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Solutions February 2006
Trademart
2006
Charlotte
Super Show Offers Super Education,
Ideas
DMIA’s
TRADEMart 2006 series kicked off
its season Jan. 10 at the Renaissance
Suites in Charlotte, N.C. For
the first time, the Queen City
hosted a “Super Show,”
the first of the four Super TRADEMarts
featuring expanded education sessions
and extended exhibit hours. Approximately
231 attendees welcomed the valuable
peer-to-peer face time and the
warm weather.
Crowding
the Aisles
On
the show floor, attendees huddled
at exhibitor booths, searching
for new vendors and innovative
products. Seventy-eight exhibitors
offered a variety of labels, tags,
business forms, commercial printing
and more. “It was a good
show,” said Murray Vetstein,
CFC, regional sales manager at
distributorship Source4, Huntersville,
N.C. “It was even better
than last year.” Vetstein
collected information on integrated
products and labels of interest
to his customers, but he was most
excited about a new mailer he
found that could substitute for
a Tyvek product he’s been
selling.
Quality
Impressions Business Forms, a
Charlotte, N.C.-based manufacturer,
was among a trio of new exhibitors
that included Shawnee Systems
Inc., Cincinnati, Ohio, and Synergy
Label, A Printegra Company, Smyrna,
Ga. Peggy Tate, customer service
representative at Quality Impressions,
found the regional attendance
to be the most valuable aspect
of the show. By exhibiting at
the TRADEMart, she said, the company
has reached a wider pool of distributors
located in its backyard. “It’s
incredible how many distributors
are out there, even just in Charlotte,
that didn’t know we exist,”
Tate said.
A
Thing or Two About Sales
In
a crowded education session, Lynn
Rogge emphasized the importance
of face-to-face interaction in
sales. The regional sales manager
at manufacturer PRINTSouth Corp.,
Atlanta, countered the notion
that technology excuses salespeople
from making personal calls, and
he shared the following sales
practices with attendees:
•
Always have something to give
to a prospect, Rogge said, whether
it’s a brochure or a promotional
product. At the same time, he
asked attendees never to leave
a brochure unless they meet the
person who should receive it because
he or she will probably never
see it. “If all I wanted
to do was distribute this brochure,”
Rogge said, “I’d hire
an airplane and throw them out
the window.”
•
Keep a record of how often you
visit your customers. Rogge uses
a table with a list of companies
in the left column. In the top
columns, he lists the months and
dates for the entire year. He
puts an “X” in the
appropriate box each time he meets
a client. By scanning the table
quickly, he can see which companies
he isn’t visiting enough.
•
Rogge also recommended that salespeople
always carry greeting cards. He
buys imprinted cards that say
“Sorry I Missed You,”
on the front. On the inside, he
tapes his business card and handwrites
a note that says, “I’ll
call you this week to schedule
an appointment,” and signs
his name. The cards are prepared
and sealed before he makes any
calls. When he’s blocked
by a receptionist from visiting
a prospect, he pulls one of the
cards from his pocket and handwrites
the prospect’s name on the
front. He gives it to the receptionist
and asks, “Will you see
that so-and-so gets this?”
Rogge claims that because the
envelope is sealed, the receptionist
is more likely to deliver the
envelope than if he merely handed
her a business card. The personal
nature of the card also improves
the chances of him getting an
appointment when he calls. “If
you don’t use something
like this, you’re really
missing the boat,” he said.
“Handwritten mail will be
opened 10 times more than something
printed.”
Kicking
Ideas Back and Forth
The
education sessions included a
roundtable discussion moderated
by Joe Webb, vice president at
distributorship Formsystems, Pensacola,
Fla., and Brian Coats, CDC, account
representative at MAR Graphics,
Valmeyer, Ill. Moderators and
attendees generated ideas based
on a list of topics such as hiring,
management, technology and distributor-vendor
relationships. Some of their recommendations
included:
•
Assign an employee to take minutes
during a meeting and then distribute
them to the staff within a certain
time period.
•
Create daily To-Do lists for yourself
and assign each task a grade level
according to its priority.
•
A good way to introduce a new
employee and reduce financial
commitment is to start by hiring
them part-time. Gradually, if
the person works out and the workload
calls for it, you can make them
a full-time employee.
•
When hiring an employee, estimate
the total number of orders you
expect in the next year, and then
divide the new employee’s
salary by that number. The cost
per order for the employee’s
salary should be reflected in
your pricing.
•
Identify and record the process
your company goes through to receive
an order. How many hands touch
the order? Use the information
to measure how efficiently your
operation performs.
•
You lose money when customers
pay late. If clients consistently
pay their bills late, consider
bundling an interest charge in
the initial quote to minimize
your financial risk. If your price
is too high as a result, and they
go elsewhere, you may be better
off in the long run. Also, consider
prompt pay incentives to improve
cash flow.
•
Evaluate the advantages and disadvantages
of unbundling your services. It
may make sense to list the services
you offer within an invoice to
illustrate the value of your work.
On the other hand, end users may
perceive that they’re being
charged a “fee” for
every line item that includes
a cost. An alternative is to list
each line item but only one comprehensive
price.
•
Consider outsourcing functions
that are too costly to bring in
house or so time-consuming that
they prevent you from doing your
job, including IT tasks, marketing
and collections.
•
Improve communications with customers
by alerting them ahead of time
to potential problems. Always
find out in your first meeting
how they like to be contacted.
That way, you’re more likely
to reach them when questions or
concerns arise.
Labels
Are Profitable
Two
education sessions at the conference
focused on labels. Steve Porter,
general manager at Synergy Label,
a Printegra Company, Smyrna, Ga.,
gave a presentation on how to
target profitable label-selling
opportunities. He said there are
four reasons why distributors
should sell labels:
•
Customers are buying labels. If
not from you, then who?
•
Labels are a growth segment of
the printing industry, especially
custom labels.
•
They can be sold across departments,
and consequently strengthen a
distributor’s relationships
with key contacts in an organization.
•
Sold as vehicles for marketing
or promotion, labels command higher
margins than labels sold merely
as products.
To
facilitate customer interaction,
Porter said that distributors
should avoid technical jargon.
For instance, instead of touting
that you sell “pressure
sensitive labels,” a term
end users may not understand,
focus on what the product does
and how it helps the customer’s
business grow.
Start
selling labels to existing customers.
“They’re buying from
you now,” Porter said. “They’ll
buy another product line from
you.” Prospects include
any company that makes something,
such as chemical and food manufacturers,
because they’re likely to
use a high volume of labels. Other
potential industries include mattress
and cushion manufacturers, and
manufacturers of erosion abatement
products. Two simple ways to identify
prospects include:
•
Visit a grocery store and inspect
the packaging and labels on various
products. Contact those companies
that might benefit from your help.
•
Scan standard industrial classification
(SIC) codes—a number that
categorizes companies by industry—to
identify potential customers using
labels for their products. For
example, the SIC code Canned,
Frozen & Preserved Fruit,
Vegetable and Food Specialties
is 2030. Also use the North American
Industry Classification System
(NAICS), which is being
implemented as a replacement to
SIC codes. NAICS codes can be
found on the U.S. Census Bureau
web site (www.census.gov). Salespeople
can use databases such as Hoover’s
(www.hoovers.com) or Dun &
Bradstreet (www.dnb.com) to locate
businesses in their ZIP code areas
whose function falls under a particular
SIC or NAICS code.
Within
any given business, distributors
may need to work with brand managers,
marketing/advertising staff, production/shipping
departments, and purchasing and
packaging employees to sell labels.
Porter also mentioned that some
accounts will require distributors
to work with a regulatory manager,
particularly at food and beverage
manufacturing companies, and pharmaceutical
companies.
Porter,
whose company supplies major accounts
such as Wal-Mart, Lowe’s
and Weight Watchers through distributors,
also offered another piece of
advice. “Don’t settle
for the label that goes outside
the box,” he said. “There’s
something that goes inside the
box—tags, labels—that
rides shotgun along with it.”
In
another session, Debbi Carter,
director of label sales at Major
Business Systems Inc., Hillsborough,
N.C., updated attendees on changes
in the use of law labels, specifically
for mattresses and cushions. New
regulations attempt to standardize
label sizes and the information
that goes on them. “What
they wanted for the whole United
States was to come up with one
law label that every manufacturer
would use,” Carter said.
While
standardizing some aspects, regulators
freed manufacturers to use a wider
range of substrates. “The
main technical change was that
you don’t have to use Tyvek,”
Carter said. “You can use
any material that’s smudge-resistant
and can be sewn into the fabric.”
Major Business Systems has partnered
with Matthias Paper, Swedesboro,
N.J., to offer a synthetic paper
alternative to Tyvek. Carter said
that the paper offers some advantages,
particularly in applications where
the material needs pin-hole feeds.
It’s difficult, she said,
to punch holes in Tyvek. As a
result, the chads are more likely
to come out and get stuck in the
printer.
Neal
Dagenhart, general manager at
Matthias Paper, distributed paper
samples to the audience and explained
that it could be used for packaging,
labels and other applications.
He said that some industries,
such as chemical manufacturers
and construction material manufacturers,
used the material for labeling
their products.
For
more information on TRADEMarts,
go to www.PSDA.org
and click on the TRADEMart 2006
link.
