think the AI tools are just going to become more and more powerful as we go.”

Randy Sparrow, vice president of sales at Salt Lake Mailing & Printing in Salt Lake City, Utah, admits that while he isn’t exactly thrilled about AI, he does recognize its potential. He believes that ChatGPT is a great tool for fine-tuning emails, but moving forward, he wants to use it to try and get in front of people — similar to Bishop’s note about AI being used for more than just emails.

“We’re trying to use AI tools in conjunction with our thought process of doing more old-school growth, like who do we reach out to that's going to fit into our market space that we don't know about?” Sparrow says.

Don’t Be Afraid to Be Old-Fashioned

Bishop urges print sales reps to keep in mind that they need to earn relationships with prospective clients.
“I think the biggest mistake that I’ve encountered is that people ask to link with me and then immediately try to sell me something,” she says. “I think a lot of sales reps forget that they need to earn the right to keep going down the path. Clients are constantly assessing you when you sell, they’re scoring you to see if you’re worthy of keeping a relationship with down the road.”

So how can a sales rep maintain a close-knit relationship with clients in a hybrid-work world? Velasco simply believes you need to show clients that you care — especially if you’re a younger sales rep who is entering the printing industry.

“You are providing a service to your client, and they want to make sure that you’re good at your service, and that you represent them at your company as if they were there,” Velasco says. “So, the personal relationship becomes more of a partnership than a friendship.”

In order to build that strong partnership, Velasco urges reps to pick up the phone, saying he sees too many younger reps relying solely on email, and, thanks to resources like HubSpot and Salesforce, some people get hundreds of emails per day. To cut through the noise, Velasco believes a phone call, video call, or even a handwritten note can go a long way.

Sparrow echoes a similar sentiment, saying that if you want to get a client’s attention, one email isn’t going to cut it.

“Following up is No. 1. It hasn’t changed since probably the ‘60s,” he says. “But the common mistake still to this day is that everybody sends out a single email or a type of communication and they just trust or expect that it’s going to be the silver bullet that works ... not recognizing that human nature is still human nature. It’s going to sometimes take five touches for you to [build] that trust for that person to respond to your email.”

Do More Than Just Sell

In order to be successful in print sales, Robert Testa, chief sales officer at BR Printers, says you need to learn to differentiate between two types of selling — and in doing so reminisced about the days of selling random items door to door so he could afford a bag of potato chips as an example.

“In our business, we are really trying to provide solutions,” he says. “I say that because it does go back and forth when you’re selling to get that bag of potato chips, you’re just trying to figure out how to sell, how to get a dollar in your pocket. But we’re trying to help the customer and there are two kinds of selling. One is just get out there and make a deal, and the other is how do we really try to put a solution together to help support [the customer]?”

Testa also appreciates another aspect of our industry: the grind. He notes that if you don’t have a strong work ethic, then print sales might not be up your alley.

“I like to use the word ‘grind’ in our industry because you must do it every day,” he explains. “Every day there’s production. We’re shipping every day. We’re producing every day. We’re assembling every day. We’re distributing every day. We’re outsourcing potentially and bringing it in. There’s a constant grind to it. It’s sort of that work ethic and grind. And if you’re not willing to do that, you’re not going to be successful in sales.”

Nurture Your Client Relationships

While looking for new clients and landing new accounts is part of the job, don’t leave your existing clients in the dust.

“Nurturing your existing clients has got to come first and foremost, especially with this type of selling, where you’re based solely on care, concern, and trust,” Sparrow says. “Making sure all of our clients feel seen is very important to us.”

In fact, Sparrow says his team even takes the time to reach out to clients monthly to highlight them in Salt Lake Mailing & Printing’s newsletter. This is just one of many strategies to employ when nurturing an existing client relationship.

Bishop believes that you can maintain strong relationships with clients through social media as well.

“It’s the second-biggest mistake I see people make is that they do not pay attention to their current customers on social media at all,” she says. “If you really do want to have a relationship with people in the 21st century, then platforms like LinkedIn are the way.”

Combining new methods and technologies like AI with old-school ideologies creates the secret sauce for success in printing industry sales.