2 Obvious Ways and 3 Not-So-Obvious Ways to Get to Know Your Print Buyers

At its core, selling is all about connecting.

Printers are professionals who provide a valuable service to someone in need. But a print customer’s need is not the primary reason a person will buy – or keep buying – from you. Relationships are the spark that fuels one sale after another.

When you hope to build beneficial relationships with your print customers, where should you begin?

Here are five strategies for creating these connections.

Break Down Barriers: 5 Strategies for Getting to Know Your Print Buyers

1. Be as Personable as Possible

If you want to overcome apathy, drive engagement, and gain lifelong customers, put human connections first.

Award-winning sales trainer Patricia Fripp often reminds people that, when seeking to build a successful enterprise, “you don’t close a sale, you open a relationship.”

Always seek to view your clients as people, not prospects. Research confirms what many instinctively know – there is something sweet about hearing your name. When you chat with customers through calls, emails, or face-to-face encounters, push yourself to use their names several times. Call out things unique or impressive about a client’s project or personhood.

Adding names or details to your interactions helps you acknowledge your customer’s humanity and creates a bond that transcends the transaction.

2. Add Social Media Touchpoints

Sales are born from relationships, and relationships are built from conversations, including online conversations.

Here are quick tips for increasing your social media presence and initiating online interactions.

• Grow social media engagement through weekly print tips, monthly coupons, wacky print facts, or quarterly feedback polls.
• Feature pictures of customer success stories or highlight your sharpest finishing techniques.
• Boost hometown appeal with snapshots of your team participating in community events or patronizing local businesses you’re proud to support.
• Post testimonial examples around frequently-ordered print items. Consider pairing success stories with a valuable product-focused coupon.

3. Craft Customer Profiles

Though you probably can’t maintain personal relationships with every print buyer, creating a handful of customer profiles that provide a big-picture persona for key customers you serve is helpful.

Use past sales data and current website analytics to tailor advertising to particular customer segments and to create effective marketing strategies. Are you selling to small nonprofits? Networking with marketing departments in large regional businesses? Targeting retail customers in particular geographical areas?

Use customer profiles to identify possible challenges, shape enticing promotions, and strategically place your own advertising.

4. Proactively Track Customer Interviews

As the world changes, your print buyer’s needs will evolve.

Build understanding with current and future clients by soliciting candid feedback and listening to what they say. Listening is an art form that starts with great questions! Whether customers are calling to complain or emailing with praise, prompt pressure-free conversations through open-ended questions seeking to flush out the “why.”

Try questions like:

• What was the best thing about your service this month?
• Did anything make this project frustrating, time-consuming, or overly stressful?
• What is one service you would like to see us add or change?
• How could we include more value in your future orders?

Before you ask these questions, create a centralized feedback portal for tracking suggestions or identifiable pain points and use this for future business planning.

5. Add Incentives Through Education

Many of today’s businesses run lean on staffing.

Print buyers are busy, and they often play a variety of roles in their organization. Many print buyers feel inexperienced with printing or embarrassed about asking too many questions. As an industry expert, one of the best ways to woo and keep clients is by offering them tips and tools for the journey. You know your market, so ask yourself: what questions do I hear most frequently? What mistakes are most costly? Where could people use an extra boost, and how could we provide that?

Whether you produce monthly tip sheets, lunch-and-learn webinars, newsletters with “how to” features, or a video featuring the Design Edit tool on your website, your buyers will feel known and appreciated when you gift them some time-saving “aha!” moments.

Break Down Barriers

The economy doesn’t run on money – it runs on trust.

When you want to build customer confidence and personalize professional interactions, seek to add value, tailor your promotions, and aim to start more frequent, meaningful conversations. As relationships flourish, the health of your print business will, too.