Fuji Xerox brings direct marketing to the print table

Printers must sit at the "big person table" in order to sell more than just print to their clients, said communication and printing services experts at Fuji Xerox Innovate 08.

Speakers at the event, which is making its way through the Asia-Pacific region and will travel to Malaysia next, were Bizucate President Peter Muir, Lithexcel's Waleed Ashoo and Xerox's Joe Rouhana. The sessions addressed the need for printers to become more knowledgeable about direct marketing tools in order to offer them to clients as part of their service.

Muir made the "big table" comment in a discussion about print solution pricing during the day's final session. Ashoo used examples from his own business to show how printers were under-valuing the work they do, arguing that the price should reflect the value that the print and marketing solution adds to the client's business.

"We charge for our brain power, our knowledge, our expertise," said Ashoo. He proposed a value-pricing model that included fees for creative work, project management, data management and analysis and online implementation.

Pictured: Joe Rouhana and Waleed Ashoo.

But when it comes to putting the invoice to the client, printers must go over the heads of the print buyers and go straight to the top, Muir said. He maintained that while in the past this relationship has been managed by marketing agencies or print buyers, but it's time to reach for a higher level.

Muir and Ashoo agreed that printers must expand their services to show that what they are selling is much more than ink on a page. Rouhana gave just one example of how printers can add value to their clients' business by implementing any of Xerox's security imaging features on the iGen3. These included microtext, glossmark text and Infrared text, all of which require almost no extra equipment or training.