Helping Customers Improve Their Game and Other Advice from the Trenches
Remember the 1988 romantic comedy Bull Durham? Every season baseball groupie Annie Savoy adopts a single-A league player from the Durham Bulls as her project, to improve, using her own homegrown rules. Like Annie, every year I, too, take on a project (just the business part, NOT the romantic side!). It’s a passion project that […]
Your Customers Just Aren’t That Into You
You are good at what we do. You’ve done it for a long time. You’re experts in it. And you can talk about it all day long. But guess what? Your customers just don’t care. Sure, they want you to be successful, mostly because they need your services and they want you to stick around. […]
5 Ways to Show You Are Listening For Better Sales
Two of my favorite sayings regarding listening come from my work bestie Bill, who always says, “you have one mouth and 2 ears – do the math” and “you learn more with your mouth closed”. REALLY listening to someone is a true gift. Constantly striving to be a better listener is worth it. When you […]
Five Important Questions To Ask Print Customers About Their Customers
In the previous Five Questions That Identify Print Solutions article we discussed the Awareness to Revenue process and ended with a list of questions to ask that help deliver print solutions. Now we’re doing a deep dive on these questions to show how they help solve your client’s problems. These five questions build on each […]
Five Questions That Identify Print Solutions
Customers care about themselves and their biggest problems. Talking about the services you provide is just background noise. Uninteresting. Irrelevant. Talk about having the best quality and service and you’ll sound like all your competitors and you’ll erode trust. A solution solves a specific problem. Your services aren’t solutions. To be valuable to your customers […]
The Workflow Wizardry of Web2Print!
While explaining why so many of you are workflow magicians, last month we looked at preflighting and the magic it brings to a workflow. This time the topic is web-to-print. Web-2-Print is not the answer to every print providers dreams. Setting up a web-to-print storefront is not a guarantee that you will find new customers, […]
Shaking Up The Status Quo: Are Your Services Standing Out?
In the world of artificial sweeteners, I am team Pink. I have always been team Pink. I know Pink. I know what taste I can expect when I tear Pink open and pour it into my coffee. I know how much Pink I need to get the result I desire. I know that I can […]
Dear Best Client, Ever: An Open Letter to Inspire Your Greatness
In my illustrious 7- year career as a consultant/coach/headhunter/social media ambassador/advisor to the C Suite/Chief Bottle Washer and Overall Team Player, I have been fortunate to work with many awesome graphic arts companies from sea to shining sea. I have met with all different kinds of companies, all kinds of managers, CEOs, and sales people. […]
Ask These 3 Questions to Drastically Improve Future Print Sales
There are three questions to ask new customers that will DRASTICALLY improve your print sales. You must learn to ask “How, what and why” in your sales conversations. HOW: Let’s start with the first one, the door opener. If we’re feeling shy about this process, it’s certainly not prying to ask: “HOW did you find […]
Take Advantage of Holiday Giving Spirit for Meaningful Customer Feedback
One of the reasons I enjoy this time of year is that people tend to be nicer – even if they are faking it on the inside. As long as customer rushes have been addressed, and the holiday madness is winding down, there is a golden window of opportunity for you to get some meaningful […]
[VIDEO] Canon Solutions America Customer Panel
Case Study Café with Canon Hear directly from customers how Canon is helping printers realize new opportunities with their digital printing and software solutions and services. This panel is very informative and gives insight into the beneficial partnership that is possible between a manufacturer and their customers.
Caution: Dangerous B2B Marketing Fail Ahead
This is a story many of you will be uncomfortable with. It touches upon the BIG FEAR many companies have in the digital age regarding negative press, comments and reviews freely flowing through the blog and socialsphere. While some of these stories end up in the horror genre, this one about Mindfire has a very happy […]