Off the Cuff: Selling Decorated Apparel to Professionals

SALES & MARKETING

Off the Cuff: Selling Decorated Apparel to Professionals

January 15, 2010
By Mark L. Venit, MBA, Contributing Writer

During my elementary school days, I recall, my dentist wore a white cottonsheet garment with a Nehru-type collar and big buttons that ran along half of the top, from his shoulder to the neck. Today, my dentist wears a golf shirt embroidered with the logo of his practice. When using his jackhammer, he still wears an embroidered white smock, which could be a clue that he also may be wearing my blood in the next 10 minutes.

Since I live in a fairly rural, less formal area (Maryland's Eastern Shore), my physician frequently wears a golf shirt with an embroidered caduceus and a hospital logo with his name personalized — except in winter, when he wears a logoed poplin shirt. And on those occasions when he wears a white lab coat or lab jacket, it’s embroidered with the hospital (which owns the medical center) logo.

While most professionals still “dress the part,” many today dress “down” when working in their offices during the summer or on days when they’re not meeting with clients. On the links or at the gym, they often wear logoed shirts, a logoed cap, a logoed sportstrap attached to their sunglasses, and display a laser-engraved bagtag and a custom-decorated water bottle in their cart’s glove box.

Twenty-five years ago, I would comment to newcomers attending my workshops at Imprinted Sportswear Shows that our industry sells custom-decorated workwear and leisurewear “to virtually everyone — except maybe doctors, lawyers and accountants.”

Those exceptions quickly de-materialized, as decorated apparel made its mark in the professional world, where its denizens wear decorated garments on and off the job. Regrettably for owner-operator apparel decorators, however, it’s usually the promotional products salespeople who are calling on — and winning the orders from — professionals. Doctors, lawyers, accountants, architects, engineers and the whole world of tech-sector professionals buy tons of the stuff we decorate — but how many of them buy it directly from you?

As a general rule, professional practices rarely hear from apparel decorators. That’s because our industry generally forgets that these practices are also businesses and, consequently, doesn’t identify them as worthy prospects.

The reasons we often exclude professionals from our marketing agendas range from a lack of knowledge about whom to address an envelope (or a phone call) to and what the hot buttons are, to being concerned about being rebuffed by a guy who has a bunch of letters after his name. Knowing it’s often tough to get the time of day from a doctor — much less an appointment date in our lifetimes— we seriously question if our catalog-and-pricelist mailings or e-blasts will get the respect and attention we think they deserve.

So, how do you get penetration into the professionals’ universe, which is loaded with upscale consumers who aren't real price-sensitive and, rather, gravitate to high-ticket products? On whom should you call and how do you access them?

Let’s get to some answers.

While advertising in publications read by professionals may have some value, it can be prohibitively expensive for many companies. And the decision-makers on our product categories are usually staffers, not the practicing professionals who have more important matters on their plates.

But there are cost-effective ways to access decision-makers in the professional workplace — including direct mail, e-mail and direct selling.

Send Samples
Whether you call it junk mail or spam, thinking every solicitation you send will meet up with an angry recipient is way off the mark. Making advertising work effectively does take some talent and effort, and “right time, right place” matters — even if you get just a small response. But among the most effective — and often overlooked — marketing weapons in our arsenal is sending an actual sample and placing a follow-up phone call. Call it "old school" if you want, but samples tell a lot more of whatever we’re trying to say in words and pictures more easily, faster and more powerfully than the most mellifluous hype.

Assuming you’ve correctly targeted your audiences with the right products, your entreaties should not be addressed to the doctors, lawyers, and accountants themselves, but to the people in their practices whose responsibilities include placing these orders on the their behalf. In a medical practice, that person is more an office manager. In law firms, accounting firms and other non-medical practices, your materials are probably best addressed to the business manager. Where possible, call ahead to learn the names of these decision-makers because it’ll double or triple the response rate. Obtaining these names can be done by purchasing mailing lists or simply "letting your fingers do the walking."

To larger practices and professional firms, you might consider addressing your mailings to the Human Resources director, purchasing department and/or marketing director, where mailing lists or your time constraints preclude getting individual names.

Direct Selling
Direct selling efforts can be highly effective — if sales appointments are secured in advance. Professional offices generally frown on cold-calling salespeople. An initial meeting with buyers at professional offices usually falls into the “missionary” sales genre, an endeavor focused on acquainting these prospects with your products and services, as well as the advantages of doing business with your company. Never attempt a premature “close,” as professional buyers rarely have any immediate urgency to buy, and their decision-making processes usually require input from other individuals — often including the doctors, lawyers and accountants themselves.

You’re likely to find that many professional practices have no real graphic identities beyond the font chosen for their letterheads and business cards. But when given the option to incorporate a simple decorative enhancement to the logotype — such as stock icons, like the scales of justice or a quill pen, or the caduceus (the winged scepter with snakes intertwined around it) for medical offices — many professionals will take you up on the idea, and the resulting design will look much better.

On a humorous note, many years ago when I was on the producer side of the table, I gave a lawyer friend a cap embroidered with his firm’s name above a stock silhouette of a sports car chasing behind a stock silhouette of an ambulance. He got such a kick out it that he asked where I bought it, to which I replied that yours truly was the source of his delight! He subsequently ordered a few dozen caps and golf shirts for the guys at his office with the ambulance-chasing graphic, though without the firm’s name on it. I wouldn’t suggest, however, that you publish this as a stock design offering!

For astute graphic products marketers, an effective mailer, “sell sheet,” or mini-catalog can be produced in small quantities on your color printer and output in small quantities to “test” your vehicle in the chosen audiences. They also can become a regularly scheduled solicitation medium.

In organizing your selections, choose only the most popular items — a few apparel choices (for staff), and awards and executive gifts (for outstanding employees and big clients). Do not send soup-to-nuts wholesalers’ catalogs, as they’ll only confuse the buyer, muddy the waters and make your effort more cumbersome. In selling to professionals, you’ll find that less is often more. Though some people will argue to the contrary, my own experience is that sales flyers or a concise catalog will get faster, better results than distributing heavyweight catalogs.

Considering the millions of dollars in custom apparel that professional practices buy every year — and in light of the fact that only a handful of companies in our industry are making conscientious, proactive efforts to zero in on professional sectors — the opportunity to take a leadership position in this segment right now is huge. Moreover, the potential rewards far outweigh the risks and costs for those who’ll move to the head of class here.

And instead of always being of the paying end of bills for doctors, lawyers and accountants, wouldn’t it be nice to be on the receiving end for a change?

Mark L. Venit, MBA, is president of Apparel Graphics Institute Ltd., Ocean Pines, Md., which provides management and marketing consulting and proprietary research to apparel graphics companies throughout the Americas and Europe. He also is the chairman of ShopWorks Software LLC, a provider of industry-specific business software. Venit teaches pricing, strategic marketing, salesmanship and other business management topics at the Imprinted Sportswear Shows. You can contact him at markvenit@cs.com.

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