PPB February 2018

A h, the hunt for that perfect gift. The client calls and says, “We need something to give to our customers,” and, being the attentive and creative people we are, we immediately launch a full-scale search in a diligent effort to find the most brilliant treasure that will land the order and excite the client. We tap into what’s trending, scour some of our favorite product lines and request our colleagues’ best ideas on PPAI’s Promo Connect. With this research in hand, we prepare a presentation and excitedly present it to the client in person or by email, only to learn that while they so appreciated our efforts, they decided to piggyback on something another department picked up at Costco. What just happened? We quickly dove into the sourcing waters and emerged with stellar product ideas—at least one of which we were absolutely certain would win the order—only to walk away empty-handed. If we blame the circumstances, we’re guaranteed to repeat this scenario. But if we assign a dollar value to our time, we’re more likely to win those orders, and those clients, more often. Here’s what I mean. Say you want to earn $1 million in revenue in 2018. You average a 40-hour work week and take four weeks of vacation plus a week at Christmas. That means, of the 47 weeks you’re planning to work this year, each week represents revenue of $21,276.60. Each day breaks down to $4,255.32, which means the value of every hour is $531.91. Now, in this exercise we haven’t considered Good Friday, Thanksgiving, the Fourth of July or lunch hours, but you get the idea. Given that your time is now assessed at $531.91 per hour, the big question becomes, how can you maximize it? Don’t start your next product search before you know what you are looking for. by Jae M. Rang, MAS Put An End To The Wild Goose Chase 32 | FEBRUARY 2018 | GROW

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