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Just the Thing

Your client wants an ad specialty. You want to sell them one.
But which one?

By Rebecca Trela

The client complaint started like any other: We don’t like what we have, and we want a cheaper product, Margie Price says. Price, the president of St. Louis-based Premiums Plus, had been selling imprinted ceramic mugs to a local church to use at a donuts and coffee community breakfast. “They wanted Styrofoam cups!” Price marvels. “I said, ‘Okay, but why?’”

Breakfast attendees, the client complained, were taking the cups with them, and the supply had dwindled. “‘Isn’t that wonderful?’ I said, and the client was very confused,” Price remembers. “Wait a minute. Wouldn’t it be great if they had a mug with your logo on it for everyone in the family? Wouldn’t it be great if they replaced every cup in their house with your mugs? So every time they opened the cupboard, the first thing they saw was your information?” Put in that context, Price says, the client understood. Now, they order only ceramic mugs.

Distributors know that the value-added sale is where the money is made in today’s market. The ad specialty sale provides a perfect opportunity, because the products are usually ordered by a marketing department or C-level executive. Studies conducted for PPAI by Louisiana State University and the University of Texas at San Antonio revealed participants preferred ad specialties over TV advertising. A coordinated campaign boosted positivity about the ad, product, message credibility, purchase intent and referral value. An integrated marketing plan showed the most effective results.

This is where distributors have the chance to shine. Most end users know—or suspect—they can buy key chains and mugs anywhere, most conveniently online at bargain-basement prices. But a value-added reseller can help design a broader marketing program and plan for results. He can connect the client with his clients. And ultimately sell ideas, not things.

Setting the Stage

Ashley Moore, left, an account manager at Weyh Roberts & Associates, Vienna, Va., hosts a tour of the company showroom with President Donna Weyh Roberts.

The “toy room” at cmfi group, Peoria, Ill., helps clients brainstorm for upcoming promotions.

To understand what the client wants, it’s necessary to have a face-to-face meeting where the distributor can ask critical questions. And here is the artistry of sales: Which questions? In which order? In what setting?

“When you’re selling print, clients want you to come to them,” says Donna Weyh Roberts, CEO of Weyh Roberts & Associates, Vienna, Va. “But we find that clients respond to a promotional products sale really well when they come to our showroom,” she says, because shopping for promotional products is similar to shopping at a mall or other retail establishments.

The company has set up a sales area in its new facility festooned with product samples and products completed, which she culls by ordering an extra item on jobs she’s very proud of. There are jackets, umbrellas, drawers of catalogs, bathrobes, folders and many other items. “It’s twofold,” she says. “It sells the products, and it also shows them the print side of our business.”

Generally, Roberts says, she runs through the basic questions: Who will use the item, when is it needed, what is the function, and of course the budget, which she isn’t shy about asking. “It’s a difficult question, of course, because people think you want to know how much money they have so you can spend it all,” she says. “Whenever I say that, I’m also quick to add, ‘I’m not trying to spend all your money. I’m trying to figure out what range we have to work in.’” After selling promotional products for 13 years, she says, clients rarely stick to the number they first give. “If they say they have $15 for an item, you can usually count on $10.”

Some distributors prefer to hold off on dollars. “A predetermined budget could potentially change if you talk about their goals first,” says Price, who also serves as the vice chair of marketing services on the PPAI Board of Directors. “If you talk about the importance of their brand and what they can achieve with a vehicle to introduce the brand, they have a tendency to add another zero.” Eventually, the conversation comes down to cost, she admits—but she has the most success by talking about where products fit in the marketing universe before moving on to dollars. It’s a technique she calls the “subtle upsell,” where the client starts thinking about the possibilities before the price tag.

“Sometimes I go into a client’s office, planning to prove my worth, and all of a sudden I realize they’re still in the embryo stages of the planning process. They turn and ask, ‘What do you think?’ Then, I feel we’ve arrived,” Price says. “That’s the add another zero moment, and we talk about designing a whole program.”
Bill Mann, principal of XPert Printing Services, Kennett Square, Pa., says many clients are deliberately vague. “I think they know what they want but want to see how creative we can be. You know what I end up doing? I give them a ridiculous range and see what sticks.” Otherwise, Mann says, the distributor can waste a lot of time painstakingly creating pitches that chase hidden expectations. Mann also asks for budget up front.

cmfi group, a Peoria, Ill.-based distributorship, also brings clients into the office to show them products in the “toy room.” Some have requested meetings be held amid this stockpile of promotional items. “It’s just an overwhelming array of products. We cleaned out the toy room once because it was so cluttered,” remembers Cheryl Schlumpf, a sales rep. “The customers complained! It helped them, and they like seeing their own items in there. They’re proud of how their products look.” The toy room is stocked by the two full-time research/administrative people the company employs, and cmfi has graphic designers who sometimes accompany sales reps on brainstorming calls. Coming up with creative ideas is not the hard part, she says. The difficult part is the questioning, the “arduous process of discovery.”

Of course, Schlumpf says, the most successful calls involve prior research. “We look at what they’re putting out there already, read their website and look at their planning calendar.” She leafs through the community newspaper to find awards the company’s won, charity events it sponsored and other community-related events, which gives her an idea of the firm’s public identity. Schlumpf advises clients to keep the message, the tone and the logo consistent, “just like Nike or McDonalds.”

Which Is the Right One?

“Most companies can benefit from a promotional product,” says Marc Englebert, a North Carolina-based sales rep for Creative Promotional Products Inc. But even a great product won’t be successful without a good environment and distribution scheme. “I like the personal, hand-to-hand approach to promotional products,” he says, describing the product hand-off as “micro advertising.” He likes when someone thanks him for an item because it’s like gift-giving. “Of course, that’s how I get my own business, so the approach works for me. Other people don’t want the face-to-face, so they might use a dinner coupon or a corporate gift.”

“All clients ask you what’s popular,” Schlumpf says. “It’s easier to show them what’s new, because popular things might not work in their market.” Worse yet, popular giveaways become popular throwaways in the hands of over-promoted recipients.

“In our market, it’s the golf events in August,” Schlumpf says—many companies in Peoria have a charity or fund-raising golf event during the summer, which attracts many of the same people. “In May, you can get away with personalized golf balls. By August, they already have the umbrella, the shoe bag, the water bottle, the golf towel, the tees…that’s when we try to have a beach party theme and give coconut-shaped mugs.” A promotional product that goes unused is wasted money.
Englebert shares the same sentiments. Just because a product is popular doesn’t mean it’s a good fit for the client, so when someone asks for a carabineer, he says, or a magnetic car ribbon, he tries to steer them away. “Right now, I’m digging thumb drives and mp3 players.” He has plans for FM digital radios in stylized shapes—a baseball, a football—for clients to take to sporting events, where they could watch the action and listen to the sports broadcast simultaneously. “If you’re in this business just to sell something to someone, you’re doing it wrong,” he says.

Proving Your Worth
Your clients look at promotional products as an expense, not as a cost of doing business, like stationery or business cards. It’s difficult to track return on investment in terms of community goodwill and name recognition, so convincing them to add promotional products can be tough.

“I’m not an advertising agency, so I don’t know what the exact figure is,” Mann says. “But I tell clients, ‘Look around your desk. You’ll be surprised how many things have a name on them.’” In a survey of business travelers conducted by L.J. Market Research for PPAI, 71 percent had received a promotional product in the past year, and 33.7 percent had a promotional item on their person when surveyed. About 55 percent keep promotional products more than a year, and 35 percent keep the products more than two years. Why? More than three-quarters of the respondents thought the item was useful, and about 20 percent though it was attractive.
Schlumpf says it’s easy to keep track of promotional products that are integrated with direct mail campaigns or e-commerce programs, both of which cmfi offers clients. “Otherwise, if a product’s really good, the customers will give you feedback, or you’ll see your T-shirt around town.” cmfi takes those success stories and keeps case studies to show clients what works and what doesn’t.

A good way to convince clients is to use the products yourself, some distributors say. “When I go do a sales pitch, I take them an item with their name on it, like a T-shirt,” Price says. “I love the name of my company, but do they? No, but they love to see their own name on things. What better way to promote my business than to literally show them what I can do?” She also brings pens with the Premiums Plus logo on it, and tells her associates to always sign a restaurant check with the company’s pens. “There must be thousands of my pens around St. Louis. I just consider the expense a part of the tip.”

Roberts says she invested in company binders with the Weyh Roberts logo embossed in teal. For her best clients, she numbers the binders and puts in commonly used catalogs, so she can chat about an item on the phone with her customer. “Our binder is sitting on their shelf instead of catalogs strewn everywhere. In all honesty, they probably have tossed other people’s catalogs in there. But at least now I know our stuff is centrally located in their office instead of perpetually misplaced.”

Selling promotional products is different from the forms industry, Roberts says, reflecting on her start in the industry at big manufacturing firms. The sales pitch is different, as well as the purpose and the buyer. But the process can open the door to selling print as well. “With my new salespeople, they understand ad specialties but not forms, so they’ll get a new client with promotional products and eventually ferret our way into their other business. My feeling with ad specialties is that we help the client expand and market their business in addition to and beyond the ink-on-paper.”

Rebecca Trela is assistant editor at Print Solutions magazine. Email comments to rtrela@PSDA.org.