Get Belligerent So You’re Not Eaten Alive—5 Tips from Jeffrey Hayzlett

Posted by Jill Havlat on April 09, 2012 under Becoming a Marketing Services Provider and Featured and Printing Hub 2012

The market is littered with fallen printers because digitization and the economic slowdown are starving many of you to the point of bankruptcy. Without a strong customer base to feed you, your business will go hungry.

But you can’t control digitization, and the economy won’t turn around just because your printing company needs it to. You can only control your response to this climate. Adapt and survive.

At Printing Hub 2012, best-selling author Jeffrey Hayzlett explained the top five reasons why people—and businesses—fail:

Fear.

Businesses recognize a need to change but they don’t drive it. They’re too afraid to move. Instead they sit and wait for a fearless, more agile competitor to gobble up their customers.

Tension.

Leaders who shirk conflict are asking to fail. Hayzlett explained, “Healthy debate is good. You need to put tension into your business. If we say, ‘No Pain, No Gain,’ why don’t we have tension in business?”

Radical Transparency.

Transparency is lacking in doomed businesses. Hayzlett encouraged his audience talk about the elephants in the room. Address problems so you can move on.

Risk.

Take risks like becoming a marketing services provider. As Hayzlett told attendees, “I wanted to get in a fight with [Big Ink] by poking them so that they’d talk about price.” With that Hayzlett seemed to recommend printers get a little bit belligerent. And we like it.

Promises.

For Hayzlett, “promises are mutual conditions of satisfaction—these aren’t forecasts.” Make promises to your customers. Keep them.

Alright, get moving. Fight through fear, welcome tension and be belligerent. Hayzlett would want you to.

Plan on joining us in Chicago next May for Printing Hub 2013.

Tell us in the comments below, what is your printing company afraid of? How will you fight through fear?