By Kelly Mallozzi
Are any of you out there old enough to remember the awesome song You Don’t Bring Me Flowers with Barbara Streisand and Neil Diamond? Check out the 70’s fashions and fabulousness here:
Sound familiar? Is that how you’re feeling about your job, at least a little? If you’re trying to find that loving feeling for printing, try to put yourself in the way back machine to when you were just getting started. Here are some things that rookies do that just might help you fall in love all over again.
1. Immerse yourself – when you were a rookie, you showed up early, you stayed late, and you yapped around the heels of the pressman until he begged you to give him a break. Kick it old school and pay a visit to your pressroom and ask a few questions – who knows? There might be something going on back there that you need to know. If nothing else, you might get a good new dirty joke out of it.
2. Hammer the Phones – you need to pretend like it’s Glengarry Glen Ross and you just got your hands on the new leads. Call everyone. Call people you haven’t talked to in ten years. Call your neighbor and ask him out for coffee. It’s time to cultivate a garden of referrals and breathe some new life into some old clients, prospects or former customers. And take every meeting. Break your expense account at Starbucks.
3. Remember that it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. Have an idea? Act on it. Want to try a new marketing promotion? Sell it to your boss. Act as if no one will ever say no to you and that is no such thing as a bad idea or a stupid question.
Because you have nothing to lose. And everything to gain. Welcome to the printing industry, rookie. We’re glad you’re here.
Kelly Mallozzi will contribute to the PMC as often as her life and four small children will allow, which will be at least once a year. As a sales and marketing coach and consultant at Success In Print, Kelly advocates for graphic arts companies to start a revolution and fight to keep print relevant. She may be irreverent, but what she lacks in convention, she makes up for in smart-assery.
