The print industry is vast, covering products as diverse as hang tags and building wraps to credit card statements and targeted marketing collateral. It’s hard to imagine that any single approach to sales would be the perfect fit for any specific company because print companies have evolved from many different sources. Some are family businesses enjoying multi-generational success. Others result from business mergers, buy-outs from in-plant departments, or spin-offs from other types of enterprises. Sometimes it helps to take a few steps back and review strategies, goals, and achievements.

The takeaway is that your sales plans should reflect what you sell, how you sell, and your target customer profile. A deep dive into your customer list is the only way to evaluate which customers help you produce a profit and which may cost you money. No one ever wants to do this review because it may show that your favorite customers are no longer the most profitable. On the other hand, you may learn that your favorite customers are highly profitable but only buy one product of the many you offer. You may also discover that your most troublesome customers are profitable and worth managing, or they are losing you money.

You should know these financials as the end of the year gets closer, and it’s time to decide on a strategy for 2023. The fastest way to evaluate your customers is to start with a sales report from your accounting system. Whether you use a spreadsheet, QuickBooks, Xero, Peachtree Accounting, or an enterprise-class sales or business management package, you should be able to extract the complete list of your customers and their year-to-date or rolling 12-month order value. You may see some customers with no orders and others with a vibrant order history. You want to look at all of them to understand what percentage of the customers in your lists are active and how many have lapsed as customers. (Figuring out what to do with them is another episode.)