It was the Eighties, we were in New Jersey, and I was leading the pack of six copier sales people. We were all in our twenties, single and making oodels and oodles of cash selling plain paper copiers!
Station wagons, hatch backs, pickup trucks, copier guerney's, rolodex's, change for pay telephone calls, yellow page books, business street directory books, mucho phones, mucho demonstrations, delivering your own copiers, and training end users were the staple of the copier sales person in the Eighties!
Now, I could tell you some off the wall stories from my days of the twenty something's, but I'd rather reserve those stories over a drink. What I can say is that the Eighties was an incredible time to be young, selling copiers and making lot's of dough. Just maybe, I'll get to meet all of you one day and share some stories.
January 1984
It was a day similar to today (cold, snow, dark) January of 1984, the reason I remember this date is because I found an old appointment book while throwing out some trash over the week. Thus, there I sat in my office (at home), going through all of the pages of the appointments, notes, curse words and the amounts of cash I made on each order (kinda felt like Chevy Chase sitting in his attic in the Christmas Vacation movie)
That day in January, me and the rest of the team of twenty something's met with Dennis Gordon (awesome leasing rep) from Hertz Commercial Leasing. Dennis was there to train us on how to present leasing, and the different programs that were offered. Back then, there was no FMV (Fair Market Value) lease, it was either a "Dollar Out" or a "10% Purchase Option". Dennis also shared with us the "Rule of 72", the step lease and my favorite lease program of all time. That my friends is the "Bakers Dozen" Lease!
Bakers Dozen Lease
To this day I still use the Bakers Dozen when needed. The Bakers Dozen lease is simple, you take the purchase price, divide by twelve and then write the lease for 13 payments. The 13th payment is the interest, you collect that payment upfront and at the end of the term the equipment is owned by the client.
The Bakers Dozen lease was used as a closing tool for those clients who stated, "I will never lease equipment", those that asked your dealership to finance the copier over time with payments, and those clients that raised and objection because they did not have the funds to buy the equipment and were skeptical of leasing.
I say, bring back the Bakers Dozen lease! Keep it as a closing tool, the old saying is that if you don't ask you don't get, right?
For those of you that want to ad this to your arsenal, click here for the brochure.
-=Good Selling=-
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