Turning Cross-Media Services Into Revenue: Who Should Drive the Market Push for Printing Companies?

A growing number of printing companies are now developing cross-media technology services. The challenge is still market development: how to open up the market, present these new services to their own customers, and turn them into revenue. How can this market be opened?

Who in the company is capable of taking on this job?

In routine sales activity, the people who meet customers are often marketing department managers. Some of them belong to the marketing team, such as hands-on marketing directors, sales vice presidents, or even the president. Before marketing, they usually carry out extensive consulting, work to uncover a broad range of customer needs, and cultivate, clarify, and prioritize the decisions that will help customers reach their goals. From this perspective, salespeople who provide consulting for businesses are more experienced than typical printing salespeople.

As market developers, they need to focus on the issues customers care about, not simply the product. They must understand how customers earn revenue and profit and possess professional knowledge of specific industries and vertical markets. A professional salesperson is more trustworthy when he or she is first a businessperson.

Recruitment Considerations

If there is no suitable internal candidate, recruiting externally is often the direct route. Selecting the right person for this job involves three aspects—qualification, fit, and interview.

Qualification—first assess whether the candidate can handle the work. Past experience, skills, and knowledge, plus prior training and education, all matter. After careful thought, the qualification list should be applied objectively and strictly; compare each candidate with those standards and score where they measure up. Review resumes carefully, but avoid merely accepting documents that lack clearly analyzed information. An objective evaluation approach is better than simply collecting resumes.

Fit—whether the person is willing to take on the job. A good way to do this is to use a behavioral validation assessment system to predict individual behavior. During assessment, candidates should be given a work environment, and their personal interests should be considered. Once the system is in place, people will perform better if they enjoy the required tasks, are interested in the work, or find the environment matches their personal interests. The assessment should also evaluate personality and personal behavioral competencies, which are closely connected to the traits the job requires. When you cannot rank candidates by their fit for the job requirements, this becomes extremely important.

Interview—the third part of the selection process requires interaction, considerable skill, and advance preparation. Once adaptability information has been collected, the interviewer must plan the interview carefully and decide who can participate; panel interviews are effective. Every participant must know the job requirements and review relevant information. Refine the assessment summary, dig deeper into the resume, and prepare to ask a variety of different questions. Questions given to candidates should have infinitely many answers, and the interviewer should peel each response back layer by layer, like an onion. In a sales interview, role-playing is an extremely effective technique for judging a candidate's selling skills. It is very simple and, in just a few minutes, can show a candidate's natural sales ability.

Getting the right people on board is central to a successful sales team. Hiring talented individuals who mesh well with the team can move the company toward its goals faster. For greater success, now may be the moment to review and redesign your current hiring process.

— This article is reposted from China Packaging Network (pack.cn). Original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-362020.html