Getting Past the Not So Obvious Obvious!

“It takes an extraordinary intelligence to contemplate the obvious.”
~Alfred North Whitehead

Recently I happened to meet an old friend and my former employee from 30 years ago when I owned a graphic communication company. She had stayed in the printing and graphics field all that time and mentioned that an exercise I taught her had been a very successful tool in her sales toolbag. She convinced me to explain it here so all of my loyal readers can benefit as she has.

When I added promotional advertising specialties to what my company sold, the resistance in the marketplace was fairly high. Most of what we sold were considered to be “novelties, give-aways, tokens, hand-outs” and a lot worse! When we were suggesting a well known retail brand as the promotional item to use, things generally did not get any better. For example a Bic Stic ballpoint pen was $1.00 a dozen at the stationary store but with an imprint they were $.35 each! That is 76% more and a tough conversation to have with a client.

After many exchanges with potential clients about value vs. price I decided to create a demonstration. When I was a kid I was not the National Honor Society student that got the academic awards. I did OK and eventually realized I was one of the people that comprehended better if I could ‘see’ the subject rather than just hearing or reading it. Here is what I did.

I carried nice two color business cards on a great linen cardstock. I also had some identical cardstock that exact same size with nothing printed on it. As a sales meeting progressed and eventually got to the value/price discussion, I would take out a business card and ask my customer what they would expect to pay for a thousand of them. They would say $12 or $15 (remember this was 30 years ago!). I would then take out a blank card, identical in every way except completely blank and ask the same question - what would you expect to pay for a thousand or them.

I would get answers ranging from ‘nothing’ to a couple of bucks. I would then ask what the difference was since the cards were identical except that one was blank. I could then sit back and let my client take over the sales meeting. They would look at me like I was nuts! “Obviously the printed cards have value because they have all your information on them and the other card is useless” they would say in many different ways. But without exception everyone realized before they even finished telling me the obvious, why a pen with their information on it was worth a lot more than one without.

Today with so much focus on digital marketing the value of a real world object with a client’s custom branding is actually more powerful than in the past. Many businesses that have convinced themselves to abandon conventional advertising and marketing and put all their eggs in the digital basket - have left the marketplace ripe for those that utilize more durable messages. 

Even if the goal is to drive people to a website, the durable promotional item is far superior to an email that might not even be opened. And if the recipient is not interested in the offer at that moment in time, the contact is wasted. But the promotional item continues to provide information and value and may eventually be the catalyst for doing business. 

Perhaps the most important part of this demonstration is that it takes the value away from the object and places it on the objective. In my many (perhaps too many) years in the promotional marketing and specialty advertising industry, I have found that business people are far more interested in investing in their objective than in coffee mugs or ice scrapers! 

Give this a try. If you don’t have blank cards just turn one over and pretend! The impact is still there. If your clients are anything like me, and I’ll bet they are, the visual demonstration will have them selling themselves while you sit back and smile. Sometimes the obvious is not that obvious. 

Gregg Emmer is chief marketing officer and vice president at Kaeser & Blair, Inc. He has more than 40 years experience in marketing and the promotional products industry. His outside consultancy provides marketing, public relations and business planning consulting to a wide range of other businesses and has been a useful knowledge base for K&B Dealers. Contact Gregg at gemmer@kaeser-blair.com.