Bemoaning Cut-throat Pricing

Just had an owner of a mailing company call me. He wanted to ask some questions about the 2009-2010 Mailing Industry Pricing Study. Within a few seconds it was apparent that most of the answers to his questions could be found on my website, so I suggested he visit site. He told me that he was already at the site, but just didn't have the time to read the stuff! Wow, this sounds like a good candidate to purchase a study. "He doesn't have time?????"

Well, at this point I am thinking to myself that I really don't have a lot of time nor the patience, nor the inclination to try and "sell him" a study. When he asked when the pricing data was gathered I told him in early 2009 and he laughed, saying, "Wow, that's pretty old, considering everything that has been happening, ya know." No, I really don't know.

I asked him what he meant when he said, "everything that has been happening," and he added, "Well, you know, all the price cutting, you know due to the economy."

I started to tell him that the "price cutting" he was referring to has been happening in the printing and mailing industry at least back as 1970 when I first got into the industry.

Well, he didn't want to hear anything about that, and I am sure he didn't want me to tell him why prices vary far more within individual markets than they do from one section of the country to the next. I wanted to tell him about the good, profitable companies out there that are not cutting their prices, but I figured those comments would simply fall on deaf ears!

I finally told him I had to go and quickly hung up on him. I really didn't feel too bad about that since during our brief conversation he had interrupted the call three times, twice to take two other phone calls and a third one in which he carried on a lengthy discussion with an employee who obviously entered his office.

Must be one of my bad days!