Larger organizations often have elaborate onboarding programs for employees, including gift boxes filled with branded and information items.
Onboarding kits generally include printed materials and promotional products or apparel, and selling them can be a profitable niche for printing sales pros. If you can provide clients with an online portal for ordering, you can simplify program management and make it easy to order kits on demand.
If you're interested in exploring this opportunity, the initial steps are straightforward. Begin by focusing on your existing customer base, particularly those in marketing. Then, identify the decision-makers in HR departments who oversee onboarding programs. This 'cherry-picking' approach can be a simple and effective way to start selling onboarding kits.
Do some research to determine who you would like to meet in HR. Then, ask your marketing client for help. In a perfect world, your client would know the HR person and happily provide a warm introduction and a glowing recommendation.
What if your client doesn’t personally know that ideal contact? No big deal! You can still reach out and share that you are a current vendor. By dropping your client’s name and title, you demonstrate legitimacy.
ChatGPT can help you write your introductory email asking for a meeting using this prompt:
I am a printing salesperson already doing business with the Marketing department at a company. I want to expand my business by selling gift boxes for new employees as part of the onboarding process. The buyer is a Human Resources manager.
Write an email explaining the following:
- I have been a vendor for <number> of years, producing a wide range of high-quality, branded projects on time and within budget.
- My company also produces onboarding kits. We have all the capabilities in-house to produce and source printed components, promotional products and apparel, and kit and ship materials.
- Online ordering technology makes it easy for clients to manage onboarding gift box programs by simplifying administrative tasks.
When writing the email, follow these instructions:
- I want to motivate the buyer to agree to a meeting.
- Keep email body copy between 100 to 150 words.
- The tone should be friendly and professional, without many adjectives.
- Use the word “You” to speak directly to the buyer.
- Use bullets when listing benefits.
- The call to action should be requesting a short meeting to learn more.
Once you have an introductory email, you can personalize it for the lead as needed and prep for the meeting by using four additional prompts:
- What are the pain points for Human Resources related to sourcing gift boxes for onboarding programs?
- What questions should I ask during discovery?
- What questions could the buyer ask me?
- What possible objections should I be prepared to address?
The best printing sales pros seize every opportunity to expand market share. They identify promising, untapped niches within their existing customer base to discover new avenues for growth.
With tools like ChatGPT, exploring uncharted territories becomes more accessible than ever before, so why not give this a try?
Good selling!
- Categories:
- Business Management - Marketing/Sales
Linda Bishop is the founder and president of Thought Transformation, a national sales and marketing consulting group helping printers and other companies achieve top-line growth through a combination of strategies, tools, training and tactics.
Her expertise includes all aspects of outbound selling and account acquisition, account retention and development, solution selling, marketing, and aligning sales processes with marketing strategies. Most recently, she published The ChatGPT Sales Playbook: Revolutionizing Sales with AI and believes AI will offer sales pros new tools for achieving revenue goals.
Before starting Thought Transformation in 2004, Linda sold commercial printing for seventeen years, working as a commission salesperson for the Atlanta division of RR Donnelley Company. She was one of the top performers in the Atlanta marketplace and had annual sales exceeding $9 million.
Linda has a BS degree in accounting from Purdue University and an MBA in marketing from Georgia State. She has written several books on sales topics, speaks nationally on sales and marketing, and has published many articles.