Time To Add Services That Work

Adding Services That Work

It use to be that all a good printing company had to do was continually invest in their people and their equipment. That was about all it took to stay competitive and increase productivity and quality. Even now companies should be making sure that they are continually investing in these important skill sets of:

Technical skills
Sales skills
Customer management skills
Purchasing skills
Negotiation skills
Social media skills

Yet as good as having all these skills sets are they are no good without the right services in place. Skills without the services are worthless. You will not be able to push the envelope, to make things work and have a trained staff in place to hit the ground running and get superior results if you can’t put everything in place and ready to roll in perfection. Customers are not going to let you learn things on their dime. Customers are not going to let you train yourself and staff with the very lifeblood of their companies marketing at stake.

The world does not have time to stop while you learn the new communication and marketing techniques.

To change for the future printing companies need, yes I said need, not think about, adding services. Now that might not sound like something you want to be doing but to achieve sales growth and market share it is not an option. It is no longer enough to just put ink on paper. To roll off the perfect printed piece and smile. To have the perfect press check as you sip a cup of coffee with your client in the customer lounge. Print companies have to sell a complete value added services. You cannot sit back and do one part of the marketing/advertising package. More now than prerecession it is do it all or die a slow painful death. As a Printing company you had better be considering what your customers need. They understand the challenges that they face and you had better start. If you can’t, don’t or won’t produce solutions to overcome their marketing challenges they will go shopping for a supplier that will.

Larson Notes & Satire:  So what’s a printing company to do?

1st you can begin by looking at some new services and try to decide what areas you can move into (with the least amount of pain). If you can’t do it alone you need to find a synergistic partner who will not steal your customers.

2nd, review your key accounts, you know the 2 or 3 that make up 60% of your companies business. The ones that if you lose your company goes out of business. As ask them what other services they would want you to be offering them in a more holistic marketing attack.

3rd review your sales message. You need to be more inclusive of the all areas of the communication process to get your customers the kind or results they need in a way they expect.

If it were my shop, I’d be looking at picking a synergistic partner with a history of blood and ink running though my veins that matches my values.

So where does that leave us? I have been around the block a few times. Been full time with my own company since 1975 as well as having grown up in the business working for my father’s company starting in 1966. Walking in to the smell of ink, the sound of the feeder grabbing each sheet of paper, the pounding of our Gordon as it die cut card stock. Yes I have a history, and what I hope is a more glorious future.

If you want your business to be more call us for an appointment.


Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-1294
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Don't Change, Expand

No one wants to change.  Change is hard. Change is difficult. Change is scary. Changing is really one big pain in the neck for you and every one in your company.

But then so is losing 10% of your business a year. Do that long enough and your entire company is no more. I read a blog this week but some printing “expert” that he thinks 20% of printing business are going to go under this year. I say NO!

Why do I say no? Not just with some magic wand waving but because my company has a synergistic plan for you to use to white label expansion services your current key accounts need.

So let’s not talk about change, even though that is what we are talking about, let’s talk about expansion. Expansion is fun, its exciting, it inspires the imagination

Expansion will beat changing almost every day of the week. So instead of changing, let’s expand.

The process of expansion is like building a bridge. Changing might make you think of a detour on a road but expansion is and becomes a structure we are building a new road to success.  We’re expanding the means for a greater influx of goods and ideas.  We’re expanding a way for people to engage you easier, faster and more completely.

Change makes people get sweaty palms as they wonder where do I fit in.  But start to talk about expanding and they get excited. Everyone in the company gets up and moving in the same direction. Expansion is job security in an uncertain world. It’s company and market share growth.It is the possibility of a raise after a few years of nothing.

So if you want to improve your printing business and your organization, don’t put yourself and your company in a position of change but one of expansion.  Make yourself the builder and savior of your company!  Talk about how you’re going to build, grow and expand on the strengths of your company's past and a new and exciting future as you move forward.

Larson Notes & Satire:  No one has a crystal ball and can product the future. I have a guarded optimism for the United States and the World at large. I see commercial printing growing over the next 3 years at 2%-3% which will at the end still leave the industry at a -12% pre-recession level. That is not good enough for you or me!

You need to take the time and address your customer’s entire communication problems, not just print. That takes time, talent and yes money. Or does it?

That is the entire key to our white label services. We can offer you a complete behind the scenes communication and marketing system that you can sell and stay in control of.  Time yes, you still need to put in the time, but talent? We have it. Money? It is pretty much plug and play. We have your back covered. Everything is in place for you to, hitch your wagon up to.

If you are going to survive in 2013 and the next year as well you need to have a deep relationship with your key accounts. You need to more into a deeper sense of consultative and team selling.

Use us for what we can do that you don’t. We have a strategy for printers, advertising agencies, graphic artists, sign shops and other people in the graphic and creative community that takes them out of commodity selling mode.

By using us with our white label services you become more that just a printer. You move away from being asked “can you sharpen your pencil” to a real problem solver.

If you are stuck in stagnant sales growth, rising costs, price pressure maybe a little expansion is in your future for 2013.

If you want your business to be more call us for an appointment.


Howard Larson
Larson & Associates\
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
|http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Put Telemarketing Into Your Business Plan

Have you put together your business plan for the year? I hope so. If not it’s not too late. (If you need help we offer a Pick My Brain Service http://www.larsonassociates.ws/Pick_My_Brain ) In a way that is what a New Year is all about. A fresh start, a new beginning. Are you thinking of and planning out that spring or summer vacation? Do the same for your business.

As a business owner planning is a key element so while you are in the process, why not take your telemarketing call center into consideration?

Believe it or not, your telemarketer can actually do wonders in the planning, execution and implementation of that hot new promotion you’ve been thinking up. Ask yourself, who is going to do the promotion? Who will carry the torch? You sales staff is already strung out, your marketing team can only put the word out. But who is there left to reach out and grab the prospect and pull him into the offer. Your outsourced telemarketing team.

Larson Notes & Satire:  Do we have a rabbit up our sleeves? No but your next customer might be up there. Yet we have a song on our lips and we are singing out. The question is, is it your song or your competition’s?

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-1294
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

What’s A Small Printing Company To Do?

The government classifies a small business as a company in the $20 million dollar range.  For a printing company that is not a very good, accurate or even fair figure. It might be the governments but it is not reality in graphics. But then the government just goes and looks at raw numbers, then crunches them down without a thought to the real world and not what makes a certain industry or company. Have these guys in Washington ever done a day’s work in their collective lives?

While the government may never come to understand the difference between small and midsize or even large you need to if you have not already done it.  The most critical difference is that different-sized businesses, in their industry need to approach working and competition in totally different ways.

Up until 2006, many small printing business owners where fat and sassy. Life was good.  They could sit back crunch off impressions and produce $3 to $5 million of revenue.  The demand WAS there.

Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not saying it wasn’t competitive but those times just don’t match the pressures and climate of today.

Today, the printing sector as a whole is in total dismay.  Technologies are pulling us in multiple directions, we are rethinking our marketing approach, our equipment purchases are directionless, as are the people we hire and the product and service we sell.

Then there is the very idea on being competitive.  And that’s where the big difference between the little guys and the bigger “little” guys becomes apparent.

If you have a big $200 million company maybe you can have a few strategists and business development on staff, people who can sit back and think about things on how the world of business works (or should work), people who can help guide a transitional paradigm shift, and there is a big paradigm shift going on for printers and related services. If you have this kind of person, these teams of experts are continuously looking for ways to streamline, refine and generate new business.

The small printing business doesn’t have that luxury.  That might be a good thing or not. I mean really, since when has a small business person been afraid of hard work. You’re on your own. It’s your life’s work on the line and all those hours you spent working? You’re out there working your butt off just to keep your doors open. Then here I come along saying you need to be putting in more time to focus on redefining your company, and plotting a course for new and strategic growth.

I see you having two options.  You can do all this plotting and positioning into a brave new world all on your own, and redefining your company by yourself.  Or, you can surround yourself with the kind of strategists (or better ones I would hope) that you’d find in a larger company.  People who can help you plot a new course.

You’re not the same as a $200 million company.  But if you want to succeed in today’s more competitive marketplace, you need to find a way to act like one.

Larson Notes & Satire:  We here at Larson & Associates have a new proposal for you.

We have taken the time and effort to put a strategy together for printers, advertising agencies, graphic artists, sign shops and other people in the graphic and creative community that takes them out of commodity selling and become a value added communication marketer for your clients and customers.

With a book of advisors to broaden your vision that can white label services that only the big guys can even start to think of for your accounts letting you become more that just a printer.

We bring
> New thoughts
> New ideas
> New perspectives
> New services
> New markets

If you are stuck in stagnant sales growth, rising costs, price pressure on margins and you think you can exist on what is expected in growth for 2013 at 2.4% do what you have always done.

But if you want more out of your business call us for an appointment.

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.

Looking In From The Outside

It is a luxury when you can look at things from 10 miles away. You are able to see things that when you’re right on top to them, in the thick of battle, you are not able to see, the old “can’t see the forest for the trees thing.” With that distance comes the possible of a realist look. When you are removed you can “tell it like it is.” Since 70% of my business comes out of printing and the graphic field I’ll be directing this right at YOU!

> Printing has fallen 24.2% during the recession
> 2007 thru 2010 sales have stabilized but have not been sustainable with peaks and valleys, surges and stops like city traffic.
> Despite rising costs of nearly 60% prices in the industry are at or below year earlier costs.
> The NAPL expects total commercial printing to increase in 2012 for the 1st time since 2007 at about .0.05% to 1.5% but that is still at over 20% of prerecession levels. And at even 1.5% grow we are losing.

Printing and the printing business is not a pretty picture right now. Having grown up and been in and around the industry for my entire life, I’m sad, really sad about the present state of the industry.  People and friends have built up good, or what looks like good rock solid business, and in the blink of an eye, poof they are gone. Yes really it can happen that fast. Do you have 1 key account with over 25% of your business? Think about it. I have seen it in being a Typographer and then have seen it again in the CD/DVD multimedia industry. Now it is Printing Companies fighting the commodity service and online print shop battle.

It gets played out over and over, and always in the same way. Just look at your financial reports. Read the numbers. I did too late before we realized things bad things were going back in 1990. We were losing money in accounts receivable. Sales were dropping as were profit margins. Sales staff was out of control, directionless and clueless. We were looking for something to grab onto but where clueless to what that was with no real long-term direction.

You can be doing everything you can within your expertise, experience and ability but there comes a time when you need to step out of the box.

So what is the problem? For each of you it can be different and played out differently. But it is there and it is quite real.

If you stand pant and try to work your way out of this mess you will lose or at least most of you will. Why? Because it is a different world out there. Evolve with it or die. You can try to take control of what is happening but you cannot stop it. Do you feel the need to exert more control than you are now?  Adapt or die.

It is very hard for a print shop or graphic studio owner. Most of you have built your businesses from the ground up, making all decisions and running the whole show.  Some of you are 2nd or 3rd generation printers and never saw this coming.

So now ask what happens if you’re not in there, daily hands-on and running the show?  What if your people screw up?  Your company, your livelihood, your family’s livelihood, your employees’ livelihood – are all on the line.

Times have indeed changed and now this kind of action might in reality be holding you and your business back.

Do you really know what’s best in today’s “global economy?  Are you stuck in the thought pattern that you know what is right, are you shutting out other possibilities and other great opportunities?

You’re in “control-mode” at the moment. I did it 22 years ago and I’ll bet you are in the same mind set as I was.

Right now in this period of fast change / high stress, your peripheral vision literally disappears.  You lose sight of quite a bit of the world around you, and you have trouble remembering exactly what is happening. Maybe you’re not this bad, but I suspect that your problem-solving ability has shrunk as your open mindless to new ideas.

Once you let go a bigger wider picture of what you and your company can become starts to evolve.

The more you push the farther away you get pushed away.

If you are able to become receptive to this new world we have in front of us and see the potential in it as to what you can do with what you now have, you will be amazed.

I feel bad for printers and graphic artists.  I invite you to take a step back and look at some of our solutions to the way we see the reality of printing, communication and advertising.  I hope you will start to understand that you are welcome to join us in a printer and graphic friendly world, one where the Larson team will support you at every turn.

Larson Notes & Satire:  Yes I feel your pain. I have been there. I have lived it. I (really) don’t want you to go through it.

2012 found me building a special alliance of a group of advisors to broadening the scope of a printing company. This team is bringing to the table new thoughts, new ideas, new perspectives and new markets to some of my current clients and the graphic community at large.  This wave of potential energy we have put together is something you need to hear about. There is an exciting buzz of calmness. There are areas I am not an expert, but in the power of the team, we are.  I let them do their thing using to their expertise so I can excel better in mine. It gives me the kind of flexibility I need to take a step back.

Want to know more? Call us for an appointment.

“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
http://www.larsonassociates.ws
http://larsonassociates.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/LarsonAndAssociatesFans
http://www.linkedin.com/in/larsonassociates
http://member.merchantcircle.com/larsonassociates

https://twitter.com/LarsonAssociate

P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.