Established wisdom in the printing industry says that you can sell on price, service or quality. Selling on price, as we know, happens all too often. The companies that choose the lowest-price approach usually put in a lot of sweat and time and make little or no money. Surprise! The service approach to selling has become more popular in the last four or five years. Companies such as Lowe-Martin in Ottawa and Yorkville Printing in Toronto have used their technical knowledge and know-how to out-service their competitors. They have also made respectable profits using the service approach.
The one sales approach that does not seem to have received much attention is the quality selling approach. Our industry seems to have adopted the attitude that customers take quality for granted or regard it as a given. The interesting thing is, that is not what customers are saying. In every survey I have seen of printing customers who are asked to rank what is most important to them, quality almost always ranks number one. It is also interesting to note that price invariably ranks number four or five, after service and honesty.

We seem to have an aversion in this industry to bragging about quality. A couple of years ago, Mead Papers held an event where it displayed annual report winners from the 1960s and 1970s. Those entries may have been winners three and four decades ago, but by today’s standards they are horrible. Pictures were not that sharp; solids and screens were weak. There was a lot less colour and what was there was nowhere near as vibrant as the hues we are printing today.
Possibly the biggest advantage printing has over most other media is quality. During the Print West trade show in Vancouver, the Fraser Valley Club of Printing House Craftsmen held its annual awards dinner for printing excellence in B.C. and displayed the nominees in each award category. The quality of the work was spectacular. It was easy to see why major corporations still use print to deliver a message of permanence and quality.

All too often I have heard the complaint in this industry that the various awards competitions are nothing more than an ego trip for those who enter and win. Maybe so, but if your company produces top-quality work you should be bragging about it, not to other printers, perhaps, but to your customers and potential customers.
Duncan McGregor (who built Arthurs-Jones of Toronto into a world-class printer) has repeatedly said that your customers will talk about what you talk about. If you talk about price, they will talk about price. If you talk about quality and the pride your people put into the work you produce, your customers will talk about quality. Talking about quality, not only diminishes the importance of price but also increases the value of printing as a medium for your customers.

The companies that have adopted quality as the cornerstone of their selling strategy appear to also have done very well financially. Companies such as Hemlock Printers in Vancouver, Friesens in Altona, Man., and C.J. Graphics in Toronto have raised the bar based on quality. The bottom line is that quality does sell.
Note: One of the world’s largest printing contests, the International Gallery of Superb Printing held by the International Club of Printing House Craftsmen, received more than 3,300 entries. Among the final 20 best of the best winners, eight were Canadian printers. Now that is something to brag about.