Printing Promo and Publicity

Had one of those interesting “do you remember” conversations the other day after my daughter saw a picture of an old-style phone. She thought it was cool that the phone had a rotary dial and a cord attached to it (fo course, just the fact that I called it “old style” and grew up with one of those phones in my house shows my age). Anyway, we started to talk about technology and items that have been introduced in my lifetime, and things that many of today’s “teens and tweens” have never known life without.

For instance, my daughter has never known life with a DVR. I still remember the intoduction of Beta and VHS tapes.

She’s never known life without a microwave oven. I remember when my family got our first — and all the challenges that it presented. (It’s so bad that my parents will not use one to this day!).

She’s never known a world without cell phones. Just the other day, I was talking to someone about the huge “car units” that introduced many of my generation to mobile telephones.

She’s never known life without space travel. I remember my parents waking me to watch Neil Armstrong take the first steps on the moon.

She thinks “Ringo” is a funny name.

She’s never known life without MTV, or Disney Channel or anything else on cable TV. I remember when they actually had music videos on MTV.

She’s never known life without ATMs or debit cards.

To her, music has always been available on CDs or downloads. She’s never used a record player. (much less an 8-track!).

She can’t understand why anyone needs a typewriter.

It’s amazing to think of all the fantastic changes that have occurred in our lifetimes, much less that of our parents.

So, what does this have to do with what we do for a living? Imagine if you wanted to be the person who thought they could make a lot of money selling 8-tracks, or typewriter ribbons, or huge mobile telephones. Chances are, you would have gone out of business a long time ago.

As times and technology changes, distributors have to change with them. Some of the items that vendors showed us at the Proforma convention were staggering — and probably weren’t even being thought of 7 years ago when I first entered this industry — much less being offered to the public!

So, for those people who want a product that’s “new and different”, be ready for some for incredibly far-reaching items and ideas. Just hope that you’re not spending your marketing dollars on the next 8-track player.

I just got back from a whirlwind three-plus days in Vegas at the annual Proforma convention. In addition to the normal networking activities that go on at the convention, the days are jam-packed with classes and other educational opportunities.

One of the highlights of the convention is the Tuesday evening Awards Dinner. The night starts with the parade of the 134 members of Proforma’s Million Club and Multi-Million Dollar Club. When you think of it, those numbers are staggering. With about 750 Proforma offices across the country and Canada, almost 20 percent of them bill $1 million or more.

The night was a real eye-opener for me. I watched those men and women walk into the room and remembered my previous billings — and I’m nowhere near $1 million. As they walked in, it struck me — they weren’t necessarily better-looking than me, I don’t think may has as good a personality as me,, and some of them may not even have more customers than me.

So, what did they have? Good business sense, excellent sales technique and great customers. All Proforma owners have the opportunity to offer the same goods and services to their customers, so the difference between me and those folks in the Blue Blazers was basically that they “get it.” They do business smartly. They value their time and their customers’ time.

I want one of those jackets (and not cause they’re so good-looking — they’re not). I want what that jacket represents. Great sales, great customers, and great opportunities.

Look out, world.

I had an interesting discussion the other day regarding turning down business. Yeah, you read that right.

You’re probably thinking, “Rich, in this crazy economic climate, why would anyone turn down business?” And, in a lot of ways, you’re right — you probably shouldn’t. But, now more than ever, it makes sense to turn down business.

Before you’re thinking that Proforma really should introduce some stricter drug-testing procedures, let me explain.

First, most companies (including ours) are set up to do business with a certain type of customer. Another way to phrase that is, we’re set up to sell a certain way. For instance, you don’t go to a supermarket to buy one Cheerio. You have to buy it by the box. There are lots of different size boxes, but chances are pretty good that you can’t buy just one Cheerio.

Same with most businesses. Items are packaged to make the sale more convenient — sometimes it’s more convenient for the customer, sometimes it’s more convenient for the retailer.

Sliding to our businesses, sometimes in an effort to please everyone we’ll quickly accept any order — whether it fits our business model or not. And that’s just wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Why? Because while we’re doing something that honestly doesn’t work for us, we’re taking time away from doing something that might work for us — calling customers, meeting with vendors, prospecting, marketing, etc.

The one common refrain I hear when I tell people about not accepting jobs is “well, you never know who they might now.” Of course, everyone knows LOTS of people (if you don’t think that’s true, remember the guest list at your wedding). However, just because they know someone doesn’t mean they’re going to refer you to anyone. And even if they do refer you to someone, there are two additional challenges — first, getting that person to buy from you and second, you hope the second person doesn’t also have a small order.

The point about “you never know who they know” was brought to light recently by someone using the game “six degrees of separation.” This person said that if we bought into that rule, he’s only 6 people away from knowing Kevin Bacon.

Of course.

We all are.

The point is, when doing business we need to do smart business. Most people will appreciate it if you honestly say “no, we’re really not equipped to do that job properly.” They’ll probably appreciate it even more if you can refer them to someone who can.

And for the record, I know someone whose friend works at a restaurant where Kevin Bacon’s sister is the manager. So I’m only 3 people away from meeting him now…

We had a small problem with an order the other day (not happy about that, but it happens from time to time, unfortunately). When I was telling some peers about how we fixed the problem, I got reactions ranging from “you’re crazy” to ” too much trouble” to “you did what??”

A bit of background. We printed shirts and programs for a local dance school for their recital. There were 96 shirts in the order. On four of the shirts — the four child’s small shirts — the printing on the back was accidentally omitted. Of course, the back listed the names of all of the students in the recital.

The school owner notified me of this problem just before 8 p.m. on a Wednesday night. She was in a bit of a panic, since the recital was the next evening. I was having a tough time hearing her, since she called me on my cell phone when I was at the Flyers playoff game. Yes, she called me about 10 minutes before the opening faceoff.

I told her where I was, asked if she had the shirts and asked her to text me her address. I told her I would pick up the shirts after the game, get them reprinted and have them back to her the next day.

Due to some problems with my GPS unit, I ended up having to text and call the owner up to help me find her house — at 12:20 in the morning (the Flyers game went overtime, and traffic was horrendous, as you might imagine).

We picked up the shirts, and left them at our printing facility. I left our production manager a voice mail shortly after the school owner had called, so I was hoping it was the first message our manager heard, and the shirts could be done quickly. I finally returned to my house at about 1:30 in the morning.

I called my production manager at about 8:30, and was told the shirts would be ready by 11. When I called the studio owner, she was thrilled. She thanked me and surprised me by telling me that I “get it. That service is important.”

I stopped to think — what were my options?

I guess I could have said, “sorry, I’m at the Flyers game and there’s no way we can do the shirts.” I could have said “how about if I just give you a credit, or don’t charge you for the shirts?”

In my opinion, they weren’t options. I did some quick math on my drive home and estimated that those four shirts could be worth about $4000 to the school owner. Sort of changes everything, doesn’t it?

How did I get that number? I figured each student takes lessons for 10 months to be in the recital. I estimated lessons at $100 per month — or $1000 for the year. Since there are four students, that’s $4,000.

Sure, the owner could have offered the parents of those students the money back for the t-shirts that weren’t printed correctly. But don’t you think that  might affect their decision to re-enroll their children next year?

And don’t you think that would have played into the owner’s mind when it came time to find a vendor for next year’s t-shirts and programs?

So…what would you have done? Go the extra miles (literally)? Offer a discount? And would you feel guilty about it afterward?

I’d welcome your comments…

When most people think about getting paid to wear to wear clothes, the immediate thought is a professional model. Even then, we’re talking about wearing some really, really expensive clothing and jewelry.

Most people wouldn’t be thinking about getting paid to wear the good, old-fashioned t-shirt. But Jason Sandler isn’t like most people.

A few years ago, Sandler had his “a-ha” moment. The idea was simple. He would charge people to wear a t-shirt promoting their brand. He refined and defined his idea to the point that now it’s his job — to the tune of over $60,000 a year.

Sandler sells himself to sponsors based on the day of the year — Jan. 1 will cost a company $1, December 31st goes for $365. During the course of the day, Sandler will wear a sponsor’s shirt, take pictures of him in the shirt, do a one-hour webcast of himself talking about the sponsor, and tweet, youtube, Facebook and use any other social media tools at hsi disposal to alert his followers about his sponsor for the day.

He has a website called www.iwearyourshirt.com where you can get more details.

Sandler was a guest on our radio show last week (www.blogtalkradio.com/get-more-businessin case you’re interested), and he talked about his business, its growth, and what he and his business partner, Evan White,  can offer small businesses for their 24 hours of fame.  Yes, I said partner. After working solo for 2009, Sandler added his partner (and doubled his fees!) for 2010. He’s looking to add two or three more people next year as well.

Seems like his idea has caught the attention of small companies — but he’s also working with some bigger companies later this year (as of this writing, he only has 19 days still available for 2010).

Sandler’s idea — and his execution of the idea — is one of those silly little “why not me?” ideas that has turned into a business. Despite his estimation that he puts in 10-12 hours a day on behalf of his sponsor, most people would do almost anything to have a similar job description.

Sandler’s story was very inspirational, and is one of those stories you hear occasionally that makes you think just about anything is possible.

So, if you’re got an idea you’ve been toying with for a while, go for it!! And if you have a few extra dollars floating around, I know a guy that will help you promote it on a t-shirt!

We had a few incidents come up recently that are making me wonder if the rules of doing business have changed and I missed the memo.

Like many businesses, we offer terms to our customers. Our terms are spelled out on our invoices, and most times I will also let our customers know about our terms when they’re getting ready to place an order. Terms are pretty standard in our industry, although I’m real close to rethinking it.

Twice in the past two weeks, we’ve had customers question an invoice — and both times the invoice was more than 60 days old! Think about that — you order an item, you receive the item, you receive the invoice, you receive a statement at the beginning of the next month — then wait another 30 days to voice a complaint? I mean, it’s not like we’re selling fresh fruit here — there are very few items that will “go bad” in 30 days.

Just curious how the mind works on something like that — and do these people pull similar stunts with other vendors. I can hardly imagine them saying to their mechanic, “Hey Joe, that oil change you did for me two months ago — not good. I don’t think I’m paying for it.”

Anyway, these recent incidents have us considering switching over to an all credit-card payment method. The reality is, is so many other businesses, you pay when you receive your goods, whether you use card, credit or debit cards. As I type this, I’m having a hard time thinking coming up with another example of a business that delivers goods or services and doesn’t get payment at that time.

Anyone? Class? Class? Bueller?

Let me know if you think of other businesses that work on terms, or if you know of other businesses changing their payment methods.

We’ve been very fortunate to have a number of great guests on the radio show recently. While the topics have been pretty far-ranging — methods of incorporation, marketing & direct mail, non-profit structuring — there is one piece of advice that shines through.

Ask for help! Or more precisely, pay for help.

With all that goes into starting and/or maintaining a business, there is one way one or two people can do it all. OK, I take that back — you probably can do it all, if you want to forgo little things like easting, sleeping, time with the family, etc.

Running a business — even the smallest one — can be complicated. Whether it’s deciding to how to incorporate, filing the proper paperwork with your state or local government, paying taxes, hiring employees, marketing yourself, and any of the other myriad issues facing owners on a daily and weekly basis, running a business is time-consuming. That’s why it pays to get help.

You’ll probably notice that I keep saying “pay”. The reason is simple — payment means that there is some expectation of expertise, and also some expectation that the job will be done in a professional manner. We’ve all heard horror stories how someone’s relative incorporated the business, or a nephew built a website, or a son or daughter does all the marketing. The reality is, by and large, you get what you pay for.

In our business, we see this constantly. Someone thinks they may be saving money by designing their business card or brochure by themselves. Usually — to be blunt — their designs suck. They’re basic — almost primitive. And almost always, they’re not “print-ready.” All of which means we have to re-do or revise or simply scrap their design work. So, they’re going to end up spending money to get something done AND they wasted their time to do the design work originally.

There was an old commercial for a transmission company that had a fitting tagline — “you can pay me now, or pay me later.” While the transmission company was referring to preventative maintenance, they could just have easily be referring to professional services.

It’s true that lawyers, accountants, designers and marketing experts cost money. But, as our experts have said repeatedly over the past couple weeks, it’s money well spent.

I got into an interesting discussion with my co-host, Josh Chandler, on a recent radio show. The discussion started with another host, Jason Sanders, asked me a rather innocent question — how important is writing to a business?

As a former writer, newspaper editor and public relations specialist, nearly all of my post-college experience has dealt with the written word. I know how important writing can be for a business, whether it’s a press release, an advertisement or instructions on how to use or assemble a new product.

Josh, however, disagreed. He stated that in today’s world, he believes that formal writing isn’t that important. He backed up his statement that with the advent of Twitter, Facebook and the like, the ability to be present and to communicate quickly, was more important.

It was a classic generation gap. Josh is 23; I’m 48.

For his generation, which grew up in a world that never knew life without the internet and phones that did more than simply make calls, the “formalness” of writing isn’t important. Instead, the ability to say what you want to say in 140 characters or less (the world of Twitter) is the way to communicate. Grammar, spelling and all else be damned — too wordy, too stuffy, too “old.”

And that’s ok — if you only communicate with people under the age of 25 (or so) and in a non-professional setting. I still believe that good writing — like a cover letter, resume, press release, newspaper and magazine articles — have their places. And if you want to communicate with some of the more traditional business that rely on the written word — banks and lawyers come immediately to mind — you better be prepared to play by their rules.

Maybe one day, Josh’s generation will change everything. Maybe lawsuits will be filed and settled in 140 characters or less. Maybe you’ll be able to  e-mail your business plan via video to your banker. Maybe one day you’ll be able to just hit “ok” on a keypad to get a mortgage or buy a car, and not bother with all those messy forms and notaries and lawyers and insurance people.

But until that day arrives — and my belief is that it’s a long, long way away — the written word will still have a purpose.

Even if it’s just to write a blog about how important the written word is.