RISORSE
Web-to-print is transforming the print industry, bringing with it a host of benefits for print providers:
But what about the benefits for your customers? How can you sell your Web-to-print service? A recent white paper from the National Association for Printing Leadership (NAPL) Research Center, “Web-to-print: The Promise, the Potential, and the Reality,” (sponsored by Xerox) has found that some printers are finding it difficult to convince customers of the payback for their own businesses. Here are 10 Steps to ensuring that your new Web-to-print software never becomes shelfware.
1) Drink your own champagne – Practice what you preach and utilize Web-to-print to market your own print services – illustrating its capabilities for both your customers and salesforce at the same time. Demonstrate its potential by initiating a personalized marketing campaign to invite people to an open house or thought leadership workshop.
2) Use customer case studies to demonstrate the potential – Turn your Web-to-print success stories into living examples of how your company can help customers by promoting your case studies and enabling prospects to imagine themselves in similar situations. Share access to a library of Web-to-print campaigns that you have already implemented for other customers.
3) Focus on your customer needs – Get to know your customer inside out – learn everything there is to know about their business processes, goals and strategy in order to help them to grow and enable you to better provide Web-to-print solutions to their business challenges.
4) Meet your customers regularly face-to-face – Although Web-to-print puts the entire print production process online, when it comes to gaining repeat business, building long-term relationships, and learning from your customers, there is no better substitute than face-to-face interaction. Initiate regular reviews in order to receive feedback and evaluate recent work processes, offer onsite training sessions and help your customers to understand how they can optimize their application of Web-to-print software.
5) Build a proof of concept storefront to pitch your clients – Consider illustrating the potential benefits by building a proof of concept Web-to-print site for a current client. Not only will this demonstrate the relevance and operation to the customer directly, it will also clearly highlight how well you understand their business needs.
6) Train your staff to sell your business as a value-added partner – Implement a strategic education plan for your sales staff to better understand and sell your Web-to-print services as value-added solutions. Position your business at every opportunity to encourage your customers to think beyond just the initial price per unit, but rather to appreciate the added value and benefit of implementing this new technology.
7) Learn from your peers – Check out published case studies illustrating how other printers are effectively utilizing the technology. Great resources can be found in the and on the .
8) Take advantage of training sessions and sales tool kits offered by software vendors – XMPie offers many free online webinars and other educational content specifically designed to help print business succeed and grow their Web-to-print businesses. Both technical training along with sales and marketing tips are offered. to our newsletter to make sure you don’t miss out!
9) Meet new people and generate excitement in your business – Local networking events and larger industry conferences are ideal places to cultivate connections, create lasting impressions and learn from vendors. Get motivated, generate new ideas, secure future business opportunities and promote your business across key industry audiences. Don’t forget also to connect online on social media groups that are relevant to your industry. Networking Groups such as the PSDA LinkedIn Group and XMPie Users Group LinkedIn Group are great places to foster mutually beneficial connections with your peers.
10) Give people even more than they expect – To grow your business, you will need to deliver a service that exceeds expectations to the degree that your customers will talk to others about it. Demonstrate your entire service and knowledge offerings, from start to finish including training, sales, design and marketing, and empower your customers to become your best advocates.
Achieving Web-to-print success requires ongoing training, commitment and partnership with vendors. XMPie is already working hard to assist our customers in navigating the groundbreaking world of Web-to-print and taking advantage of all the amazing opportunities on offer. To learn more about our services and software visit our .
