MFP Copier Blog

Can anyone get one of these or does anyone have one they would sell?

Please reach out to me if you can help.

janderson@sissines.com 

8:30 a.m. in Germany is 2:30 a.m. in my native east coast U.S. time zone. I was jet lagged from the previous day’s flight. It was already hot, and there was no air conditioning in the conference room of the hotel in Bad Wörishofen. Coffee. Europe has the best coffee.

My discomfort alleviated, I still did not expect that this day in July of 2016 would have such a profound impact on DocuWare and the way we operate. This was the first day of a workshop that introduced our senior management team to a new strategic planning and implementation process called Hoshin Kanri.

“Strategic planning,” “implementation process,” “Hoshin Kanri” – we’re getting into dangerous waters. This business jargon tends to cause eyes to roll … but stick with me because what I am talking about is how we were able to better organize our energy and effort to achieve significant business results. In short, how we’re able to put a strategic vision into action.

Hoshin Kanri, also known as policy deployment, is a methodology that enabled us to achieve breakthrough goals by ensuring a laser focus and precise alignment throughout the organization. I would like to take you through the Hoshin Kanri methodology, and along the way, I’m happy to share a story or two about my experiences.

The Hoshin Kanri 7-step Process

1. Establish Vision vs. Current State

   In this phase an organization determines their true goals. What is it they want to achieve at the most distilled level?  This critical step sets the direction of the compass needle and determines where you want to travel. In this phase a company may do things like review its mission statement, its processes, and its current key performance indicators (KPIs). The organization openly discusses what they are doing to move in the right direction and what is not working.

   This is difficult. If you have ever sat on a committee that is responsible for writing or rewriting a company’s mission statement you might already have experienced the challenge that comes with defining company direction: its main goals, values and vision.

2. Develop Breakthrough Objectives 

   Breakthrough objectives aren’t like other goals your organization has probably set in the past. They are “breakthrough” in the sense that they are goals that might seem impossible to achieve at first glance.

   These types of goals force your organization to do new things such as introducing new products, entering new markets or transforming your service delivery model. These are the goals that are going to force change within your organization, and that won’t happen overnight. These goals have a three- to five-year time horizon.

   I won’t share DocuWare’s breakthrough goals as they are proprietary to our business, but I can share the categories they address. We have three targets:

   1. Sales excellence
   2. Excitement working with our solutions
   3. Excitement interacting with our company
   

   It was at this phase of the planning that the management team started to feel aligned – our departments all had a direct role to play in reaching one or more of these goals.

3. Develop Annual Objectives

   Breakthrough objectives are huge and meeting them doesn’t happen all at once. In this phase you develop one-year goals that will get you moving towards your breakthrough objective, “This is what needs to happen next year for us to reach that goal in five years.” 

   This was an exciting step for us. We started thinking about what we really needed to do in the next year. Under each of our three targets we developed one or two initiatives, all of which were focused on revamping our processes.

   Throughout the organization, we found that if we only optimized processes we had in place, we could only achieve incremental change (maybe a 5-10% improvement by changing a small thing here or there). We couldn’t keep doing things the same way and expect a significantly different result.

   We ended up identifying five major processes within DocuWare that we wanted to transform and called it “xxxx process Version 2.0.” We developed a vision of what these processes would achieve and gained a shared understanding of what our expected result would be. This was our first year’s annual objective

4. Deploy Annual Objectives

   If you’re noticing a trend where each previous step starts to cascade down to the next for a more specific refinement, then you start to see how the Hoshin Kanri methodology works. It takes a big vision and breaks it down into actionable steps.

   In this phase, you establish concrete steps for what your organization will really start to do. Here you plan specific, measurable goals that are assigned to initiative owners and supporters within the leadership group of your organization.

   Under the umbrella of “Excitement working with our solutions” DocuWare determined that there were two driving variables that went into “Exciting Work” equation – 1) things that our users found exciting and delightful, and 2) things that detracted from that excitement.

   We started to think in different terms. We already had excellent metrics around bug numbers, support case volume, and satisfaction with our help desk … but what if we started thinking about the fact that every time a user interacts with an expert from our company that we aren’t living up to our mission, and that it could be taking away from their overall excitement of our solutions? Of course, we want to continue to be there to delight our customers with excellent service when they need it, but we also really needed to focus on empowering our users to manage their digital transformation without an expert. From this we decided the number of support cases each customer opened with DocuWare through their life cycle was a powerful metric to monitor. I asked my teams to find specific trends that pointed to where we could proactively empower customers before they had a need to contact us. This work became the basis for my team’s first year annual objectives.

5. Execute Annual Objectives (aka Just Do It!)

   Through steps 1-4, an organization aligns strategic vision with a clear roadmap to achieve that vision.

   In Step 5 you simply do it. I say “simply” but obviously doing the work is a big challenge, and no one approach is the “right” way for every organization. Many organizations implement well-known approaches like Six Sigma DMAIC, Kaizen Events, Plan-Do-Study-Adjust cycles, or A3s.

   A mentor of mine once said “the product of strategic planning is the planner, not the plan.” I think there is a lot of truth in that statement, but I also think he never went through a Hoshin Kanri planning. We had planners AND a plan.

   To implement our plans, we used an A3/PDCA approach. DocuWare’s leadership team created action plans and milestones. We created a lot of new processes to ensure collaborative and transparent teams across divisions. Throughout the first year with a little trial and error, we found our way quickly.

   High visibility KPIs are a key part of our Hoshin Kanri initiative. The methodology provides many tools which make closely tracking KPIs possible. They’ve got great names, like the “Bowler” (it looks like a score card you keep at the bowling alley) and the “X-Matrix” (which is not another awesome movie with Keanu Reeves). We ended up having a lot of action plans going on at DocuWare. The great thing was that even though we all are working on different plans, they all are synchronized, pointing each department in the same direction.

6. Monthly Review

   One of the pitfalls organizations face when creating a yearly plan is that it sounds great at the beginning of the year but as the daily work never seems to end, the plan gets delayed, stalled, or even forgotten. To bring about a great change requires a lot of dedication, and most importantly a lot of effort. In fact, most advice on Hoshin Kanri will tell you that a minimum of 60% of a leader’s time should be focused on achieving an annual goal.

   The only way to ensure that is to review the progress often, and while action teams should meet at a minimum every week, the leadership round must meet at least once a month to review the status of all Hoshin Kanri projects.

   Hoshin Kanri truly transformed DocuWare’s senior leadership monthly meeting. Every initiative owner is responsible for giving a status update on his/her project and a discussion about the KPIs happens as an entire management team, not limited to subgroups or divisions. The phrase “red is the new green” became a motto, because unachieved KPIs (marked in red by our tools) are not look at as failures or non-achievements but simply as an opportunity to further push us to change more in our organization, to break even further from our status quo and find new and innovative ways to bring change. Fast change.

7. Annual Review

   Hoshin Kanri is a cycle of work that brings an organization toward an extremely ambitious goal.

   Of course, along the way adjustments will need to be made, minor course corrections here and there. An annual review is an extremely important step. It’s an opportunity to look at what happened over the last 12 months and figure out what needs to be done in the next 12. Next year’s goals and action plans need to be set.

   DocuWare’s first annual review was held just two weeks shy of one year after our kickoff of Hoshin Kanri. I was frazzled because I arrived a day later than expected (Pro Tip: if you forget your passport, there is absolutely no way they are letting you on a plane headed out of New York). Coffee. Great European coffee. Cures all ailments.

   Each of our initiative owners prepared a presentation to review the past year’s achievements and shortcomings. I reviewed the several enhancements in our product, changes in our processes, and in our adaptations of our communication strategy with the management team. These better enable our users to meet one of the goals in DocuWare’s mission statement which is to “manage the digital transformation of their business processes and their dynamic adaptations without the need of experts.” We talked about what could be done better. I had noticed one of my major KPIs wasn’t really telling the whole story and we worked as a team to figure out what the best metric would be. And then we circled back to step 3, a little wiser than the year before.
   
   Looking for other ways to boost productivity in your organization? View our webinar "Boost Productivity by Connecting Data Across all Enterprise Applications."

   
   
   

   About the author:  

    Jon Langdon is the Vice President of Client Services & Quality Worldwide. He oversees the operation of DocuWare’s Support, Professional Services, and Quality Assurance Teams in Germany, United States, and Bulgaria. He holds an Executive Master of Business Administration from the University of New Haven. He is currently spending his spare time learning the craft of woodworking.

Three sales people garner an appointment with the same client.  One of the sales people is with the incumbent dealer of the account.  The other two are on the outside looking in to gain net new business.

The client is at the end of a five year lease for a color A3 MFP (30 ppm).  Other than the copier cabinet there are no additional accessories on the existing A3 color MFP.

All three sales people had the same opportunity with the client. All three sales people paid a visit to the clients office to beat their chest as to why they are the best.  Seems that only one salesperson listened to the client and did a little extra digging. That client wanted to reduce their costs due to a change in their business model.

The incumbent sales person offered up a new A3 30ppm color MFP for a couple of dollars less than what the client is paying on the current lease.

The second sales person offered up a new A3 30ppm color MFP as well, but also offered up a price for a slower A3 color MFP.

The third sales person took a different approach.  That sales person went to existing device and inspected all of the paper trays.  Only two of the paper trays had paper in them and both were filled with letter size paper.

The fact that only two trays were being used and only letter size paper was in the trays sparked the next action.  That sales person then accessed the meter counter in MPF, but it wasn't the total counter he was after.  With a couple of extra button selections the sale person accessed the true meter for the MFP.

The true meter goes into depth about how many pages are printed for each paper size.  Can you guess how many 11x17 pages were printed in five years?

Who guessed zero?

If you did, you win.  Our sales person also calculated the average volume and it fell right into the perfect volume for an A4 color device.

Our sales person asked for a little bit of time to work up a price for the client.  While working up the price, he noticed another glimmer of hope on the meter print out sheet.  The color volume averaged 100 pages a year.  This smarter than the average bear sales person then developed a second price for the client.  That second price was for a black A4 50 ppm MFP.

Presenting the numbers to the DM for the A4 color device was not working. The client needed a lower price.  Rather than backing down the price of the A4 color MFP, our sales person presented the A4 black MFP with the print speed of 50 ppm.

During the presentation of the price the sales person made reference that they were only printing 100 color pages a year or eight pages a month.  He stated if you really need to print only eight color pages a month, then just add a small inkjet color printer for a couple of hundred dollars.

In the end the client agreed that they did not need color, did not need 11x17 and wanted the low cost option of the black A4 MFP.  Documents were signed that day on the first appointment.  Done deal and great GP.

Afterwards our sales person asked for copies of the quotes that were presented.  Believe it or not both quotes were emailed to the client and not hand delivered!

Both did not offer the cost savings that the client wanted.  Seems like both salespeople did not dig and do their homework.  In the end that's why the other two lost the sale.  

Can you guess who was smarter than the average bear?

-=Good Selling=-

PS "If you're not promoting A4, you're going to get your butt kicked"

Please check out my YouTube Channel and please subscribe.  I'll be releasing new video shorts in the next week.  Print4Pay You Tube Channel

While driving to an account today, I couldn't help but thinking about a new rep that just started with us.  Our business is nothing like it was almost forty years ago.

My job was to pick up the phone and or cold call for scheduling demonstrations of copiers.  We had maybe four different models of copiers and the only accessories that were available was additional paper trays. Back then you could focus and get results.

Today is much different and I don't have to tell everyone how convoluted our industry is.  Being a successful office technology rep is quite the task and I tip my hat to those who've made it past the first two years.

I thought it would be a great idea to share those on Linkedin that I follow and admire for their content and their activity.  Activity is BIG, why follow someone if they are not active.  Thus, there's no special order below, it's my short list of peeps to follow on LInkedin that can help your sales career.

Larry Levine: Larry started in the copier industry in 1988.  Which is something I found out when I picked up his new book "Selling from the Heart".  Larry is an active blogger on this site, and covers social media everyday.  He's got a great story for developing a genuine approach for sales. Larry is not only great at what he does, but finds time to give back to his community on a regular basis.  

Mike Stramaglio: Mike's been in the office technology business a tad longer than me.  Even though I don't get to speak to Mike that often, we do get to chat a few times a year at industry events.  Mike is extremely active on social media and also gives time back to charitable causes.  For me, Mike is my silent mentor on Linkedin.

West McDonald: West the wolverine, West the Sultan of MPS (Managed Print Service) and West the great communicator.  His passion is to help his partners improve thier business as change accelerates the imaging industry.  West has many blogs posted on Linkedin an is active with sharing threads from others. If you're looking for someone to emulate on Linkedin West would be my choice.

Dayna Karron: Dayna and I have never meet, although we've exchanged emails from time to time.  I tried to track her down at last year's Jillian's Fund Event, however she wasn't in the same spot for more than a few minutes.  Dayna is a prolific poster on Linkedin and I can understand why she's great at what she does.  Dayna knows that hard work does pay off.  Dayna is another great sales guru to follow.

Dale Dupree: (The Copier Warrior) What can I say, someone that is after my own heart when it comes to being creative!  I'd like to think I was just as creative as Dale back in my hey day, but that was many years ago.  Many of Dale's threads on Linkedin take us on many cold calls where Dale uses his creative genius to brand himself with new prospects.  Following Dale will inspire you to get creative and think outside the box.

Looking for additional inspiration?  Follow all five of these peeps. I'm grateful that I connected with all of the above. Yes, there are days when I can find it hard to get going. All it takes is a short trip to Linkedin and one of these great peeps will have something that reminds me of "the harder I work, the luckier I get).

Hey, you can also follow me But, all of my stuff gets posted here first and then to Linkedin.

-=Good Selling=-

“Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It’s about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let out true selves be seen.”

Brene Brown

Authenticity is one of the biggest challenges for salespeople in a profession riddled with scrupulous, fake and disingenuous sales reps; that quite frankly many buyers despise them. However, authenticity separates sales reps from sales professionals and this is what buyers want!

It may sound a bit touchy-feely but set aside some alone time, take a look inside yourself as sales is all about building credible, genuine and real relationships. In order to build relationships and change the way people think while prospecting, you need to understand who you are and what goods you bring to the table. Here lies the issue for many sales reps, they don’t understand the value they bring to the marketplace because they haven’t spent the time investing in themselves.

"If you're your authentic self, you have no competition"

BE WILLING TO BE AUTHENTIC

Authenticity, it's making the conscious choice based on accurate self-knowledge. This means stepping outside the shallow world in which many in sales live. Prospecting is not an easy thing to do as we have so many things that distract the mind.

"Sales reps have hypnotized themselves into believing what they aren't doing doesn't work"

Authenticity is a choice. It's not easy, but for sales professionals this is the difference between just getting by and making it happen. Self-reflect for a moment, asking yourself what does it means to lead an authentic prospecting lifestyle? It's hard work. It's looking right into the mirror, asking tough questions and answering them. You're in charge of your own sales career.

THE BRUTAL FACT

The lack of trust with sales people has become an epidemic. According to a survey from HubSpot Research, only a mere 3% of people consider salespeople to be trustworthy.

How many of the prospects you work with are skeptical and have low levels of trust? Skepticism is peaked out at max levels and most are scraping the bottom with low levels of trust.

No one wants to slow down and realize there's some work to be done when it comes to prospecting. It starts with leadership as prospecting has hit the mass critical stage within many sales teams.

How many is sales constantly hear the saying, "Sales is a numbers game", "It's a numbers game, go out there and prospect some more!" I want to puke when I hear this!

Quantity is important when it comes to prospecting but so is quality and efficiency. Quality comes from the behind the scenes work to be able to deliver quantity.

"Sales leaders are readers as they invest in themselves"

They do the hard work to make sure that when they get in front of a prospect they have an opportunity to truly bring the goods.

They understand their heart is behind the hard work.

AUTHENTIC PROSPECTING

The heart behind prospecting is the quality. A sales professional places their heart at the forefront as they truly want to make a difference in the lives of their clients and prospects.

It's the fundamental reality of all those in sales that every sales professional needs to prospect. Prospecting for new business... we talk about it and measure quantity but how many truly monitor quality?

How many bring to the forefront the quality in making sure when they write the email, pick up the phone, walk in the front door or make the social connection that what they deliver matters and can bring value?

"Those who care the most when it comes to prospecting will consistently have food on the business table."

VALUE BEFORE VISIBILITY

A sales professional waves the flag of value before visibility. They weave value into their communication.

How many understand how to truly weave value into an effective business conversation?

To authentically prospect means to truly understand your values, what your prospect values and incorporate this into an effective business conversation.

Unfortunately prospecting has become a negotiable item?

LONG TERM VIVISION

We all want short term results when it comes to prospecting. Many in sales get whacked over the head for 30 day and quarterly results but how many add in a long term perspective when it comes to prospecting?

"Sales reps are consistently inconsistent when it comes to prospecting"

Sure, you'll find an opportunity when the ball rests on the one yard line or when the opportunity sits inside the red zone but let's not discount the long term vision. A vast majority of conversations when prospecting will not fit into a short term window but will be there someday.

To authentically prospect means to balance a short term sales funnel with a longer term relationship funnel. Not every opportunity will fit into the 30 day or quarterly window. Let's not ignore them but nurture them.

A sales professional knows what it means to balance their relationship funnel alongside their sales funnel. With authenticity and a blend of caring they nurture their relationship funnel with education and insight.

BE AUTHENTIC AND MEAN IT

Authenticity starts when you set the intention and muster up self-fortitude to be genuine. You must become keenly aware of what this looks and feels like, along with the willingness to act in accordance with your genuine nature.

In a world full of self-interested salespeople who look at prospects as dollar signs, an authentic sales professional stands out like a shining star.

An authentic sales professional prospects with the mindset of a sales servant. They've developed a how can I help mindset. They have a true burning and genuine desire to help.

Being the real you is scary while prospecting. We need to get real and get honest with ourselves. Take off the 'bravado mask' that hinders you from prospecting. The barrier it's creating will not last forever. Be the real you, not a prospecting imposter.

If you would like to know more about Authentic Prospecting, please tune into the latest episode of the Selling from the Heart podcast (click on image below)

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 modern 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 has launched! 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 and Kindle. You can click on the book image below and this will take you to Amazon.

You can find more material inside Selling From The Heart.

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, Social Sales Academy and on my podcast by clicking on Selling from the Heart.

In the office on Friday we had a chat about the manufacturers in the industry.  My thoughts centered around KonicaMinolta and the great job they're doing with diversifying.  Ricoh was at the bottom of the list. 

Enjoy the threads from ten years ago this week:

Ricoh Offers Managed Print Services to Reduce Printing Complexity

Not a lot here this week, but some interesting items that included Canon Business Solutions and a duplicator that was introduced with a paper tray.  Oh yes, and the question of the week was who was going buy Imagistics. Can anyone answer that?

Enjoy the threads from 15 years ago this week:

Off & Running!

Just a short blog for everyone tonight. I'm doing updates to the site, listening to the Yankee game.  Thought this would be a neat short story about Linkedin.

I've always stated that as long as you work hard you never know what tomorrow will bring you.

For years and years I've spent at least 30-45 minutes a day on Linkedin. Whether it's giving congrats for a new job/position, posting links to this site, posting interesting links to other sites, sharing threads, and making sure I send everyone a "happy birthday" note.

It's just something I do. Recently, I heard a statement that it takes 21-28 days of doing something to make it a habit.  Guessing that's the same for athletes when they practice over and over to get that muscle memory.  Linkedin has become a daily part of my selling day, whether it's for the copiers that I sell or promoting the Print4Pay Hotel.  Yup, it's a habit now.

Today was kinda busy, I was on the phone (hands free) when I received a call from outside of my area code. I thought it was just another telemarketer (did I just write that!), I answered the call and was pleasantly surprised.  It was one of my Linkedin contacts, and that person was in the market for a copier ASAP.

It was a few hours later when we did the call and defined their needs. The only covenant was that the copier was needed ASAP. Traditionally I don't send proposals, I will send the other docs because it can speed up the order process. Sending the order docs rather than a proposal allows the client to read the Ts & Cs and develop questions.

About thirty minutes later I had the signed order docs in my email. WooHoo!

It wasn't a large order and wasn't a small one either.  But it was a net new account that directly came from Linkedin.

Just thought that was neat story that hard work does pay-off and as long as you work hard you never know what tomorrow will bring you.

-=Good Selling=-

There's a cool blog below from Bill Siderys titled MFP & Copier Pay Plan Changes for the Future. If you get the chance check it our.  Bill is still a member of the Print4Pay Hotel, and I'd like to thank him for his valued long time membership.

Check out the threads from ten years ago this week!

Weekend Copier Notes from 09/28/08

Last week was a killer!  Not that I sold anything, but I had a golf outing on Monday (did secure a meeting out of that), two full days of training in PA on Wednesday and Thursday.  Friday AM I left for the Jersey office and what should have been about 2.5 hours turned into almost 5 hours because one of the major highways was closed in both directions.  I had to bird dog my way home on the back roads of eastern PA.

Enjoy these threads from 15 years ago this week!

New Ricoh Type-H Staple