Having been in the print industry since the mid-late 90s, Colin Sinclair McDermott entered the world of self-employment in 2004 and over the years that followed, experienced a number of highs and lows running his own print company, learning what does and doesn’t work.
In 2022, he trained with The Business Coaching Academy to become a fully certified corporate coach with the Worldwide Association of Business Coaches.
Through The Online Print Coach, industry members can access an online training platform in The Print Growth Academy, as well as private 1-to-1 coaching with Sinclair McDermott.
I’m sure you’re heard the phrase: "You're only as good as your last print order!”, and it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been dealing with a customer and on most accounts giving them wonderful service but there’s always a competitor hanging around, waiting for you to slip up.
Let’s be honest, whilst you’ll have a few you are fairly adamant are not going anywhere else, customers can be a lot less forgiving these days.
If you do your job well, you shouldn’t need to worry too much but this is the world of print - things can go wrong! Presses break down, couriers have a habit of losing those time critical jobs.
It’s probably happened to each and every one of you and it’s something I came to accept was inevitable years ago, but it’s how we respond to these situations that make us become the best print suppliers.
But what happens with the print suppliers that aren’t responding well to these situations? Are you looking out for it? Competition is a fact of business life and in many ways I enjoy it as it keeps us on our toes and always striving to do better.
There are four key areas you want to be focussed on when analysing your competition:
1. Customer Views & Preferences
For this, you want to be checking out what customers are saying about them. Check out their Google Reviews, Facebook, and Trust Pilot - wherever people are talking about them.
Success leaves clues so look for the positives of what people are feeding back on but more importantly, look for the negatives. Is there a trend of people complaining about jobs always being late, boxes being poorly packaged and arriving damaged, and poor communication throughout the process of the job? This is invaluable information.
Could your next email marketing campaign flip this on its head and talk to your audience about 95.7% of your jobs being delivered on time throughout the previous month?
Could you talk about how your jobs are shrink wrapped and packed in secure double-walled cartons? Could you promote how your customers can track the progress of their job from start to finish on your system?
2. Alternative Solutions
Are there any particular print products or services your competitors are offering that you could be missing an opportunity with? Perhaps they are having a lot of success with their new recycled range of stocks? Maybe they’ve introduced embroidered workwear to their offering or started selling large-format?
3. Customer Segments
When you’re reviewing their customer reviews, look at the types of people who are commenting. Could there be a trend with schools, colleges, and universities leaving positive reviews? Are they focussed on specific geographic areas that you should be? Are any of your customers popping up on there? Are they providing a service to them because you are not?
4. Competitive Strategies
Lastly, have a look at what your competitors are doing to stand out. What value proposition are they focused on? Is it a free next-day delivery service? Dedicated account managers? Free artwork checks? Credit accounts? Discount on the first order?
So, Which Competitors Should You Analyse?
The first thing you want to do is choose a variety of competitors to analyse. I’d recommend starting with five. Pick the ones you come up against most frequently but it’s also important to keep an open mind when choosing. Don’t just think about who looks exactly the same as your business, consider some indirect competitors too. These are companies that might not offer exactly the same as you. It may be similar but both are still targeting the same audience.
Check What They Are Charging
Take a look at how they are charging. Pricing is a really sensitive topic and the last thing you want to do is get dragged into a race to the bottom. It is important however to know how you are placed against your competitors.
If you are pricing yourself too low, you could be leaving money on the table that they are picking up and if you are charging too much on certain products, you could be losing those price-sensitive customers. It's a fine line to master but by going through this process, you'll have a better idea about how to position yourself in the market.
Survey Your Customers
One of the most valuable things you can do when it comes to competitive research is to interview your customers. Getting feedback from them directly can not only give you a better understanding of how they view your company but also you can gain their opinion of your competitors too.
Here are some of the questions you should consider asking:
- How often do they typically order print?
- What is their annual spend?
- If they are comfortable sharing, which other printers do they use?
- How would they prefer you kept in contact with them? Phone/Email/Zoom, etc.
- Are there any products you'd like to order from us that we don't currently sell?
- Are there products we do sell that you'd like to place with us but don't currently feel you can? If not, please give a reason? Usually, this might just be down to price and needs a discussion to negotiate terms.
- Is there anything we could do better to enable us to win more of your business?
You get where I'm going with this but these are some ideas to get you started. I appreciate some of these can be difficult questions to ask but if you can get them to open up and give you the answers, you're well on your way to hopefully increasing their spend with you.
You can set these up in software like Survey Monkey or if you have a Mailchimp account, they now have a new feature for conducting surveys. Once you've set it up, email it to your current customers with some kind of incentive like a discount voucher to use on your website.
I’ve gone through this process with many printers now and we have a one hundred percent record of identifying money being left on the table.
I hope these points give you, Print Monthly readers, something to think about and perhaps can help you too to uncover some hidden print sales within your business.
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