Quick Printing

I’m tired of reading material written by folks who don’t understand us. I think Forbes is one of the biggest offenders. AOL put Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Airlines, as chairman of their Small Business Board of Directors. Then there’s the likes of Inc. and Entrepreneur that assume all of us want to float an IPO (initial public offering) and get rich. And then there’s the flip side: those who treat us as self-employed and give us stories about five helpful iPhone Apps and the like. Okay, here’s the real scoop.

An entrepreneur is one who brings together the forces of land, labor, and capital and makes a profit. Lesson one is that a self-employed person is not an entrepreneur; rather they are self-employed because they employ themselves only. Nothing wrong with that audience, but that audience isn’t us.

We employ others and, as such, can take a paid vacation, for the business goes on making us money when we aren’t there. At least, it is supposed to do so. Those who are working exclusively for themselves, whether doing accounting, lawyering, or cutting grass can’t do that because if they don’t work, they don’t earn. Therefore, we real entrepreneurs have employees and real people headaches. That’s one.

Two is that we are not ever going to take our business public through an IPO. Some of us may dream of that and a few may even do it, but the vast majority of us will not. So we don’t need to know about VCs (venture capitalists). The funds for our business come from our retirement account, savings, credit cards and/or any other way we can scrounge around for a few bucks to get started. And since either the cash or the credit belongs to the family, that’s why I say we are family-based rather than market-based (as in selling stock on a broad scale). And, by the way, there are about 20,000 public companies in the U.S. and about 12-15 million of ones like us.

Three is that we are geographically oriented. We didn’t get here by figuring out the best gizmo and then moving to where gizmos were needed. No, we are where we are usually because of our family or happenstance. We look around and think, “Gee, wonder what I can do here to make a living.” And then we open that kind of a business.

Four is that we are a lifestyle business. The reason I say that is if we were all about profit we’d all be junk dealers or auctioneers because they usually have the most cash in the neighborhood. No, we’re about a lifestyle: something that has hours that agree with us, something that doesn’t require us to travel all of the time, something that allows us to hold our head high at the Rotary meeting, and something that, preferably, we have an interest in.

There’s more, but I’ve got better things to do than give lectures to the big magazines about doing some market research on us before filling our in-box with stuff that is too farfetched (IPOs) or too trivial (social media will save your business).

It is always interesting to watch the ongoing debate between owners on which new widget to buy or how to get their existing widget serviced properly. As I look at the different opinions, it seems to be more a question of who they are dealing with rather than the quality of the widget itself. Sure, sometimes there are some lemons out there, but by and large, most complaints are because they don’t like the dealer or the techs.

Do you ever wonder if your ability to draw customers has nothing to do with the equipment that you have, but rather how you and your staff are interacting with your customers or how you are interacting with your employees. Do your customers complain about how they are treated at your store or do your employees complain about how they are treated by you and their fellow employees?

Think about the answers to those questions. It could be very interesting.

Is your prepress department ready for the future? The role of the prepress department will expand and evolve as more services are added to the arsenal of products sold by printers. But before any printing company can add services, it has to be sure that the prepress department can handle the services now being sold.

Typesetting, design and file output are the standard services now offered by most printing companies. If you look closely at most financial statements, you’ll see that the prepress department is losing money because the printer isn’t charging enough to cover the department’s cost. As John Stewart says, prepress is a black hole.

To survive the future, the typical printers will have to attempt to reinvent themselves and offer more cross media services. Most of these services will be computer and Internet based so the logical department to produce the services is the current prepress department.

Print owners need to make sure their prepress department is making money today. Typesetting, design and customer file output should be profitable and not considered loss leaders. Printers can do this by using outside design and typesetting services to supplement the work produced in house. Printers can set standards for customer files and use the automation and workflow tools that come with most digital presses and direct-to-plate systems to cut production costs and increase profits.

It will be very difficult for a printing company to add additional services if the prepress departments are already losing money. If a prepress department is inefficient now or the prices charged for the service too low, then there will be no way to add other services to offset the current losses. If it isn’t profitable now it is never going to be.

You have to get ready for the future today. Make sure your sales people are charging fair and profitable prices for design and typesetting. Printers shouldn’t be giving away design work just to get the printing job. If you can’t produce it profitably in house, then use an outside vendor.

Automate now. Require customers to provide PDF files that are constructed according to your specifications. Use the hot folders and workflow systems that come with your equipment. Make the prepress staff learn how to use the tools properly.

It is up to the owner to make sure the changes happen. The owner needs to lead and make sure pricing for prepress tasks is correct and profitable. The owner has to make sure the staff is using the tools available to be more efficient. Printing is more competitive and as printing evolves it will be harder for the typical print shop to survive. You can no longer afford to live with a “black hole” in prepress sucking away profits. Unless you plug the profit leaks now, you won’t be able to add the new services that will be required to stay in business. The black hole may not just suck away prepress profits. It just might suck away your future.

July is shaping up to be a particularly busy month. This week I will be in Tucson, AZ, at the AlphaGraphics annual convention. The following week I will be in New York City to preview a new offering from Epson. The next week, Karen and I will be in San Antonio, TX, at the annual Franchise Services conference for owners of Sir Speedy, PIP Printing, and Signal Graphics franchise operations.

In looking at my travel schedule, it dawned on me that these events–and others like them–are proof that despite all the doom and gloom there are many signs that our industry segment is still alive and kicking.

At the AlphaGraphics event, I’ll be presenting awards to a group of franchisees being singled out for their contributions to the system and to fellow AlphaGraphics printers. That is only one of many awards scheduled to honor franchisee success.

At the Epson meeting, I’ll get a sneak preview of a new offering aimed at our market. To me, this indicates a confidence in the quick and small commercial printing industry on the part of a major manufacturer.

Finally, I’ll be presenting awards to the PIP and Sir Speedy top sales volume franchisees, along with awards to all of the franchisees who made this year’s Quick Printing Top 100 roster. Again, these awards show that success is possible under almost any economic circumstance.

I’m reminded of a quote I once ran across in a sales training book: “Success in life comes not from holding a good hand, but from playing a poor hand well.”

The Graph Expo Show Daily is the attendee bible for Graph Expo. It has information about products on display, educational sessions, booth locations, show events, “Must See ‘Em” awards, and much, much more. The much, much more part is what I want to ask you about. What sorts of things would you like to see in the premier publication for this once a year event?

This year, the Show Daily will also be available in a digital eBook version that will have embedded video. This will offer show information in digital form and is a reflection of the digital developments reshaping our industry. I certainly hope that you will be attending Graph Expo, simply because it is the premier event for the printing industry in North America. And I also hope you will send along your thoughts on what you would like to see in the 2010 Graph Expo Show Daily.

Thanks!

Open and Honest

(This blog was submitted by Bill Greif of TG & Associates)

Debra asked me to take a cut at a blog about a subject that we feel is critical to business success and growth. We often emphasize the role of leadership in the business and we cite the traits that we think represent leadership. Being open and honest with your staff is such a trait. When we work with owners we ask if they are open and honest, and they always say they are. Then we ask if they share the numbers, and the response is usually, “No, of course not. They don’t need to know that.”

When I worked in aerospace, the employee profit sharing at the end of the year depended on how the company did against the goals in four major areas: Bookings (New orders), Sales (Delivered Orders), Cash On Hand, and Profitability. Every quarter, the General Manager would conduct a series of meetings across the plant site (I guess we would call them town halls today), and she would provide the status YTD for each of those four areas and the actions underway to make sure they would be met at the end of the year. If there were some serious concerns about meeting any of them, she would be open and honest about those concerns and would answer any questions from the employees. There were over 10,000 employees and they all had a chance to hear the news from the top and to question what was going to happen.

In this era of economic stress and uncertainty, your employees need to know what is going on in your business and what actions you are taking to deal with the issues. They need to know that you are managing the business and that you are on top of what it takes to secure their livelihood. They also need to know how they can contribute to help secure their future. When did you hold your last town hall meeting? Don’t remember? Then it is way overdue. If you won’t be open and honest with them, then fear of the unknown may drive them to another company where they can learn what is going on.

Bob and I will be traveling to the Florida office next week for Quick Printing’s annual planning meeting, along with our two sister publications Printing News and Wide-Format Imaging. As part of that event, we have to present the editorial calendar for 2011. Some issues are set in stone, so no worries there. In April we’ll publish QP’s Annual Franchise Review, June will see another edition of our Top 100, and December will host the Company Capabilities advertorials. That leaves nine months in play.

Most years we end up filling in the blanks with subjects such as monochrome and color digital output devices, mailing services, offset, sustainability, prepress, and finishing. Of course, we always leave some wiggle room because you just never know what might pop up in the course of a year.

As always, we’ve mulled over the conversations and suggestions of our columnists, various industry leaders, and the printers we’ve talked with in recent months. However, we’d still like to hear from you. What would you like to read about? What would make QP more interesting, more useful, more valuable to you? Please take just a few minutes to share your ideas with us. We really want to know!

Okay, maybe I oversold this a little, but this morning I was looking at all the good stuff posted here by our columnists and editors and noted that the comments in response were few and far between. Does that mean folks aren’t clicking through to get to the blogs? Or does it mean that those who read them don’t have any comments to make? Is the link to the blogs too small or hidden? What’s the deal?

If you’ve read this far, I’d appreciate it if you would take the time to tell us what you think about our Print Talk blogs. We’re always open to suggestions and value your feedback. I look forward to hearing from you.

Why does it take us so long to train someone?

I think I found the answer. Visited a print shop last week where workers weren’t trained. In talking with the owner about how to get them trained, I think I stumbled onto something profound. The reason it takes us so long to train is we don’t train; we wait for enough different jobs to come through so we can show them how to handle each one. In short, that’s not training; that’s waiting for them to gain experience.

What’s the difference? Training is teaching vocational or practical skills so the trainee gains the knowledge, skill, and competence to perform. Experience is figuring stuff out in the heat of battle. Which is better? Both are necessary, but we typically don’t do both, rather we rely on the Osmosis Method of Training. You know, you stand there and watch me do this and pretty soon you will know how to do this too. Some say that experience is the best teacher, but the problem is you have to die to graduate.

Okay, what if the Army trained only using experience? Here’s your M-16, son. The bad guys are coming over the hill, so I’m gonna be busy, but you be sure to ask me if you run into anything you don’t know. Hmm.

How do you do it? Set aside time to train. It can be before you open in the morning or anytime you can carve out specific heads down time. Do not train during the heat of battle. Now, here are the four basic steps in On the Job Training :

1) Put the worker at ease and find out what they know. Who knows? They may know more about it than you think and you can tailor your approach to their level instead of being too basic or too advanced.

2) Show them what you are doing while you tell them what you are doing.

3) Have them show and tell you while they do it.

4) Test them by using another person, and have them signed off on the task.

The most important step is the last one—testing. The other person commonly is the trainer’s boss, but since you’re the boss and the one usually doing the training, you need someone else. It can be anyone, but you’re better off with someone credible like your paper salesman. Okay, I used a paper salesman once and he did alright.

Anyway, you also need a task listing. Go to your computer, open up a Word.doc or whatever and begin making a list of tasks that a person has to master to do whatever. Also assign a time to each of the tasks.

Assume you wanted to teach someone the care and feeding of a desktop printing calculator—assuming there’s still one around. What do they have to know? Break the job down into individual tasks and assign a time standard to each step. Don’t worry about if you are wrong on the time or even if you leave out a step. You’re the boss. When you get into the training if you think you should change something, then do it. In my example, a trainee has to:

1) Change paper rolls, 2 minutes

2) Change ribbons, 2 minutes

3) Clean the print head, 1 minute

4) Know how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. We don’t do square roots or differential equations in this business, so those four are the basics they need.

But wait, have you ever shown someone how to do something and then they don’t remember the next day? That’s why you use the four step process.

1) Ask them what they know about changing paper in the calculator.

2) Show them how to do it while you change the roll.

3) Have them do it while they show you.

4) Then test them by having them show and tell your mysterious other person within the assigned time. Remember the task listing you prepared? Print one out. For each of the tasks, have the trainee as well as the rater (mysterious other person) initial and date each step. Now put the training record in their personnel file. (Okay, scan it to a PDF and file it appropriately on the hard drive if you want).

Now, if and when the person is unable to accomplish the task they have been trained to do, you can go back to the training record and discuss why they can’t do what they knew and demonstrated on such and such a date.

Rarely is that an issue. Most common is when you have to train someone else to do the same thing when the first guy quits, you have a task listing to go back to and jump right in. You don’t have to create a lesson plan every time you have a newbie.

While my example is a little bit on the simple side, you can train a person to run a nuclear reactor in much the same way. And now you don’t have to wait a year or more for enough jobs to come in. You can just train them and get on with life.

Now my printer-friend has a plan. If he uses it, he will begin digging out of his time management quagmire.

Quick printers have a lot of technology at their fingertips, but it isn’t worth much unless customers need it. PDF files can automate the workflow, but printers don’t tell customers the benefits or how to use it. Online ordering is easy to provide to customers, but how is a customer suppose to learn about it? Printers buy technology because they think it will increase their sales. When it doesn’t, the printer is disappointed and disenchanted with technology.

The problem is that printers aren’t listening to their customers. Printers are just telling them about technology and hoping the customer is interested. They should be trying to find out what their customers need and what they want. They must find out the benefits the customer is seeking from a printer.

To be successful, printers are going to have to improve their listening skills. I’ve been helping a number of quick printers dissect their sales calls and the recurring problem is that the printer uses the first sales call to talk about his company—not to find out the needs of the customer. The printer is so afraid that he won’t get the chance to talk to the customer again, he hits the customer with everything he has. This leaves the customer confused and the printer looking like, well, just another printer.

Cool technology will get you in the door. Statements such as, “We can make your ordering easier using the Internet,” or “We can help you avoid problems submitting your files,” can get you in the door. Once you get there, you need to just listen. Ask questions. Find out what the customer needs. Find out his pain. Asking questions and listening will help you build a solid foundation for the relationship.

The standard practice of many printing salespeople is to list what they do and hope the customer has a need. If you will take time to learn about the customer, then you can begin using your experience to solve problems and offer benefits for using your company. Don’t start selling until the second appointment when you know something about the customer and really can help them with their printing needs.