There are several approaches to getting things printed. As for me, I prefer teamwork. I know of brokers who keep their vendors secret. Delivery receipts and boxes are either furnished by the broker or are devoid of any printer, or any other  identification. I do understand why they do it. Some customers and some printers view a broker as someone to dump. We can be viewed as a temporary obstacle.

I don’t see it that way. I see myself as an adjunct to the printer’s own sales force. I provide the same services as their people, but without the added cost. I’ve written about this before, but it bears repeating. A typical sales rep will earn: 1. 8% t0 12% commission; 2. Matching Social Security contributions; 3. Expense reimbursements (usually); 4. Group Health Insurance benefits; 5. Probably some kind of 401K or other retirement; 6. General Overhead (desk, phone, office supplies). Add these six expense  items and what does it actually cost to have locked-in sales people? Do the math, pay a sales rep 25% to 30% including commissions and benefits, or discount the invoice by 10% to 15% for the broker. Brokers are a win-win. Where printers go wrong is that they want to make the broker the customer. The broker isn’t the customer anymore than your employees are the customer. Get that right and everything will run smoother.

As for the real customers, they usually call me because their printing is problematic. They are paying too much, they aren’t getting cooperation, and the work isn’t up to their liking. Usually I can find ways to solve all of these problems.  Most people are untrained in printing, because they don’t know the best ways to get a printing job done, five to forty percent reductions are very common. As for getting cooperation, I’ve formed a growing cadre of printers, mailing houses, and other services that over the last twenty years have proven themselves over and over. When I choose a printer to add to my quiver I’m judging them through a lens of decades of experience. My customers don’t have that advantage. There is nothing like a history to gain cooperation. As for the quality issue, I make sure that the customer gets an adequate proof, and I go with them to  press checks, just to make sure. Most customers B.B. (before Bill) don’t know what to do when presented with a proof and have never heard of press checks until I teach them. And what if something is going wrong, does the customer have to take it up with the printer? No. They hand the problem to me and I discuss it with the printer. I am the customer’s advocate, but I’m not a trial lawyer, I don’t have to defend a customer in the wrong. I’ll present the arguments as best I can looking for the win-win, but I can’t morally support a demand that I see as unfair or unethical.

Despite all the services we brokers provide for both the printer and the customers, why do we continue “to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune?” Let me paint the typical life-cycle of a customer and broker.

1. The customer is fed up with all of the problems they’ve been experiencing getting their printing done right, on time, and a reasonable cost.
2. Someone recommends us to the customer.
3. As a FREE service, we evaluate their printing needs and find ways to cut their costs while offering better quality, and outstanding service.
4. We’re the conquering heroes. The customer loves us and wonders how they ever got along without us  before.
5. Time passes and they forget how much they’ve been saving since our association. They forget how difficult it used to be getting their printing done.
6. One day a printer’s rep calls on them , and tells them that brokers (not true–see above) are an added cost.
7. The printer low-balls the price to get the business.
8. The customer becomes convinced and unceremoniously kills the goose that brought them the golden egg. Down goes the conquering hero.
9. Eventually the customer has turnover in that department. Printing becomes problematic again, because they are fragmenting it to suppliers who insist that they are capable even when they are not. Where a salesman’s commission is involved they will force, if necessary, the round peg into the square hole.
10. The new people get frustrated.
11. Someone recommends us. The company has a cloudy but long memory. They have  totally forgotten what we did for them, but they seem to remember that brokers cost  them more.  Are you kidding me? What happened to the conquering hero? We didn’t change, they did.

Despite  the fact that having an open relationship with customers and suppliers is risky, I prefer to focus on the job at hand and let those other issues take care of themselves. The job at hand requires that it be done right, on time, and at a reasonable cost. Sometimes I need to get the customer’s graphic designer in contact with the printer’s pre-press department to work out some of the file issues. Other times I’ll schedule a meeting with myself, the printer, and the customer to hammer out specific production, delivery, or billing issues. I don’t disguise where proofs originate, and more often than not, I accompany the customer to a press check. It is pretty difficult to hide your source when they are going to the building. Maybe blindfold them? Nah. I like the teamwork approach. I think it is the best way to proceed and if it costs me over the long haul, so be it. I’ll “suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” if it gets the job done right, on time, and at a reasonable cost. But that’s just me.

Not long ago I was exiting the freeway when I got caught up in a whirlwind of freshly printed brochures. There was a young man beside a large delivery van desperately trying to contain the mess. A skid had fallen out of the truck and paper was flying everywhere. I learned later that the printer had to pay a fine for littering, or failure to contain their load, or something. Whatever it was, it only added insult to injury.

Coming on this scene any print professional could tell you immediately what this was–it was a jinxed job.

Murphy holds its hand

Did you ever experience a situation that no matter what you did, you couldn’t make it come out right? From time-to-time printers experience the same thing and they universally call it the jinxed job. In the last post I told you that Murphy was a printer, you know, whatever can go wrong will go wrong. When a jinxed job appears Murphy walks beside it holding its hand. When it is going wrong, it is wrong every step of the way.

You start to get a sense that a jinx is coming when the bid is incorrect. Some important piece of information is missing, forgotten, or not conveyed. The customer expects the given price, but the sales rep has to eat crow, return to the customer, and beg forgiveness before giving them the new price. The most common error is paper. No, I’m not talking paper choice here, I’m saying that the estimator forgets to add in the paper. Since paper, as I’ve discussed in a previous blog, accounts for 30-60% of the job, forgetting paper could double the estimate. When that happens, the printers try to work with the customer and maybe give them the paper at cost. That should do it, right? The problem is solved so we move on. Don’t be silly it’s never that easy.

Remember this is a jinxed job and Murphy is in charge. Invariably the job gets written up wrong. The job jacket is processed normally and nobody catches the error.  Of course we don’t realize this until the job is complete and were doing a postmortem to determine what went wrong. The exercise in locating the source to avoid having the same problem  reoccur, is pointless. The blame is systemic. When Murphy is exercising full control, the mistakes happen all down the line, like Dominoes in a row.

Simple can be the worst

I recall a simple calendar we once printed for an insurance firm. The size was 18″X24″. It was a poster style rather than a multi-page calendar, so it covered the entire year. The art was simple, and the printing a breeze, since it was just one color. This job was a light walk on a summer day, a no-brainer. They had an upcoming event where they intended to distribute the posters to customers and prospective customers. No problem, the event was two weeks away. That was more than enough time to print the job. Ha! Jinxed job.

The first error belonged to the customer. There was a typo on their address. We fixed the typo and offered to reprint the job at cost, but, and this is where it really went wrong, the customer’s office was in a town some thirty-five miles away. They couldn’t make the trip to see another proof, so they told us to proceed without a proof.  We didn’t know this at the time, but Murphy was there and smiling that snide toothy grin of his. Don’t you just want to just smack him? We fixed the typo alright, but in doing so, introduced another error. The reprinted job was delivered with just two days leeway, but there was still enough time to fix our error, reprint, and make their deadline,  just barely.

This time we made sure that customer saw a proof. We were confident nothing else could go wrong. When nothing else can go wrong is when Murphy is at his best, don’t you know?  The customer came to the shop the morning of the event to pickup her job. She came in, we showed her what the printed piece looked like and we sent her happily out with a delivery person to help load it into her car. It had been raining that morning (you know where this is going, don’t you?). There were dirty puddles in the parking area. Murphy, Murphy, Murphy. Our delivery guy slipped and dropped the two carefully kraft-wrapped bundles right into the biggest puddle. We brought it back in, and tried to salvage a few “good” ones for the event, but the edges were mostly dirty. There wasn’t much to  save.

We get no respect

Finally on the 4th printing, we got it right. We missed their deadline, but we got it right. Do you think we were appreciated for all of our effort? No, we never saw that customer again. They were too nice to tell us what they really thought of us, but the message got through. They expressed loud and clear it with their feet.

The last few blogs I’ve posted have been stressing the importance giving the printer correct specifications so that your returning bids will be accurate. If you do that, and do it perfectly, will that prevent errors? No. Ask any printer you know or any that you don’t know for that matter if Murphy was a printer and you’ll hear a resounding, “Yes” or maybe an emphatic, “Hell, Yes.” For those readers who may not know Murphy’s Law, it goes like this, “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” What does that mean? I’ll tell you, it means that no matter how perfectly you plan a print job, and how thoroughly you execute that plan, in the end there’s a chance that a boogie will jump out and ruin the whole darn thing.

So many steps, no wonder someone trips.

Why does Murphy pick on printers? That’s a good question that I think can be answered very simply by the complexity, and number of steps it takes to get something printed. For example I once worked on a company’s brochure. They, the company, hired a graphic designer who hired a photographer to take shots of the workplace. The pictures were professionally done, and the graphic designer did an excellent job in preparing the art. This was before computer design programs when art was furnished to the printer on art boards, so the first step in the process was to shoot the art on our stat camera, and send the photos out to be drum scanned. State of the art stuff for the day. When the prepress people, who were called in the industry (don’t laugh) strippers, got the camera’s film and the film from the separator they had to strip it all together.  This required a different set of negatives for each color. Which were carefully taken over to a plate burner where the negatives were placed precisely over a printing plate and the images photographically etched onto the plate. Then the plate had to be developed. I could go on and on, but I’ve probably already put you to sleep so I’ll stop here.

miscommunications happen

Did you count the steps it took just to get a plate made, and the number of places where something could go wrong? The first possible communication error was between the customer and the graphic designer, the second between the photographer and the designer, and the third between me (the sales rep) and the designer. Another possible point of error is between the printer’s sales person and the estimator. Do you see where I’m going with this? If the job is miscommunicated up front, in any way, there isn’t anything you can do in the production to make it right. I often hear customers say, I don’t need a proof, just go on with the job. I understand, they are busy and don’t need any more to-do’s in their day, but proofs, and specs, and everything else we do to communicate the job are as necessary to the job performance as getting the art in the first place.

Ruined because of what?

Back to the brochure, after all those steps and I didn’t even enumerate what could go wrong on press, in the bindery, or even with delivery, after the job was delivered I got a phone call from the president of the company. He said, “This is a terrible brochure. You ruined what was supposed to be a showpiece for our company.”

I had samples on my desk and for the life of me couldn’t understand why he would be so upset. It was a beautiful piece. So I asked, “What exactly is the problem?”

He told me that his secretary’s dress came out too aqua it was really more of a royal blue color. I swear this is a true story! Her dress was the wrong shade of blue, are you kidding me? Assuming there was a real problem, where could it have taken a wrong turn? First if shot under fluorescent lights unless they are color corrected everything will be tinged with yellow. The color separator could have been adjusting for pleasing flesh tones and tweaked it a little off color. Printing is done with dots as I mentioned in an earlier blog (Sunday, February 15th, 2009), those dots are made with four pigments, CYMK. Not every color can be perfectly reproduced with those colors. Finally on press, the ink flow to the sheet is adjusted by the press operator to get the best result. Where did it go wrong-anywhere, nowhere.  The real question was did the brochure fulfill it’s purpose? Was it professionally produced in an accepted workmanlike manner? Yes and yes. Did any potential customer refuse to buy his product because of the color of the secretary’s dress? I don’t think so. His reaction was a bit over the top don’t you think? I wonder what was really going on?

He was

But again, Murphy was a printer. I swear that he was.