7 ways to get better service from your Promotional Products Supplier
7 ways to get better service from your Promotional Products Supplier
1. Know your Supplier – We’re not talking about the distributor who you’ve been dealing with for 20 years, we’re talking about the people who actually commission the products and manufacture them. Going with a familiar company pays off, and if you look closely you will see the majority of great product comes from a handful of top notch suppliers.
2. Get a Sample – Photoshop, Photography, and other colour touchups can do great things for the stars, just think about how much they can do for that mug you just ordered! If you have the time, get a sample, it’s almost always worth the expense.
3. Use Several Sources – This is especially crucial when it comes to 3rd party decorating techniques. A Hanes or Fruit of the Loom shirt is the same, but how your logo looks on it can be quite different. Make sure you know your distributor has an idea what a red background can do to a logo and what a ‘flash’ is.
4. Double Check your Proofs – Make sure your distributor insists on proofs, and then check them carefully. You probably have 4 or 5 variations of your logo, and your distributor partner has 100x that in their art files so insist you get a proof.
5. Insure and Inspect your Goods – Make sure you open that box that arrives at your door when you get it, not 2 hours before your event. What if UPS smashed something, or they got moldy on the boat while on-route from the orient? Make sure you get what you want!
6. Look for Little Extras – There are tons of supplier initiated promotions that happen at different times of the year. Some examples are straight discounts or 10% free goods, no charge shipping, free setups, etc. Just ask, you never know what you’ll get.
7. Don’t treat your distributor partner as a doormat – There is a lot of competition out there, and we’re all aware of it. But if you truly value your company’s brand, reputation, and market presence, be wary of who you select and how you treat them. Like any industry there is the good, the bad, and the only in business for 10 days. Ask for references, check their website for testimonials and follow up! A good promotional products salesperson is a brand consultant, value them as such.
7 ways to get better service from your Promotional Products Supplier - To learn more about this author, visit Dave Burnett's Website.
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No Promotional Products distributor is perfect. There are just too many things that can and do go wrong with the sheer volume of products flowing through our industry. Here are a few ways we’ve found to make the overall experience as perfect as possible:
1. Know your Supplier – We’re not talking about the distributor who you’ve been dealing with for 20 years, we’re talking about the people who actually commission the products and manufacture them. Going with a familiar company pays off, and if you look closely you will see the majority of great product comes from a handful of top notch suppliers.
2. Get a Sample – Photoshop, Photography, and other colour touchups can do great things for the stars, just think about how much they can do for that mug you just ordered! If you have the time, get a sample, it’s almost always worth the expense.
3. Use Several Sources – This is especially crucial when it comes to 3rd party decorating techniques. A Hanes or Fruit of the Loom shirt is the same, but how your logo looks on it can be quite different. Make sure you know your distributor has an idea what a red background can do to a logo and what a ‘flash’ is.
4. Double Check your Proofs – Make sure your distributor insists on proofs, and then check them carefully. You probably have 4 or 5 variations of your logo, and your distributor partner has 100x that in their art files so insist you get a proof.
5. Insure and Inspect your Goods – Make sure you open that box that arrives at your door when you get it, not 2 hours before your event. What if UPS smashed something, or they got moldy on the boat while on-route from the orient? Make sure you get what you want!
6. Look for Little Extras – There are tons of supplier initiated promotions that happen at different times of the year. Some examples are straight discounts or 10% free goods, no charge shipping, free setups, etc. Just ask, you never know what you’ll get.
7. Don’t treat your distributor partner as a doormat – There is a lot of competition out there, and we’re all aware of it. But if you truly value your company’s brand, reputation, and market presence, be wary of who you select and how you treat them. Like any industry there is the good, the bad, and the only in business for 10 days. Ask for references, check their website for testimonials and follow up! A good promotional products salesperson is a brand consultant, value them as such.
7 ways to get better service from your Promotional Products Supplier - To learn more about this author, visit Dave Burnett's Website.
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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Kim CastleWith nearly two decades in the advertising and design business, with clients like Domino's Pizza, General Motors, Direct TV, Pedigree, Wolfgang Puck, Higher Octave Music, Hollywood Celebrity Products, Disney, and Paramount, as well as thousands of entrepreneurs around the world define, structure, communicate, and position their business for greater profits, BrandU(R) co-creators Kim Castle and W. Vito Montone discovered that entrepreneurs could experience the same power that big brands command for a fraction of the cost with the world's only process-based results-drive Integral approach to business creation. BrandU(R) is helping entrepreneurs grow with the power of extreme clarity from idea...to brand...to market(TM) and helping one million entrepreneurs become successful and whole so that they can make a difference in the world. Are you one of them? If you want to experience clarity all the way to the bank(TM), get started now at http://www.brandu.com. - Visit Kim Castle's Website |
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Dianne CramptonDianne Crampton is an executive leadership coach, team culture consultant, author and president of TIGERS Success Series, Inc. Dianne has been helping CEO's and Executives connect their employees to their core values and goals for over 20 years using the trademarked TIGERS team culture process, which stands for trust, interdependence, genuineness, empathy, risk and success. To download a free white paper on behaviors that build strong teams and behaviors that will predictably tear them down go here. Dianne's contribution to the 2010 Pfeiffer Consulting Journal (an imprint of John Wiley and Sons Publishers) entitled TIGERS Hearted Teams is available in November 2009. Her new book TIGERS Among Us: 5 Winning Business Team Cultures And Why, Three Creeks Publishing will release in March 2010. To receive publishing discounts, subscribe to the free TigerTracks Newsletter here. - Visit Dianne Crampton's Website |
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