In this Industry Tips, Colin Sinclair McDermott, aka The Online Print Coach, says if your onboarding process is nothing more than a quote and a hope, you are leaving repeat business on the table before the ink is even dry Most Sign Businesses Win the Job, Then Lose the Client Ihad a coaching session earlier this week with the owner of a sign business. It’s a good company with a solid team and decent turnover. We were working through his customer database together when something jumped out at me straight away. Hundreds of contacts had placed a single order and then disappeared entirely. Not one follow-up from his side. Not one touchpoint after the job was delivered. Just silence. He looked at the screen, shrugged, and said what I hear all the time. “They know where we are if they need us.” I have spent over 25 years working with sign-makers and print businesses across the UK, and this is one of the most common patterns I encounter. The effort goes into winning the job. The quoting, the samples, the back and forth on artwork and specifications. Then the job ships and that is it. The relationship, if you can even call it that, goes cold, and the business owner sits there wondering why the phone is not ringing with repeat orders. The Silence That Costs You Clients On the surface, this looks like a sales problem. Not enough enquiries. Not enough new business coming through the door. But when you actually sit down with the data, the picture that emerges is very different. The enquiries were there. The first orders came in, the clients were won, and then they were quietly lost again, not to a competitor offering a sharper price, but to nothing at all. There is a massive difference between delivering a good job and building a relationship that generates repeat business. The first is a production task. The second is a commercial discipline. And it is the second one that most sign companies are neglecting entirely. What I advocate for, and what I walked through with my client that morning, is building a structured onboarding sequence. I call it a pre-purchase and post-purchase sequence. It is typically six or seven steps, and a good chunk of it can be automated once you have built it out. The investment is in the initial setup. After that, it runs largely on its own. 24 email: editor@signlink.co.uk Issue 265 - June | July INDUSTRY TIPS | THE ONLINE PRINT COACH Having been in the print industry since the mid-late 90s, Colin Sinclair McDermott entered the world of self-employment in 2004 and over the years that followed, experienced a number of highs and lows running his own print company, learning what does and doesn’t work. In 2022, he trained with The Business Coaching Academy to become a fully certified corporate coach with the Worldwide Association of Business Coaches. Through The Online Print Coach, industry members can access an online training platform, Print Mastermind and private 1-to-1 coaching with Sinclair McDermott. www.theonlineprintcoach.com Building the Sequence That Sets You Apart The first step is straightforward. When a new prospect gets in touch, send them a proper introduction to your business. Not a price list. An email that lets them understand how you operate, what to expect from the process, and what distinguishes you from the ten other sign companies they could have contacted. This is your opportunity to demonstrate professionalism before you have even quoted. Step two, if the opportunity is there, send them a physical sample pack. Let them feel the substrates, see the print quality, hold something tangible in their hands. In a market where so much is transacted online, a wellpresented sample pack positions you
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