The secrets revealed! What happens at Minuteman Press sales conferences

A postcard dropped through our letterbox this week... an invite to the Minuteman Press International conference. Based in Vegas. I was interested to hear that Steve Minuteman Press had actually gone to it one year; he used Air Miles accrued using his Amex card. We shan't be going any time soon.

Meanwhile, it was the UK Minuteman Press national conference last week end. We did attend that.

It's a nice weekend away staying in a Village hotel in the middle of a Coventry business park. The customer service was the most impressive thing; otherwise it was a standard fare hotel chain offering. One of the most memorable things was receiving an email from the Village hotel prior to departure: we could put in a bid to upgrade our hotel stay; the highest bid would win. A business colleague said he thought it marginally illegal. We didn't bid, we wouldn't have time for spas and gyms.

The Minuteman Press Franchise bosses fly around the world visiting each country where the Franchises are based. All English speaking countries. And they have now added Northern Ireland to their portfolio.

This year we met the CEO's son who is heir apparent to the business. He introduced a new element to his presentation... less black and white and more detailed analysis. His subject was social media; a new area of expertise for the Franchise.

As per usual, the conference will be given a cheesy title like 'reaching the stars with print sales'; then we will be told that the Minuteman Press Franchise has been award number 1 status in the world. This will be followed by histograms and line charts revealing that print sales are going through the roof.

Oh! I missed out the bit where UK awards are presented. I can still remember staggering to the front, sort of shell shocked, to receive our awards. That was a few years ago now.

Often a presentation from previous years will be rehashed; such as how to offer customers mailing services.

A core element of the (mostly non interactive) presentations, will be revealing what the Franchise is offering and a mild rebuke as to how the Franchisees aren't appreciating the offering. The presenter occasionally asks the gathering a question. The questions remind me of Sunday school (showing my age here) where the answer is always 'Jesus'. Interestingly there were a lot of Franchisees at the meeting. The meeting isn't compulsory and the attendees pay their own way. The Franchise in UK has grown a fair amount in the last few years so there were a few new faces. However, of the six Minuteman Press Franchises in the immediate Manchester area, three were missing. The best bit is probably chatting to the other 'Minutemen'. Exchanging ideas and offering tips. We get to meet new Franchise staff, always a pleasure. And we might exchange a few pleasantries with the bosses. Sometimes on the lines of:

Them: 'why aren't you buying this service off the Franchise?' 
Me: 'If its such a dead cert why isn't the Franchise supplying it at no cost, as part of the Franchise deal?'

Anyway, they fly off to their next presentation and we retire to our room or the bar for a nice 24 hour break from running a printing business.

When we get back to Stockport we review our notes and discuss how best to implement the information we have received.