Marketing and Sales

Finding the right words to describe your product or service offering can be an agonizing task. In today’s crazy business environment it’s especially difficult to stand out from the crowd and impress corporate decision-makers.

Printing Industries of America (PIA) and Sales and Marketing Executives  announced a new training program—Sales Academy: Playbook for Selling Success—scheduled for March 9 to 11 at PIA's headquarters in Pittsburgh.

“We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.”
Iris Murdoch, Author/Philosopher

Much has been said, discussed and argued about the “economic situation” in the past few months. Is it possible that there is a stone unturned on this topic? Yes, there is, because the way you communicate your personal brand in this economy—not to mention how you help your clients promote their own—can have a big impact on how well you weather the challenges that could come your way.

When it comes to integrated products, it’s not so much about the product itself, but the product’s features. Manufacturers are getting even more creative and coming up with new applications for their customers that make production more efficient, cost-effective and sometimes, even better for the environment.

Have you ever been bored by a PowerPoint presentation? Of course you have – it’s an endless succession of bullet points, cheesy graphics and lame special effects. And the presenter regurgitates everything that’s on a slide you’ve already read. Let’s call PowerPoint what it really is—corporate karaoke. We endure it even though it bores audiences, trivializes content and pushes speakers to the side of the stage where they interact with their slides instead of the audience. More and more people have come to equate giving a presentation with using PowerPoint. But PowerPoint, even when used well, should be used sparingly. PowerPoint addresses what

Don’t let the economic slowdown get your printing company down. Jumpstart your sales success by educating your team about what print buyers really need and want at the first-in-the-nation Boot Camp for Print Reps from Print Buyers International (PBI), Chestnut Hill, Mass. The half-day seminar will provide the inside line on the real-world questions and concerns of print buyers today. Designed specifically to educate printing sales reps, customer service reps, paper reps, even print company executives and CEOs, Boot Camp for Print Reps is the only seminar led by the expert printing and print buying powerhouses of RIT Professor Emeritus Frank Romano and PBI

Margie Dana, founder of Print Buyers International, is a print-buying expert and speaker. She focuses on improving the printer-buyer relationship in her weekly “Margie’s Print Tips” e-newsletter. The following is an edited version of a recent Print Tips, reprinted here with permission. I surveyed print brokers for their insights on why buyers have such strong opinions about the brokerage industry. In today’s Tip, I am presenting brokers’ feedback. (Newer terms for brokers have been cropping up in recent years, including print consultants, print managers, print distributors, print agents and print specialists. By the way, “print broker” is not synonymous with “print manager.” I associate

Commenting on economic downturns, Warren Buffett once observed: “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.” Well, the water’s receding, and unless your company is at the absolute top of its industry, you’re probably more than a little worried about your level of “exposure.” Here are three steps that will dramatically increase your chances of surviving—and even thriving—in our dismal economy: Survival Strategy #1: Cut the waste. (And I’m not talking about reusing paper clips!) The one function in a company that is more wasteful than any other is new product development, where the average company squanders more than

Thomas E. Houck is a speaker, author and consultant whose program, “Your CFO Advantage” helps business owners grow their companies. reduce their taxes and lower their stress level. Here are his top 10 survival tactics to help small business owners in a tough economy: 1. Cash flow is king—As a small business owner, you must know how your cash flows. This isn’t fancy accounting; it’s simply tracking how cash comes in versus how it goes out. Take two hours, and use your QuickBooks or check register to get a grasp of this monetary movement. 2. Trim the fat—When cash flow is good, “fat” tends