The selling of transactional print and the selling of web-to-print portals couldn’t be more different. By transactional print, I mean the kind of print sales that you have to compete on every job. Most printers have at least some of their business in this kind of transaction: sales representatives getting quotes and competing for each job the customer puts out to bid. This is hard work and can be low margin when you’re pressed on price with every exchange.

Web-to-print portals force a customer into a “program relationship” with you. This is a more strategic sale.

I like to describe a web-to-print portal as you selling for permission to install an ordering system inside the customer’s organization. I know the portal is “virtual” but it behaves like an internal ordering system built specifically for this customer. A web-to-print portal centralizes all the assets that are “orderable” into a single online repository. This is often overlooked in the sales process because it is assumed that the customer understands this—but they don’t. Most companies don’t have a centralized repository of their marketing assets that is easily accessible to the people who need to order and access them. This is a primary value you are providing with your portal.