Traditionally, the main focus for print service providers has been to promote their services and products to customers to win new and repeat business. However, in what is now an incredibly busy market where many companies are offering similar services, it may be time to alter this approach to help your business stand out from the crowd.
A recent study from Forrester Research found companies that sell services or products with a vision of what customers can actually achieve have a 74% chance of winning a deal. To put it simply, rather than solely focusing on showcasing your products' technical specifications, you should instead consider highlighting what you can actually do with them - and showcase all the weird and wonderful applications they can be used for.
This is certainly true of the sign and graphics industry, where this way of working translates to application selling.
Rather than pitching the type or brand of media, you should instead help your customers see what can be created using your products. Doing this allows the customer to see the opportunities they can access and provides them with food for thought when it comes to developing innovative graphics.
This type of application selling also speaks to the customer's wallet and helps them visualise sellable products. Even if the time is not right, they will remember you when these opportunities do come up.
Here at Drytac, we manufacture a wide range of unique and high-quality adhesive media for retail, and while we could easily go on and on about the technical specifications of these products - all of which can be accessed online or via data sheets anyway - we instead focus on what our customers can achieve by working with these materials.
Rather than looking at a piece of sticky print media, customers are instead seeing the many types of applications the products can create, thus making it much more sellable. These specific jobs and applications allow printers to pitch real world products and visualise solutions.
Here is an example of the two approaches to selling this type of media. If we were to go along with the technical approach, we could explain to customers that Drytac SpotOn Clear Monomeric Gloss PVC film is easy to apply, repositionable, removable and can be printed with most wide-format ink sets, while sister product Drytac Polar Blockout is an opaque PVC backer that can be printed on one side and has a permanent adhesive.
However, if you were to focus on the application instead, we can tell customers that by using these products they will be able to create stunning, two-sided POP applications for windows that can be easily installed without bubbles or peeling, have no light bleed through and can be repositioned and removed without leaving residue.
Here is another example. We could sell Drytac ReTac Textures as a 6-mil PVC with an embossed finish and a unique adhesive that is repositionable and can be removed without causing damage to drywall or other surfaces, while adding in that it is also HP Latex certified.
Taking the application selling approach, we can instead explain how the film can be used to create vibrant murals with depth and texture, can be installed with ease and removed without leaving any residue or causing damage to the wall surface, even after several years of use.
So, next time you are talking to a printer about the materials you have, focus on the applications and help them to visualise the products they can create and sell. You will almost certainly find that they will come back to you time and time again because you are giving them solutions and ideas.
By Peter Bourgeois, Territory Sales Manager at Drytac.
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