Lexington, Kentucky, USA - WhatTheyThink, a leading Internet portal for the graphic arts industry, has just completed a study of print buyers around the country. The study focused on buyer satisfaction with service received from sales representatives. Also examined was gender preferences by buyers. 171 buyers from around the country participated in the survey. The questions asked were: Which best describes the amount of time your printing sales rep spends with you? For selling purposes, some say females are more 'detail oriented' but males are more 'driven' to get jobs through the print production process. From your experience, which best describes your thoughts on this subject? Overall, only 1 percent of the buyers said that their rep spends too much time with them while 72 percent said that the time spent was just right. 17 percent said they hardly ever see anyone from their print firm and 8 percent said they didn’t want to see a sales rep. (2 percent had no opinion.) Of the male print buyers surveyed, only 6 percent said male sales reps take better care of them and 6 percent said females tend to provide better service. A clear majority (88 percent) said they had no preference. Of the female print buyers surveyed, 7 percent said they preferred a male sales rep and 16 percent said females would take better care of them. Again, a majority of the buyers (77 percent) said they had no preference. Randy Davidson, President of WhatTheyThink, said the results were very fun to examined. “With this survey, we tried to get deeper than before. Previously, we have asked buyers if they were satisfied with the overall service from print related firms. This survey asked about a specific person within the print firm.” When asked about the high level of satisfaction most buyers have with their rep, Davidson explained his view. “The data clearly supports satisfaction with the human touch that print firms provide to their clients. 72 percent of the buyers who said they hardly ever see a rep said they spend under $25,000 annually on print services. So basically, buyers are very satisfied with the personal touch.” Asked about the gender portion of the survey, Davidson said buyers really have no preference. “The results are really based on the buyer’s experience. However, it was very interesting to see a relevant amount (16 percent) of female print buyers prefer female sales representatives. We examined gender because of the notion some have that opposites attract in the selling process. In other words, send a female rep to a male buyer. Send a male rep to a female buyer. If that is anyone’s strategy, it appears to be faulty and if anything works the other way.” The complete results are available at www.whattheythink.com/press.html WhatTheyThink provides news, interviews and research daily at their web site. The portal has nearly 12000 subscribers who get valuable information about print buyers, printers and suppliers to the industry. For more information, visit www.whattheythink.com.