The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Printing has many emotional ups and downs like most jobs, however I'm here to tell you about the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of print sales.

The good parts of print sales focuses around knowing you have a great partnership in a customer after persuing them as a prospect for a long time. They call you up or email you letting you know that another project is on its way to you without you even giving them a quote first. They are bidding you out, they know that the service they are receiving goes far beyond the menutia of getting quotes from multiple vendors.

Also when you complete a project for a customer without a hitch. They love the end product and praise you for it. I love that email when it comes through reading, "We love these brochures!" It is a great feeling.

The bad happens when projects go awry without having the control to change the outcome. For example, a brochure that is printing and is due to the customer by a specific date and the last process of the project gets botched. This happens usually because someone lacks attention to the details and the brochures get folded wrong or scuffed creating a inferior product that the customer will not be happy with. A process that the print salesman has no control over can create a bad situation where a customer could end up severing ties with the company this print salesman is associated with.

The ugly (worst of all), happens when after a project goes awry and instead of doing damage control and attempting to fix the situation by taking responsibility for the inferior product, the company ends up trying to blame the customer in any way it can. This can become very ugly and can produce such a bad taste in the customer's view that one, they will never come back and two, the ugliness can spread to other customers giving the printing company a bad name in the industry causing a whole slew of other problems.

I try to stay only with the good however the bad happens sometimes and i've steered clear of the ugly. I can only do my best to make sure my customers are happy mainly due to hard work and honesty, both traits that are endearing to my customers.