If I were a sales manager for a printing company, I’d focus on effective prospecting techniques before I moved on to treating customers well. There’s absolutely no excuse for making a cold call without having done your homework.
Once upon a time, I worked at a studio where every file had to be checked by three people before it went out to the printer. Every file, every time. What do you do when you spot a client’s error?
I was on a conference call recently and someone asked the question, “Does anyone have any creative ideas for getting in to see someone who is consistently ignoring my voice mails?” The best idea that I’ve heard in a while came over lunch recently.
Last week, I was interviewing a candidate for an enterprise QC management position. His response to one of my questions struck me as profoundly disturbing: “Never in my career have I been called with good news.”
My book (“System Busters: How to Stop Them in Your Business”) has become required reading in specific departments for some colleges, and I was happy to receive some feedback from a particular professor recently. He asked his students to write a report on their thoughts about the book’s overall message and whether or not they believed it would help them in their future professions.
When trying to win over prospects, lead with “why” your company is in business, move on to “how” you serve customers and, finally, get to “what” you offer. Customers don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it.
I am a student at Clemson University and have had the opportunity to talk with some of the industry’s leaders in innovation that have embraced the strategy of becoming a marketing service provider. I offer the following three reasons for becoming a marketing service provider:
When it comes to print, I like the unexpected. Iggesund’s promotion for the Invercote sheet incorporates an ample dose of it. There are many reasons to love this piece—yummy textures, surprising pop-outs, images that appear to be 3D…all ideas you’ll want to steal.
I have spent much of my career hiring sales people. It used to be a pretty simple process. If I were a sales manager today, the process I used would be NOTHING like that old one.
Early in my sales career, I made the grave error of badmouthing a purchasing agent. I was speaking to my key contact at that company and delivered the punch line just as the head of finance was walking by. Gulp!
