Print Samples: What DO YOUR Business Cards Say?
Before every trade show, event, or customer meeting, look at your business cards. What do they say about you and your company? Do they give your company, name, title, and contact details? Perfect! They should. But if you stop there you miss an opportunity to create a billboard for your story. A couple of years […]
How to Tell if You Are Considered a Print Vendor or a Print Partner
If print customers are thinking of you as a print vendor and not as a print partner, you are in serious trouble. You are interchangeable. You are competing on price. You are a number on a spreadsheet. You aren’t top of mind for recommendations or referrals. You are on the way out and you probably […]
How to Attract the Best Print Customers
“Nobody ever asked me what customers I wanted before.” This was told to me by the VP of Sales at a $25 million revenue commercial print business a few years back. Throughout his career, new print customers came in seemingly randomly by referrals, leads from the website and the phone, and hunting sales reps. So […]
3 Ways to Earn Trust Through Collaboration with Print Customers
The secret to earning referrals and long-term loyalty with print customers for their printing and print marketing needs is really no secret. Creative collaboration is the key to success. Collaboration can take many forms. On the lowest end, we have information exchange and administrative collaboration: emails, calls, job status, pricing, billing, and so on. The […]
5 New Business Development Takeaways from KushCon Tampa
On August 6th, I attended KushCon Tampa with Will Crabtree – aka #WillThePrinter, co-host of the PrinterChat series on Podcasts from the Printerverse and owner of Tampa Printer, Gorilla Gurus and Sign Parrot, and Jim Cox, General Manager of Tampa Printer. KushCon is billed as a Hemp & Wellness Expo. There were tons of CBD […]
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 in 2020. If printing wasn’t essential, it wasn’t produced. And when things started to open, ‘essential‘ was applied to the spending, not the materials; was/is it essential to spend money on this? The […]
Is Your Website Meeting Your Goals?
Over the past few months, I’ve written about the changes in Google search results pages and how they impact companys’ search performance. There are many ways people may learn about suppliers. Ranking high in search results may not be essential for every company. But a company’s website is important in most buying processes. Goals for […]
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 everything will be ok with 100% certainty. This situation can make even the most seasoned print customers nervous especially if they work as a print producer at advertising agencies, brands, or corporations that plan their print […]
Build Back Better Brings Print Customers
This is not a political post. It’s a financial one for design, print, and marketing pros. At the end of 2020, the United States Construction Industry was valued at $1.36 Trillion Dollars. Even with the pandemic, private residential and non-residential construction had record-breaking figures. Up until 2020, the construction industry employed more than seven million […]
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 results with print. While there is still some uncertainty when it comes to planning meetings and events and when/if there will be a return to offices, we can control getting best prepared for whatever 2022 […]
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 – Is Your Print Business Maximizing the Value of Your Customers?, Part 2 – How A Customer Reference Program Can Help You Sell More Print As consumers, most of us are happy when we “earn” a […]
Back to The Future with Fast-Food Packaging
Fast-food packaging is near and dear to my heart since my first job. I joined the packaging team of a fast-food chain packaging supplier after college and learned so many things about what was referred to as environmentally friendly at that time. Since then, it has been important to me to follow trends and changes […]