advice

I've been in the printing industry now for over 10 years and there is a new breed of office employee taking over companies. This new breed no longer takes 2 hour lunches filled with alcoholic consumption, blowing off the rest of the work day nor is there a good-ol' boy network to compete with anymore. Dem good-ol' boys are dyin' out and more importantly, print buyers are becoming smarter and younger.

Print Sales employees can no longer rely on the "wine and dine" technique and must have real time knowledge of their customer's projects. This is a must. I am a part of this new breed. We are hardly "sales people" but more of solutions experts. We dedicate ourselve to making sure our clients our taken care of and that doesn't include buying them season tickets or expensive wine, but giving them the confidence that their projects are taken care of and will look professional and deliver on time.

The new breed is here to stay and the legacy print sales people will have to learn how to adapt or move on. It's kind of like the new breed of poker players but I'll save that for another post. . .

Service

To me, excellent service is the difference between a good printing company and a great printing company. I have worked for four different printing companies and my current company, Bridgetown Printing is by far the most service oriented company making customers feel comfortable and at ease with their vendor decision.

We stand behind our word and we let the customer know that they are the most important customer to us whether they give us one project a year or 30. We do not play favorites and treat every customer with respect and gratitude. We know that it is our customers whom keep us going and we do not want to lose any of them.

We strive to be the best whether offering creative solutions to cut time and costs or making sure we stand behind our product taking responsibility for any in-house challenges that may arise.

How printing is changing

I've noticed over the last several years that the printing industry has become more service driven utilizing more of a targeted approach from the marketing side. This has in turn caused a decrease in the quantities being printed for direct mail and collateral thus reducing printer's margins and increasing the chance for error. To combat this printers have grasped onto digital technology to supply 1 to 1 marketing to their clients and end users.

Although Digital technology hasn't quite gotten as good as offset their is a noticeable effort made to get more in line with offset printing. For any variable pieces or short run small signature/postcard jobs digital printing is the way to go. It offers a time savings as well as cost efficiency not mentioning the environmental benefits that go with using less paper and wasting less raw materials with the exception of toner based ink.

Offset printing will still be a strong player for many years within the Printing Industry however as time goes by we will see less and less large run projects and more and more small run specialized variable projects.