Published Articles

Published in: Georgia Printer, July 2002

Useful information for change is almost always there.

A recent Harvard Business Review article titled "Read A Plant - Fast" brought back a flood of memories. Why more companies don't send key personnel to visit other organizations to learn better business and production practices is a mystery to me. Throughout my consulting career of more than 13 years, I've rarely visited or worked with a client or client's customer from whom I didn't learn something useful to enhance their future work performance.

Published in: Printing Industries of America, Inc., Sales & Marketing Advisory, May 2002

What we do daily is very much a reflection of what we understand is expected and needed. In other words, each of us operates on the information that we receive and that is supported by consequences. What most of us in graphic arts production have as information is too often, at best, generated by shop floor data systems or job tickets. In other words, we have cost figures, which can be either wrong or misleading, especially in what they don't tell us.

Published in: IPA Bulletin, May/June 2002

Technical Competence Is Only Half the

Picture for Business Development Success

We were recently contacted by a national graphic arts company, with a most unusual request. They wanted a proposal for training their experienced and traditionally successful sales reps to be more successful with major accounts, and in today's changing business environment. After two conference calls and a follow-up proposal, we received the award to develop their sales training curriculum for experienced and successful reps.

As you might guess, this is not a traditional sales training curriculum. As an overview, it's designed to guide their reps into becoming strategic resources for target customers.

Let's cut to the chase: if we don't wake-up and change how we see our business and what we do for our customers, performance results aren't going to change. Customers are different today and in the future from anything we've experienced in the past. But too many of us are looking back in our daily attitudes and practices – grieving over (a) the loss of a major customer, (b) insensitive bankers, (c) how September 11th, Enron, and the dot-com collapse have ruined our business, and (d) the difficult-to-understand practices of desired customers.

Do We See Ourselves?

When will we get out from behind our desks, and out of the safety of our offices and plants and go visit our current and potential customers to learn what they're struggling to accomplish?

Lunch with two graphic arts buyers from a major manufacturing company in the Carolinas left me asking myself, "How do we get the word across to our industry's organizations?" As no small footnote, these two buyers had asked me to take them to lunch, saying, "We need to talk to you!"

In today's soft economy, most of us are looking for new opportunities that can have an almost immediate affect on our performance. However, many of the resources that most impact our company's performance aren't on our balance sheet -- our customers, our employees, and our suppliers.

There's increasing evidence that print and graphic arts suppliers are being divided into two camps by the market: 1) those who constantly pursue understanding their customer's business for purposes of creating additional perceived value on a proactive basis and 2) those who do not understand their customer's business beyond print specifications and are subsequently reduced to a reactive, "low price wins" market position.

Do We See Ourselves?

When will we get out from behind our desks, and out of the safety of our offices and plants – and go visit our current and potential customers to learn what they're struggling to accomplish?

Published in: Printing Industries of America, Inc., Sales & Marketing Advisory, April 2001

Many printing companies are asking themselves what happened to all their business and what should they do differently to overcome the challenges of uninformed, blood-thirsty buyers, the Fed, and the growing influence of the Internet. We've poured our energies and thinking into new technologies, equipment, financing needs, and managing compressed (and often unrealistic) production schedules to the extent that understanding and proactively serving buyers' changing needs have become lost.

What is needed for business development to become priority number one and to be improved?