What’s new, what’s green and what’s selling in the world of paper

By Michael Cornnell

SELLING TIPS

Looking to polish up your paper-sales skills? Check out these suggestions from Bart Robinson, vice president of marketing for Mohawk, Cohoes, N.Y., and Jeffrey B. Luehring, segment leader for carbonless rolls and security with Appvion, Appleton, Wis.

To sell quality, sell the difference

If you’re having trouble selling high-end paper, try emphasizing to clients the improved results they’ll see by using it. “Think about collateral that comes through the mail,” said Robinson. “We’re all standing over the trash can as we open our mail these days, and, if you are using a commodity envelope or substrate that you may be wafer-sealing or something like that, you are more apt to just take from hand to trash than if you had something that had some sort of a texture to it, a different size, something that differentiates you from the rest of the pile,” he explained. “From a marketing perspective, you’ve got a better chance of customer engagement simply by using a different paper. We’re too busy and worried about cost per piece in the print marketing, and not worried enough about cost per response,” he said. “I think that paper and printing techniques are things that can enhance cost per response.”

To sell security, show the benefits

Clients who have never had a problem with document fraud before may be resistant to buying security features. To overcome this resistance, Luehring recommended focusing on the value being purchased, similar to what an insurance salesperson would do with a specific policy.

“I think with any product in general, and especially security products, is that a distributor is really selling the expected benefits from that solution,” he said. “How that relates to security is it’s really like an insurance policy against fraud. What we’ve found, and distributors and manufacturers will tell you the same thing, is that if somebody’s been defrauded, they understand what’s occurred and are very ready to take action and invest in some more security measures in their documents,” explained Luehring. “The ones who have not incurred fraud tend to not want to spend [money] on that insurance policy, but the statistics say, fraud is going to occur. So what we’re really trying to do with [the sales tools described under the “A New Sales Tool For an Old Problem” subhead] is have the distributors sell that value,” he said. “We’ve done some primary research with distributors, and they get that value, and they want to do that, but they were looking for some better tools to do that.”

Paper. Year to year, how much does it really change? The answer, it turns out, is a lot. Products wax and wane in popularity, green initiatives expand and evolve, and suppliers continue offering stronger and more sophisticated sales tools. There's a lot of new in the world of paper, and most of it seems to be in the print distributor's favor.

AN OLD PRODUCT ON A NEW RISE

The Internet and culture's overall shift toward electronic documentation has long been held as a detriment to print, but for some paper products, it's actually proving to be a boon. Bart Robinson, vice president of marketing for Mohawk, Cohoes, N.Y., explained how technology is driving interest for one of the company's products.

"We have a surface treatment on our [HP] Indigo products called i-tone, a surface treatment that enhances the printing through the HP indigo," he said. "We are selling more and more of that product. We grew that product over 50 percent last year, and this on a paper that's been around for 50 years," he continued. "What it is, it's finding new places [in] a home, whether it's the online photo-products that are now using super-fine or the online book players are using super-fine. So it's being used in that [new] digital space, even though it's being seen as an old, historic brand."

A NEW SALES TOOL FOR AN OLD PROBLEM

While some paper products are benefiting from new cultural developments, others still thrive from old paradigms that aren't going away anytime soon. Document fraud is an unfortunate mainstay in the paper world, but also one that continues to drive sales and innovation.

Jeffrey B. Luehring, segment leader for carbonless rolls and security with Appvion, Appleton, Wis., described a new sales tool the company is designing to help distributors sell print security. "Many sales tools from paper companies tend to be swatch books and sheets of paper, but what we've found is that [distributors] are actually selling a finished document that contains print and paper to an end-user, so our new selling tools are much more document-focused," he said. "We're pointing out the features and benefits of security paper to deter fraud, and we're pointing out the features and benefits of what a printer can print on or apply as well," he said. "It's to focus much more on the final item that a distributor is selling, versus trying to have a distributor use some paper swatch books or sheets of paper to try to articulate to an end-user what that can do for him or her to deter fraud."

Luehring said the tool is likely to be ready by November or December. It will be a hard-copy document full of live examples to show clients possible security features, and also will have an online component. It will be organized by at least four different vertical markets: financial, education, medical and government.

ONCE-NEW INITIATIVES BECOMING THE STANDARD

Green initiatives, once a new idea and something that would have been considered a trend, are now becoming mainstream in the industry. Robinson explained how green initiatives have contributed to Mohawk's bottom line.

"We've been working on that for many years, and quite frankly have gotten to the point where there's really not much more that we can do that we haven't already done," said Robinson. "We were on that bandwagon long, long ago, and continue to feel very strongly about it. It's been a very important part of Mohawk's growth." Details on Mohawk's green offerings can be found on its website, www.mohawkconnects.com/company/environment, covering company initiatives such as its wood-sourcing policies and carbon-offset projects.

Appvion also has a large amount of environmental information on its website, www.appvion.com/en-us/environmental/. Luehring described some of the green initiatives within the company's security line. "Within our security products line, we do have the ability to use 50 percent post-consumer waste in the products," he said. "Any of our products are available as FSC-certified as well, and all of our operating sites as a corporation are ISO 14001 certified, which is for chemical and environmental management."

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