Day in and day out, customers order the same things. Perhaps you have a contract with them for specific printed goods, or perhaps you serve an industry that has traditional printed matter that you provide. These are your cash cows and they keep the business humming. But, are they helping you grow? In competitive industries like print there are so many options for a print buyer that you can find yourself undercut, even if you believe you have a good customer relationship. The path to staying at the top of the list is to be the innovator and educator that brings new ideas.

To differentiate your company and offerings, think about your people, your processes, and your technologies. What makes you different? What can you offer that would be hard for your competitors to mimic?

It’s not sexy, but it is an essential function. It is also the the most important arbiter of the profit margin on a job. The more time it takes to capture specifications, verify specifications, follow-up on specifications, and fix specifications, the smaller the profit. In many print shops, there is no central method that everyone uses. Even in shops with web-to-print systems and digital storefronts, there may be multiple solutions installed, with none of them used by the sales team. Those sales may be transmitted in emails, text messages, phone calls, and notes left on desks for customer service to follow up on.