Ok Kids, are you ready for my next installment. Go grab a drink, kick the shoes of and get ready for this one.
Let get something straight, printers are printers, not some magician that can pull 100M postcards, inkjeted, sort and ready to mail, out of thin air. Lets get something straight, printing takes time and more time then you can imagine.
So here is my beef. I had customer’s on countless occasions, make “minor” changes to proofs and then ask, “You can still deliver/mail this in (fill day here)?” My response was, “I’ll check with production, but most likely not.”
A minor change is a minor change. I don’t care if you are replacing an image, or adding a period at the end of a sentence. There is still a process all printing companies follow to fix customer changes. Here is basic understanding of what happens.
1. Sales Rep writes up your changes and submits them to a CSR
2. CSR inputs the changes into the job tracking program and sends it off to prepress land.
3. Prepress manager puts it inline with all the other changes
4. Prepress operator makes the changes
5. Prepress operator (different one) outputs a new proof
6. New proofs are sent to the CSR
7. CSR send proofs to You or Sales Rep
8. You sign off on them
9. Now we are ready to go.
In that 9 steps at least 4-6 people (depending on the size of the printing company) has touched your job for some “minor” change. You know how long all this takes. Figure 2 days, if your lucky maybe 1 day. If you are really lucky, send a lot of work to me, and are good looking (only joking) and I’m not hung over, you might see it same day, but you have send me an ass load of projects before you get to that level.
So you see, your “minor” change isn’t that minor at all. Oh yes, I’m going to bill you for these changes too. So don’t get pissed that a missing period cost you $300. You got off lucky.
As a sales rep, my job is to manage your expectations as well as my team back at the plant’s expectations. See, we don’t like to have a project in our plant any longer then it needs to be. The longer a job is in a plant and off schedule, the more likely we are going to end up losing money on it.
So my suggestion is to make sure you give yourself and your team some wiggle room. If you know your copy editor sucks, well add a couple of days to his/her due date. If you know there is going to be changes, let me know. That way I can manage people on my end. This way when your project ships on time, we are all fat and happy.
Let get something straight, printers are printers, not some magician that can pull 100M postcards, inkjeted, sort and ready to mail, out of thin air. Lets get something straight, printing takes time and more time then you can imagine.
So here is my beef. I had customer’s on countless occasions, make “minor” changes to proofs and then ask, “You can still deliver/mail this in (fill day here)?” My response was, “I’ll check with production, but most likely not.”
A minor change is a minor change. I don’t care if you are replacing an image, or adding a period at the end of a sentence. There is still a process all printing companies follow to fix customer changes. Here is basic understanding of what happens.
1. Sales Rep writes up your changes and submits them to a CSR
2. CSR inputs the changes into the job tracking program and sends it off to prepress land.
3. Prepress manager puts it inline with all the other changes
4. Prepress operator makes the changes
5. Prepress operator (different one) outputs a new proof
6. New proofs are sent to the CSR
7. CSR send proofs to You or Sales Rep
8. You sign off on them
9. Now we are ready to go.
In that 9 steps at least 4-6 people (depending on the size of the printing company) has touched your job for some “minor” change. You know how long all this takes. Figure 2 days, if your lucky maybe 1 day. If you are really lucky, send a lot of work to me, and are good looking (only joking) and I’m not hung over, you might see it same day, but you have send me an ass load of projects before you get to that level.
So you see, your “minor” change isn’t that minor at all. Oh yes, I’m going to bill you for these changes too. So don’t get pissed that a missing period cost you $300. You got off lucky.
As a sales rep, my job is to manage your expectations as well as my team back at the plant’s expectations. See, we don’t like to have a project in our plant any longer then it needs to be. The longer a job is in a plant and off schedule, the more likely we are going to end up losing money on it.
So my suggestion is to make sure you give yourself and your team some wiggle room. If you know your copy editor sucks, well add a couple of days to his/her due date. If you know there is going to be changes, let me know. That way I can manage people on my end. This way when your project ships on time, we are all fat and happy.