Gimbel & Associates Blog

Printing projects start with project design but marketers and designers aren’t always up to speed on printing industry developments. Lack of information can cause designers to miss out on exploiting new technologies or create unnecessary expense. Here are some trends and printing operation developments that can affect how creative people design print projects.

Color Choices and Specialty Inks

Printing presses can create only a portion of all possible colors by mixing their four basic inks; cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (CMYK). When colors must be exact, such as in a corporate logo, printers purchase specialty inks or “spot colors” that ink companies pre-mix to exact specifications. Ink companies create the colors according to the Pantone Color Matching System (PMS).

Your Mindset and Approach

You need a strategic mindset and approach to establish

• Making customers, rather than finding This means earning more time with the customer, with an open invitation to continue a dialogue, and with a sincere commitment on the customer’s part to take action.

Though people in the printing industry are in the communication business, they aren’t always personally skilled in the art of information exchange. A brush-up on communication skills can      make a big difference in how customers and others perceive company executives and other personnel, and how effective they are in their print business jobs.

The printing business is awash in advanced technology and automation. One can walk around the trade shows to observe software and equipment everywhere that handles many of the tasks formerly dependent on experienced printing professionals. Automation enables printing companies to produce more work in less time and at lower costs. But that doesn’t eliminate the need for skilled humans to envision solutions, monitor progress, and include new technology in efficient workflows. And legacy equipment still in use at most print facilities will require educated operators.

For quite some time this industry will need talented individuals dedicated to keeping print a viable and valuable means of communicating information-and that’s a problem.

The discussion on business growth for today's commercial printers is highly focused on technology considerations around such topics as inkjet, digital, workflow, and other process and production related concerns.  In our strategic work with commercial printers of all sizes we constantly face a wall that challenges their senior management team. How to focus "On the Business" versus focusing "In the Business?"   Day to day operations absorb the greatest amount of time for senior management.  Where we are going and how important is it if not more so than what happened on the shop floor that day or what order did not get filled?

If you ask print salespeople about the most important things they should bring to a meeting with prospective clients, they might mention items such as print samples, company brochures, or sales pitch slide decks.

Gimbel & Associates interviewed print buyers about their experiences with printing company sales representatives and discovered that many print service providers were using sales approaches anchored in objects like these. Unfortunately, the things that matter the most to the print buyers were often missing from conversations with print service providers courting them for their business.

In our eBook “From the Other Side of the Desk” we provide printing company executives and their sales teams a rare look at the how customers perceive interactions with the sales people who came calling.

Every aspect of our lives is driven by data. The need to protect and secure this data is becoming increasingly critical.

Privacy is becoming a core market differentiator for companies. Businesses need to prove to their customers that they handle data securely and ensure the protection of privacy. 

What constitutes a violation of privacy? It’s not always obvious, and interpretation can vary based on the application, industry, etc. 

Print service providers don’t always mail what they produce for their clients, but when they do, they must be clear about the rules and regulations administered by the US Postal Service. Generating mailings (or even designing mailings) without considering the mailing requirements can blow the client’s budget, cause delivery delays, or depress campaign results. In severe cases the postal service might even reject the mail. Help clients get the most from their investments in printed and mailed communications and generate worry-free mail by being informed about mailing requirements.

A vertical market is a group of similar businesses that has a common set of needs for products and services.  Customers in the same vertical market have the same types of applications, and they often have the same business issues.

Getting to know a vertical market helps you sell because you:   

Customer journeys from awareness to purchase take place in a variety of communication channels. Multiple touchpoints provide opportunities to educate customers, transact business, or entice them to take the next step in the buying process. Some of those touchpoints involve print and others occur in digital environments. Familiarize yourself with your client’s customer journey maps to reveal new revenue opportunities and strengthen your client relationships.

Print service providers are not exposed to all the interactions clients have with their customers and prospects. You may be involved with only one small part of the relationship, such as direct marketing postcards or product brochures. To help your clients achieve their business objectives, you need to know more. Ask your clients to walk you through their buyer journeys to find out how the services you provide correspond with the client’s overall communication strategies.

Focus on the Customer Needs

We can often get so focused on producing the job itself, that we lose sight of WHY a customer is getting the job produced. It’s not because they don’t have enough work to do or that they have extra money to spend. It’s because the job supports a business need.  As you have your consulting conversations with the customer, talk about more than just the job. After all, the “job” is never going to shop with you again… but the customer and the company will.