Friday, August 3, 2012

A Quickie!

I clinched a new account for the office yesterday and I'm pretty happy about it cos I see lots of business coming from them. I totally 'stole' the account away from a well known local Ad Agency which has put a big smile on my face for the past two days.

Most of the clients, especially my main and important clients have always been recommended to me by someone. I haven't really gone out and look for new clients in years. Between my partners list of clientele and mine, we're pretty happy with the steady stream of business they give us on a very regular basis.

But of course, that doesn't mean I won't go out and acquire new ones if the opportunity came my way, which was precisely what happened in the case of my latest client. An ex-graphic design trainee who worked with us passed my name to his current employer and the CEO of the company, an international corporation, wanted to meet me.

Seeing as how I was pretty free yesterday, I went over to meet them and introduced my company and its services and within 10 minutes, I was walking out of there with the account safely secured and with work to be done for them!

Now, before you think I'm some super sales person or anything, let me tell you otherwise. The CEO was a very nice person and pretty direct with what he wanted. He showed me his current Ad Agency's pricing and told me he was appalled at how much they were fleecing him. Now, I know Ad Agencies don't exactly come cheap, I used to work with a few for 20 years.

But this time even I was flabbergasted at how much Ad Agencies charge these days. They were practically marking up their printing costs by at least 500% and I kid you not! One look at their pricing and I told him I could cut his printing cost by at least 350-400% (and I'd still make a sizable profit from it) and the deal was clinched!

He called in his CFO and designer and instructed them to give me the current project they were working on to print. I was a little rattled by the speed at which this was going but wasn't about to complain at my good fortune.

I took the artwork, headed back to the office, printed the items they need and delivered it back the very next day which earned me a phone call from the CEO who was very surprised and pleased with the speed of my work. He said his now former Agency used to take at the minimum, 3-5 working days to get things printed.

Now, to me printing and delivering stuff the very next day is really no big deal and is the norm for us since we own our own large format printing machines with our own production crew to get things done but heck, I wasn't about to tell him that. I was just beaming from ear to ear and soaking up the praises bestowed upon me ... hahaha ... (Yes, I know, I have no shame!).

But jokes aside, I'm seriously still a little shocked at the rates Agencies charge these days. We have a few Agencies as our clients and they squeeze us dry with our printing prices and now I know just how much those crooks charge their clients in return. No more discounts or cheap pricing for those bums!

But I guess they do need to charge exorbitant prices to pay for half the redundant personnel they hire. Imagine for instance if they needed to come up with a flyer for restaurant equipment at RapidsWholesale.com. Just getting that flyer conceptualized and printed would take at least as much as 6-7 people working on it, when seriously you'd only need at the most 3 people in reality! So, somebody has to pay the other 4 people's salary, right? And who better than the client ... hahaha!

Oh well, at least now I know how to 'steal' clients from Agencies ... LOL!
 

4 comments:

  1. Good to hear business is going well for you Nick! I hope you won't be too busy that you need to stop running though! ;p

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    Replies
    1. If I have to, I'll just bring my running gear to work and run in between projects ... LOL!

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  2. Yahooo! Congrats on "stealing" that new account! Good for you!

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