PPB June 2018

feed back Send feedback on articles in PPB or opinions on industry issues to JamesK@ppai.org . A Matter Of Perspective In the May PPB article “Storytelling At Its Best,” Bobby Lehew, chief content officer at industry business management platform commonsku, wrote about shifting the marketing perspective from products to purpose. Assessing The PPAI Sales Volume Study PPAI’s annual sales volume study highlights, published in the May issue, showed a 9.3 percent increase in distributor sales to a record $23.3 billion. It also indicated significant growth among large distributors, which drove the strong increase. The online and large distributor sales growth may explain the small distributors’ shrinking piece of the pie, and it begs the question, what can small firms do to compete and grow better in the future? If strong online sales growth increases at the same rate in the future as it did in this annual analysis, within three years 50 percent of sales will be online; in five years more than 70 percent. Isn’t this a major paradigm shift, and what will the new industry look like five years from now? And why are sales of non-industry products growing? Shouldn’t suppliers already in the industry provide those products, or shouldn’t the non-industry suppliers be in the industry? PPAI is right to take some of the credit for the industry’s great sales increase; i.e., PPAI taking the message of the unique value of promotional products to end users and non-industry influencers is the best way to support industry member suppliers and distributors. Congrats to PPAI and others who do this valuable marketing. AL KERNAN Retired, formerly VP Marketing at ASI and PPAI Churchville, Pennsylvania Bobby, your message enlightens my view of the question, “What do you do?” and why it is so difficult to develop further interest with an elevator speech reply. Thank you very much. RENE RICHARDS Account Executive Cedric Spring & Associates Saint Charles, Illinois PPAI 108800 Well said, Bobby, I could not agree with you more. A story is way more engaging and gives a person the entire 360-degree view of what we do and how we do it. Thank you! ALLISON GUTIERREZ Branding Consultant Brown & Bigelow San Gabriel, California PPAI 102272 Great insights. What I teach in my networking sessions is, when asked what you do, turn the question back to the prospect: “Well, tell me what you do first.” Then tailor your answer to their job, their challenges, their industry, their perspective , as you suggest. Works every time. Thanks for sharing. MARY ELLEN SOKALSKI, MAS CEO The Scarlet Marketeer Cherry Hill, New Jersey 8 | JUNE 2018 |