I spent some time with my older brother last weekend. He's a rocket scientist. (Well, okay, he's an engineer, and there is a difference between pure science and engineering, but he's involved with software for rockets and missiles and that's close enough for me.) He was explaining the challenges of guiding guided missiles, and it should be no surprise that the biggest challenge is keeping the missile on course, especially when the target is moving, too.

"We've got the timing of mid-course corrections down to very small fractions of a second," he told me. "That keeps the missile very close to the best track to the target. And at the speed these things are traveling at, it doesn't take very long to get too far out of position for a successful intercept."

That got me thinking about mid-course corrections to a printer's sales and marketing plans. They don't move as fast as a missile, of course, but it's still true that it doesn't take all that long to get too far out of position for a successful result.

You Do Have a Plan, Right?

I hate to mention this, but I know enough quick/digital/small commercial printers to know that I can't safely assume that you have a sales and marketing plan in the first place. If you do, you can ignore the following sentence. If you don't, then I have to ask you why the hell not?

It's been said that failing to plan is exactly the same as planning to fail. Okay, that may be a bit strong, but I think it is fair to say that a lack of planning is the main problem for most of the underachievers in the industry. It's convenient to blame the competition or the economy, but the sad fact is that most printers are reactive rather than proactive.

Here's another expression I know you've heard, the one about working in the business rather than on the business. It all adds up to the same thing—going to work every day with no real plan in mind and just dealing with things as they come. That can work to some degree in terms of your day-to-day operational issues. It doesn't work well with chronic problems, though, and it doesn't work at all with sales and marketing. The only alternative to a sales and marketing plan is to let your sales volume be governed by things completely outside of your control. Does that sound like a good idea?

Sure, it is possible to have a very good year when those things are moving in the right direction. I think experience has shown, though, that "those things" have a nasty tendency to go in the other direction.

Changing the Plan

I had a mid-course conversation with one of my clients this morning. Her sales and marketing plan for 2008 has three main goals: $50,000 worth of deeper penetration of current accounts, another $50,000 worth of new customers, and $30,000 of that sales volume increase coming from her new large-format printer. Through the first five months of the year, she's at (approximately) $14,000 from deeper penetration, $7,000 from new customers, and $1,500 from the large-format printer.