Business Management - Marketing/Sales

When looking at the five human senses, one must respect that the Internet has just two of them covered, sight and sound. Printing, takes the lead with the ability to interact with all five senses. This is a major advantage in a myriad of areas, some of which we will touch upon here, but the majority can be left to our creative resources.

What's clear to me about serious, professional print buyers is not so much their skill and savvy; rather, it's their affection for print. What concerns me is the "incoming class" of freshmen print buyers. They won't seek out jobs as print buyers out of a love for the medium. They will be generalists who must be comfortable with different media.

I recently came across a white paper authored by Jacob Aizikowitz, currently president of XMPie, a Xerox company, entitled “Can Print Personalization Be Highly Creative and Efficient? Expanding Beyond the Form Metaphor.” While this is a vendor white paper, it is written in a very neutral manner and discusses an important topic well worth reading.

Achieving greatness requires three things: practice, coaching and concentration. These three “Greatness Drivers” are hard. I’m not giving you some magic elixir.

It's understandable that evolved printing firms want to meet with marketing. Problems arise when they approach marketing directly, but are still seen as printers. Marketing execs may bounce them over to the print buying team, which may react as I did years ago — ticked off. Hopes for that printer are dashed.

Print-on-demand (POD) technology allows for the printing of books as they are ordered, without warehousing, storage or startup costs. Books are printed with the same quality and professionalism that you would see in any traditionally published book. Instead of having hundreds (perhaps even thousands) of copies stored in a warehouse, POD printers can provide books more efficiently with less waste. 

In this webinar, you will hear how two users, Conceptual Product Development and UBR Services, are leveraging digital technology to both grow their business and deliver books. They will share with you how they are doing it and why it's just smart business.  

Click here to view this webinar today!

The survivors will have the best salespeople, not necessarily the best equipment. Oh, they will have good machinery, good software, good management and good (low) costs but, above all, they will have dynamite salespeople working within and propelled by a superb marketing program.

Joe Stoeckle, senior buyer at R.L. Polk & Co., will go out of his way to maintain good working relationships with his print providers. The products and services that he purchases are important to his employer's business—and the job he does at purchasing them is critical in his position as a buyer.

Many commercial printers sell promotional products to supplement their other product and service offerings. Relative to the balance of a printer's capabilities menu, promo products are uncomplicated.

As we skate into the fourth
 quarter of what has been a  very difficult year, it is none too soon to be thinking about strategies for 2010. With that in mind, I have put together a Top 10 "must do" list for 2010.