Just because you sign the invoice doesn’t mean you’re always right — or does it?
Every print buyer will – sooner or later – be the primary cause of a job that goes bad. Generally, sooner than later, as buyer-initiated mistakes often occur when the people who are in charge of purchasing haven’t completely figured out the in’s and out’s of the printing business. But, whether you’re dealing with a rookie or an experienced buyer, how you handle their mistakes can be the difference between upsetting the client and building a lasting relationship that stands the test of time.
The best way to deal with buyer-initiated mistakes is to prevent them from happening in the first place. Think about how you can help buyers protect themselves from themselves.
Print buyers already understand the process required to achieve exceptional results with their preferred suppliers. However, if they are like me they constantly think they can resort to short-cuts to achieve those same high-quality result. And to be fair, the vast majority of time those short-cuts do lead to similar results. Don’t let buyers take short-cuts.
“I said gloss, not matte!”
A lot has been written about how individuals process information. This comes to us today in terms like “active learning” and “active processing”. What it means, in a nutshell, is that the more an individual is engaged in a task the more likely they are to retain detailed information about that task.
How many times – as a printer – has a print buyer called over the phone requesting a quotation? Most of the time? All of the time? Do you ever get all of the details? As a result, the quotation that the printer prepares doesn’t accurately reflect the project. On a good day, this mistake is caught by the buyer and the proper information is provided. On a bad day, the buyer rubber-stamps the purchase order and the job goes into production with incorrect information. Then what?
One simple way to help protect buyers from this short-cut is to always insist that they provide an overview of the project and the specifications in writing. Physically taking the time to write the information down requires dramatically more engagement from the buyer than rattling out project specs over the phone. Even if you’re able to fully-engage the buyer and have them demonstrating all aspects of the project to you, still ask for the projects specifications in writing.
Writing is great, because it provides you with some background should a problem arise. Provided you have worked within the parameters outlined in the quotation, you avoid any situation where communication might have been compromised. Nobody needs a project completed on gloss stock instead of matte or – as in my case – PMS8201 instead of PMS8202. Avoid the headaches and get it on paper.
The proof is in the proof.
Always, always, always send proofs to clients for review and approval. Even the small jobs. This is another costly short-cut that I suspect every print buyer has regretted. It’s such a simple step in a project yet it can save countless hours, a lot of money, and virtually all relationships.
There are countless stories about print jobs going bad because buyers didn’t properly review a proof, and these errors generally creep into repeat jobs. “Just run it like you did last time” is great, but the buyer needs to understand that some of the variables have changed. Maybe you’ve got a different press since the last time the job was run, or the mill has made minor changes to the way the stock is produced. In any event, sending proofs to clients gives you an opportunity to clearly explain what variables have in fact change and what you might be concerned about when it comes to meeting their expectations.
The last, and probably most important way to get clients involved in the problem-prevention activity is to have them attend the press approval themselves. That way, they approve all printing and colour issues on the spot. But it isn’t always possible for buyers to attend press checks. (More likely, they just don’t want to attend, but that’s a story for another day.) Consider creating a binder of printed materials that house master samples of client projects. That way, if you know in advance that a buyer won’t be able to attend the press check in person, you can have them refer to other printed documents that you may have worked on previously as the standard that needs to be met.
Buyers aren’t perfect. They make mistakes. Sometimes they try and blame the printer for those mistakes. If an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, encouraging your buyers to follow more rigid procedures can only help.
Originally published in Graphic Monthly Canada magazine.
