The Week in Copiers Fifteen Years Ago
Last Week of May 2006
Another day of rain, wind and temps in the fifties. There's a chance it may all clear out for tomorrow. Enjoy Your Weekend!
Another day of rain, wind and temps in the fifties. There's a chance it may all clear out for tomorrow. Enjoy Your Weekend!
"If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways."
Michel de Montaigne
Let me ask you a question, how far and how much have you grown in your sales life?
Take a moment, grab a cup of coffee, sit down, and reflect... go back 5 years ago and then push to the present...
If you want to live a better sales life, you must learn to grow.
Success in sales does not come to you overnight. It is achieved through daily improvement and small consistent increments over time.
A true sales professional doesn't sleepwalk through the day nor their career.
Sales professionals actively think about the things they do. They objectively evaluate themselves on a regular basis. They look at things through an unbiased and clear set of lenses.
On a daily basis they ask themselves:
The journey to becoming a sales professional starts with understanding who you are at your core. It is becoming more in tune with your deeper self. It is the ability to recognize what fires you up, what makes you happy or sad.
As a sales society, we’re largely fixated on the outer work. We focus on the stack rankings, where we are at quarter or year to date, key performance indicators, and number of new clients... starting to the get the picture?
Take a step back and realize that these are merely outer symbols. This does not reflect your inner world.
The key to sales happiness lies in transforming yourself and your career through the inner work.
When you truly understand who you are, you can make a conscious effort to improve yourself and how you communicate better with others.
Do you have the courage to dig in and ask yourself deep questions?
What makes your heart sing?
How would you define yourself?
I encourage you to become your own Sherlock Holmes. Become interested in what grabs your attention and tugs on your heartstrings.
Stop looking in the dictionary for words that define you.
Getting to know yourself allows you to tap into the road of happiness as this is critical to your success as a sales professional. Your beliefs, your attitude and your daily routines are mission critical.
Understanding yourself can mean recognizing your shortcomings. It's about putting them on display for others to judge.
Yes, this means getting extremely vulnerable. This starts with looking in the mirror and saying to yourself, "This is me. This is the real me. This is who I am."
If you struggle to ask yourself deep questions, then you will struggle to ask your clients deep questions?
Becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable is what ferocious self-honesty is built upon.
I encourage you to think about this one...
How can you become ferociously self-honest if you struggle to deal with any discomfort in your sales life?
Those of you who are willing to take risks, step out of your comfort zone and create some discomfort, will reap the biggest rewards.
Let this one sink in for a moment...
If YOU, can't challenge yourself to improve then how can you challenge your clients to improve?
John Simone nails it,
“The key to wisdom is knowing all the right questions.”
What questions are you asking yourself on a daily basis?
The questions you ask yourself affect the sales life you lead. The questions you ask yourself literally determine what your mind focuses on, which triggers certain thoughts, actions, and inactions, ultimately affecting your sales results.
When you can ask yourself empowering, deeply reflective questions, it shifts your mind to a whole new level and sets into motion the thinking and actions to jumpstart your sales life.
"I think self-awareness is probably the most important thing towards being a champion."
Billie Jean King
I understand, I get where you all are coming from. Every day, I walk in your shoes. I am fully committed to helping your sales team integrate social aspects and heartfelt strategies into your current sales process to grow new business. I want you to get results. This is why I am passionate about doing this the right way, the genuine way, the authentic way! It's about understanding value before visibility.
Selling From the Heart is making a difference! I poured my heart into every page of this book and I think you're going to love it. You can find it on Amazon in paperback, kindle and in audio. You can click on the book image below and this will take you to Amazon.
In a world full of empty suits, I'm passionate about helping sales reps succeed by getting valuable before they get visible. I help sales teams understand the true value they bring to the market.
I appreciate getting the opportunity to share my stories. Integrating the use of social and sharing my story on LinkedIn was my “game-changer” in the highly competitive office technology world. With great pride I transform, challenge, coach and inspire sales teams to grow new business by helping them share their story and how they communicate it out by integrating the use of social inside the sales process. You can follow me on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and on my podcast by clicking on Selling from the Heart.
Memorial Day Weekend is finally here and the weathing is miserable! Fifty-two degress, wind and rain for the last 16 hours and that's the forcast for another 24 hours. At least I can catch on my my P4P Stuff. Remember that this weekend is to honor those that have made the ultimate sacrifice for our country.
There I was going back and forth with the client trying to figure a way to get the deal done for a couple of production devices. Seems what ever I tried was not working. I even reached out to others in the Print4Pay Hotel community for help with how to get bring this deal home. All of the suggestions were not working and then the client told me "I need to get this deal done so I can go rescue the cat!". What, the cat wtf **** does that cat have to do with ordering the damn copier I thought? You want to order the copier so you can rescue a cat I asked. The reply was "yes, let's get this done now".
I guess the cat, the copier and the rescue escapade didn't sit well with me and that's when I realized it was all a really vivid dream. When I made my way downstairs this AM I told me wife about the dream and she stated, "there was something going on because I heard you talking in your sleep trying to cut a deal".
Well, I guess the cat is now out of the bag and this isn't the first time I've been accused of trying to cut a deal in my sleep.
Even those these are dreams there have been times when a dream helped me figure out a way to get an opportunity closed. It was more about looking at something from a difference perspective and I guess the subconscious part of my brain figured it out for me. Mind you it does not happen often and the dream I had last night was wild and will not help to close any working opportunities today.
On the other hand the part about reaching out to others within our community is something to take note. Sometimes as sales people we think we're understanding the client needs and wants but something went missing during the sales cycle. I guess the moral of the dream is if you think you need help then you do and should reach out to others for help.
Curious to know if anyone else has been accused of cutting deals in your sleep. If so I think it would be great to hear some of those stories.
-=Good Selling=-
Sponsored by
Why partnering with ARCOA makes sense
Electronics Recycling is an important and profitable part of the IT asset lifecycle, but it can be overwhelming with all you already do, varying state regulations, and the limited resources at hand. That’s where ARCOA comes in. When you partner with ARCOA, you get all the benefits of a big company without any of the capital investment. We’ve been doing this since 1989 and have the expertise, certifications, and nationwide resources to get the most for all your clients’ retired IT assets. Plus, positioning your clients as environmental stewards not only elevates their appeal to consumers, it meets government requirements and avoids fines.
What partnering with ARCOA looks like
Our role is to make it easy for you to bring more value to your clients. We work with you to help stretch your clients’ IT budget by reducing the total cost of ownership of their electronics. We’re experts at identifying and implementing the solutions your clients need for the end-of-use remarketing, recovery, and recycling of their technology assets. The sooner you involve ARCOA, the sooner you and your clients will see better results.
The CIA to stop using fax machines
Lead for IT Asset Services in Missouri
(Webroot claims of ransomware victims that 49% were unaware of the infection for more than 24 hours) reported on webroot
ABBYY solution company receives $$
MSPAlliance Updates MSP/Cloud Verify Standard to Address Cybersecurity and MSP Assurance
20 jobs forecast following merger at city firm Intuity Technologies
Lead for IT Services in Illinois
IDC predicted that four hundred billion fewer pages would be printed in 2020
ATCO Australia Pivots to the Cloud with OpenText
TPx Awarded Most Promising in SMB Cybersecurity in the Coveted Global InfoSec Awards at RSA 2021
ReachOut Technology Remains Bullish on Infrastructure and Cybersecurity; Seeks to Acquire 75 ...
Toshiba Tec is hacked with ransomware
Ricoh Canada's Document Processing Services Chooses ancora Software to Enhance their ...
In past, company ran video ads featuring actor Christian Slater as a hacker named “The Wolf” who access company data by hacking into printers and MFPs
HP sells printer/MFP plant to Sharp’s parent
Business Korea magazine reported that HP Inc has sold a laser printer/MFP
manufacturing plant in Weihai, China
Bell Techlogix earns spot on CRN® Tech Elite 250 and MSP 500 lists for second consecutive year
NetDocuments Cloud Platform Records Unprecedented Q1 2021 Growth
Cybersecurity Update
You've heard it from me over and over and that's as long as you work hard and put in the effort good things will happen. Now they may not happen on your timeline however in the long run the work and the effort will pay off.
It was about three years ago when I started posting IT, MSP, MSSP and Document Management press releases on this site. Over those years the news from those press releases and the verbiage used in them has slowly helped me to better understanding of the IT world. When you couple that with the awesome training that Stratix offers on a weekly basis it became clear to me that sooner rather than later I would have my first managed IT client.
Today I received my first managed IT order for 10 users from an existing account and while it's not a medium nor huge client, it's a start. Sometimes it's more about ability to knock one down to build the confidence and then the other domino's can fall in to place.
Did I have help? You bet your sweet butt I did and I couldn't have done it with out the members of our IT team.
While I'm a little late to the game I can see the pay-off for younger rep because of the monthly residual for each client acquired. While the sales of copiers only pay you once every three or five years the managed IT is a gift that keeps on giving each and every month for as long as you have the relationship with your client. I have two clients that I have a forty year relationship for copiers, and then another 15-25 for thirty years and I can only guess at the rest. Imagine selling managed IT services for forty years and the residuals? Now I'm thinking I was born thirty years to early!
After Memorial Day I have second appointment with a much larger company to see if we can finalize a proposal we introduced about four weeks ago. At this time I think we have a good shot winning and that's because of the vision, the team and the IT stack that we bring to the table.
I'm not giving up at selling copiers because there is still quite a bit of demand but you can bet the ranch that I'll be telling more clients stories about IT news that I've read. The Columbo in me comes out with that last question before I leave, hey did you happen to hear about XYZ company that........which means a new conversation starts
-=Good Selling=-
Tomorrow is the last day of the month for me in May. I have one small order to book, however that still leaves me $7K short of my monthly quota. I still have two $60K opps out there however one has been in the weeds for three weeks and the other opp is in the weeds for a week. Both will get calls and emails, and after 41 years of doing this I still can't fathom why and existing client or net new won't give you the courtesy of an email or a phone call.
"When values, thoughts, feelings, and actions are in alignment, a person becomes focused and character is strengthened."
John C. Maxwell
Stop for a moment, sit back and now reflect upon this question...
How much value are you creating for your clients and prospects to help grow your sales and their business?
All too often, I hear salespeople, sales management and those in executive management sing praise to the importance of creating value for their clients and prospects. Inside a sea of sales sameness, VALUE; irrefutably becomes one of the single biggest aspects.
However, in order build value, how many know the true meaning of value? Why is this so important?
"Know thy value, know thy worth"
Merriam-Webster defines value as:
My question to all of you...
How many know what you're worth?
There are way too many of you in sales that act like 'walking, talking brochures', as you simply regurgitate product information. Your clients and prospects aren't buying into your facts and features.
In fact, most aren't even product oriented in their thinking; what they're focused on is finding a solution to their challenges and solving their problems. This is what creates value for them.
When you pound your chest and rattle off great wizardry about your products, you fail to position you and your knowledge as the answer to their pain, frustration or aspiration.
Instead, all you've done is position yourself as a commodity, swimming in the deep blue sales ocean known as the 'sea of sameness'.
Attention sales community...
You've allowed the buyer to base more of their purchasing decision on price, thereby pressuring profit margins as they crush you with the sales sameness hammer.
A true sales professional creates value through the eyes of their clients. With 20/20 vision, they clearly gain the opportunity to be viewed like none other in the marketplace as if they've almost created a new market segment of one.
They have effectively repositioned themselves from their competition. Price now becomes a less dominating factor within the purchasing decision. I get it, at some point price does become an issue, but if they perceive unique value, price will never be THE issue.
"Creating value not only transforms sales effectiveness, but it also provides insulation from the price hammer."
Building strong relationships and understanding holistically what value means, lays the foundation for becoming valuable.
Sales professionals create value alignment.
A sales professional understands their value. They know value is deeply cemented within the foundation of their business house.
What makes you valuable?
People won’t ever engage in a business conversation nor buy from you if they don’t even understand why they should pay attention to you.
A sales professional understands their value statement is their promise. It's the value they deliver, communicate and our held accountable for fulfilling.
Given client expectations and the competitive business landscape, a sales professional consistently reviews their value statement as part of their personal business strategy. They spend time with their clients to see if they're actually meeting and fulfilling the aspects within their value statement with them.
On a daily basis, a sales professional will ask themselves...
"How well do you know your value statement?"
A sales professional always looks at things through the eyes of their clients. They develop a true understanding of what they value. They realize all clients value different things; as there's no cookie cutter model and how to create it for them.
The same can be said for different people within the same organization. A sales professional gains an understanding and builds credible relationships with all of the people making up the buying team. This is to ensure their sales communication is appropriate for each one of them.
"Sales professionals do not cut corners and assume they know their client's value"
By strengthening the relationship, a sales professional is able to get a better sense of the current business situation and where their clients want to be; as this information is used to position their value to address their clients' initiatives, goals, desires, and challenges.
A sales professional will spend as much time as is it takes to gain an understanding of their client's value. They know taking shortcuts and skimming over key details will result in a failure to create and communicate value.
Company values are the guiding principles that are most important to a sales professional about the way the company works.
They align their values to the company's to create a value based go to market strategy. Words they align to...
When alignment of values happen, people understand one another, everyone does the right things for the right reasons. Value alignment helps the company as a whole to achieve its core mission, taking care of their clients and employees.
When values are out of alignment, with people working towards different goals, with different intentions, and with different outcomes; this ultimately damages work relationships, productivity, job satisfaction, and creative potential.
"How well do you know your company's mission, vision and value statement?"
In the end, a sales professional marries both values together in harmony and uses this to take care of their clients as well as to grow new opportunities.
Done with precision, building value positions sales professionals with a greater chance to grow sales and long-term business relationships.
I encourage you to go back and analyze some of your best client relationships.
Grab a sheet of paper and start asking yourself some of the following questions:
And if you struggle at any level to answer, then I believe uncovering these could be the path to strengthening and insulating your relationships from hostile take-overs.
In order to crush your sales, I encourage you to pay close attention to the strength of your relationships, tolerance for change, your client's current situation and always ask questions.
It's imperative that in today's competitive business landscape, sales professionals must marry their value, their client's value and their company's value together in complete harmony; one that is uniquely suited to promote growth and better business.
I understand, I get where you all are coming from. Every day, I walk in your shoes. I am fully committed to helping your sales team integrate social aspects and heartfelt strategies into your current sales process to grow new business. I want you to get results. This is why I am passionate about doing this the right way, the genuine way, the authentic way! It's about understanding value before visibility.
Selling From the Heart is making a difference! I poured my heart into every page of this book and I think you're going to love it. You can find it on Amazon in paperback, kindle and in audio. You can click on the book image below and this will take you to Amazon.
In a world full of empty suits, I'm passionate about helping sales reps succeed by getting valuable before they get visible. I help sales teams understand the true value they bring to the market.
I appreciate getting the opportunity to share my stories. Integrating the use of social and sharing my story on LinkedIn was my “game-changer” in the highly competitive office technology world. With great pride I transform, challenge, coach and inspire sales teams to grow new business by helping them share their story and how they communicate it out by integrating the use of social inside the sales process. You can follow me on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and on my podcast by clicking on Selling from the Heart.
It's been eight days since my last blog and tomorrow marks three hundred business days of working remote since March of 2020.
Jersey is just about wide open at this point however we are the only state in the continental US that still has a mask mandate and social distancing for indoor activities. The only other state with mask mandate is Hawaii.
May
May has been kind of up and down and with three days left in the month I may end $5 or $6k short of my monthly quota. A good thing is that there's still more than 10% of the month left.
The month has been somewhat frustrating since one large existing account has decided the get lost in the weeds for the last three weeks. Emails, calls and nothing seems to get them to poke their head out for a chat. Patience.....I keep telling myself that because sooner or later something will happen. One of the good things that came from this week is that another existing account that went into the weeds for four months made an appearance and I was told they need asap 5-7 A3 color MFPs. That's a nice one. We'll see if this can come to fruition before the month closes on Monday the 24th. So far crickets for the last 24 hours.
Now if just if I could get both of those well that would be a nice way to end a so so month.
300
The past three hundred days have been a long long journey during COVID19. I know the blogs have tailed off as of late and I guess the reason for that is two fold. One it's almost summer time again and I do love my summers and the other is because with the transitioning to a post COVID19 era, I've been more active with in person meetings. In addition I've actually populated the NJ office for a couple of days in the last two weeks.
I couldn't have done this without many of you. The zoom chats, the phone calls and the emails helped me make it through one of the toughest times our industry has ever faced. It will be interesting to see the changes now that we're in a post COVID recovery and I'm sure I'll have something to write about the changes that I'm seeing in the field.
Special Thanx
I guess the first person I need to thank is my dealer principal, he's the one didn't cut staff and believed in his people. To him I owe a heartfelt thank you because if I had been furloughed who knows what the next step would have been. Next is my VP of Sales, he has that no quit mentality like me and helped me believe that if you have faith you can accomplish anything. Guess what? We accomplished EVERYTHING!
Greg Walters our early zoom meetings were the bomb and I know we both helped each other and others as well. John Anderson, what can I say I love John like a brother and our consistent chats kept the juices flowing. Larry Kirsch, the old veteran that knows more than me and I'm still learning from him. Dayna Karron, what can I say but I wish I could be more like her. We had an early Zoom call in early April about the use of Linkedin and what I learned (can you believe I'm still learning) helped so much. Chris Pierson, was the only guy I could chat with that understood what it was like in Jersey for the past 300 days. Gonna miss Chris because he's transitioned out of the industry.
Eddie Jones, Jason Habbal, Monte Jensen, Deon Beshoff, Joe Escamillia, Frank Vasquez and everyone else that attending our early zoom calls was amazing. Having the ability to talk about our markets and what's working or not working was key!
Martin Hoffman (Copier Store), Chris Polek (Polek & Polek), Brent Martin (Arlington), Brett Apold (Arcoa) our calls and zoom chats helped me to understand what was happening with our vendors. Funny story with Chris it was in mid February that we did a chat about COVID19 in China and how that might affect our supply chain. It's 300 business days later and there are still major supply chain issues! Guess Chris and I knew something but never thought it would be this bad.
To my wife, one amazing women that puts up with my crazy ideas, my workaholic attitude and ADD, Could not have gotten through this without you dear.
The End
At 300 business days I'm calling this blog series a wrap. I can only hope that I've helped someone along the way and if I did it makes all 300 days something very special.
-=Good Selling=-
It's been almost two years since I wrote my last blog on finding a full brother alive and well living in Arizona. If you're not familiar with the blog it's about my fraternal twin and I being adopted back in the summer of 1960. We were a tad over three years old and to this day I remember the ride we took down the NJ Turnpike to meet our new parents. We always knew we were adopted and that lead to some issues especially with me as I got older.
Fast forward to two and a half years ago when I received the results of my DNA and was notified that I have a full brother living in Arizona. Yes, we connected and yes me met in Vegas two years ago this week. We look more alike than my fraternal twin and I did.
In the last two years I've been able to connect with two half sisters to learn more about my birth parents or at lease my birth fathers side of the family. Both are up there in age and both are sweethearts for allowing me to test and pry their memory banks. I received a shocker that one day last summer when speaking to one of the sisters. My birth father had eight children with his wife and then my birth mother had 3 children with her husband. My birth mothers husband had left her after WW2. Some where in Bergen County, NJ my birth mother and father met and I believed they had three children (Peter full bro in Arizona and me and my twin). So between half brother/sisters and full siblings there was 14 of us. The shocker was that my birth mother and birth father produced 6 children and not the three I was led to believe. By my count that makes 17 of us! To date I've not been able to track down the other three siblings and one of the reasons is that they probably never took a DNA test. In addition my twin and I were the youngest. My birth fathers age when I was born was 47! Well at least he was a player.
Every now and then I get some "hints" sent to me from Ancestry.com. I'll open the email and see if it's something new or just some of the same old hints that have been coming across for years now. There was a new name that I was not aware of so I logged into Ancestry. That new name didn't go anywhere but there was a PM from someone. Okay, let's check it out because just maybe it's a hit from a full sibling. The PM was from a women in NY and stated that I was showing up as a 1st cousin with a 15% DNA hit. Sometimes with Ancestry a DNA hit like that could also mean a full sibling thus I was willing to check it our further. Stuff just started to click, this person was adopted out two days after birth and not the legit way but given to another family. The year was 1963 and the location of the birth was in North Jersey which is right in line with my birth family.
Okay, 15% DNA hit, North Jersey birth, adopted out not the legit way and all of this was adding up that this could be a close family member. Of course I reached out to her and she shared with me that she knew and had met her birth mother. She gave me her full name and maiden name and both of those names were names I was not familiar with birth family circle. Right, back to the DNA, I then asked her who else she share DNA with and then the names fell into place. One was my full brother and one was a nephew of mine that were on Ancestry. So it had to be from my birth fathers side of the family and yea that was probably the right conclusion from the start, however take it from one who knows birth certifications from that era can have false information.
Like me many years ago all I wanted was to find some type of connection in the world. Who came before me, how did I get here, where were we from and who were my birth parents. It was more like needing closure to to along standing puzzle that couldn't be finished because you didn't have all of the pieces. Today I was one of those pieces that could help her put a name and a face of her birth father.
I felt on top of the world today because I thought I had the contacts that could help her figure out who her father was. For me it was a choice of two people my father (the man about town) or one of his sons. There were only two sons and one was killed in a car accident in 57 and that only left the one son.
I called my "go to" nephew in PA and we chatted about the names and threw around some scenario's an in the end he need to reach out to his Aunt/my half sister to she what she remembered.
By the End of the Day
Turns out that my half brother had a short marriage back int the early sixties and was then involved with another woman who turns out to be the mother of the person who contacted me. I was told that my half brother and her had a baby although he wasn't around anymore because he decided to change teams if you get my drift. That baby was her! My half brother also passed away back in 1990.
End result is the person that contact me is my niece and I'm her uncle. She was elated that after all of this time she finally had solved the puzzle of who her father was. I felt awesome that I could help this stranger that turned out to be family in finding that last piece of the puzzle. Thus the reason I just had to write this tonight.
As with many adoptions it's more about be careful of what you wish for. In most cases adoptions back in that day (at least in northern NJ) were from unwed mothers that were Catholic and since they were Catholic those mothers carried the babies to term and many made local arrangements for the adoptions.
In closing I'm never been so thankful for the faith that people put on lives in the Catholic Church for born and unborn.
Art
Access to this requires a premium membership.
A Premium Membership can carry you to the top of the sales ladder!
Premium Membership Includes:
Follow the link on the forums to get your Premium Membership. If you're interested in a lifetime membership please send me an email arthurkpost@gmail.com and we'll send you a pay pal invoice of $399 of a LIFETIME Print4Pay Hotel membership.