For more Information please visit our web portal.

Friday, February 12, 2010

The Art of Questioning

Asking good questions, and doing so in spirit of honest information gathering and eventual collaboration, is good practice for leaders. It cultivates an environment where employees feel comfortable discussing issues that affect both their performance and that of the team. And that, in turn, creates a foundation for deepening levels of trust.


80-john-baldoni.jpgJohn Baldoni is a leadership consultant, coach, and speaker. He is the author of eight books, including Lead Your Boss, The Subtle Art of Managing Up.

PEIR Adds Wynit to Vendor Partner Program

WYNIT, Inc. a leading national distributor with a 20-year history of selling internationally branded products in the consumer electronics, digital photography, print and presentation, video editing, outdoor, security and photo ID market categories has officially become a PEiR Group Preferred Vendor Partner.

As promised, The PEiR Group continues to expand it's vendor programs (47 vendors) and with the addition of Wynit you now have another distributor for both Canon and HP wide-format products and services.

Many of you already know and have worked with our national account manager at Wynit, Miguel Gonzalez, who just recently came over to Wynit from Tekgraf. For more details on the Wynit vendor program please login to the PEiR Group intranet and review the vendor library area titled Wynit.








If anyone is interested in attending the PMA (Photo Marketing Association) Convention on February 21-23 at the Anaheim Convention Center, Wynit has offered our members free passes to the PMA Exhibit Area.

To download the free pass click here:

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Shaun's Corner "Sell Technology Not Print"



I was in Up-State NY and Boston last week to meet with several of our PEiR members and their AEC customers to learn about the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for our industry in 2010.

One thing is abundantly clear: While opportunities to sell customers printing services appear to be declining, the opportunities to approach customers with technology solutions are huge and growing. The days of throwing bodies (labor) at problems are long gone. Every AEC company recognizes the need to use computers and software applications to improve productivity and efficiency.

Whether they use AutoCAD, Microsoft Office, Timberline, Prolog, Primavera, SharePoint or whatever, they are all accustomed to budgeting for technologies. They simply need reminding to extend that technology review to their reprographics services. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the bidding process.

The contractor community, has a limited number of funded projects in the works. As a result, contractors are required to do a lot more bidding to win a project. The bidding process used by many contractors is oftentimes very inefficient, and as a result, can create technology sales opportunities for those reprographers who can demonstrate the value of their bid communications and document distribution services.

In an effort to keep costs down and in some cases to keep their doors open, many contractors are trying to cut any costs associated to pre-construction activity, in order to survive. Remember, contractors don’t make money by bidding, they SPEND money. To stay in business, they need to make the bidding process as cost effective as possible. To most, that means reducing costs in bid set printing by eliminating them entirely, or passing printing down to subs by simply distributing their bid documents digitally.

That’s where we need to turn into technology promoters.

Solutions like PlanWell/BidCaster and Sub-Hub can offer better document control, productivity improvements, bid response tracking and better security than ANY analog-based solution. Contractors are still opting to use less sophisticated digital distribution methods (technologies) like FTP and CD’s because they do not understand the savings that your technologies can offer.

Reprographers who are struggling to get GC’s to pay to use their document management solutions need to remind themselves that they must explain to their customers that the technologies they (reprographers) offer actually help solve problems and create value.

Some reprographers are still lucky enough to be printing bid sets for government projects particularly in markets that require bids to be distributed in paper. Others claim that bid set printing is declining so fast that they (reprographers) are finding that they have more print capacity than the market is demanding. I could not help noticing at some shops, production devices and personnel were sitting completely idle. Such circumstances demand a different approach to remain relevant to our customers and viable as an industry.

Don’t lose the chance to help your customers to increase productivity and reduce costs with the technologies you can offer. You may need to price the technologies a bit different but I think you will find that you will have a better chance of getting your customers to accept the costs.

Automating the Bid Communications Workflow in the Construction Office


It is important when selling technology that you understand what problems and inefficiencies you can solve for your customers.

In the bid process you can save the pre-construction department labor, printing costs and increase their chances to win more projects. Effectively doing more with less and that is what the marketplace is looking for!

Canon Offers PosterArtist Software-- Wide Format Poster Templates



PosterArtist is a poster creation software program designed to be used by all levels of users to create professional-posters, banners and signage in just four easy steps. This template driven poster creation tool for PCs was developed by Canon specifically to create large-format posters quickly and easily.

PosterArtist provides over 200 professionally designed templates, and over 1000 royalty free images and clip art that can be quickly customized and outputted to a variety of media. You can even import your own images such as company logos and digital camera photos. With PosterArtist, now you can quickly customize and print posters, banners, signs, and eye catching displays.

PosterArtist includes an Auto Design feature to make printing even easier-just specify your layout elements and the software will automatically generate a variety of designs for you to choose from. With PosterArtist, you can integrate variable data, enlarge scanned data, import presentations and other office documents, and bring in images directly from most digital cameras. Visit Canon's PosterArtist Website to learn more and download a trial version today!

Monday, February 8, 2010

QuarkPromote.com



In an effort to strengthen its ties with the digital printing community, Quark has announced the launch of QuarkPromote.com, a new on-line service that promotes digital printing by local print operations.

Announced late last year, QuarkPromote.com helps digital print shops market their on-demand print capabilities by providing a web based design application that makes creating and printing marketing collateral like business cards, flyers, datasheets, business letterhead, tri-fold brochures and other promotional documents a breeze.

Quark’s research showed that many small businesses just do not have the marketing expertise or the layout software to make professional looking promotional materials in-house. Now with QuarkPromote.com , businesses of all sizes have free access to professionally designed templates and a network of local print provider to delivery their printed materials.

After hearing about this new service, and thinking how it might help some of our members who have digital presses, I asked Quark to send me more information about this exciting new service.

If you are looking for ways to expand your market reach and to offer more digital printing services please visit the video link and view a demonstration of the features of QuarkPromote.com. You can also visit their web site to learn more about this service or to sign-up and become one of their print partners.

[Links]

Video

Website

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Webinar on Print Cost Recovery and Print Tracking






Please plan to join Mike Becker and myself on a webinar that will offer valuable insight into understanding cost recovery and how this subject can lead to new customers, along with higher profits.

Mike Becker – has over 20 years experience selling document and cost recovery solutions to AEC, advertising, legal and financial service markets. Mike most recently was one of Sepialine's top revenue producers, now Mike is working for us.

Webinar Agenda:

  • What is cost recovery?
  • Why are your customers interested in cost recovery?
  • Finding new customers and new markets
  • Ideas for cost recovery by industry

Webinar Details:

  • Date-- Feb 18th
  • Time-- 9:00 AM (Pacific)
  • Register -- click here

Shaun Meany
President
The PEiR Group

925-658-0212 direct
925-876-9409 cell
925-658-0201 fax
http://www.peirgroup.com/
http://www.abacuspcr.com/