Marketing and Sales

Recent research uncovered nearly 80 reasons why customers dislike salespeople. Nevertheless, sales is an honorable profession. Stand out from your competition by avoiding these seven bad behaviors.

In the span of less than 30 years, printers have been fundamentally transformed from creative craftsmen into digital communicators. While increasingly sophisticated and expensive presses are still a printer's backbone, high-tech prepress and database services are now the printer's nervous system.

Holiday giving is all the more remarkable when recipients are left wondering how they deserved such a nice gift. One way to accomplish this is turning to gift sets.

Stamford, Connecticut-based Cenveo announced sales results for three months ending in June.

For the three months ended June 27, net sales were $397.6 million as compared to $524.5 million for the same period in the previous year. For the three months ended June 27, the company recorded a net loss of $18.3 million (or $0.34 per share), compared to net income of $2.7 million (or $0.05 per share) in the three months ended June 28, 2008.

Headquartered in Solana Beach, Calif., Printable Technologies, a leading provider of software as a service (SaaS) web-to-print and media personalization solutions, announced that its fiscal performance in the second quarter 2009 was the greatest in the company's 14-year history.

Chicago-based InnerWorkings, a leading global provider of managed print and promotional solutions to corporate clients, reported results for the three months ended June 30.

The old adage of spending money to make money certainly rings true in the printing industry.

Many companies in the industry find that nothing gives an employee a little push to succeed, and in turn a boost in revenues, then forking over a cash bonus, an all-expense paid trip to somewhere sunny or another type of pat on the back.

Cleveland-based Proforma has introduced a major account support program, which will be led by Dave Hunnius and Jeff Heimerdinger. Hunnius and Heimerdinger join Proforma with more than 40 years of combined industry experience. Most recently, they led a team at Dayton, Ohio-based WorkflowOne where they supported sales professionals in generating more than $100 million of major account business in three years.

You and I know. We're printing resellers: brokers, agents, distributors or whatever name we choose to call ourselves. Fair enough? Not quite. Our monikers alone could defeat us in court, and some of our day-to-day practices could destroy our businesses if handled poorly.

Is the primary goal of your business-to-business advertising sales lead generation for your salespeople, representatives, distributors or resellers? If so, consider the following proven lead generation techniques gleaned from working with more than 170 companies and some of the best marketers in the business.