Off the Cuff: Differentiating Your Company from the Competition: Part 2 of 2

SALES & MARKETING

Off the Cuff: Differentiating Your Company from the Competition: Part 2 of 2

October 26, 2009
By Mark L. Venit, MBA, Contributing Writer

In Part 1 of this two-part series, we examined the importance of making a good first impression on prospective clients, properly handling incoming inquiries, what your company’s appearance says about it, as well as its professionalism to first-time visitors. Now, let's turn to issues regarding educating your prospects about your products and services, responding to inquiries, following up on them and what these improvements will cost.

Do you work proactively to inform and educate your audiences about your company and its products? Wouldn’t it be nice if every caller and walk-in client gave you lots of time so that you could tell them about your company? Good luck, but that's not likely to happen. But a “propaganda sheet,” a single-page promo that’s faxed or e-mailed (or handed to on-site visitors) with every quote can help accomplish the same purpose. Think of this sheet as telling everything you could say in a full-page ad in the Yellow Pages or on a fabulous homepage, jammed with lots of good reasons to buy from you. It should include everything from your business hours and contact information to your stated quality and turnaround guarantees, the credit cards you accept and other helpful facts. It informs the prospect about your in-house capabilities in graphics, digitizing, worldwide shipping and selection. It’s where you can show off your local and professional affiliations (SGIA, NNEP, local chamber of commerce, etc.) and awards. It spells out the many advantages of doing business with your company. (By the way, the word “propaganda” comes from the Greek word propos, meaning “truth.”)

Here’s a quick checklist of the types of things you might consider telling prospects about when you’re creating your first “Official Propaganda Sheet:"

What You Offer
• Screen printing (not “silk screening,” a term more germane to amateur efforts)
• Embroidery (not “monogramming,” unless this is your primary offering in sewn decoration)
• Promotional products (not “advertising specialties,” which is a dated term and often a misnomer)
• Awards and engraving (or “recognition products”)
• In-house graphics/in-house art department/in-house digitizing (if you offer these advantages, flaunt them!)
• Other technologies (digital printing, CAD-cutting, direct-to-garment digital printing, banners, signs, etc.)
• Other services (athletic numbering/lettering, personalized embroidery, installing vehicle/marine graphics, host company/club/school stores, conduct on-site “try-on” events, etc.)

Advantages of Buying from Your Company
• We guarantee our imprints/embroidery forever!
• Visit our showroom (if you’ve got a good one, brag about it!)
• In-house art department, in-house production, in-house digitizing or complete in-house production facilities 
• Buy factory-direct (or, for sales agencies, that you are direct factory representatives for the nation’s leading apparel manufacturers, promotional products manufacturers, etc.)
• Evening hours (or evenings by appointment)
• Rush service available
• Prompt/fast, courteous service
• Free catalog and pricelist
• Open Saturdays from...
• Save Time
• One-stop shopping
• Save money
• Conveniently located at ... (if your location is a bit hard to find without a GPS, insert a map or easy-to-follow directions)
• The latest styles and colors
• Guaranteed (number)-day service
• We'll come to you! (Or “Have Reps, Will Travel”)
• Local, locally-owned/operated
• Competitive prices (legal and ethical limits preclude making bigger claims, using deception and telling outright lies)
• Huge inventory (either you've got it on the shelf or you use “off-premises warehouses” — such as your favorite wholesalers!)
• Since 19XX/Serving the valley/region for XX years
• Visa, MasterCard, American Express logos, etc.
• Other words that "sing" include: unchallenged, unrivaled, friendly, and free

Bragging
• Memberships — such as the local chamber of commerce, local business associations, etc.
• Honors and awards — Businessperson of the Year (be sure to include the year); East of Eden, Wis.; Official Supplier to Boy Scouts of America — North Japip Council; First Place — Impressions Awards, etc.

You get the idea.

Do you respond to inquiries quickly? Do customers and prospects get answers fast — especially about pricing — or "when you get around to it?" If these questions aren't answered quickly, you’re leaving money on the table. (Yes, that means you need to develop a quick-response price list for your best-selling items. But you’ve been meaning to for ages, right?)

Fast response means you answer the phone and e-mails immediately, even if all you can do is tell the caller you’ll return the call or respond shortly.

How well do you follow up? A few days after quoting an order, do you follow up with a call to the buyer to ascertain the status of the pending order? Do you mail the customer advertising materials or an interesting e-mail from time to time, or assign a salesperson or customer service representative to call on the prospect/account? Then again, if you’re not properly harvesting data from callers and visitors, you can’t follow up, can you?

How much will all this cost? Not much, but I’ll leave the specifics to you and how you view investing in your own company’s future. What’s certain, though, is that the cost and effort to look good and to keep prospects and customers informed is far less than the cost of doing nothing or doing business as usual. And how many times have you learned that the cost of keeping a customer is a small fraction of the cost of generating a new one?

Re-energizing how you look, sound and feel — as well as responding to your customers and prospects now — will pay dividends today, tomorrow and for years to come. Differentiating your company from the competition is what the industry’s most profitable, innovative and friendliest companies do to stand out. Differentiating your company means that it gets remembered over time, establishes a distinct identity that separates you from the pack, earns you a little more respect and, in time, earns you new orders and new accounts.

Mark L. Venit, MBA, is president of Apparel Graphics Institute Ltd., Ocean Pines, Md., which provides management and marketing consulting and proprietary research to apparel graphics companies throughout the Americas and Europe. He also is the chairman of ShopWorks Software LLC, a provider of industry-specific business software. Venit teaches pricing, strategic marketing, salesmanship and other business management topics at the Imprinted Sportswear Shows. You can contact him at markvenit@cs.com.

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