Print Business Tips: 7 Ways to Earn Buyers’ Trust

1. Print Business Tips: 7 Ways to Earn Buyers’ Trust Trust is defined as the firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of something or someone. It is earned through actions, not words. So if your print shop doesn’t deliver on your sales and marketing promises, it can be hard to restore that “firm belief” in your abilities to follow through on future jobs. Whether you sell products through salespeople or online storefronts, your customers must be able to trust your shop as a supplier of printing services. Consider these seven steps. Show prospects that you’re more interested in solving their business problems than making a quick sale. ​​Yes, we all want our sales and revenue numbers to rise, but printing businesses are still built on service, relationships, and results. If your salespeople talk more than they listen and don’t offer customized recommendations or solutions, your prospects will sense that they simply want to sell them something, whether it’s relevant to their business or not. Be consistent. ​​When producing an estimate, a proof, a proposal, or a product, strive to be consistently good. Your customers will not only expect consistency in brand colors from job to job, but also consistency in the price estimates for similar types of jobs. If you deliver a consistently great customer experience from the start of the job until delivery and invoicing, your customer will trust that you can provide similar great service on any time of job that comes your way. Don’t let small details fall through the cracks. We all feel stressed and overwhelmed from time to time. But don’t use that as an excuse for missing a promised delivery date, overlooking an order, or neglecting to make a requested change. If you do have to adjust a delivery dates for a couple of jobs, be sure to let your customers know ahead of time. And when your shop does make errors, act quickly to make things right.

2. Don’t over-promise and under-deliver. ​​Making promises if much easier than meeting multiple rush deadlines that meet your customers’ expectations for quality. If your marketing and promotional materials make promises that are wildly unrealistic, customers are bound to be disappointed. Be clear in defining what types of files and instructions your customers should provide in order to get the best quality and results. Don’t talk trash about your competitors. ​​Your customers would rather hear more about what your company ​can ​do for them, than what your competitors can’t do. Treat everyone from your customer’s team with respect​​. Print buyers today come from all generations and many types of backgrounds. Although every buyer may have different levels of purchasing authority and knowledge of printing and marketing, they should all be treated with respect. You never know when an employee from your client companies will get promoted, change jobs, or start their own businesses. If you have earned the trust and respect of every employee from that client company, your good reputation may spread to other departments and companies. Be extremely careful with customer data. ​​Whether you are sending out personalized emails to your own customers or personalized direct-mail pieces on behalf of your customers, the accuracy of the data matters. When you receive a personalized direct-mail piece with the wrong name or inaccurate details, you tend to blame the sending company than the printer. When you make small, but obvious, mistakes with data, it’s easy for a client to wonder how widespread the problem might be. If your company is contractually required to safeguard certain data, make sure that everyone in your shop is aware of their obligations. Accuracy, privacy, and security can help you earn trust. Good Print-Shop Management Software Helps A 2016 Hubspot survey revealed that only 3 percent of 928 respondents considered salespeople and marketers to be trustworthy (compared to 49 percent for doctors and 48 percent for firefighters). Maybe that’s because it’s easier for salespeople and marketers to make promises than to deliver on them. An easy-to-use ​print-shop management system such as Ordant can make it easier for your print shop to deliver consistent, quality service and estimates. You can easily share client notes and requests as a job moves throughout the shop. And you can avoid errors that can occur when data is entered in multiple programs. If your shop handles a higher volume of smaller, fast-turnaround jobs, Ordant helps prevent jobs from getting lost in the shuffle. For a demonstration, visit ​www.ordant.com