"Do not employ salesmen," he wrote. "Use Google instead. It’s cheaper, actually delivers and gives a far better return without all of the ego and bullshit."

Some would say it was only a matter of time – the increasing reliance of the consumer on Google searches to find products and services would inevitably, eventually, change the way the print industry sells itself.

But print is different. Product variables are multiple and complex and the tradition is of face-to-face interaction and close commercial relationships. Wells’ comment was inevitably met with a lament about the loss of the ‘human touch’ and a claim that what Wells thought was the future of print, was actually a virus that would bring about its demise.

Wells, as a former salesman, may seem an unlikely candidate for Grim Reaper to the profession. But since his adoption of an online sales model, the results speak for themselves.

"Our single biggest order off Google is £13,500," he reveals. "And, in the early days, I could go down a job list and tick off £5,000-£6,000 that had resulted from a £500 spend on Google. We also won a magazine deal worth around £30,000 over a period of time through a Google ad. It’s dropped off a bit since then, but it’s still very effective."

Online initiatives
By "early days", Wells is referring to the latter part of 2008 when he first began his internet experiment. Having paid someone to redesign his website, he became interested in how to get that website to the top of Google searches.

The answer was search engine optimisation (SEO), the process of inserting key words into your website titles and text (among other things) so that Google can find you. He also opted for a ‘sponsored link’, which only charges you when someone clicks on them, hence the term ‘pay-per-click’ (see box), to boost his profile.

Since 2008, Wells has expanded his use of both methods and he says that, although it is by no means a solution for everyone, for him it is a much more sensible approach to sales than hiring sales staff.

"A telemarketing campaign will cost you say £12,000 and to put a salesman on the road costs you around £50,000. There are a lot of risks in both: will either deliver, is the salesman as good as he says he is, will it pay off? Google is less of a risk. With Google, you can spend what is needed, when it is needed. You also have complete control over costs and its results are completely trackable."

The tracking software for both Adwords and SEO are free. When you sign up to Adwords you get access to a fully comprehensive reporting system on the performance of your ads; for SEO, you can sign up to software called Google Analytics, which tells you everything you need to know about your website visitors, from how long they spent on the website to what browser they were using.

Despite this wealth of free information and proven results, printers remain unconvinced. Gareth Morgan, managing director of SEO and pay-per-click consultancy firm Liberty Marketing, says it’s down to a lack of understanding of the potential benefits.  

"A lot of the print guys like the process of word of mouth and networking as opposed to the more impersonal online methods, despite the fact there is massive untapped potential online to generate work and sales," he says.

But if everyone gets on board, there is obviously the potential for multiple companies with the same key words, making climbing the Google rankings very complicated. Morgan says this is the case in the insurance industry at present and, as a result, specialist companies such as his own are employed to constantly monitor and amend a whole myriad of technical SEO factors, such as getting other companies to link to your own website, to keep a company near the top. It is unlikely that if this situation occurred in print, consultancy of this frequency could be financed.

While the alternative approach of pay-per-click can be effective, it can be expensive – even in print it costs as much as £2 a click to be at the top for some key words. So if you have lots of people clicking through, but the interest is not converted to work, you can quickly rack up a bill for no gain.

As a result Morgan says constant observation of results is key. You need to establish what works for you and amend or cancel if the returns are not forthcoming. He doesn’t advocate a full-scale switch to SEO and pay-per-click at the expense of all else, but advises instead a move to make both a key part of the marketing mix, one that can deliver excellent leads for sales people to follow up.  

Jane Houghton, managing director at Future Recruitment, agrees. "It is not enough to just rely on SEO, you need to follow it up. The company that responds quickly to an SEO enquiry and arranges to see a new client immediately, will have a better chance of winning the business."

However, it is the quality of sales people that is turning the likes of Wells away from human operators altogether. Indeed, Wells still cold calls and has sales meetings, he just does them himself rather than employ people who have often "lost their job through poor performance".

Perhaps, then, it is poorly trained sales staff who are having a hand in their own downfall and leaving a gap in the door for SEO and pay-per-click?

Dani Novick, managing director at recruitment company Mercury Search and Selection, says that if this is the case, that more training is needed for sales staff, then print needs to help rectify the situation.  

"The standard of sales people is improving, but often only through the candidate’s own personal initiative, as very few companies invest in training. Some organisations like the Lateral Group are delivering sales programmes resulting in a more effective sales force, but this is more the exception."

Sell not spend
In their defence, printers may argue that in the tough market conditions they need a salesperson to be selling and earning money, not training and spending it. Novick, however, argues that this investment is crucial as the role of the salesperson is still integral to the future of success of print.

"There can be no doubt that, for certain products and markets, Google search and pay-per-click can be very effective," she explains. "However, because there is less opportunity to interact with the customer, offerings, even where there is a degree of choice, will inevitably become standardised and therefore commoditised, which puts all of the power with the buyer and prices will fall.

"The role, and real value, of a sales person is to create opportunities that lead to businesses opening up new markets and channels, helping them service their customers’ current and future needs. There are obvious ways for the mediums to work together and the more effective your IT systems are the more you free up your sales people to go out and generate these new opportunities."

Rather than the death of the salesman, then, SEO and pay-per-click should be regarded as another weapon in the salesman’s armoury, and in a market where every order counts, a company needs as many weapons as it can get. Printers may have been able to ignore the benefits of Google Ads and SEO thus far, but they won’t be able to afford to for much longer.

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JARGON BUSTER
Gareth Morgan, marketing managing director at Liberty, translates the technical terms

Search engine optimisation (SEO) "SEO essentially determines how far up the list of results your website is when someone searches on Google or other search engines. It is split into two areas: the onsite and the offsite. Onsite is all about key words. If you are a brochure printer in Swansea, you need to have key words relating to that within the content of your website, so ‘brochures’, ‘south wales’, ‘Swansea printer’, ‘specialist’. Offsite is basically getting other websites to link to your own, and the more websites that point to your own, the higher you get in the Google rankings."

Pay-per-click "Pay-per-click is basically an auction. If you are willing to pay more than anyone else for someone to click on your advert, then you are at the top of the list on the Google sponsored links area, which is on the right of the main search screen when you conduct a search. Your advert will come up when words within it are searched for."

For more information on Google Ad Words, click here
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