Pitching Your Web to Print Storefront

5 keys to unlock a great demonstration and convey more value of your web to print offering

This is class #5 of a 5 part Web to Print Master Class | 5 min read

Class Takeaways

• Your web to print solution can be a powerful sales tool if you know how to communicate its value.
• Your prospects care about ROI above all else and it’s your job to explain how web to print storefronts can save them time and money.
• With a strong demo storefront and the help of your software provider, you can use web to print to turn prospects into sales.

Print buyers don’t have the bandwidth or necessity to keep up with what print providers can do.  Your clients have no reason to keep up with the cutting-edge advancements in areas like digital print technology, omnichannel campaigns, automated web to print storefronts, and the like. Your business, armed with a modern web to print solution, has the potential to revolutionize the way large enterprise companies manage and distribute their vast and ever-changing array of assets and materials. But they may have no idea that that is possible.

So teach them! Position your business at every opportunity to encourage your customers to think beyond just the initial price per unit, but rather to understand the added value and benefit of implementing a solution that facilitates how they order and distribute their marketing assets. And not just to understand the value, but to get excited for the potential return on investment. Because that’s what modern marketing is all about, ROI and measurable results. That was hard with the old-school ways of doing print marketing. Web to print changed that.

We will cover the following 5 keys to developing a pitch-perfect strategy for demonstrating the value of your web to print storefronts:

• Know Your Prospects Pain Points
• Learn How to Translate Features to Savings
• Spend Time On Your Demo Storefront
• Err On the Side of “Under Promise, Over Deliver”
• Use Your Software Provider as a Resource

#1 Know Your Prospects Pain Points

The first step in being able to effectively pitch, demo, and sell to your prospects on the value of your web to print. This is true of any sales strategy, but it’s worth extra consideration when you’re planning on selling a solution that your prospect might not be very familiar with, such as web to print technology.

You need to be knowledgeable not just about the web to print solution you are using but also the specific ways that your solution can address the problems and struggles of your prospect. And because no two prospects are the same, this means taking extra time in the research and preliminary conversation phases to flesh out your idea of how your solution can solve their pain points.

This preparation is crucial, especially for big prospects with more complex needs. These are the potential clients that are the most valuable and the most achievable with a modern web to print platform. But you need to be ready to answer technical questions. The more tech-savvy clients are not going to let you get away with vague answers. On the second or third demo, they will bring super-smart tech guys to address topics such as SAML and other single sign-on integrations, CXML punch-outs and procurement communication, APIs, payment gateways, security, reporting… you get the idea. You better bring your “A” game for these type of prospects.

So, in summary, for those big prospects: Be prepared. Plan your demo. Ask questions at the beginning of the call. Start with a conversation to focus on what really matters. Avoid areas of little interest, you probably only have an hour which isn’t always a lot of time.

#2 Learn How to Translate Features to Savings

This step follows logically from the step one. Once you have an idea of what pain points your prospect is dealing with and you have a good idea of how your solution can solve them, the next step make the link as clear as day in your demos in conversations.

You’ve got to be able to translate “web to print features” into “saving time and money”. This goes back to the major through line of this guide: the decision makers you are selling to don’t know the benefits and advantages of web to print technology, so you need to be able to explain it in a way that will connect. This isn’t like simple print sales where your client wants something printed, asks for it, gets a quote, and then gets the print. This is a long-term solution that will become a part of their organization’s marketing supply chain and workflow. That takes more time, nuance, know-how, and guidance to sell.

If you don’t get anything out this article, get this. Today marketers make decisions primarily based on revenue -marketing ROI. Their job is to generate qualified leads, customers, retain customers, grow accounts, and make those revenue numbers grow. What printers need to figure out is how to help marketers get there. This is very different from simply supplying print demand. This approach is totally different. It requires insight and strategy.

And it requires translation. A big part of your job here is to translate technical terminology, print industry lingo, and software specifications into easily graspable, big picture takeaways.

These prospects want to find an easier way to distribute marketing materials to their sales reps, affiliates, partners and staff in various field offices. Web-to-print brings simplicity to the ordering process. It gives your customers the ability to manage their print procurement system with complete access to the controls. This is the framing you should always return to and hang your hat on. How does your solution make their jobs easier, protect their brand, and save their budget?

#3 Spend Time On Your Demo Storefront

As they say with storytelling, “show, don’t tell.” The same goes for using your web to print storefronts to attract new clients. The fastest and most effective way to convince a prospect why your marketing asset management solution is worth investing in is to show them what it does. Your strategy when it comes to storefront demonstrations can make or break your success with web to print.

All that is to say, spend time configuring your demonstration storefront. The comparison to storytelling is not just skin deep. With this demo storefront you are trying to convey a story. The story of how a brand can streamline their marketing asset supply chain, control and monitor print and other asset ordering, and spend less time on tedious tasks like proof approvals and fulfillment logistics.

Your demonstration storefront should be set up so that you can walk a prospect through it and tell that story. Let’s break down the steps involved in that:

Step 1: Create a Fictional Company

The number one reason you want to create a fictitious company is so that you don’t have to show a client’s storefront and its products. Some clients’ marketing materials may contain sensitive client information.

Step 2: Set Up a Variety of Product and Workflow Types

Every prospect is different. They handle different marketing products, business rules and user roles. You want to make sure your demo site appeals to a wide variety of client types. Here is how you can do that.

Upload all kinds of products to your web-to-print demo site (print, promo, apparel, kits, bundles, direct mail, digital) assuming the solution you offer handles those products types. This way, if your prospect is looking to distribute print and non-print products; you can show them how you can handle it.

Activate all settings to show the system’s full potential. These are spending limits, discounts, approval thresholds, branding controls, inventory controls, viewing rights, store dollars, pre-populating assets, ability to upload mailing lists, localization, and so on.

Set up multiple users with different user rights. Your clients might want to provide sales, marketers and branch managers with access to different product categories. They may want to give some of them elevated rights or perhaps more store dollars. Make sure you can demonstrate that they can provide a unique experience to different users.

Go crazy with customization. Set up custom html pages as landing pages. Show diverse ways they can display products. Demonstrate how they can personalize the store and white label it. Place promotional banners or custom messages on different pages to show they can personalize the experience and promote new products or upcoming tradeshow materials.

Step 3: Go Above and Beyond With a Proof of Concept Storefront

Have a particularly big prospective client? Consider illustrating the potential benefits by building a proof of concept web to print storefront. Not only will this demonstrate the relevance and operation to the client directly, it will also clearly highlight how well you understand their business needs. There’s no easier way to demonstrate how your platform will help their business than to show an example of what their own private, white-labeled marketing portal could look like.

#4 Err On the Side of “Under Promise, Over Deliver”

Because web to print technology is generally somewhat foreign to the print buyers and marketing people that you are selling to, it can be easy to cause misconceptions about what your software does and doesn’t do. This is especially true if your sales people aren’t highly familiar with the solution you’ve been using or if the platform is new to your business.

That’s why it’s best to err on the side of caution and live by the the tenant of “under promise, over deliver” when it comes to web to print storefronts. This isn’t to say you should be coy about what your web to print solution can do by any means. Your goal at the end of the day is to paint a pretty picture of what automation, online connectivity, and advanced controls can do for your prospect. They should be excited about the possibilities that web to print enables. But be careful with answering questions about specific capabilities.

Sales reps in general tend to say “YES” a lot to move deals forward. They confirm capabilities your solution does not provide. The last thing you want is to mislead clients. It’s hard to come back from that. You will forever be stamped as untrustworthy. It is better to say: “I’ll have to get back to you on that one” than to make answers up. Prospects will know you just lied to them. They will take their business somewhere else

As print providers, you have to understand this, whatever you tell the prospect while explaining what your solution can do, they will remember it. Saying “yes” to questions that are a “maybe” only makes it harder to be taken seriously as a long-term business partner. Moreover, the moment they come to know that their demands or requirements will not be met, you lose a customer.

Through your research and understanding about the customer, you should be able to identify which parts of the system would be relevant to their business challenges. Suppress that desire to show it all, more is not better, more is complex. People want technology to solve specific problems. Too many options causes more problems.

#5 How do you want to manage the warehousing and supply chain?

The only group that knows how your web to print software works better than you do is your software provider. The team behind your web to print solution not only knows the bottom-line advantages it gives you and your clients, but also most likely are adept at communicating those points.

Just as you, as a print provider, aim to develop mutually beneficial, long-term partnerships with your clients, the business behind your web to print software should be a partner to you. That means you should aim to take advantage of all the resources and support your software provider has available, especially when it comes to pitching your web to print storefronts to potential clients.

The best web to print software providers will have support documents, training sessions, and other educational content specifically designed to help printers succeed and grow using their web to print software. Leverage your software provider as a part of your strategy for making the most of your web to print solution.

The big picture: Your choice of a web to print platform matters

You are well aware of the role this class of print software has played in the online revolution within the industry. And you likely have some knowledge on the benefits of modern web to print storefronts beyond the simple aspect of “bringing print online.” The ability of print providers to go beyond print and become full-service marketing solution providers is wrapped up with web to print as well.

Web-to-print is a self-service order entry solution for your customers. It is also a very different way of doing business that requires you to treat it like a new service offering, create a strategy for it, name it, market it, and train your people how to sell it. There are too many failed web-to-print projects out there. A common theme to these failures is that lots of work was done and nobody is using the tool.

The way to avoid this is to have a strategy in place for not just how to implement web to print storefronts, but how to educate clients and pitch to prospects the “how”s and “why”s that make your solution great.