Selling new business acquisition solutions

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Selling new business acquisition solutions How many times have you walked out of a sales call and said, “that went nowhere”? Ever wonder why? Perhaps it’s because you went in unprepared to make the call in the first place. Selling in today’s environment is quite different in many ways than it was just a few years ago. Customers do not have time for a sales person to just drop by. They are very busy trying to keep their business afloat. To even get in the door, you need a very good reason to get their attention. Most customers are facing complex challenges that are difficult to describe to you in a short meeting. So they don’t! If you walk in to a sales call with a product in your hand and say something like “let me show you the best darn thing I have seen in a long time”. They may just ask “how much” for the product you’ve shown them. If you get this response, 90% of the time, you’ve just lost their attention. You might want to pack up and leave because it’s the customer’s way of politely telling you “I just don’t have time for a nice chat”. What do they want? They want to do business with salespeople who understand them— their job and their problems, in other words a consultative approach. The answer: start your sales process with a sales call plan personalized for that customer. Personalize it by researching your customer enough to understand their business and what drives it. How do they do business today? Who are their customers, how do they get and keep them? What potential problems might they have? When you call for that appointment you can tell your customer that you may have a solution that could improve their ________ but that you would appreciate a few minutes of their time to confirm your understanding and make sure that you are not going to waste their time with your solution. When you get the meeting, your goal is to confirm what you researched and gather as much additional information as you can. One of the key questions is: Do you have a budget for a good solution? If not, they may not be convinced that you can help them or perhaps they need to understand the metrics of how your solution can help them. The following questions will help you create the metrics that will help you demonstrate your solutions value: • What is your average customer value? • What is the life-time value of a customer? • What is your typical close ratio? What is this based on? • What is your desired ROI expectation? • Is there any impending event that may cause them to make a decision about your solution? With these questions you should be able to work the math out and then create a “what if” scenario to show that your solution can produce better results than their current practice. This is a much abbreviated version of solution selling but the key points are: • Learn to be a consultant • Research your customer’s business before making a call • Don’t lead your sales call with a product • Make sure that your customer is interested enough to look for ways to pay for your solution before you spend a lot of time on this account. I hope this helps. Keep in mind that there are lots of other key points necessary to be successful at solutions based sales; far too many for this short email. Please call me to if I can answer any questions or for more information. Good Selling! Learn: www.intelimailer.com Watch: http://youtu.be/He429Ylw3l8 Build: https://storefront.acculink.com/Promo/Login.aspx

Ed Glaser Chief Marketing Officer 252.321.5805 ed.glaser@acculink.com

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AccuLink Re-defines High-end Marketing with HP Indigo

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2012-02-23

Trade printing firm’s HP Indigo 5500 and Scodix 1200 production line yield award-winning work

PALO ALTO, Calif., Feb. 23, 2012 – AccuLink, one of the top 100 trade print service providers (PSPs) nationwide, creates superior marketing materials using an HP Indigo press 5500 installed with a Scodix 1200 digital UV curing solution from Scodix Ltd.

The Greenville, North Carolina-based company, which also operates HP Indigo 3050 and 7000 model presses, invested in the HP Indigo 5500 to build a competitive advantage while moving production from offset to digital printing.

“The quality of HP Indigo presses is by far the highest and most consistent of any digital press on the market,” said Lindsay Gray, co-owner, AccuLink. “With such high quality and the ability for variable data printing on a digital press, we have no plans to ever buy offset equipment again. We are consciously moving offset to digital with great success and without any negative ramifications from customers.”

Tackling new applications
The new digital press and UV coater allow AccuLink to create premium products that help its customers achieve better marketing results than standard printed materials. Delivering an unparalleled range of enhancements for special effects, the Scodix 1200 has the capacity to produce up to 99 Gloss Units and a polymer height up to 70 microns for tangible dimension.

AccuLink recently produced a personalized, tri-fold mailer for a professional football team that was sent to 1,800 prospects encouraging rentals of skybox seats. The front features a football that appears to be autographed by the addressee. The football image also has dimples creating a pigskin texture and a raised grip. According to Gray, team officials were very happy with the 4.4 percent response rate to the mailer, which helped sell out the team’s skybox seats for next season.

Since installing the press late last year, AccuLink has seen additional evidence of the superior quality of its new printing and coating installation: three early jobs the company produced on its new equipment have won awards.

Simplifying workflow
Designed to produce marketing collateral, direct mail, photo merchandise products, books and manuals, the HP Indigo press 5500 is a versatile production device allowing for continuous printing with multiple feeders and stackers enabling seamless switching between jobs, proofs and media types. The added versatility gives AccuLink the ability to run a variety of applications on one press with little disruption in between jobs.

“With HP Indigo, we have so many capabilities and can complete a variety of complicated processes under one roof,” said Gray. “We might have one vanity published book followed by 1,000 personalized postcards followed by a table tent followed by a two-color management book – not many systems can be that versatile.”

AccuLink financed its new Indigo and Scodix purchases using HP Financial Services, the company’s leasing and life cycle asset management services subsidiary. By choosing HP Financial Services, AccuLink received competitive rates and flexible terms, and was able to preserve capital.

More information about HP Indigo technologies is available at www.hp.com/go/indigo, through the HP Graphic Arts YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/hpgraphicarts and through the HP Graphic Arts Twitter Feed at www.twitter.com/hpgraphicarts.

About HP
HP creates new possibilities for technology to have a meaningful impact on people, businesses, governments and society. The world’s largest technology company, HP brings together a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure to solve customer problems. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com.