Form/Label Combinations Bring Growth Opportunities

A longer initial sales cycle generates higher profits and repeat orders through client savings

By Jamie Heckelman

Thinking of selling form/label combinations? Don't expect to waltz into your prospective customer's office, dazzle him or her with some attractively designed samples and walk out with the order.

Instead, you are going to have to invest time and energy in learning how this potential client's operations function, what his or her ultimate goals are and how to achieve them.

In the end, both you and your client should be extremely pleased with the results.

Tom Warnez, president of Metcom in St. Clair Shores, Mich., sells form/label combinations to the local manufacturing, distributing and warehousing markets. He said that form/label combinations are particularly appropriate for shipping and picking applications.

"We try to understand our customer's business by touring the entire operation," said Warnez, "including the warehousing or plant facilities. We look for problems, especially within the picking/shipping arena, such as matching problems or excess labels."

The next step, said Warnez, is to determine both the labor and product costs involved in picking, packing and shipping. When designing a system that incorporates all of these factors, he is able to present substantial overall savings for his customer with a form/label combination.

Reduce Expenses and Aggravation

"When labels are separate from forms, it often makes for errors, wastes time and causes aggravation," Warnez explained. "Form/label combinations eliminate these problems."

Kevin Oliger, president of DocuForms in Davenport, Iowa, said that form/label combinations constitute approximately 10 percent of his business. He noted that customer demand for form/label combinations is increasing, especially for packing slips/bills of lading and shipping forms within the manufacturing and insurance industries.

Oliger agreed that in order to successfully sell a form/label product, a distributor must examine the client's whole system from start to finish.