7 Things a Printer Should Never Do - by Suzanne Morgan Mistakes print suppliers make and print buyers hate We love printers, but we’ve noticed a few bad habits that we’d like print suppliers to break. After twelve years of training and educating literally thousands of print buyers, we’ve made a list of what print buyers say annoy them the most: 1. Focusing on "you" and not "me" It’s a turnoff to listen to incessant banter from a sales rep or incessant promotional copy about how great that printing company is, how long they’ve been in business, the long list of equipment, etc. (yawn). Any good communicator knows that to get someone’s attention, you talk about them first. A printer who can effectively communicate an understanding of a print buyer’s challenges and needs (first!) is a printer who gets listened to. 2. Believe that quality is everything Just because your printer touts degrees from RIT and prints all day, doesn’t mean they get to judge print quality for the print buyer. First of all, quality is in the eye of the beholder. Good quality is dependent on the ROI and expectations for a specific print job. Therefore, expectations for quality may be different for each project. Second, even if the quality is perfect, that doesn’t mean that the print buyer will be satisfied enough to come back again. Print buyers often select printers that offer satisfactory but not perfect print quality because those printers also offer an ease of doing business. They are simply easy to work with. Food for thought. 3. Make the customer call to follow up Print buyer principle: "the less work you make me do, the more I like you." Printers who are proactive with offering job status, quickly communicate that orders have been received and delivered, and immediately notify the customer about problems with the job become preferred suppliers. Printers: don’t make your customers chase you down to get information that you should have already sent them. 4. Drop by without an appointment Some print sales reps will argue the merits of this until they are blue in the face, but the fact is that print buyers HATE IT when printing sales reps visit them without an appointment. It doesn’t matter if this print buyer is your customer, your friend, or your cousin. Take "I was in the neighborhood, so I’d thought I’d drop by" out of your vocabulary. No excuses. Don’t do it. 5. Try to be all things to all people Perhaps the thing that most harms a printer’s chance of working with a prospective client is painting their list of capabilities with too broad strokes. While a long list of capabilities can be enticing, if a printer isn’t specific enough about what they do or tries to get every print job, he may get none. Trying to be all things to all people isn’t annoying, but it is confusing. Printers: the best thing you can do is to help a print buyer know what types of jobs to send you or have you quote on. Then consistently restate what you do best. 6. Not having a compelling reason for calling Print buyers will pay attention to printing sales reps with a concise message and who state a compelling reason why they are calling that buying company. Print buyers want to talk to printers that know a little bit about their business and can immediately demonstrate how they might help them. 7. Sells products only Today’s print buyer isn’t all that interested in a printer’s equipment list. Moreover, print buyers have many, many sources for their print jobs. Lots of printers have excellent product quality and customer service. What makes the difference is the level of expertise, consulting and value-added services a printer can offer. That’s what print buyers need and that’s what they want to hear about.