I'm not sure if Ray and I have ever met, however, we've been connected on LinkedIn for quit a few years. Ray, is also one of those old copier dogs like me. Just the other day he posted a blog about the good old days of selling copiers.
Thus, I asked Ray if I could re-post that blog here. We've got Ray's permission to re-post the blog. Enjoy!
“When I get old, I hope I remember my copier salesman days.”
I thought it might be fun to share some stories from my career as a copier guy. I will admit the industry has been interesting – I hope you enjoy.
Back when carbon paper was the thing every office used, and it was getting less and less, it was the age of the copier/printer. I started a career with Lanier Worldwide, of course back then it was called Harris/3m, and it is known today as a subsidiary of Ricoh. The industry has not changed very much, in the sense that it stills sells the means to put dots on paper. Well, I guess they also do a few other things - after all, there has been a lot of creativity to keep them relevant.
Although today, I thought it would be nice to reminisce the glory days of vans, coffin carts, stair climbers, dongles, mono component vs dual component, toner developer, paper cassettes, sales boards, quotas, Demos (2 every day), 100% commission pay plans, and the greatest thing of all - the Bell.
Of course, the bell came with the warning: if you ring it in jest, you buy beer for the rest. Once the sale was complete, you rang the bell, then colored in the line on the sales board with the green marker to highlight the dollar volume. Yes, back then we actually drank beer in the parking lot - every night after daily sales recap. Man, those were fun times.
Some reading this will remember all the fun things that went with the job as a Copier Salesman (or saleswoman). Keep in mind, back in the late 80’s/early 90’s, regardless of your gender, you were a salesman. Remember the sales manager yelling! Through the entire office - every morning around 8:30. “Are you stress relieving or goal achieving?” This was his polite way of saying - get your van loaded and get the hell out of the office.
When I look back at the industry, I realize just how aggressive we all were to succeed. We literally hated the competition. The competitors were stealing food from our family’s bellies and no one liked that. One of the great ‘competition removal programs’ we had was to call pharmaceutical recruiters and give them the name and phone number of the competitor’s sales reps in our territories. This actually worked very well, as I remember.
Computers - what computers? Al Gore had not invented the internet yet - so what would we do with them? We sold word processors. Our Google machine was microfiche, and our CRM was a shoebox. Yes, a shoebox. If you used one of your own, having big feet gave you a bigger storage database. They called the shoebox CRM the Diebold file system. A-Z, 1-31, January through December, a glue stick and index cards – technology at its finest.
You old timers reading this know exactly what I am talking about. The rest of you really don’t care and it’s meaningless to you, so I won’t bore you with more technology of our day. If you really want to learn, watch the Flintstones reruns - we all did.
Back in those days... Wow, did I just say that? I thought only old people said that. Crap, I knew I would end up saying it, I just didn’t think it would be today…
Anyway, as a copier rep your day was filled with cold calls. There was no reason to make appointments - our job was to sell to people that had no idea we were coming. Yes - the famous “Cold Call Close” your grandfather talks about really happened. Which by the way, was an unbelievable high.
The demo! Yes, we did Demos and lots of them. Every successful sales rep knew that it took twenty cold calls a day and ten demos a week just to survive. It was the copier industry that came up with the saying “if you show it, you will sell it.” With a loaded van, you headed out to your geographical territory, and keep in mind we used paper maps to navigate around neighborhoods, looking for that lonely church. We all knew churches ran tons of bulletins. Every time you drove by church, you could practically hear the sounds of clicks. Clicks - the term for paper running through the copier. More clicks equaled more money. Once we found a prospect (basically was everyone in the world), we would sell the demo.
The craziest demo I ever did… Tony the Crab salesman had a van on a street corner. The kind of street corner where you wouldn’t want to even think about buying a crap from the back of a van. Although buying crab wasn’t the goal. Selling Tony a miniature Crab Flyer printing press was.
Remember, before you could sell Tony the copier, you had to show Tony the copier. This is the sole reason all successful copier reps carried long extension cords. Yes, Tony may have had no power in the crab van, but the gas station parking lot Tony called his storefront did. Once the cord was plugged into the lonely outlet in the men’s room with no door, it was time to start making copies.
I know everyone is asking themselves - what the hell does a Crab Sales Guy makes copies of? You may have guessed, of course - it would be one of the crabs. So as I began my pitch that included explaining how every crab vendor should have flyers, and why outsource that, I quickly grabbed a big blue crab from the cooler in Tony’s van (it smelled like shrimp to me), and I immediately set the crab on the glass and hit the big green button. Out came a picture of the blue crab, well it wasn’t blue - color capabilities were not available yet - but once Tony saw the crab printed on that sheet of paper he was sold.
What happened next is something all copier reps face occasionally. You may have guessed, he couldn’t get approved for the 5 year lease. He was able to muster up enough cash and of course a few crabs for trade, so Tony quickly became the proud owner of a slightly used machine, the one that had been rolling around in the back of my van for months.
So when I think back on those good old days, I ask myself what Tony would think today. He more than likely went paperless, has a Facebook page, his van is probably in a junk yard, and Uber drivers deliver his crabs. Yes, I am also quite sure Tony has a crab app.
Obviously, things have changed since then; however, one thing has not. That one thing: it doesn’t matter want you sell - just sell enough of it. Selling has never been all about the products; selling is the ability to make the product exciting and being creative enough to emphasis a benefit. Keep in mind your passion for making things exciting will always prove fruitful.
The old is forever new.
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