Sales Strategies

[Cory Smith]

 

[CathieHarris]

For the existing client: "We have your file and we own it. If you go to anybody else, you'll have to pay them to redo it."

 

[Alith7]

"shudders"
that's about all I have to say on that...

 

[michaelejahn]

When everyone quote is higher, go to Mimeo.com or VistaPrint.com - all the people in that cartoon above do not even exist at these companies. You can argue quality all you want, I am not listening nor are many others.

 

[gordo]

You can argue quality all you want, I am not listening nor are many others.

Most printers don't understand what quality actually is - so they don't know how to talk to prospective customers about it, which is hopefully the reason that you're not listening.

Gordo

 

[Alith7]

Most printers don't understand what quality actually is - so they don't know how to talk to prospective customers about it, which is hopefully the reason that you're not listening.

Gordo

Gordo! is there just a touch of sarcasm in there? LOL

 

[gordo]

Gordo! is there just a touch of sarcasm in there? LOL

There might be a touch. Michael J probably knows better and may have been feeling a tad petulant when he made his post.



Gordo

 

[claude72]

Gordo! is there just a touch of sarcasm in there? LOL

No, it's a today's reality!!!

Just look at the files specifications asked by many on-line printers: most of them want pages in JPEG or TIFF in CMYK without profile... this shows that either they are incompetent and ignore most of the basis of printing and quality, or are butchers who make crap-printing volontarily... In both cases, quality is far away to be their main concern!!!


For example:

- look at Mimeo.com files specifications: what quality do you expect from Excel/Word/Publisher files???

- VistaPrint says in their "Printing tips PDF" they prefers PDF, Illustrator files and PSD files (quote: ) "For best results, we recommend using Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop files."... OK for PDF... Illustrator is not a layout software, but can make good (one-page) files if well used by experimented users (that's another story!!!)...
... but what "best results" can you expect from a PSD file??? only crap!!! They also accept all kind of bitmap files: bmp, gif, jpeg, pict, png... even the worst quality with poor numbers of colors: again, that's crap-printing... (and easy money).

 

[MailGuru]

If pricing becomes an issue during a sale, I normally end-up explaining to the prospective customer (not only about printing, but also mail, programming and fulfillment projects): "We are NOT the cheapest in town, but, we ARE the best. If you want it done right with exceptional quality, then we're your best shot. If it's just about the cheapest price where quality and accuracy is not an issue, then, you probably should look elsewhere."

Main Reason: The long-range damage that you will do to your company's reputation by putting out sub-quality, but, inexpensive, work will far outweigh the revenue that you would generate by lowering your standards. In other words, if you have sub-quality pieces circulating out there, other prospective customers who notice will not know, or care, that it is sub-quality because it was cheap, only that it is sub-quality. "Who printed this? I just want to make sure they NEVER print anything for me......."

In instances where we've lost a sale because of this line of thinking, we usually end up getting it back anyway to correct the mistakes that the "cheap" company made, and, sometimes higher than the originally agreed-upon price.

-Best

MailGuru

 

[Deleted member 16349]

The objective should be to produce quality at the lowest price.

That was the view of the Quality Movement. The expected outcome of driving quality up was also reducing operating costs because the effort to reduce the factors that resulted in variation and lack of predictability would also reduce costs. The idea of higher quality requiring more cost is faulty. It should be the other way around.

Just my outdated view.

 

[CathieHarris]

I still go by the old adage: "Inexpensive pricing, quality, quick turnaround: You can have two of them, but not all three."

Probably doesn't work well these days, as my company seems to provide all three (most of the time), but back in the day, that's the way it was. Maybe still is to some extent.

 

[Alith7]

I still go by the old adage: "Inexpensive pricing, quality, quick turnaround: You can have two of them, but not all three."

Probably doesn't work well these days, as my company seems to provide all three (most of the time), but back in the day, that's the way it was. Maybe still is to some extent.

Our shop generally provides all three too. I work pretty hard to make sure our quality stays top notch. even having to but heads with departments heads end the owner sometimes.

And, I was agreeing with Gordo's comment. He just isn't usually prone to such blatant sarcasm. it amused me.

 

[CathieHarris]

It amused me too.

 

[MailGuru]

The objective should be to produce quality at the lowest price.

That was the view of the Quality Movement. The expected outcome of driving quality up was also reducing operating costs because the effort to reduce the factors that resulted in variation and lack of predictability would also reduce costs. The idea of higher quality requiring more cost is faulty. It should be the other way around.

Just my outdated view.

I get what you're saying, and, in some respects, you are correct - in theory (much like college text books).

But, here, in the real world, "higher quality" means slowing down and and paying attention to detail, more QC checks and more frequently.

Here are a couple of "real world" examples of what I am talking about:

(1) When most mail companies postal standardize or "CASS-certify" a customer's mailing list, there will always be a certain percentage of addresses that will not CASS certify (bad addresses). The industry standard for 99% of most mail houses is to simply delete these records from the mailing and continue to process. It's much faster, more productive, and, less expensive. In our case, we take the time to manually correct the bad addresses. It takes more time to do so, and thus, costs more money in production time and labor, and is reflected in our pricing. Our customers know that this "higher-quality" process costs more, but, they appreciate it and are willing to pay a higher price.

(2) We have 6 high-speed digital production presses. NONE of them are equipped with high-capacity stackers that will stack 5 to 10 thousand printed sheets on output. This is by design. For higher Quality Control, our laser operators must remove printed output from the low capacity output trays at a rate of approx 50 to 100 sheets per handful, fan through each group of 50 to 100 sheets, looking for any quality issues (such as speckling, streaking, smudging, poor print quality, etc) as well as any blatant content issues (such as "Dear Mr. G", invalid dates, missing variable data, etc.), and then stack the handful on our stacking tables. This takes more time, increases production cost, but, produces a higher quality product. I guess one could argue that this also reduces cost, as these quality issues are discovered, and corrected, quicker than if they were sitting in the middle of 10,000 sheets in a high-capacity stacker, thus reducing the cost of reprints (if, the shop was conscientious enough to admit that it was sub-quality and commit to re-printing the bad sheets - you'd be surprised at the amount of those who rationalize "hey, it's less than 1% of the run, the customer will never know it, just let it go......."

In short, in the real world, if higher quality actually reduces cost, I should be able to buy a mid-sized BMW at the same, or, lower cost than a mid-sized Kia.

-MailGuru

 

[Deleted member 16349]

I get what you're saying, and, in some respects, you are correct - in theory (much like college text books).

But, here, in the real world, "higher quality" means slowing down and and paying attention to detail, more QC checks and more frequently.

Here are a couple of "real world" examples of what I am talking about:

(1) When most mail companies postal standardize or "CASS-certify" a customer's mailing list, there will always be a certain percentage of addresses that will not CASS certify (bad addresses). The industry standard for 99% of most mail houses is to simply delete these records from the mailing and continue to process. It's much faster, more productive, and, less expensive. In our case, we take the time to manually correct the bad addresses. It takes more time to do so, and thus, costs more money in production time and labor, and is reflected in our pricing. Our customers know that this "higher-quality" process costs more, but, they appreciate it and are willing to pay a higher price.

(2) We have 6 high-speed digital production presses. NONE of them are equipped with high-capacity stackers that will stack 5 to 10 thousand printed sheets on output. This is by design. For higher Quality Control, our laser operators must remove printed output from the low capacity output trays at a rate of approx 50 to 100 sheets per handful, fan through each group of 50 to 100 sheets, looking for any quality issues (such as speckling, streaking, smudging, poor print quality, etc) as well as any blatant content issues (such as "Dear Mr. G", invalid dates, missing variable data, etc.), and then stack the handful on our stacking tables. This takes more time, increases production cost, but, produces a higher quality product. I guess one could argue that this also reduces cost, as these quality issues are discovered, and corrected, quicker than if they were sitting in the middle of 10,000 sheets in a high-capacity stacker, thus reducing the cost of reprints (if, the shop was conscientious enough to admit that it was sub-quality and commit to re-printing the bad sheets - you'd be surprised at the amount of those who rationalize "hey, it's less than 1% of the run, the customer will never know it, just let it go......."

In short, in the real world, if higher quality actually reduces cost, I should be able to buy a mid-sized BMW at the same, or, lower cost than a mid-sized Kia.

-MailGuru

You are doing extra work to remove poor quality. You are not producing good quality. Slightly different.

The idea of the Quality Movement was to try to eliminate the causes of errors and variation and not to remove errors after the fact.

It is great if you satisfy your customers expectations but if a competitor can do that too without producing the errors you have, they may win the race.

Of course if everyone does the same thing, then quality is not the differentiator or the driver to lower costs.

I would also add that it is not easy to find root causes to problems and if no time is available to do that, you have to do what you can.

 

[gordo]

I don't want to be confrontational, however, the responses on this thread (with the exception of MailGuru's) confirm for me that printers don't understand what quality in relationship to printing actually is. "Quality" is such an overused term in this industry, it is also one that is effectively meaningless since it is seldom if ever defined in any practical sense.
When I speak to printers, I try to get them to never use the word "quality" in any internal discussions nor with any customers. This helps them to focus their thinking more effectively on their process as well as define quantifiable and measurable attributes of their print production and sales efforts. (This is what I think MailGuru was trying to describe in his post).
The best definition of "quality" that I've ever seen is Deming's: "Quality is meeting customer expectations." BTW - it is not exceeding customer expectations as that is as much a business failure as not meeting customer expectations.
If you don't meet customer expectations - you go out of business. That is the service side of the equation.
If you don't meet customer expectations at a profit point - you also go out of business. That is the manufacturing side of the equation.

I could go on, but it would take a book to cover it LOL.

best, gordo

 

[michaelejahn]

No, it's a today's reality!!!

Just look at the files specifications asked by many on-line printers: most of them want pages in JPEG or TIFF in CMYK without profile... this shows that either they are incompetent and ignore most of the basis of printing and quality, or are butchers who make crap-printing voluntarily... In both cases, quality is far away to be their main concern!!!
.

@ claude72 - do not mean to pick on you here, but you made a few statements one might disagree with...

so - I would like to debate your point of view.

1. I have not met many Printers ( nor visited many printers web sites ) where they explicitly request ( your words)

"...pages in JPEG or TIFF in CMYK without profile..." - please do share a link to a printers site that does that. Most request PDF pages. If you send a PDF/X file, at least you get an output profile.

2. - this does NOT show that they are "incompetent" - one of our PressWise customer took 3,750 orders from Shutterfly on Monday ( yes, all in one day ! ) - and they were probably images taken with iPhones or cheap digital cameras, and if they did have a profile embedded in the image is was probably sRGB ( which is just fine ) and they printed them and shipped them without touching them and customers were happy - how is that "incompetent" ?

3. Not sure I agree that "Illustrator is not layout software" - most professional package designers use it, and submit the files to their flexo house as an .ai file, as the service provider often needs the layers to process the parts as required.

4. As for PSD files - same holds true - there is NOTHING about a PSD file that would degrade the image, and, in some workflows ( where the PSD file might have a layer named "DIELINE" or "TEMPLATE" - they might include it and have a business relationship with the print service provider where there is an understanding between the two parties.

Vista Print and Mimeo have some rather large corporate accounts.

go to this link and click on;

"Annual Report on Form 10-K for fiscal year 2012"

Vistaprint Investor Relations - Financial Reports

Page three says it all;

"Fiscal 2012 was a solid year for Vistaprint. We grew 25 percent over the prior year, passed the milestone of $1 billion in annual revenue."

Hard to make and argument that they are some 'crappy printer'.

 

[Deleted member 16349]

The best definition of "quality" that I've ever seen is Deming's: "Quality is meeting customer expectations." BTW - it is not exceeding customer expectations as that is as much a business failure as not meeting customer expectations.

I have read this statement of Deming's before and it has always bothered me. I think it needs to be taken in the proper context.

It is a practical statement but if one pushes quality past what the customer expects and it leads to lower operating costs, then exceeding the customer expectations is worthwhile.

How does Deming measure quality? I expect that it is very much related to the reduction of variation and accuracy of the aim point for a specification, applied to the manufacture of parts or to some measure of satisfaction of customers.

There are a lot of views on what quality means but from a manufacturing view point it tends to mean an ability to meet specifications with a statistical variation within tolerance. I guess from a service point of view it means deliver what you say you will at the time you say you will, which the customer perceives as good.

Having quality in the manufacturing operation helps provide the quality in the service to the customer function.

 

[gordo]

I have read this statement of Deming's before and it has always bothered me. I think it needs to be taken in the proper context.

It is a practical statement but if one pushes quality past what the customer expects and it leads to lower operating costs, then exceeding the customer expectations is worthwhile.

I think that you are connecting two things - customer expectations and lowering operating costs - in the context of "quality" that are separate and distinct issues.

Lowering operating costs - while maintaining service and product integrity - is the rightful goal of any business. As a customer (the expectations and quality dimensions) that lowering of costs should probably be invisible.

"Exceeding customer expectations" to me simply means that customer expectations weren't properly defined, communicated, and set effectively in the first place. Actually, the more I think about it the more I think exceeding customer expectations is not even possible. You can meet or fail to meet expectations but I don't think you could exceed them. Maybe you could give me an example of how that would appear?

How does Deming measure quality? I expect that it is very much related to the reduction of variation and accuracy of the aim point for a specification, applied to the manufacture of parts or to some measure of satisfaction of customers.

He was much more holistic than that. This, taken from Wikipedia, gives a bit of insight: "A system is a network of interdependent components that work together to try to accomplish the aim of the system. A system must have an aim. Without an aim, there is no system. The aim of the system must be clear to everyone in the system. The aim must include plans for the future. The aim is a value judgment. The most important figures that one needs for management are unknown or unknowable, but successful management must nevertheless take account of them."

There are a lot of views on what quality means but from a manufacturing view point it tends to mean an ability to meet specifications with a statistical variation within tolerance. I guess from a service point of view it means deliver what you say you will at the time you say you will, which the customer perceives as good.

And at the price you quoted.

But from a service point of view it's not just delivering what you say you will at the time you say you will, and at the price you quoted - it means that it meets my (the customer's) needs, not yours (the supplier's needs). That means that you, the supplier, need to understand what my needs and priorities are for any given project and determine whether you are willing and capable of delivering on those needs.

gordo

 

[Alith7]

"Exceeding customer expectations" to me simply means that customer expectations weren't properly defined, communicated, and set effectively in the first place. Actually, the more I think about it the more I think exceeding customer expectations is not even possible. You can meet or fail to meet expectations but I don't think you could exceed them. Maybe you could give me an example of how that would appear?

gordo

So this is my view on quality. It's not just the level of the finished product, but the level of service that is provided from start to finish. In my shop, that starts with discussing the job with the customer, establishing what the goal of their project is and making sure that the outcome will be what they expect. And. If not. Then we give them options and solutions before we proceed. From there, the files go into prepress and are checked to make sure that they fit the specs of the job and the attention to detail and job specs continues through the rest of the shop until and including delivery. I think too many shops look at quality as defining the final perfect sample to the customer. And my shop does all of this. For every customer large or small. And we have some of the most competitive prices in our area. We are also a quick turn shop.

When this is the level that every job is completed at. And every employee knows/is expected to maintain this level of service, it becomes just what you do. It is not "special". It does not cost extra. It just is.

Gordo- to exceed a customers expectations shouldn't be impossible. In a day to day world where customer service is non-existent, providing good service generally exceeds most people's expectations. To go even beyond that to provide incite and assistance that a customer didn't even know they were lacking takes it further. Exceeding a customers expectations isn't necessarily possible only due to a lack of understanding their needs. But sometimes just providing key little bits of help that others wouldn't or couldn't, or going that extra little bit that you didn't have to to make sure the customer is taken care of can accomplish that too.

--> posting from an iPhone is a pain. If anyone was wondering. LOL