The Compliment ~

The biggest compliment you can give to a sales person is to recommend them to another person.

I once heard one of John’s clients telling another man, if you’re not working with John then you’re not working with the best.

Another sales person at Ussery is also on the receiving end of a lot of kudos from her clients. She’s fussy and particular and her clients love her for that. They know she is watching out for their high standards.

I was just told today by a long-standing client…”good eye” for the typo I caught. Four people proof-read the final copy, but, there it was, plain as day ~ two different dates for the same event.

Who have you recommended lately?

Your Commercial ~

I’m paying a lot of attention lately to television commercials. It’s gotten me to thinking…if I had to create a commercial for Ussery Printing, what would it be?

Allstate Insurance cleverly uses a man in their ads called mayhem. “Mayhem” gets into all kinds of trouble to illustrate the idea that if you comparison shop for insurance you might want to make sure you’re comparing apples to apples in coverage. Boy, that sounds familiar. Printing specifications are typically open to interpretation that could mislead a client to choose a cheaper option, only to discover they are not happy with their results. What a great way to illustrate the difference in costs.

Yesterday I watched a commercial for Bassett Furniture show-casing their designer fabrics and their design team assistance while choosing furniture. In the same hour was another commercial for The Dump (also a furniture company); their pitch was for low-interest rates and no payments for three years. I’m confident Bassett also offers great interest rates but the focus of their ads was on the custom fabric options and designer assistance. Both sell furniture and both know the client base they are after.

Some printers focus very well on niche markets and this is good strategy until their niche market experiences a decline. Some printers are project driven and will print just about everything and anything. This is a good strategy too since they are able to handle the various declines in different markets, but then, they’re not investing in work-flow efficiencies as well as the niche printer.

We’ve struggled the last few years developing new markets…just like most printers. Some have gone the MSP route, and that’s an excellent choice for those printers who can add data management staff and marketers to their current printing staff. What about the rest of us? Do we continue to wait until the buyers return to their pre-recession buying levels? I don’t think we should because, as a 30-year veteran of printing, I don’t believe we will ever return to those levels.

So, getting back to my original musing…what would a commercial for Ussery Printing look like? Maybe that’s the creative thought-process we should talk about, if only to rediscover who we are and what we want to be in the future.

Insanity ~

It’s been said that the definition of insanity is thinking you can do the same things over and over and then expect a different result. Let’s think about this.

What to lose weight in the new year? Of course you do. But realize you can’t lose weight if you keep eating, drinking and exercising the same as before. Something has to change.

What to have more stamina, become more toned and flexible? Well, you have to move your body differently someway, somehow, or nothing much will change.

Want to be better at your job, increase your sales, or find satisfaction at work? Then, you can’t behave the same way you did last year.

What are you willing to change to make 2012 different from 2011?

My Christmas Wish…

I’ve been writing printstories for nearly two years now, and the months when inspiration oozed, I wrote often. But then, when I’m over-whelmed at work or tired, I’ll write only a few times a month. If you’re a new reader to my blog or a consistent reader (thank you b-t-w) my wish this holiday would be that you would take a moment and wander through my stories and perhaps even share them. You can search under special people, or sales or just start at the beginning. I don’t think you’ll be bored. I know some really funny, gifted and unforgettable people. I wish I had more time to write about all of you.

Merry Christmas.

Leveraging Technology ~

I don’t need to read a Harvard Business Review Study to know about the natural attrition of sales. If you’re a professional sales person, you are keenly aware of your average retention rate, and the certainty that you will not maintain all your accounts for a long period of time.

There are some accounts I’ve had for fifteen years, and some, half as long. I’ve lost some work to the down-and-dirty group printing of on-line printers or the previously printed items that have gone completely digital. Sometimes I’ll lose a client over price, but not usually. Why? I represent an expertise in printing, not just me, but all the experienced people in my plant. We provide our clients with alternatives, solutions and analytical experience in buying efficiently. Helping clients to analyze their purchases on a yearly budget will typically put less money in my pocket in the long run, but because of that assistance they remain valued clients.

Which brings me to the hype about leveraging technology to retain clients. People maintain clients, not technology. Technology is just a tool, and a tool to be used very wisely. People will always differentiate your business.

Communicate ~

I was at the pharmacy to pick up a prescription and the clerk told me they couldn’t locate it. She then looked behind me and said “next.” I moved to the side for a moment, frozen, not really knowing what to do. As I stood there my face became red and I felt the embarrassment of being dismissed so I left the store and drove home. I was too frustrated to talk to anyone in management, I was speechless.

Ten minutes later my phone rang and the pharmacist said they had located my prescription. I shared my experience with being dismissed and the pharmacist then shared with me that they had everyone looking for the prescription when I was there and they couldn’t figure out why I had left the store. Wouldn’t that have been good information for the clerk to share with me?

There are various ways to communicate, and they include not only verbal and written communication but also subtle eye contact and body language. Usually the communication process is complete once the receiver has understood the message of the sender. What have you left unsaid lately?

Saying Goodbye.

Tomorrow at 1pm many of us in Dallas will say our formal goodbye to our colleague, Ron Hagood. Ron was a friend to many and that will be even more difficult. Then, there’s his family and I am positive their sadness is immense.

I truly appreciated Ron and knew he was a trusted colleague. I have to admit though that I couldn’t classify him as a friend. As a friend I would have known his wife and his children’s names. I did know his church affiliation because we talked about his faith, and that gives me comfort knowing he had faith.

Whether out of respect, friendship or love, our celebration of Ron’s life will be bittersweet. Ron was a veteran of the Graphic Arts Industry who in his work life developed relationships with many people. Now, it is with sadness that we join his family to say our goodbye’s. Ron will truly be missed.

Corporate Jenga

Jenga is a balancing game played with 54 slender wooden blocks. It challenges the players mental skills and agility. To begin, all the wooden blocks are stacked on top of each other (this is not the challenging part) three to a tier until it is 18 levels tall. Once the tower is built, the game begins and each player takes a turn choosing a block to remove. The goal is to remove a block from the guts of the tower without it toppling over. After that, the player is then required to place the block they removed on the top of the stack, again, without the tower falling down. As the game progresses the tower becomes less and less stable, when eventually it falls over.

I’ve talked with clients in corporate America who feel like their jobs are becoming an endless game of Jenga. As people are “tapped out” of their jobs and not replaced, workloads become increasingly hard to balance. The remaining workers must deal with the overwhelming instability, as it takes a toll on their ability to do their jobs well. Although the tower hasn’t fallen for most of corporate America, the precariousness is felt throughout the company as job duties grow beyond a fair balance.

But, what about those Jenga blocks that are added to the top of the wooden pile? What are they representative of?

Early Discovery ~

When Ty was about four years old he did something that every parent fears.

He was watching TV in the living room while I was nearby in the kitchen making dinner. Earlier I had lit a candle, and without thinking about it, left it burning when I went to the other room. So Ty, being the inquisitive child, found a piece of paper and laid it across the flame. As the paper began to burn he realized he needed my help and flew into the kitchen. I took one look at his face and his urgent cry and wasted no time running into the next room where I picked up the burning piece of paper by a tiny edge that wasn’t on fire and carried it to the sink.

When everything (including me) was under control I turned to face my son. It was obvious from the terrified look on his face that he knew he made a mistake and I was confident he would not make that particular one again. So, I didn’t scold him or punish him, instead I pulled him towards me and gave him a big hug and told him he did the right thing. I thanked him over and over again for coming to get me and not trying to hide what he did. My goal was to reinforce the part he did do right, that was, alerting me to the situation.

There are many situations in life and work, where, if you can identify a problem early in the process, that the damage could be minimized. The piece of paper could have turned into the sofa being on fire, which could have turned into the house being on fire. If that had happened, I can’t imagine the emotional toll Ty and I would have faced.

If you do anything at all in your job, you will occasionally be required to identify or admit problems with your work. But the damage could be negated by admitting the problem sooner than later.

Stamp Control ~

I received a notice that health insurance premiums were increasing yet again, so we decided to get a new policy for Tyler. I made inquiries, chose a provider and after a drawn-out application process, that involved telephone conversations with Ty and lots of faxing back and forth, we finally had a policy in force. Of course the broker said from the beginning, oh no, don’t drop your current policy until we know for sure the new provider has the new policy in-force. Of course the new provider charged us from the initial application date, even though the process took nearly 45 days. sigh… It’s too difficult and time-consuming to get anybody on the telephone these days to make it right.

After getting approved we were then prompted to go on-line to set up payments. I was a bit surprised that paper billing wasn’t even an option. My choices were to allow them to charge my credit card; and for that privilege they would only charge me $10.00 per month. Or, I could allow them to automatically draft my bank account, and there wasn’t an up-charge for that.

I’m not sure why I feel insecure with an insurance company having access to my bank account, but I do. I fret that somewhere in the depths of their detailed paperwork, they’ll somehow create access for my doctors and dentists to reach in and grab their portion. That’s the cynic in me.

Of course I allow my mortgage company and utilities to draft my account. I’m okay with that because they’re fairly constant…I know what to expect from them. But, insurance providers? Their premiums are increasing every time I turn around and it concerns me that I might miss something and there you go…they get to draft my account every month.

Obviously I signed up for the automatic draft since I’m watching my money and the only other option would cost me and additional $10.00 a month for nothing. I sure wish I had the option of the 44 cent stamp.

Old Rules ~

Old rules just don’t work sometimes.

I’d like to think that I have a modern point of view, and what I mean is, that I don’t believe what “we’ve always done” in the past should dictate what we do now. I think we can all agree that the world has changed and is changing so fast that we can’t possibly keep up. But what can we do to keep from falling behind?

Whether it’s our children, our work, or even our marriages, there are modern approaches to the challenges we encounter today. My parents worry about how much our children have in comparison to what they provided for us. This is true I tell my mom, and it is a result of our current culture. I can’t compare my childhood to my parents, and my parents have a difficult time relating to the challenges our children must contend with. So, if culture has changed for our families, what about our work culture? What rules, goals, policies and practices do we hold onto that we might be better off without because it doesn’t fit the needs of the employees or better yet, our customers.

Now more than ever, a companies’ culture is being evaluated by a younger generation of buyers who expect different attitudes, values, goals, and practices. The truth that buyers are getting younger and our industry is getting older makes me think we should re-evaluate how we are meeting the demands of the future.

Maybe we should consider “Young Rules” ~

Social Media…

I’m not sure this is a good thing to admit, but it’s a fact; over 20 years ago, when I began my career in sales, the only item on my desk was a telephone. We didn’t have computers or the internet. How did we locate potential clients? The owners leased a thick reference book that contained local business contact names and addresses. The book also cross-referenced companies by their products or services. It was a valuable tool.

There wasn’t much back then that you could use to hide behind…certainly not the telephone, unless you used it to call your mom or your friends. But then, you weren’t using your time wisely and management frowned upon socializing during work hours.

Of course today everything is different. Our research is now done on the computer and this is more efficient than the thick reference book. Or is it? The challenge now is focus. I can easily research on the computer but the internet is also full of fun and it’s very easy to get distracted and get caught up in the social aspect. Then, 30 minutes later I look up from my monitor and the time is gone.

So, who wouldn’t rather communicate with a friend? And, social media is just that. The really hard work in sales is reaching out to communicate with the people you don’t know, but then, wouldn’t that be called business media?

There is no substitute ~

Equal, equivalent, match, the same…these are all words designers and printers should use carefully.

When you change a file from a Pantone specific color to a CMYK equivalent, there is the misperception that the CMYK equivalent will match the Pantone color. This is just not true, and, the confusion might be a result of the words we are using. There are some Pantone colors that convert well and look nearly the same as their CMYK counterparts, and then there are those that don’t convert well at all.

I’m not sure we should use the words equivalent or match when it comes to proofs or inks or anything that is subject to interpretation by machines or people. Equivalent describes something that is equal in force, amount or value. The term implies that they are interchangeable and that we can substitute one for the other. Equivalent Fractions have the same value, even though they may look different. These fractions are really the same: 1/2 ~ 2/4 ~ 4/8. This is an accurate example of equivalent.

When printers use words like match proofs and CMYK equivalents, what we mean is that we are showing you our best representation of what your digital files look like. The defining line is where art, science and expectations collide.

American Printer ~

As of September 2011, American Printer ceased publication.

This is the last statement in the footnote of the It’s so hard to say goodbye to yesterday blog from the American Printer editor, Katherine O’Brien.

The death of our industry magazine is just another slam on the printing industry and it makes me sad. Don’t misunderstand, I’m just as guilty of not reading this publication as the next. I’m an industry veteran…31 years in printing and I can’t even find the time to support a magazine that covers my industry. There is so much to read, so much to do and so little time to do all the things we want to do. I’m now supposed to be an expert not only in my industry, but the other industries I call on. At least that’s what a lot of the sales gurus are saying. Study, learn, and make the call to the senior marketing managers and prove to them you understand their challenges. Heck, it’s hard to keep up with my own industry challenges. How do I do all that and still support my own? Guess we didn’t and that makes me sad. I think I’ve already said that.

Budgets ~

I have a budget for just about everything…food, clothes, entertainment. I know generally what these things cost, but there are moments, when I’ve found the perfect black slacks, or concert tickets I can’t live without, where I will mentally take from one budget to fulfill the extra costs of something I really~really want.

Budgets are like that with clients too. Bring them a creative idea or a fabulous paper you’ve discovered, and there’s a real chance they will borrow from another budget to produce something they really~really want.

Summer Weather ~

Sometimes the sales team gets teased as we’re heading out to appointments when the weather is glorious. It’s usually a fresh spring morning or a crisp fall afternoon when envy creeps up on the co-workers whose jobs require them to remain inside. But then, there are those days…when monsoon-like rains pummel us, icy roads slow us down, or, like this summer, when triple digit highs go on and on, day after day, zapping our energy. On those days we are not so envied.

It’s been a long hot summer for everyone. The air has been so heavy and oppressive it feels like I’m lugging around 10 extra pounds and at the end of the day. I have to laugh as I head out to yoga where the high temperature of 99 degrees feels good after walking in from a 108 degree parking lot. It’s all relative.

When you compare rain, sleet, snow and triple digit heat to the glorious days, it’s safe to say that outside sales isn’t always easy. Sure, we do get to come and go, but the effort and stress is exhausting. Once you get stuck in traffic for over an hour, or have to walk nearly a quarter of a mile, in heels, in a skirt while trying to arrive sans sweat, or, er…perspiration. There are days when I envy my CSR…

Effortless

Effort is described as the conscious exertion of physical or mental power. It is a serious attempt to achieve a particular goal.

What happens when somebody is so good at what they do that their work appears effortless? Say, a great dancer who is graceful, athletic and has astounding timing. Would you say the physical exertion it takes to dance well is an effort…even when the dancer makes it appear effortless?

Veterans of any industry usually do their jobs at such an efficient level the appearance of effortless can be misleading.

Sam Said:

I was at a client’s office today reviewing proofs and the subject came up about turn-around demands and how fast everybody wants everything. Sam jokingly said it was all McDonald’s fault, more specifically their introduction of super fast service and the drive through window. Today, if we have to wait four or five minutes we’re rolling our eyes and tapping our toes wondering if management has lost control. Where’s our burger and fries?

Maybe that’s why John and I like going to Ambergris Caye, an island off the coast of Belize. For a few days the islanders have to remind us…hey, you’re on island time. Translation: We don’t do anything fast. It’s not that they’re lazy or unconcerned, it’s their technology or lack of what we would consider high-end efficiencies that make their world slower than ours.

So, what’s going to happen when we just can’t do anything faster or we can’t multi-task ourselves into higher efficiencies? Have we gotten to that point yet? I sure hope we’re close. Between tweets and FB friends, e-mails, LinkedIn and too many telephones to count, I’m longing for a place in-between island time and just plain crazy time.

Changes ~

Word is out on the street; things are changing at Ussery Printing.

Change makes most of us uncomfortable, even when it’s for the best. The discomfort arises out of not knowing what will happen next. New people are coming on board from the recent closing of Padgett Printing and we’re full of anticipation to see how we will all work together.

I don’t know a whole lot about the football draft but I can see a correlation when you are talking about recruiting talent. Ussery already has great talent, but the addition of some new people will give us greater depth in our abilities as a team. Isn’t that how it works in sports? If a valuable player gets side-lined or isn’t performing up to par, the other team members pick up the slack?

Over the years we’ve watched many great printers close their doors, from the traditional Heritage Press to the new-age Buchanan Visual Communications, and those are just two of many. Every time a printer fails we have a choice in how we react to the news. I’ve been involved in my share of plant closures and thankfully have always rebounded. Some people have been fortunate to never endure a closing, but the people who can claim that are getting harder to find. It’s humbling when it happens and all the employees deserve our respect knowing how hard they fought, even if their shop closed. Some have spent a life-time in an industry we’re all still struggling to maintain. It’s important to support our own teams, but also let’s unite to support the game.

Winning the Lottery ~

Yesterday afternoon I bought a lottery ticket for a good friend here at work, and I was shocked at my emotions when surprising her with the ticket. I’d considered the possibilities, but what are the real odds anyway of it being “the winning ticket?” But everything screamed in my head…what if THAT ticket, somehow, miraculously, held the winning numbers and I was amazed at how hard it was to give it away. What if my mind kept saying. How do you let go of something that has the capacity to be life changing?

It was, I think, a normal response. Of course I want good things for my friend, but the possibility of that kind of money made me pause and think about this. How would I feel if the ticket held the winning numbers? Would I be crazy mad? Would I be thrilled for her? Would I be considered an idiot by my friends and/or enemies? Enemies you say? We all have them so lets not be naive. What would they say?

That got me to thinking…that there is an imaginary line in the sand for all of us. What you do for a friend is completely different from what you would do for those folks you don’t like. But what if your job is to support people you don’t necessarily like. Would you withhold support that is crucial to their success? It’s a common problem in business that most people won’t admit to, let alone talk about.

Try it. Buy a ticket and give it to a friend. Better yet, buy a ticket and see if you can give it to someone who doesn’t have your best interests at heart.