Choose Your Inspiration Mantra--DeWese
This is a printing salesperson psychotherapy column. I have to write these every so often because I get bagfuls of letters, gigabytes of e-mails and memory-filling voice mails from distraught and depressed print salespeople.
You've got hard jobs, and some of you have stupid bosses and even stupider competitors. These conditions can create considerable anxiety for even the strongest of psyches.
The stock market tanked. Mr. Greenspan waited too long to reduce interest rates. The economy has been headed in the wrong direction. The presidential election results in Florida had to be counted, recounted and litigated, and all of the TV coverage sickened some of you and distracted the sales efforts of others.
This has been a rough winter with some record snowfall, freakish ice storms and brutally cold temperatures. Print salespeople who are supposed to be out and about and calling on customers have to deal with treacherous roads, snow-covered parking lots and job delays.
The bleak and gray days in February can lead to misery and despair among our printing sales forces nationwide. If the sales force is depressed now, we are sure to have a sales slump in March and April.
Well, this ol' Mañana Man has got to do something about your mental condition. I can't let you lapse into some lethargic state of mind where you all crawl under the covers and curl up in a fetal position. On the other hand, I don't have time to answer all of your letters, e-mails and phone calls.
Once again, I'm going to have to single-handedly save the printing industry. If owners and sales managers would do a better job of motivating salespeople, I wouldn't have to continually come to the rescue.
This will have to be an interactive group therapy session like the, er, yeah, like Oprah's TV shows. Oprah has been hosting a series of shows on spirituality that have really helped some people that I know. Not me. I'm the Mighty Mañana Man and I don't need any help. Some of my friends needed Oprah's help and told me about her shows. I'd never lie around on the sofa from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. on a weekday and watch Oprah.
First, it's important for you to realize why print sales is so difficult and, hence, why you are so vulnerable to this diabolical dejection that you are feeling.
The role of a printing salesperson is to be outside proactive. This means you must leave the building and use your own initiative to obtain a sale. There are four types of salespeople: inside reactive, outside reactive, inside proactive and you, outside proactive.
Inside reactive salespeople work in stores and wait for customers to come in and buy something. The customers are driven into the store by advertising either for the store or for some specific product. There is an infrastructure that supports this type of sales role.
Pick Your Type
The outside reactive salesperson tends to be a route detail person like a pharmaceutical salesperson calling on doctors or a Leggs pantyhose salesperson filling the rack at K-mart. Here, again, there is a well-orchestrated marketing effort that supports the outside reactive salesperson. There is great advertising visibility for the products.
The inside proactive salesperson is a telemarketer of some sort. Highly automated phone systems, pre-screened databases and national advertising also back these salespeople. They are playing a numbers game and are trained to deal with a lot of rejection.
Printing salespeople, on the other hand, usually have to identify their own prospects and benefit from little or no awareness-building advertising. Unless your business card reads R.R. Donnelley, Quebecor World, Quad/Graphics or the like, many of your prospects will have little knowledge of your company. It is left to you to create a word picture of your company and to create customer desire to buy from your company.
Furthermore, you have to do all this while you are on the road driving to the next appointment, returning calls on your cell phones, checking on jobs you have in the plant and working the phone for tomorrow's appointments.
Good and Bad News
That was the bad news. The good news is that outside proactive salespeople are the highest-paid salespeople—if they produce significant sales.
Next, and I don't need to dwell on this, print sales is highly competitive and often price-sensitive. You all know this so I won't belabor the difficulty associated with competing with seven sheetfed printing companies for the same $15,000 job.
Those are two huge reasons why your job is so hard. Hard jobs must be performed well. You've seen major league pitchers give up five runs in the seventh inning when they had been pitching a shutout and leading 2-0. You've seen them walk dejectedly from the mound, kick the bat boy, throw some bats around the dugout and dump the Gatorade.
These guys are in a funk. Just as you are in a funk when you've pitched Aspirant Litho to a new account for three months, finally bid on a $20,000 job and lost the job by $4,000 to Ed's Discount Printing. Furthermore, you had to make sales pitches in 20 degree weather with a tricky car battery and a winter-long case of the flu.
Alright, here comes the inspirational therapy. I'm going to recite some inspirational messages that I've lifted from some great people and you chant them after me. Pick one that means something to you to be your winter inspirational mantra.
Okay, here goes the first one.
- "Well-done is better that well said." This means you should stop talking about what you are going to do or how good you are and just do it. I worry about people who tell me how good they are. When you are good, people know it.
- "Do it. Move it. Make it happen. No one ever sat their way to success." Remember, you are an outside proactive salesperson. Your greatest success will occur when you are belly-to-belly with a print buyer.
- "Destiny is not a matter of chance. It is a matter of choice." You will not succeed in print sales sitting in your office. You have to plan sales success and execute the plan outside of your office.
- "Pride makes us do things well, but it is love that makes us do things to perfection. Fall in love with your job." If you can't fall in love with your job and your company, then find another job. Otherwise, you are cluttering up print buyers' lobbies.
- "Luck chooses those who are prepared." America's most successful printing salespeople are the biggest dues payers. They have the greatest technical know-how, the most self-esteem, the greatest love for their companies and the most intimate knowledge of their customers.
- "When you dance with a customer, let him lead." Great salespeople are lightning-fast responsive and great listeners. You will listen your way into more sales than you will ever gain by talking.
- "The most precious gifts you give others are your time and attention." The greatest printing salespeople are not the prettiest, the best groomed, the most articulate or the best dressed. The greatest salespeople are the ones who know how to serve others with their time and attention.
By now you should have picked your mantra and we should all be feeling better about ourselves. If you need a little pick-me-up, you can watch Oprah. But, I don't want you watching it at 4 p.m.; you're supposed to be making sales calls then. ABC reruns each day's Oprah show at 1 a.m., which is just about the time you should be finished writing up your day's orders.
Oh, there's one last inspirational message that no Mañana Man devotee should ever forget: "I'm no slacker and I'm no slouch. You'll never find me on the therapist's couch. I live to make calls and sell profitable printing. I'm gonna get out there and sell something."
—Harris DeWese
About the Author
Harris DeWese is the author of Now Get Out There and Sell Something! published by Nonpareil Books. He is a principal at Compass Capital Partners and is an author of the annual "Compass Report," the definitive source of information regarding printing industry merger and acquisition activity. DeWese specializes in investment banking, mergers and acquisitions, sales, marketing, planning and management services to printing companies.
