Finding the Opportunities in Your Business Marketing is a great example. Almost every print business owner I speak to tells me they need to be more consistent with their marketing, yet it continually falls down the priority list because something more urgent comes along. AI can help turn one idea, customer conversation, or piece of industry knowledge into multiple pieces of content, whether that’s a LinkedIn post, customer email, website article, or video script. The important thing is that the expertise comes from you, rather than allowing technology to manufacture another piece of generic content that could have been written by anyone. Sales follow-up is another area where I see enormous opportunities being missed. Think about how many quotations your business sends every month and how many receive a proper follow-up. In many businesses, that responsibility sits entirely with an already busy salesperson who is expected to remember when to chase each customer. A relatively straightforward automated process could create reminders, prepare relevant information, and ensure opportunities don’t simply disappear into someone’s inbox. The technology doesn’t need to close the sale; it just needs to make sure the conversation continues. Think Tasks, Not Jobs There’s understandably a lot of concern about AI replacing people, but I think we’d be better served by looking at the individual tasks people perform rather than their entire jobs. Take a typical salesperson in a print business. How much of their working week is spent researching prospects, writing emails, preparing quotations, updating the CRM, and chasing outstanding enquiries, compared with the time they spend actually speaking to customers and developing relationships? If we could use AI and automation to remove even two hours of repetitive administration from that person’s week, that’s two additional hours they could spend having meaningful conversations with potential customers. Multiply that across a sales team and the commercial opportunity becomes significant. The same thinking applies to customer service, estimating, artwork, production planning, and virtually every other department within a print business. I’ve personally embraced AI over the past year, and it’s fundamentally changed how I operate my own business. I use it to prepare for coaching sessions, research customers, analyse information, challenge ideas, and support the production of my podcast. I’ve even started building my own software tools, something I wouldn’t have dreamed of attempting a couple of years ago. It’s saved me money, but more importantly, it’s allowed me to become considerably more productive without continually adding more hours to my working week. I also think many businesses are barely scratching the surface of what’s possible. They’re still using AI like a glorified search engine, typing in a question, receiving an answer and moving on. The real value comes when you start treating it as an assistant, giving it context about your business, your customers, and the challenges you’re trying to overcome. Ask it to analyse information, identify opportunities, or challenge your thinking rather than simply writing another email. Then there’s email itself, which has effectively become the operating system for far too many businesses. Customer enquiries, order approvals, internal requests, and important decisions all arrive in the same inbox, competing for attention. AI can help categorise messages, extract relevant information, identify missing details, and prepare responses, leaving your team to concentrate on the decisions that genuinely require their expertise. And let’s not forget the production floor. Some of the most exciting opportunities are emerging around artwork checking, preflighting, scheduling, workflow management, quality control, and predictive maintenance. Every time someone manually transfers information between systems, repeats a check, or intervenes in a predictable process, there’s potentially an opportunity to improve efficiency. So Where Do You Start? You don’t need to embark on an enormous digital transformation project to start benefiting from AI. I’d encourage every print business owner to take a relatively simple approach over the next 90 days. Spend the first 30 identifying where time is being wasted, the next 30 improving and automating one repetitive process, and the final 30 measuring the impact. Has it saved time, reduced mistakes, improved productivity, or created additional opportunities? If it has, build on it. If it hasn’t, understand why and try something different. I genuinely believe we’re entering one of the most exciting periods our industry has experienced, but the businesses that benefit most won’t necessarily be those investing in the most technology. They’ll be the ones that understand how to use it to operate more efficiently, develop their people, serve their customers better, and create opportunities for sustainable growth. So, I’ll leave you with the same question I asked my audience in Las Vegas. If AI and automation could give you back five hours of your working week, what would you do with it? Having spent over 25 years in the print industry and now working with hundreds of print businesses through my coaching and Print Mastermind community, I see the same challenges cropping up time and time again INDUSTRY TIPS | THE ONLINE PRINT COACH 26 email: editor@printmonthly.co.uk Issue 363 - November | December 2026
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