Sales Compensation for Todayʼs Marketplace
Gerry Michael, Graphic Arts Principal, Falco Sult; and Bob Lindgren, Management and Business Advisor and President/CEO Emeritus, Printing Industries Association of Southern California
Few questions are more important for printers to address than the question of
how best to grow their companies. Ultimately, every company seeks new sales,
whether to simply maintain the current sales level as normal customer attrition takes its toll on the current customer list or to achieve higher, and hopefully more profitable, sales levels. The question that faces every firm is this: How do I increase the number of customers I serve and the sales my company achieves? Ultimately the answer comes down to recruiting, developing, and retaining good sales reps. The biggest single issue here that needs to be addressed is the appropriate sales compensation system to best answer these questions. The unique characteristic of most printers is that
they are custom manufacturers. They do not produce automobiles or loaves of bread that are sold to customers, but rather solve customer problems by
producing a product (printing) that is designed to meet the buyer’s specific objectives. This reality defines the way that printers market what they do. They don’t advertise on television or other mass media to reach a broad consumer audience. They employ skilled sales reps whose mission is to search out prospective commercial buyers of print; learn about the marketing, packaging, and information needs of those buyers; and show them how print can help them achieve their objectives with specific and detailed examples employing the visual impact of print together with its appropriate distribution. This means that sales reps must have great listening skills, a strong sense of curiosity, technical knowledge about printing, and be skilled salespeople. The successful print sales rep has to be highly self-
motivated as the universe of possible print users is very broad and the likelihood of initial rejection is great. When compared with other occupations, it’s apparent that the role of a print sales rep is very
The Magazine 10 Forecast | 2018
Membership Spotlight
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