Sales Clinic: What Do You Sell?

A Printing Salesman walks into a bar…

He takes a seat at the corner of the bar itself. There are four other customers, two to his right, and two to his left, across the angle. The bartender says: “What’ll you have?”

“Schlitz draft,” the Printing Salesman says, and the bartender shuffles over to the tap to draw the beer.

“You look like a salesman,” says the customer farthest across the angle. “What do you sell?

“Printing,” says the Printing Salesman.

“That’s interesting,” says the customer. “So, can you believe the Pats got beat by those miserable Jets?”

Bar Scene: Take 2

A Printing Salesman walks into a bar…

He takes a seat at the corner of the bar itself, with the same four other customers. The bartender says: “What’ll you have?”

“Schlitz draft,” the Printing Salesman says, and the bartender shuffles over to the tap to draw the beer.

“You look like a salesman,” says the customer farthest across the angle. “What do you sell?

“Well, that’s a good question. Do you want the short answer, or can I give you the longer answer?” says the Printing Salesman.

“That’s an interesting way of starting a conversation,” says the customer. “I got nowhere in particular to be, so let’s hear the long answer.”

“OK, to start with, I work for Superfast Printing and Graphics, right here in town. Do you know where we are, over on Green Street?”

“Yes, right next to Curly’s Barber Shop, right?”

“Exactly, we’ve been there for almost 30 years, and we’ve grown a lot over the years, but let me come back to that in a second. Obviously, working for a printing and graphics company, I sell printing and graphics, but that’s really broad. I sell everything from basic business printing – like letterhead, envelopes, business cards, and business forms – to marketing materials like flyers, brochures, postcards, and catalogs. I sell a lot of what we call book work – employee manuals, technical manuals, instruction books, and booklets – and lately I’ve been selling a lot of wide-format graphics. That includes posters, and banners, and window clings, and even vehicle wraps. Do you need me to explain about window clings and vehicle wraps?”

“No, I know what you’re talking about. My wife works in a flower shop. They have signs in the windows, and their delivery van is all decorated up, though I always thought that was paint.”

“It could be paint, but more commonly today it’s printed. It’s really cool technology. By the way, don’t let me leave here without asking you the name of the flower shop.

“I told you, though, that we’ve been in business for almost 30 years, and that we’ve grown a lot over the years. We started as a quick print shop, where you could literally wait while we printed up simple orders or made copies from whatever sort of originals you might bring in. Now we’re much more of a full-service, commercial printing company. We’re still pretty quick, but we can do a lot more than the quick printing and copy shops of the 80s and 90s. The wide-format printing is an example, and we can even help you with what we call marketing services – not just printing the marketing pieces, but actually helping you to develop very sophisticated cross-media marketing campaigns, using direct mail, email, and all kinds of other media to get your message across. We can even build you an interactive website to be part of all of that.

“Hey, please forgive me if that was more of an answer than you wanted. I get pretty wound up about what we can do and what I can sell.”

“No worries,” said the customer. “So, can you believe the Pats got beat by those miserable Jets?”

Bar Scene: Later on

“OK, fellas, it was good to meet you. I guess we’ll have to wait until next year with the Pats, but I know it’s gonna be a good year for us with the Red Sox.