Business | Knowledge
their brand, deadlines and expectations, while they gain the convenience of dealing with fewer suppliers, fewer invoices and fewer conversations. You become harder to replace, not because you’ve
locked the customer in, but because you’ve made yourself genuinely more useful. There is also an obvious opportunity for cross-selling and upselling. Print businesses often put enormous effort into finding the next new customer while barely scratching the surface of the opportunities sitting within their existing database. A customer buying business cards might also need
folders, brochures, signage, workwear or promotional merchandise. A restaurant ordering menus may need window graphics, pavement signs, loyalty cards or takeaway packaging. The construction company buying site boards may also require vehicle graphics, safety signage, manuals and branded clothing. You don’t necessarily need hundreds of new customers. You might simply need to sell more relevant things to the customers you already have. Diversification can also reduce price sensitivity. If you are simply ‘the printer who supplies our leaflets’, replacing you is relatively easy. If you understand the customer’s brand and provide their print, signage, exhibition graphics, promotional material and packaging, comparing that relationship against a random online price becomes considerably more difficult. You have moved beyond selling an individual commodity and started selling convenience, knowledge, reliability and a solution.
YOU DON’T HAVE TO MAKE IT Perhaps the biggest opportunity for smaller print businesses is that diversification no longer means buying all the machinery needed to produce everything yourself. The trade supply market has changed that completely. A sign company can easily offer general commercial print through one of the many established trade printers, adding a healthy margin without creating production headaches. They don’t need to become experts in running litho presses or digital production because somebody else already has the equipment, expertise and capacity. Likewise, a traditional copy shop or small digital printer can now punch considerably above its weight. Wide-format graphics, exhibition systems, books, specialist finishing, packaging and promotional products can all be sourced through specialist trade suppliers.
The choices are almost endless, but the clever
part is deciding which choices make sense for your customer base. Don’t start with a supplier’s catalogue and ask, ‘what could we sell?’ Start with your customer list and ask, ‘what are they already buying from somebody else?’ Take your top 20 customers and list the relevant products and services they are likely to purchase. Then identify which they currently buy from you and, more importantly, which ones they don’t. Those gaps are your diversification opportunities. You’ve already done the difficult bit because
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you have the relationship, their trust and hopefully a history of delivering successfully. Instead of continually spending money convincing strangers to buy one product, look at how you could help existing customers buy three, four or five complementary products. There’s another useful question to ask. Think about the last 10 occasions when a customer asked, ‘Do you do...?’ How many times did the answer begin with ‘no’, and where did that customer go next? Every relevant request you turn away potentially sends your customer towards somebody who will say yes, and that supplier might offer everything you currently provide as well. Of course, diversification needs control. You need reliable suppliers, sensible margins, quality standards and clear expectations around turnaround. There is no point generating thousands of pounds of additional outsourced work if poor buying or constant problems leave you with little profit and a large headache. But don’t confuse not producing something with not being able to sell it. They are completely different things.
Some printers tell me they don’t want to become a ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’, but diversification doesn’t mean abandoning your expertise. You can still be exceptional at signage, digital print, litho, packaging or whatever your core specialism happens to be. You’re simply building complementary products and services around it. Besides, the fuller version of that old saying makes the point rather well: ‘Jack of all trades, master of none, though oftentimes better than master of one’. So, here’s the challenge. Take your 20 best customers and build a simple matrix. List their names down the left and, across the top, list every relevant product or service you could realistically provide, whether you produce it yourself or outsource it. Tick what each customer currently buys from you, then look carefully at the gaps. Identify three complementary products or services you could introduce without major capital investment, find reputable trade partners, calculate your margins and start talking to your customers. Don’t ask whether you particularly want to sell those products.
SOME PRINTERS TELL ME THEY DON’T WANT TO BECOME A ‘JACK OF ALL TRADES, MASTER OF NONE’, BUT DIVERSIFICATION DOESN’T MEAN ABANDONING YOUR EXPERTISE
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