25. The drilling machine

25.

The drilling machine

What do customers really want? That is the most central and important question. Put it this way, would your customer want a drilling machine or a hole in the wall? You already know the answer and I strongly believe that the customer wants a hole in the wall. Yes, the best one at the best price, made fast enough, good-looking enough, and so on. But they don’t really care how you’ve made it?!

Historically, printers and converters in the graphic market saw it the other way around. Back then, it was important to have the right tool (Heidelberg, Komori, KBA, Man Roland or HP Indigo) but still all of them delivered the “hole in the wall” – the right kind of “hole” at the right price? Today, there is almost no interest regarding what brand of tools you use as long as you deliver the hole, the perfect end product. What’s more important is your choice of partners and your own business model. With the “hole in the wall” theory, I mean that the value the product generates is more important than the product itself. Not as it was in the past where high quality was the only value that mattered, which originates from the days when printing was a handcraft. Today, the value comes more from the communicated quality response we get from the print, most of today’s tools produce good or good enough quality for that depending on which kind of technology for which kind of product. The focus of brand owners has changed toward that value. Spending money on printing today is more about what result (measurable) and/or what value you get back from using printed media instead of other alternatives like electronic, social media, etc. Commercial print is still struggling with how to add and present this value to the CMOs, while packaging has this

attention today – the trend is to sell more products through the package itself. The priority for packaging toward digital will first be value, time to market, shorter runs, variations, etc., and then we’ll get to the drilling machine or the hole in the wall again. This means that we need to add value in competition with other media. As commercial print today is being replaced by electronic displays when it comes to information, packaging still has to be physical and protect and carry the product inside (again, it’s hard to get one liter of milk inside of an iPad). Packaging has to continue to develop and become smarter, lighter, and more attractive. We will also see more intelligence coming in, adding more value. It boils down to the same question and the same answer. It’s the drilling machine or the hole in the wall, same-same but very different. The secret is to walk a mile in your customer’s shoes, view it all through their eyes. Place yourself in your customer’s position. Your view will change if you do. Try to imagine how your customers think. Understand their challenges and demands. They are fighting and struggling every day to achieve so many things that you can help out with and do for them, becoming their prime supplier. Support and help them to be more successful also in front of their customers, which is often us consumers. Sell the “hole in the wall”. Give the customers what they want. The consumers don’t care about your drilling machines; they care about a nice hole done with good quality, the right value and at the right price, where the right price doesn’t have to be the lowest price. The brand owners chase the best “holes in the wall” because that sells more of their products. Keep that in mind. Think about it: drilling machine or hole in the wall.