Top Secret Competition --DeWese

Oh great! This is just what we needed. More competition! New competition! The news item was all over the trade press during PRINT 05.

This time it's our federal government. They bought a new five-unit sheetfed press.

They paid cash. A few million for a new press is nothing to our officials in Washington, DC. After all, Congress just passed a Hurricane Katrina relief bill that is paying some cruise lines $2,500 per person per week to house Katrina victims. I don't mind that so much, but the weekly rate is about three times the regular price when the ships are actually cruising.

Then there was the recent Transportation Bill to which various legislators attached 1,600 "pork barrel" amendments. I'm all for helping the Katrina victims and having a great transportation system, but these amendments had nothing to do with the hurricane victims or better roads. One taxpayer watchdog group reports that there were 13,977 pork projects totaling $27.3 billion in the fiscal 2005 appropriations bills. These were new appropriations for our politicians' various pet projects in their home states. This is called getting reelected.

If you had that kind of money to throw around, you would never lose a customer. Just teasing. Don't start throwing money around among your customers or you'll wind up in jail.

We don't have a pork barrel in the printing industry.

The Feds don't worry about money. First, they've got our tax money and, whenever that runs out, they can print more money. For the federal government, running out of money is called having a deficit.

Taxes Come First

If you, you dumb printer, run out of money, the government classifies you as stupid and demands that all your tax money be paid first and immediately.

So, you damn sure better be able to borrow some dough, sell some more printing real quick, grab your shotgun before that old wolf comes wailing at your door, or even have a yard sale. The yard sale is safest.

This time the new competition is the sneaky part of the government. It's the CIA. Yep. The CIA purchased a five-color Roland 700 perfector with in-line coating. Of course, the spies got the ColorPoint and automated washup features.

I guess the CIA needed the press because they now need to print our Top Secret stuff in four colors, plus coating.

I'll bet the CIA picked up on my research published in my column last month. It revealed that last year the printing industry made profits of $3.4 billion on revenues of $170.0 billion versus the airlines that lost $9.071 billion on revenues of only $131.5 billion. Furthermore, the airlines employ a paltry 581,088 people to our 1,300,567 co-workers in printing.

I'll bet the CIA read this and said, "We've got to get in on this printing gig. We're not making any money spying on other countries and we're getting a lot of bad press."

So, they did some research and called a meeting. The director of research said, "There are only 1,892 printing companies in the Baltimore/Washington market, so we will start slow. They will never know what hit them. We'll buy one press first and slowly capture all the business. We'll make it look like we're just printing our own stuff."

Suspect Sales Methods

Press release photos from PRINT 05 picture various CIA officials, one of whom has the title chief of customer service and sales. Can you imagine the sales tactics these guys will use? I know we've hired some real dolts who have made torturous sales calls, but I don't know of any actual torture applied to get a purchase order.

I'm not real worried about this new threat. The print buyers in the Washington, DC, market are tough and I predict they will squeeze the CIA into surrender within just a few months.

Here is some more vitally important stuff to keep you up-to-date.

If you or one of your salespeople is not prospecting or can't seem to focus on serving existing customers, he or she may be suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder. Nearly 1.5 million adults now take attention drugs to improve concentration and cut down on procrastination. In fact, ADD drug therapy is growing more among adults than children.

"Fifty percent of all adults continue to have problems with attention," says Patricia Quinn, M.D. Attention Deficit Disorder impairs concentration and impulse control at work, home and in social settings.

This malady and its pervasiveness enables me to come out of the closet. You all know that I invented Sales Procrastination. It was an accident. It was a symptom of my ADD. It's the reason I can barely concentrate long enough to finish one of these columns.

If print sales have become boring and you have to drag yourself out of bed to go to work, see a doctor and get yourself tested.

If the doctor or the shrink says you're okay, then maybe print sales really are boring, and you need to think about a new career, like the CIA. If you're not okay, you need to get the therapy required to fix your ADD or run for Congress where every day is fun and you get to spend all that money on your own pork barrel projects.

Or, on the other hand, you could 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, available through NAPL or PIA/GATF. He is chairman and CEO 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 has completed more than 100 printing company transactions and is viewed as the preeminent deal maker in the printing industry. He specializes in investment banking, mergers and acquisitions, sales, marketing, planning and management services to printing companies. He can be reached via e-mail at DeWeseH@ComCapLtd.com.