Print Production Pricing

I'd like to bring this back...I think a lot of this topic has to do with how specialized the Commercial Printer is.  Is this a Printer that offers something unique, or just wants to get the best price on their Digital machine to compete with someone who might still be using offset?

I would say the majority of my Commercial Printers want the same thing, good image quality, accurate registration, and responsive support.  Does that warrant a discount, no, but in the big picture, we're not providing anything extra either.  In more complex shops, that do more of the design in-house, I can upsell Fiery Impose/Compose.  I ALWAYS recommend the customer purchase a Spectrophotometer for themselves and yes, I sell this for closer to retail.  Any advanced finishing is a HUGE value add to these customers and can keep the deal healthy.  The other factor I take into consideration is the click charges and whether or not you will single-click for all sizes.  If you are single clicking (especially if their current vendor does not), you can hold a higher margin in the equipment.  At the end of the day, it boils down to how much of a value YOU provide as their consultant, salesperson, specialist, or whatever you call yourself.  Offer them as many samples as they like, make sure they see the machine in person and observe the samples being run.  Make sure they understand the limitations of the equipment (weights, sizes, speeds, finishing), as well as the opportunities to increased revenue.  One thing I tried recently and that worked was I added $2500 to my deal and when sitting down with my customer I offered them the option of a trade-in for cash, free service as a new customer promo, or 3 lease payments.  They chose my trade in for cash of $750 since they owned their previous machine and wanted to feel an intrinsic benefit of having purchased it 6 years ago.  The couple went on vacation and used the $750 to pay for their hotel.  Another customer told me I had a higher priced proposal but that they liked me and what I offered them.  I found out that part of their decision was based around also having to upgrade their workstation for the production unit to the latest OS.  They were more confused about what they needed than money conscious so when I offered them a brand new (at the time) Windows 7 Computer with a 24 inch screen for $30 additional, their response was, "that's it?" and I walked away with a signed order.  Perceived value is not actual value.  $100 to you and $100 to them do not equate to the same outcome.  $100 additional for piece of mind in making the right choice is always possible if you can reassure your client that their investment in YOU comes with a great product and great service.

to summarize this long-winded email as I'm contemplating my lunch options on a Friday is that the customer ultimately invests in the salesperson.  I might as well put stickers that say DAVID on them over the manufacturer logo.  When my customers recommend me, they recommend DAVID, when they have an issue, they call DAVID, when they are ready to upgrade, they want to work with DAVID...make yourself a Branded part of your organization and the hardware follows.

Awesome!

When I was a Color Sales Specialist I made a living selling to the Print Industry. I agree that David's approach is spot on. Taking the consultative approach is an added value that will allow you not to have to be the cheapest price.

Having said that, we as a company have moved away from pursuing the Print for Pay market. For the following reasons:

They are often difficult to get financed (But they know it)

They are slow to pay their Service charges

They want to negotiate away what they owe in service charges or they won't renew with you.

They demand a very high, often unreasonable level of service Tying up your most talented Service techs, Troubleshooters, and Field Service Managers for a inordinate amount of their time.

It is not unusual to have a Print for Pay customer pull out a "loop" to show you an "Issue" that they are having with copy quality. We got to the point where we would laughingly tell them if you can't see it with the human eye we will not address it.

There was one account named "Capitol Copy" who we nick named "Capitol Punishment" They had gone through 3 Canon Dealers and no one would take their business, so Canon asked us and we foolishly agreed. I was a Field Service Manager at the time and was spending 2 to 3 days a week at their location. They said that was GREAT! Because the last guy was there every day. We split the account with Kodak. One day our tech caught one of their staff purposely damaging a drum by whacking it with a screw driver. Because he thought that would improve his copy quality. For some strange reason they required a very high number of replacement drums on the Canons too....HMMMM?

After a year of dealing with this, we gave them their renewal price and it was triple the previous year. They called us in for a meeting. The Principal told us that our price was unreasonable. We told them that is what it costs because of their unreasonable service level requirements. And yes we mentioned that we saw their staff purposely damage a drum on the Kodak machine. For some strange reason they went with Kodak exclusively. I saw the senior Kodak service tech later that week and I said "Congratulations!!! You beat us out for Capitol Copies Business!" He responded with "F*CK YOU! And I thought we were friends LOL.

So you can make a living selling to the Print for Pay market. Of course your Service Manager will probably hate you.

That's my $0.02

Vince

Unfortunately everything you just described rings true.  I have 2 go-to technicians for Production Equipment and I have learned invaluable things from them.  Unfortunately these printers are rarely willing to make the investment in the RIGHT product, so we always find ourselves trying to stretch the capabilities of a lesser machine to make the end result feasible.  That being said, production is our least profitable department in service regardless of how much money we make up front on hardware.  It is not unheard of for us to have to upgrade 5 year leases at 3.5-4 just because the equipment cannot handle the workload.  Our techs also spend 5 times the amount of effort on production accounts due to complexity, calibration, and unreasonable expectations.  Who would have guessed the cheaper machine I tried to talk them out of wouldn't do what the bigger one will?  If every one of my light production customers would have purchased the RIGHT unit, I'd be happy, they'd be happy, and my service manager would be happy.  It boils down to the 2/3 law.  You can only satisfy 2 out of 3 criteria.  Someone is going to be unhappy!