[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:01] DC: Print Buying UKvUSA is a series dedicated to helping printers create stronger, more meaningful, and more profitable relationships with print customers on both sides of the pond. I’m Deborah Corn, Founder of Project Peacock and Principal at Print Media Centr.
[0:00:21] MP: I’m Matthew Parker, the Champion of Print at profitableprintrelationships.com.
[0:00:26] DC: We may not always agree, but that’s when it gets interesting. So, turn up the volume, get out your notepad, and welcome to the program.
[EPISODE]
[0:00:41] DC: Hey, everybody. Welcome to Podcasts From the Printerverse. This is Deborah Corn, your Intergalactic Ambassador. More specifically, we are here today with the UKvUSA podcast, which means, I have my arch-nemesis and sometimes best friend, Matthew Parker on the other end of the microphone. Hello, Matthew Parker.
[0:01:03] MP: Hello, Deborah Corn. How are you today?
[0:01:05] DC: I am good. I am interested and excited about having this conversation. It is something you and I speak about all the time. Why don’t you take it away?
[0:01:17] MP: Okay. Today, we’re going to do sales approaches, the good, the bad, and the ugly. We’re going to split the show into two, and we’re going to do a bit on each, but we’re going to start with the bad and the ugly. Then after, I don’t know, three or four hours of that, we’ve probably got about 10 minutes of the good afterwards. But let’s start with the bad and the ugly, because I think, Deborah, we’ve both seen a bit of that, haven’t we?
[0:01:39] DC: Every day, Matthew. Every single day I’ve got the ugly swarming my inbox, my LinkedIn inbox, and targeted ads too. I’m going to start adding that to the mix of bad sales approaches.
[0:01:55] MP: Yes, totally. I’m going to start off with a little tale about a sales approach I had, and it was a while ago when I was working. Well, that was ages ago. Sales has not improved since. So, this printing company got in touch with me, and I was working at a big magazine publishing company, and we had a magazine, I think it was about 280 pages, and we printed 200,000, it’s a lot.
Anyway, this printing company got in touch and they said, “Oh, hi. Is that, Matthew?” I went, “Yes.” Thinking, “Oh, God. It’s another printing company that’s right.” I went, “Yes.” “Oh, hi. It’s so and so from the XYZ printing company. We just wanted to introduce you to us. We’re really good. We’ve got great service and quality, and I’ve got an A2 press, and I’ve got a copy of this magazine here. I was just wondering if I could do a quote for printing it.” I did have a couple of spare minutes that day, so I decided to give as good as I got. I said, “Yes, I know the magazine. Do you know how many copies we print?” Which they should do, because we were a public company.
Actually, the print run for that magazine was out there as public knowledge, and they went, “No, we don’t.” I said, “Oh, well. Yes, you’ve got an A2 press. This one comes in at 200,000 copies. Do you still want to do a quote for it?” “Oh, yes, please.” At which point, again, “Yes, okay. Well, I think we both know this is not a job for an A2 press, and thank you, and goodbye.”
If I break down that approach, there’s so many things that I thought were wrong with it. First of all, they haven’t done their research on me as a prospect, and they’re ringing up someone who’s in a major company with a lot of print. You’d think they do their research at that point, and yes, I’d give them full marks for optimism. I don’t give them very many marks for anything else. It’s not difficult to find out the number of pages to that magazine, even if it was only 10,000, it was too big for their press.
They should know that someone in my position is not going to use a company of their size to print one of the magazines. Instead, they should have said, “Yet, we understand we’re not going to be on your magazine roster, but you do lots of other prints as well. Maybe we can have a shout at some of that.” Hopefully, they might even search some of it, but none of that. They just went straight for the big prize and lost out, which really pissed me off. Am I allowed to say that on this podcast?
Especially as a very chilled-out, non-conflict-liking British person, but he really pissed me off. That meant that there was no way I was going to consider them again for smaller jobs either. So, that’s one of the things. The other one is, they offered me no reason why they were an interesting printing company. I go on about this a lot in my How To Stop Print Buyers Choosing On Price Masterclass. But every single buyer expects good service from their suppliers, and granted, some services a bit better than others. But how many printing companies do you know Deborah, who’ve actually gone out of business because they offer poor service? The same, they offer good quality print? Well, I should hope so, they’re printers. If you can’t put ink on paper well, then you shouldn’t be in the business.
Again, how many companies that you know that went out of business because they had bad-quality print? A few years ago, 30 years ago maybe, at the beginning of my career. But nowadays, everyone does good-quality print. Then, they were leading with not, we’d like to tell you a bit more about our company and why we’re ideal for the sort of work you do. But they just said, “Can we give you a price for the magazine, please?”
If someone asks me for a quote, three things happen. One of three things happens. One, either I say, “Thanks, but no thanks,” and put the phone down. Or, I go, “Yes, I’ll have a quote please.” Either to keep them quiet or because then, I can use that quote if it’s better. I can use that quote to beat down my current suppliers because I can tell people what the current market rate is like. Or, I can go, “Oh, that’s a nice, cheap price. I’ll go with that.” Yes, that sounds like good news, they’ve won the job.
But if I’m that disloyal as a customer, they’ve got that job for a couple of goes, and then someone else would come along with a cheaper price, and they’ve lost it again. So, being that price-led — they were the ones making about price at that point, not me. Being that price led was bad. So, loads of reasons why I felt that was a poor sales approach. I don’t know your opinions on it, Deborah. Please don’t say you thought it was great.
[0:06:18] DC: No. First of all, I want to point out that there’s the print buyer that only buys on price, and all the printers who got all cringe because you just said, “I’m going to use their quote, I’m going to waste their time, waste their estimators time, get a quote. and push my other vendors down in pricing.” That’s the guy you want to go after all the printers at the procurement person. I’m just saying, that’s your job, that’s what you’re supposed to do, and there’s nothing wrong with it. But not all print buyers function that way. Your job was specifically related on being a cost center in a lot of ways, not a profit center. You’re a cost center.
I would say that, first, congratulations, they knew you printed a magazine. At least they knew that, which is a lot better than what I get, which is, “Hey, Deb. What you got coming up that we can bid on?”
[0:07:11] MP: Yes.
[0:07:12] DC: Well, back when I was a print buyer, to tell you the truth, sometimes I would have stuff for them to bid on if they just got me at a good moment. Part of that too was, at least when I first started, printers used to just show up at your door, and come and sit at your desk, and have conversations with you. It’s very handy, by the way. Now, that certainly doesn’t happen, but at least they knew you were printing a magazine. So, I think that they did something correct. But I know that you want to handle it in sections, so I will ask your permission for this because you are leading this podcast. If you’re okay with it, I would just like to talk about something they could have done, if that’s okay.
[0:07:56] MP: Sure. Yes. Absolutely.
[0:07:59] DC: What I like to call it is, holes in the wine list. So, whether or not they were able to or understood that there was a way for them to find out how many magazines you’ve printed, which I didn’t know that you could, by the way. So, I just learned that from you.
[0:08:17] MP: You can’t with all companies, but yes, you could.
[0:08:18] DC: I’m just saying, I would never even think that that would be public information. So, that’s good to know that in certain cases, people can go to that depth of research. I would say, if you’re looking for that, that’s a great piece of advice for Matthew Parker. But, let’s assume that I, the position I take, which is, the minute I hear a printer say, “We’ve got better pricing service and quality than your current suppliers.” I take that as a personal attack on my ability to make decisions. You’re basically saying, I can’t choose vendors, and you’re telling me you’re better, but do you even know who I print with?
Putting that conversation to the side. Matthew and I feel differently about it. I have an emotional response to that, which is, how do you know? Don’t start off with, I’m the problem here because I’m not choosing you, so therefore, if I only knew about you, I might choose you. Which, by the way, could be true. But that approach doesn’t work for someone like me, and most of the time, it doesn’t work for somebody in advertising agencies, because we hear it all the time.
What I would say is that, if you have that magazine in your hand, which seems like the gentleman who got in touch with you did. What are they not doing in that magazine? Are there no customer reply postcards in there? Are there no inserts? Are all the covers static? Maybe they could have used their technology to only print the covers and make them different colors, or collective items, or come back to you with a, “Hey, we see you have this amazing magazine, but there was nothing about subscription in it, or a way for people to get in touch.”
Sometimes some of the lifestyle magazines are attached to products, or vacations, or resorts, or things like that. Like, here’s a way that we can help you improve whatever the potential results are that that publisher would want for that magazine. Is it more subscriptions? Is it more people using the products and services? Is it more people visiting the web pages of the content? What is the goal of that magazine? Which is the first thing I would say is the salesperson should understand, and we’ve spoken about this before. Let’s have a new business meeting, not a sales meeting. I want to understand your goals. I want to understand what you want to do with it.
Then, go in with a conversation about what they’re not doing, which should be interesting to any print customer, whether they do it or not. In this particular case, you didn’t feel that the printer could actually execute because they didn’t have the right size of equipment. Now, that doesn’t mean that they don’t have partners or sister organizations that maybe could have done it. Just saying, a benefit-of-the-doubt thing, but you’re not even going to get there if you’re having a conversation with someone who you happen to know is mentioning a press that’s never going to work for you. But if they can print that magazine, and they have brought you a new idea or a way to make that magazine more successful, why wouldn’t you also just print the magazine with them too?
But the customers, in my opinion, have to come to their own decision around that, based upon another conversation we’ve had before; customer convenience, customer loyalty, customer satisfaction, user customer experience. If all of that is established upfront, that you’re just here to help me with things I might not be aware of possible, or want to understand why I’m not doing something, or if I can help you do it in a more efficient way. If, to your point, I’ve done the research, and I know you’re not doing it as efficiently as possible, instead of just guessing or suggesting that it could be better. I might have spent six months finding the most automated place with the most sustainable equipment and the processes, and I’ve gotten this printer approved, or in other cases, the customer told us we have to use these printers. Then, it’s a closed door, “I don’t want to ever speak to you again, because you’re not actually adding any value to my world.” So, that’s what I would say about all of that.
[SPONSOR MESSAGE]
[0:12:41] DC: Are you looking to elevate your game, take your bottom-line customer relationships, and events to the next level? Then, I want to work with you. I’m Deborah Corn, the Intergalactic Ambassador to the Printerverse. I engage with a vast, global audience of print and marketing professionals across all stages of their careers. They are seeking topical information and resources, new ways to serve their customers and connect with them, optimize processes for their communications and operations, and they need the products and services and partnership you offer to get to their next level.
Print Media Centr offers an array of unique opportunities that amplify your message and support your mission across the Printerverse. Let’s work together, bring the right people together, and move the industry forward together. Link in the show notes. Engage long and prosper.
[EPISODE CONTINUES]
[0:13:41] MP: I think that’s great. Actually, you’ve segued nicely into the second half for me. I’ll come back to that in a little bit. But I do think that people who are ringing up, blindly hoping that they might get a bit of work from the wrong type of company are making themselves an awful lot of work and generally making themselves quite unpopular at the same time. So, one of the things I used to do whenever I got printers approaching, I sort of do is, “Yes. Tell me what your sweet spot is. What do you think that you produce particularly well, or particularly competitively, or what do you like to specialize in? Tell me.” So many just said, “I will print anything for anyone.”
At that point, I’ve lost interest, because if you’re a jack of all trades and master of none, there’s rarely a space for you. As soon as someone says, “Actually, what I really like to produce, Matthew, is these types of flyers. If you’ve got this size, this color fall on it, and this sort of run” that’s where you’re going to get a good price from me. Well, you know where you are in the market, and I’m likely to give you a price to try that out.
Equally, if they go, “Well, what we’re really good at is special finishes,” and start to talk to them about that. Then, maybe we’ve got a conversation going. Or, I can go, “Actually, you know what? I brilliantly do all those special finishes. I never do any special finishing whatsoever. So, let’s not waste our time talking to each other at this point. Go and find someone who is.” But so often, people don’t choose a target audience. They don’t think about who they want to speak to. They just have a long list of random numbers that they give a generic cookie-cutter message to.
[0:15:16] DC: I just want to point out to the listeners that one of the reasons why this podcast is really valuable is because, if you just heard the responses that Matthew and I gave, he’s still focused on price. That was his job. I’m focused on adding value. How could you make my life better? Whether it’s because I’m going to bring a new idea to the creative department, or you’ve helped me do something faster. Again, what are my particular goals with that piece of print?
Somewhere, you might have some customers that are price-focused. Then, what Matthew’s saying is super important. You might have other customers who need a little more hand-holding. I will say, we do need a little more hand-holding in the advertising space, in the marketing space, because we tend to want to push the boundaries a little more. So, that’s a great idea, but we can’t do it that way, we can do it this way, which is why collaboration is so important. Yes, there’s a price to that. But in my world, that can be a secondary consideration sometimes, as long as the outcome is the creative thing that we wanted. So, I thought that our differences were really illustrated in that response. So, I just wanted to point that out.
[0:16:40] MP: Okay. Thank you. In my defense, I don’t always buy on price. I do sometimes.
[0:16:44] DC: No, it’s not a defense thing. By the way, in your defense too, sometimes I had to buy on price too. It was like, “This is the budget for this. Make it happen.” That was it. There was sometimes I would say to my printers, “Look, I’m begging you. Just do it for this price now and we’ll work it out as we go along. Somehow, that’s completely legal and above board, but I need you to do this for me, or I can’t do it with you, and I’m going to go to 1-800, get me something right now at this price.”
[0:17:19] MP: I think it’s also worth pointing out. There’s a difference between price and cost. I still do some buying for companies, where I’ll go in on a consultative basis, and I’ll help them look at their printing if they haven’t got that expertise. Typically, not always, but typically, I will save a company around about 30% of their print spend. Now, I’m not doing that by going out and beating printers up on price. What I am doing is I’m looking at the specification. I’m looking at how they do things. Have we got too many people? Could they automate some of what they’re doing in-house? I’m looking at, have they got their business cards being printed by someone who’s got a super big press, or have they got their brochures being printed by somebody who’s got a super small press? Could we do it more cost-effectively by putting it in a better supplier?
There’s all sorts of ways that I look at how people are buying print, and yes, I will challenge people on price sometimes. But actually, the biggest savings I find typically are in cost. Printing is so competitive now that you go out to two similar suppliers for the same product, and you’re not going to get that much variation in price. But you are going to get a huge variation if you suddenly change the specification, or if you go out to someone who’s got a different press and is more suited to that job. So, that’s part of my job. I think it’s an important thing to say, and sometimes, you’re quite right.
One project I worked on a couple of years ago, the client had a very important set of ethics within their company, because it was what their product was based around. They could not use a supplier no matter how brilliant they were, how cheap they were, whatever it was, unless they had certain elements within their company policies that would comply with those ethics. Brilliance, that’s a job after my own heart.
[0:19:16] DC: That’s going to become more and more into play as more of the Gen Zs have buying power, which they’re very close to having right now. Somehow, in people’s minds, we still think of them as like in high school and stuff. But the older end of them is like 25, 26 years old now. I mean, they will soon have budgets or already have, and they’re certainly learning, and they care more about these things. Okay. Go ahead.
[0:19:46] MP: You better learn how to connect with Gen Z, because it’s not going to be with the sales email or a cold call. So, that’s a whole load of other things you need to start thinking about.
[0:19:55] DC: Just make sure that you’re mindful and demure when you do it.
[0:19:58] MP: I’m always mindful and demure, Deborah, as you.
[0:20:00] DC: It’s a TikTok thing, so you’re not paying attention to the Gen Zs if you don’t know that. Go ahead. It’s all the rage now.
[SPONSOR MESSAGE]
[0:20:10] MP: Do you need some direction or new ideas for your business? Would sales goal setting and accountability improve your revenues? Or do you have a member of staff who could be performing better?
I’m Matthew Parker, the Champion of Print at profitableprintrelationships.com, and I offer a personal mentoring service. Together, we work out exactly what you need. We create a personal mentoring program for you, and then we speak twice a month. You get set goals and action points to make sure you progress.
What makes me different is that I’m the buyer. I’ve been approached by over 1,400 different printing companies, so I know what works and I know what doesn’t. If you’d like to find out more, go to profitableprintrelationships.com, click the training tab, and then go to mentoring. Or alternatively, just hit me up on LinkedIn. I look forward to working with you.
[EPISODE CONTINUES]
[0:21:03] MP: We’re moving on to the second half of what we’re doing now, and that’s going to be the good that we’ve seen in print sales. I’m going to lead with one example, and again, like a while ago, but it really stuck in my mind. Again, I was working at the magazine publishing company, and I got a call from a printer. They said, “Oh. Hi, Matthew, we’re a printer, but I don’t want to print your magazines.” Okay. You’ve now got my attention because, yes, so many people ring up, and going, “Can I have a massive multimillion-pound magazine printing contract?” You realize that’s not for you, and it’s a different sales approach. You’ve won another 30 seconds of my time before I put the phone down on you.
They said, “Actually, what we do is we focus on companies that have a subscription business, and we know that you’ve got a big subscription element to the magazines that you’re publishing.” Good, they’ve done their research. “We like to work with people with subscriptions. Typically, we can find that we can reduce the cost of their subscription renewals, but we also raise the rate of subscription renewals at the same time.” At that point, my brain is kind of going, “Okay. So, what are you doing? What are you saying a good rate for subscription renewals is? Can you really raise my subscription renewals? What are you saying about costs? Am I missing a trick here? Yes, come and talk to me more.” They got a meeting because I needed to find out all that stuff.
The couple of lessons I learned from there is, first of all, what was really interesting was, they didn’t talk about print. I mean, they’ve got a nice printing press. I’m sure they’ve got great service, great quality, all that sort of stuff. But the only time they mentioned print was at the beginning, when they said, “I’m a printer and I don’t want to print your magazines.” After that, the conversation was all about our business and how they could help the business.
I mean, yes, I knew they were a printer. I knew there must be some print involved, but I didn’t actually know what they were going to offer. They weren’t going, “Hey, we can do some cut-price flyers for you for your renewals or anything like that.” They were going, “Yes, we’ve got some systems that we use, some processes, and we’d just like to come have a meeting and tell you a bit more about them.”
The other thing they were doing was, they were focusing on my pains, even though I didn’t know I had them until they rang up, and not on features and benefits. So, so many printers ring up and go, “Hey, we’re brilliant, and we could do this better, and that better.” One printer used to ring me up. We did a magazine about guitars, and he was a keen guitarist, so he got the magazine, but his company didn’t print it, which he was most annoyed about, because they needed to pay for the magazine rather than get a free copy from the printer. But he would ring up every issue and go, “Yes, you’ve got a little problem on this page, and I think the colors out slightly here.” I, “For goodness sakes, it’s a commercially printed magazine. There’s going to be a few kinds of errors and things in there. That’s the way it goes. I don’t have an issue with that.”
Stop trying to tell me you can do it a little bit better because you’re just beginning to annoy me every month to do a bit more about that. What you said earlier, that was very much making it all about me and my decisions. So, this printer, we’re not saying how they could do things better. They weren’t saying, “Hey, we’ve got brilliant services, we got brilliant quality. We’ve got these presses. We’re near this motorway.” All the things that printers normally say, which I kind of either take for granted, or don’t care about, or I’ll find out about later on.
They were focusing instead on, actually, we can normally help people like you to improve their business results. Okay. That’s a bit like when I go to the doctor and they’re going, “You know, you might not be quite as fit as you think you are. You need to come in for a checkup, and you need to get this checked out.” I’m going, “Okay. I need to check out my subscription rate, and renewal rates. Can they be better?” That’s exactly what you were saying earlier on. What’s the hole in my wine list?
[0:24:53] DC: Yes. Also, approaching it as a business meeting and not as a sales meeting. Let me hear directly from, “Look, these are things I can improve for you. We believe it can be improved. Let’s just have a conversation about that.” To your point, most excellent point, the next thing you did was went and did research on all of that, so you could have an intelligent conversation when they came over to tell you how they could improve upon that. Which, of course, makes you look better in your job.
I have an interesting story. I’ve told it before, but it’s always worth telling about something that’s a little crazy, but we have different worlds. I was working actually in the procurement department of L’Oreal for Redken Fifth Avenue specifically, and they had a pool of vendors that were vetted by L’Oreal, and those were the only vendors we could use. But within those pool of vendors, we would triple bid with the vendors that were approved for L’Oreal. So, there had to be triple bidding, there was no price fixing, or anything like that going on, obviously. But we couldn’t go outside of this pool of vendors.
If we had to go outside, my God, the process, but they really did not. It wasn’t really me that had to do. It was like the injection molding people, because, sometimes hair products go into packages with injection molding. It wasn’t me. I was doing window clings for all, and sort of like the stuff they handed out at the salons where they sold the products, or their own salons, or the department stores. It was a lot of print, is what I’m saying.
One of the approved vendors was Sandy Alexander, who’s a very – the advertising people know that printer. It’s one of the – we associate creativity with them.
[0:26:52] MP: [Crosstalk 0:26:52]
[0:26:55] DC: I’m just saying, we associate, like they can handle us. We are different beasts with our budgets, and that’s the whole point. I get my triple bid, and at that point, I really wanted to work with Sandy Alexander because I hadn’t had a chance prior. I mean, there was other work going on, but I wasn’t the one who had ordered it. This job was, I mean, the quantity, I don’t remember, but it was like a very high quantity of window clings for, “Hey, we have Redken Fifth Avenue products in here,” whatever it might have been.
I get my triple bids back. Two of them are within a normal, decent range of each other, which, to your excellent point, your triple bids usually should be in range. If one is out of range, that’s the one I always call, because I’m like, there must be a problem. Maybe I didn’t give the specs correctly or something like that. I always think I am the one that caused the problem, by the way. But more than likely, you find out to the point you made before, they don’t really have the best equipment for that job. So, either they have to farm something out, and that’s what adds cost to it.
By the way, if you’re a buyer, pick up the call and find out what is wrong, why is that outlier out there. By the way, that outlier could be the one that actually read your estimate really carefully, and they’re correct, and everyone else is wrong. So, you never know what’s going on there. I always contact that person. In this case, so Sandy Alexander was out of range, Matthew. I mean, out of range to a point where I just couldn’t justify to the powers to be, why we were going with that.
I call Sandy Alexander, and I’m like, “Hi, this is Deborah Corn. I’m calling from L’Oreal, Redken Fifth Avenue.” They’re like, “Uh-huh.” I’m like, “I want to find out why you’re so at a range. I really want to work with you, but I need you to be within this range or as close as possible.” They were like, “No.” I was like, “I’m sorry. What? Let me start again. My name is Deborah Corn. I’m calling from L’Oreal, Redken Fifth Avenue.” They’re like, “Yes, we heard you.” I’m like, “I don’t understand. I want to work with you. I need you to help me get you into this range so I can send you this work.”
They were like, “Yes. We stand by our estimates. They are not just considered for the material costs. It’s the expertise of our staff. It is the quality of the things that we use. It is making sure that there are no mistakes. We have proofreaders.” I mean, all of the other things that came into that estimate were not just, “This is the price of paper, we mark it up this much.” They were like, “Uh-uh.” They’re like, “Thank you so much for reaching out to us, but we stand by our pricing.”
I hung up the phone, and I sat there, and I was like, one day I will be worthy of printing at Sandy Alexander. Worthy, worthy, Matthew. One day, maybe they will accept my job. I don’t want anyone to think it was ridiculously expensive. It was just out of a range that I could justify. Even if it’s $500 and the other ones are within 20 of each other, I can’t justify that. It sounds ridiculous, but you can’t.
[0:30:35] MP: Absolutely. You can’t.
[0:30:37] DC: You can’t. You cannot justify it. It’s fine. Okay. Sometimes you can with shipping, if shipping – let’s just say, it was all apples to apples at that point. I happened to tell that story at a presentation at Dscoop, and the head of Sandy Alexander was in the audience, and he was just like, “This was the best story I ever heard.”
I felt that to this date, this is still the best sales approach I’ve ever had, even though it wasn’t an approach. They were basically saying to me, “L’Oreal shmoriel, we work with all the brands, and you’re not going to get any juice or be able to bully us into a lower price.” Which by the way, that’s a pretty big mallet if you’re working for a giant advertising agency to get doors opened and get what you want.
I mean, I was used to – not at L’Oreal because, again, they had a vendor pool, but at advertising agencies, my God. I would pit them against each other. I mean, anything I had to do, not necessarily on price, but to get what I want when I wanted it, including the paper I wanted. I didn’t care, would have to go drive to the mill and get it. Who’s going to rent the car and get it for me is the one who’s going to get this job. We don’t have to, “I need that specific seed paper. Someone go make it for me.”
Say no sometimes, and standing by your values, by your staff, by the all you do to ensure I don’t have to reprint, or, there’s always money to reprint, right? But spend a little more to make sure you don’t have to. To this day, I still hold them in a different regard than anybody else, but it is also because, throughout my career, I rarely heard no, unless it was just like, “This is a job for a web press and we don’t have one.” That was literally the only time I would hear no. Otherwise, they didn’t care what they had to do to get my job because they thought they were going to get the rest of my $80 million budget, or whatever it might have been.
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[0:32:50] DC: News from the Printerverse delivers topical sales and marketing insight along with plenty of printspiration one time a month to inboxes everywhere. Our contributors cover the industry and the future of print media and marketing with strategy for strengthening your customer relationships, better targeting of your prospects, and practical advice for helping your business grow. Printspiration is just a click away. Subscribe to News from the Printerverse at printmediacentr.com. Print long and prosper.
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[0:33:26] MP: I agree. I think no definitely encourages respect from buyers. If someone just goes, “Yes, I’ll drop my price. How much?” Then, I’m a buyer, I’m just going to go for as much as I can at that point. You give me something, I’ll carry on going again, and again, and again, trying to get more, and more, and more. Until I’ve got you white-faced, shaking, pouring sweat on the floor, going, “No, please. I really can’t go any lower.”
At that point, you might get the job. I mean, I cover all this in my negotiation training. It’s a straight-line negotiation. You’re giving nothing to negotiate with. It becomes just purely on price because you’re throwing nothing else in. I always, always, if someone is trying to negotiate with me, the first thing I come back with is, “What’s in it for me?” You better have a reason as to why you want me to reduce my price. If I’m doing training courses, people do try and move price with me.
Sometimes, there’s a reason why I might move price. If they are able to do it on a time when I’m particularly quiet, if they’re going to give me a lot of training, if they can share things with me that might be useful. So, if it’s an organization and I can get more emails out to their members about what I’m doing. There’s reasons why I might. But generally, I have to come up with those ideas as well. It’s very rarely the other person who does.
If you’re going to give way on price, have something you want in return because that slows that straight-line negotiation now. But know, it’s very powerful, and it might lose your job, but it gets you respect, it gets you remembered, and quite often, unless it’s pure commodity print, you’re in with a reasonable shout the next time as well. So, it’s a great story.
I’m going to finish up with one more story because I really like this one. This was a local printer to me, not a big printer. They got in a wide format press. What they did at this point was, they created a really big presentation folder. Most presentation folders are A4. This one was somewhere between A4 and A3. They just posted that to their key clients, going, “Look at what we can do that most people can’t. We can produce these really big presentation folders” and it looked great. It’s a sort of thing that gets remembered. You may get some orders for those folders, but equally, and actually, we go, “Oh, that’s really nice. I’m not doing one like that, but I wonder if they can do X, Y, Z, instead.”
Often, those unusual samples, if they’re done well, and often they’re not, but if they’re done well and creatively, they will get you a conversation, and it may just win you the straight vanilla print, but it does get you that conversation going. That was one I liked, and I still remember that folder. Yes, the postman had to knock because it wouldn’t fit through my letterbox. Yes, that’s a good sign that suddenly it’s being placed personally into my hands at that point, and it costs them a bit more to post it, and all the rest of it. But it was a really nicely done thing, and I remember it several years on.
[0:36:35] DC: Real last thing. Just tell everybody about your eBook about how to stop buyers buying on price, and then we’ll wrap this up.
[0:36:44] MP: Okay. Despite Deborah saying, I always buy on price, I’ve written the book, How to Stop Buyers Choosing on Price.
[0:36:49] DC: By the way, I sat in on Matthew’s workshop once just to take a few pictures on social media. How long did I stay? Three hours or something like that.
[0:36:56] MP: Three hours, yes. You did the whole course.
[0:36:59] DC: I did. I was like, “This is the best course.” I hope everybody knows, I would not be saying that if it wasn’t true, but I really sat there for three hours and I didn’t have to. I could have left any time I wanted.
[0:37:08] MP: Yes. It was great having Deborah there, and she was a very good delegate in the course as well. Added a lot of value to people and took full part. I hope you’ll be over in the UK and come on another workshop at some point with me. But yes, so I’ve written the book, I do the masterclass, which I can deliver either live if you’re in the UK, or I could deliver by Zoom, in stage processes if you’re over in the USA. It’s one that I get.
If you look at my blog, you’ll find quite a lot about this. I basically taught around something called the TPD principle, and you can find out all about that on my blog. I’ve also got the free book, which is Ten Common Print Selling Errors and What to Do About Them. We’ll put a link in the notes, or just find it on my website at profitableprintrelationships.com. If you’re interested in the negotiation side of things, I’ve written the book and done the training on that as well. So, just reach out to me. You can find me on LinkedIn easily enough, and go, “Hey, Matthew. Tell me more.” I’m going to have a quick conversation about it, and I might even give you a free negotiation tip as well.
[0:38:04] DC: Excellent. Look at you, giving away things for free, Matthew Parker. Also, just want to remind people that Matthew and I have a really informative and engaging library of content under this podcast, UKvUSA. Please go back. I mean, to Matthew’s point, sales hasn’t really changed. Customer relationships haven’t really changed. People have new needs, but the way that you engage with them or want to sell with them might have subtle nuances to it. But at the end of the day, I refer to it as when a need and a relationship meet. But we discussed that and how to be more targeted on the approaches in the content that we create here. So, go back and listen to some podcasts. Just do a random, just click on the aggregated link of all of our things. Randomly scroll, and push one, and listen. I just want to thank everybody for their time and attention. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. Until next time, everybody. Print long and prosper.
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[0:39:12] DC: Thanks for listening to Podcasts From the Printerverse. Please subscribe, click some stars, and leave us a review. Connect with us through printmediacentr.com, we’d love to hear your feedback on our shows and topics that are of interest for future broadcasts. Until next time, thanks for joining us. Print long and prosper.
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