Creating New Sales Strategies

Sales constitute the foundation of a printing company's success, the source of revenue that drives profitability. But despite its huge importance, many printing company managers apparently take the sales function for granted.

While firms focus much attention on continuously improving operations efficiency, product quality, and manufacturing methodologies, executives give little thought to reviewing sales strategies or enhancing approaches to selling.

In an industry where many market segments report brutal price competition, razor-thin profit margins, and sales declines, a new focus on selling strategies may be what keeps a company's presses running.

There may be no magic formula for sales success, but numerous industry-specific sales consulting firms, seminars, and educational materials are available.

To provide a starting point for printing company managers who want to either tweak or completely revamp their approach to sales, here's a list of useful tips and advice for improving the sales effort. The list was derived from interviews with a sampling of printing industry sales consultants.

1. Target profitable sales. Accept that the time-honored "sales at any cost" mentality, by which sales people are inclined to sell anything to fill up press capacity, does not lead to profitability.

"Print sales people should call on companies that need the products they produce well. Instead, most sales people call on everyone and sell anything to fill up the press," explains Sean McArdle, founder and chief executive of LifeAnswers, Inc., a training firm located in Vienna, Va.

McArdle, author of The Winning Sales Call, Customer Creation, and the Art & Science of Printing Sales (some of which are available through the National Association for Printing Leadership [NAPL], Paramus, N.J.), advises printers to target their sales efforts at the largest buyers in the marketplace of products that they produce well.

Why the largest? McArdle estimates that it costs about $8,500 to obtain a new customer. He says it takes seven to 10 sales calls to close a new prospect, expended at the rate of about $850 per call (an estimate contained in a study completed by the Printing Industries of America, Alexandria, Va.).

Given the cost to develop a new customer, McArdle asks, "Do you want a new customer who can spend $300,000 a year, or one who's going to spend just $30,000? You want to start with the $300,000 prospect and work your way down."

Observes sales and marketing consultant Peter Ebner, "A salesperson's income is affected more by the size of their accounts than by the number of accounts. When you consider that it really takes no more effort or skill to call on a volume account than to contact a marginal account, your prospecting time will be better spent pursuing high-volume accounts. As a rule of thumb, only call on accounts that spend at least $25,000 a year on printing."

Ebner is the principal of Peter Ebner Seminars, Ontario, a sales training firm. He is the author of How to Grow Rich "Selling" Printing, Earn $100,000 a Year Selling Printing, How to Turn Any Objection into a Sale, How to Write Quotes that Your Prospects Can't Refuse, Power Presentations, and Supercharge Your Print Sales, many of which are available through NAPL.

2. Focus sales efforts at the company level. Many print sales people focus on building a relationship with the buyer when they should be forging the bond with the company, says Dennis Castiglione, president of Procom Management Group, Cleveland, Ohio, a graphic arts management consulting firm. He says that focusing on the buyer places a printing company in a vulnerable position because if that individual leaves the account, so may the business.

"If you have a strong bond with the company, then when a new buyer—with his or her own favorite vendors—steps in, you will not be replaced. It is hard to dethrone suppliers that are entrenched with their clients," says Castiglione.

He adds, "As the trend to reduce suppliers continues, printers will have to demonstrate the unique value they offer a company above and beyond the familiar refrain of quality, service, and price."

3. Enhance prospecting skills. The number-one reason for poor sales performance, according to Ebner, is that sales people are not attracting new business. He says that the main obstacle stopping sales people from converting prospects into customers is that they don't know how to overcome objections.

The most common objections presented by print buyers, Ebner says, are these:

"I'm happy with my current printer."

"I'm not interested."

"I bought the same job elsewhere for less."

"Let me think about it."

"Too busy right now."

"I need three quotes before I decide."

Sales people who don't know how to answer these objections, Ebner says, will continue to lose jobs to the same objections, and eventually will stop prospecting.

He believes that many sales objections stem from what has become the industry's standard sales pitch of high quality, competitive prices, and outstanding service. "But if every printer is offering prospects the same things, there's no reason to change vendors," says Ebner. "Instead, focus on the unique benefits your company will offer a prospect."

One way to demonstrate benefits to prospects, advises Ebner, is to change the job specifications during the bidding process. Of course, before attempting to change any of the job specs, sales people must ask prospects the rationale behind production variables, such as paper, format size, quantity, and so on.

"If you quote on your prospects' specs, you're simply selling a price-sensitive commodity and will continually lose prospects to their current supplier because they'll use your quote to get a lower price from their current printer," says Ebner.

"Today, about 99% of print sales people are quoting the specs and are not solving a business problem; instead, they might change the job specs to reduce or better utilize trim waste," says Ebner. "They've got to stop selling printing and start solving problems because that's when they start showing the prospect that they know more about the job than he or she does. All of a sudden, they become valuable. They give the prospect a reason to buy from them."

Sales and marketing consultant Pamela Conover echoes Ebner on the need for salespersons to position themselves as solutions providers, not mere sales reps.

"In a sense, print sales people need to act like doctors: find out what the problems are, and offer a course of treatment. Sales people who just go out and take specs are a dime a dozen," says Conover, principal of Conover & Associates LLC, a North Caldwell, N.J-based graphic arts consulting firm that specializes in sales and marketing.

She believes that the best sales people truly believe that their job is to help clients, not just sell a job.

Ebner, offering a final piece of prospecting advice, says to start the process at the top of the corporate ladder. "A 'no' from a low-level employee," he contends, "may block you from contacting the real decisionmaker. Many have the authority to say 'no' but few can say 'yes'. Improve your chances of finding the decisionmaker by starting at the top."

4. Improve preparation and presentation skills. An area where print sales people can improve the most, many consultants agree, is in preparing what to say to prospects.

"Sales people get so ecstatic about talking to a new prospect that they expend their pitch on the first visit and have nothing left to say on subsequent calls," observes Castiglione. "They forget that the best relationships are built over a period of time, not on a single call. Still, they must be properly prepared for that first call."

To do so, Castiglione advises, sales people must have a solid understanding of the prospect's products, business practices, industry, and clients.

Adds consultant Leslie Ades, "If you understand your customer, how they go to market, the core market factors that drive their business, and those factors that drive the business of their customers, then you have a clear perspective as to how you can assist them in building their business. If you do that, you have a partnership, and price doesn't mean anything. It is the relationship that is important."

Ades is the executive director of Ades Marketing Consortium, Los Angeles and Chicago, and is the author of Managing Mavericks: The Official Printing Industry Guide to Effective Sales Management , available through the Graphic Arts Technical Foundation, Sewickley, Pa.

McArdle too emphasizes preparation, saying, "You need to prepare to convert a prospect to a client. If it takes seven to 10 calls to win over a prospect, and you run out of things to say by the third or fourth call, you lose."

McArdle advises that print sales people prepare in advance for 10 different sales calls. One of those calls should be a tour of the printing plant, he adds, because experience shows that, although there's an 80% chance that somebody who visits your plant will buy from you, most sales people never invite prospects to see their plant.

Ebner contends that the number-one reason for lost sales in the printing industry is lack of presentation. He says, "A typical first call goes like this: meet the client, take down the specs, learn a little about the company, and show some samples. But if you don't make a strong presentation that gives the buyer 10 or more reasons to buy from you and not the competition, you won't get the job."

Another presentation weakness is poor listening skills. McArdle says that many a print salesperson wrongly believes that what he or she has to say is more important than what they can learn. "In other words, they spend more time telling and selling than they do listening and learning," he explains.

McArdle continues, "Virtually every customer in the world will tell you how to sell them and how to keep them happy, but most sales people never hear it because they don't listen for it or ask the right questions to find out."

5. Beware the price objection fallacy. "In almost every case when a buyer says your price is too high and you offer to do the job for less, they don't take you up on your offer," says McArdle. "Price is something that you believe is important, and a customer will use it on you."

He says that when sales people lack belief in the value of their products, they believe it when a customer says the price is too high. "The salesperson should ask, 'At what price would you give that job to me?' That unleashes a dialog in which the customer tells you the truth, instead of using price as an excuse to get rid of you," says McArdle.

6. Build relationships, not rifts. "Many sales people, consciously or unconsciously, believe that they are in an adversarial position with a prospect or customer. They think the customer is always trying to get a lower price or a better schedule, always trying to get, get, get," explains McArdle.

He says that this "get-something-over" mentality is a crippling belief system that does not translate into sales.

"Every salesperson should walk into a client and/or prospect's office believing that they can be the best solution and best thing that has happened to that buyer all day," says McArdle.

This mental perspective can also help to keep customers. Says Conover, "Remember that everything is based on relationships. People buy from you because they know you, trust you, like you, and believe you will stand behind your product."

7. Boost the business from existing accounts. In Leslie Ades's view, printers should focus their efforts on increasing their "share of wallet" of existing accounts. While many companies focus on their A and B accounts and ignore their C accounts, he says, there may be potential to cultivate a C account into A or B level.

"Instead of chasing the work your competitor is getting, focus on developing the business you already have," adds Ades.

8. Change compensation structures. Historically, most printing firms compensated sales people on a commission-only basis, a practice that continues today. This compensation method encourages the "sales at any cost" mentality mentioned earlier and actually tends to undermine the stability of a firm's sales force.

"There's definitely a movement today to compensate sales people using a combination of salary and bonuses," observes Conover.

9. Do what it takes. McArdle believes that 90% of sales has nothing to do with the customer and everything to do with the salesperson. Thus, he says, print sales staff members need to learn and practice the best principles of sales until they become habits.

"You have to be willing to do what it takes not merely to gain the sale but to earn the right to people's business. Many sales people think they can just walk in and ordain a sale," says McArdle.

He concludes, "When it comes to printing sales, we should all be more like children. After all, what does 'no' mean to a child. The answer: absolutely nothing."