Professionally Printed Sales Proposals Help You Sell in A Digital World
Before the internet, companies relied on print collateral like sales kits to help convey their messages to prospective buyers. Creatively curated, these proposals contained things like brochures, flyers and information sheets, professionally presented in a branded folder.
As websites and emails became our primary communication methods and budgets got tighter, the printed sales proposal was replaced with digital downloads and electronic delivery.
Is your sales proposal getting lost in your customer’s inbox?
Nowadays though, some companies are finding that the money they save from their print budget is hurting their overall bottom line. In 2018, survey data * found that the average office worker receives over 100 emails a day, contributing to the global figures of 124.5 billion business emails a day. Are you losing sales because your digital proposals are getting lost in the clutter? Is your digital message strong enough to be that one in a billion that gets your potential customer’s attention?
Digital printing to stand out from the crowd
Many companies don’t think so and are using digital printing of physical alternatives to help them really stand out from the crowd. Southport Print Co. has been working with several clients who are seeking assistance to stand out from the crowd. We care about the environment too, but if you think that your digital delivery of sales material is making a green impact, don’t forget that many people still print things out to share with their team, make notes on and allow easy comparison when making purchasing decisions. Our clients find that print is working – we’ve put together a case study showing how providing printed collateral increased one electricity supply company’s profits and customer satisfaction.
Case Study: OTI Power Booklet Production and Distribution
OTI Power is an Australian owned company whose core business is to reduce energy costs by supplying solar panels and invertors to residential and commercial customers. Their Queensland head office was experiencing disappointing results and frustration with electronic delivery of their sales materials.
OTI Power’s Sales Manager Lisa Chillvers said: “Some of the daily challenges that we were faced with was that emails were going to spam, and customers were simply deleting them without realising. In the customer service industry, it is so important to know that your customers are receiving your proposals and with email we could never be sure that we were getting the necessary connection with our clients”.
Switching to personalised high gloss proposals
In 2019, OTI Power made an internal commitment to deliver key proposals to clients as personalised professionally printed booklets, forgoing the email attachment style proposal.
The objective was that each potential customer received a professionally designed, personalised, high gloss proposal that was delivered straight to their home or office from the Southport Printing Co. office in Southport.
Compliments and increased leads
This change immediately resulted in OTI Power receiving numerous compliments from customers on several levels. Customers commented on how this was a nicer experience to receive a high-quality sales kit rather than a PDF attachment that they were often printing off themselves anyway.
OTI Power firmly believe that taking this extra step and delivering high-quality personalised sales kits resulted in an increase in the percentage of closed sales in 2019.
“It is so lovely to hear customers be awed by the personal touch and the little bit of extra effort that we went to provide them with their quote” Ms Chillvers said. “This strategy also supported our strong brand with the print quality and delivery reflecting so much about us which was unable to be clearly represented in a PDF attachment.”
At Southport Printing Co. we output up to 20 proposals a month for OTI Power ranging from 1-50 pages each.
The Southport Printing Co. design team have templates that they use to populate with supplied, personalised content that to ensure that their high-quality brand is reflected in each print job.
Files are printed and dispatched to OTI Power within 24 hours of receiving the approved proof. On occasion, we dispatch the proposal directly to Australia Post for delivery to their clients.
How many of your competitors are doing this? This strategy will help you stand out in any market. Could personalised print collateral be key to helping you close more sales?
Our professional printers are far superior to any home or office laser printer which means your brand will stand out amongst the others on the kitchen or boardroom table as consumers and corporate clients make their purchasing decisions.
A professionally printed book will receive more attention than a PDF. Not only is it visually appealing, it is physically with your customer. How many PDFs are current sitting in your inbox or download folder for you to get to “soon”?
The most surprising fact of all may be the cost of making this change. Our machines are industrial print machines, purpose built to print high quality print jobs and we can tailor packages to suit all budgets and objectives.
Speak to one of our sales team members today about how you can adopt this effective marketing strategy for your business.