Sticky Solutions Provide Long-Term-Value for Printers
How can I attract more customers and keep them longer? That is the million dollar question Printers ask themselves every day.
Let’s say you work hard to get a lead. You succeed and get your prospect interested. In a few weeks, after back and forth communication, your prospect decides to go with another printer, a decision more than likely based on pricing. What happened? The prospect failed to see any reason to stay. No value added. You made it easy for your prospect to go with another printer.
So it’s harder and harder to find loyal customers in this price focused and dynamic market. That’s why print companies need to offer sticky solutions that add value, allow them to stay competitive and build long term relationships.
Sticky Solutions Provide Long-Term-Value for Printers
Sticky solutions make it hard for your customers to leave. This is because you have made yourself a vital part of your client’s workflow. You become a valuable part of their business that is not easy to break from. You simply offer greater value and can do more for your clients than other printers.
You have made it harder for your clients to justify a new relationship over invested time, money and effort.
Solution providers create long term relationships. A solution provider simplifies and automates a variety of processes making things extremely easy for clients creating long term relationships.
A “job shop” printer focuses on transactional relationships that meet a current need. These type of printers see clients come and go arbitrarily. Controlling the sales pipeline is harder and building relationships is difficult.
6 reasons printers are moving towards sticky solutions:
1. Keep clients longer
2. Make it hard (time, money, effort) to unravel a working relationship and create a new one.
3. Don’t have to fight to win so many new clients.
4. Greater control over their sales pipeline.
5. Meet goals and project sales
6. Grow faster
Here are three ways to create sticky customers.
1. Web to Print Engine
Offer complete support for all printed marketing assets from order inception, through production and finally to the shipment. Your clients control the settings and permissions regarding which materials users can access, how and what content can be customized, and whether approval is required on the final piece before it is submitted to production.
User profiles and pre-approved templates allow users to personalize creative in just seconds. The system automatically populates materials using the user’s information so they don’t have to key anything in.
As a web to print solution provider you hold all your clients’ artwork, user information and significant data. Your clients will think twice before having to download or recreate all their artwork, set up all their users and user rules, as well as system preferences on a new system.
Take a look at our Web to Print Solution to keep clients longer.
2. Marketing portals
Marketing portals allow client to easily spin up storefronts offering sales forces, partners, affiliates or whomever with the access to search, browse, personalize, and order any marketing materials.
Print assets can be customized with personal messages, exclusive price points, unique images, interactive maps, QR codes or whatever user need.
Whether your clients offer printed materials, apparel or promotional products, marketing portals allow your clients to bring all marketing assets under a single, intuitive marketing portal where they control who has access, what can be seen, and how much can be ordered.
Marketing portals commonly handle print, promotional, apparel and digital assets. Compiling, organizing and moving all these products into a new system does not take days or weeks. In addition your clients have to ask to integrate with the new system.
Take a look at our Marketing Portals Solution to keep clients longer.
3. Fulfillment System
A Fulfillment Solution allows you to manage your clients’ orders and inventory throughout the entire lifecycle. The system warehouse management features include all the normal capabilities such as product receiving, storage, warehouse control, picking, retrieval and issuing of goods, but we also have some special bells & whistles.
Printers that offer fulfillment solutions hold clients’ stock. Deal with transporting existing stock, managing requirements during the changeover and handling data and reporting between two suppliers is not an easy or affordable task.
Take a look at our Fulfillment Solution to keep clients longer.
Conclusion
As a buyer, I am far less likely to move suppliers if I have to go through a complicated process just to make a small saving. A new supplier has to offer me a very compelling reason to change.
Printers that offer sticky solutions are more likely able to retain customers. Sticky solutions simplify your clients’ work and makes it hard for them to consider another supplier.
