While they may appear to be mutually exclusive conditions, challenge and opportunity run right alongside one another in a market such as ours.

Your customers and prospective customers are facing increasing pressure on their budgets. And with the demand for conventional printing services shrinking and excess capacity in most markets, the conditions are ripe for continued attacks on your customers and your margins.

So what to do? Time to get your prospecting hats on and begin the process of getting new business from both existing and prospective customers.

While it is best to always be in a prospecting mode, what better time to increase your prospecting activity than when your (prospective) customers are in the search of solutions to problems? The pressure they are feeling to optimize stagnant or reduced budgets means you have a great opportunity to create new value for them.

Notice I did not say "Cut out your profits and bid any price to get the work.”

I am saying reinvigorate your prospecting plans, hone your prospecting skills and learn to ask the right questions to discover new, more effective ways to assist your customers and prospective customers manage the procurement of their printing and marketing services. When you do this you protect your margins, not cut them, by helping your prospects solve problems your competition is not even aware exist! Challenges aplenty? Yes, it is indisputable. But when you walk through the door, your customers and prospective customers will see you either as an "innovator and leader" or as "just another printer" with great quality and service to beat the band but "just another printer" nonetheless.

The problem is they won’t be able to see the leader in you unless YOU get busy proving your worth.