New York City is replete with PFL customers. One of them, Affinity Commercial, leases commercial space in the city. (Need some space? Contact them at: (AC@AffinityCommercial.com)

They recently got a makeover of the 4×6 postcards they use as mini-brochures for marketing to potential clients. They added a compelling graphic, spiced the piece up with some color on both sides, and cleaned up the clutter. Look at how separating the bulleted list of “services offered” into four short columns made it more readable. I also like the classy feeling created by using an italic font for “Specializing in Midtown Manhattan.”

Postcard/Brochure Before Makeover

Postcard/Brochure After Makeover

Continuous improvement in their print marketing materials is just one more reason PFL’s customers are the best. Nice work, Moshe and Sloane!

I am of the opinion that when it comes to highlighting what your company does and why someone should work with you, video often speaks louder than words. Here at PFL, we use multimedia in many different ways, but our favorite thing to do is showcase our remarkable small business customers by giving them a voice.

Have happy customers? I suggest working with them to create unique video accounts of how your business has helped them be more successful. You’ll deepen your relationship with your customers and give them a way to promote their own businesses. Hint: The more off-the-wall and creative the better!

Need some inspiration? Here is a video of PFL customer Jason White from Mattress Safe showing off his dance moves:

The Lesson List – What I’ve learned

I’ve spent more than 20 years working in rapid growth small businesses and recently had a MBA student ask me one of the most interesting questions I’ve had in some time. What have been the 3 most important lessons I’ve learned? It is a great question and harder to answer than I thought. After sleeping on it, here is what I came up with:

Like a shark, you have to swim forward or die
Innovation is the key to any young business. If you are not looking to improve your service or product at all times a competitor will do it and you will lose your advantage and go out of business.

You should be willing to do anything for money as long as it is legal, ethical and moral
Too many people in start up businesses get fixated on their ideas and don’t make money when they can. If you run a painting company and someone asks if they can buy brushes from you, why not make some extra money even if that is not your main business?

Stupid people cost you money
While this seems harsh, it is true. Failure to hire and train the very best people you can is the death of many businesses. If you hire someone who just does not get the job done, cut them lose as soon as possible. You are doing both parties a favor.

It is not often that you get a request to share your hard earned wisdom in a short and concise manner. I’d suggest that everyone try the exercise even if you don’t share your answers with anyone. You might be surprised with how useful your lesson list can be as you deal with your day to day problems.

One of the best things about working at PFL is that we can bring our dogs to work.  After loving everyone else’s dogs for almost three years, I finally convinced my husband to replace our dear departed Corgi, Sadie, with a new pup.

 Allie started coming to work with me at 8 weeks old. She was a bit tentative at first, huddling under my chair, but now at 16 weeks she rules the Marketing room.  She gets a steady stream of visitors, both human and dog, who want to take a stress break and play with her.  She is starting to get a bit rambunctious so if anyone has any good tips on teaching “Come” and “No Bark” I would appreciate it. I wouldn’t want her to get banned for being a little trouble maker.

 Our dog-friendly policy helps make PFL a great place to work.  If you work for a dog-friendly company let’s hear from you. If not, why not try to implement it. We would be happy to send you our dog rules and policy!

 Here is a list of the dogs that roam PFL on a daily basis:

Allie   - Welsh Pembroke Corgi
Bear    - Labrador Retriever/Weimaraner
Bodie  – Malamute
Daisy   – Labrador Retriever
Jax       – Boston Terrier
Jessie  – Border Collie
Louey  - Boston Terrier
Lulu     - Dachshund
Resi      - Deutsch Drahthaar
Shelby – Springer Spaniel

I remember a job from years ago where the training consisted of me filling out some paperwork, skimming a manual, a quick pep-talk from the boss and then getting thrown in, to “learn as I go.” That was not a great experience, and I learned things sporadically, got frustrated, and frustrated my employer. Many of you can probably relate in one way or another to getting “training” at a job like this.

Here at PFL, we value training our new employees. So much so that we pay them to train for four weeks before they are even out on the floor, test them, have graduation requirements and other full time employees who are expert in their departments take time to train them. Why? Simple–if we are not learning as a company, we will fall behind. A business learns as its people learn.

Take a look at this short list of questions, and see if any spark an idea for your company:
-How can you use training to improve company culture?
-What can we focus on in training that we are currently lacking or can strengthen on the floor (sales, efficiencies, etc.)?
- Are we seeing leadership opportunities for the trainers, and recognizing future leadership needs in the class?

Don’t look at employee training as a part-time thing. Employees are an invaluable asset to your business–that is a no-brainer. But, investing in them strategically and looking down the road is the smart way to get the rewards that pay off now and in the future.

Every conference and seminar I’ve attended in the last 2 years has had one or more sessions on how businesses should be using new media like Facebook, Twitter, blogs, et al, collectively called “SocNet” or Social Networking. PFL’s customers take a variety of approaches, from aggressive use of SocNet, to ignoring it completely. It has felt like SocNet is more consumer-oriented, and since PrintingForLess serves organizations, rather than consumers, perhaps SocNet is not terribly important for us.

On the other hand, our modest efforts, primarily this blog and some Twittering, have sparked some good responses and engagement from our customer base, in the form of blog comments and re-tweets.

One of the things we’ve had fun with is tweets featuring links to our customers’ print projects. We post a hook or riddle, then link to a funny/interesting/beautiful image or piece. Instead of making it about us, we’re making it about you.

Check it out: http://twitter.com/pflcom

If you want to find out a bit more on business use of SocNet, here is a brief “11 Commandments” courtesy of @johnfoleyjr.

We love helping our customers be successful as they define it.

We also love living in Montana in the springtime!

If you read the title and are still reading, you must have salespeople in your company.

For all of us who interview, hire, train, coach, and manage salespeople, Seth Godin’s recent blog post reflects what I have thought for years. He doesn’t use the phrase “service heart mindset” but that is another way of looking at what he describes — or bringing it about.

Our best salespeople reach out, truly connect with customers, know their needs intimately, and are TRULY Easy To Do Business With, or ETDBW. And they sell more.

Being disciplined enough to hire and keep only the best salespeople is hard, especially in a small or high-growth business. But make no mistake: it’s worth it.

The Wall Street Journal has an excellent article on direct mail marketing (DMM). It turns out that dropping the DMM portion of a company’s marketing campaign can trash inbound leads and customer activity. A better idea is to add opt-in email and web presence to your DMM activity, for a truly integrated marketing communications effort.

Read more: http://tinyurl.com/WSJonSnailMail

No business is an island. But while we focus heavily on our customers and employees, we sometimes forget another key stakeholder: our vendors.

An unfortunate discovery yesterday reminded me that it is our job to communicate our expectations to our vendors clearly and unambiguously, and their job to execute crisply. If we are sloppy in our Purchase Orders, we can expect sloppy execution from our vendors. That lesson cost us $1,800.

Treat your vendors like valued partners. At the same time, hold them to a high bar.