There is a local shopping area of retail stores, restaurants, and businesses a mile from my apt. It’s where I do my...
How Printers Can Save Local Businesses from Themselves
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QUIZ: Are you Investing or Dabbling in the Printing Industry?
The printing industry is not just about printers, presses, and paper. It's a multifaceted world, filled with...
Why You Must Hang Out With Smart People In the Print Industry and Life
No matter where you are in your print career and life, you must cultivate a large circle of smart people as colleagues...
How to Get the Most Out of Your Chief Marketing Officer
Printing company owners think I’m kidding when I say that a Chief Marketing Officer can do even more than they’re...
How To Boost Your Print Shop’s Open House with Digital Marketing
Hosting an open house event at your print shop is a great way to showcase your capabilities to your prospects and...
How to Run a DIY Print Sales Improvement Program
If your print sales team wants to systematically improve -- rather than leave things to chance -- try running a DIY...
Why Print Businesses Shouldn’t Dodge Disastrous Reviews
On the most recent episode of PrinterChat, a Podcasts from The Printerverse series co-hosted by me, Jamie McLennan,...
Are You Choosing the Right Chief Officer for Your Printing Company?
As a printing company advisor, I help clients hire Chief Officer positions for sales, operations, and business...
Reality Check: The Perception of Printing
I record and produce a significant number of episodes for Podcasts from The Printerverse. Discussions about printing,...
How Printers Can Build a Strategic Lighthouse to Guide the Business
Where is your print business headed? Not sure? Too many owners rush to the tactical side without a strategic beacon to...
How to Respond to Questions About Sexism in the Printing Industry
With just a few minutes before the first, women-only panel discussion on the main stage of Dscoop ended, the audience...
When Print Sales Are Down, Who’s Really at Fault?
When printing businesses see their sales drop, there are gaping organizational issues that can be the root cause. The...
The Perfect Partnership: Collaboration Between Printers and Designers
In the world of printing and design, collaboration is key. From business cards to banners, brochures to billboards,...
Authenticity Matters in Brand, Print Business and Personal Messaging
Authenticity for brand, personal, and print business messaging has become more important than ever. Whether it's in...
Five Signs You are a Print Junkie – 2023 Edition
Do you see print everywhere? Do you count down the days until the new printing press or finishing equipment arrives at...
How to Break Through the Creativity Block
You can have all the right people in the room and still have a creative block when you do marketing for a printing...
5 Tips to Combat Post-Holiday Work Blues for Organizational Productivity
The new year is meant to be a time of renewed purpose and energy but, in reality, it can be overwhelming catching up...
2022: A Year in Flux for Marketers
What a year in flux and uncertainty 2022 has been. COVID has receded, and life got back to some semblance of normal,...
7 Items for Your Print Business Year-End Checklist
End-of-year business planning is a time of opportunity. It's a chance to make your print business more powerful and...
Are You Getting Noticed by Print Customers?
Are you getting noticed by your print customers? Do you know how they found you? I recently sat in on a client’s sales...
Print Samples Sell Your Association
Every print association has had the same problem – how do you keep members engaged and interested in your events? Over...
Building the Future with Print
The viable future of print business is dependent upon how print is used, and what it’s used for. We saw this firsthand...
But Wait, There’s More: 3 New Business Ideas for Print Businesses
The summer is approaching and that typically means a little slow down for most print businesses, but honestly who...
A Coffee Table Book for Your Company? Do Tell!
Your business deserves the very best treatment in telling its story. Elevate it with print! Here's why, and I believe...
Is it the Right Time to Sell Your Print Business?
Printers ask me: "When is it time to sell or exit from my business?" Good question. Whenever that time is, we can't...
How to Help Overworked Print Customers Buy From You
Making print sales isn’t easy these days. Supply chain issues are disrupting the process and the ability to promise...
Use Print to Ask for Feedback and Improve Customer Relationships
To improve our businesses, we need to continuously learn about the people we serve. Think about the process of asking...
2022 CMYK Manifesto: Know, Show, Do, Share
This annual post has traditionally focused on what is in front of us in order to help customers generate business...
Do Customer Loyalty and Rewards Programs Drive More Print Profit?
This blog is part 3 of a 3-part series: Maximize New Opportunities Through Current Customers. Catch-up here: Part 1 -...
Wrapping Up 2021 with Bullish Thoughts for 2022
This year has, in many ways been one giant blur. It was January, yada-yada-yada, and here is my year-end wrap-up post....
The Four Words That Define 2021
As I reflect on 2021, I almost feel a little guilty about stating publicly what a great year it was for me. I was...
Explore Print Sample TV: Even More Print Samples!
A few weeks ago, we had a chance to create a bucket of new episodes of Print Sample TV! We have some cool things...
Where, Oh Where Did the Print Customers Go?
I have had vast conversations with big-budget buyers and print buyers buying on a budget over the last two years. I...
Now Playing at a Theater Near You: PRINT!
I recently wrote an article about the return of the theater experience for the Ricoh Business Booster site where I am...
Is Your Print Business Maximizing the Value of Your Customers?
What is a customer worth to your business? The simplest calculation is your customer lifetime value (CLV), which is...
3 Productive Ways to Follow Up on Following Up
Printers say the craziest things. While that isn’t the name of a new Podcast From The Printerverse series, it might as...
Do All Your Employees Know the Elevator Pitch of Your Print Business?
No. The answer is no, they don’t. Some of your employees are non-customer-facing so MAYBE it’s not necessary for them...
How to Win a Gold Medal for Company Culture
If you watched any of the ‘2020’ Olympics you may have drawn the same conclusion that I did… the world has really...
What’s Your Priority? Sales Revenue or New Lead Generation?
What do you think is the highest-priority marketing objective of print businesses today? To drive sales revenue or...
The ABCs of Packaging Design
Here are some tips I want to share to ensure you have the best packaging for your product. The buzz around...
How Much Should Your Print Business Spend On Marketing
A print industry friend of mine asked my opinion about how he should budget for marketing this year. I’ll share with...
The Sales Edit: 5 Tips to Produce MORE in 2021 and Beyond
First, there was the magic of tidying up with Marie Kondo. Then there was Norwegian Hygge. Now, we have The Home...
The Rewards of Collecting Community ‘Vig’
If you have watched as many movies and TV series as I have since March of last year, ‘vig’ may be a term you are...
Say YES to Customer Lists from Colleagues Who Are Closing Their Doors
When the magazine I ran for 22 years closed its doors, the owners offered me all the business data and customer lists...
Remote Control: Cybersecurity and Working From Home
We’re all getting used to the ways in which COVID has changed our working lives. Dealing with restless children,...
The Sales Overwhelm and How Ted Lasso Helped Me Solve It
If you are tired of hearing me take some liberal leaps and tie TV shows, Broadway musicals, and movies into lessons...
Print Samples: Menus Make a Difference!
One of the early segments of PrintSampleTV featured an important marriage of content and paper embodied in a...
2021 CMYK MANIFESTO: REFLECT, RELEASE, RECOVER and REBOUND
Greetings Citizens of the Printerverse and welcome to a New Year! It is a new year, right? The calendar has changed...
My 2021 Resolution: To Help More Printers Get More Customers!
My name is David Murphy and I love to help printers bring value to new customers. In fact, it’s been my passion for...
It Takes Two: Digital Twins in Print and Beyond
Happy New Year, Printerverse! Certainly here in the UK we still find ourselves at home, living our lives through...
Hybrid Marketing Teams Are Here and They’re Hot
Marketing departments in printing businesses are being disrupted. Today's employees have been adjusting and adapting...
Jumping on the 2021 “Word” of the Year Bandwagon
What’s your “word”? You can’t spend five minutes on social media in January without having ten of your friends,...
2020: The Pandemic, the Pivots and the Perseverance of Print
I am counting the days to 2021 as if it were my release date from prison. I’m keeping my head down, not rocking any...
Setting Communication Goals for 2021 and Beyond
The year that seemed it would never end, and that most people said was the worst they have ever experienced, is...
Comms 2021: Employee Ambassadors and Data-Driven Culture
What comes to mind when I say ‘influencer’? It might be impossibly perfect people in designer gear on Instagram,...
Three Ideas for Prospecting Print Sales in 2021
Imagine having to drive 45 minutes for a haircut, or to get clothing altered. Imagine no malls or shopping centers to...
Improve Customer Communications In The Now Normal
Earlier this year, after COVID seemed to change everything, I wrote about communication lessons learned during these...
Simply the Best – Sales Lessons from “Schitt’s Creek”
Not only am I a TV junkie, but I like to fancy myself a trendsetter (kinda). And so, I am proud to say that I have...
Try a ‘Hail Mary’ Play for a Happy Holiday Sales Season
Huddle up Printerverse! We have been inching our way down 2020 to the goal post and the end is in sight. All of our...
Five of the Best Ways to Be a TERRIBLE BOSS and Tank Sales
We’ve all probably had one or more. Some of us have probably even been one at one or more points in our careers. You...
Create Customer Conversion Programs for Print Sales
It’s almost month seven of COVID disruption and things are not getting much better. The United States leads the world...
The Future of Work, the Future of Print
How do you define the ‘print industry?’ To borrow a lyric from The Sound of Music, how do you catch a cloud and pin it...
Three Fundamental Sales Truths (that may seem opposed to each other but really aren’t)
There is a great song in the smash musical Hamilton in which Angelica sings about three facts of her life that are all...
Five Industry Orgs Step-Up To Address Diversity With Action
Over the past few weeks I have been immersed in conversation and online discussion about my post, Black Lives Matters,...
Print, Design, and Cities of the Future
Walking around my neighbourhood has been very strange for a while now, and I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to it. I...
The Five Zoom Archetypes Get a Treatment Plan For Sales
For the last two months, I have been doing a riff on the fact that many of us are living on ZOOM calls these days....
[VIDEO] #PrinterChatPodcast LIVE! An Industry Panel Discussion
Co-hosts Will Crabtree, Jamie McLennan and Deborah Corn welcome Larry Vaughn, Warren Werbitt and Robert Godwin for a...
Five Verticals That Need Prints Help, Now
Greetings Citizens of The Printerverse and I truly hope all is well in your neck of the galactic woods. I have been...
The Five Zoom Archetypes Get A Sales Diagnosis
Last month I introduced the 5 people you meet on a Zoom call. I realize that I missed some major categories, but I...
Warning: Don’t Drink the ‘Print is Essential‘ Kool-Aid
Greetings Citizens of the Printerverse and welcome to week 3 or 4 of Corona lockdown. I have stopped counting the days...
Are You Effectively Communicating To Your Customers During A Crisis?
Change. Heraclitus, an ancient Greek philosopher, is credited with saying “The only constant in life is change.” While...
99,000 Reasons to Click, Learn, Connect and Carry On.
Greetings Citizens of the Printerverse! It has been a crazy month. First off, a massive shout-out to all of the first...
Winning Print Customers by Losing the Print Pitch
Podcasts From The Printerverse launched two new series at the end of 2019 that you should be paying attention to. The...
Spice Up Your Customer Emails with Print
How do you communicate with your customers? Are you stuck in one channel or are you mixing it up and keeping it spicy?...
One Day or Day One?
My sister in law is the luckiest person I know when it comes to winning radio contests. Concerts, movie passes, you...
2020 CMYK Manifesto: Research, Regroup, Relax, Reinvent
Greeting Citizens of The Printerverse and welcome to a New Year! My role as your Intergalactic Ambassador gives me a...
Three Tech Trends for Print… in 2020 and Beyond
Happy 2020! That number alone sounds pretty futuristic – I’m sure if our child selves were asked what 2020 will be...
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...
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...
2019: The Year Of____________________????
It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. It was downright Dickensian, 2019 was. BEST OF TIMES: A dream I...
Printing United Provides Sweet Revenge For Print Lovers
It has been almost a month since Printing United opened its doors and ushered in a long-awaited trade show that...
How Well Do You Know Your Sales and Marketing Goals?
Guest post by Kenneth Theriot, TheRiot Agency We bet you know your overall sales targets and marketing themes. But...
How to Be Less of a Professional Half-Ass in 5 Easy Steps
Humans. We are imperfect. We make mistakes. Some of us, though, make lots more than others. It’s a continuum, really....
Print Industry Education: Whose Job is it Anyway?
I just flew back from Chicago and the last ever Print show (sigh) and boy are my arms tired. That’s a Dad joke for...
Injuries, Occam’s Razor, and Little Tweaks for Sales Success
If you’ve ever read my blog before, you know that I’m a runner. In fact, I wrote another piece here about training for...
War and Peace: What Hamilton and The Print Industry Have In Common
After an utterly fantastic Project Peacock event providing Printspiration to a room filled with print customers and...
3 Sales Lessons from Major League Baseball on Rookies
I would not call myself a baseball junkie by any stretch. As a kid I played softball from second grade until I...
The Sad Truth About Paper Options and the Paper Supply Chain
I AM MAD AS HELL AND I CANNOT TAKE IT ANYMORE.. and I am not alone! At a recent event I attended, a panel represented...
Five Life (and Sales) Lessons From My Third, Half-Marathon
Well, friends, I did it again. Back in 2015, shortly after I moved to Connecticut from Chicago, I trained for and ran...
Giving Stress A Beat Down For Better Sales Performance
Friends, I’m not gonna lie to you. I am stressed. Like, in a constant pit of my stomach, breaking out in a cold sweat...
Behind the Scenes with Morten Reitoft, Inkish.TV: Highcon
Morten Reitoft explains the motivations behind the making of a recent film on INKISH.TV. Being an independent media...
Champion a Cause to Win Hearts, Loyalty, and New Print Customers
In 2019, Millennials (23-38 years old) will take over the earth as the largest living adult generation projected to...
Is Collaboration Lacking in Your Workplace?
As I was doing my usual Tuesday morning social media audits ( translation: spending time on LinkedIn and Twitter...
Inspiring Transformation and a World Of Growth with Shuchi Sarkar, Global Marketing, HP
Deborah sat down with Shuchi Sarkar, Global Marketing Head, Graphic Solutions Business at HP, at Dscoop to record this...
5 Ways to Help Attract and Keep Women in Print – Starting with You!
Happy Women’s History Month… and more relevant for our purposes here, Women’s Print HERstory Month!...
Dear Men: How to Be a True Ally to a Woman at Work
Being that it is Women’s History Month, and we are celebrating Women’s Print HERstory month all month long at Girls...
Every Picture Sells Your Story, Don’t It?
One of the best side-effects of hosting #PrintChat is the ability to see patterns in the chatters responses over time....
When it Comes to Email Marketing, Set a Date With Customers
Email marketing falls into two basic categories: calendar-based or behavior based. Calendar based emails are sent...
Sales and Strategy Lessons From a World Class Brand
I am going to start this post with a huge disclaimer. I AM NOT A DISNEY PERSON. My kids are not Disney kids. We are...
2019 CMYK Manifesto: Invest in Your Audience
Greeting Citizens of The Printerverse and welcome to a New Year! My role as your Intergalactic Ambassador gives me a...
27 Replays from 10 Epic Hours of Printspiration!
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