Hi. I’m Kent Buescher, President and CEO of U.S. Press LLC here in Valdosta, Georgia, and I guess we’re going to talk a little bit today about knowing your customer. You know, that’s the most important thing that we really need to do in our business and that is who is our customer? How would our customer react? You know, I’ve seen so many things. We print 30 or 40,000 different pieces every year for customers all over the country. We print some great piece and we print some pieces I don’t understand. And it’s like that with so many things in advertising. When we talk to our customers it’s like we don’t understand what it is they want.

And I’m reminded of the story that I think that everybody needs to remember when you market, and that is there was a company that had probably the best advertising that they’d ever seen. They had great packaging, they had all these wonderful things, and they were in the dog food business. And they couldn’t figure out why the sales just weren’t going anywhere. I mean they kind of went up and they kind of peaked and leveled off, and despite everything they were doing they just weren’t—they just couldn’t sell anymore. And so they employed the best and brightest minds to try and figure it out. And finally, one little wormy guy in the back one days said well, you know, I think I know what it is. And they said what? And he says, the dogs hate it, sir.

And so, you know, I think it’s important to understand what our customers want. It doesn’t matter what business we’re in, but we need to ask them, we need to talk to them, and we need to create a dialogue with our customers. We can’t just have a one-way only conversation. Our conversation should be two-way, and so that as we are able to do that we can develop a relationship with those customers that allows us to be an important vendor to them. And that’s what we try to do at U.S. Press for our own customers, is to understand their business. I always figured they’ve got to have a problem. If they don’t have a problem, I don’t have a customer usually. And, you know, in our case we’re trying to help people reach their customers, and that’s the things that we do on a day-in and day-out basis.

So my advice always to customers is the first thing I tell them is what does your customer want? Would you buy this product? I mean it’s some little basic kind of questions that we ask. You know, would I be a customer for what I want to sell? And I’ve had people come in to me and they say they’ve got a great product and they say I’ve got this great idea and I want to do it, and it’s a neat looking thing, but I look at it and I think for the life of me how would you use this product? Is it something anybody even needs? So I think it’s important to ask some basic questions and know our customers, and make sure that we’re able to talk to our customers in a manner they expect to be and provide the information they need, and help them with whatever their problem is.

For more information about knowing your customers, please feel free to give us a call at U.S. Press at 229-244-5634 or check us out on the web at uspress.com.