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Maybe the missing piece is increasing sales and therefore revenue. If lean is adopted as a defensive strategy the only metric is reduced headcount. One way to frame the problem facing printing firms can be seen as decreasing cost in a shrinking market. But, if lean is seen as re investing in...

I also agree. I'm not sure I would blame marketing departments though. They don't have any time to think either. They're frightened by whoever is the next up in the food chain. They lord it over printers cause they have a hard time getting respect from their bosses. Anyway, that's why I've...

That's exactly why designers should Not Try to Do This at Home. I fear the real underlying problem is the conventional wisdom of printing companies. In my humble opinion, it's driven by the fear of screwing something up. Better to produce "good enough"stuff...as long as they don't have the...

When I was teaching production to designers, we were pushing them to work in RGB mode for images. Stay away from the mode button. Give your printer RGB. The big problem was that almost every printer the students talked said they required CMYK files...:)

What about if you work RGB than convert to CMYK at the last step?

i'm not a hands on technician so this may be dumb. But isn't there a switch in PS that allows you to adjust the amount of GCR?

Guilty as charged. I am a senior. I aqree that duotones or even quad tones with four different blacks is the optimal way to go. Problem is that it's become pretty hard to find two color or 4 color black printing processes. A couple of years ago I did a tri tone with stochastic screening that...

My experience is that it can make a significant difference. The problem is that it's tricky to get the curves right. And when you are on uncoated stock is even worse. Then you have to know that the grey balance is pretty under control in the printing process. If you have the time to do some...

The problem I have with this approach is two fold. First, it depends on dis incentives as opposed to incentives, as in with sticks and carrots. I think this falls on the stick side. I've found that carrots is a much more sustainable approach. I would vote for comp for CSR's, instead of a cap...

Exactly. And nicely said to boot.

All points very well taken. Maybe the sales person of the future will be more like a business development person. Invent new markets! Build the brand on the web and in networks! Now that is a job that could attract the best and the brightest... and give a career path to everyone in the shop...

My take is the cross pollination is a non starter. The skill sets, personalities and personal motivation of sales people are completely different from those of really great production people - either pre-press, presswork and finishing. I think a much more reasonable approach is to recognize...

Actually I agree with you on this one. "No one is paying to have lunch or go golfing". The thing is that customers no longer want any of those things. Who has the time? My experience tells me the less time the sales person takes from a customer. The better, the customer service. It may have...

Hi Oscar, Can't really help with the question you asked , but... You might want to consider approaching international companies that are doing business in or near your market. Any big brand that is producing print advertising for your local markets might be open to a local source of...

Hi I'm a newbie and have been looking through the forums. I forget which one but I found this: "Our sales schleps are so lazy that they don't even call the client to get printing specs anymore... just send the files to prepress and have them preflight it and tell us what's on the disk...

no problem about the quick reply. I have PrintPlanet on my RSS feed at Google reader Although this may seem like shameless self promotion, I think in this context it's ok. I have a blog about selling printing that you might find interesting from time to time. It's at dr druck's selling print...

My two cents... the thing about printing is that it is not sold. It is bought. The trick is to be "top of mind" when the buying event is about to happen. I ran a program about ten years ago that worked pretty well in the insurance business - identifying and selling to high value clients. It...

I've seen the same thing you do.. About underpricing to get the work. But....if you look at from the marginal cost point of view, it might be that the overhead costs are being absorbed by a certain volume. Then the marginal cost is very, very low. It's like the "long tail" that is a buzz du...

Thomson makes a good point. But... the problem is that all in costs for digital prints are even harder to figure out than offset. Since so much of the real cost is "overhead" , it's really hard to figure out the marginal costs after a break even point. If it were me, I would focus on the...

The conventional wisdom is that decisions are motivated by greed and fear. That's behind all the ROI blah, blah, blah.. My take is that changing what has worked in the past is not about greed. If greed were operative, they probably wouldn't be in the fix they are in. For every big decision in a...