Reps can avoid solving today’s problems with yesterday’s tools by educating themselves on new services.

By Bill Gillespie

I learned about fulfillment the hard way. I had sold a POP kit that was going into drug stores around the country. It was a sweepstakes and it involved an entry pad and poster. The winner in each local market would win a skateboard.

It was a new client and I was excited to have the sale. I wanted to collect my purchase order and get back to the plant before anyone could change their mind. Before I could leave, the buyer looked at me and asked, “Do you fulfill?” To me, this meant that the client was simply asking if I was able to ship his kits to the 2,500 drug stores participating in the sweepstakes.

“Of course,” I responded. “I do it every day.” I let him know that we were not only a “full service, high quality, commercial printer”… but a fulfillment company as well. I had just increased my sale by whatever the fee would be to drop ship. I was a regular printing sales genius.

About the time we were finishing the bindery work, my boss rushed into my office completely out of breath. “Bill … do you know anything about some skateboards? There’s a driver trying to unload some in receiving,” he said. Now I don’t know if you have ever seen 2,500 skateboards in one place … but you can’t exactly stack them in the corner. They took up more space in our warehouse than our total paper 
inventory at the time. To this client, fulfillment meant holding valuable inventory and shipping to the winner in each market. It meant storage, inventory liability and a whole lot of record keeping. I had increased my sale, but had plunged my company into something we knew nothing about. The long and short of it is we lost our shirts … and it was my fault. I didn’t know what I was doing.

New skill sets, new opportunities
Fast forward to the present. What does the skill set landscape look like for today’s printing rep? What do you need to know and how do you go about getting educated? What happens if you bluff knowledge about the new service horizon?

It’s safe to say that many of the services that are popular today didn’t exist 25 years ago. Today you need to understand variable data, digital printing, Web-to-print solutions and postal regulations. That isn’t all either. You also need to understand FSC certifications, remote proofing, online proofing, fulfillment services, data management, PURL’s and response rates.

To be relevant to today’s marketer, you need to understand each of these tools, how they work and the business problems they solve for your customers. Your clients need help to navigate the endless sea of options and arrive at the right combination of solutions so their initiatives are successful. You have to help them make money. You have to help their marketing dollar deliver a ROI that demonstrates you are valuable.

Successfully delivering a set of specifications, on time, only makes you a commodity. Your degree of service makes a difference, but as the playing field becomes more level, your days are numbered. Eventually, a competitor that expects to meet your standards but delivers more value is going to steal your customer. The competitive pressures on every mature business dictate that your clients will continue to trade up and increase demands.

Expertise required
A few weeks ago one of our clients said, “Bill … we are a Fortune 500 company. Why aren’t you sending me Fortune 500 representatives?” She went on to clarify her point by saying she expects a consultant (we love to call ourselves that don’t we?) that will educate her and train her staff on the latest and greatest tools available to help maximize their marketing dollars. She is expected to 
deliver results and has elected to surround herself with suppliers that help her make that happen. When she proposes a solution to her 
superiors, she intends to be confident that the best tools and expertise are being employed. She intends to do that even it means my company doesn’t get hired to help.

Imagine printing in 1978. If you could print a four-color job in register and hold color close to the OK-sheet you could have all the work you wanted. The invoice included hours of prepress charges and a boatload of film. The client paid for all of it and you made commission.

For the last 18 years, the clients have been doing the prepress work. You do file repair and charge a nominal fee for proofs and output. The revenue vanished and reprints are as portable as a DVD. You have been forced to embrace new services and have no choice but to become an expert in each of these areas. It is this expertise that can anchor your work and replace some of your lost revenue.

Becoming educated
The Industry Measure says that in 2006, 47 percent of printing establishments did some sort of digital printing including variable data. That’s cool. It demonstrates that almost half of our industry has adopted this solution. It’s not a fad. It is here to stay. You had better become an expert. Your clients are going to buy it. You want them to buy it from you.

Web-to-print tools are starting to catch hold too. After a slow start, this type of application is beginning to gain traction. As marketers evaluate how they sell and how they support their channel partners, services that provide flexibility and speed to market are going to become routine. This type of sales dialogue is destined to become as commonplace as color corrections were in the ‘80s.

You need to become educated. It isn’t difficult either. The vendors that sell these tools and services have deep, elaborate presentations, sales aids, white papers and case studies. If your company has embraced these technologies, your vendor partners and fellow employees can help you become an expert, quickly.

If your company hasn’t made the plunge, potential vendors will visit and happily conduct a sales meeting on your behalf. They will demonstrate the power of their tools and help you see how others are making money with the technology. They will shower you with examples and samples for you and your clients.

You can also ask to visit their facilities for training and onsite demos. Every digital press manufacturer has a scripted presentation designed to knock your socks off. The same goes for the Web-to-print solutions, remote proofing tools and PURL providers.

With a few phone calls, you can arrange to see enough to confidently stand in front of your client very well educated. You will be able to talk with them about variable data, direct mail, how to prepare a smart campaign, imbed PURL’s and watch the response data be collected and measured in real time. You can help them make good decisions.

At every crossroads there are people that choose not to go forward. For reasons of comfort they stick to what they know and elect not to advance or learn about the next tool or service. They yearn for what they remember. They want what made them comfortable to continue.

Unfortunately it doesn’t. Eventually, these people see their relevance and income start to diminish. They feel their clients are no longer loyal. They feel that all the good they have done is no longer appreciated.

That isn’t true at all. It’s just that they are no longer helping. The client still has needs. The competitive landscape has evolved. The resistant rep has not. He’s trying to solve today’s problems with yesterday’s tools. It won’t work.

Bill Gillespie has been in the printing business for 33 years, and has been in sales and marketing since 1978. He was formerly the head of operations for Color Graphics (an Atlanta commercial printer). In 2005, Bill assumed the role of executive VP Operations for Brown Industries, a global POP company. He can be reached at (800) 241-4698, or bill.gillespie@brownind.com.