Business Management - Marketing/Sales

In my March 1999 column, I included a print salesperson survey and promised to send a magic "sales power" paperweight to everyone who completed and mailed in the survey. I hope I never weaken and make this kind of offer again. The mailman has been bringing in bags of surveys, and I am bone-tired from wrapping these little boxes. Furthermore, in a post-column wave of euphoric largess, I decided to send every survey respondent a Sean McArdle audio tape and my book, "Now Get Out There and Sell Something!" So, this whole stupid survey idea has cost me a bunch of money, and I had to tabulate

This column is way out on the edge. It falls in the category of "experimental prose." It has not been approved for general use by any government agencies. As a matter of fact, if you are . . . 1. pregnant; 2. suffering from high blood pressure; 3. wearing mittens to prevent thumb sucking; 4. wearing mittens to prevent scratching your eyes out; or 5. wearing a straight jacket . . . then, you probably should excuse yourself from this column now. Come to think of it, if you are reading this from a hospital bed, ring the nurse button now and have this magazine incinerated with the medical

We are all at risk of staying too long. Whether as a guest or in a business meeting or even, I suppose, as a columnist. Knowing when it's time to leave may be no less important for columnists than it is for boxers and ballplayers. For me, that time has come. I haven't lost a step, and I'm still at the top of my game. But nothing erodes desire and competence faster than the loss of motivation. I have sold my business. Confident that my former clients are now in the strong and very capable hands of Charlotte Seligman, my colleague of many years, I am

The printing industry never gets any publicity in the national media. Television, magazines and newspapers ignore us. It's as if commercial printing didn't exist. The graphic arts industry gets no attention or respect. If I'm not mistaken, we are something like the third largest employer and the seventh or eighth largest industry in terms of the dollar value of our production. I think I'm about right. You can look it up. The technology sector gets tremendous coverage on television and in newspapers. Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Sun MicroSystems and all those Internet companies get lots of press. Cocktail party conversations abound with tales of fortunes

I don't know about you, but the Gallup people have never, never, never called me for my thoughts on any national issue. I have never been polled by anybody. Not "CNN," Time, Newsweek, USA Today—nary any national media pollster or political party pollster has called me. Hey, I'm in the phone book. I've even got an e-mail address. I file and pay my taxes every year. I'm a registered Republican voter. I've got credit cards, and all the catalogers have my name and address. I'm not hidin'! The pollsters can damnsure find me! No one has asked me to rate the president's performance or that of

I used to provide advice about how to develop marketing programs in the fall, when most printers were developing their plans for programs to be launched in January. Today, there is no longer a single time of the year when marketing and sales executives write their plans. New programs are likely to be launched in almost any month. In companies with fiscal years that vary from the calendar, annual budgets may kick in on July 1 or September 1. Newly acquired companies and additional capabilities also frequently lead to the development of new marketing programs in the middle of the fiscal year. So February is

Attila the editor sent me an e-mail that ordered me to his office at 8 a.m. the following morning. "Ordered" me, the Mañana Man, in his office at 8 a.m.! I was indignant! I considered deleting his electronic mandate, but I decided he must have some big assignment for me. I knew if he actually wanted to see me, it had to be important.

Never known for brevity, I am thrilled to be able to reduce to one word my marketing advice for the new year now upon us: SEGMENT. Life is observably complex. A walk in the woods, a stroll in the mall, a visit with a client in a downtown high-rise—they all reveal diversity and the complex relationships that affect our lives. So I intuitively mistrust reductionist approaches to difficult matters. They tend to oversimplify. Still, I say to all you printing sales and marketing managers, segment your customer and prospect lists. It's true: My teeth are set on edge when I see brief guides to

Harris DeWese has been under the weather with the Cajun Flu for a few days so, I, The Mañana Man, am writing this column in his stead. As you know, I am the genius "other" personality trapped in DeWese's body, such as it is. This will give me a chance to get some things off my chest that DeWese never lets me say.

I was eating a Boar's Head smoked turkey sandwich and, although I'm an investment banker and supposed to read The Wall Street Journal at lunch, I was, in fact and as is my habit, reading the label on my jar of Kraft mayonnaise. The same can be said for the Cheerios box at breakfast and Rita's tabasco sauce label at supper. I have been reading the label since I developed a fierce loyalty to Kraft at age six. That was more than 50 years ago. There should be a law that every deli and sandwich shop have Kraft mayonnaise available as an option to