Business Management - Marketing/Sales

This is column number 154. One five four! They don't call me old Rhetoric Breath for nothin'. It also marks my 14th anniversary writing for Printing Impressions. By the time you read this column, a whole bunch of people, including yours truly, will be in Chicago at GRAPH EXPO. I'm being inducted into the Soderstrom Society during GRAPH EXPO, and, if I'm not mistaken, you will have to start calling me "Sir Mañana Man" or maybe it's "Lord Mañana Man." The Soderstrom Society is kind of like being knighted or something, I think. There's lots of news as I write this. By the time you

Shut your eyes tight and imagine that you're in the grand ballroom at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. You and everyone in the audience are elegantly garbed in formal attire. You have come to attend the fifth annual Mañana Man's Receptionist Hall of Fame ceremony. Tonight, four new nominees will be inducted into this prestigious society of printing company employees. If you're a regular reader, you will remember that I created this recognition five years ago to honor the folks who greet your customers by phone and in person. They are the people who frequently create the first impressions that lead to new accounts. They

The capabilities brochure is a familiar standby of marketing. Intended to provide sales support, the brochure accomplishes its mission by positioning the company effectively and by describing its capabilities clearly. Sounds simple. So simple that a capabilities piece is often the first marketing communications tool developed by printing companies—often at considerable cost with modest attention paid to its use and less to its value. The brochure is the great unexamined marketing expenditure in many a printing company. The time and dollars that go into the brochure's development and use are seldom examined closely. Its purpose—presenting the company in a favorable light, making its capabilities better

I am pathetic. I am impaired in so many ways. I'm house-painting challenged. I'm wallpaper-and-picture-hanging disadvantaged. I'm chess and bridge incompetent. My mother-in-law tried to teach me bridge and laughed herself silly for the first 15 minutes. Then she got ugly mad at my ineptitude and made me pick up all the cards she'd thrown around the room. Charles, a friend of mine, is a tournament-level backgammon player. I'm clueless when he talks about the game. Charles is also a single-digit handicap golfer and plays a great hand of bridge. (Guys named "Charles" are always smart and multi-talented.) I'm also a fishing idiot. My brother-in-law,

About 10 years ago, when my waist was 10 inches smaller and all my parts were alive and well, I wrote a column about the contributions that the so-called "little people" make to the success of their printing company employers. In 1988, my wit was still quick and I opened the column by rewriting the lyrics of the great old standard, "Little Things Mean a Lot." My version began like this: "Blow me a kiss from across the room. Say I look nice when I'm not. Give me smile if I've waited a while. Little things mean a lot…" My revisions butchered the great lyrics of the composers, Edith Lindeman

A few months ago, owing to the silly deadline imposed by Attila the Editor-in-Chief and his sidekick BakSlash the Editor, I had to write this column on Super Bowl Sunday. This chore, of course, meant that I was working whilst the rest of America was having fun. Another unofficial holiday has rolled around, and again I have to work while it happens. This is Academy Awards Monday, and most folks are attending Oscar parties and eating hors d'oeuvres. It's just as well that I wasn't invited to any of these gatherings because I haven't seen a single nominated movie. My ignorance would have made me

Here's an idea for a marketing activity so obvious, it's easy to overlook. So basic, it works for all kinds of graphic arts operations. Most companies define their programs as the sum of their marketing activities. Asked about programs, more than a few marketing and sales executives respond with a list: a company brochure, several mailed pieces, a Web site, a newsletter, lead generation activities and an annual open house—programs found at many companies. Do these add up to a marketing program? Maybe so, maybe not. It's not the items on the list that determine whether the activities constitute a program. The activities are tactics. What

One of my partners here at Compass Capital Partners, Steve Marcus, says that I can't say no. He says that I have a "mother-hen complex" and, because of this malady, I am compelled to solve the problems of others. I guess you could say that I'm "can't-say-no impaired." Years ago, when I was a big-shot executive, one of my secretaries, the lovely Miss Pam Stewart, made a needlepoint decoration and framed it for my office. It read, "No, Nein, Negatory, Non, Hell No!" She had observed the same weakness that Steve Marcus has discovered in me. I keep Pam's needlepoint near my office phone

To feed or divert a discontented populace, the ancient Romans offered bread and circuses. And, to a certain extent, they met with success. Their idea lingers in today's world of graphic arts sales compensation; some printers pay straight salaries to their sales forces, while other printers add various incentives and bonuses. Despite what many consider to be the intrinsic nature of motivation, incentive plans can help boost individual performance in certain situations. In this second of two installments (see March issue, page 56), Printing Impressions reviews incentive plans and other issues relative to commercial printing sales compensation. Various industry players share their thoughts and

A familiar declaration, usually delivered in emphatic tones: Advertising doesn't work for commercial printing companies! Heard that before? I have. Often. It's a truism—a seemingly self-evident statement likely to be called into question only by rookie marketers. No one likes to be a novice, wet behind the ears, unaware of what works and what doesn't, not really knowing how to do the things that matter. And so, in many printing companies, advertising is an unexamined option, seldom considered by marketing and sales executives. The belief that advertising holds no benefit for commercial printers is so strong that a surprising number of specialty printers, with highly focused