As a consultant I am often engaged when decision makers want to improve their sales results. I regularly hear “we want the sales team to be more effective,” and “we want them to sell more.” These appear to be universal goals in the print and mailing industry.

Sales effectiveness is the combined result of four disciplines: sales leadership, sales methodology, sales execution, and sales culture.

Let’s focus first on sales leadership. Great sales leaders see their role in helping their team to achieve desired results.

I hope you attended some great online webinars in the last year. Events where the content was salient, the speakers were engaging, the technology worked well and there was relevant interaction with the attendees. At the end, you felt it was worth your time to attend.

I suspect you have also attended some ineffective online events that were not well delivered, and you tuned out, or were bored and began multi-tasking during the event. Or worse, left

Do your customers know everything you can do for them? This is a question I ask at the beginning of consulting engagements. The answer is usually some variation of, “No, most customers don’t really understand everything we can do.”

This is a big challenge for in-plants. Educating customers and senior leaders in your organizations about everything you do - and can do - to support the strategic goals of your organizations is a critical role for in-plant managers. If senior leaders don’t understand what you do and how it benefits the larger goals of your organization, it’s a slippery slope to outsourcing.

Direct mail continues to be a critical component for many marketing plans for both B2C and B2B products and services. It’s always more effective than digital-only channels like email or social media ads. Three trends are driving new strategies in direct mail marketing.

• Consumer expectations for brands to know my preferences

• More data and tracking to understand the correlation between online and offline transactional behaviors

• Inkjet technology driving improved and complex workflow

Does every manager and team leader understand the marketing strategy for your company? Some owners of companies challenge me when I ask this question. “Why does our IT manager need to know our marketing strategy”, they ask. A concise marketing strategy is the basis that drives activities, decisions and investments in sales, client service, operations and finance as well as marketing.

Strategic planning comes in many forms, and there are different methodologies to create a successful plan to guide companies to achieve their goals.

While many companies have some type of annual planning process to define goals and budgets, the plans are often more tactical than strategic. Too often, the plans define short-term goals by quarter for the next year.

A new year, a time for new thinking, and new approaches. While this January feels quite different than most, it is still that time to pause and reflect and define the goals for the year.

Healthcare companies of all types continue to face the brunt of the pandemic. The people managing the in-plant print operations continue to respond to dynamic changes in business conditions and the need for print, signage, and mail.

Many new inkjet production presses have been installed across all sectors of the print industry in the last five years. The overriding reason they are installed is because they print faster at a lower overall cost than toner and offset.

K-12 school districts’ in-plant print facilities have been on a rollercoaster since COVID hit. Many faced similar challenges last spring when the shut-down required an immediate transition to online learning. School districts were faced with the immediate need to print millions of books and documents to enable students to continue learning.

Does everyone on your team know all the plays? It’s Fall. It’s football season. It’s fourth quarter. And for many companies it is the time for budgeting and strategic planning. Companies have both formal or informal processes for strategic planning and budget planning. Yet, few people get excited about the time spent in the planning process.

I recently interviewed three managers running large in-plant print operators — Mike Lincoln, Colorado State Printer, Jerry Hill, California State Printer and Tammy Golden, Assistant Commissioner of Document Solutions at State of Tennessee. Despite significant differences in print volumes and approaches, all three managers expressed the need to assess, adapt and expand their services to meet the changing requirements of their customers.

When your leadership team demonstrates optimism and positivity on a regular basis it lays the foundation for and reinforces a culture that breeds results. Optimism and positivity are the underlying goals of many corporate cultures.

Someday we will reflect on how the world changed in 2020 with perspective. Right now, as businesses continue to adapt to new ways of engaging employees and customers, the single focus is how to get the work done.

Many sales teams are challenged in the current business environment to connect with customers and prospects. New sales are harder to find and harder to close. When I ask sales teams about who they plan to contact for referrals [always ask for referrals], often they speak about customers who buy specific types of print jobs.

Salespeople regularly complain that they don’t get enough leads. Most salespeople expect their company to engage in marketing activities to generate sales leads. This seems like a reasonable expectation. Yet effective marketing strategies have shifted to multi-touch nurture programs that take planning a strategic content approach before they hand off marketing qualified leads to sales.

In-plants are often the unsung heroes for their companies. They often operate in a basement or a remote facility without too many visitors. Their internal customers are the many departments and lines of business, like marketing, legal, compliance, customer service and HR that create communications for customers and employees. In many cases, the departments they serve have no idea what the print department actually does or how they do it.

Inkjet presses from many equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have delivered on the promise of lower cost, higher throughput, and better uptime. Many in-plant print operations attribute part of their success to their inkjet adoption strategy. Performing regular preventative maintenance is the key to drive uptime and excellent image quality.

Many sales cycles are stalled. Whether your team is selling print, services, direct mail, software, equipment, or products, the current situation has many sales cycles stuck and delayed. Your sales team may be hearing from customers that decisions are on hold or postponed. Or they may be hearing nothing as prospects do not respond to emails and phone calls.

In printing, mailing, and direct marketing companies, most production work is highly functional with distinct departments. There are separate units for data processing, creative design, pre-press, printing, finishing, mailing, and shipping.