Diversifying Into Promotional Products
I applaud Print Solutions for its continued coverage of advertising specialties. As forms sales diminish, distributors need education on diversifying into this market segment. As a manufacturer, we also have to diversify.
Print Solutions readers need to be aware of all the creative ideas and available products in the ad specialties market. The title of your promotional products feature published in June, "Excite Prospects With New Ideas"
(p. 80), best describes our new offering--the TeleBook™. It's a custom telephone message book with marketing impact. It's part form, part advertising specialty, and we hope distributors will embrace it because they can use their forms and printing knowledge to offer the creative marketing solution.
In the June promotional products story, the sidebar "Systems Selling is Key to Success" offers terrific advice. We certainly will refer our customers and prospects to your well-written piece. Thank you again for exciting us about new ideas.
Matt Gillies
Vice President of Sales
Cowdin Printing Co.
West Caldwell, N.J.
Editors' Note: Print Solutions includes a monthly Promotional Products department (p. 65). Next year, the magazine will publish feature stories on promotional products in June, August and November.
Consider Cultures Before Partnering
The most overlooked aspect of organizational partnerships is culture. It's also the main reason partnerships fail. You can have synergy and a great strategic fit, but if the organizational cultures are too different, the partnership will be an uphill battle from the first day. Before joining forces with another company, ask yourself if its business methods and values feel right to you, compared with your own company. Trust your gut.
Jeffrey R. Robertson
President
Skyline Business Forms & Commercial Printing
Denver
The "ultimate" in partnering is the sale of your company or the acquisition of one firm by another. Many deals don't work out, and the No. 1 reason is culture. When Alco Standard (now IKON Office Solutions) was chasing firms nationwide in the late 1980s, acquiring 15 business machine/ copier dealers per month for about a year, the company's leaders always wanted to "have a meal" with the seller prospect. If they couldn't see themselves inviting that person to their homes to meet their wives and have dinner, they wouldn't sign the deal. Think about that as one criterion for partnering with someone next time you're leaning that direction--the "dinner test."
Jim Anderson
President
Corporate Development AssociatesPhoenix
An industry pro should ask and answer several questions before moving ahead with a partnership: 1) Why do I want or need to partner, and what are the chances of the partnership helping me or hurting me? 2) What will a partner bring to the table that I don't already have? 3) Does the partnership face geographic limitations? 4) Is the partnership something the end user requires?
Distributors seek me out because I have something most of them don't have and can't learn about quickly (MICR check printing experience). I give distributors the chance to retain their check printing accounts while offering a different method of check writing, so I'm not a threat to their customer relationships. Geography isn't a problem because I don't have to meet face to face with end users. My role is to be a third-party expert who can work with end users to implement a MICR system, then move into the background afterward.
Dick Gray, CDC
President
Xtension Technologies Inc.
Laguna Hills, Calif.
Talk to Us
We encourage feedback about stories published in Print Solutions, as well as in DMIA's E-Weekly newsletter and Independent Management Report e-newsletter.
The question of the month: DMIA's i2002 show was held last month in Rosemont, Ill. What post-show strategies can help firms gain business?
