What Keeps Printing Sales Reps up at Night?

For some sales reps, it’s the demands of meeting increasing customer expectations.  For others, it’s juggling a portfolio of products.  And for all sales reps, the ups and downs of the industry certainly provide both potential – and angst – to keep them up at night. CANVAS talked with print sales reps and sales management from coast to coast about the challenges they face in the real world of selling print on a day-to-day basis.  One of the first realizations in this process is that it’s tough to define the extensive list of multi-faceted products and services that sales reps are being asked to include in their portfolios these days.

Mark Sprague of Litho Craft in suburban Seattle, WA (www.lithocraft.com) has been in the sales end of the printing industry for three years and describes it in a very upbeat and positive tone as, “A roller-coaster ride – an up and down kind of thing.”  “I feel like I use contracts or letters of intent to make sure it’s an enjoyable trip,” says Sprague, “but it’s different things to different people.  It’s not ink on paper.  I work in marketing. It’s as much image as anything. It’s a desire to distinguish ourselves in our own industry. I spend a lot of time with projects in the design stage.  The design community almost sees me as a fellow designer.”  While Sprague seems to bask in the ups and downs of the challenges that come with the printing industry today, he notes, “We have a lot of new recruits on our team and their cold-calling experience is pretty eye-opening.”

Across the country in the suburban Boston area, sales and marketing manager Robert Brown with Kirkwood Printing (www.kirkwoodprinting.com), describes what he and his sales team do on a daily basis as “delighting very, very fussy customers who buy high-end commercial sheet-fed printing.  We’re servicing their needs and producing beautiful work at a fair price.”  Sales representative Michael Stone with Offset Impressions in Reading, PA (www.offsetimpress.com) describes what he sells in a more traditional manner as “commercial offset sheet-fed printing.”  Even the National Association of Print Leadership (NAPL) describes itself as “The Trade Association for Excellence in Graphic Communications Management.”  Is that what sales reps are selling?  Graphic communications management?

Sales reps seem to be selling everything from ink on paper to digital asset management to variable data digital printing, with a side-order of customized on-line fulfillment, not to mention graphic design and Web tools for responding to direct mail.  It’s quite a portfolio of products and an amazing cache of knowledge and experience is required to manage it all, if you’re going to beat out the printer next door who’s selling pretty much the same thing that you’re selling.

While Sprague clearly appears to enjoy his roller coaster ride most of the time, he expresses a concern that we heard repeatedly from printers throughout the country, “Customers have the expectation that everything can be turned in 24 hours.  We have a lot of nationwide clients.  The designers that we work with understand the process, but individuals at local levels don’t really understand.”

Managing customer expectations is something that Don Benner with O’Neil Printing in Phoenix (www.oneilprint.com) has crossed frequently in his diverse career in the printing industry, which has included running his own shop, “It’s a challenge to have clients understand what’s involved once the artwork is released. You have to educate the customer.  It’s a custom manufacturing process, especially for high-end, strategic projects.  I think technology has sped up the execution of projects and even though we have all this state-of-the-art-equipment, a lot of people still think you push one button and it’s done.”

According to Bill Gilmer, of Wordsprint, Inc. in Wytheville, VA (www.wordsprint.com), who describes himself as both president and sales manager, one of the biggest pain points in print sales today compared to five years ago is the frenzied amount of information exchanged. Says Gilmer, “The amount of information exchanged per unit billed is increasing exponentially.  Five thousand brochures five years ago would have cost $3,000 and would have been done in two weeks.  Instead of that one meeting and two phone calls and one FAX, it’s six meetings, 35 e-mails and multiple proofs to multiple parties — and it’s two to three days — not two weeks.  But we can’t bill $3,000 for the job, we can only bill about $1,300.”

Without a doubt, there was agreement with printers of all sizes that an anxious competitiveness is pervasive in the print industry. And there are very complex factors that figure into that competitiveness, no matter what kind of print product or ancillary service you might sell.

Rachel Rush is an account manager for Quartier Printing in East Syracuse, NY (www.quartierprinting.com) who finds the current state of the print industry “extremely competitive.”  Says Rush, “We’re trying to differentiate ourselves.  Everybody tries to sell the same things — quality, service — but you have to define what your quality and service is.  I don’t just sell the printing; I try to find ways to take the burden of buying the printing from my client.  I make them give me a forecast of what they are going to do for the year.  I make sure they have what they need to go with their manufactured items when they need them.”

Ron Flynn started Reflections Printing in suburban Atlanta, GA in 1992 (www.thomassonprint.com). In 2000, Reflections Printing, an affiliate of Thomasson Printing, became part of Nationwide Graphics.  Flynn finds that competitiveness in the industry has ramped up to a new level when compared to 20 years ago, “Profits are being squeezed because the competition is so tough. The biggest pain factor is just the amount of competition within an industry that is showing very little growth.  Very high-end catalogues are being produced in China.  Low-end printing is being produced digitally.  The market is being squeezed from everywhere, yet you have all of these printing plants competing.  But the biggest challenge we are going to have as an industry is competing with the gang-run shops as printing becomes more of a commodity and less of an individualized item. I have a lot of customers who are starting to go to 48-hour print or 48-hour post cards.  It’s a serious problem for our industry as a whole.  How do we compete with the printers that are running gang-run shops?  These companies are blitzing everybody in the country.  That will be a battle.  How do all of us show the value in what they give us to print to keep it from becoming a commodity?”

Much like Flynn, Brandon Gabriel, vice president, new business development for LAgraphico, Burbank, CA (www.lagraphico.com) finds that there is a certain kind of competition that has a negative affect on the industry, “Printing is becoming a commodity,” says Gabriel, “that’s always a challenge.”  He adds, “Technology is changing so rapidly that people are involved in printing that weren’t involved in printing years ago.  Our 28 years of experience doesn’t go as far as it used to. We constantly have to re-invent ourselves by offering our clients new and unique solutions.”

“Technology in itself is a pain point,” says Tim Kultgen, print consultant with Litho Tech in Bloomington, MN (www.lithotechusa.com).  Kultgen, who has an in-depth background in the print industry, including a bachelor’s degree in industrial technology in graphic arts management from the University of Wisconsin – Stout, has a knowledgeable perspective on the situation, “Everything is going on line. Our company has been around for nearly 50 years.  Manuals and documentation are our specialty.  With computers and technology you can go on line and download a technical manual.  There really isn’t a demand to print it anymore when companies can put it out there electronically.”  Kultgen adds, “What it amounts to is refocusing your niche.  This industry is ever-evolving.  In the last five to10 years, it’s really changed.”

In some parts of the U.S. market, most noticeably in the Midwest, overcapacity poses an ongoing challenge.  According to Ken Dause, account executive with Think Arbor, Royal Oak, MI (www.thinkarbor.com), “Locally, there is still somewhat of an over-capacity issue in this industry, although the number of printing companies continues to decline. The print market as a whole is declining.  It puts pressure on pricing and makes it hard to make a living even with customers that you have a relationship with.”

Peter Douglas, senior vice president and director of marketing at Lake County Press in Waukegan, IL (www.lakecountypress.com), has a similar observation, “With over capacity, some printers become annoying.  It’s bottom feeding.  They can only sell at that level for a certain period of time before they go out of business or become acquired.  We don’t do ‘B-level’ types of printing.  Our jobs are very involved.  About 60 percent of our work is derived from design and advertising agencies, so they are pretty technically advanced with UV inks, stochastic imaging and special coatings.  Our big value proposition is service, not the lowest price.”

But capacity issues aren’t limited to the Midwest.  Says Randy Parkes, vice president of marketing for Lithographix, Inc. in suburban Los Angeles (www.lithographix.com<), “The challenge is to eliminate the highs and lows in the year.  You staff up for a certain amount of production and it’s difficult when your workload doesn’t match your production level.  You don’t want to have people standing around.  We’ve had some competition with Brazilian printing, but we don’t really lose work to Japan, China or Europe because if anything has time sensitivity, customers can’t go there.”

Even with concerns about time sensitivity, Jeremy Hayes of Active Graphics in Chicago (www.activegraphics.net) has had to face the Asian print dragon, “There used to be more books that you would get — that once-a-year book – a big job that was a half million.  Now it’s gone.  It’s overseas in China.  Design firms here are hiring design firms overseas to follow through with production.  It’s stunting growth more with U.S. printers than people realize.  It may not be a huge detriment right now, but it’s an issue, and it will only get worse.”

While many print sales reps are facing challenges with customers going overseas for print, some don’t see it as the demon it is often made out to be. While it poses a certain type of competition, many customers are finding logistical problems to be too complicated for everyday print needs. Sue Charlier with Independent Printing, Inc. in DePere, WI (www.independentinc.com) says, “We’ve seen some print go overseas and I personally have seen that come full circle.  When a company tries that and they hit a backorder situation for the first time and have to expedite shipping, it doesn’t take long for a company to come back and place things domestically.  Today, everyone wants things just in time.”

Terry Preston of Hutchison Allgood Printing in Winston-Salem, NC (www.haprinting.com) has similar observances, “The printing being done in Asia is coming back to the U.S.  But we’re in a global economy and getting pressures from those areas, whether we admit it or not.  One client compares us to Asia every day and we can’t compete with their prices.”  Joe Fanelli of Steve Woods Printing Company in Phoenix, AZ (www.stevewoodsprinting.com) believes that the threat is real, but notes the challenges customers face printing in Asia, “You leave yourself vulnerable to hurricanes and other weather and international disputes — but we need to be very aware that the threat is not going away.”

Fanelli, who has been on both the administrative and sales side of the printing industry recognizes external pressures in the market place, but says, “The biggest challenge in the industry is that we haven’t won our business as businesses and great craftsman.  We create great art and pieces that can transport you to another place or time.  We do all that, but we forget that we are a business that does business for other people.  We can say that you can get all of that on the Internet, but people, particularly in certain industries, still want something in their hands.  We are in the business of translating a concept into a tangible product.  We are putting ideas into paper – it’s not just printing.  We are doing what we’re doing to further the business goals, whether marketing or financial, of our clients.  We are here to maximize their marketing goals.  It’s not about being tech savvy, or being up on the latest things: we impress ourselves easily, but such knowledge is a requirement for us internally.  Bottom line — it’s about what my business can do to make the customer’s business better.”

While global implications are part of doing business in virtually every industry today, we found that most of the challenges that concern print reps these days are a little closer to home.  Susan Burns with Graphic Communications Corporation in Lawrenceville, GA (www.gccprint.com) has been in the printing industry since 1992 and has concerns about the level of quality customers seem to be willing to give up, “People are willing to settle for digital printing quality when they should not. They think ‘oh, digital printing — it’s fast and cheap.’ Then they wonder why it doesn’t look the same as sheet-fed.  There’s a mindset of ‘see how good I can look to my supervisor if I can prove to them that I can save $500’.”  Burns, who sells both traditional offset and digital printing, finds great value in digital printing, when used for the right print jobs.  She finds, however, that some customers are so focused on price that they try to use it for annual reports and other high-end pieces that are better-suited to offset printing.

Much like Burns, Jackie Priest with Geographics in Atlanta, GA (www.geographicsinc.com) is put off by customers who are willing to sacrifice everything for price.  “The pain point for me,” says Priest, “comes in situations where the relationship is getting taken out of the equation. There are on-line auctions, corporate buyers and purchasing agents that claim they’re not buying solely on price, but we have limited opportunity to contribute as sales reps in those situations.”

What strategies are hardworking sales reps employing to master these challenges?  Brandon Gabriel has found a particular point of differentiation in environmental consciousness, “Being in Southern California, customers are conscientious about the environment.  It’s a big point of interest for a lot of our corporate clients. The owners of LAgraphico made a decision about six or seven years ago to adopt eco-friendly practices.  We offer recycled papers and we just got our FSC certification.  We try to get to the root cause of why customers are using recycled papers — then we try to direct them to the right choice. They’re asking about FSC papers and they’re listening to us.”

According to Jeremy Hayes (Active Graphics), “We have the ability to interpret clients’ needs and wants and turn it into something and make it realistic within their budgets.  We listen, analyze, figure out how to create and make the design come to light while improving their business and watching the bottom line.”

“We do a lot of marketing that is very different from every other printing company I’ve ever worked for,” says Robert Brown (Kirkwood Printing).  Kirkwood Printing was founded in 1973 and purchased by a group of independent owners in 2004.  By the end of 2004, under the new owners, Kirkwood was recognized as the fastest-growing sales organization in the Boston Business Journal’s list of top twenty printers.  Says Brown, “We mail on a monthly basis to a growing list of clients and prospects.  We use a different designer to create the marketing tool every month.  At that point, the relationship changes from a vendor relationship to a colleague relationship with the designer.  Most companies print one capabilities piece and mail them out and wonder why people are not calling them.”

What we found, overall, in our conversations with sales reps was that while everyone had concerns about competition, both foreign and domestic, as well as turn times and rock-bottom pricing, success is not possible without product quality.  A great sales rep cannot sell a substandard product on a long-term basis and maintain success.  But we also found that quality must be partnered with a keen understanding of the customer’s objective for each item. And, finally, it seems that sales reps who understand their customers and sell quality products sleep much better at night if they have differentiated themselves and their products from the great teaming masses. That differentiation might be based on the exceptional service the sales rep provides or the willingness and flexibility to develop a unique solution for each customer.  When these magic intangibles are meshed properly, competing on price becomes less and less of a consideration, as does printing in Asia or Italy or Brazil.  However, being different from everyone else isn’t necessarily enough.  Says Joe Fanelli (Steve Woods Printing), “I haven’t got a clue what a selling skill is.  But I think if you listen to a customer and get their objective and you have a solution for it, the only selling skill you need is to be passionate about what you have and get it into a terminology your customer understands.  We produce beautiful things – craftwork — but if the customer is a hotel, it’s about capacity, not about a really neat-looking key packet.”