Carnival of Inkjet Printed Backlit Signs

Printing backlit signs for a travelling carnival

Keith Bernard, owner of Now That’s a Wrap by Road Signs, is a vinyl application expert. Based in Sarasota, Fla., the company wraps anything and everything with precision and perfection.

When the company was recently asked to create a package of 48 backlit signs for two carnival game stations, Bernard decided to take a unique approach.

Instead of simply applying a translucent backlit inkjet material with a gloss laminate to the front of the approximately 24″ x 40″ Lexan panels that would line the top of the game structure, Bernard printed LexJet Simple Transparent Adhesive Vinyl in reverse, backed it with Simple Translucent Vinyl (6 Mil) and applied both to the Lexan with a laminator.

An alternate way to print backlit signs“Since they travel a lot from place to place and they wanted it protected by the Lexan itself so that if the Lexan gets scratched it doesn’t scratch the print. So we did a second-surface mount and mirrored the image so that you’re looking through the Lexan at the graphic,” explains Bernard. “We could have printed to a translucent material and applied a gloss laminate and no one would know the difference, but with the second surface mount to the Lexan it really looks a lot better and it’s more durable for all the traveling it will do.”

Once the carnival is ready to pull up stakes and move to the next venue, like a state fair, the entire game station folds up for easy transportation. Then, when it’s folded out again the Lexan graphics are already in place in their slots and backlit with LEDs recessed in the top of the game station.

“Those graphics really popped out there and the customer was very happy,” adds Bernard. And, thanks to the process Bernard chose to apply the graphics they can be handled rather roughly with no damage to the graphics.

The Art of the Serendipity Sales Pitch

Serendipity is defined as good fortune, luck, or an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident. I prefer the Serendipity Pitch over the traditional Elevator Pitch.

If you’re in sales, you know the drill. A hard to reach customer just happens to get on an elevator with you. You both get on at the bottom floor and are headed to the top. It will give you a precious minute of uninterrupted one-on-one time with this impossible to reach customer. The clock’s ticking. What do you say that gets you the appointment, or better yet, a sale right on the spot?

In many ways, I’m old school when it comes to what you need in your sales tool box. Skills like active listening, strong questioning techniques and efficient time management are timeless. Perhaps the most important of these fundamental skills is preparation. Being prepared frees up the mind. It allows us to process information we are getting from a customer, without having to think about facts we should already know.

You’d think these key skills would be a must for today’s sales pros. Think again. In today’s selling environment, technology is making many salespeople lazy. Email and texts have served to erode the quality of writing skills. Smart phones and tablets flood us with data, but do very little to convert that information into knowledge. Attention to detail and well-honed skills are a mark of the 20 percent of salespeople who are doing 80 percent of the business.

Point of View
When creating your Serendipity Pitch, it’s very important to think like the other person in the conversation. While the traditional version of this scenario focuses on you speaking with a hard to reach customer, what if the person receiving the information isn’t a customer?

Imagine you’re attending a dinner party and one of the folks at the party (a lawyer) asks you, “So what do you do?” Obviously, the information you provide to the lawyer will be different than the information you deliver to the potential customer. Both are important. While the lawyer may not be a potential customer – though you never know; he may need courtroom graphics at some point – ultimately, he may know someone who would benefit from your product or service.

A well crafted Serendipity Pitch provides the lawyer all the information they may need to positively present you to their friend. It’s because of this fact that I always create two versions of my pitch. I create one for someone who fundamentaly understands the products I offer, and one for someone who doesn’t.

Get to the Verb
I love this phrase! This one comes from LexJet’s founder, Art Lambert, who’s a very successful sales executive and entreprenuer. I believe his phrase sums up the mind of the customer perfectly. Customers are busy, so get to the point.

What does he mean by the verb? It means you need to give the customer a reason to listen to you… now. Who are you? What do you want from me? Why should I invest my time listening to you? How does what you propose/offer benefit my business? How much will I save with your solution? When may I expect these savings to my bottom line? When speaking to our proverbial lawyer you want to convert his casual and polite inquiry into genuine interest.

Ditch the Pitch
When making their pitch, most people rattle off a list of their responsibilities or the products and services their company provides, kind of like Bubba Blue in Forrest Gump: “There’s shrimp-kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There’s pinapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich. That… That’s about it.”

Like Bubba, our tendency is to say everything we do because we do so much. There’s certainly value in everything you do, but here’s what happens… The more information you provide, the less memorable you become, unless you’re Bubba Blue.

So, the perfect pitch is not a pitch at all; it’s really conversational messaging. It’s relaxed, fairly informal and, most importantly, it boils everything you do down to its essense. Moreover, it communicates the value of what you do in practical terms to the person with whom you’re speaking.

Ask for the Order
Don’t waste your minute with meaningless chatter. Get to the point, be confident and be direct about what you want. It communicates to the customer you value his time, you know your stuff and Key sales pitch bullet pointsyou believe in what you’re selling. Regarding the lawyer, ask if he knows of anyone who might benefit from your solution.

I’ve included a graphic in this post that helps us focus on the key elements of our pitch. It’s called the Relationship Revolver and it includes the six “bullets” we want to communicate during our conversation.

Briefly, these are the descriptions of the bullet points:

  • We sell products
  • We help customers
  • We build relationships
  • We create value
  • We share knowledge
  • We invest to continuously expand our capability to serve you

I started this post with the defintion of serendipity and that I prefer it over the term elevator. Now I’ll tell you why… Invest time learning about your customer. Be well prepared. Be confident. Practice until it feels natural. When you’ve done these things, the customer lucky enough to have stepped onto that elevator will be the one experiencing serendipity.

Have fun, make money…

Short Term Promotions with Punch at Colonial Beverage

Printing fabric with a wide format inkjet printerVersatility is the name of the game at Colonial Beverage in North Dartmouth, Mass. With a print shop headed by Tennyson Lacasio that’s deluging the local beer market with point of sale graphics to ensure its brands get top billing, Lacasio needs consistent, reliable, high-quality inkjet materials that keep Colonial in front of the consumer.

A lot of Lacasio’s printing is in the form of banners for just about every application imaginable, indoors and outdoors, from table drapes and entryway banners to flags, awnings and stage displays for special events. Lacasio recently switched from a scrim banner for the bulk of that work to LexJet’s new Poly Select Heavy fabric.

Printing on fabric for banner applications“It has better image quality,” Lacasio explains as the primary reason he’s continuing to use Poly Select Heavy. Print quality is one of Lacasio’s top priorities, if not the top priority, for the prints that leave the shop. Lacasio takes extra care with his designs to ensure the biggest impact for Colonial Beverage at the point of sale, to which the photos of his work on the fabric shown here certainly attest.

Of course there are other reasons he likes this new fabric so much: “It’s much more durable in the wind; we’ve been using it for about two months and we haven’t had to replace any torn banners, so we’re saving money by not having to replace banners as quickly,” he says.

Inkjet printing on fabricAfter picking Lacasio’s brain and getting a feel for what he was looking for, Lacasio’s customer specialist, Chris Piersoll, suggested Poly Select Heavy as a solution. “I asked if a lighter, airy banner that comes in longer rolls to eliminate some waste in production would work for him. He liked the idea of a new banner material that could help show off his product better and differentiate him from his competition,” recalls Piersoll.

Piersoll’s recommendation turned out to be just what the printer ordered. “I’ve been using it for about two months now printing on an HP Z6100 with really good results. It’s also very popular with our customers. I’ve never been disappointed with anything Chris has recommended we use,” adds Lacasio.

Extreme Snow Sledding on Sunset Select Gloss Canvas

Sledding downhill on inkjet canvasDo not try this at home, or in your studio. Now that we’ve got that disclaimer out of the way we can share an unusual thrill seeking ride that Jimmy Coray of Kimo’s Kamera took from the top of Mount Nebo’s south summit (11,877 feet, the highest in the Wasatch Range) 900 feet down at a 70 percent grade.

Kimo’s Kamera is a photography studio and photo lab located in Nephi, Utah, just a few miles from Mount Nebo. Coray makes the trek up to the summit every winter as well as a few times in the summer. This time around Coray sewed together a few pieces of LexJet Sunset Select Gloss Canvas to make an eight-foot long sled for the adrenalin rush immortalized on video (click here to see the video on the Kimo’s Kamera Facebook page).

Using inkjet canvas as a snow sled
Jimmy Coray prepares his Sunset Select Gloss Canvas "sled" for a 900-foot ride down 11,877-foot Mount Nebo in Utah's Wasatch Mountains.

“We had some extra canvas we printed that we didn’t get the color quite right, so I sewed them together and thought I’d give it a try,” says Coray. “The canvas didn’t rip or tear so I’d say that’s pretty good, plus it was fun.”

When Coray isn’t sledding on the canvas, he’s printing it for family photos and special projects.

“We love the gloss canvas; it has a great look to it. It’s been over the past year that we’ve really pushed the canvas and that’s been going very well for us,” says Coray.

A non-sledding split-image gallery wrap on Sunset Select Gloss Canvas by Kimo's Kamera.

Coray’s next experiment with LexJet media will be a mountain bike made out of Sunset Photo Metallic Paper. Just kidding, but then again, you never know…

Make sure to send us your craziest experiments with LexJet media and if you’re interested in all the possibilities, call a customer specialist at 800-453-9538.

Three New Canon imagePROGRAF Printers Win BERTL Best Awards

Canon’s new imagePROGRAF iPF8300, 6350, and 6300 wide-format inkjet printers have all received BEST distinctions from BERTL, Inc. as part of the industry analyst firm’s 15th Annual Awards.  The BERTL BEST recognition builds upon the recent Five-Star Exceptional ratings the new models recently earned for their extraordinary image quality, enhanced image-processing capability, and advanced printing technologies.

BERTL , which stands for Business Equipment Research and Test Laboratories, provides end users with objective, independent product evaluation reports and comparative analyses on imaging devices and software solutions. BERTL prohibits any manufacturer-control over its product evaluations, and bases its opinions, ratings and awards on a combination of rigorous analysis and worldwide customer satisfaction research. They use 11 testing criteria to bestow performance-based ratings: Build Quality, Network Administration, Security, Workflow, Finish, Ease of Use, Media Handling, Printing, Image Quality, Features, and Price.

“Canon U.S.A. is proud to receive the BERTL BEST award for providing large-format solutions that meet the color quality, precision and workflow needs of graphic arts and photography professionals, ” said Jim Rosetta, vice president and general manger, Imaging Systems Group, Canon U.S.A. “Since its launch, the imagePROGRAF line has established itself as the preferred choice for professionals seeking a highly-versatile, easy-to-navigate solution capable of delivering extraordinary color-intensive output.”

To deliver extraordinary image quality across an expanded range of media types, the new imagePROGRAF models feature a Media Configuration Tool that enhances the precision and quality of output achieved with third-party and genuine Canon-branded applications.

Additional print options and improved photographic output capabilities are delivered through bundled print plug-ins for Adobe Photoshop® and Canon’s Digital Photo Professional that support Adobe’s Color Management Module. These functions enable features such as Black Point Compensation, which affects the way Photoshop displays and works with colors to improve color conversions that are critical for reproduction in the graphic arts.

Each new model allows 16-bit RGB images edited in Photoshop to be sent directly to the imagePROGRAF printers – preserving smooth and high gradation.

The imagePROGRAF iPF6350 and iPF6300 printers are compliant with U.S. ENERGY STAR energy-saving standards and RoHS compliance standards. To learn more about Canon’s full line of ENERGY STAR qualified and certified products and other environmental initiatives, please visit www.usa.canon.com.

LexJet is proud to sell these and other models in Canon’s imagePROGRAF line of printers. For more information about any of the features or special promotional offers, contact a LexJet account specialist at 800-453-9538.

Wildlife Photographer Applauds LexJet Sunset Photo Metallic as ‘Best of Both Worlds’

We appreciate all of the feedback we get from customers who try different products. LexJet uses these insights to continually develop new and improved products.

For example, we recently received a nice note from Brian Hampton, the nature and wildlife photographer who was featured in Vol. 4, No. 1 of LexJet’s In Focus newsletter for a 5 x 8 ft. print he produced on LexJet Sunset Photo eSatin 300g paper for a special exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. (The print showcased Brian’s image of a lioness that was the grand-prize winner in the Nature’s Best Photography Windland Smith Rice International Awards.)  In the note Brian tells us why he is so impressed with LexJet’s new Sunset Photo Metallic paper.