Once again, recent surveys of print buyers by the good folks from PrintPlanet demonstrate buyers’ willingness to:

1) tell potential print vendors what they are looking for and why they will buy.

2) offer print vendors and their sales teams the opportunity to provide the leadership and creativity to differentiate themselves from the competition and earn the business.

To summarize the responses to one of the questions, this survey showed that ‘two thirds or more of those print buyers would like to have access to on line resources’.

- 67% of buyers spending over $500,000 on print want a knowledge or learning center.
- 66% want access to paper information.
- manufacturers and agencies appear to want the most information.

Reflecting on this data for just a moment:

How might you turn it into information that you can use to assist your customers or prospective customers? What questions can you ask your prospective (and current) customers that will lead you to the heart of their buying motivations?

Why might print buyers be interested in these types of resources? Perhaps they are facing some challenges achieving their organization’s objectives and perceive that these resources will be of value to them.

Is it possible that their industry, business, company and their role is facing changes that they are not quite sure how to manage? What kind of research can you do to bring the resources they need to them?

If their current print vendors were doing such a fine job why might they (print buyers) be looking for these resources? Looks like, smells like and sounds like opportunity to me.

The answers are waiting for the print vendor who can ask the right questions, the right way, of the right person(s) at the right time! An effective questioning or discovery process is part of a purposeful, well planned business development strategy and plan.