In my former life, I was first a print buyer and then later became a sales rep for a printing company. I remember one seminar that my sales manager sent me to that taught that print sales is really a numbers game. If you cold call “X” number of companies per day, you’ll get “X” number of jobs to quote on and that will turn into “X” number of sales per month. The theory was that the most important thing that you could do as a sales rep was to cold call as many buying companies as possible. The higher the number, the more
If there’s one topic that riles print buyers, it’s asking them if it’s okay for printing sales reps to “drop by” to see them without an appointment. We asked that question in last week’s Print Buyers Online.com’s Print Buyer Quick Poll. Out of the 133 print buyer respondents, 71% said “No, it’s almost never okay – even with print suppliers that I often use. This really irritates me.”
Check out the full results of the survey, plus buyer commentary here: http://www.printbuyersonline.com/content.asp?id=3533 . Also, check out what printers said about this same topic in our Print Supplier Quick Poll: http://www.printbuyersonline.com/content.asp?id=3534
While most sales reps respectfully refrain
Last November, I was invited to China by PrintBestBuy, a print management company that represents large Chinese printing companies. I toured about eight printing companies and met with many more printers during conferences held in three cities. I learned a lot. China is on the super-fast track in capitalism. The printing plants I toured were extremely impressive in plant size, tremendous amounts of affordable labor, cutting-edge technology and excellent print quality. Most of these companies have specialized in err, well, specialty printing – hand work, holograms, complex foil stamping, etc. They’ve got it goin’ on in many ways.
Perhaps the fact that I’m even mentioning
On the last day of this month, I will be 65. And, dammit, I’m still not grown up. I still don’t know what I wannabe when I grow up.
This is sad. I ask myself: “How am I defined?”
Ever wonder how you are defined? It’s scary to think about.
When I finish this column, I will have written 251 “DeWese on Sales” columns for PRINTING IMPRESSIONS magazine. Does that define me as a columnist?
I owned the Marple Crawdads semi-pro baseball team, coached more than 1,000 baseball games and won nearly 80 percent of the games. That’s better than the win percentages of Connie Mack
The one question that I keep hearing from printers is whether or not someone with the title of “print buyer” is really the person the printing company should be targeting. Some printers ask, “Shouldn’t I just go over the buyer’s head and talk to the real decision maker—someone in marketing?” I feel that many people in the printing industry want one, “correct” answer to the question of, “Is it the print buyer or the marketing manager?”
The answer is that it depends! By comparison, purchasing agents have long gotten a bad rap as only being interested in price. Now, the same darts are being thrown
THIS IS my 250th column for PRINTING IMPRESSIONS and, as I predicted way back in my first year—1984—the world population would reach 6.6 billion people. How is it I am accurately prescient? Remarkable!
I also predicted the U.S. population would reach 300 million. Yep. I was right about this also. Gee, I’m good.
Furthermore, in these very pages in 1984, I predicted the number of Websites and blogs would total about 6.7 billion—and, I’m pretty sure that I am right about that number. The remarkable thing about that last prediction is that 1984 was six years before the World Wide Web was invented by
DOES ANYBODY really, really, ever, ever listen when a recorded message tells you, “This call may be monitored for quality?”
I don’t think so. I don’t believe there are any monitors. Monitors are a fictitious form of marketing communication. The company is just telling us, “We care about quality, and so we are monitoring this call!”
Or, maybe I’ve got it wrong. Maybe they are monitoring my quality. Like maybe they are checking on the quality of my baritone, my diction or my rationale for the call.
Why else would they give me a warning that the call was being monitored?
I’ve been through some tortuous
I’M ONLY gonna say this once! Listen carefully! I deny all of the rumors! I know it seemed possible, even likely. I know you will be disappointed. You’ve come to expect so much of me. The whole thing had such a romantic cachet. Here goes. Grab your armrests and hold on tight.
“DON’T MOVE, or both of us will die,” shouted Wesley Autrey as he pinned a fallen commuter between the subway tracks before an onrushing subway train in Manhattan.
Wesley had been waiting for his train on the station platform with his two young daughters when a young man suffered a seizure and fell about eight feet to the tracks below. Wesley jumped down to the track bed, rolled the man between the tracks and lay on top of him as the train passed over them with two inches to spare.
Wesley is just a 50-year-old construction worker.
He is just a good father who
I GUESS you all saw that Mister Hot Shot George Clooney won People magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive!” competition.
This is twice for Clooney.
Brad Pitt won twice.
Last year I called People magazine to inquire about my ranking in the competition. I wasn’t even in their database.
This year I called People again and inquired about my standing in the ranking. A kind and very patient researcher performed an in-depth search while I held on the phone. No luck.
I suggested that just maybe she would find me in the “M’s” as the “Mañana Man.” Yep. She found me. The People researcher said I was in the Hispanic Sexy
