Price!
Price!
Price!
It’s all about price. That’s how many people see print buyers.
And the truth is, there are a number of print buyers out there who do focus on price. But these print buyers don’t get the best from their suppliers. And they certainly don’t get the best deals.
Print buyers who negotiate well will achieve more with their print budgets
But they will also be in control of their jobs. This is because they create good agreements with the printers they wish to work with. And these agreements will work for both parties. And that means that they forge stronger partnerships with their print suppliers.
Print buyers who are not skilled negotiators do not manage to create these partnerships. This is because they rely on price haggles rather than win-win agreements. And that means their suppliers are less dedicated to them. And the print buyers have less control over their job. And they often end up paying more.
Paying more and receiving less is not a great negotiation strategy
So here are three negotiation strategies that I believe all print buyers should practice.
However, the first strategy may seem to be handing everything to the seller.
Think about what you can give in a negotiation
Negotiation is about giving as much as getting. If you don’t have something to give you won’t get the same results. Some buyers simply demand a lower and lower price. But they end up with suppliers who are not engaged with them. And they also have nowhere to go if the print company refuses to lower their price.
So it’s important to make sure you think of what you can give in a negotiation. What can you do to help the supplier? What can you give that is more likely to make them help you achieve your goals?
But isn’t giving way a sign of weakness in negotiation? Not if you apply the next strategy.
Always get something in return when negotiating
If often see print buyers giving way when they are negotiating. Giving is a good way to create a win-win outcome to a negotiation. But it only works if you get something in return. And that’s what many negotiators fail to do.
So make sure that you have a list of things that you would like to gain from a negotiation. And if you give way on a point, make sure you get something in return.
But, for this to work successfully, you need to let the other party know what you want.
Be open when negotiating
Many negotiators think that knowledge is power when negotiating. But this is rarely the case. The best negotiation outcomes that I have seen happen when both parties are open.
It is much better for the other party to know what you want. Then it is much easier for them come up with a solution that works for you.
And you also need to understand the other party. You must ask them to be open with you. Then you can work to help each other. And that creates a successful negotiation.
But some print buyers don’t agree with a strategy of working together.
Shouldn’t successful negotiators concentrate just on their needs?
A good negotiator will always understand what they need from a negotiation. They will understand what they think they can realistically expect from a negotiation. And they will also understand at what point they need to walk away.
But they will also understand what they need to do to get what they want from a negotiation. They understand that they will have to help the other party. Otherwise a negotiation will become too one-sided.
And that’s when the other party is likely to walk away. And the negotiation will fall apart. Buyers need to focus on their negotiation skills to make sure that their negotiations are successful.
Make sure you focus on your negotiation skills
Here are three action points to start work on making your negotiation even better:
- Discuss how you go about negotiation as a team or a company
- Set yourselves some company targets for negotiation
- Start reading up more about negotiation skills
So don’t just focus on price
Think about all the other advantages that you can gain from a successful negotiation. You’ll discover that you and your company will end up achieving lots more.
The recession forced mailers to use their circulation more efficiently. Smart circulation planners will leverage these lessons to squeeze more profits as we emerge from the recession. Don’t think that because response rates have stabilized that your circulation planning should return to business as usual.
Circulation planners are optimizing their house and prospecting lists to suppress the households that won’t buy. The cooperative databases and merge-purge houses can score your mail files and tell you which households are not worth mailing. Plan on cutting your catalog cost for printing and postage a minimum of 10% to 15% without hurting top line revenue. That 10% savings drops to your bottom line. The older your RFM segments, the more suppression opportunities you’ll find. Vertical lists and magazine lists have even more potential to prune circulation than your house file. Optimization is the tool to precisely trimthe fat in your circulation.
Shoppers have been trained to wait for promotions…because smart shoppers know promotions are coming. It’s becoming clear that a series of smaller promotional offers are better than the occasional big promotional splash. Shoppers may respond just as well to 10% as 40% off….so don’t train your customers to wait for the next big promotion. First, they won’t buy till they get a big promotion and Second, when they do buy, your margins are squeezed hard. Don’t have your promotions end too soon; don’t cut off your catalog’s response too soon with a promotion that ends long before the natural end of a catalog’s life! Promotions need to be in synch across on line and off line channels so that customers don’t learn to ignore your catalog and just wait for the e-mail promo to arrive.
On line behavioral targeted ads are smoking hot. Traditional off line marketers must learn how to use on line ads. The ROI on programs that use cookies to serve ads to your own web site traffic will make you a hero. On line ad programs are cheap, profitable, scalable, and with metrics that make them easy to manage.
Virtual catalogs drive web traffic especially when catalog links are featured in an e-mail campaign. Virtual catalogs don’t get much respect because they are so cheap (at $10 per page, a 64 page catalog costs all of $640.) Send out an e-mail with a link to your new virtual catalog and watch traffic and sales spike! Send your virtual catalog to everyone on your e-mail list and reactivate those marginal names you can’t afford to include in your circulation plan.
Attribution, or which channel gets credit for the sale, is a huge issue. Good work is being done on the web side to properly allocate sales between multiple programs. Catalogers have match back programs but match backs tend to give too much credit to the house file. Learn to back out sales from e-mails and web programs from your match backs and you’ll mail smarter. Use mail / no-mail hold out panels to measure the true impact of your catalog.
Use those best practices learned during the recession to craft circulation plans that maximize profitability.
It used to be that most mail order catalogs were printed on cheap, drab newsprint. Not anymore — the most successful mail order companies are opting for high-quality 100-pound gloss text pages and even experimenting with 70-pound matte stock for a softer, more personal glow. Also, in an effort to identify with environmentally conscious customers, many companies are also printing their mail-order catalogs on recycled paper.
The mail-order catalogs remain as strong as ever, and it’s easy to see why the world’s biggest companies are employing mail-order marketing strategies to complement online campaigns. They’ve learned that the easiest way to make sales online is for the customer to know exactly what they want — and where to find it — before they even log on.
Arandell is already viewed as a leader in print quality. That quality can be seen on the printed page but what pushes Arandell above is everything that happens beyond that printed page. At Arandell, we do more. Contact us today to learn more. Click Here
Full Color printing is no longer a luxury; it’s a necessity in many industries. Today, everyone is producing full color catalogs. Customers have come to expect big color images alongside catalog product descriptions to help them make a decision between products. But you don’t have to justify the jump to full color just to beat your competition — full-color images have a better sales rate because they simply look better. To make yourself even more distinctive, put a spin on it and produce a catalog with special coatings or speciality colors.
Having similar concerns? Let’s talk so we can learn and understand your needs (deep dive if you will), your business, and challenges – then we can develop a solution that specifically addresses these and follows through with measurement and review. At Arandell, we go beyond the printed page.
The catalog industry has a wide-sweeping impact on American culture, well beyond the economic benefits of employing millions of people, paying millions in federal, state and local taxes, and conserving energy and natural resources. The American catalog experience has significant and important social benefits to American culture and consumers and the economy.
Catalogs stimulate consumer demand, both for direct and retail, fuelling the largest engine of economic activity we have.
Catalogs are highly targeted and merchandised to meet specific consumer interests and needs, thus representing an effective and efficient marketing channel to maintain and strengthen American competitiveness.
Catalog brands have a long-term relationship with Americans that is part of the shared American experience. The ability to come back to trusted brands and companies for the things we need, knowing the consistency and helpfulness we will find as consumers can be relied upon again and again. This is a high ideal of American commerce.
The robust American catalog shopping expereince allows for a shift in power from the retailer to the consumer.
Catalogs are mailed predominately to willing customers who may have a pre-existing relationship with retailers, or to those consumers who have requested a catalog from a company they are interested in shopping with, or to other “opted-in” consumers who have expressed interest in receiving marketing information or specific offers.
Catalogs help small and large businesses succeed.
September 8 is quickly approaching and you know what that means…the USPS will require 3 tabs on all letter-size booklets, or “slim jims.” When these regulations take effect, catalogers mailing slim jims under the letter-size postage rate must transition from 2 tabs to 3 non-perforated tabs. (Click here for additional information about the new tabbing specifications.) The industry is well aware of the requirements and testing has been taking place and will continue to determine if the 3-tab requirement reduces slim jim response rates.
Arandell Corporation is prepared for the new letter-size booklet regulations and has been heavily involved in testing 3 tabs versus 2 tabs for our customers. [Although we are not currently equipped to tab the oblong digest format (which is only one type of tabbed Letter-Size mail), to meet the new regulations, if we do see a come-back in demand for it, we will certainly reconsider investing in that technology. To clarify, an oblong digest is a digest catalog that stitches on the short side.]
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