Take a Trust Measurement
One tenet of the Total Quality Management
movement of the 1980s is, “Every important factor
can—and should—be measured.” Sometimes
that’s true; sometimes it’s nonsense.
In business, the tangible can be measured,
but important business decisions such as supplier selection,
hiring and dispute resolution are often subjective.
That’s especially true in the case of custom-manufactured
and service-intensive products. “Quality,” a word I
despise, cannot be defined exclusively in terms of the product
itself.
Many academicians and adherents of TQM (and
its latest manifestation, Six Sigma) have contributed to the
productivity of American business. But in all business
movements, excesses occur. Application of these principles to
the graphic arts industry must be selective. Most of us would
like formulas, especially statistical parameters, to measure
everyday business activities and to steer us away from risks in
hiring, dealing with suppliers and customers, and determining
“what is acceptable.”
Trade customs for printing haven’t
existed since 1994. Different companies have different
standards of acceptability regarding electronic prepress.
Industry standards regarding turnaround times, forms management
charges and prepress alteration charges are virtually
non-existent.
But good marketers thrive on chaos. They
seek answers to these conundrums through their understanding of
customers rather than the pricing and practices of competitors.
In today’s commoditized environment,
distributors—and everyone else in the “print food
chain”—are best advised to avoid slavish use of
industry ratio studies and other statistical
“truths.”
Instead, you should sensibly avoid
conventional wisdom. That’s the essence of competitive
differentiation, commonly called your USP (Unique Selling
Proposition). Some companies differentiate themselves in terms
of product. That is difficult, dangerous and seldom has
long-term staying power.
Nothing in a distributorship, or any other
type of selling organization, is as powerful as trust. Trust
defies statistical measurement. It is individual-specific, not
even account-specific. Only its results, not its elements, can
be defined. The ability to quickly and credibly establish trust
ranks as the single most important attribute of a successful
salesperson in 2005.
Selling in the current business environment
is best described as industrial dating. It has all the elements
of courtship. There are no formulas for identifying and
“connecting” with a marriage partner. How many
times have you seen a married couple and wondered about the
attraction? Like courtship, industrial dating requires time and
patience. Pace is important: There may be trouble if one
partner seems to be moving too slowly or too quickly. Trust is
critical in business because of the lightning speed with which
it can be undone. One person can undo years of effective
trust-building.
Trust can be measured, albeit imprecisely.
Too many research firms in our industry conduct surveys built
exclusively around statistical feedback. Good research
addresses clients’ business issues. Interpreting answers
to open-ended questions can provide valuable information about
the reasons customers do business with you, the depth of your
firm’s relationship with customers, the extent to which
customers perceive your organization is different from
competitors, and customers’ perception of the relative
strengths and weaknesses of your firm compared to buyers’
expectations.
If you’ve been in this business for a
while, you’ve probably gone to bed one night believing
that a specific customer is “safe,” only to wake up
the next morning to find the customer in a competitor’s
camp. That’s a message to treat every existing account as
a prospect at all times.
Trust-building goes beyond on-time delivery
of consistently acceptable print at a competitive price.
That’s the minimum expectation of buyers. Trust-building
requires that you bring useful information to every sales call.
And do not evaluate every client problem or “bump in the
road” solely in terms of short-term economic value. Like
marriage, a business relationship can be strengthened or
weakened by the manner in which disputes or difficulties are
resolved. When all is said and done, the most important asset
of distributors is the trust inherent in their relationships
with both customers and manufacturers.
Contributing Editor Dick Gorelick is an
award-winning authority on sales, marketing and business
strategies for the printing industry. As president of the
Graphic Arts Sales Foundation in West Chester, Pa., he travels
extensively, consulting, writing and speaking on sales
training.
The ability to quickly and credibly
establish trust ranks as the single most important attribute of
a successful salesperson in 2005.