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Plant tours, open houses, in-plant seminars—all are designed to accomplish the same results: to educate customers and potential customers about your company's potential for helping them achieve their objectives. While they are all designed to accomplish the same goal, there is a variance in how they are conducted
Going on Tour
For plant tours, make a list of prospects. These can include students—especially from art, printing, design, and photography. Write to specific department heads outlining your plant tour policy. Ask them about operations they might like to see. Civic and professional groups and trade associations are another target. Be prepared to alter your work activities for a tour, since many groups meet in the evening.
You will need information to make the tour effective. You will need to know the number of people on tour, and the group's schedule in order to alter working hours, cut, or expand portions of the tour. You will need to know the group's primary interest, to allow you to stress key operations, touch on others, and have the right personnel doing presentations.
You will have to brief plant personnel on who is coming, when, and why. You will need to check your insurance to make sure you are covered in respect to all contingencies. You must assign tour personnel with an eye to expertise and familiarity with assigned areas. Clean and fix up your plant as much as your budget will allow, and consider these extras: unfamiliar or complex processes; samples or promotional handouts; refreshments.
The actual tour route to follow is the actual workflow within your plant. Try to have special-interest groups such as art directors or photographers, end tours in related departments. Have departmental personnel demonstrate and explain their specialties, but keep the tour guide in charge to avoid distractions and prolonged discussions. Keeping each group together and attentive makes the tour more efficient.
The maximum ideal group size is 15. Maintain a safe environment during tours. Avoid potentially hazardous areas. Make sure electrical fixtures and lighting are in good condition. Bring groups back to the starting point or gathering area for final discussion and questions.
My House Is Your House
An employee open house at your printing company can reap valuable dividends by improving company awareness and employee morale, increasing the visibility of executive management, demonstrating manufacturing processes, and enhancing your firm's image as it is perceived by employees and their families.
The success of an open house depends upon setting objectives and thorough planning of specific ways to accomplish them. Once you define objectives, you should not deviate from them.
When planning, define your objectives and your theme, select a committee with reps from all areas of your firm, choose a date and time, determine your invitation method, and outline the promotion of your open house.
Budget considerations include plant cleanup, displays, invitations/postage, refreshments, decorations, entertainment, chair/table rental, guest/employee name tags, and product samples to give away.
Safety and security considerations include roping off machinery, walking the tour routes carefully to check safety, doing general housekeeping through the office/plant areas, keeping groups together at all times, and instituting a sign-in system for listing employees and respective family members.
Saturday Morning Seminars
In-plant seminars can provide current and potential customers with an understanding of the diversity and technical aspects of your company's products. They can demonstrate appropriate uses of printing and show commonly used specifications; they can spotlight the product assets of your company. Saturday mornings are ideal for bringing together art directors, graphic designers, and clients for briefings at your plant.
The following is a suggested plan of action, along with details to be considered: prepare a lesson plan, select a convenient time for seminar, review samples, slides, photographs, and brochures to be displayed, select a mailing list of prospective guests, design and print invitations, design and print business cards for instructors, mail invitations, receive reservations, confirm reservations, develop local media coverage and publicity, implement plant cleanup, collect support materials, review seminar program with instructors, inspect plant for readiness and safety, and then conduct the seminar.
While some of the above appear to overlap, they are all important in their place and make a definite contribution. Regardless of their importance, it is always wise to remember that nothing happens until somebody sells something. Good Hunting.
George's company, ProTrain, is available for specific assignments in sales and marketing. He can be reached at georgemreinfeld@juno.com.
author: By George Reinfeld