Within a month of PDQ's inception, Carns was advertising in local media -- something he has done with undying regularity to this day. He employs a broad media mix, using local broadcast and print as well as a healthy dose of direct mail. PDQ's ads stress image, not price. Last year PDQ's ad budget was 4.5% of sales.
Advertising consistently and aggressively, Carns believes, tells the world you exist -- a critical element in the crowded quick-printing business, where customers are accustomed to searching out copy shops as the need arises, and customer loyalty is far from a given. Carns knew PDQ couldn't just open its doors and expect people to show up -- which is precisely the premise that most quick-copy shops operate on. Those shops do little advertising -- and they certainly have no outside sales force.
Having an outside sales force in the quick-printing business is almost unheard of. PDQ, however, has had one since its first month of operation, and today it numbers seven people. Carns recently hired his brother, Rick, who used to own a copy shop, to be PDQ's sales manager. Unlike most sales managers, Rick Carns spends little of his time behind his desk. Most of the time he is in the field with PDQ's sales force, calling on customers.
"Most quick printers are not successful at outside sales because they don't understand what sales takes," Carns claims. "Even if they get around to hiring outside salespeople, they usually don't tell them much more than, 'Go out and sell some printing.' "
Carns argues that successfully selling something as basic as printing requires as much product knowledge, initiative, and persistence as selling supercomputers. On his desk he has a small sign that reads, "Nothing happens until after the eighth call." Carns explains that bit of wisdom this way: Most salespeople stop calling after three calls. Most buyers will not buy until the sixth call. If you make at least eight calls, then you have outperformed the competition, and it's likely you've softened up the most reluctant of prospects. But equally important -- and less understood -- notes Carns, is this: "If you make eight calls on a prospect, then it will take someone else at least that many calls to get that prospect away from you." One of PDQ's major clients, required 24 sales calls before signing up with the printer, but Carns knew the account was worth the effort. Today that client does $70,000 worth of business each year with PDQ.
The doggedness of the sales force at PDQ mirrors Carns's methodical persistence. When making a cold call (always in person), a PDQ salesperson simply introduces himself or herself to the receptionist (the gatekeeper) and asks for the name of the person in the company who buys printing (the prospect). Upon returning to PDQ that afternoon, the sales rep leaves the names off in the print shop. The next morning at 6 o'clock, PDQ's pressmen arrive for work and print up sheets bearing the gatekeeper's and the prospect's names, along with PDQ's logo. The bindery workers arrive by 8, when they glue the sheets into notepads and shrink-wrap two sets of three, along with the salesperson's card. The salesperson arrives at work by 9 o'clock, picks up the personalized note-pads, and drops them off at the prospective client's company that morning.
The salesperson then follows up with a phone call two or three days later to ask if the prospect received the notepads. Then the rep asks if he or she can come in and talk, some days hence, not to sell anything but to determine the prospect's needs. A few days later the salesperson returns with a written proposal detailing how PDQ might be able to help. If the prospect demurs, then the PDQ salesperson simply asks, "May I be backup printer on your next job?" Notes Carns, "No one has ever said no to that."
By now PDQ has developed a mailing list of 10,000 names, including virtually every business in the city, to which it tries to send PDQ's bimonthly internal newsletter. In October PDQ had a monthlong 2¢-per-photocopy sale for volume users. That was a means to identify large copy users and then follow up with sales calls. As a result of the sales, notes Rick Carns, "we picked up 12 sizable accounts and 6 more we are likely to get."
Every PDQ employee who does not come into daily contact with customers must go out with a salesperson one day per quarter, while once a year each salesperson visits half a dozen competitors' operations to discern what they might be up to. Each week salespeople write thank-you notes to customers who have recently placed large orders. Carns himself used to do that, until the business grew too big.
Networking
Gaining instant competitive advantages Two months after starting his company, Tom Carns went to his first industry trade show. The National Association of Quick Printers (NAQP) has two meetings a year. One is its annual convention and trade show. The other is a midwinter series of seminars. Carns hasn't missed any of those semiannual meetings since he started his company.
Carns, a past president of the NAQP, finds such sessions ripe for intelligence gathering because they're intensive and filled with people from noncompeting markets. "You talk with people at breakfast or the cocktail hour. It's a great way to learn a lot. On top of that, for obvious competitive reasons, if you talk to printers from Cincinnati, they're going to tell you a lot more about their business than printers from Las Vegas would."
At the 1982 convention Carns saw a manufacturer's thermographic printing press that produced raised letters on the printed page. He was pretty sure no one else in Las Vegas had such a press. He bought one. "We automatically did every letterhead and business card that way at no additional charge," says Carns. "That was the first thing that really differentiated us from the local competition." In 1983 PDQ's sales rose by 73%, largely because of the acquisition of that one piece of technology.
Over the years at industry conventions, Carns has gotten to know a handful of like-minded, fast-track quick printers. Two years ago Carns and seven other large, successful quick printers formed the TIP (Top Instant Printers) group, which convenes quarterly at different members' businesses to exchange ideas. Last year the group began conducting intensive top-to-bottom audits of each member's company on a rotating basis, to gauge how well the individual business was being run. Carns says the TIP group has been a great boon to his business, for obvious reasons. "Say we hired a Big Six accounting firm to look at our company, but it doesn't really know the industry. The help and knowledge I'd get from seven of my peers really can't be matched by someone coming in from outside the industry."
