He Just Doesn't Get It --DeWese

You remember that the Feds released my print buyer and banker hostages. They found my secret camp when a snitch revealed our whereabouts. It was probably that weasel laundry truck driver.

I was holding the hostages until the printing industry raised prices by 25 percent. So much for that plan. I'll have to try something else.

I'm still being held by the Feds at a brand new Executive Detention Center. It was built for all the Enron, WorldCom and Adelphia Cable executives who will soon be my cell, er, suite mates. This place is the ultimate white-collar prison. The Feds have a management contract with the Ritz Carlton for this facility.

I can't watch 600-channel cable TV or read in the library all day. I'm the only inmate, so I can't even play cards. I do stroll through the gardens and loll in the hot bubbling spa. This is my think time.

What do I think about?

I think about all the things that are happening that I just don't get. That's the topic of this column—things I just don't get.

Lacking Aggression

For example, there are tens of thousands of print salespeople who rarely, if ever, attempt to prospect for new accounts. I meet some salespeople who can't even name their top prospects. This makes prospecting easy for their more aggressive competitors. Surely the prospecting laggards understand their incomes will grow. They must know that new accounts protect them if they lose any of their existing accounts.

I don't get it.

Here's another one. There are thousands of printing company owners and CEOs who either ignore their sales departments' failure to prospect or do nothing to help them prospect for new business. Then they whine about sales declining. Surely they understand that growing sales with new business will enable them to improve the balance sheet and finance the future.

I sure don't get it.

When I began writing this column 18 years ago, 20 percent of the print salespeople made 80 percent of the sales. Today, 20 percent of the salespeople make 80 percent of the sales. Nothing has changed! It seems like we would have made some progress in 18 years.

I just don't get it.

It seems that printing industry management would have learned how to manage salespeople so that maybe the ratio would have changed to 60 percent/40 percent. The truth is that the 80 percent/20 percent superstars are largely self-motivated, self-trained and natural talents. We either need more natural talents or we need better sales management. I think that many owners/CEOs are afraid to try.

I know some CEOs who won't even walk into the sales department. I guess they are afraid that someone might ask them a question.

I really don't get it.

I'm 60 years old and maybe I haven't grown up yet. I'd hoped to be grown up at 30, then 40 and surely by 50. But, I'm still a baby. I guess I am naive, unsophisticated and gullible. There are so many things I just don't understand.

We have a handful of executives in our industry who have tanked everything that they ever touched. They have produced one debacle after another. Yet they keep getting jobs and, when they do, there is always a press release to keep us all posted on their next victim.

People keep hiring them even though they are arrogant, condescending and incompetent. Did I mention pretentious? Stick pretentious in there somewhere. Someone should check out the resumes. These guys are great at writing resumes. Maybe they get hired because they look good and interview well. Their $1,200 Hickey Freeman suits are empty and when they are fired ultimately, they always get big severance packages.

When we buy printing equipment, we visit other plants, talk to users and crawl under, over and around the equipment. But we don't show the same diligence in our hiring practices.

I just don't get it.

Here's one that is painfully fresh in my memory. There are countless printing managers and salespeople who continue to practice win/lose negotiations. During the course of any negotiation or conflict, they interrupt, speak loudly and talk over the other party. They insult the other party and use bullying tactics. These tactics don't work in parenting, spousal relations or in business.

I suppose this behavior is reinforced on all of the cable talk shows we see. Political opponents browbeat one another and try to win by shouting down the other person. No one, including the TV viewer, can hear what is being said. Some of the TV hosts even interrupt and specialize in intimidating their guests. It's as if they are compelled to punish their guests.

Please trust me on this one. I have listened my way into more sales than I ever achieved by talking. I reach mutually satisfactory, negotiated solutions by listening carefully to the other party. Even if they shout and bully, I listen.

Yep. I don't get it.

You won't believe this one. There are thousands of salespeople who never, never ask for the order. They never close. I can only assume they are afraid to close or have never been trained how to close. There are books on closing sales. The printing industry has some trainers who teach closing techniques. Sean McArdle, who conducts seminars for NAPL, probably knows 50 ways to close a sale. And the old veteran trainer in Chicago, Doug Wyman, must know a 100 ways to close.

I don't get it.

Enough of this print sales stuff. I want to talk about some societal and cultural things that confound me.

As I write this, a coward sniper(s) has randomly killed eight people and wounded two in the Washington, DC, area. What is in the mind of this killer(s)?

I don't get it.

Prior to these random shootings, a series of girls were kidnapped, raped and murdered by perverted animals. What drives the minds of these predators—often men in my age group? Whatever happened to the old-fashioned "nervous breakdown?" You may be too young to remember when a man would suddenly start babbling in his office or sob uncontrollably. The funny farm people would come and take him away for rest.

Now, demented minds turn to child molestation, brutal rapes, serial killings or other deviant behaviors that seem to appear in the newspaper every day.

I don't get it.

Big business executives, already multimillionaires, want, covet and conspire for even more. Their accounting firms, eager to please and worried they will lose a big client, validate their financial shenanigans. Well, you read the papers. You watch CNN, MSNBC and Fox News. Tens of thousands of employees and shareholders lose their jobs, their 401(k)s and their investments. Whatever happened to integrity?

I just don't get it.

Soon the corporate crooks will be my cellmates and I can ask them directly. Maybe then I will get it.

Now, you will get it, if you will just 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 M&A activity. DeWese specializes in investment banking, mergers and acquisitions, sales, marketing, planning and management services to printing companies.