Hearts and Minds contd.

This doesn't have that much to do with selling, but

So this week, while you are making your sales calls or managing your team, don't forget that Croot and thousands of great salespeople are out there selling a product that will keep our nation and our families safe. Let's say a prayer that Croot and his company meet their sales quote soon and return home safely to the biggest sales awards ceremony this company has ever seen. Oh . . . and Croot . . tell your buddies we are forever grateful for your sacifice. We will never forget them. - p.39

Amen.

Now back to the "thoughts".

In sales we've been using the war metaphor for a long time. I was always sort of uncomfortable with "targeting the market," "being in the trenches" and "destroying the competition." It just didn't fit what I saw as the most effective selling. Thanks to the article I realized that the problem is not the war metaphor, it's the conventional meanings I put into "waging war." Major Croot's description from hard won experience changes everything.

"I expected a hard-nosed conversation about objectives, overcoming the enemy, never giving up and fighting to the end. Instead, I heard words like caring, listening, loving, helping showing and giving." p 35

Now that sounds alot like the selling process that I've seen work.

Another thought. It sounds like the Major doing the daily work on the ground, might "get it" better then the suits in Washington. In the context of this article, suits can be seen as Top Management. That might have some parallels in the world of the print business.

And now the minor quibble. Brian says that "It is difficult to force anybody into anything." I would say that it is for all practical purposes impossible. If you are not selling what your customer wants or needs, it's not going to happen. If your product is not what they want, find a customer who does or redesign the product. In the 21st century there is no third alternative.

Micro Marketing and Sales Process

Wave Mail Micro Marketing works because it is based on common sense. It is not widely used today because the technology and variable data printing is only now going mainstream. It's not hard, but it requires a continuing focus. Any sales person understands that continuing focus is the hardest thing to do.

One under appreciated property of print, is that it makes focusing much easier. Consider the efficiency of making a shopping list. By writing it down, you don't have to spend mental energy remembering. Less energy on remembering, means more energy to focus on "what to do next."
The enemy of focus is not "not enough time." The real problem are the distractions that make it hard to remember what to do next. Since a salesperson lives in a rushed world of doing the next thing, you need help to remember what that next thing is.

First, look at the process from 30,000 feet. Try to forget about the trees and look at the forest. It's only common sense.

What has to get done:
1. Find Suspects.
2. Move Suspects into the Prospect bin.
3. Move Prospects into the Customer bin.
4. Move Customers into the Client bin.
5. Nourish a Book of Business based on a Community of Clients.

Here's what I mean:
1. Suspects could be anyone that you can reach and who need a better, faster, cheaper, less risky way to communicate in print. It could be new businesses within 2 miles of your plant. It could be a specific industry like pharms or publishing or non profits or designers. You get to choose.

2. A prospect is someone who has asked for an estimate. Think of all the estimates that never turn into jobs. Then consider that these are people who know your company enough to call you at the print event. Then consider how much marketing and cold calling is needed to get the opportunity to ask you to estimate. Prospects are the raw material that you can turn into revenue.

3. A customer is someone who has given you a job. Now you have a database of people who have experienced your company. They have trusted your firm to help them with a high risk (to them) transaction. Hopefully the transactions was mutually valuable. Obviously, no amount of blah, blah or marketing is going to repair the damage down by a bad experience. But, if you are still in business, most of the jobs you've done have probably been ok.

4. A client is someone who has given you a couple of jobs over some defined time period.
This is self explanatory.

5. A book of business is a community of clients for whom you are the trusted go-to person when they need to make a printing decision.
More about this later.

What you should do:
1. Divide your present customer list into prospects, customers and clients.
2. Figure out the most efficient ways to move everyone from a lower bin to a higher bin.
3. Look at the indicators EVERY day to figure out what is giving you the highest ROT. (Return on Time is an idea I first heard at a Dr. Joe Webb presentation). Be ready to change tactics on a dime. If a tactic isn't working try another one. But don't change the strategy - do something every day to move them from a lower bin to a higher one.

What are the hard parts?
1. You have to sell stuff that people want to buy.
If you are selling the ability to communicate better, faster, cheaper with a minimum risk, every person or entrepreneur or business needs that. Whether you can make them understand and be ready to buy what you are selling is another big question.

2. Who has the time?
Sending and answering emails and phone calls, getting the specs right, going to useless meetings (either internal or external) and then chasing jobs that are in the plant does not leave alot of time left. That's why this is not about investing more time. It's about investing LESS time in activities that have low ROT.

3. How can I get real time information?
If you have an active customer facing web site, it's pretty easy. If not, there are lots of workarounds.

4. Why should I bother?
Situations change so unexpectedly that even a client from your book of business can disappear. People get fired or move to a new job. Companies can get bought and your contact network loses the power to buy. So, you have to keep the pipeline filled.

No doubt, it's all easier said then done. But then so is everything. A few really blessed professionals do it naturally. The rest of us have to practice and need a little help. The good news is that it's not that hard to do, if you know what you are supposed to be doing.

Micro Marketing Wave Mail Sales Program Part 1

Suspects to Prospects
A suspect could be anyone.
A prospect is someone who has asked for an estimate.
A customer is someone who has given you a job.
A client is someone who has given you a couple of jobs over some defined time period.
A book of business is a community of clients for whom you are the trusted go-to person when they need to make a printing decision.

First some assumptions. If you agree with what I'm seeing as the problem, continue to read the solution.

Assumptions
1. Every firm and sales person needs a sustainable flow of new prospects.

2. Since salespeople are paid by commissions on jobs they bring in, they don't make the time to identify suspects or prospects.

3. Printing is not sold. It is bought. "Do you have something to estimate?" never results in anyone saying "What a good idea. I should print something."

4.The trick is for the sales person to be "top of mind" when the printing event is about to happen.

5. The paradox is that repeated sales calls - either in person, email or printed pieces - are often irritating to suspects/prospects. Instead of building a brand, they can undermine it.

6. The best "data mining" comes from active listening in a conversation, either on the phone or in person.

The Solution: Micro Marketing Wave Mail/Call Campaign
Each potential suspect gets three pieces of mail and a phone call. No action after three times, off the list.

Pre Step one: Salesperson decides how many follow up phone calls they can make in a week. Usually it's about 1 or 2 hours once or twice a week.

Pre Step two: Choose a list of suspects.
This could be an inactive customer list, or a list of all new business formations within 5 miles of the plant, or a particular industry or job title.

Step One: On Monday of week 1, mail piece number one to 48 suspects.
The trick is to not mail to anyone to whom the salesperson will not have time to make a follow- up phone call. (Rule of thumb - one hour = 12 calls. Need time off for coffee to take notes and think about the conversations. 48 assumes 4 hours per week.)

Step Two: Call every person who received a mailing piece.
The first call is something like,
"Hi I am X from abc printing. I sent you a postcard and just wanted to confirm it got to X. If you don't mind I am going to send you a mailing piece once a week for the next couple of weeks to let you know some things that our company might be able to help you with."

If the answer is "no thank you" good. Cross them off the list. Don't send any more postcards.

If the answer is ok or fine, make good on your promise and keep sending. Every once in a long while, you'll get lucky and the response will be something like "I'm so glad you got in touch. I have a project coming up in a couple of weeks that I could use some help with."

Step three: Send out 48 pieces total of mailing piece no 2. Note : Replace the "no thank you's" with new suspects. But keep the quantity at 48 to stay within the four hour call commitment.

Step four: Go back to step one and repeat.
For those getting their second mailing the conversation might be opened with " Hi abc (you probably learned the gatekeeper's name in the first call), just wanted to make sure X got my postcard. If it goes some place naturally, follow it. If not, "thank you" and off the phone.

To the first time mailee's the conversation is that same as before:
"Hi I am X from abc printing. I sent you a postcard and just wanted to confirm it got to X. If you don't mind I am going to send you a mailing piece once a week for the next couple of weeks to let you know some things that our company might be able to help you with."

Then repeat 1,2,3 as necessary.

Making it work:
Someone in authority has to look at and sign the call sheets every week. Everything else are production and design details. If you have a VDP tool like Xmpie, it's that much easier.

Why it works:
Because creating a `sustainable flow of sales is a definable process. Once defined it can be measured. Once measured it can be managed. read more here

How to Sell a Commodity cont.

This comes from A Beautiful Experience . It's a blog that is maintained by a marketing firm in Canada.

A couple of days ago I blogged about how to decommdify in a commodity industry (commercial printing). The post was picked up by "The Print CEO Blog" here and it started a healthy discussion. One of the comments was from Michael J, and he drove home a great point - great service and taking care of the small details is a definite must to decommodify:

From 30 years of selling printing, these are my rules of thumb.

1. Answer the phone (quickly, professionally)
2. Give customers what they ask for (quickly, professionally.)
3. Don’t try to baffle them with bs, if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance.

The critical issue is to save time and minimize risk.

How long does it take for a customer to get an intelligent, accurate response to a phone call or an email?

If it’s more than one phone call or 30 minutes for an email, it’s too long.
(I’ll call you back means within the hour.)

How long does it take to get an estimate in the customer’s hand?
If it’s more than 24 hours, it’s too long. If it’s 4 hours that’s about right.

If a customer needs a paper sample, how long?
If it’s more than the next morning, it’s too late.

How long does it take for the customer to get production information?
If it’s more than 5 minutes it’s too long.

That’s the experience at Amazon and the best printing companies.

Well done!

About this blog, me and 'dr. droock"

After 30 years selling Print, and 7 years teaching Print, I suffer from the "What YOU should do is . . . " syndrome.

Contact at josefowm(a)gmail.com

This site is a place to bloviate, educate and be an activity space to collect and refine ideas about Print and new Print products. It's "dr. droock," instead of Michael Josefowicz, to make it easier for me to make mistakes. It can take a lot of editing to get it just right when you know it will live at Google. The paradox is that often the best ideas come with minimal editing. But the words may sound pontificating, clumsy or just plain dumb.

I chose "droock" as a tip of the hat to one my heros, Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg. I chose "dr" because my mother always wanted me to be a doctor, not a printer.


About Michael Josefowicz
I can't remember when I fell in love with Print. Probably when I was seven and discovered comic books. Some years later I graduated from Columbia College in 1967 with a major in sociology. Then spent a year studying demography at University of Wisconsin in Madison in 1968. Then I taught for a year in a public school in Manhattan. Then my wife and I started a printing company called Red Ink Productions.

I learned about selling print in the "wild west days" of Print in New York City from the 70's through the 90's. During those years I made many mistakes, many more than once. I think I learned some things along the way.

For those 28 years I owned a boutique print brokerage that catered to high design professionals, museums and art galleries. Then I taught for 7 years at a prestigious design school. In between I was involved in one internet startup that crashed and consulted with another that was eventually bought by an 800 gorilla. Now I am part time managing partner of a consulting firm that focuses on product development for digital printers, a part time Blogger in Chief. And a full time Grandpa.

Anyway, I love print and the people involved in the Black Arts, both past and present. Production, sales, vendors, press people, bindery people, Gutenberg, Benjamin Franklin and even some designers - they are all great people.

- Michael Josefowicz, August, 2008