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Salesperson or "Commerce Experience?"

The word “sales” might bring up image of someone is taking advantage of you and trying to sell something to you that you don’t want. We often compare salespeople to used car salespeople and may dread going into certain situations where we know we must make purchases. We mentally prepare ourselves for that moment. We think up any number of possible outcomes before we go in. We don’t want to go in feeling like that salesperson won and we somehow lost. True sales are helping you get what you want with all the information you need to decide, no snake oil sales pitches, paying for it in a hassle-free transaction, and the salesperson getting what they want. That is an ethical sales scenario. We are all salespeople in people in life no matter what we do in life. It’s an invaluable skill to have whether we utilize it consciously or not. We are constantly selling ourselves to everyone we encounter by way of our personalities and interactions with each other.

Being in sales is a common career choice and field description for many people across the globe. Another common career we often hear in conversations is someone say they’re in purchasing. Both sides go hand in hand together when it comes to doing business. So, if being in sales is such a common job title why is it also looked at so negatively and how can we change that perspective?

The goal of someone working in purchasing is to obtain the best possible quality item at the lowest possible cost to themselves or their company. The goal of a salesperson is to sell those products at the highest cost they can to maximize profit for themselves or their company. It’s a creative dance that gets woven together behind the scenes of most people in other fields. The end user simply gets or purchases the product and goes on to use it without giving much thought as to how that product came together.

The idea often lost on the average American is that of negotiating. The concept of what it is and how to do it may be there but the execution on how is lost. We have become conditioned to pay full retail at big box stores, shop around for better prices, look for coupons, anything that can give us the perception of saving money and it’s all just a lot of sales theater. The conditioning we receive from our parents when it comes to negotiating goes back to that idea of buying a car. We’re often taught that the sticker price of every car on every car lot is negotiable so never pay full price. The used or new car salesperson has been taught how to combat this tactic by constantly appearing to his manager for better deals on your behalf. It has the appearance of them going to bat for you because you really want this car, they’re your friend, and they want you to have this car despite their evil boss. Saturn motor cars changed that perception while they were in business. They built a car and their whole marketing platform was no hassle car buying at sticker price which they assured you was the lowest price they could already give on their vehicles. Saturn salespeople wouldn’t negotiate. When you looked at the price of a Saturn model car compared to other cars you saw a good deal for most budgets. It was highly successful. Why?

Saturn nailed sales by changing the public perspective on car buying. It went from a hassle to an easy experience. So why not alter your client perception of what you do and instill that some confidence in buying at the price you’re asking? Explain to prospective clients who want to know why they should use your services that “I'm not a salesperson. I'm a "commerce experience." When you purchase from me you get the peace of mind that I've got your best interest in mind with my pricing, custom estimates, and that I stand behind what I do. I'm not located in India and I'm a small business. I make all my clients feel welcome and included.

Can we still negotiate? Absolutely! Don’t be afraid of a client who is asking you to negotiate and don’t be offended by it. If it’s a good client or a good order and the margin is there, maybe offer them a one-time incentive price. Set the boundary early on that while you may negotiate you aren’t going to make this an expectation or common practice. It’s client appreciation and retention and it’s up to you. Don’t let yourself get bullied by a client or perspective client either. If they’re unhappy with your pricing and attempt to argue you into changing it don’t be afraid to send them down the road to shop somewhere else. Even a good client can turn into a bad client and if they cross that line, they’re no longer to us a business. How so? They can’t accept our “no” for an answer and our pricing and are insistent we can change it. We have our own bottom lines to worry about as well. You might think to yourself “I can lose a few cents on this order to retain such a good client” but at the end of the day what you’ve really done is let a bad client take control of your company and set a bad precedent that they can win over you in future interactions.

We can be excellent salespeople if we change that perspective in a positive commerce experience. Stick to your pricing and policies. We don’t tell our clients how to operate their business anymore than they should ours. We’re here to help each other in a no hassle process that involves trust on both sides and the confidence we have in each other that we’re the best person for them. In being that positive commerce experience for someone we also must realize where our own boundaries and limits are in pleasing those prospective or existing clients.

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NFT What?! (Non-fungible tokens)

What is an NFT or Non-fungible token?

You may have heard a lot of talk about the acronym NFT in the past year and had no idea what it was or how it mattered. NFT stands for non-fungible token. Still confused? So was I when I first started hearing about this. Let’s break down just what exactly an NFT is and then we’ll get into how these matter to graphic designers and promotional products distributors.

NFT EXPLAINED:

An NFT is generally built by using the same kind of programming as cryptocurrency. This would be a currency like Bitcoin, Dogecoin, or Ethereum, but that's where the similarity to all of that ends. Cryptocurrencies are considered “fungible,” meaning that they can be traded or exchanged for one another or used as actual money. Still confused? I don’t blame you. After hours of literally reading all I could on this subject, I was still very much in the same boat and needed half a bottle of aspirin to choke back the headache and tears. So why is this all so very important to our industry?

Think of an NFT like you would the Mona Lisa. The Mona Lisa is a one-of-a-kind painting that is priceless and has been replicated many times over but never quite as good as the original. NFTs themselves are basically a digital version of a one-of-a-kind Mona Lisa and can really be anything digital. Examples are such items as drawings, music, and sometimes animations. A lot of the current excitement and buzz is around using the technology to sell digital art.

Other cryptocurrency platforms are expanding their tech codes to be able to handle the extra data required to code in an NFT token to the art piece to “stamp” it as the original source. You can currently use Ethereum to purchase these tokens for anywhere between $30 to $100 depending on the type of NFT and date coding.

SO WHY DOES THIS MATTER TO GRAPHIC DESIGNERS AND PROMOTIONAL PRODUCTS DISTRIBUTORS?

In consideration of your client, when they ask for your services as a graphic designer to custom design artwork for them, they want to know their artwork is original and one of a kind. The ask can be anything from an illustration to a logo or more. That client is purchasing your skills as an artist to develop a unique piece for their usage.

So graphic designers have been basically creating a version of the NFT this whole time. The key difference is the lack of the NFT token, but designers do their best to ensure that the client’s design is protected and unique before turning over the work. Even though the designer is the original artist, they don’t own the work because they were paid as a professional to complete an assignment and turn the rights to that asset over to the entity that hired them. An ethical graphic designer should never hold a client’s artwork or files hostage for any reason other than the work has not been paid for. Until payment is received, the ownership of the works stays with the designer.

Given that this new trend towards paying prices for NFT works that rival classical paintings are not going away it stands to reason as graphic designers and promotional products distributors that we’re going to be facing these requests soon. I hope at this point you’ve followed along about the digital artwork and at least understand how that works as far as an NFT goes. The simple version is artwork gets created, stamped digitally via a specialized token, and then can become highly valuable as original digital artwork. But what about any of this applies to promotional products? Those are physical items we sell to clients and not digital. I think you’ve probably lost your mind.

Let’s not dispute my lack of sanity but instead, let’s discuss this from a promotional product's point of view. A company we’ll call MoneyBags LLC calls your business and some frightened employee who has been yelled at like things were needed yesterday is on the phone telling you he needs some sort of unique, never been done before, award or thank you gift for a bigwig at his company and need it yesterday.

That employee is scared because in the past nothing has been unique enough or really satisfied his bossed but has just been deemed as passable. You ask your questions about the item needed and the person it is being given too.

You learn this bigwig is a 20something who is big into technology, online videos, and is never without their face buried in some technological device. So what can you propose to this employee that his younger generation bigwig will like? I see you’ve followed me now! You suggest that they get the bigwig an NFT as a personalized award/thank you!

Why? Because you have access to a great graphic designer, you have no physical overhead for a product, your cost is in the designer alone, and the profit margin can be very high for such a unique NFT. Remember that an NFT is a verified original digital artwork certified as such by a cryptocurrency platform-based token. This bigwig will literally have a one-of-a-kind item no one else in the world will have. More to the actual point, you will have created a totally customized promotional product out of the digital realm with no touch on a physical profit. This ends worrying about supply chains being late or an order being messed up.

The future of promotional items is here, and it may be found in the form of the NFT. So, the next time your client says they are looking for that unique item no one else has, be a hero and suggest an NFT. Be the further hero by being able to explain to them in simpler terms what an NFT is and how it will save their day. Welcome to your new potential revenue stream. It’s more useful than trying to find that ever-elusive “ANY KEY” that has haunted us for years.

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