By Dave Fellman
Last month, I wrote about one of the most common excuses I hear from reprographics/wide-format printing salespeople who are just not doing very well. “Our prices are not competitive,” they tell me—and then I tell them they have to accept some of the responsibility for an inability to sell at premium prices. It’s been my experience that the first thing most underperformers need is an attitude adjustment.
Here’s something else I tell salespeople who hit me with the “our prices are not competitive” excuse. First, I ask them what their company’s total sales volume is. (Hopefully they know. If not, I send them off to ask.) Once I hear the figure, I tell them: “OK, what that means is that your prices are perfectly fine for X dollars worth of printing buyers. Go out and find me more people like those people. Don’t complain about the people who won’t pay your prices. Go out and find more people who will!”
No Time
Another common excuse I hear is the lack of time for prospecting, and I generally hear two variations of this theme. One is that “taking care of current customers takes up all of my time.” The other is that “I have to watch over my jobs and make sure they get through production. If I don’t watch them very carefully, things go wrong and I look bad.”
I address the first variation by asking the salespeople if they want—or need—to make more money. The answer is almost always yes. “In that case, it’s very simple,” I say. “If you want/need to make more money, you need more customers, because you’re not making the money you want/need with the customers you have. If you don’t make the time to develop some new customers, you aren’t going to make any more money. Now, do you want some help with time management?”
I Have To Watch Over My Jobs
This one is worth a little more consideration, because in addition to being a time management excuse, it’s also a way of shifting the blame for any customer dissatisfaction. I address this excuse by asking the salesperson where the problems come from, and telling them that, in my experience, the vast majority of quality and service problems originate at the point where the specifications are being transferred from the customer to the printing company. “So,” I ask, “are you part of the solution or part of the problem? If you can assure me that you’ve giving your production people all the information they need to get the job done right and delivered on time, then I’m semi-sympathetic. If not, my advice is to do your job right and let them do theirs.”
Next Month: One more excuse, and the moral to the story.
Dave Fellman is the president of David Fellman & Associates, Cary, NC, a sales and marketing consulting firm serving numerous segments of the graphic arts industry. Contact Dave by phone at 919-363-4068 or by e-mail at dmf@davefellman.com. Visit his website at www.davefellman.com.