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That kind of price jockeying left preserving profit up to the owners of Booklet Binding, who did so by finding what Kosowski refers to as "little tricks" to trim costs. They hired managers with little experience. They hired machine operators with no previous job experience at all. By the time they hired Landiak, in April 1993, their inventory of magical moves was depleted; there was nothing imaginative about cutting bodies. "I was just tired of it all," says Patrevito.

But the energetic Landiak, who has trained himself to sleep just five hours a night, saw a company caught up in what he -- among others -- regards as the biggest challenge facing nearly every business, from cellular-phone makers to chopstick suppliers: the struggle to offer customers a consistent reason to buy from this business in an economy in which no tangible advantage can last. As Carey explains, "If management doesn't take a proactive role in establishing a strategy that is viable for the sales staff, then the sales staff will be desperate and at their door, begging for help" -- as it was, in fact, at Booklet Binding. In The Discipline of Market Leaders, a popular 1995 business book, authors Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema argue that now more than ever, every company must "find the unique value that it alone can deliver to a chosen market" and identify exactly how it will deliver "continually improving value" to customers.

In the absence of staking out such defensible territory, a company like Booklet Binding gets pushed into a wide-open field where there are so many competitors -- popping up on so many fronts -- that it can't possibly safeguard its profitability. The management at Booklet Binding was lucky; because of the heavy capital investment required and the industry's dirty-shirt aura, the competitive market shift wasn't lightning fast. But fiercer competitors inevitably pop up. Frank Puisis, a former certified public accountant, bought a competing bindery with a partner five years ago. "The old binderies are all ke-klunk, ke-klunk, ke-klunk," says Puisis. "Successful businesses differentiate themselves."

Not that it's always obvious how to do that. Without thinking, managers usually reach for one of two solutions: they add services -- "Tell you what, we'll include 24-hour turnaround for the same price" -- that only erode margins further; or they decide to shrink the business, as Kosowski and Patrevito did. But as they fleshed out their plans to cut to the bone, the pair found that "being downsizers really isn't our nature. We'd rather take the company higher," says Patrevito.

To consistently win profitable business, Booklet Binding would have to surround its commoditized service with enough value to make it seem to be worth more. How might it do that? By, as Landiak puts it, "uncomplicating the world for its customers, by showing them how to increase revenue or decrease cost or how to retain their own customer base." In an economy in which euphemistic concepts like downsizing and reengineering had all led to one ailment -- corporate anorexia -- there had to be added value in giving customers the help they no longer had in-house. Hence the chopstick maker offers marketing tips to its restaurant customers; the cellular-phone distributor teaches customers to use the gadget more effectively as a business tool. "If customers perceive that you have a high level of expertise, and it can help them, you're worth more to them," says Landiak.

Yes, said Patrevito. Right, said Kosowski. Then Landiak laid out his plan for how they might make Booklet Binding that kind of company. No, they didn't expect it to be cheap. Or quick. But what they heard struck Patrevito as "totally overwhelming," he says. "I wasn't sure I wanted to commit myself to that kind of sweeping culture change." Kosowski's reaction: there's got to be another way.

Worst of all, perhaps, was this: what Landiak was proposing was something they had already tried.

Make no mistake: Patrevito and Kosowski believed in sales training. Hadn't they routinely dispatched their employees to Dale Carnegie seminars? "It kind of boosted my confidence level," reports salesperson Tom Bromann.

And they were only too familiar with the "canned programs," as Patrevito calls them, that successfully motivated employees -- briefly, anyway. It was the sort of step that most companies took, grateful that a Zig Ziglar or a Tom Hopkins had swaggered into town just as fourth-quarter numbers were looking soft. People heard funny stories, and they came back pumped up. So what did you learn? came the question. "I am . . . a selling machine!" an employee would roar back.

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