Sales vs Production: Sales strikes back!

[Michael Josefowicz]

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. Refresh my memory, but what the hell does a sales rep actually do? They don't pick up files anymore, they don't deliver proofs now that their atrophied brains have figured out what a PDF can do, they don't do press checks unless they're right after lunch which is usually when they drag their lazy carcasses into work, and they don't deliver the printing when it's done! Call me crazy, but I think I could do that too!"

I spent 30 years as a Sc*&mbag printing broker, so I've seen this attitude, not stated so honestly, again and again and again. It's the old sales/production thing.

Now that I have a little time, and this forum sounds like real people solving real problems, i think it's time to strike back.

So . . . dear friends in production:
The sales process and the sales and CSR's who manage that process are the only people who bring in money. Everyone else is spending money. Sorry, but that "lazy sales schleps" are paying everyone's salary.

Then us revenue generators have to listen to sutff like:

"They don't pick up files anymore, they don't deliver proofs now that their atrophied brains have figured out what a PDF can do, they don't do press checks unless they're right after lunch which is usually when they drag their lazy carcasses into work, and they don't deliver the printing when it's done!"

This is a salespersons job? They have to find customers, then develop trust with someone who naturally doesn't trust them, then they have to respond in a heartbeat to some finicky designer or marketing persons ridiculous requests then they have to go back to the shop and take all kinds of guff from PRODUCTION. Then they have to pick up files, deliver files, do press checks and deliver printing?"

Give me a break

In a well run shop, the sales people hunt, the sales people and CSR's manage the relationship and the production people produce.

If we all did our jobs, and stopped the blaming and the whining, it would be a better world all around.

Meanwhile, be very careful what you wish for....
as in
"A state-of-the-art web based quoting, ordering, proofing, job status and customer to company interface that client's ENJOY using, instead of a web site with hours of operation, a phone number and how many years in business. Cut out the sales people and hire a cute college intern with nice legs for the occasional delivery (Salaried position of course. Male intern in San Francisco.) and watch the profits soar!

Or, to cut costs even more, forget the cute intern and just find a chimp with a suit. At least the client's will understand WHY their sales rep doesn't know jack $#@%!"

How many pre press people or production people do you need in this scenerio? How about a totally web based transparent system with bar codes for work processes? and real time information about where in the process the job is and when it will go to the next step and when it will be delivered. And how about real QC that reliably produces what every one is being paid to produce? What about an end to the silly production mistakes that take a profitable relationship that took three years to build, destroyed in a day, becuase somebody didn't do their job?

Not for nothing...I'm just saying.

 

[RUsure]

Sales vs. Production . . .

Sales vs. Production . . .

. . . I think that the Production gripe stems from the "be careful what you wish for" part of the previous post. The "totally web based transparent system with bar codes for work processes", etc. vs. the "respond in a heartbeat to some finicky designer or marketing persons ridiculous requests" is the battle. It is Prepress that has to de-code the bits & pieces of variance inherent in any job. And, put up with the psyche-numbing perception that their skills can be easily replaced by a "simple" web-based system.
In a perfect LEAN environment, every job could/would be pigeon-holed into a narrowly-defined end-product. With time & materials being used in a squeakily efficient manner . . .
Then the Salesperson's opposite-number would also be the "chimp in a suit" that could be trusted to fill out the job order/request online & the Salesperson's commission/bonus would be paid, oh, so quickly.
Oftentimes, it just seems that a Salesperson will toss a brownpaper bag full of jigsaw puzzle pieces on the table & expect it to be produced next day. And to a Prepress person, the potential for missing & ill-shaped pieces is the norm - and the questions cannot be answered by a "layperson".
Obviously, Sales brings in the paying (hopefully) jobs, and the Prepress folks do not (hopefully) have to deal extensively with clients. But, a little cross-pollination of skills & understanding between Sales & Production is necessary, because Sales (& print buyers) - you know you want to be the hero in the suit that "got the job done in no time". Not the dreary solver of problems, with the Golden Gate Bridge stretching before you, in need of paint (again) . . .

 

[Mike Bishop]

What do customers pay for?

What do customers pay for?

I agree with your comment, "If we all did our jobs, and stopped the blaming and the whining, it would be a better world all around." A printing company is a team, and all members must complete their duties efficiently for the company to prosper and grow.

However I totally disagree with your comment, "The sales process and the sales and CSR's who manage that process are the only people who bring in money. Everyone else is spending money. Sorry, but that lazy sales schleps are paying everyone's salary." Our customers are paying for a product, and that product is created by the production staff of the company. No one is paying to have lunch with the sales staff, no one is paying to go golfing with the sales staff, they are paying for printed material, which sales and the CSRs do not create. The product of a printing company is printed material, not manufactured friendships with the sales department.

There are plenty of printing companies that do not use traditional sales reps, but have instead turned desktop operators into a mix of CSR/desktop/sales. The worker takes a call generated from web advertising, takes the order and files, and produces the finished product. Voila! No sales rep needed. And this model can work for some companies. How does this company make money? According to your statements this company should only be spending and losing money since there are no SALESMEN to pay everyone's salary. Instead these types of production models are becoming more common, and they make money in the absence of a dedicated sales staff.

As you stated we need to all do our jobs. This includes sales people learning something about the process that creates the work that they sell. I am a Pre-press manager and I take calls from customers, I help them through technical problems and I prepare training material for them and their employees. This is done in addition to producing consistently high quality print work. In short, I develop a relationship with them that is a value added feature of doing business with us. Sales more often seems to feel that their only responsibilities are to have lunch with the customers, hand out tickets for the local sports team to prospects, golf, attend business expos, etc.; when in fact they are a also a part of the production team. Sales need to not only bring in the orders but also facilitate it's proper completion in house. Learn what files need to be supplied to pre-press, what your presses are capable of, how to easily transfer digital proofs, etc. You are not selling in a vacuum. Printing is not just about talking it is about doing.

 

[Michael Josefowicz]

However I totally disagree with your comment, "The sales process and the sales and CSR's who manage that process are the only people who bring in money. Everyone else is spending money. Sorry, but that lazy sales schleps are paying everyone's salary." Our customers are paying for a product, and that product is created by the production staff of the company. No one is paying to have lunch with the sales staff, no one is paying to go golfing with the sales staff, they are paying for printed material, which sales and the CSRs do not create. The product of a printing company is printed material, not manufactured friendships with the sales department.

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 been how printing was sold in the day when the world of pre-press was thriving. But no more.

There are plenty of printing companies that do not use traditional sales reps, but have instead turned desktop operators into a mix of CSR/desktop/sales. The worker takes a call generated from web advertising, takes the order and files, and produces the finished product. Voila! No sales rep needed. And this model can work for some companies. How does this company make money? According to your statements this company should only be spending and losing money since there are no SALESMEN to pay everyone's salary. Instead these types of production models are becoming more common, and they make money in the absence of a dedicated sales staff.

Yep. My favorite example is PrintingForLess.com. They have three person CSR people, who are better than any sales person I ever met. But, the sales function doesn't change. It's just done more efficiently. It's like making PDF's. The situation today is completely different from what it was just 4 or 5 years ago. Designers got a little smarter, but mostly every time there is a new software rev it gets more and more stable.

As you stated we need to all do our jobs. This includes sales people learning something about the process that creates the work that they sell. I am a Pre-press manager and I take calls from customers, I help them through technical problems and I prepare training material for them and their employees. This is done in addition to producing consistently high quality print work.

Makes very good sense to me. In fact, when I was a print broker, my first aim was to get to the production people and build trust with them. Now, I have the advantage of having got into the business running a 1250 mulitlith for about 3 years. And my dad was a pressman.

In short, I develop a relationship with them that is a value added feature of doing business with us.

Actually after the customer is brought in, my opinion is that IS the value added feature of doing business with your company. So.... how come you and other people doing CSR don't get a piece of the job in exchange for the invaluable customer service you do?

But CSR is not hunting and gathering (that's sales. CSR is farming and nurturing)
CSR is not deeply understanding what the customer needs, even if the customer herself doesn't know she needs it. That should be the sales persons job.

Sales more often seems to feel that their only responsibilities are to have lunch with the customers, hand out tickets for the local sports team to prospects, golf, attend business expos, etc.; when in fact they are a also a part of the production team. Sales need to not only bring in the orders but also facilitate it's proper completion in house. Learn what files need to be supplied to pre-press, what your presses are capable of, how to easily transfer digital proofs, etc. You are not selling in a vacuum. Printing is not just about talking it is about doing.

Actually printing is all about doing it. In the sense of delivering stuff. All the rest is blah, blah. But this is a legacy way of understanding selling. If the sales staff is still doing that, no wonder there isn't enough work in the shop. But if it's sales jobs to really understand their market and where the contacts they have live in that market and what the real pain points are of there contacts. It's a high skill, high pressure job. If that's not what they are doing. Then they are just spending money.

As for creating revenue, as opposed to spending revenue, I'm just saying from a standard input/output model. Sales job is to bring in work and therefore money. Production's job is to spend as little time and money as possible in getting the work out the door. As for creating the value that keeps coming back for more. That's a different question. CSR's are critical. How come most printing companies, either get it for nothing as you described or hire newbies and underpay them?

 

[Michael Josefowicz]

. . .
Obviously, Sales brings in the paying (hopefully) jobs, and the Prepress folks do not (hopefully) have to deal extensively with clients. But, a little cross-pollination of skills & understanding between Sales & Production is necessary, because Sales (& print buyers) - you know you want to be the hero in the suit that "got the job done in no time". Not the dreary solver of problems, with the Golden Gate Bridge stretching before you, in need of paint (again) . . .

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, upgrade and more highly reward CSR's. The only example I personally know of this is printingforless.com. The CSR sits at a computer most of the day. Answer emails in real time. Has a great relationship with production. Has a trusted relationship with the customer.

Some of them will come up from production, others will come up from sales. Getting production people to do CSR or sales people to do production is a waste of time and resources or it is an unfair system that forces people to do what they have not be trained for. My own opinion is that CSR's should get a piece of the action.

I'm betting that some salespeople - maybe not the majority, maybe just newbies would be willing to share some of their commission for a highly skilled and incented CSR. ( if anyone knows anyone who is doing this, please post. I don't.)

 

[Mike Bishop]

Spread the Wealth?

Spread the Wealth?

Michael, I like your idea of cutting the CSRs in on the commission from sales. It would give the CSRs a vested interest in maintaining the relationship with the customers and hopefully improve responsiveness for the customers in day to day interaction. In my experience many sales people abdicate responsibility of their accounts to CSRs, and to a lesser extent Pre-press, after the initial honeymoon period of the account is over. Sales starts to take accounts for granted and orders often come in and get printed without the sales person's knowledge, yet sales still receives the commission. If the other people responsible for these accounts are incentivized the accounts will hopefully be more closely managed.

I also went too far with my description of sales as golfing and lunching in my previous post. Obviously, most printing sales is not done on the golf course, or over a 3 martini lunch; but this idea of sales is not entirely dead. Sales still take lunch meetings, or stop by a company to chat with their contact, or spend a large part of their time E-mailing, texting or making phone calls. And yes there are still perks such as tickets to games or shows given out to clients and prospects. The fact remains that none of this is what the customer is paying for. Despite the efficiency of the sales to customer relations that you claim to have achieved, none of these interactions is what the company is selling. The printer still sells printed material.

As far as the cross training of CSRs and Pre-press to handle orders generated from non traditional sales methods, it does not seem to be a "non starter" as you refer to it. This type of worker may actually be the future of many shops. As you yourself stated "My favorite example is PrintingForLess.com. They have three person CSR people, who are better than any sales person I ever met." If the work is available and steady, how is this multitasking employee not an improvement on a standard Salesman - CSR - Pre-press combination? And unless the Sales people want to adapt, they can, and in many instances will, be eliminated. If the sales leads are generated by Web advertising why employ traditional sales? Conversely, the product still has to be made in order to make money, so production will remain in the form of the aforementioned CSR/Digital Pre-press employee. Production will become increasingly automated and the loss of employees on the simple manual labor side will increase as well. It seems that the next generation of print employee will be a distillation of all of the current employee types, and it appears from the companies that have already adapted this approach, that the new employee archetype is a CSR/Digital worker not a traditional Sales worker.

 

[Michael Josefowicz]

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. As long as there were a real upside. Nobody is going to want to do that for a W-2. Doesn't have to be alot of money right now, but without the gold at the end of the rainbow...not so much.

I think the only thing that you are under estimating is the skill and tenacity to be able to understand what a customer needs, not just what they want. The customer has a communication problem, you have a plant that can produce all kinds of stuff. So how do you ticker with the stuff you already know how to do well and meet the customer's unsaid need. Now that strikes me as a really interesting job.

But consider that getting the conversation going, knowing how to manage the conversation, knowing what kind of information you are trying to pick up from body language and half spoken words, that needs training and discipline. It only looks easy because it comes naturally to a real pro. It's a little like the "newbie designers" who start sentences with "Couldn't you just......?" It looks easy if you've never done it.

Just one more thought. If a job can be clearly defined in specifications by a client - as in filling out a web form - it's a commodity. The lowest price wins. If you are the low price supplier, you get the job.
But as soon as the customer cannot fill the standard web form there is the real opportunity. Then you are not selling them what they think they want, you selling them what they need. And almost by definition you are not competing on price, you're competing on innovative product design.

If your shop is lucky enough to have lots of really smart, experienced people and some TOP NOTCH salespeople, it's a much better business than chopping wood.

 

[Mike Bishop]

The crux of the issue

The crux of the issue

Michael, your last paragraph poses perhaps the most pertinent scenario for the next generation of print provider.

"Just one more thought. If a job can be clearly defined in specifications by a client - as in filling out a web form - it's a commodity. The lowest price wins. If you are the low price supplier, you get the job.
But as soon as the customer cannot fill the standard web form there is the real opportunity. Then you are not selling them what they think they want, you selling them what they need. And almost by definition you are not competing on price, you're competing on innovative product design."

It is in the inability of the customer to properly, or completely, fill out the web form or provide usable files for production that the opportunity for printers to distinguish themselves from competitors lies. As in my previous argument for the new archetype of print worker, I believe that digital pre-press skills combined with a CSR's communication skills is the perfect meld. Paramount to this however is the ability to actually complete the job. If a CSR/Digital worker has great communication and organizational skills but can not do the desktop work necessary to properly and efficiently produce a final piece, there is no product and no sale. On the other hand if a desktop operator is moved into the position of a CSR/Digital worker and has adequate communication skills and can create consistently high quality product, you have a sale. In short, I believe that the digital age of printing has consolidated, and continues to consolidate, skills into the hands of less and less people. Ten years ago the thought of a midsize shop running with 2 Pre-press employees per shift was ridiculous, computers changed that. The next stage of automation is fast approaching and those workers with computer skills and a willingness to engage and guide customers may be in the best position to benefit.

 

[Michael Josefowicz]

On the other hand if a desktop operator is moved into the position of a CSR/Digital worker and has adequate communication skills and can create consistently high quality product, you have a sale. In short, I believe that the digital age of printing has consolidated, and continues to consolidate, skills into the hands of less and less people. Ten years ago the thought of a midsize shop running with 2 Pre-press employees per shift was ridiculous, computers changed that. The next stage of automation is fast approaching and those workers with computer skills and a willingness to engage and guide customers may be in the best position to benefit.

Exactly. And nicely said to boot.

 

[James.Costen]

Keeping Sales Focused on New Business

Keeping Sales Focused on New Business

The issues you are having with sales sounds a lot like a compensation system that encourages complacency. Do they get ongoing commissions for life, or do you have a cap on commissions per client. I have found that if salespeople are not used for hunting new business, then what is the point?

If I have customers that do a lot of repeat order activity with mostly the same files, and I don't want to deal with inconsistencies in document specs, I usually just set them up with editable online templates. Customers can just order what they need through the website, and everyone can move on with their day. I don't see the point in involving a salesperson for reapeat order activity. I don't even want customer service reps involved if possible.

May I suggest that you establish a cap on long term commissions (maybe 6 months or a year) and include penalties on salespeople for every mistake on an order that was within their power to catch. Their attention to detail should rise and their focus on pursuing new business then becomes unavoidable.

As for repeat order activity, I use an ASP product called Print Bridge (Forix Print Management Software - design editor, ecommerce, mailing lists, order tracking) that customers can use themselves. They seem to love it and it costs me far less than any of my employees.

 

[Michael Josefowicz]

If I have customers that do a lot of repeat order activity with mostly the same files, and I don't want to deal with inconsistencies in document specs, I usually just set them up with editable online templates. Customers can just order what they need through the website, and everyone can move on with their day. I don't see the point in involving a salesperson for reapeat order activity. I don't even want customer service reps involved if possible.

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 on comp for the salesperson.

Second, it eliminates the chance to really understand your client's problems. Once you make it easier and easier for your customer to submit through a website, without a person as part of the conversation, it drives the commodity sale, without building the relationship and getting the information the company needs to keep building "better mousetraps".

You are actually training your customer to not need you.

 

[brent]

Hmmm...don't know if I agree with it training the customer to not need you. Once a client is set up for online ordering of his corporate items, they see how easy it is to order their day to day printing without having to deal with the printing company at all. They are busy doing their jobs...so making it as easy as possible to order printing is a godsend to alot of our clients. They know that when they hit the submit button their job will be at their doorstop printed within a couple of days...no muss, no fuss. They get used to it...they fall in love with it. They can't live without it!!! well you get the picture.

We have had customers leave us for price a couple of times in the past year, but everyone has come back....why? Because ordering printing from our company is easy and not a hassle. Once clients get used to ordering their printing online, they will be hesitant to go back to the old fashioned way of sending an email with updated info, and going through the whole typesetting-proofing garbage.

To me (and to our company), this locks them in to us...and is an AWESOME mousetrap!