[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:02] DC: Print Buying UKvUSA is a series dedicated to helping printers create stronger, more meaningful, and more profitable relationships with print customers on both sides of the pond. I’m Deborah Corn, founder of Project Peacock and principal at Print Media Centr.

[0:00:20] MP: And I’m Matthew Parker, the Champion of Print at profitableprintrelationships.com.

[0:00:26] DC: We may not always agree, but that’s when it gets interesting. So, turn up the volume, get out your notepad, and welcome to the
program.

[EPISODE]

[0:00:40] DC: Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Podcasts From The Printerverse. This is Deborah Corn, your Intergalactic Ambassador. Today, we are here with the UKvUSA podcast. Hello, Matthew Parker, my rival from the other side of the pond.

[0:00:56] MP: Hello, Deborah Corn, my enemy for whom I always have to put on my heaviest boxing gloves.

[0:01:04] DC: Yes, true, to knock me out, but you never do, Matthew. I always get back up fighting.

[0:01:09] MP: Oh, yes, you wouldn’t be Deborah if you didn’t.

[0:01:11] DC: Thank you, Matthew. I appreciate that. Okay, everybody, we have a pretty serious subject to tackle today, which is budget cuts in marketing and print. Now, with the current situation in the world, we know that marketing budgets are, let’s say being shut down at the moment for only the necessities, if there are even necessities for some companies and everybody’s kind of holding on to their cash to see what’s going to happen towards the end of the year.

Now, I’ve spoken to many printers who tell this to me. I’ve spoken to the agencies who tell this to me, but just in case anybody out there might not understand the reality of the situation, I asked ChatGPT for a little assist to get some stats. So, according to chiefmarketer.com, 39% of CMOs, chief marketing officers, plan to reduce spending this year. Fifty-nine percent of marketing leaders say they don’t have sufficient budgets to execute their full strategies in 2025. That is from adweek.com.

In the B2B space, 39.2% reported no change and 8.4% are reducing their budgets. And the interpretation from the site 6cents.com, is that, that means that the majority of marketing budgets are stagnant and pausing investments, including print. So, just because only 8.4 reduced their budgets, you still have 40% of people using the same budgets that they have for as long as they have and they’re not putting more into the marketing budget.

So, these numbers show that print buyers and marketers are under intense financial pressure, making this the right time for printers to step up and show value and build trust. The printers who invest in relationships now will be the first in line when the spending returns. At least that’s my opinion on it. So, this conversation is going to be about what a printer should be doing in this moment of time when maybe they have customers who are no longer purchasing prints at the moment, or reducing their orders, or quite frankly shopping around looking for the lowest prices they can find. It’s also going to be a conversation about reaching out for new business because if you have shrinking budgets and clients doing less work, you need to find new clients potentially to come in and fill those gaps.

So, let’s start with that. Matthew, when marketing budgets are tight, what should be the first new business outreach from a printer, someone who they’ve never spoken to before?

[0:04:23] MP: The only way that you are going to get through to a company in that sort of situation, well, there’s two ways. The first way I wouldn’t recommend that that’s to go through and go, “I can do cheaper prices,” and probably you will get someone to listen to you but it’s not a great way to sell, and we’ve talked loads of times on this podcast about why that’s a bad sales pitch. I don’t plan to go into it here.

The second way is to justify to that company why they need to listen to you when their budgets are shrinking, when they’re doing less marketing. Those companies still have to get the results. So, if you can go, let me come in and show some successful marketing activity that we’ve done and share that with you as to how that work can help your performance, then I think you’ve got a shot at having that conversation.

But let’s be really clear about this because loads of printing companies think that marketing case studies mean going in and showing some fancy flyers and having a testimonial from a customer who says, “Oh, that was so great to work with. They were on time and on budget.” That means absolutely nothing. You have to go in with statistics and proof on why the strategies that you’ve been using work. That means, sadly, that the majority of printing companies, I’m really going to struggle to get into those companies because they haven’t been monitoring the marketing success of what they’re doing or their customers won’t share it with them.

[0:06:04] DC: Okay. I don’t disagree with you, but that wouldn’t be my approach. It wouldn’t be my approach, but it’s not wrong, what you said, unfortunately, because I would love it if I just thought you were wrong. I still think that that is a little too aggressive to go in there with, like, “Hey, we can do this all for you.” I think this is a good time to season, to like lay the foundation. So, if you know that this company does a lot of direct mail, instead of saying, “We could help you improve your direct mail,” because, as you said, you don’t know what their results are for their direct mail. It could be fantastic.

I would contact them somehow, whether it’s email and you got a hope that they open it, but otherwise send a package with just some samples of things that you know that they’re not doing along with printed out case studies or a QR code to hear the person who they could connect with, not like a designer talking about how easy it was to – how they like reduce the volume but added some specialty effects to it and it made all the difference to them and they keep doing it. I don’t know what it is, but it’s more about leading them to the water than like putting the hose on them, even though it would be like a light hosing to begin with. I don’t trust that it wouldn’t ramp up pretty fast and all of a sudden become like one of those riot hose things. Thoughts?

[0:07:36] MP: I’m not planning on waterboarding any clients. That’s kind of not one of the sales tactics that I promote.

[0:07:42] DC: Weird example I use there.

[0:07:43] MP: Maybe we should. I mean, maybe that’s the way to get businesses, is the only way is to make them –

[0:07:48] DC: Buy from me, you’re going to get the hose.

[0:07:51] MP: Yes. By the way, if anyone takes this up, it wasn’t our idea. We take no responsibility for any failures that you might have on your sales at that point, or indeed any lawsuits that may be brought to you from –

[0:08:02] DC: True. We’re not providing legal advice.

[0:08:05] MP: No. Otherwise, I think you said pretty much what I said because you said send in a packet with samples and case study and printed out case studies.

[0:08:16] DC: I know, but you went to the, and we can help you do this part. I’m saying leave that out. That’s the only difference.

[0:08:24] MP: Okay. My view in sales is that you always have to have a call to action. People need to be told what to do. If you don’t, they’ll go, “Oh, that’s nice. I’ll show that to my –”

[0:08:33] DC: Want more samples? Join our mailing list. Interested in our upcoming webinar about designing? Sign up for our mailing list. Want to come for a tour and see all of our equipment? Sign up here. So, there could be calls to action that are less salesy.

[0:08:50] MP: There could be. I think, personally, that if times are tough and everyone’s all hands to the pump to try and make their marketing budgets work, no one’s got time for a webinar, for a plant, or they probably don’t even really want any more samples.

[0:09:08] DC: I don’t know what to say about that. You might be right about that one. However, if it’s on demand, they can –

[0:09:13] MP: Okay, [inaudible 0:09:14].

[0:09:16] DC: No. If it’s on demand, they can watch it when they want. And going back to successful marketing is the right message to the right person at the right time. So, it’s not about sending one message out to all your prospects. It’s about sending a really detailed message with meaning to that one company. If you’re talking about things that they’re interested in, I do believe that they will take the next step to hear more or learn more until the point where it gets to, “And we can help you do that.” And, “Hey, Deb, what do you got going on?” You answered two of my emails, and now all of a sudden, I feel that that’s an invitation to hunt you down and try to sell you.

So, that’s what I’m just saying. There’s a fine line there. And to your point, when people are freaking out on the other side, they do not want those phone calls. “Hey, what do you got going on?” I’ve been getting a lot of those, by the way, a lot of emails from people who tell me about their capabilities and then ask me, if they could quote my next job.

[0:10:25] MP: Yes. That just gets you absolutely nowhere.

[0:10:27] DC: Well, considering I’m not a print customer. Yes, just because I’m on their list, I guess I’m connected to them on LinkedIn or something.

[0:10:36] MP: Yes, whichever approach you take, whether you prefer my hard waterboarding approach or Deborah’s gentle sprinkler approach, yes, I’m firmly of the opinion that the only way you’re going to get through to people at the moment is through statistics. They all either know their job or they think they know their job. I appreciate there’s a big difference, but very few of them are going to trust the printing company to teach them about marketing. If a printing company says, and here’s the results we got, suddenly they will.

[0:11:03] DC: Yes. I’m not saying teach them about marketing, but they could have somebody else come and teach them about marketing, an influencer, somebody that the designers know. It’s always great to hear from a peer, so I think that there’s an opportunity, as well.

[SPONSOR MESSAGE]

[0:11:24] DC: Print Media Centr provides printspiration and resources to our vast network of global print and marketing professionals. Whether you are an industry supplier, print service provider, print customer, or consultant, we have you covered, by providing resources and strategies that enable business marketing and creative success, reporting from global events, these podcasts, Project Peacock TV, and an array of community lifting initiatives.

We also work with OEMs, suppliers, industry organizations, and event producers, helping you connect and engage with our vast audience, and achieve success with your sales, marketing, and conference endeavors. Visit Print Media Centr and connect with the Printerverse. Links in the show notes. Print long and prosper.

[EPISODE CONTINUES]

[0:12:18] DC: Okay, budget cuts create competition. So, how can printers differentiate themselves with new business prospects without offering to reduce pricing? I will refer everybody to the last podcast we did about print management companies that dives into this topic in a greater length. But right now, we’re talking about quick hits and quick wins.

[0:12:45] MP: Well, the first thing printers should do is invest in my book, How to Stop Buyers Choosing On Price, because there’s a whole chapter on that about differentiation. But let me give you a few things. So, all the printers that I got who tried to differentiate themselves said, we’ve got better quality, we’ve got better service, your difference is me. All these sorts of things. Yes, okay, Deborah, we’re on video as well. Deborah is making a cringe-inducing face.

[0:13:09] DC: No, I was laughing because like the difference is me. I know, I hear that all the time. And by the way, sometimes it is, but we’ve also discussed, great, that doesn’t make me sticky to the company, it makes me sticky to the person.

[0:13:22] MP: Yes, and even if the difference – you’re not going to prove that to me yet, so don’t lead with it. Your difference is not your printing press, it’s not your location unless you’ve got something really time-specific. Yes, all these things that printing companies love to lead with don’t work.

What I say is the differences have to be specific so that is something that the customer can actually understand. It’s not some huge idea of, what if someone says my difference is my quality, what does that actually mean? My difference is my marketing expertise. What does that mean? They have to be valuable to the buyer and this is where you can show a difference that is valuable typically by being an expert in that customer’s market segment. So, don’t be a printing company that is all things to all people. Be a printing company that works really well, has a big track record in the insurance business, or works with restaurants, or whatever it is, that’s a really good one to have. It also has to be proprietary. So, try and make something that’s hard to copy. I’m the trainer in the printing industry who’s been approached by 1,400 different printing companies in my buying career. Yes, that’s something that very few people, if any, can actually copy at that point.

Those are the things that you have to think about. Creating difference is hard. When I run my workshops on this, this is probably the most difficult bit for everyone and I totally get that. But yes, you have to come up with something that’s relevant to the client that they understand that’s hard to copy. So, not that easy, but it’s a way to do it.

[0:14:58] DC: I think one way that the printers can reach out and differentiate themselves is to try to set up new business meetings, not new business for the printers, but new business meeting for the customers if they happen to be a client that has customers. And go in to understand what their goals are, especially when they have less money to work with and become a strategic advisor on where is a good point to insert print and where maybe go to digital media tools and hopefully printers are able to provide both of those. That’s also what I would say.

If you have a customer that let’s just say they print magazines and they’re printing less magazines. Okay, also make sure you’re offering them an electronic version of that. So maybe they can still distribute it to people or use them as teasers to, “Hey, here’s a free edition of the July issue of our magazine, and hopefully if you like it, here’s an offer to subscribe or whatever it might be.” So, I think that the focus isn’t on the printing business or selling print, but about how to help the person on the other side, and it also depends upon who the person is on the other side, like a print buyer or an agency isn’t going to have that type of information and they’re not going to have time to have a new business meeting with you. But a small business would a regional chain of somebody, anybody that doesn’t have a giant marketing agency working for them. And if they do, try to have a conversation with those marketing people, which is also a great way of finding new customers.

Instead of going after the brands or the stores, go after these little design agencies and talk to them about your capabilities. See if you can make some print brokering situation with them if they print with you. I don’t know if that’s legal or not legal. Is that fair to do, Matthew? Are you allowed to do that?

[0:17:12] MP: Yes. Yes. You can do that over here.

[0:17:12] DC: I’m not a print broker, so I don’t know what the rules are about that.

[0:17:16] MP: I can’t speak for America, but yes, in the UK, that’s fine. It’s not an issue.

[0:17:19] DC: Okay. Well, whatever it is, as long as everything is transparent and nobody’s doing anything shady, it should be fine. But that goes back to being a partner and not just a provider.

[0:17:32] MP: I totally agree with trying to get in at the beginning and the planning parts and the process. One of the number one issues that I hear from many printers over here, they say, “They could have done this job so much better, if only they talked to use earlier.” I go, “Why don’t you?” They go, “We’ve been asking to do these many times, and they just won’t involve us earlier on.” I don’t know why companies don’t because it’s in their interests. But it’s really hard to do. I can’t disagree with what you’re saying at all and I can’t disagree with the target type of company that you’re talking about at all. But I still think you will suggest that. If you’re really, really lucky, you’ll get a hit rate of one in five, which is far better than a hit rate of nothing.

But it’s a really tough thing to do, at least in the UK. Companies don’t want to talk to their supply chain. They don’t want to understand how their supply chain can outvalue because it’s just one more thing for them to think about. So yes, I agree, but it has to come with a reality check as well, sadly.

[0:18:36] DC: What’s the best way to follow up with someone who says we’re not spending right now?

[0:18:42] MP: It depends how salesy you want to be. I’m tempted to go, what would make you spend now? What would make you play some business with me right now? Not what prints you want, but what result would you need to get in order to play some business with me? And potentially, that starts the conversation where you’re beginning to talk about projects and goals, as opposed to, can I supply you with some print?

So, that would be the number one I go down. The other one is literally, “That’s fine. I understand. If you don’t mind, I’m going to carry on sending some resources. They’re yours. Use them as you’d like. If you’d like to use them with your current suppliers, I don’t have an issue with that. When should I ring you? When are you having your next budgets? When can I ring you to see if you’re in a position to talk about spending?” That way, at least you’re keeping in touch with Deborah, keep them warm, gentle, sprinkler, let the grass grow type effect.

But at least you have their permission, you can get back in touch to them and go, “Hey, we spoke whenever it was, you suggested that around about now you’d be revising your budgets. I just wanted to get in touch and find out if we can have the conversation we couldn’t have before.” And those are my two very quick answers to that one.

[0:20:00] DC: Yes. Is it 1989? Because that’s what it sounds like in your world. That’s very old-school sales, isn’t it, Matthew? What you just said? I mean, I’ll follow up at the cadence that you want and I’ll contact you the way that you want me to contact you and I will put in my CRM to follow up in September and basically say, “So, you got anything coming up.” It’s not a relationship at all.

[0:20:28] MP: It’s not. But if you’re sending the resources at the same time, then you’re –

[0:20:34] DC: But you’ve asked them if they want to opt out of that. Okay, let’s divide this into two different categories. One is the prospect that you don’t know at all, and one is a customer you have who’s not spending right now. So, answer again in those two categories, because I don’t know who you’re talking to. If you’re talking to the prospect this way, I’m going to lose it.

[0:20:59] MP: Okay. So, I was talking to the cold prospect at that point, because I think that too many people waste time trying to spend time with prospects aren’t going to convert.

[0:21:14] DC: So, you put all the work on them to opt out of everything? Okay, we’ll definitely get everybody buckled up now because here it comes. Go ahead.

[0:21:23] MP: I didn’t say they could opt out. I said, I’m going to send you resources. Yes, if you want to use them with another supplier, that’s fine by me. But at least that way, I’m going, yes, I’m going to send you stuff, and I keep in touch. I mean, what else would you suggest at this point? Because if I say to someone, I’m not spending, I don’t want to hear from you, and someone keeps ringing me, I’m going to be exceedingly rude to them on the phone very, very quickly for an email. So, I’m intrigued. Come on, let’s hear the 2025 sales bit about this.

[0:21:51] DC: I would become Deborah Corn and be the inspiration person and just keep sending the coolest stuff I have ever seen to this company and of course, related to what they do. So, if they do a lot of out-of-home advertising, let’s just say. Then the next time I see a really cool billboard or something, I send it to them and say, “I saw this and I thought of you. Or sending something that what you said before, some statistics, “Hey, I thought you’d be interested in this.” The responses from retailers reaching out to customers who have left things in shopping carts has really lifted sales.

So, I thought you might be interested in this data. Then back away, without the, “And we can help you do this.” At some point, I define sales as when a need and a relationship meets. And if they’re not spending right now, that doesn’t mean they’re not a customer of you. They could be a customer of your information. They could be a customer of your statistics. They could be a customer of the education you provide, such as, if you’re going to create an image in AI, here is the prompt to make sure that it’s printable. I think you could be really, really, really helpful when somebody’s not spending right now, so that when they do spend, they remember all the things you can do because it’s in front of them and you’re sending them relevant information at the right time.

[0:23:28] MP: I maybe wouldn’t have sent all the same things that you did, but I did say I’ll keep sending them information. So, we’re not a million miles away. There is a huge –

[0:23:36] DC: Yours is attached with the sales pitch though, correct?

[0:23:40] MP: No.

[0:23:41] DC: Okay, you just said you always have a call to action.

[0:23:43] MP: I just said I’ll keep sending you some resources. So, in this particular instance, I said, I’ll keep sending you the resources, open brackets, not saying this to the prospect, so you remember me, close brackets, then I’ll actually do my sales call to action bit when you told me I should.

[0:24:02] DC: Fine. I’m not telling anybody when I’m ready to spend. I’ll be like, “How the hell do I know?” It’s going to happen when it happens, right?

[0:24:09] MP: Lots of people will tell you when budgets are going to be reviewed. For me as a buyer, I often tell printers that because it was a great delaying tactic. It means I can go, I’m not doing anything now. I’m doing a review in September and you know what, that would get rid of 90% of printers who forget to contact me at that point anyway.

[0:24:25] DC: Okay.

[0:24:26] MP: One of the things that I should remember –

[0:24:29] DC: Right. My prediction is that everyone’s going to hold on to their budgets to the last quarter and then they’re going to dump all that money into trying to get sales at the end of the year to salvage something in 2025, and it will be madness. So, if you’re out there, now’s the time to be laying tracks for those phone calls and inquiries to come to you. I want you to answer the same question. We’re not spending right now, but it’s a customer that you have, that a printer has.

[0:25:01] MP: Okay, so just before I do, the one thing I’d say is be very careful about who you nurture and who you’re wasting your time on, because a lot of people spend a lot of time following up people they shouldn’t be in my experience. So, people that we know. For that one, it’s a trickier one. So, they’ve been a customer and they’re now not spending. It depends how good the relationship is. I’d be tempted.

[0:25:23] DC: Oh, what do you know?

[0:25:25] MP: Yes, I’d be tempted. I’ve never said it’s not, but I’d be tempted to try and have a
quick call and just going, “Hey, you’ve been spending with us and now you’re not. Can I just have 10 minutes of your time just so we can have a quick chat so I can understand what’s going on? I can update my budgets, which gives you an excuse.” Yes, if that’s how they help you out. Okay. But equally, yeah, can I find out what’s going on, what’s causing you to stop spending, and how we carry on things from here, will be my probable route of doing this.

Again, there’s so many variables in that customer as to how I’d respond. So, I’m thinking of that with a reasonably high spending customer who’s gone to pretty much zero, maybe not completely zero, but pretty much zero, but I’ve got a good relationship with, then I want to find out what’s happening.

[0:26:16] DC: Okay, but we know what’s happening. They’re holding on to their money because there’s uncertainty in the world. This is a specific point in time.

[0:26:24] MP: Unless they’ve told us that, we don’t know that. They could have gone with a competitor, they could be switching to e-communications instead. There’s all sorts of reasons that they might be moving, or might be stopping working. So, we don’t know that. There’s a fairly good likelihood that you’re absolutely right, but let’s hear it from them and find out. Did we mess up on a job and they’ve suddenly moved everything in anger and I as a salesperson never knew about it, what can I do to try and make that right to get back in again?

[0:26:51] DC: Okay.

[SPONSOR MESSAGE]

[0:26:54] MP: Do you need some direction or new ideas for your business? Would sales goals setting and accountability improve your revenues? Or do you have a member of staff who could be performing better? I’m Matthew Parker, the Champion of Print at profitableprintrelationships.com, and I offer a personal mentoring service. Together, we work out exactly what you need. We create a personal mentoring program for you, and then we speak twice a month. You get set goals and action points to make sure you progress.

What makes me different is that I’m the buyer. I’ve been approached by over 1,400 different printing companies, so I know what works, and I know what doesn’t. If you’d like to find out more, go to profitableprintrelationships.com, click the training tab, and then go to mentoring. Or, alternatively, just hit me up on LinkedIn. I look forward to working with you.

[EPISODE CONTINUED]

[0:27:47] DC: How can printers keep prospects interested and engaged when they’re not ready to buy? It’s not that they don’t have money, they’re just not ready to pull triggers on anything at the moment.

[0:28:00] MP: I think it comes back to the discussion that we had about sending people the resources. So, I’m a great believer in not contacting people too often, but staying front of mind with them. Again, there’s a delicate balance there. But I think it’s really making sure that you are sending those people, individual resources. Hey, send them chocolate and cake as well. Because unless it’s a – you’ve got a – when I worked at a company that had a strict no gifts policy, even getting a chocolate bar was out of order, but most companies aren’t that strict.

So, send them cake and chocolate. I’m shallow buyer. The person who sends me the most cake is probably going to get a good chance of seeing me fairly early on. And make sure that you are in all the right community places, I’m choosing my words carefully here, the right community places during that time. And by that, I mean yes beyond LinkedIn and do the social media thing, but actually where do your customers hang out? Are there shows that you should be going to where people see you? Are there forums where they hang out and can you go on to some of those groups and participate helpfully as opposed to as a salesperson? Are there social events that they go to where you can go and sponsor a round of drinks or something and just be there to say hi to people?

But be visible in their community. You’re not going to do it just by shouting out on LinkedIn or on Facebook or whatever social media channels you use, unless your customers are hanging out there as well. And just do little things like send them a nice card. It doesn’t have to be any interesting statistics, but just send them a nice card going high every now and again. That can be done every three months or so. It doesn’t have to be a long labor-intensive one, but people notice that sort of thing. Do things stand out? What about you, Deborah? What do you think?

[0:30:00] DC: Well, everything you just said isn’t going to stand out because other people are doing the same exact thing. So, maybe you’re only one of three companies doing it when 25 could, but you’re still one of three. Then you go back to how do I differentiate myself if three people are sending little notes to keep in touch.

I go back to education because I talk to the print customers and they don’t know what’s going on out there and either do the marketers, as far as all of the possibilities, the ecosystems that they could be working within. So, to your point before this month is realtor marketing month at the print shop and there is an open house event where a very successful realtor is going to discuss their marketing ideas, and you have a designer there, and you have people who are just there to help the realtors understand that, yes, those little yard signs really do work and there’s other opportunities of putting little cards in the house, like, this is a new fireplace. These floors were replaced two years ago. There’s a new roof. There’s a new refrigerator.

I mean, thank you notes for the realtors, for people who come to their showings. So, the realtors can be connected to potential home owners, who they need to market to. And then you could just go vertical by vertical. At the end of the day, most of the time, everything that a printer is doing can be packaged into something that works in most verticals. So, whether you are having meeting planner Monday, and on Monday you are only sharing information about marketing for events and getting more bodies to the seats and writing blog content about it, and then hosting an event at your print shop or local restaurant who’s one of your customers. You know what I’m saying? Go into the community. Who are your customers? Do any of them own restaurants or bars or meeting spaces if you’re going after meeting planners and really start creating a community around your products and services because the era of people who really understand print buying, Matthew, is over.

It breaks my heart to say this, but that’s why we talked about the print management companies last time, because the way that the industry is going through automation and everything, the same sales system is, I just don’t think is going to work for much longer. So, I believe that sales will fall under the need and the relationship, and until that need arises, printers need to treat everybody as a customer of their information, as a customer of their community, as a customer of their partnership opportunities with other customers that they might have and make it an ecosystem that they want to be part of.

If they happen to be a marketing agency or a design agency or just a designer who has a meeting planner, and a realtor, and a local restaurant as a customer, then they have even more reason to engage with you and work with you if you’re providing them a consistent stream of information that makes them more valuable to their customers. I win.

[0:33:41] MP: Two comments and two stories.

[0:33:44] DC: Okay, go ahead.

[0:33:45] MP: So, the first comment is –

[0:33:45] DC: Are you going to burst my bubble? I just need to know.

[0:33:47] MP: Yes, of course I am.

[0:33:49] DC: All right, go ahead, try.

[0:33:51] MP: So, first comment is when you were telling me about all those very useful real estate ideas, I was beginning to feel a bit sold to at that point. Here’s all my products. I know you weren’t doing it and saying, “Hey, you’re going to buy them, but there was that kind of underlying bit there.” Maybe I’m just quite being [inaudible 0:34:09]. But I’m thinking, well, they’re showing me all that because they want me to buy it.

Point two is that all that you say in terms of educating people, people should be learning, but they don’t really want to a lot of the time. It’s really annoying.

[0:34:25] DC: Matthew, I’m going to stop you right there. It’s not that they don’t want to. It’s that there is no central place where you can find all that information. If my printer has that information, I’m going to keep going back to that website to get it. I’m just going to say this last thing and then I will shut up and you can finish your answer. But I used to say to printers, I look up envelope sizes all the time. All the time, I’m constantly looking them up. Where do I go to look them up? A place that sells envelopes because my printer doesn’t have anything handy on their website that tells me all the envelope sizes.

So, instead of going to their website and maybe discovering something new or seeing a blog post that I might be interested in saying, “Oh, my God, we have a project like that coming up.” I’m going to a site that I will never purchase envelopes for just to get their information. I am a customer of their information.

[0:35:26] MP: Okay, so I’m going to illustrate this with two stories. A sad one and a happy one. I did an assignment with one of the largest online printing companies in the UK and they were doing some customer day. So, this is where they were getting in printing companies who were their customers, typically, and good day plans, some nice hospitality, a tour around the plant because that’d be relevant to the customers and they get to learn a lot, talk to some people like me in terms of how to get better results on selling prints, and only a tiny fraction of their customer base turned up. They were really sad. It was enough to make the day worthwhile, but the majority of people just didn’t want to do that.

Now, one of my other clients, I suggested that they did have an event, not too different from what you suggested, but instead of making it an educational event. I said, “Hey, why don’t you get –” so this is a local printer local print shop. I said, “In your town, why don’t you just drop a note to lots of small businesses around there going, ‘Let’s all get together for a business catch-up over a pint.’ Really good results.” But you know what, there was no education in that, but there was community.

[0:36:42] DC: Okay, crawl, walk, run. Start with the pub and then move it to an event. I would say about the first situation, everything you said about the event was about that company and not about the people attending. So, that’s why we’re not –

[0:36:56] MP: That’s why they had people like me talking about stuff that is of interest to them, sales techniques, things like that. So, it wasn’t, some of it was a planter was about then, but there was a lot that wasn’t.

[0:37:09] DC: Okay, well, anything about them is going to – people start weighing like, is this like one of those timeshare situations where I’m going to get a free trip to Puerto Rico, but I’m going to be hearing about condominiums for like 12 hours a day. If it’s completely about the customers and not about the printer at all, I think there is a better shot at it. I mean, I don’t know, who were you talking about sales to? Who were the people in the audience?

[0:37:44] MP: They were either print resellers or printing companies. So, yes, people who –

[0:37:51] DC: Wait. A printer had an event and invited other printing companies over?

[0:37:55] MP: This is an online print company, and you’d be amazed how many printing companies use their services.

[0:38:00] DC: Oh, because they’re a trade printer, so they invited the printers over to sell more print, which benefits them. Okay, that makes sense.

[0:38:06] MP: But then where’s the difference between you defining it that way and saying that people inviting real estate people over and showing all the real estate products that they could be purchasing? Where’s the difference? Because isn’t that just –

[0:38:19] DC: Okay, because –

[0:38:19] MP: – thinking about me as well?

[SPONSOR MESSAGE]

[0:38:22] DC: Girls Who Print provides women in print and graphic communications with information resources, events, and mentorship to help them navigate their careers and the industry. As the largest independent network of women in print and a nonprofit organization, our global mission to provide resources, skill-building, education, and support for women to lead, inspire, and empower has never been stronger or more accessible. Through our member platform and program, as well as regional groups forming around the world, your access to Girls Who Print is just a click away. Gentlemen, you are most welcome to join us as allies. Get involved and get empowered today. Link in the show notes.

[EPISODE CONTINUES]

[0:39:10] DC: What it is, is showing them the ecosystem, like about things that they don’t know. They might only be buying the same things because that’s what’s in their package, for example. But maybe what they’re not buying is, does this real estate company go to events? Where are they getting their event signage from? Where are they getting their business cards from? Where are they getting any tchotchkes that they hand out to people? I’m saying there’s a whole ecosystem that these people might not be aware that they could get in the same place.

We talk about this with wide format all the time. The smartest thing I ever heard, Dan Johansson, he said to a room full of commercial printers, “If your customers are not buying wide format from you, they’re buying it from somebody else.” And it was totally true. Sometimes customers don’t think that their printers can do what they’re not purchasing from them, if that makes sense, just because they’re not aware. And they think, “Oh, well, I get my postcards from this place, and I get my banners from this place.”

So, it’s an opportunity to show people without being like, “What could we could do for you?” But just say, here’s a roadmap of everything a realtor might need to promote. We have come up with a way to pick and choose your things and bundle them into a package deal. So, let’s just say that you choose one from Tier A, one from Tier B, one from Tier C, and that’s package one, right? But the point is that that’s what they walk away with that information. While they’re there, you’re only talking to them about why a pull-up banner might not be the best way to exhibit at a booth and different options that they might not be aware of, like soft signage, for example.

[0:41:05] MP: I’m still not seeing the difference between the print events and your events, because that’s exactly what that one was around. So yes, I feel I’m being a bit of a day for downer on today’s conversation, but I’m trying to be realistic on people’s expectations.

[0:41:19] DC: Yours is a sales event, and mine is not. There was no sales –

[0:41:22] MP: It wasn’t a sales event at all. There was no sales in the event at all, Deborah, but it’s still –

[0:41:26] DC: It was an event about sales. I’m saying it was an event about sales.

[0:41:31] MP: The information was about how you can improve your sales techniques, but there was no more selling of print there than there was to –

[0:41:39] DC: Did you inform the audience listening to you, speaking about sales, about ecosystems that they could be selling to their customers? Were you educating them on packages that they could create based on different verticals?

[0:41:56] MP: I was educating them in a whole load of ways in terms of how they could improve their prints. Yes, so we talked about upselling, we talked about quick fixes –

[0:42:04] DC: Sales.

[0:42:04] MP: – to get more customers in. Yes, but that’s what they wanted to hear.

[0:42:09] DC: Exactly. This is a different audience, so it is not the same event.

[0:42:15] MP: But it’s the same type of event. We’re going to go around in circles here. But yes, my experience is that when you put on those ones where you invite people into the printing shop and go with all the good intentions of educating that people view it suspiciously. Do a social event and it works.

[0:42:35] DC: Okay. And like I said, do a social event first then and then invite people over. I mean, and you could do – look, we started this conversation with marketing budgets are being cut. I get it. So, I’m just tossing out grandiose ideas, but modify them if you can. For example, maybe you could sponsor a food truck at a summer event and just wrap it for them so people know that you’re out there. Or support some local something just to get your name out there. And that could be the social way of bringing people to you, including exhibiting at realtor events or joining some local association if you can join it as a sponsor or a supporter or something like that, and handling the community aspect of it. But then inviting them for because now we want to show these people that we’re the experts in this, that we can be consultative and help them understand how things could work together, the best way to follow up with people, how to get more people on their mailing list or on their social media channels. So, when they have houses to sell, they can have more people to share that information with.

I just think that there’s, we’re not saying the event is different, but I’m saying the feeling that people will have at my event versus yours is different.

[0:44:09] MP: Okay, and I disagree, but hey –

[0:44:10] DC: Oh, my God. Okay, well, the people out there are going to agree with me on this one, I really think. Because I’ve got my pulse on the people, Matthew.

[0:44:18] MP: Cool. Let’s see what the audience responds with.

[0:44:22] DC: Okay, that’s fair. If you think Matthew is wrong as always, please let him know in his social media posts.

[0:44:28] MP: And equally, if you think Deborah is wrong, please let her know in any social media posts.

[0:44:35] DC: Well, don’t just create a random one and say Deborah’s wrong. I mean, at least comment on the share of the podcast.

[0:44:40] MP: You know that I wouldn’t do that.

[0:44:42] DC: All right, fine.

[0:44:43] MP: Maybe put a LinkedIn poll on it sometimes.

[0:44:45] DC: All right. Well, now I’m a little heated, so thank you so much for that. I’m wide awake now. Okay, everybody, appreciate your time and attention. Until next time, prospect long and prosper.

[OUTRO]

[0:45:00] DC: Thanks for listening to Podcasts From The Printerverse. Please subscribe, click some stars, and leave us a review. Connect with us through printmediacentr.com. We’d love to hear your feedback on our shows and topics that are of interest for future broadcasts. Until next time, thanks for joining us. Print long and prosper.

[END]

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:02] DC: Print Buying UKvUSA is a series dedicated to helping printers create stronger, more meaningful, and more profitable relationships with print customers on both sides of the pond. I’m Deborah Corn, Founder of Project Peacock and Principal at Print Media Centr.

[0:00:22] MP: And I’m Matthew Parker, the Champion of Print at profitableprintrelationships.com.

[0:00:26] DC: We may not always agree, but that’s when it gets interesting. Turn up the volume, get out your notepad, and welcome to the program.

[EPISODE]

[0:00:40] DC: Hey, everybody. Welcome to Podcasts From the Printerverse. This is Deborah Corn, your Intergalactic Ambassador. More specifically, we are here with the UKvUSA Podcast, which means that Matthew Parker is on the other end of this microphone. Matthew Parker?

[0:00:59] MP: Hello, Deborah Corn, and how are you today?

[0:01:02] DC: Good. I would just like you to know that I’m getting slammed for my English accent.

[0:01:07] MP: Well, that’s understandable.

[0:01:10] DC: Yes.

[0:01:11] MP: Trust me, if I try to do an American accent, I get slammed, too. So, I just stick in my comfort zone and stick to what I know I’m good at.

[0:01:18] DC: Yes. That was actually the only thing that gave me comfort was a Brit trying to do a southern accent. I was like, “Oh, I am light-years away from him.” I’m like a freaking professional voiceover artist compared to his southern accent. Okay, we have a topic today that is from Matthew’s head. So, buckle in, and I’m going to kick it over to Matthew.

[0:01:42] MP: Okay. Today’s topic is who is going to thrive and who’s going to struggle. I thought it might be interesting for us to have a chat about the different types of print seller. I’ve taken that in its broadest sense. Not just people who’ve got machinery, but people who sell print and have a think about who’s going to do well over the coming years and who’s going to struggle. What do you think of that as a topic, Deborah?

[0:02:12] DC: I think it is a fantastic topic, Matthew. Go ahead. Let’s hear your gems of wisdom.

[0:02:18] MP: Whoa, okay. I appreciate it. The podcast now, whilst I got a compliment from Deborah. Excellent.

[0:02:24] DC: Well, I was being kind before you started. I’ll give you the chance to make a good point. Go ahead.

[0:02:30] MP: Okay. No, I’ll put it in my show notes, “Deborah was nice to Matthew for five seconds.”

[0:02:33] DC: Yes, at 1.02, Deborah gave Matthew a kind word.

[0:02:39] MP: Excellent. Well, thank you for the kind word, Deborah. I look forward to many unkind words in the coming part of the show. What I did was I had a think and I came up with two types of supplier who, I think, are going to do well in the coming years. They may not be the ones that everyone’s thinking about. I also came up with two types of supplier that I think are going to struggle over the coming years. Probably, one of them is no surprise. The other one might be a surprise. We’ll wait and see. Just building up a tension for the end of the show there. We’ll put that one on last, so you’ll have to wait until the last minute before I reveal that one.

I’m going to start with one that I probably a while ago, I wasn’t sure we’re going to survive in the print environment. I hate to admit it, but I’ll do it before Deborah says it. I was wrong. I think that a really good space for the high street printer, the one with return environment, the one where you can walk through the door and go, “Hey, I want this fired on.” Now, they have come under as beyond the no illusion, they have come up with threats from the online print environment, because it’s very easy for lots of people nowadays to upload their product onto an online printer and get it done, and it’s cheaper.

However, I think that there will still be a need for people who go through the door and go, “Help. I need my business cards due in the next three hours, because I’ve got a flight coming up. Help. How do I do this? I’ve got no idea how I’m going to design this flyer. Can you do it for me? Help. How do I market my business?” The type of on-the-street print store that I’m thinking of has its own equipment. I think that’s vitally important. There’s a number out there that rely on a franchise and they go, “Sure, we’ll take your artwork and then we’ll send it away to the central printing hub. They’ll get it down and we’ll have it back for you in a few days.”

I think they’re going to struggle because they will come up against the online printers. The people who’ve got the machinery in the back and go, “Sure, no problem. I’ll have that out for you in two or three hours,” they’re the people who are going to do well, and they’ll be able to charge a good price for that as well, because nobody else can do it. Until we sort out drone delivery, and that’s going to take a while yet, they’re going to carry on being the only people who can do it.

The really intelligent people in this area are also offering design. They’re maybe offering a bit of website help. They’re able to upsell from just the basic bit of print that maybe the person as customer, has walked in for. They’re on my prediction list for surviving and thriving. What do you reckon, Deborah?

[0:05:26] DC: Well, there’s a lot of track that has to be laid before that is going to be a situation, at least where I live. The only what you call walk-in printers here are FedEx office, or going to – in a Staples store, or what’s the other one? The UPS store has printing as well. None of those places you could walk in as far as I know and say, “Hi, I need help marketing my business.” They’re complete output places. There are printers in my area, but again, they’re the printers that the regular consumers, or the civilians would be afraid of to walk in, because they look like you need to know things before you walk in there.

I’m not really sure. But now let me give you the flip side of that. It’s possible, but everybody knows if they need something really fast to go to FedEx office, or to Staples, or to the UPS store. That’s literally what they do, so people know that if they’re not going to order online for some reason. The flip side of that is my good friend, William Crabtree, who’s also the co-host of the Printer Chat Podcast, he owns Tampa Media. Tampa printer is what would be a commercial print shop where people would walk in and say, “Hi, I need business cards right now.” Even though he primarily sells online, he has done enough digital marketing and has a presence that people know they could go to his print shop and get marketing consulting and see the different types of paper that you could have a business card and all the different finishings and things of that nature.

Yes, in that sense, it is the way to do it. I was actually going to say, one of the sellers that will be around and thrive through technology. Do you want me to elaborate on that now, or do you want me to bring it up later?

[0:07:42] MP: Meet up in just a second. I’m just going to circle back and go from what you’ve said. You’ve got a slightly different landscape in the US to over here. We’ve got some smaller franchises over here, and some people –

[0:07:55] DC: I’m just going to stop you for one second, because I said where I live. These are my only options. If you go to New York City, there’s little different options there.

[0:08:05] MP: Okay. I’m going to say, around where you live, then UPS and FedEx are going to carry on. They’re going to do well with that type of business. Yes, it will be commodity only if you like, but it will be people who can get that output out there straight away. Over here, it’s slightly different in that we have a number of franchises, and even in a town that is about 15 minutes away from me, and yeah, it’s a fairly country town, you can walk in and get that done. I think they’ll continue to do well. But they do need to diversify as well into. UPS and FedEx have effectively printers of diversification to help them add more on to their core business. It works likewise.

[0:08:45] DC: And everybody knows where to find one, and they’re all over the place.

[0:08:49] MP: Yeah, absolutely. From that point of view, yeah, I think they will do well. Tell me more about printers with technology, because you think they’re going to do well.

[0:08:59] DC: No. I think the technology itself is going to be the thing that does well as a seller. Whether that is, I would normally say, Mr. Google, because Mr. Google does a very good job if you can afford to basically pay a salesperson’s salary, but dump it into Google. However, the tide is shifting, Matthew Parker. I believe the print shops, or any business that tells anything, who can start getting a grip right now on how the AI is going to search for suppliers, is going to be in a very good position. From the people that I’ve spoken to, the answer to how you do that is to literally make sure that any question you think could be asked about printing is, the answer to that question is somewhere in the text of your website, because people search questions. How do I? Where do I? What is this called?

It’s not the same way where you just put a keyword, like for Google, and anything about that keyword shows up. This is a very specific search. I don’t know about you, but I have given up on Google now to search anything. I could not care less what Google says, because when I do it through the GPT engines, I get a much more tailored results. Of course, I check the facts, Matthew. I make sure that these are legitimate sources and whatever it might be. I cannot even tell you that the system has helped me fix my Mac, has told me which replacement remote control I need just by taking a photo of my old remote control, because I didn’t want to go behind my television and find out what the serial numbers were and try to type that in, like one of those crazy passwords that, “Do you want this 97-character password?” No, thank you. Once that is figured out, that will become the best salesperson in the world.

[0:11:20] MP: I think that’s a great answer. Anyone who can manage that, I think, will do very, very well, indeed. Yeah, it is. I read a whole blog recently all about how AI has added another layer of search into this that people have got to get to grips with. It’s very different from managing it from your traditional SEO. Personally, I wouldn’t worry too much about SEO these days.

[0:11:41] DC: Oh, no. Google fired all those people. They’re like, wait, this is – they even know what’s irrelevant now.

[0:11:47] MP: Yeah, even for a long time, it’s been the longtail keyword, the complicated one that’s got the answers.

[SPONSOR MESSAGE]

[0:11:55] DC: Girls Who Print provides women in print and graphic communications with information, resources, events, and mentorship to help them navigate their careers and the industry. As the largest independent network of Women in Print and a nonprofit organization, our global mission to provide resources, skill building, education, and support for women to lead, inspire, and empower has never been stronger, or more accessible. Through our member platform and program, as well as regional groups forming around the world, your access to Girls Who Print is just a click away. Gentlemen, you are most welcome to join us as allies. Get involved and get in power today. Link in the show notes.

[EPISODE CONTINUED]

[0:12:42] DC: As a matter of fact, Google is trying to compete. I read somewhere. I wish I could remember the source, so everybody fact fact-check me. I read somewhere that Google is now going to give you what they believe are the top results for what you’re actually searching for, as opposed to the results that they want you to find, which is what’s been going on for the last however long they’ve been in existence. That is in response to the fact that people are flocking off of Google and searching on the AI.

As well, YouTube has taken over as the largest search engine, according to a couple of people I spoke to yesterday. I’m not very sourcey today, but I’m a source person. I apologize to everybody out there. I will search it, or you can search it, but the people who told me are not crazy.

[0:13:36] MP: Thank you. We’ve got your retail high street copy printer as a survivor. We’ve got printers who manage AI as a survivor. The next one I’m going to throw –

[0:13:47] DC: AI as a search engine.

[0:13:49] MP: Yes. Sorry, I should have been more specific. Printers who manage AI as a search engine as a survivor. The third one I’m going to throw into the mix is smaller print management companies. Now, I want to be very specific here. I think, again, the landscape may be slightly different in the US. I’m not talking about the big print management companies that are out there. We’ll come on to them later. I am, in the UK at least, there’s a good number of companies who are far more than print brokers or print resellers, but they do do print management, and they will find the right solution to what you want to do. They’ll give you the advice. They’ll manage copywriters for you, designers, all that sort of thing. I believe that there’s still a large number of smaller companies out there that are crying out for this type of help.

They don’t want to go to all these suppliers themselves. They are probably spending far too much on it, but they don’t know where they’re spending too much, or how to reduce it. They’re being ignored by the larger print management companies because they’re not big enough if you’re a massive print management company. I think that they’ll continue to do well, because I think there’s still a good number of potential customers out there who haven’t come across this solution yet, and would welcome it with open arms.

It’s not necessarily good news for the imprinter, but I think these print management companies will do well. Do you have many companies like that in the US, do you know, Deborah? Because I’ve not come across some really.

[0:15:22] DC: I know of one called Managed Solutions that was started by people that used to work with me at FCB, like the director of production, a couple of the production people. Foot Cone & Belting was an advertising agency. Merged now. I don’t even know what name it’s under. But they started a boutique management service for production. I used them when I was in the advertising agencies, because it was like hiring a hired gun. They would come in. They knew everything that needed to be done. They could take the project by themselves and go away.

I would agree with you that that is not going to go away, because we’re talking about the David Druckers. We’re talking about the Noel Toccis, who I do the Making it With Print Podcast with. They don’t even call them projects. They call them productions. These productions are bespoke, customized, high-end productions, like they call them. The intricacy there, regular civilians could never ever achieve that. Everybody can hire an advertising agency. I do believe there is a one layer left of people focused solely on craft and not on commodity.

If you need them, you have the money; it’s like the joke, if you have giraffe money, you don’t have to ask how much a giraffe is. People with giraffe money are hiring these companies. If you go to Cannes, to the awards, you’re going to see all those, the work of a lot of those people there, even though it’s also tied to advertising agencies.

[0:17:07] MP: I think also, at least in the UK, there’s a layer of companies that aren’t looking to do that level of production, but are happy to come into a company and go, “We’ll manage your print for you.” Yeah. I used to go into companies and go in and say, “I can probably save you 30%.” That’s what I say on average when I go into a company, just by looking at. Not by beating printers down by 30%, but by looking at specifications, by looking at what jobs goes to what printer, and all those sorts of things. Yeah, none of what I was doing was going to get, be noticed at Cannes, or anything high profile. But there was a lot of day-to-day business prints, and I think there’s still a need for that. I think that there are companies out there that can do well out of that.

Well, if you look at things like hotels, just as an example, there’s a small hotel chain, they use a lot of print. But there’s no one printer who’s probably going to say, “Hey, I can manage all that for you. I can do the design.” It’s just not in their comfort zone. A good print management company can do all that. Or they might be able to do more transactional prints and show people about multi-touch engagement with their audience, which they might not come across before. I think there is a good space still in the print-selling arena for these types of people.

[0:18:25] DC: We did a whole podcast on this, just so I’ll make sure I link it in the bottom about print management services.

[0:18:31] MP: Cool. Excellent. Yes, that would be good. It’ll come up again in a moment. Do you think we’ve covered all the survivors? Do you think there’s any more survivors out there, thrivers out there?

[0:18:41] DC: I have one. There’s an African proverb. I think it’s African, where, look at me with no sources today.

[0:18:48] MP: I was going to say, what’s your source for this?

[0:18:51] DC: Exactly. Allegedly, there is an African proverb that says, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” I believe that the era of networks for printing are the ones who are going to be last standing here. Because when it comes to selling, you turn on a button and you say, “Okay, I’m ready for the flood of consumer work that I can’t get any other way, because I can’t sell to a hundred different people all over the country, or as close to my store as possible,” if that’s the goal of the person who’s purchasing the print. But when it comes to sales, the sales are already there, because they’re coming through Etsy and eBay and Zazzle and Canva, and the AI tools are making files now.

I believe that the networks are where this sell – and it’s because the selling doesn’t have to be done. You’re just taking orders, and it’s the type of print that you just take an order for. It’s not coming from your customers. It’s coming from wherever. There’s a strategic reason why it’s coming to your print shop. Either you’re close to where the final destination needs to be, or you have that particular equipment that’s required for that job, so you’re getting it. It is also a way for that same print shop not to say no to anybody, because they can put those same jobs through the network and find someone who has a web press if they don’t. Find someone who can make flexible packaging if they can’t. Last standing, the networks.

[SPONSOR MESSAGE]

[0:20:47] MP: Do you need some direction or new ideas for your business? Would sales goals setting and accountability improve your revenues? Or do you have a member of staff who could be performing better? I’m Matthew Parker, the Champion of Print at profitableprintrelationships.com, and I offer a personal mentoring service. Together, we work out exactly what you need. We create a personal mentoring program for you, and then we speak twice a month. You get set goals and action points to make sure you progress.

What makes me different is that I’m the buyer. I’ve been approached by over 1,400 different printing companies, so I know what works, and I know what doesn’t. If you’d like to find out more, go to profitableprintrelationships.com, click the training tab, and then go to mentoring. Or, alternatively, just hit me up on LinkedIn. I look forward to working with you.

[EPISODE CONTINUED]

[0:21:41] MP: When you’re talking about the networks, we went straight from Etsy and people like that, and Canva, to people who might need a web press, and I’m not joining the dot sellers. Tell me a little bit more about what you mean by network.

[0:21:53] DC: I’m saying that there are tons. I mean, even if you look at Shutterfly, okay? That’s not the best – Well, it is an example, because they are printers and they have tons of presses and giant warehouses. In that sense, their website is selling for them. They spend money on advertising, telling people what they can get on the website. You buy the print, and it goes to their facility. There are other places where you can go on, iwantapillowofmycat.com. That person more than likely does not have a press in their house, or anything like that. They are taking that order and they’re putting it through whatever system they’re part of. Then it gets produced.

Again, technology is selling print and a network is fulfilling it. I don’t know how many networks, or how many physical printing plants will be needed, ultimately. I mean, this seems it’s the way it’s going to me, putting aside bespoke printing, customize specialty, high-end, all of that stuff will always have – there’s a reason why the letter press is still around for hundreds and hundreds of years, right? That pushing the envelope craft is not going anywhere, but less and less and less people will be skewing that way.

[0:23:36] MP: In my experience, iwantacatpillow.com, and I’m off to buy my cat pillow after this call. Iwantacatpillow.com, they’ll probably align just to one supplier, or very few suppliers. What I am aware of is at least a couple of big online printers with a good presence, who are purely virtual printers. I won’t name names at this point, but there’s two, maybe three, actually, that I can think of off the top of my head, who either don’t own any hardware, or who have hardware for the easy bits, but they don’t have any hardware for when someone orders quite a lot of the products on their site.

[0:24:15] DC: That’s what I was saying about the web press. Even if you have regular, so let’s just say I also have regular customers and they come in with some job that I know the best option is a web press, but I don’t have one. I can send it through my own network and find somebody who has a web press. It comes back to me. That person shouldn’t need to know that that has happened, as long as I as their point of contact and the person they’re paying takes full responsibility for whatever happens outside of their facility.

[0:24:48] MP: The one thing I’d say about the networks is I think they are a way to make sure that you’re getting, hopefully, regular work in without having to do any sales, you’ve got to be really, really competitive. It is a commodity market. I would say the majority of printing companies that I know have not optimized their production well enough to be able to deal with this, is only when you have to be happy to deal with an awful lot of products, where you get a run of one, or five, or 10. If you can’t manage the front end of that order and the back end of that order, you are really going to struggle, particularly at the pricing that’s been demanded in that marketplace. I’ve seen the workflows that are involved around these. If you’re set up for it, no problem at all. If you’re not set up for these products, you haven’t got a hope of trying to fulfill it. I know it’s one –

[0:25:46] DC: That’s the point. You can’t even get into the network unless you’re prepared to get into it.

[0:25:51] MP: Because I know one printing company that wants to enter this market, and they just exited from it very quickly, because they knew there was too much culture change in their company to be able, not – yeah, it wasn’t a question. They could have afforded the investment of the workflows, but the culture change would be too much for them.

[0:26:10] DC: Yeah. I don’t disagree with you at all on that. I would say, that for the last, I mean, 10 years, five years, I mean, certainly since the pandemic, the writing has to be on the wall that the industry is evolving, the world is evolving. I mean, there is so many of my service providers, I have nothing to do with. I don’t even know who they are half the time. It’s okay. Now, it’s always okay, until there’s a problem and you have to hunt somebody down. I understand that. Put that to the side.

There has been years of talking about workflow and automation, and these were big terms, because they weren’t really drilling down. It was like, you have to optimize your entire print job, and you have to integrate this for $75,000. Those companies have gotten smart now. There are some that just sell an online storefront. There are some that just will help you get out of pre-press faster and check the files to make sure that they’re okay. There are some that can give you more visibility into predictive maintenance. The press doesn’t need more cyan ink in the middle of the run. Paper purchasing, bulk purchasing. There are a lot of advantages to it.

I do have to say that one of the reasons why this is on my brain so much in this way, full disclosure, is I’ve just completed two podcast conferences. One with Fiery, and I had no idea all the things a DFE could do. It eliminates a lot of everything I’m just saying now. The other one was Gelato, and GelatoConnect, and everything that they’re doing there. That’s why it’s on my brain, because I really did learn so much about how this technology can really help a print shop stay around, for as long as it wants to stay around.

Now, I’m not a spokesperson for any of these companies. I learned with the audience when I host these things. I would say, listen to the conference yourself, or just go to their website and see if it’s something that is right for you. If it is, then you can get into this game.

[0:28:36] MP: Fantastic. Right. Let’s switch this around now. We’ve talked about who’s going to survive and who’s going to thrive. Now, it’s time to look at the flip side of everything and have a chat about who we think is going to be doomed over the coming years. I think the conversation we’ve just been having about the networks leads me nicely in to my first suggestion of who’s going to struggle as print evolves. That is your traditional commercial printer. The one who’s got a couple of LIFO presses, maybe some digital, they’ve got a sales team, they go out to companies, they’re not expecting any walk-in traffic, but they are going out proactively to companies and trying to find customers who still spend a reasonable amount of print, who haven’t gone to print management, who aren’t putting it all online and going, “Actually, you should deal with us.”

I think that’s becoming a really competitive landscape. It’s been commoditized a long time ago. I think it’s very hard for any printer who is not doing something unusual to get into a customer, first of all, to actually get in to have a dialogue with a customer, but also, to actually give a reason why they should be considered, unless it’s price. I think these people are going to be gradually squeezed out of the marketplace. I say that with great sadness, but unless you’re doing something unusual, unless you’re mastering AI, unless you’ve got that printer network, unless you’re talking to print management companies, you are going to struggle. What do you think, Deborah?

[SPONSOR MESSAGE]

[0:30:14] DC: Are you looking to elevate your game, take your bottom-line customer relationships and events to the next level? Then I want to work with you. I’m Deborah Corn, the Intergalactic Ambassador to the Printerverse. I engage with a vast global audience of print and marketing professionals across all stages of their careers. They are seeking topical information and resources, new ways to serve their customers and connect with them, optimize processes for their communications and operations and they meet the products and services and partnership you offer to get to their next level. Print Media Centr offers an array of unique opportunities that amplify your message and support your mission across the Printerverse. Let’s work together, bring the right people together, and move the industry forward together. Link in the show notes. Engage long and prosper.

[EPISODE CONTINUED]

[0:31:17] DC: I mean, thank you for coming to my TED Talk. This what I’ve been saying forever. Unless, that business is actively creating a relationship, or emotional connection with their community, like Will the printer does. He also, if you search anything in Tampa about printing, he will come up, because he spent years working with Mr. Google that way. It’s a crazy thing, Matthew. You know, when you want something, you have to search it. You have to look for it. Unless, you’re like, “Oh, wait. I heard something about that. Oh, there’s a place around here. I just got something in my business mailbox about how we can set up a new business meeting.” We talk about this all the time. Not a new business for the printer, but a new business for the client. What are their needs for the next quarter, for the year, and how can you come up with a plan to do that?

Yes, unless there is consultative selling, unless there is, we would like to come and talk to you about the holes in your marketing, and I’ll just use a local car dealer, not somebody who’s attached to one of the car makers, but just a local person. Maybe they have a used car lot, or something like that, and they have a couple of them. If that person’s going to keep doing the little ads in the circulars with a 1997 Dodge, whatever, for $1,000, or whatever it is, unless somebody goes there and says, “Look, here’s all of the people with your same business within five miles of here. You’re all doing the same thing.” Yes, of course, people are looking for used cars. They’re looking for a very specific thing. I need a minivan. I need a car for Uber, whatever it might be. They’re looking for some – I need a car for my kid to go to drive to work, or go to college. You know what I’m saying? They have very specific things in mind and price is a big one.

There are certainly ways for people to stay updated on that. For example, have the dealer give out a QR code magnet for somebody’s refrigerator. Every week, they can scan the QR code and see the new cars that are available on the lot, or create some VIP promotion, where you learn about the cars that they just got before they start advertising them. Because you actually know what they’re looking for, maybe you could even get a text alert that says, something’s in the car, but none of that happens without marketing. None of that happens without educating the consumers, the community, the neighbors that this is possible.

To your point, unless smaller local printing companies are willing to do something like that, and it’s difficult, Matthew. I get it. Some people believe that, “Hey, this is what I do. I don’t do the other stuff.” Fantastic. There are probably people you’re printing for who can help you with the marketing end of it, with the design end of it. Talk to your own customer. See if you can make a business deal. Maybe they’re the better people to go pitch and you come along as the expert in how you’re going to output all of these wonderful ideas.

Sitting passively and waiting for people to walk through the door, although in this example, you said they weren’t walking through the door, they were actively seeking accounts. I get that too, but it’s going to be harder and harder as people are just using cellphones and not – the offices are closing, or moving, or have shrunk and not everybody’s there every day. It’s just going to be more difficult to get a hold of people, as opposed to just calling up a potential customer and say, “We want to come over and show you how we can help you increase your revenue, get more people into your restaurant, get more people enrolled in your community college, get more people to show up for the play that somebody’s that’s coming to town.” That’s my thought.

[0:35:49] MP: I think it’s going to be increasingly difficult, at least at a slightly higher level. I mean, a lot of the people you said, they’ll probably engage with the local copy shop, or they’ll be ordering their prints online. Once you get to the next level of company up, say the bigger car dealer, so many times now, they’ve been put into a chain of car dealers and they’ve got their prints sorted out with the print management company, or it’s an only one –

[0:36:13] DC: That’s why I said. I’m not talking about somebody who works for General Motors, one of those dealerships. There are independent people that have used car lots. There are car washes and things like that.

[0:36:26] MP: Most of those people, they’re not generating enough print for a decent sized commercial printer to be able to fill their presses these days.

[0:36:35] DC: Okay. They’re going to have to fill them with 10 different things. Do we actually wait to the last five minutes of this podcast to have a fight?

[0:36:47] MP: Well, that’s quite good, actually, that we have well lasted that long. Yes, even if they get 10 people, it’s not enough a lot of the time for these traditional commercial printers, because those 10 people, yeah, one or two will go and use their presses. The rest will be buying online print. They’ll be saying, “I don’t need print, because I’ve mastered online advertising, or I’m doing completely different stuff.” They’re really, really going to struggle. I think that’s why they’re doomed. Who else would you say is doomed?

[0:37:17] DC: Matthew Parker and his attitude.

[0:37:21] MP: I’ll take that. I prefer realism, as opposed to –

[0:37:27] DC: Well, okay. Now you’ve got me. I am Deborah, the realist Corn here. I don’t disagree with you, but you’re suggesting that all of the income has to come from the path I just said. To me, again, I’m not a printer. I know it’s an expensive business. There’s leases, there’s people, there’s properties involved. What I would say is that in my opinion, you have the switch that goes on, because you have the technology in place, where you could take all these online orders all day long to fill your presses. Then you consultative sell with everybody else and you bring in the people that need you to actually speak with them to work with them.

Yes, maybe you only need two salespeople now. Because any of the sales that those other people were bringing in is now just coming through a computer, an online system. I hear what you’re saying, Matthew, and I agree with you. The shelf life of a standalone, independent print shop that is not printing very specialized something is going to be struggling to find, to make them money, unless they have something else going.

To me, turning on the switch, and it is turning on a switch, because if it’s too much stuff coming in, you can say, “I don’t want any more work. I need to catch up first.” Because to your point, there are rules and regulations. If somebody says that it’s got to be delivered at this time, I believe, you have to deliver it as it’s supposed to be at the price it is. You only accept the work, or the work only comes to you within your parameters. You are essentially working for that big commodity in the sky. But it is a cash register. It’s a cash register.

[0:39:29] MP: It’s only works if you’ve got the running systems in place.

[0:39:33] DC: Yes, Matthew. But they’re out there.

[0:39:36] MP: The majority of printers do not have the not –

[0:39:40] DC: Correct.

[0:39:41] MP: – right distance, or right –

[0:39:42] DC: How many years does the industry have to say, “Hello. Hello. You should really workflow automation, automation, automation.” I mean, it’s been years and years and years. But I get it. Not everybody can do it. I completely understand that. Then, your plan B might be to something else that is interesting, Matthew, is that if you look at Jamie the printer’s company, Innvoke Print Marketing, what they’re doing to diversify is buying up other print shops that do things that they don’t do. They even bought a photographer, because a lot of their clients had needs for still photography for things. Now they can control all of that.

Now, they saw that labels and flexible packaging is an opportunity. They bought a print shop, or label business that does that, because they’re not the experts in it. They want the experts who are already doing it to do it. Then their team goes in and learns how to sell for them. There is a way to also create your own network, whether if you’re in the position of mergers and acquisitions, that is popping off in the United States, because people either get me out of here, or I see a great opportunity to get a wide format business, instead of bringing a couple of pieces of equipment here and then trying to figure out how to do it. I know of print shops that are buying other printers’ lists and then just shutting down the print shops.

We’re just going to take the competition out of here. We don’t need any of their stuff, and we’re just going to buy the list and shut it down. You’ve got to be in one of these positions, or you will eventually, like anything else. I mean, did we ever really think that book stores would be gone? I mean, most of them are, unless there’s a specialty bookstore. Most of the bookstores are gone, because a more efficient and effective way of getting a book in your hand came to be. That is just the way it goes in modernization.

I mean, people once sold horses for transportation, and they got put out of business by the automobile, right? That’s why it’s still called horsepower when they describe an engine and things like that. We’re in this moment of time of an event horizon, and it’s not about the effectiveness of the channel. It’s the fact that the printing industry needs to embrace this modern technology, communication technology, the way people want to order, the way they want to talk to people that they buy from or not, the way they learn, the way they search for things. Any business that is part of that system and is still something that people need or want is going to stay around.

Anybody who has something that people need and want and isn’t meeting the moment by allowing them to purchase, communicate the way they want to, get informed the way that they want to, it’s like anything else. You’re just going to stop being part of that system.

[0:43:15] MP: I’m going to throw a bomb in there for my last suggestion then. Oh, by the way, I will say that I live near at least four thriving bookstores, all within less than half an hour of me.

[0:43:26] DC: Yes, but there’s also Hobbits running around where you live.

[0:43:32] MP: Not quite like that. Anyway, my last suggestion for people who are going to struggle is large print management companies. They’ve gone through so many mergers, they’ve got to the point where they’re no longer being as creative as they should do. There’s only way for thin margins left. I think they’re really going to struggle going forward, because I think some of their clients are getting fed up with them. Some of them are really challenging them now. The way they’ve been set up, I think they’re going to struggle to actually make a profit, particularly those with an open book policy. I think it will be very interesting to watch that landscape going forward.

I predict that there may well be some large print management companies that struggle to survive. They’re the ones with all the technology and all the networks and everything that should work. I think they, again, it’s down to not selling creatively enough. I think they’re going to struggle.

[0:44:42] DC: Okay. We shall see if that happens, Matthew Parker. I want to thank everybody for their time and attention today. And always, if you are not aware, all of our podcasts are also playing on printfmradio.com, a new 24-hour, seven days a week, 365 days a year Internet radio station that I opened. It is the first in the world, dedicated to print and graphic communications. We have a schedule on printfmradio.com, so you can see when the podcast from Matthew and I are playing, as well as all of the library of Podcasts From the Printerverse. Plus, we have submissions from other industry podcasts to mix it up. Yeah, I’m really excited about that. Look out for Matthew’s LinkedIn post about our podcast. They are always a debate in the comments. It’s always interesting. Until next time, everybody. Listen long, print long, and prosper.

[END OF EPISODE]

[0:45:53] DC: Thanks for listening to Podcasts From the Printerverse. Please subscribe, click some stars, and leave us a review. Connect with us through printmediacentr.com, we’d love to hear your feedback on our shows and topics that are of interest for future broadcasts. Until next time, thanks for joining us. Print long and prosper.

[END]

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:02] DC: Print Buying UKvUSA is a series dedicated to helping printers create stronger, more meaningful, and more profitable relationships with print customers on both sides of the pond. I’m Deborah Corn, founder of Project Peacock and principal at Print Media Centr.

[0:00:20] MP: And I’m Matthew Parker, the champion of print at profitableprintrelationships.com.

[0:00:26] DC: We may not always agree, but that’s when it gets interesting. Turn up the volume, get out your notepad, and welcome to the program.

[EPISODE]

[0:00:40] DC: Hey, everybody, welcome to the podcast. I’m Deborah Corn, your Intergalactic Ambassador to the Printerverse. And today, we are here with the UKvUSA series, and that means the returning champion for the United Kingdom is not on this podcast, but we do have Matthew Parker today. Hello, Matthew Parker.

[0:01:02] MP: Oh. Hi, Deborah. How are you doing today?

[0:01:04] DC: I’m sorry, I built you up and then I slapped you down. I’m sorry.

[0:01:09] MP: We know really that it is the returning champion and you just don’t want to admit it, you Americans. But hey, there we go.

[0:01:15] DC: All right. Well, fine. You are the returning champion for the United Kingdom. I will give you that.

[0:01:22] MP: Thank you.

[0:01:22] DC: But our topic today might actually cause more tension than the global trade situation going on at the moment. It is a polarizing topic, I think at least. It’s print management. Matthew, why don’t you define what you think print management is or print management services, and then we’ll take it from there. And I’m just saying. Because in the US, it could actually be two different things.

[0:01:53] MP: Yeah. And I think it’s the same in the UK. I’d say there’s two levels of print management company. There’s those who call themselves print managers that are actually more print brokers, and they’ll do your jobs for you, and they’ll do a very good job at finding you the right supplier, but they’re not really managing your print on its whole. How I define print management is to have companies who go, “We want to take all your print spends or a large part of your print spends, and we are going to manage all of that for you. And in doing so, we are aiming to improve the efficiency in the way that you work, take the headache away from you, and reduce your cost.” That’s their headline stance.

There’s a variety of companies that do it. There’s the massive, big corporate entities. But I’d say there’s also a number of companies out there who’ve evolved from being print brokers into having a business model that is more developed than that. What do you say? Do you agree with that? Have I got it right?

[0:02:49] DC: I agree with that definition. And where it gets confusing sometimes to people is managed print services and print management services, which are two different things. The managed print services, based on my experience, is referring to people who help companies manage literally their office copiers and things like that, everything about them, including reducing the amount that they’re printing or whatever that is. We’re not talking about enterprise copy machines, or printers, or anything in the enterprise space. We’re talking in, let’s say, the regular area of printing in all of the lanes, by the way. It’s not just commercial print anymore. As long as we are clear that we’re not talking about office machines, I’m good with your definition.

[0:03:43] MP: Great. Okay, I’m totally with you on that. And I think it’s great that everyone in the audience has a clear definition of exactly where our conversation is going to go.

[0:03:50] DC: Okay. One of the things that I have noticed is, over the last 15 years that I’ve been doing Print Media Centr, is that England and Australia, particularly, are in this print management system. Sometime, at least 20 years ago, you all decided that it was a better process to have these print management companies than buyers sitting in companies. I know that’s a very general statement, but I think the system is way more predominant in the UK and Australia than it is in the United States. But it is there, and it is creeping around. And this is really a great time for those companies to start poking their heads in doors. That’s why we thought this was a good time to have this conversation.

Matthew’s going to lead it. I will say he’s got way more experience in this subject matter than I do, because I would always be fighting against these companies coming into the advertising agency. Go ahead, Matthew. Take it over.

[0:05:07] MP: Okay. Thank you, Deborah. And it’s worth saying that I’ve come across print management companies in various ways during my roles over the years. I have helped print management companies with their systems internally and help them look at how they buy things. I’ve also helped people who’ve been looking at implementing print management and looking at their contracts and going into those in some detail. It will be interesting as we have our conversation to see whether you’re hearing about all the things that I might talk about that have gone on in the UK, whether you’re hearing about those in the US as well.

Our topic for today isn’t just print management, it’s print management, good or bad. And of course, there’s two different viewpoints to that. There’s the customers and there’s the suppliers. We’re going to kick off with the customers first and we’re going to talk about the goods and the bad. And then we’ll move over and we’ll talk about what it’s like for the supply chain as well, and see how many punches we throw at each other during the way.

Let’s kick off with the customers. Let’s kick off with the good. I think it’s always nice to start off with some nice things as well. Is print management good for the customer? And I think it’s worth saying, again, it very much depends on the customer. It depends on their culture. It depends on the size of the company. And it depends on the type of print they’re putting out. But I’m going to put out some broad ideas because there’s so much variety. I’m just going to put out some broad statements here, and then we’re gonna see how Deborah reacts to them. Basically, I’m going to throw some sentences out there like the touch paper and retire gracefully and watch her explode it by statements.

[0:06:42] DC: Everybody likes to touch paper, Matthew. Didn’t you know that?

[0:06:46] MP: Absolutely.

[0:06:47] DC: I’m sorry, you opened up the door for me to just take that. Everybody loves paper, they touch paper. Yay.

[0:06:54] MP: Right. I’m going to say that, broadly speaking, with a good print management company, and of course, there are print management companies of different standards out there, but with a good print management company, broadly speaking, a large corporate company can have the whole headache of print being taken away. It means that they don’t have to have that specialization in the house. I can see Deborah. We do this with a video link as well. I can see Deborah –

[0:07:21] DC: I’m literally freaking out already.

[0:07:23] MP: Okay. But it means the expertise that is harder and harder to get in-house these days doesn’t have to be worried about. They can just go, “Right. This is what we want from a company,” and it all gets taken care of. Remember I’m talking about the good first, not the bad. Okay. Potentially, there’s a reduction in headcount because a full print management service will allow you to take that buying element out of your company, and they’ll manage it all for you. And it can expose inefficiencies in the print buying system, it can expose poor specification, and it can fix those. Those are some of the good things that I have seen happen with print management. Not always, but sometimes. Deborah is looking very, very concerned. I’m going to let her have her say now.

[0:08:16] DC: Okay. I’m going to remain calm during this conversation.

[0:08:20] MP: I give this about 15 seconds, by the way.

[0:08:22] DC: Well, you haven’t said my trigger words yet. But okay. I can’t disagree with what you just said, because there are benefits to using these companies and these people. Benefits. I can tell you that when I was working in advertising, there were a couple of times that there were projects that were going to take a long time. They needed research into – for example, we had to get copper dyes made because the embossing was going to be so deep. And it was just the testing process, honestly, it was just tedious. Not that it wasn’t important. It was. But to do that, as the director of production, I couldn’t do everything else, including managing the six people I was managing and all of their things.

In that case, calling in people I knew who were production managers from advertising agencies who now formed a print management company saved the project. They would run back and forth, get the dye samples, bring them to the office. We’d all look at it. They would manage the project with us being their client. It was their printers. That’s the thing, though. They were working with their suppliers, not the agency’s suppliers. I’m not saying that that was an issue at the time, but that’s how it worked.

And I have to tell you that it was a godsend because there were people who understood exactly what we needed and exactly how to navigate the personalities of an advertising agency, which is really where the bottlenecks are. It’s the people, not the things that are moving around. Because everybody wants to own their thing, whether it’s the copy, or the design, or what the client wants, whatever it might be.

In that instance, it really worked out. And I think that it’s a great option. Instead of looking for a freelancer or a consultant who could just work for a couple of weeks or a couple of months. And this project was a couple of months, and you just hired the company, and they took it over. It was very beneficial in that sense. But it did cost extra money that came out of our budget. Everybody had to agree that the agency was going to pay for this outsourcing, and it came out of whatever the profit was from that job because we could not keep it in-house.

[0:11:08] MP: And I guess that’s fair enough. If you’re going to pay for – you’re going to have a service, it needs paying for. Otherwise you’d have had your own staff running around and they wouldn’t have been doing other revenue-earning things as well.

[0:11:20] DC: We couldn’t handle it. I’m being honest with you. It got to the point where we like something’s going to break. We need to do something about this, whether it’s another person working in the department or farming it out. But I just was bringing up that point because that is something to consider unless you can build the costs for this help into your budgets to begin with. But more than likely, you don’t know you need the help until that project comes in front of your face.

[BREAK]

[0:11:49] DC: Print Media Centr provides printspiration and resources to our vast network of global print and marketing professionals. Whether you are an industry supplier, print service provider, print customer, or consultant, we have you covered by providing resources and strategies that enable business marketing and creative success, reporting from global events, these podcasts, Project Peacock TV, and an array of community lifting initiatives. We also work with OEMs, suppliers, industry organizations, and event producers, helping you connect and engage with our vast audience and achieve success with your sales, marketing, and conference endeavors. Visit Print Media Centr and connect with the Printerverse. Links in the show notes. Print long and prosper.

[EPISODE CONTINUED]

[0:12:45] MP: And I think there’s probably a difference as well between companies that can manage a project and don’t want everything. And those companies that come in and go, we want all your print.

[0:12:58] DC: Okay. That’s fair.

[0:12:58] MP: And outside the agency sector, yeah, and the corporate sector, the print management companies are going to say, “We want everything.” And actually, the companies are going to go, “We want you to do everything. We don’t want kind of yet another supplier in there.” The whole idea is to make this efficient.

I’ve given the theory of what print management should do. And I’m not going to deny that there are times when it does that for companies very well. But the reality that I’ve seen for many companies over the years is rather different.

Now, when I act as a consultant for companies that are buying print, it is not untypical for me to go in there and to be able to save them about 30% on their printing costs. And that’s not because I’m going in and I’m beating up suppliers and going, “You’ve got to drop your prices.” It’s because I can see the way they do things are inefficient. They’ve got the wrong specifications for products sometimes. You’d be amazed at the amount of business cards that go out to massive printers or big brochures that go out to small digital printers.

By moving a few things around, it’s not difficult with the right company to make savings. And when print management came into the UK on a corporate level, that’s where it succeeded. There was a lot of bad buying going on because there weren’t enough professional print buyers left by that time. It was pretty easy for a print management company to go in, who knew what they were doing, and go, “Right, we’re going to create huge savings for you and do that easily.”

The trouble came in two to three years later when they went, “Right, we’ve done all these savings. What do we do now? How do we compete against the other print management companies that are around? Oh, I know. Let’s compete on cost.” And that’s what they’ve tended to do.

What I’ve seen in a lot of cases is that print management, in order to exist, to prove its existence, had to go, “We’re going to find you further cost savings.” And that means that the measurement of everything that they’re doing is done on cost alone. And that is something that I fundamentally don’t agree with. Yes, cost is a part of it, but it’s not the only thing.

It does mean that it’s very difficult to be more creative unless there’s a cost saving. There’s little attempt to do things differently unless there’s a cost saving. And print management is not incentivized to act in the customer’s interest unless they’re saving costs. And the other half of this is that some of those cost savings are very, very opaque.

When you start diving down into the way that things are done, measurement is not always in the customer’s interest. I’ve seen that cost savings are measured by the key products that a customer might put forward. If you’re producing, say, a certain set of direct mail or brochures every month, the print management company will go, “Well, let’s measure those. That’ll be our benchmark. And then we’ll buy all the other stuff for you as well.”

It is in their interest sometimes to approve full savings on the direct mail or the key products and to have an “open book policy” where they show that they’ve approached certain suppliers on those. And they may be encouraging those suppliers to put in falsely low prices for those particular products, telling their suppliers, their vendors that they’re also going to get some other jobs where they’re going to make a much heftier profit. And what is not measured is the day-to-day operational print, where it is very easy for them to make some very big profits because that’s not being measured. Now, I don’t know if you’re seeing that in the US, but I’d be very interested to hear your thoughts on that, Deborah.

[0:16:53] DC: Oh, boy, Matthew.

[0:16:55] MP: Have I given you trigger words yet?

[0:16:57] DC: No. It’s just depressing to me. First of all, if you’re saving anybody 30% on their printing and you’re not reducing the cost of printing, which is the biggest expense in the cost of printing, then you’re firing people. That’s how you’re saving 30%. Humans are being put out of work. To your point, okay, I go in there, I tell the CFO. Because that’s who – they walk right into the CFO’s office. They bypass everybody else. They go right in there and they show them a big chart that they printed. It says, “We can save you 30%.” And the CFO goes, “Great. Save us 30%.” Right?

Then the next print management company comes along and says, “We can save you 30% on the 30% you’ve already saved.” Now we’re down 60%, right? How? And if the agency is not willing to get rid of more people, I’m sorry, but that comes from the printers. And that is where my problem arises. If you speak to the printers who have been displaced from their long-term clients because these print management companies come in, to my understanding, at first there’s some negotiation, like, “Do you still want the work from your client? Then you’re going to have to do it for 30% less because we need to get our margins.” Or 10 % less, or whatever it is, so that they can prove this cost saving across the board.

Then I’ve heard that some of the print management companies then charge, let’s say, a job tax on the printers that, “Oh, well, if you want to get the work from the clients that you’ve had for 10 years prior to this, you’re going to also have to pay us to give you the work.” There’s a system in there going because the print management companies aren’t doing this for free. They need to make their money and their only place to make the money to pay the people who are now managing the print projects, which by the way, can sometimes be the print producers that used to work on the projects until the print management company came in. Then they hire them back at a lower salary to manage this client. They might even sit in the office at their own desk, but the company is no longer their boss. It’s the print management company that’s their boss.

Again, where I’m coming from, from an agency, that is just chaos, and I don’t want any part of it. And if I want to help the agency lower the cost for projects. Because it’s not just printing that’s involved in it. There’s art directors, there’s people in photo shoots, there are a zillion things involved in a project to reduce overall costs of the project, 30% that doesn’t have to come out of just specifically the printing area. And I just do not understand how you can say that the printers aren’t affected by this. If somebody’s paying less for printing, who are they paying less to printing for? The print management company? And then the print management company is paying the printers the same exact price that they were getting from the agency? Again , I keep saying agency because that is my experience with print management companies coming in and basically trying to displace me and my entire department.

[0:20:50] MP: Just to clarify what I said earlier, when I go in as a consultant, not as a print manager, probably not in an agency, but sometimes, there is a lot of inefficient buying going on to begin with. I can make that first 30%. And, yes, it’s going to affect some suppliers and they may get different jobs. But what I’m not doing is any of the job taxes, telling people they’ve got to reduce their prices by 30% or they lose their job. And that was what was possible for print management in the very early days. Now they have to change what they’re doing. And to be fair, they’re not now offering a 30% reduction. It’s more likely to be a two, three, or maybe 5% reduction. And that’s as far as it goes.

[0:21:33] DC: Oh. Isn’t that interesting?

[0:21:37] MP: Because the 30% has already been done by a previous print management company. I think that initial 30% can be done if there’s been no previous print management or the skill buying done at a company, and it doesn’t have to affect the prices that are being paid for print. It may mean that jobs go to different printers, but it doesn’t mean beating up the suppliers. I’m not saying that that’s what the print managers do. Because we’ll come on to print management and suppliers in a little while and talk about that as well.

What I think is interesting, though, is, for instance, the job tax or the volume rebate that some suppliers have to pay if they get a certain amount of work. That’s not shown in the open book policy. That’s where the print management company can be making extra profits because they’re paying less for a job than they’re admitting to their clients. And they may also be demanding, agreeing, negotiating a monthly fee with their clients for the provision of that service as well.

As I said, I don’t think there’s many agreements that are very opaque where clients don’t really understand what is happening. And that’s an issue. But there are also companies who don’t know what they’re doing, who can’t find the staff, who don’t want the hassle, and that is a big cost saving for them to take on that headache going away. It is a game of two sides. Clients are paying for that service. But I think they’re often paying a lot more than they think they are.

[0:23:14] DC: The best instance, I think, for these print management companies is exactly what you said in these growing businesses, maybe like a regional thing or just think of like a national insurance company, things like that, where the agency might be an agency or marketing department, internal, even corporate communications. When I worked at L’Oreal, we were in the procurement department, and we had a list of printers to work with, but we did not create the specs or anything like that. We just followed the orders from the in-house agency. Sometimes in this company, you do have a procurement person who is responsible for purchasing print, but they’re also responsible for getting office chairs, and making sure that there’s catering in the meeting, and anything else that an office manager might do.

In those cases, first of all, you have to hope that they have a trustworthy printing partners who aren’t like, “Ha, this person’s not going to negotiate with me because they have no idea what is going on. They’re not a professional print person. They’ve been told to source business cards, or told to source signage for the office, or told to source posters for the lobby that need to change every three weeks.” Who knows what it is? But they’re calling somebody and they’re going, “Help. Help. This is what I need. Give it to me.”

In those cases, yes, they are probably not buying effectively and efficiently unless their printers are really partners for them. And in that case, if they were, they would be making sure that they were quoting and executing the jobs as effectively and efficiently as possible. Otherwise, there’s a good chance that they’re going to be run out by your print management company, right?

[0:25:12] MP: And I think this is what’s happening with a lot of companies. Yeah, they’re an experienced bystander, what they’re doing. And there are printers who unreasonably are making profit out of that.

[0:25:12] DC: Correct. If no one’s going push back on your price, then that’s the price. I mean, we’re not saying they’re doing anything wrong. The price is always the price unless somebody says, “Hang on a second. What can we do about this?” But if I just say, “Great,” then everyone’s gonna go about their life. But this is what happened after 2008, the recession. People started looking at everything that they were spending money on, which is marketing is always the first list to look at, and they were like, “Okay, do we really need a printed annual report? We could do that as a PDF.” And so they’re still paying the designers and the marketing people or the in-house desktop publishers, we used to call them, to create these documents, but they’re not printing them.

Or I worked in a corporation, the Katz corporation, and we had an “in-house print shop” downstairs in the basement. It was mostly just for like sell sheets and things like that. But anything that could be stuck down there was already built into the – there was no additional cost for it. You know what I’m saying? It was already built into the corporate structure. So then you start looking at what’s out of house that can come in-house? And what is in-house that we don’t have to do anymore, we could do digitally?

It is a double-edged sword there, you know. But I do think in those cases, a print management company can actually save a lot of the print work that would be relegated to digital files or just gone away because it can’t be managed, it’s costing too much money, and they’re not seeing results because it’s not like a professional print person going, “Hang on a second. What is the goal of this project?” If it needs to stay around, then we need to make it at least flashy or something that people want to look at it. Not just send them a trifold brochure and say, “Come have a vacation here.” There are ways to be more effective and not print as much. And those companies, if they have a vested interest in that, that would be good.

I also want to say this last thing, and then let’s move on to the other side of this, which is that the print management companies also have a vested interest of delivering the projects that they have been tasked with delivering. It’s not like they sabotage them. They certainly want to do the best work possible so that they keep these clients. But to your point, they’re not going to do anything that’s going to add any cost to that job because the margins, the savings was the pitch. Not, “We can save you all this money and do spectacular print for you.” It’s, “We can save you all this money and basically get done what needs to be done, whatever that might be.”

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[0:28:34] MP: Do you need some direction or new ideas for your business? Would sales goal setting and accountability improve your revenues? Or do you have a member of staff who could be performing better? I’m Matthew Parker, the Champion of Print at profitableprintrelationships.com, and I offer a personal mentoring service. Together, we work out exactly what you need. We create a personal mentoring program for you, and then we speak twice a month. You get set goals and action points to make sure you progress.

What makes me different is that I’m the buyer. I’ve been approached by over 1,400 different printing companies, so I know what works, and I know what doesn’t. If you’d like to find out more, go to profitableprintrelationships.com, click the training tab, and then go to mentoring. Or, alternatively, just hit me up on LinkedIn. I look forward to working with you.

[EPISODE CONTINUED]

[0:29:28] MP: Two trends, and then we’ll move on. But two trends that you may be interested to hear about if they’re not already happening in the US. One is print management companies are trying to broaden their services, and they’re trying to take on the digital side of things. They’re trying to take on the photo shoots. They want to manage all of that because it’s more revenue for them and it allows them to safeguard their turnover should print be going down.

Secondly, in the UK at least, there is now a shortage of people who really understand how to buy print. Print management companies aren’t necessarily using experienced buyers. And potentially they’re going to begin to run into the same problems that their clients were in to begin with, in that they don’t always know enough about what they’re doing. Now that’s not true of all of them by any means. But if you need a huge print buying staff, you are going to more than likely have quite a few people who are order places rather than print experts. And that’s a great shame.

[0:30:33] DC: Yeah. I mean, I have to say this a lot of the times when the print production people lose their jobs because agencies are downsizing and all that other stuff, or remote work, and now there’s not remote work, whatever the reason might be. And they get in touch with me, and I’m like, “I have to tell you, you might want to look into these print management companies because it is what you do. And they need people with our expertise to help other people.”

Even though I don’t necessarily think that these are the best systems, when it comes to helping people, which I think is my primary responsibility as the ambassador to the printerverse, it’s one of the first places I tell them to investigate. Because there is work. And people of those calibers can only help the customers. And that is where my vested interest is in.

If, ultimately, the print customers are happy and the companies are happy printing and paying for it, then it’s better to keep that print in the industry moving than to get rid of it just because it’s not as open of a system for creativity and craft as I would want it to be. Next angle of this. Go ahead. Take it over.

[0:31:54] MP: Okay. Let’s move on and let’s talk about the supply chain now, because I think that’s the other side that’s really important to think about. And I’m going to put the good and the bad together. The good for the supply chain. Jobs without sales. They don’t need as many salespeople if they’re turning on the print management tab. And that can be a good thing. Salespeople are expensive.

If you’re talking to a number of print management companies, you can reduce your job costs and potentially increase your profits because you don’t have that expensive salesperson or salesforce with their cars, their mileage, their expenses, who don’t always get the results and are still being an overhead month after month. You can change the volume when you want it as well.

I know print companies that use print management. If they’ve got a lean month, they turn the print management tap on. If they’ve got a busy month, they go to the print management company, “Sorry. Not interested this month. You’re going to have to find someone else.” And it works for them as a model. I’m not sure that it’s a good model to work on, but it does work for them. Those are a couple of the positives against that. Print management is basically making print a commodity-driven market. There is very little looking at, “Is this the right supplier for the culture of the project that’s going on?”

You’re going to disagree with me on this, but sometimes, particularly in the agency world, maybe projects were being looked at. Again, we have to have a certain type of printer, and it’s a commercial print project rather than a really bespoke print project that needs a certain type of supplier. But print management is making it all about price. They’re not loyal to any suppliers. You may think I’ve got my volume here. But if they find a cheaper supplier, you’re going to lose your volume.

And printing companies do not have the chance to talk to the customer and add value to the project. And as print management is struggling to find knowledgeable buyers, they are unlikely to add that value themselves unless the customer is really demanding it. And finally, there are the golden handshakes. If you want to join us, you’ve got to pay a certain amount upfront. There’s the volume rebates. If you do a certain amount of work with us, we’re expecting this money back. All these things which add to the print management profits that are kept out of the open books that they say that they’re showing to some of their customers. How do you feel about all that? It’s kind of quite a depressing –

[0:34:34] DC: Well, yeah. My work here is done. You just did it for me for all the reasons. I have nothing to add to that other than I actually have a question for you about that. What do you think is the advantage or disadvantage for those same printers instead of – I was just going to say being extorted by the print management systems, because now my true feelings are coming out. Because that’s how I feel. You want to print for the client that you’ve been printing for for 20 years? You gotta pay us, right? It’s not as blunt as that, but that is –

[0:35:05] MP: Or you’ll lose it. Yeah.

[0:35:08] DC: Yes. Or you’re going to lose it for a second time, right? Why isn’t it a better option for printers to join a network like Gelato, or Cloudprinter, or something like that and get the work from everywhere in the world and help with – I mean, there’s a sustainability story there. There’s a cost-saving thing. Everything you just said about. You don’t need salespeople. I believe it solves that same issue. And it is the same situation. You don’t talk to the customers. You could actually be printing for somebody who ordered print in Scandinavia that wants it for Sacramento and doesn’t have to fly on a plane, which saves money. How would you compare the two if you were a printer looking at, “We need to do something on these down times or to keep the volume going?”

[0:36:05] MP: I’m a big fan of those systems. I think if you are a supplier to them, you can’t just turn the volume on and off. You have to commit to having a certain amount of volume. You don’t have that choice that you might do with the print management companies. The way I looked at it there, if you’re a printer, if you can do both, then you’re in a good situation because they’re serving two different markets.

Cloudprinter, Gelato, people like that, they are more direct to consumer, and they are more at the smaller end of the market. They’re not going to supply the solutions, certainly not all of the solutions, that the big corporates want because they’re looking for something rather different. I think that the Cloudprinters of this world are serving a slightly different market to the print management companies of this world. They may disagree. But I think, effectively, print management is saying we’ll do everything. I think areas like Cloudprinter, you still have to have someone putting those orders in. You still have to have –

[0:37:11] DC: Yes. Okay, fine, fine. Yes. For the print customers, they would have to know what they were doing and put the order through. Okay, fine.

[0:37:19] MP: Yeah. There are two different markets. If you’re a printer and you want that low-margin work, because it is low margin, let’s make no bones about it, then if you can get in with both, good on you. And well done.

[0:37:32] DC: All right. Fine. I’m making a formal statement. Matthew turned me around on that argument. Fine.

[0:37:40] MP: Thank you. Okay. As we work towards the end of this, I just want to throw something out there, and it’s particularly for those printers in the US who are still serving traditional clients who don’t want to get involved with print management. And I think in the US, print management is growing, but there’s still a substantial amount of work out there that is not managed by print management. Is that fair in saying that?

[0:38:05] DC: I’m not an analyst, so I can’t confirm or deny that. But if I just look at patterns, I would agree with you.

[0:38:13] MP: Okay, thank you. The reason print management got to this position of strength and market dominance in the UK is because printers let them.

[0:38:30] DC: Yes. Oh my God. Hallelujah. Thank you.

[0:38:34] MP: Yeah. If anyone says and complains about print management, and you’re a print company, would you let them get there? It’s your fault. And I make no apologies for saying that because, years ago, I was buying a substantial amount of prints at a magazine publishing company. And I was talking to my suppliers, going, “There’s more you could do here. You could have more business from me. Here’s what I’m looking for. And here’s the way that we could make our work more efficient.” And they were turning around and going, “Matthew, we’re not interested in this. We just want to print. We don’t want to think strategically. We just want to get your jobs, put them on, and try and get a fair price for them.” And that is why they lost to print management, because printers haven’t been thinking strategically. If you’re a printer out there in the US and you’ve got work from big companies at the moment, you are under the threat of print management.

[0:39:37] DC: 100%. Whether you know it or not.

[0:39:39] MP: Go and think about coopetition. Go and think about talking to some of the other people who are doing that work going, “Let’s get together. Let’s take the place of a print management company and let’s do this ourselves.” Because if you don’t, the print management company will. If you want the profits, the print management company, then you’ve got to put that in place and you’ve got to go to your clients before the print management companies and say, “Here’s what we can do for you and here’s how we can do it better than print management companies.” It’s going to require a shift in culture. It’s going to require you to work with people that you’ve traditionally been competing against. It’s going to require you to invest in a certain amount of IT and maybe some salespeople and some management with a different strategic view. But if you don’t do it, you’re going to lose that work. That’s what’s happened so far.

And all I can say to printing companies who’ve lost out is you have no one to blame but yourselves. If all you’ve done is stuck to it, your guns and said, “We’re a printer. We take your jobs. We print them.” That’s why you’ve lost out.

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[0:40:49] DC: Girls Who Print provides women in print and graphic communications with information resources, events, and mentorship to help them navigate their careers and the industry. As the largest independent network of women in print and a nonprofit organization, our global mission to provide resources, skill-building, education, and support for women to lead, inspire, and empower has never been stronger or more accessible. Through our member platform and program, as well as regional groups forming around the world, your access to Girls Who Print is just a click away. Gentlemen, you are most welcome to join us as allies. Get involved and get empowered today. Link in the show notes.

[EPISODE CONTINUED]

[0:41:35] DC: I want to take it from the other side.

[0:41:38] MP: Okay.

[0:41:40] MP: From the customer side. I have been sitting in my desk in my office and the CFO calls me and says, “Hey, we just had a meeting with this company and they said they’re going to save us 30% on printing. What is going on here? Why is there 30% to be saving, and nobody has saved it before? What the hell is going on here?”

After the first audit, after one of those companies came into the agency – and let me tell you, that’s what happens, because they start freaking out. They’re like, “30% is a lot of money to save from the one department who spends the money in the advertising agency.” Whether it’s, I mean, the broadcast producers are under production, the media buyers are under production. Where we spend all the money, everybody else brings it in.

I learned that I needed to report on everything. As I’m saying, the print buyers have a responsibility in this, too, to fend off these people. Every job, I’m sorry, you have to report on it. Create a little report. Send an email thanking everybody. And CC people about thank you for helping us get this job in on time and under budget. And show that you really are in a partnership with your printers. It’s not just this thing that can save you 30% without everything, all the other benefits of human relationships that are attached to that.

The other thing is that when those companies come in to assess where the savings can be, to me, there’s a strategic list for the print customers to say, “Okay, let’s see if we can’t do the same thing here.” Not with getting rid of people. That’s their goal. Get rid of the people, then the agency doesn’t have to pay salaries, health insurance, taxes, whatever else it is. Yes, there’s a lot of savings in that, but it doesn’t mean that these are the best people doing the jobs who understand the nuances of the client and all of that other stuff.

When they tell you where to save this money, I think it is the responsibility of any production person who gets called into that office and says, “What the hell is going on here?” To already have a response to it. Or to say, “This is what I’ve been sending you every Friday. We’re already lean and mean. All they’re going to do is change the quality of our jobs,” which is not something that an advertising agency wants to hear. They love saving money, but not if they’re not going to win awards for the work that’s going out.

If you can find out from the people that the print management companies met with where they said the savings are, you can then go to your printers and say, “Look, I’m not here to beat you up for 30% reduction in your costs. I’m here to tell you that both of us potentially are on the chopping block here. Let’s figure out something within the legal parameters of Sarbanes-Oxley and all of the rules about publicly traded companies, no price fixing, nothing like that. But perhaps, if you get a disk to us in this time and we have more time to do the job, we can offer you some savings here.

It is actually a business process that allows you to, “If we don’t have to fix any of your files, we can save you some money in the part that we’ve allotted to pre-press.” If you’re willing to – I’m sorry, paper people. If you’re willing to change your paper sometimes. If we can look at an alternative stock to your brand standards that might be more accessible, or closer, or whatever it might be, and we can get the client to agree to that, then we can save some money for each job.

It might not end up 30% unless bodies are gone, but the point is that the agency sees that you’re addressing it, you’ve done something about it, and nothing’s going to change as far as the quality that the agency is used to. I will caveat again, print management companies are not about not doing what people want. Otherwise, they won’t have jobs. But it’s like in the beginning, when digital print first came out, and you called your printer and you’re like, “Hey, there’s this thing called digital print. What’s that all about?” And if they didn’t have a digital printer, they would go, “Ah, you don’t want to do that. It’s not going to give you what you want.” That’s what you’re going to hear from people. That’s my opinion on that.

It’s equally on the print buyers, if they get displaced, that they should be doing everything they can now to keep telling people how much they’re helping the agency efficiently, effectively purchase print, manage the projects. Let everybody know when you stay till 2:00 in the morning. And thank people. Just keep it very visible what is going on. And that is not the easiest thing for producers to do.

And I tell this story all the time, coming from 25 years as a print producer in an advertising agency, when the clients came to the office, they hit us. They were like, “You’re all animals. Do not come out of your office. And clean your damn office. Nobody can see the hurricane that’s going on in these offices and stacks of paper. Do something about this.”

For us to kind of come out of that production hole and be like, “Hey, look at us. Look at what we’re doing here,” is not an easy task. But I’m begging everybody out there. I had to do it. I became a blogger, and a podcaster, and all that stuff that wasn’t in my wheelhouse. If I can do it, you can do it. Just get in front of people’s faces and you report on all the savings and efficiencies that you are creating for the agency, for your business, whatever it might be, at all times. And then that gives that CFO an opportunity to say, “You know what, I don’t need to take this meeting. We’re already on this, but thank you very much.”

[0:48:34] MP: I’m going to go further. I agree with everything you said.

[0:48:37] DC: I win.

[0:48:39] MP: But I’m going to take it further. I’m going to say, if you’re not constantly challenging your supplier base, I’m afraid, on price, on specification, on whether that particular vendor deserves their place on there, if you don’t already maybe have, I’m going to call it an A roster and a B roster. Your awards roster and the roster for everything else, rather than just relying on your awards roster to do everything for you. If you’re going, I want to keep this printer rather than somebody else because they take me out to lunch or they give me an easy time, you are not doing your job well enough. That is lazy buying, and it deserves to be lost to print management.

If you’re not able, when a print management company comes in, to go through their audit and go, “Here’s where they’ve got it wrong,” not just in terms of this is a job that’s a bit difficult for us to do, but here’s where they’ve missed these bits out at the specification, here’s where they’ve forgotten about these bits, here’s where this is not going to work for us. Then if you’re going, “Oh, yeah, I can’t challenge that audit,” then you have been buying lazily, and you deserve to lose your job. And there are lazy buyers out there. There are those who don’t try and find the right supplier for everything. And that is where print management wins.

[0:50:02] DC: Yeah, because they don’t know. Nobody’s doing this to like be a bad buyer. They don’t know. I didn’t know that I wasn’t buying effectively and efficiently until I learned about all these other printing techniques that I didn’t know about because I was beholden to my printers who, like I said, when I wanted to do something different that they didn’t have, and perhaps they didn’t want to outsource to a trade printer or a trade finisher. It was always like it was the worst mistake I was ever going to make in my life. “You don’t want to do that. It’s going to mess up everything.” And then you get terrified about these things.

But I do agree with you that – I love Jamie the printer. Jamie McLennan. Jamie the printer, who I do the PrinterChat podcast with. He sends to everybody. And I think this is something you’ve said too, a note with the job. Like, “How did everything work out? Is there anything we could have done better?” And I think that’s great from the printers to find out if there was a process efficiency. Why did it take me three days to get an estimate? It pushed me back on my job. Whatever it might be.

And on the other side, it would be awesome if a printer who understands that their clients are right for this print management service. Land grab. For them to come back and say, “We’ve analyzed all the print that you’ve done last year. And if you’re going to do some or most of it this year or next year, we can come up with a schedule that allows us to print a couple of things at the same time. We can imprint information later on or change it.” I know people don’t like to store shells, but it might be the most effective thing to do if you’re just changing text of an offer or a date instead of reprinting the whole thing.

If I were a printer and I’m looking at corporate – I mean, especially now with the supply chain issues and all the stuff going on with tariffs and all that other stuff, people are cutting their marketing budgets already because uncertainty is a marketing budget killer. Now is a great time to assess if you can help your customers, and to your other point that you may be before.

I had never thought about printers forming a little printing ring there, and somebody who has white format, somebody who has offset, someone who has digital. She’s not necessarily competing against the same things. But everybody can take something 100% of the time, and then the things that everybody can do, whoever is up, whoever has the best price at the moment for whatever reason, can be the one that takes that job. And I’m assuming there’s some revenue splitting going on there.

But the other thing I’ve been saying for years is the printers should hire somebody to do this for them, not a CSR that is working for the printer and helping work come in and managing the client’s relationship, but somebody who’s actually being a print manager for a printing company. You can pitch people and say, “Hey, we get it that this can be a confusing thing, a complicated thing. This is actually just a misunderstood thing, whatever it might be. We will help you figure this all out.” And potentially train somebody who’s there, who will be loyal to that printer forever, because they know that they don’t know things. Or we can have somebody assigned to your account, which means they will go over to your company and discuss projects with you. They will come up with creative ideas. They will help, essentially, be the print production person. But all the work goes back to that printer and to your – I kind of like your system. Or the group. The group could get two out-of-work print buyers, or designer, or somebody who speaks clients. Not necessarily a financial person. But they have to be able to speak client, print customer, and you be the number one resource for that.

And like you and I always say, those customers will be sticky to that process because they don’t know what they’re doing. If it doesn’t matter that the print buying role might move to another print shop. They’re going to keep their process where their process is because they don’t know how to move it.

[0:54:49] MP: I agree. I think the other thing to point out is that many print companies don’t have the capacity to cope with the volume of print that the larger companies are putting out. Form that alliance, and then between you, you can manage that capacity. And I think that’s a really important bit.

[0:55:04] DC: Yeah. I like this alliance idea.

[0:55:06] MP: But people have to think differently to survive. And sadly, the printing industry, both buying and the supply chain, have not always been good at doing that. And I think that’s probably going to be my final words to say on that.

[0:55:21] DC: I know. But now I want to start a company where you and I are the print buyers for everybody, and we just have a ring of printers. I guess it’s called a print broker. Yeah. Okay. Has anything been resolved? I’m not sure. But I guess the most important thing here is everybody on all ends of this has to be aware of the advantages and the disadvantages. And I would agree that they are different for every company, for every skill level, for the work that’s being produced. But if you are a printer for a corporation that it’s in an office building, anything like that, anything that buys enough print that they’re going to be freaking out right now, you better do something to get in front of them and say, “Hey, we’ve got you. Don’t worry about this. We can weather this storm together. Don’t jump ship. Let’s talk about printing less, printing smarter.” I’m not even saying less. I’m just saying printing smarter, generating better results with your print, so we can keep doing this. And that’s it, too.

[0:56:34] MP: I hope we’ve opened a few eyes on the podcast and warned a few people. If we’ve done that, then we’ve done our job.

[0:56:40] DC: Excellent. Thank you so much for your time and your attention. I also want to mention, and I’ll put the link in the podcast, I did an interview with Stephanie Doyle. She’s a packaging buyer, and she was talking about – she references these print management companies and what’s going on in companies, agencies like hers, who are getting bombarded. Not her agency. I’m saying the agencies are on a full-frontal attack by these companies because everybody knows that times are tough and have been tough. And they might not be getting better this year. Anything you could do to keep your work, keep it. If you need some more advice, get in touch with Matthew or I. And until next time, everybody, thank you so much. Print long and prosper.

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[0:57:35] DC: Thanks for listening to Podcasts From the Printerverse. Please subscribe, click some stars, and leave us a review. Connect with us through printmediacentr.com. We’d love to hear your feedback on our shows and topics that are of interest for future broadcasts. Until next time, thanks for joining us. Print long and prosper.

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