Whose Fault Is It?

Even as a commodity, what we sell is a branding and awareness-building staple. It’s fascinating to me that those who degrade our industry with fervor STILL use these products.

Read More

Bobbleheads: A Story of Promotional Products Delivering Measurable ROI

Successful promotional products are all about developing brand affinity—an emotional connection made with a brand through the magic of 3-D advertising. But calculating the ROI of using promotional products compared to other marketing tools or tactics often presents a challenge for brand management. For example, a statement like, “This creative giveaway resulted in this specific sales result,” is a calculation all too frequently unavailable. Enter the mighty Bobblehead, or even better yet, the calculable ROI of the powerful resin figure.

Read More

No Single Raindrop Believes it is to Blame for the Flood

Our industry has been much maligned. We may dislike it, but the proven effective branding strategies we offer have been devalued in many ways. We’ve embraced terms like swag and tchotchkes, because the terms are so commonly used. It may be argued this contributes to the image of our industry as trinkets and trash.

Read More

How to Skyrocket Your Q4 Sales

Last week, I had the pleasure of interviewing six of my favorite, top-rated suppliers in a Skyrocket Your Q4 Sales webinar. In just about 50 minutes, each of my guest experts shared a fresh idea to increase your promotional products sales, case studies you can easily duplicate and very special offers and EQP pricing you won’t find anywhere else.

Read More

Volunteerism, Work and Mixing the Two: A Distributor Shares Her Story

Jane Nelson-Halverson, owner of Dakota Promotions & Printing, describes her experiences volunteering for an abused adult resource center, which she also does some promotional work for. She details the services the center provides, as well as how she handles selling promotional products to an organization she also volunteers at.

Read More

A Brief Look at Quality Control in an Asian Factory

Quality control is arguably the single most important part of your supply chain. In the promotional products industry it is often neglected in order to save time or simply because the whole process is not transparent enough. This is unnecessary, since doing quality control right can be much faster and much more effective than some might think it is.

Read More

Promotional Products Industry: Balancing Risk and Reward

One of our biggest challenges is the question of how we can help those promotional product reps actually closing the sales and working with limited resources make it part of their decision to deliver safe and socially compliant product? It’s all in the balance of risk and reward.

Read More

The Price Is NOT Right

The lowest common sales denominator in our industry is the product-based sales person, i.e., promo-peddler, trunk-slammer, tchotchke-chucker, ad nauseam. The mere fact that you are reading and digesting this means you most likely aren’t one of those. I’m addressing this article to you—the thinking sales person, the promotional partner, the extension of your client’s marketing department. You Think, Therefore, You Am. (I gotta stop talking like I’m Popeye.)

Read More

Should You Ever Stop Following Up?

Should you ever give up on follow-up? That depends on how valuable the prospect is to you. I can tell you from actual experience that it may take months to get an order or get in to see a prospect that has the ability to give you large and repeat orders, but the payoff can be enormous.

Read More