An Interview with Saul Kaplan, Innovation Catalyst written by Lorrie Bryan Q. What does business innovation mean to you? Is it different than technical or product innovation? A. I like to say that it is the innovator’s day—everyone is interested in what innovators have to say during bad economic times. That’s the good news. The …
Navigating the Learning Curve from PSP to MSP Written by Lorrie Bryan One of the most common recurring dreams people report is the one where they are a student, they show up for class and are surprised to find out there’s a midterm or final exam for which they are not prepared. Sound familiar? You …
Mail Call! An Interview with Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe by Lorrie Bryan Q. Can you give us a prognosis on the Postal Service? A. We’ve experienced a lot of financial challenges—just like any other business—due to large increases in digital communication and commerce, and the economic turmoil over the last few years. But going forward, …
Jill stepped into Kevin’s office, closing the door behind her. “I just ran into Tom,” she announced. “He said he turned in his notice. Can you believe it? Until the downturn, he was always one of the top salespeople around here.” Jill was an account executive at BigPrintCo. A trim blond in her late 30s, …
A recent article in Forbes entitled, Apple Gets Predatory with Lion OS Pricing, May Bite into Ballmer’s Bottom Line, reminded me of an ongoing controversy about print pricing. The article talked about how Apple was undercutting the price of Windows 7 to try to steal market share from Microsoft. But this controversy about print pricing, …
Written by Michael J. Pallerino So your client has the ultimate marketing piece. An “award-winning-customers-will-knock-themselves-out-of-each-other’s-way-to-get-to-their-product” message that’s just sitting in the queue waiting for somebody to say, “Go.” He called you looking for guidance. He has ideas. He wants high quality, four-color marketing collaterals printed in 24 hours. He’d also like to email out a …
Written by Lorrie Bryan Customer-facing [kuhs-tuh-mer] [fey-sing] -adj. Interacting or communicating directly with customers: good customer-facing skills. If you astutely recognized that all of these things are customer-facing tools, then congratulations! Contrary to what many business managers and owners think, customer facing is not confined to specific personnel at designated times, and it transcends the …
With the 500 point drop that occurred last Thursday and the shellacking we took yesterday, I could practically hear the collective groan that occurred across the country. After a decent run in the stock market and a level of acceptance that the comfort level we grew accustomed to may be gone for a very long …
A century ago and even as recently as a decade ago, the quivers of printers all held essentially the same arrows—offset print products and services. Some arrows were slicker, sleeker or faster; some cheaper, blunter and more basic. But they were all primarily the same, and most had a good chance of hitting their intended …
If we were to break down our activities as sales professionals, I’m sure we’d all agree that there are three things that drive our business: New Account Acquisition (hunting for new business) Account Development (growing existing business) Account Retention (preserving the business) Sounds reasonable enough but . . . This is the printing industry…and we …