Is Your Company Excluding Potential Customers?

In the past several months, we, and other team members under the PRINTING United Alliance umbrella, have heard of situations where woman business owners and high-level mangers, and minority business owners – industry professionals who were actively seeking to purchase production equipment – were ignored in the trade show booths of companies from which they wished to make purchases. In each case, according to reports, these industry professionals took their business elsewhere (to another booth) and made purchases from companies willing to engage with them. We hope those attendees and their new suppliers will form strong, long-lasting relationships.

In these unfortunate events, women and people of color were not taken seriously, not treated as viable prospects, and were not given the attention they deserved. While some might choose to look the other way in the presence of, in this case, racism or sexism (consider that discrimination based on age, cultural heritage, sexual preference, and disability can also occur), the act of excluding a person as a potential customer is not only bad for society, it’s bad for business.

Cases in Point

While Sarah Barr, owner and CEO of Lemoyne, Pennsylvania’s Konhaus, says she has been ignored at industry trade shows before, a trade show held last year was the first since she became the owner of her company, making the sting of being ignored that much more acute. She says that she went to the Expo prepared to purchase numerous technologies for her business, but “almost every booth I went to I was ignored.” The experience, Barr says, led to disbelief and anger.

“As a buyer,” she said, “I never thought I would have that kind of experience.” She says she ended up not buying some of the equipment she needed because she was ignored by booth staff. A male production employee who attended the Expo with Barr was sometimes addressed first, and told her, in one case, “I watched you being ignored.”

A case of being ignored and dismissed is what drove Elaine Scrima, vice president of operations at Clearwater, Florida’s GSP, to take her company’s sizable investment to a competitor while she was at a trade show. She describes arriving at a vendor’s booth where she previously made an appointment with two men, only to be met by one as a no-show and one as a visibly disinterested representative who suggested she speak with a female colleague at the booth, someone she remains close with to this day. However, her relationship with that vendor ended that day.

“I was really taken aback by it,” she says, “to the point [where] they could have said, ‘Hey, we'll give you a free press to try for a year,’ but I would have [said] no, because if that's how they're going to treat me, how will they treat my people inside the shop?”

So, she took her business elsewhere. In this case, she took her business to Agfa, a company from which she then invested in 12 devices. And the company that dismissed her?

They lost out on the potential of a sale “in excess of $10 million when it's all said and done,” she explains, “because one of the philosophies that I implement when I'm buying equipment is redundancy.”

While it’s not guaranteed Scrima would have purchased equipment from the vendor that snubbed her, even if they had treated her respectfully, the company lost out on the opportunity to try to work with GSP.

“I may have met with them and decided that wasn't the piece of equipment for me as well, that's very possible,” she says. “But they didn't give me an opportunity to even put that into play. So, you know, it just left a not good taste in my mouth. And even to this day, I don't even go by their booth whenever I attend the show.” And that is something that has stuck with her for more than half a decade.

Nick Burton, founder of Eternal Designs, located in Rome, Georgia, has noted that this type of scenario has happened to him on several occasions. Burton, a minority business owner, notes that there is one particular instance that stands out when he attended a specific show for the first time in 2017. “I was interested in purchasing an auto [screen printing press] and was looking to get more information and my hands on the actual equipment I was interested in,” he explains. “I remember visiting a booth and walking around the equipment for a while. I was there for 20 minutes, and no one ever approached me. Realizing no one was coming up, I walked to another vendor.”

For anyone who experiences this, it can be frustrating. “I can’t say I was mad but more disappointed that this kind of stuff still happens,” Burton says. “I understand it is very hard to talk to everyone at these shows. A lot is going on, and there are a lot of people to engage. That said, the simple acknowledgment of people goes a long way.”

Another example: In a recent article published in Wide-Format Impressions, Maggie Harlow, owner of Signarama Downtown in Louisville, Kentucky, spoke of the “vibe” in certain trade show booths. After passing several booths featuring print samples showing several women in body paint, she chose instead to visit, and a major purchase, from a company that was welcoming and provided frank, informative discussion to help her make the best decision for her business.

The question here for exhibitors and others is how do event attendees perceive your business? Is what you’re putting on display ultimately unwelcoming, even offensive? A simple reality of business is that the larger your audience base, the greater capacity to conduct business. Is body paint really the best you can do?

The Broader View

Zooming out from the exhibitor/attendee dynamic described here to the wide activity of doing business, it is important to consider if (or how) this same behavior is occurring at your printing business. Are there subtle biases found within the culture of your company that exclude certain groups from your sales processes? Is the behavior of your sales or management team such that, for instance, women and minorities feel less than welcome?

Diversity, whether among prospects, customers, or employees, requires thoughtful positioning of your business, and may run strongly counter to habits or outdated perceptions of what is normal. In a podcast released last year on Impressions Xchange, Beck Sydow, founder at HumanKind Business Leaders, said, “Diversity is difficult because it drives us toward discomfort.” In many cases, it gets us out of our norm, forcing us to gain a deeper understanding – not all of it good – about ourselves and our businesses. This can also be viewed as growth. So, again, is your business welcoming to all? If not, then why not?

It may be that our current comfort drives our behaviors – it’s easy for us. Sierra Bitsie, a Navajo-born educator and community diversity leader, says, “Efficiency is the enemy of diversity.” Sticking with what we know, and whom we are most comfortable with and understand, is likely more efficient, in a way. But the approach is also exclusive of “variables” that force us to try harder or to work differently, to reach those we have previously excluded. But sex, gender, race, and other factors are not variables. They are inherent realities among your customer base.

You Might Be Surprised

While Barr says some of the experiences she had may be attributed to old-school thinking or generational differences, those are not viable excuses for those experiences. With outmoded biases removed, reaching the business owners of our industry today may be as simple as saying the same thing to everyone: “Hello. How can I help you today?”

Burton also notes that the changing landscape within the printing industry must be acknowledged. “Companies need to take note of the changing landscape and adjust, becoming more proactive and thoughtful in their approach to the buyer,” he says. “Companies must adjust to these trends or find themselves playing catch up to the companies that are already riding the wave.”

Several years ago, Wide-Format Impressions content director Dan Marx spoke with a veteran industry salesperson who had sized-up a young man in his trade show booth who had many tattoos and piercings.  He said his first impression of the potential customer was “Probably not.” Fortunately, he shared that he looked past his own bias and assumptions about the young man, and instead treated him as an “equal” prospect. That young man – a business owner – eventually became one of his best customers. This story is a prime example of not only “judging a book by its cover,” but also escaping the mistakes that approach can present.