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 visualize sellable products. Even if the time is not right, they will remember you when these opportunities do come up.
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 visualize 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 a PVC film is easy to apply, repositionable, removable and can be printed with most wide-format ink sets, while a sister product 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 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.
So, next time you are talking to a customer about the materials you have, focus on the applications and help them visualize the products you can create for them. You will almost certainly find that they will come back to you time and time again because you are giving them solutions and ideas.
