I was told early on that once you understand the customer’s need, you should offer several options – not 300 tumblers or 1,000 pens for the customer to choose. It’s up to the professional promotional product distributor to assess the needs, consider the client's budget, and search for the best items from vendors with whom you have a relationship or know are highly rated in the industry to meet those needs. Picture a funnel, with thousands of pens pouring into the top, and two red stylus pens popping out the bottom to show your client.
Sounds easy, yes. But for someone like me, who has a problem deciding which movie to see or where to go out to eat, it can be a nightmare. Untold hours are spent looking at products and trying to decide how best to narrow down 10,300 pens to a manageable number and then narrow those selections down to two or three best choices. Often, I’ll narrow options to, say, eight items, and then ask my partner to help me select the best two of the bunch.
So imagine the angst I experienced when I had to do the purchasing for an organization on which I am a board member. My assignment: choose a pen, an item with perceived value as a "leave behind," and an item that would "Wow!" 200 staff members. All within certain budget constraints. Any decision-making skills I had acquired flew out the window. This was not selling and providing that "extra value" to any company or organization. I was selecting items on which my reputation would be based. I needed to demonstrate I was choosing the very best value at the very best price that would do the job for which it was chosen. My very reputation was at stake!
As a promotional products distributor, pens drive me up the wall. Everybody needs them, there are so many to choose from, and normally the profit from such an order will buy me a dinner at a fast food joint. And yes, I do know that a pen order often can become so much more down the road. But back to pens.
Logging onto a promotional product research tool, I typed in “pens,” discovering there were 30,313 pens available. Narrowing it down to my "special vendors," I was presented with a mere 6,652. Ah, but having oh-so-much experience behind me, I knew the very next step was for me to ask my partner, "Which companies are your go-to ‘pen’ companies?" That narrowed it down quickly, but I still had hundreds from which to choose, even within the price point I was working with.
And of course, within that narrow price range, my job was to select the pen that would be perceived to be of much greater value; it shouldn’t look or feel like a mere 50-cent pen, but one that would be prized and sought after for its sleekness, feel, balance, and writing quality.
Thus, my first dilemma. It was easy to rule out many pens, as they looked, shall we say, er, inexpensive. Okay, cheap. At the top of the price range there were also pens with extras, such as styluses ("styli?"), lights, markers, and other oddities. Zapped them off my list. They wanted a pen. No more, no less.
Having an intimate knowledge of this organization’s logo also helped narrow down colors. I envisioned a white logo that would pop off, say a burgundy or green pen. But still dozens of options remained on my computer screen.
Decisions, decisions. And this was only the first of three items I had to select. Out of frustration, I ran to my partner and yelled, "Choose a pen for me!" And he did. It looked like a fine writing instrument, wrote well, had a full ink fill, came in the right colors, came with a full ink chamber, and fit right in my budget. And all was well.
Next month, I'll write about choosing a "Wow!" item for staff and a leave-behind with a perceived high value.