Sales Brochure Printing Trends

Sales brochures are one of the best tools in the salesperson's arsenal. They serve as an interactive guide when explaining products and services, point out key features and benefits to the customer and help the salesperson keep on track with the pitch. Design and copy play crucial roles in aiding the sales brochure, and today printing is playing a bigger role than ever as designers and copywriters strive to add new ideas to proven sales strategies. Here are a few things you should keep in mind when planning your next sales brochure:

You don't have to be tri-fold to be successful

The vast majority of brochures are tri-folds, but this isn't necessarily the best folding style you should use when printing a sales brochure. The salesperson needs to be able to open up the brochure and demonstrate products and services through the words and images in the sales brochure, so often a simple half-fold, z-fold, double parallel-fold, accordion-fold or a four- or six-panel brochure will do the trick. Accordion folds are great for visually depicting timelines, while extra panels offer more opportunities to break up the text.

Bigger is better

Again, the sales brochure isn't sit-down-and-read literature; salespeople need to be able to guide customers from one section to the next quickly to keep them on track with what they're saying. Bigger brochures mean extra room for information, images and content; and work to expand the sales pitch. Instead of the standard 8.5-inch by 11-inch sales brochure, try an 11-inch by 17-inch or 11-inch by 25.5-inch brochure and see how much more impact the larger sizes have.

Quality counts

You wouldn't send out a salesman dressed in a tacky suit and lunch stuck in his mustache, would you? Then why would you print your important sales material on inferior paper? Online printing companies such as PsPrint offer high-quality 100-pound gloss cover and text stocks, as well as 80-pound gloss text and 70-pound  recycled matte - the latter of which can win your company some points with environmentally friendly customers. If you print using recycled paper stock, make sure you note it somewhere on your sales brochure. Also, see if your printer offers aqueous coating for a beautiful sheen.

Set your sites

The most successful sales brochures deal entirely with one product or service, and it's best to have a different sales brochure for every offering if it's in your budget. This is because niche marketing is refined more and more every day, so it's extremely important that you sell customers on the thing they already want or need. Once you've closed one sale, they'll often gladly come back to you if the experience was pleasant for them. In addition to these tips, it's important to keep in mind that brochure printing price-per-piece is dramatically reduced as printing quantities increase. This means that high-volume printing is the most economical way to go, so order as many as you know you'll use to save money now and make more profit from each sale later.