I don’t know about you but the summer months have slowed in recent years.  The end of July is soon upon us then the Dog Days of August. It used to be the summer was our busiest time of the year. No longer. It’s not just the economy either. The middle of the summer is when everyone is either on vacation, thinking about vacation, or can’t get an answer because their superior is on vacation. It’s maddening.

The decision making process is slow enough as it is. But here are a few things you can do to speed up the process to get a decision made.

Add a sense of urgency/scarcity to the equation. There are lots of ways to do this. The trick is to make sure the urgency applies to your client and not you. In other words, your client doesn’t care that you have open press time and need the business now. He does care that this deadline in August 3 and he might not get his stuff because you have another big order already booked for the last week of July.

Find out what’s important to them. Is there an event involved? Is there any other time constraint? What kind of an incentive can you provide to do the work sooner? Get creative. If you are slow in the art department, give them a credit toward upgrading their art if they commit now. Think of the incentive as business development for the future.

Make sure you have all your ducks in a row. This means you understand all the steps necessary to getting the job done. If you’re doing corporate work, does a Purchase Order have to come from the Purchasing department? How long does that take? When you know all the steps, you  can ofen  shorten or eliminate some of them. This often means doing things in parallel instead of sequentially (one right after the other.)
Some of our slow times are our own fault for not doing our homework. When you consider the business/sales development cycle, there are things we can do to speed it up. Everyday you do shorten means more dollars in your pocket.

We’ve been printers for over 36 years and during that time I’ve seen a lot of quotes come and go. We’ve always had a hard time with very low printing prices on contract orders. It does seem to fluctuate a bit, but right now I think it’s at an all time low.

Last week we bid on a contract job. 4000 5.6 oz shirts, four color front, four color back. Quick turnaround (two days.) This was through a reliable broker we’ve done tons of business with in the past, so he is going to put margin in the deal as well.

I called him today for an update on the job. He tells me he didn’t get it and he doesn’t know who did. But he did know what the winning price was.  So here we go. 4000 is not exactly a huge order, but it is good size nevertheless. The winning price is. . . . $1.98 landed!  As far as we can tell, the shirt the end user speced was going to cost about $1.09.  My price was competitive by historical standards, but nothing close to this. That $1.98 was for everything. I can only hope there was no broker involved.

So what’s it like where you live? Any comparable stories? I can only imagine this is desperation pricing driven by trying to keep the wolves away from the doors.

Well, I said I was done with this, but I guess never say never. I’m sitting in the departure lounge in LAX waiting to board a 19 hr flight to Dubai, eventually ending up in Tirupur, India. Over 27 hours in a plane seat! I said I was never going to go to India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, or Sri Lanka. Guess what, these are the places where big t shirt volume is happening.

I’m doing a consulting gig with a vertical apparel company that’s printing 50,000 shirts a day.  They’ve been after me for two years to come, and I’ve just been too busy. Things are slow enough now where I can take off for 10 days or so.

I’m supposed to have a good internet connection there and I’m looking forward to uploading  pics and videos over the next week or so.

Usually when I’ve gone to far away places like this I’ve flown on some pretty interesting (read scary) airlines.  This time it will be different. I’m flying Emirates Air with the youngest fleet of planes in the world. They only fly Boeing 777s and the double decker Airbus 380. I’m n the 777LR  with laptop power, USB, and Ethernet in EVERY passenger seat – Woo Hoo… I might even be able to blog while I’m over the Sahara.