Conference Education
Full Conference attendees have open access to all of the below education sessions.
A la carte pricing is available for Expo Only attendees to purchase individual sessions.
We are currently in the process of adding speakers. Please check back for details.
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13
9 am - 12 pm
VIP Series Education
Sponsored by Ennis
3 - 4 pm
Using Facebook and Twitter for Business
Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are changing the way companies think about their marketing. From opening your brand to new customer opportunities to demonstrating yourself as an industry expert and joining the conversation, there are multiple reasons why building a Facebook page and Twitter account for your brand are not only a good idea, but vital to stay in the game. As the online landscape continues to change, even the most savvy social media marketers are still trying to figure it out. This session will help those new to the idea get a better understanding of how and why to get started while teaching more experienced social networkers how to use the platform properly. Tips from learning how to engage your customer and disseminate vital information versus self-promotion, the 80/20 rule, and more are sure to give you the leverage you need to confidently open your brand to the new uses of online marketing.
Direct Marketing Applications That You Can Sell to Your Customers
In 2008, direct mail sales were $547.7 billion dollars and accounted for 26.6% of all direct marketing tactics. While this marketing application is clearly still a forerunner in marketing campaigns, it is important to understand how new postage increases and competitive mediums like online advertising, email and social media are affecting direct mail purchases. Today, marketers need to be more progressive with their direct marketing campaigns to stand out and generate a high response rate. This session will showcase some unique direct marketing packages, new ideas and trends influencing direct mail, and how you can turn a blanketed direct mail campaign into a targeted, mixed media marketing program for increased sales and success.
Implementing a Low Cost E-Commerce Storefront
Implementing an e-commerce package on a budget is a daunting task, but there are many e-commerce storefront tools available for small businesses. This session will cover e-commerce storefronts from top to bottom, allowing you to determine what products in your current offering can be placed into a storefront, how you can streamline a storefront with your existing website, how to establish a basic plan from first steps to implementation, and how an e-commerce storefront can make a small business look like a big player. The tips shared in this session will give you enough information to immediately move towards an out-of-the-box storefront solution that includes ways to manage transactions and perform online credit card charging.
4:30 - 5:30 pm
Best Practices of Growing Distributors
Eric Belcher, CEO, Innerworkings
Join Eric Belcher in this riveting session that will demonstrate what today's best distributors are doing to grow in a down market and how they are able to stay leaps and bounds ahead of their competition. Here, we will discuss the type of structure that a growing distributor sales force needs to sell today's multi-media printing products, the kinds of back-office systems that winning distributorships have in place, and the top three things that put companies head and shoulders above the rest. While this session is specifically relevant to businesses in a troubled economy, the tactics we will explore are valuable in any economic situation. The companies that build a successful foundation today are the companies that remain strong in years to come. Join us and learn how to build better business strategies that you will use long afer the current recession ends.
Selling Enterprise Accounts
Any salesperson can close a million dollar enterprise account. The missing element that most salespeople lack is the determination and the methodology to make it happen. This session will appeal to sales professionals who are interested in going after the larger prey and want to land managed accounts that bring in a steady revenue stream. An industry insider and former executive for one of the majors will tell you step-by-step how to approach million dollar accounts, get an appointment, reach the decision maker and convince them to give you their business. Don't miss this incredibly informative session.
Generating Brand Loyalty for Repeat Business
Companies like Coca-Cola, Harley Davidson, Google, Apple and many more have developed a strong following of customers by creating brands that people trust. This brand loyalty is developed through products, delivery, price, value, and customer service. But, creating brand loyalty is not just for big companies. For small to mid-sized businesses, brand loyalty is the key to repeat business, word-of-mouth referrals, and can be exactly what makes or breaks your success. This session will teach you strategies to implement throughout your business that will go beyond the product and turn your company into one that customers trust and are proud to affilate themselves with. We will discuss simple ways to go from being a business that customers send jobs to, to one that customers rely on. We will also discuss ways that you can incorporate customer incentives that fit with your brand versus simple discounting that can devalue your brand.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 14
8 - 9 am
Understanding the Print Buyer - Part I
Margie Dana, founder, Print Buyers International
Learn what is on the minds of print buyers today. In the first part of this two-part session, Margie Dana will provide an overview of how today's print buyers source print, carry out their print program strategies and make purchasing decisions. You will get an understanding of who is buying print, what type of print is being purchased, where these print buyers work, what their job entails and how their buying behaviors have changed in the current economy. The goal of this session is to give attendees a clear idea of how to better understand who the print buyer is so that they can differentiate their business from other firms in a crowded industry and build valuable business relationships.
Successful Advertising Strategies
When evaluating where to put your ad dollars, it is imperative to understand what you expect to gain from your advertising campaign. This session will teach you how to start at the end and work backwards until you have a strong, strategic plan that allows you to acheive a quality ROI and a detailed road map to get there. We will discuss how to evaluate various mediums to reach your desired audience, how to build an advertising campaign that works for your budget, different options from pay-per-click to print, how to track your leads and how to incorporate a dollar-for-dollar tracking system to evalute the success or failure of your campaign. In this session we will also review the differences of advertising for brand awareness and advertising for product sales.
Marketing Without Spending
All marketing campaigns require time and effort, making no marketing intiative 'free'. But, this session will teach you how you can build a strategic marketing campaign without spending hard dollars. In the scope of today's media landscape, there are numerous tools and platforms that your business can capitalize on to expose your brand and product offerings far beyond the base that traditional media previously allowed. From web exposure, to word-of-mouth, press, internet searches and more, building buzz for your company can take little more then time, effort and energy. If you have the right resources, know where to look, and develop a strong plan with solid expectations, your company will be able to quickly and easily expand its marketing strategy without increasing its marketing budget. This session will show you how.
9:15 - 10:15
Understanding the Print Buyer - Part II
Margie Dana, founder, Print Buyers International
Get to know your customer in Part II of this session that will further dissect the challenges modern print buyers face when making their purchasing decisions. In this session, you will gain an understanding of what is most important to a print buyer and what their common struggles are so that you can learn how to communicate more effectively. Understanding how a print buyer thinks, how not to sell to a print buyer, what current print buying trends are for the coming year, and how print buyers choose to (or not to) work with print distributors are all key components in learning how to position your company to speak their language and gain new customers. Margie's years of experience working hand-in-hand with some of today's largest corporate print buyers will enlighten you on how you can break through the barrier and become a trusted source for print purchasers.
Perfecting the Sales Pitch
Rick Farrell, president, Tangent Knowledge Systems
Are you able to simply and successfully describe your company to a prospect in one minute? When cold calling, can you leave a 90 second voice message that compels your prospect to return your call? Do you know how to make your company stand apart from every other distributorship, agency or firm knocking on your prospect's door without giving a 15 minute speech? Perfecting your sales pitch is about more than knowing how to keep it short and sweet. It is about knowing your prospect, understanding how your business makes sense for them, and figuring out how to touch on their hot buttons. In just one hour, Rick Farrell will turn your standard elevator speech into a winning sales pitch can be adapted for every client, every time. Hint: it's less about you and more about them.
Tax Reduction Strategies for Small Businesses
G. Kent Mangelson, principal, American Society for Asset Protection
It is not uncommon for most small businesses to overpay their business taxes by approximately 40%. If you had the knowledge and information to reduce this drain on your revenues, your business could be looking at an entirely different financial picture. By understanding and implementing a few simple ideas, such as paying lower income taxes and setting up a living trust, you can avoid overpaying capital gains and protect your assets against undue taxes (and potential lawsuits). Kent Mangelson, a small business champion, will show you how to avoid the most common asset-protection mistakes that small business owners make. Plus, he will show you how you can pass your assets onto your heirs tax-free. This session may just pay for your whole trip.
10:30 - 11:30 am
Selling has Nothing to do With Selling
Rick Farrell, president, Tangent Knowledge Systems
85% of selling has nothing to do with pitching your product and everything to do with listening to your customers. Since no two customers are alike, each time you speak with a prospect or current customer, you are faced with a different set of problems, challenges and needs. By learning how to ask the right questions, you can turn the tables and get your customer/prospect speaking to you, thus enabling you to make an informed recommendation on how you can help them and eventually win their business. Here we will teach you the right way to engage your customers in a quality conversation so you can get the bottom of their needs, how to handle objections so that you can leave the door open, and how to make an impact that will set you aside from your competition. In addition, we'll teach you how to quickly disqualify prospects so that you can focus your time on those accounts that you have a greater opportunity to close.
Promotional Products Distributors: Increase Your Print Sales in 90 Days
Adding print to your product line should be natural for ad specialties and promotional products distributors. The printing industry itself is a multi-billion dollar industry and a great deal of printing is being purchased by the same people you speak with every day. By learning a few key fundamentals, you can begin to offer your customers print, in addition to the products they already purchase from you allowing you to keep a greater portion of the sale in-house. This session will uncover the basics of selling print, including how to: specify print, work with printers, identify print sales opportunities, speak the language, find additional resources, and more to get you comfortable offering this new service to your clients.
Five Tried and True Ways to Get New Customers
Finding new customers is always a challenge. In this session, you will learn who your best prospects really are and how to find them by using five proven strategies that will help you overcome the challenge of identifying leads that provide little to no results. We will take you step-by-step through ways to increase your lead generation techniques that are simple, logical and based on the most fundamental communication principals. This session will leave you with a brand new set of prospecting strategies that will produce incredible results time and time again.
