Today, I had to do some research on the new HP PageWide XL 8000 system. For those of you that are not familiar with the HP PageWide XL 8000, plain and simply put, it's a beast! Able to print 30 "D" size full color pages in a minute!!
Information on the web is pretty much limited to an HP spec sheet, and the HP Press release. Neither one of those documents were going to cut it for me, I needed to learn more, because the word on the street is that the XL series of PageWide could possibly put KIP out of business along with making a huge dent in Oce wide format sales. Did you notice I did not mention Ricoh? Well, let's leave Ricoh alone for once and focus on the two leaders in wide format systems.
Back to the need to know more, after a few minutes of searching I was able to find the HP XL installation guide. This was a huge find! After reading through the manual I was able to glean a few useful specs that will help me in the future. While I was researching the XL 8000, I had a call from my friends over at ESP Surgx. While I had them on the phone I had some questions about some of the electrical specs that HP mentioned and what devices are required for the install. ESP Surgx was able to help me comprehend those specs and put them into content that I could comprehend.
So, it's really not about what I found in the manual. It's more about doing the detective work, reading the manual and then using the information in the manual to sell against your competition. Over the years, I've downloaded many operation manuals, one that I remember dearly was the Xerox ColorQube. By them time I was finished reading the manual I had enough data to consult with potential clients why the ColorQube was not the right system for them.
Dang, after reading the operation manual I probably knew more than the Xerox rep! But, that's the key, you arm yourself with knowledge, you are then considered not only the expert on your system but also the competitions!
Thus, when you're stuck for reasons why the customer should not go forward with the competitions system, go find the operation manual, give it the twice over and you'll have all the content you need to create a convincing argument!
-=Good Selling=-
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