By Dave Fellman
It’s an unfortunate fact that many printers have been disappointed in the performance of their salespeople in recent years, especially in terms of developing new business. There are plenty of “farmers” it seems, but a disappointing lack of real “hunters.” Perhaps in recognition of that fact, there seems to be a trend in the industry toward integrating the sales and customer service functions, using “Account Managers” to maintain assigned accounts and seek out new business opportunities, both within those assigned customer organizations and through raw prospecting. In effect, each Account Manager is being paid to be both a salesperson and a CSR.
The plus side of this strategy should be pretty obvious, because one Account Manager will almost certainly cost less than a salesperson and a CSR. The minus side should also be obvious, though, because a salesperson who is encumbered with significant customer service responsibilities has a considerably lower “top end” than a pure hunter. I know quite a few salespeople in our segment of the industry with annual sales volume in the $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 range—and a couple of people well above that level too! I don’t think any of them would have gotten to that level as quickly as they did if they were also expected to handle all of the customer service responsibilities for their customers.
Of equal importance, I don’t think any of them would have gotten to that level at all if they hadn’t been suited to the job in the first place and then been well trained and well managed. And some of what that means—the training and management part—is that they weren’t allowed to fall into the “customer service comfort zone.” Instead, they were focused on and motivated to develop new business. Their job description was to go out into the marketplace and identify prospects and then facilitate the decision for those people to stop buying from some other printing company and start buying from them. Their compensation plans supported that job description. In other words, a low “guarantee” coupled with a high incentive component made it worth both necessary and desirable to seek out new business.
Your Choice
The bottom line here is that you have a choice on the sales side of your business. You can hire or designate an Account Manager and provide him/her with training and management and motivation to handle orders and customers and hopefully grow your business. If your company already has significant sales volume, and your challenge is to make yourself more profitable at that volume level, this strategy might be your best choice.
Alternately, if increasing your sales volume is of greater importance, you should probably hire or designate a pure outside salesperson and provide him/her with appropriate training/management/motivation. There’s a cost involved either way, and in either case, the training, management and motivation will be the difference between success and failure.
Dave Fellman is the president of David Fellman & Associates, Raleigh, NC, a sales and marketing consulting firm serving numerous segments of the graphic arts industry. Contact Dave by phone at 919-363-4068 or by e-mail at dmf@davefellman.com. Visit his website at www.davefellman.com.