|
|
Business-Relationship Therapy
By: Tama Swan, Associate Editor
Issue: 2009aug
Try giving your clients a chance to call the shots, and lend them a helping hand while you’re at it.
In a time when pricing and billing have even smaller margins of error than usual, some promotional products companies are benefitting from role reversals and new types of partnerships with their customers.
This spring, the staff at Salt Lake City, Utah-based SnugZ/USA (UPIC: SNUGZUSA) determined it had an excess inventory of lanyards and other select items. Following in the footsteps of rock band Radiohead, which famously ditched its record label and offered its album, “In Rainbows,” for any price buyers chose to pay between $0 and $99.99, SnugZ chose to try and reduce the surplus by inviting distributors to quote their own prices.
It’s not a clearance special and the items aren’t being discontinued, says Megan Ludlow, a sales executive at SnugZ who oversees the promotion. The excess is mostly made of less common colors, such as yellow.
“I ask [customers] what they think is fair to pay, and so far we haven’t gotten any offers we had to refuse,” says Ludlow. “Not one person has [wanted us to give it to them for free].
“We had a couple of people kind of joke around and say, ‘10 cents.’ But then I’d say, ‘Oh, yes,’ and just kind of change the subject. I didn’t really want to take 10 cents. We have a range in mind and anything close to that I’ll take,” Ludlow says. “We had one person offer more than catalog pricing for the lanyards, so I had to tell him the catalog price is this, shoot lower.”
Scott Johnson, a distributor from San Diego, California-based Custom Logos (UPIC: 4logos), quoted his own price to SnugZ when he was trying to land a new client that needed lanyards and wasn’t picky about color. “I knew I needed to be low on my price because I had some stiff competition, so I used that to close a prospect,” Johnson says.
Ludlow says the promotion has also created more interaction with customers. “We wanted to create interaction rather than just sending them to the website or quoting them something out of the catalog,” she says. “We want to make it a little more personable.”
Name your own pricing strategies have even taken hold of ad agencies. Virginia-based Agency Nil, a start-up headed by a recent ad school grad who couldn’t find work, offers freelance branding, media and advertising services without set pricing, letting clients decide what to pay instead.
However, reversing roles with clients isn’t just about quoting prices. Some suppliers are going after leads with the gusto of a distributor all in an effort to help the distributor help them. Andy Mackay, president of East Northport, New York-based Colorstrike/Liquid Technologies (UPIC: CSLIQUID), not only offers samples, virtual samples and idea sessions for free to distributors, but he’s even done legwork for distributors when their invoices were overdue. “For one past due account, I went as far as finding 10 prospects in their area that our product would work for,” says Mackay.
Doug Greenhut, president of Delray Beach, Florida-based supplier The Book Company (UPIC: BOOKCO), outlines a type of role reversal in this month’s Guest Viewpoint. In it he suggests suppliers take the time to research and understand distributors and their end-user clients (Forget taboos, he says, there is nothing malicious about it.) much in the same way distributors do. This lets suppliers do the best job they possibly can and puts everyone closer to making a sale.
“The bottom line in my mind is: Go out and sell and impress even if you don’t sell our product this time,” says Mackay. “We’ll get you in the door or open your existing client’s eyes and maybe we’ll get our next sale.”
|
|
|
|