PrintForecast Perspective Archives

It's not always great news, but it certainly can be. The industry has been advised for many years to concentrate its selling efforts outside corporate purchasing departments and go directly to marketers and communicators. This can be a problem as executive recruiting firm Spencer Stuart reports that the average tenure of a Chief Marketing Officer is now only 23.2 months. The rule of thumb, in my experience, has been that it takes six months for a new executive to become familiar with their environment, a year to accurately diagnose problems with all of their subtleties and implications, and eighteen months to show progress. Five months later it seems, they are gone.

There are many problems with this, of course, but we'll limit the discussion to how it affects printers and the content development and production businesses.

First, if you are a new vendor, it takes considerable time to start the selling process of introducing your company and breaking down pre-existing business relationships to induce them to try your offering. Sometimes you have to wait until current suppliers fail before you get your own opportunity to work with that client. (Reminds me of the old saw about the bad sales rep who said “I've never messed up one of your orders. All I want is a chance.”)

Second, the players are always changing. Because selling outside the purchasing department requires knowing decision-makers, influencers, gatekeepers, and others, a more complex network of relationships needs to be maintained. Understanding that network and nurturing those relationships takes time and effort. Many printers feel that they should keep selling to purchasing departments because they perceive that there is greater stability and certainty in those relationships, and the costs of selling using other strategies may have greater risk and higher, uncertain costs, with longer sales cycles. What they give up in lower selling prices, they feel, is balanced by lower and more predictable sales costs. (What some in the industry consider to be a lack of sophistication among printers in selling and marketing may actually be an economic decision based on a realistic acknowledgment of their inability to execute a grander strategy; but that is a topic for another time). Indeed, the marketplace rewarded such production-oriented management in the past, but things are not that way anymore. The marketplace does not reward such activity today. In fact, multi-tier selling is critical in this environment, because it offers a more balanced view of the client and provides for additional relationships that maintain communication when there is a change of command. This can benefit the incumbent as well as a new salesperson, when the changing of the guard opens the window for new opportunities.

Why is short CMO tenure “good” for the printing industry?

It's only “good” if the opportunities that are created are taken. There is intense pressure on new CMOs to perform and have early successes. They need ideas. They need a mix of continuity from the prior office-holder, and they need to stop things that were no longer working (which is presumably why the prior CMO was replaced). Most of all, they need to have a measurable, almost immediate, positive impact on their company's sales volume.

Knowing past communication campaigns, even those worked on by competitive printing companies, and their effect is important. How well do you know the range of printed materials used in the marketing departments of prospect and client companies? Do you have a sense of what the client's competitors are doing? Your role as a supplier can be immensely helpful to a new CMO.

A change in CMO is often the precursor to a change in ad agency, public relations firm, and the company's network of freelancers. How well do you know those resources? Can you recommend new ones to the fresh CMO for them to consider?

Finally, a change in CMO often means a change in media. How equipped is your company to discuss the use of print? ...how print works with other media? ...new uses of print? ... effectiveness of print? ...the ROI of print? Can you supply the links to non-print media that the company may need?

All of these questions can only be answered when the printing business is viewed as an expert in these areas. Competence in graphic communications has to extend well past the production floor for the printer to be viewed as a credible advisor in these matters. Value-added is not a task performed for an extra fee; value-added is an established mutually profitable relationship between peers.

Marketing is supposed to be a long-range strategic activity that permeates an organization. Yet, with the average CMO tenure at less than two years, it is clear that marketing is far more tactical today. Print is a superb tactical medium. Printers who actively participate in the transitional changes when a new CMO arrives can have a significant advantage over competitors who do not. And, since that CMO may leave for a new position in two years, that former CMO may take the proactive relationship that was created to their next assignment. In that case, what you do today is preparing you for a new relationship two years from now where you'll never have to make a cold call. And if you're having trouble getting into a company today... don't worry, that person will be gone, on average, in 23.2 months.