After hearing their presentations critiqued -- Ashcraft says he "learned to say, 'I don't know the answer, but I'll get back to you' -- the salespeople offered 90-minute versions of their seminars to the company's 45-member administrative staff. Those presentations began in late fall 1994 and ended early in 1995. "It's nice that we were able to do it in front of people we knew, but there's a downside to that," says William Mead, who left the company last May. "Your best friends can be your worst enemies."
Bralich argues, however, that the "Sales Qualification System," as Landiak tagged it, actually brought people closer. Booklet Binding's compensation plan, he points out, promotes isolationism, because salespeople are paid totally on commission, which consists of a straight 5% on sales. "You go through the presentations, and you learn about each other's personalities," says Bralich. "It has made us a much stronger group."
The resultant expertise has also brought Booklet Binding's salespeople closer to customers -- literally. Several have been invited to customer sites to give presentations on various topics. Chalifoux met with the sales staff of a small commercial printer to lecture on mailing. Autin made a sales call with a customer to help explain personalization, which involves the ink-jet spraying of any individualized information -- in this case, phone numbers -- on a direct-mail piece. "That's the best," Autin says proudly, "when your customer thinks enough of you to share his customer with you." Similarly, Moreno prepared some literature for a customer's sales call. And McParland made a presentation about fulfillment at a customer site.
Such coziness gives back more than warm feelings. "We're getting higher margins more frequently," says estimator Prendivoj. Booklet Binding, she reports, is also getting more "quote action": two years ago the company rendered fewer than 1,500 quotes a month. Now that number is up to 2,000. And a higher percentage of those quotes -- more than 20%, compared with 15% two years ago -- are turning into actual jobs, she says. "I'm getting jobs where they don't even ask for quotes," McParland claims.
In 1995, with sales at about $20 million, Booklet Binding posted pretax margins that were roughly double the industry norm, which Patrevito places from 2% to 5%. The biggest reason, Kosowski says, was that salespeople were successfully making customers aware of Booklet Binding's fattest-margin work: the hand assembly of kits, ink-jet personalization, fulfillment, and so on. Team Services, the division that houses those higher-end functions, has grown from $800,000 in 1993 to $8 million in 1995, according to Bralich. "When there's a crack in the door, our salesperson now opens it," says Kosowski. "Salespeople used to be afraid of what was on the other side. The training has changed that."
Not that the training is over. This year the company's salespeople will have to make still more presentations. This time, using outlines from Landiak, they'll cover some of the topics they learned in those classes about a year and a half ago: selling value over price, reintroducing Booklet Binding to customers. "We have to reinforce those strategies," says Patrevito. He's also busy taking the information the salespeople collected for their two-hour presentations and having it transferred onto a disk, a tool they can use to further demonstrate their mastery to customers. Not that he's had much time to attend to that; there are always people waiting to see him.
But wait -- aren't those loiterers supposed to be gone by now? Wasn't that the whole point of the training? "It's OK," Patrevito says, ducking into his office. "Now they're here to tell me good things."
ARE YOU SELLING A COMMODITY . . . YET?
Time was, a company knew it was selling a commodity when its top line moved in one direction while its bottom line moved in another. Now it may be too late by then. "It's almost instantaneous," warns consultant Max Carey. "You've got to watch for it carefully." The first clues -- in any industry -- consist of indications that a company is losing control in its transactions with buyers. Some signs:
1. Customers start keeping their distance. If you are getting fewer face-to-face meetings with your customers, it means they see you as just another bid. Instead of mailing in your best shot, Carey advises, tell them, "We'd love to quote your business, but we don't know enough. We'd rather give you no solution than an incomplete solution." No matter what happens -- with luck, it will lead to a wider-ranging interaction -- you'll find out where you stand.
2. Customers unbundle your services. So you've set forth a price that includes follow-up maintenance, 24-hour delivery, and a per-unit cost. Well, the customer says, how much for the item without the quick delivery? Why couldn't we maintain it ourselves? "What they are trying to do is reduce the illusion of the sale. They want to strip it down and see what you really think the product is worth," says Carey. "It puts you in a no-win situation, and it's another way of keeping the transaction at arm's length."
3. Salespeople have to battle constant price objections. Tom Patrevito, vice-president of Booklet Binding Inc., interpreted the constant heat his sales staff was getting as a sign that "we were pushing the marketplace to its limit in pricing." But as Mark N. Landiak, the consultant who worked with the bindery, pointed out, Booklet Binding didn't effectively communicate any strengths but pricing. "If your salespeople are down to asking, 'What's it going to take to get your business today?' then they've basically said they don't have any worth," says Landiak. "It's not the customers' job to care about your margins. And they won't."
