Business Management - Marketing/Sales

You have been good readers this year and I am going to give you some Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa gifts, depending, of course, on your holiday persuasion. This is another "first ever" column. Giving readers beautifully gift-wrapped presents in a written medium has never been done before. You will recall I was the first columnist to ever hypnotize his readers in a column that I wrote back in 2001. Yeah, I think it was 2001? Some of those readers never came out of their stupors. Still others are permanently locked in a trance and, I might add, are better off. The meddling Food and

Oh great! This is just what we needed. More competition! New competition! The news item was all over the trade press during PRINT 05. This time it's our federal government. They bought a new five-unit sheetfed press. They paid cash. A few million for a new press is nothing to our officials in Washington, DC. After all, Congress just passed a Hurricane Katrina relief bill that is paying some cruise lines $2,500 per person per week to house Katrina victims. I don't mind that so much, but the weekly rate is about three times the regular price when the ships are actually cruising. Then there was

By Vincent Mallardi Forget 1-to-1, B-to-B and the like. Nowadays the foregoing are bipolar sales disorders. Instead, try a new formula. It can take sales to the third power, and is called triangular selling. This is where a "third party," besides the ordinary buyer and seller, is brought into the transaction. The results cube your sales as you step out of the square—the new math of marketing exponentially. Who's new? Three third parties may be invited: a benefactor [B] or payer who's independent of the buyer, a content provider [C] with a gift of graphic information, a distribution channel [D] with a place to place the print,

I've been in sales and marketing most of my career and was delighted to be invited to contribute to Printing Impressions on the subject of marketing in the printing industry. This column will appear every other month, and in it I will be offering advice, guidance and suggestions about how you can use marketing strategies to grow your business and make your sales- force more effective. Peter Drucker, an expert in strategy and policy, once made the comment that the purpose of marketing is to eliminate the need for sales. While I'm certainly not as smart, experienced or well-known as the esteemed Mr. Drucker, I

Marketing Is What Differentiates Us Don't wager your future on that brand-new offset or digital press your company just installed. Or even on those value-added, non-print services you've decided to embrace. They may help grow your business in the long run, but are no immediate sure bet if not supported by ongoing marketing efforts that help entice existing clients and prospects to buy your various service offerings.

Read this entire column and you could score $1,000 or a great Mañana Man golf shirt. Come on now. It's only 1,381 words. Our industry gets a bad rap. I know. It depresses some of you who are embarrassed and lie. You tell your friends and family that you're in IRS audit and collections, or in the sludge reclamation business, or you are involved in swamp- land real estate sales. Your mama can handle your brother being sent to the big house for 15 to 20, but would go into cardiac arrest if she knew you work for a printer. Print buyers take us

Did Ya ever have a conversation, leave it and then wish like hell you'd said one more thing? That thing, that remark, was probably the best or funniest or the most important point. One more brilliant, scintillating point—and you forgot to say it! You slap your forehead and say, "Whoa doggies. Where was that comment when I needed it?" Or when she said, "You're the first, the last, my everything." All you could muster was, "Well, darlin', I love you more than my Harley!" You shoulda said you love her more than your '86 Ford F150, you big dummy. Or, if you really,

In late May of this year, just a month before my 63rd birthday, I realized that I had denied myself the luxury of a mid-life crisis. A lot of my friends and business associates had some sort of mid-life crisis. Their stories of a fast break from the routine boredom of their ho-hum lives sounded exciting and fun. My opportunities for some mid-life fun just passed me by. I was always too busy doing a deal, writing a column, making a speech or trying to keep up with my 30 ballplayers—cleaning the men's and women's port-a-potties and making sure we had enough game balls

I was soaking in my spa reading the March 16th edition of Time magazine. The jets were pulsing hot massaging surges and I was thinking, "It doesn't get any better than this." But, then again, I'm old and easily satisfied. I read a column by Patricia Marx about the famous and enormously publicized runaway bride. The column made me laugh out loud and when I finished reading, I said, "Wow! I wish I'd written that!" I'm an envious cuss and it always sparks my petty jealousy when someone does something that I do better than I do. (I know that last sentence was lousy,

by Vincent Mallardi, C.M.C. Energy price hikes are tanking economic energy. Real GDP, net of fuel and power, is zero, which means any growth in '05 will be in the second half. Printing sales are up at a nominal 6 percent pace, but with less value-added because of energy-related inflation in paper, electricity and freight costs. Most benefitting from the present 4.3 percent inflation rate at the consumer level is banking/insurance ($2.68T, +5 percent; with $14B to print). Commercial banking ($>9B to print, +21 percent) is cashing in on the tougher federal bankruptcy law and lesser restrictions for charge card issuance. Bank on