Print Solutions Magazine

Gone are the days when the title on a business card accurately described a career. Life has become increasingly complex, changing faster than our vocabulary to express those changes.

What’s the title on your business card? Does it adequately communicate your activities or, more importantly, the benefits you bring to customers? If you answer yes, you’re in a small minority.

Soon the controversy about the 2010 national census will begin. It will focus on the difficulty of defining demographics, occupations, religion, ancestry and virtually every other category. Increasingly, it supports the contention that all generalizations are false — including this one.

What is printing? Does it include the output of office copiers? Does it include computer-generated forms? I wish it were otherwise but I dismiss studies by many trade associations and organizations that sound authoritative but fail to state their methodology and the number of respondents upon which the data are based.

All of this raises an interesting question: Are we operating in a coherent industry? What’s your response if a stranger asks you to describe your business, or even your role, in 25 words or less?

At this point, let me admit that I’m probably better at asking questions than providing answers. If I had easy answers, I’d be relaxing on a lush beach in the Caribbean instead of writing this column. This column is written in the belief that it’s necessary to first forge general agreement about the challenge before offering a solution.

In a dynamic society and industry, we must learn to live with ambiguity. The changes we’ve faced in the last decade or two are unlikely to be aberrations. The speed of change in our industry is likely to accelerate in the foreseeable future. That change is unlikely to be confined to technology, an aspect of our industry that those of us who are mere mortals are challenged to understand.

The speed and importance of non-technological changes are likely to equal the speed of changes in technology. Today’s buying motives no longer resemble the buying motives of five or 10 years ago (although it’s true that in the absence of any other perceived value, price remains the chief determinant of supplier selection). Speed of production and clients’ lack of involvement in the entire production and distribution process have grown in importance.

Today, sales success involves the ability to discern the needs, attitudes, perceptions, objectives and motives of customers and prospects, and to explain how you’ll address those issues.

Acceptance of the fact that no two accounts have the same needs, attitudes, perceptions, objectives, or buying motives highlights the difficulty of adopting a job title that is universally applicable to all situations. It’s unlikely I have met you or understand the challenges of your daily activities, but I would guess that:

a. You wish you had a more descriptive job title on your business card.

b. You wish you had a shorter, more descriptive response to: “Tell me more about your company.”

There’s an irony in all of this. In the current business environment, the more successful a forms distributor or forms manufacturer (pardon the terms) may have been, the more likely they were to develop unique and tailored services and capabilities — and the more unique and tailored those services and capabilities, the greater the difficulty of coherently explaining the services, capabilities, and potential contributions of you and your organization to a prospect.

I don’t have an easy answer to this dilemma. There is no easy answer. One answer will not suffice in all situations. All-purpose titles and explanations are passé.

All I can offer are a couple of ideas. In today’s commoditized environment, the traditional notion of sales is dead. It is now best expressed as “commercial social work.” First, determine the needs, perceptions, objectives and challenges of a customer, then construct a tailored solution.

Don’t attempt to define your role in terms of facilitating the manufacturing or procurement of a product or service. Instead, define your role in terms of a resource to assist development of each customer’s business. Your success is directly related to the success of customers, not the successful production and delivery of printed material delivered on-time at a competitive price.