MFP Copier Blog

One of the more interesting threads below is from Gordon MacKay from Queensland, Australia.  Gordon posted a thread in reference to his existing dealership and his past experience in the copier industry.  It was awesome to re-visit this thread.  Gordon, if you're still out there, shoot us a reply.  That thread is here

Japan's Konica Minolta

Sitting on the cold marble chair under the canopy of a pillared room, this statue oversees our National Mall a most sacred place. They called him honest Abe he was a great president, a great man and to some an enemy. He died at the hands of a coward and was immortalized by a nation with gratitude. Today as Lincoln sits on his chair under his pillared gazebo his spirit can hear children at play, children of all colors greed’s and backgrounds. Sitting in his chair the spirit of Lincoln has witnessed things that in his lifetime were unimaginable.

It’s been decades and centuries since these marble men and woman walk and talked amongst the living. Now they sit stand or their names are carved in stone. These stone men and woman will carry on conversations with those who visit by creating thoughts of what was and why it is. The school children, the war widow, the suppressed looking for inspiration as they fight for new rights, the fellow soldiers touching the names on a wall of their fallen comrades, or even a current enemy looking to validate more hate, or a past enemy sharing the sorrow of past hatred. The statue is always both a symbol of what was, and inspiration to what can be. The shadows of the monuments at our great mall travel the grounds and as their shade touches the other monuments their spirits inner act in the stone world they share, its visitors should listen to the advice these spirits will share. It’s in this world of remembrance which brings the cause to what will soon be remembered. These statues tell us through the silence of reverence that everything has meaning and what we describe as current absolutes are merely current circumstances.

“Past yesterday’s can be a reflection of tomorrow, so today we should listen and reflect from what the past tells us, it is then we can improve our tomorrows.”   

As these past spirits wander in their shadows they must be amazed by what they see. The reasons for so much pain and sorrow in their live time is validated or explained in their immortal lives. These monuments must be anxious to yell and scream as they see today’s atrocities, or as they witness what those living today believe to be right, knowing their history will prove was wrong. They know this from their experiences and their own history. The past tells us what can happen when the arrogance of men both good and bad drive their aspirations to a conclusion with or without mercy. These monuments will weather and the current care takers will preserve for the future generations. As these future generations visit to remember those long before them. They will also bring life back to these monuments, as all who visit - when they think and dream with the sprits in the shadows of the statues.

“One should focus on why they would be missed rather than on what they are missing.”    

   R.J. Stasieczko

Note from Art:  If you're liking RJ's Blogs, then please make sure you click on his collection link @the top of the blog. I'm moving all of them there over the next few days

It' just about 10PM, and I just finished up my LinkedIn chores.  Twice a day, once in the AM and then after dinner, I'll spend about 30 minutes viewing my wall, sharing content, adding content, commenting on content and then wishing everyone a Happy Birthday and or a Happy Anniversary at their job.  It's my way of keeping up with contacts and promoting content that I like or find useful for others.

Was there anything unique about today?  Naw, I had to process an order early in the AM, then it was off to follows ups with existing opportunities.  I'm thinking I followed up more by email than by phone, in additional all of the three appointments I set today were via email.   My how the world has changed from the eighties.

I was able to move a few more opps closer to closing and feel that I got a shot of closing at least 20K or more in the next 3 days.  Sure, hope so, Thanksgiving will be here before we know it.

I had a 3PM appointment with an existing account a few minutes from the office. I arrived a few minutes early only to find out that the account had moved on me!!  Arrgghh, now I'm going to be late. I should have checked with the client prior to leaving, thus being late was my fault.  I was lucky because their new office was only a few minutes away. I was suppose to met with the DM to go over that new wide format color scanner from Contex.  The SD One MF is a killer, if you have the time you can check them out at National Azon.

Our DM was not available and thus I meet with the office manager who I have know for years.  We went over features, specs, needs, and pricing, however the office manager was not sure if they needed a 24 or 36 inch model.  The office manager than also asked me for pricing to upgrade to old A3 color MFP that they have, kinda just like yesterday, you just never know what tomorrow will bring!

Before I left, I scheduled the follow up appointment for next week.  Scheduling that follow up appointment is crucial to moving the deal forward.  I could have stated this, "ok, I'll research these items for you and I'll call you to schedule another appointment".  So, WTF does that leave you, especially if you can't get a hold of them for a week or maybe two weeks.  Right, you leave with nothing! You then  hope that you can schedule that next appointment on the first call.  Leave nothing to chance, make your own way and control your own sales destiny.

By the time I left it was somewhere around 4PM and that meant stupid traffic on the way back to the office.  So, not a bad day, no orders but developed another $10 in opportunities, and that's what really matters.  You can't sell jack %$#$ without opportunities.

Amount Sold Today = $10K

Total Revenue to Date = $62K

New Opportunities Created Today= $00K

Total New Opportunities Created = $209K

Revenue Required $138K

-=Good Selling=-

"What Type of Day is it Today?" 

Any guesses...."It's a Great Day to Sell Something!" 

Initially, I had three appointments for today, "had" is the key word.  I rescheduled my early AM appointment for an existing account.  We were scheduled for a webinar for AP & AR workflows along with a discussion about the existing MFP.  I was not able to get a history on my MFP in time, thus I had to reschedule. 

My second appointment was a closing appointment, brings the docs, review the docs and get the signature. More on that  in a bit. 

One of the items I mentioned to the newbie aka rookie in the office is that I try to limit creating proposals. I would rather write up the lease, maintenance agreement and sales order in advance. Then highlight all of the signature areas and tag those highlighted areas with little green "sign here" stickers.  I'm thinking the little green  "sign here" stickers gets my point across. 

I've even presented up three sets of closing documents if I'm presenting multiple recommendations.  Assuming the order is a good thing!  I don't mind re-doing the docs because a client wants to add or take away something from the order!

Our resident rookie aka newbie broke the ICE today and signed his first order on his own!  Woohoo!  Awesome and good for him, I can see there's a good work ethic there. 

K, back to the second appointment, I got all of the docs signed and my client then hit me with, we want to get two more of these for the other offices, not today but maybe a week to a couple of weeks! 

See, that's a part of this business that I love, as long as you keep prospecting you just never know what tomorrow is going to bring.  I knew about their other two offices years ago, but put them on the back burner for awhile.  The order was for a color A4 MFP and revenue is about $10K. In addition, I scored with two more opps for $10K each!

Alright, my third appointment of the day, well never came to fruition. I had a call about noon from one of my clients, asking me what happened yesterday. Ok, I told him I had a few appointments, the day was ok and went home about 5PM. "No", he stated, "you were suppose to meet with Tim to go over the specs for a new copier". I was like WHAT!  No, I have Tim down for today.  I went to my scheduler and I had two appointments for them, one for yesterday ( had rescheduled that) and one for today. Anyway, we rescheduled for Friday, and I'm hoping that looks good for an 800ppm color A4.

Can't wait for tomorrow!

Amount Sold Today = $10K

Total Revenue to Date = $62K

New Opportunities Created Today= $20K

Total New Opportunities Created = $199K

Revenue Required $138K

-=Good Selling=-

Geesh, it's day twenty already!  Can't believe I've done this for twenty work days in a row. 

Everyday I try to add something in the daily blog that I can share with others,  after thirty six years of selling down the street, I have a few more than the average bear. I'll try and figure that tip out later in this blog.

My first appointment was at 9AM, and thank goodness for that, I was able to work from the home office until 8:30AM. 

The appointment was to discuss and review a proposal for a wide format system.  There was no opportunity to close since the proposal would have to be approved at different levels for the purchase order to be approved. We spent about 15 minutes reviewing the proposal, the features, and a few questions about a couple of specs. Other than that, nothing much to bring home to mama.  On the way out, I did close for the next point of contact.  We both agreed to touch base in 5 days to see where we are in the process of getting the system ordered.

Next stop, was the office for another day of following up, prospecting, working the CRM and preparing for two appointments for tomorrow.  I probably ended up with maybe 20 calls, set three appointments, with one closing appointment for tomorrow.  I also had a good email exchange with another client that believes we'll be seeing an order for a 45ppm color A3 device in a few days! 

Speaking of emails, I'm thinking I sent 25-30 emails and probably responded to another 15 that were incoming. It was a busy day.

I was able to add a one small opportunity for a small A4 device, but it didn't start out that way. I had received a call from a net new prospect that had seen one of our systems in the field. That prospect wrote down the equipment ID# number and gave us a call, stating that they were interested in that type of device. Initially, I had called the prospect, but was relinquished to leaving a voice mail.  Right after I finished the call,  I sent an email to our prospect with the hope of setting an appointment. We had an email exchange back and forth and the client was putting up a good fight for not meeting, stating "that is the model I'm looking for, and I need a price".  Not wanted to spend to much time on a lower end A3 Color device, I relinquished and offered up pricing via email.  But, I also sent along a paragraph on why it's important to meet (space, network, Macs, existing equipment).

We had a further email exchange today with the prospect objecting to the price and asking if there was anything pre-owned.  I had nothing to offer that would be less that what I already price out.  I had then had my epiphany of the day!  I forgot all about asking this client about his needs for 11x17. It turns out there was no need for 11x17, thus I called the prospect and we where chatting about some of the cool A4 color and black devices that we have.  Thirty minutes later I sent out some numbers for loaded A4 black and color device.  Figured I would give the prospect two choices instead of one. 

We just emailed each other about ten minutes ago for a few additional questions (8:56PM here).  I'm thinking we're a few days from nailing this down also. Other than that it's late I still need to post press releases on the site and figure out why HootSuite has been messing up.

Amount Sold Today = $0K

Total Revenue to Date = $52K

New Opportunities Created Today= $3K

Total New Opportunities Created = $179K

Revenue Required $148K

-=Good Selling=-

It's Monday, the weather was clear and I got a head start on the day.  Just about 8:30AM I received an email from an existing client that he had signed the order docs and they were ready to be picked up. 

I'm all over that and scheduled an appointment to pick them up at 3:15PM.  I selected the 3:15PM time slot because I had another appointment booked for 4:15 a few miles away with an existing client.

The other day, we had our net new telephone prospecting morning.  One of the newbies in the office made 90 calls and no connections.  Wow, that's awesome dialing that many numbers, but on the other end it's a real bummer that the newbie could not connect with anyone.  No worries newbie it happens from time to time.

I learned some time ago, that I will not make a telephone cold call unless I know what that company sells.  This allows me to ponder some type of vertical pitch before I make the call. 

The main pitch will not be about we sell copiers or IT, but more focused on how the DM could benefit from what our service or product can do for them.

For instance, I might ask the DM if they every have overage charges on their copiers. If so, I would make this statement, "our program could eliminate overage charges for copiers and MPS programs, is that something that you would be interested in?"

If I have the DM's name, then it's off to LinkedIn and Google to see if we have mutual connections or anything in common.  Commonality is huge, whether it's sports, fishing, reading organizations, try and find something that you have on common.

My goal for today was to get 10-15 mailers in the mail, which includes a corporate  brochure, my card, a folder and then a brief hand written note.  Thus, all of my calls today took some time. I checked out each company on their website and google. In addition I also checked out the DM's for any commonality.  One mailer even included a copy of the LinkedIn page and who we had in common for first level connections. That was a first!

I'll be following up on those accounts next week, since the mail takes so long now!

After lunch I was still committed to cleaning up the rest of the calls in my CRM.  I scheduled two additional appointments later this week and was able to schedule 3 webinars with existing clients for workflow processes.    Not a bad day so far.

At 3:15PM, I picked up my order!  The a short drive to over to my next appointment.  My client had expressed interest in moving from a black device to a color device.  They were doing more marketing and did not have a color printer, in addition they were tired of going back and forth to Staples and the local printer for color docs. 

Seems like there is always some of issues that we need to work through.  In this case it was twenty payments left on the lease. Which added up to a pretty hefty amount, but I had a plan.  My plan was to show my client their existing costs, and then their proposed costs, and then break the cost down from yearly to monthly and then to daily.  The end result is the daily cost to upgrade was ninety eight cents a day for 26 work days.  I have the closing appointment scheduled for Thursday to sign the docs for the new color device!

Amount Sold Today = $8K

Total Revenue to Date = $52K

New Opportunities Created Today= $0K

Total New Opportunities Created = $176K

Revenue Required $148K

-=Good Selling=-

About eighteen months ago, I posted a blog titled “What I Like about the New Contex SD One Color Scanner”.

The SD One Color Scanner was the first true large format color desktop scanner on the market. Not only did the system have a small foot print but with a weight of only 18.6lbs, the Contex SD One was excellent for construction sites.

With the recent addition of the Contex SD One MF, Contex has knocked it out of the box again with a portable wide format scanner.   The Contex SD one MF doesn’t need to be connected to a computer, nor does it require software to scan wide format drawings aka blueprints.

The onboard touchscreen tablet (which is wi-fi enabled) enables you to mark-up and share documents to your personal Cloud, a project folder and mobile platforms such as Google Drive, and Dropbox.

Do you have a need to scan As-builts at the job site as well as the need to mark up or annotate those scans as well? If, so the SD One MF offers all of these features in the standard configuration. No longer do you have to rely on having a wide format printer/plotter at the job site to perform the markups!

Another awesome feature is that you can also mark up, annotate and scan to a USB Stick. When it comes to printing, Contex offers print driver for HP, Canon & Epson, thus you don’t have to be constrained to one printer.

Let’s take a step back in time, before the Contex SD One MF was launched.

All color wide format scanners required that they needed to be connected to a network or directly to a PC. In addition, you had to install software on that PC in order to scan those wide format drawings. In some instances the PC was not up to spec with the scanners needs and or the software was not compatible with the OS of PC. Thus, you not only had the cost of the scanner, but you also had to keep the PC, OS and software up to date on a regular basis. We all understand what a hassle it is when our hardware is no longer compatible with our PC’s.

The Contex SD One MF eliminates the need for the PC, the OS and the software.

Here’s my favorite Top Talking Points;

• On board wi-fi tablet allows you to scan to Cloud Platforms
• On board tablet allows you to mark up and annotate drawings at the device
• Scan and save drawings as .tiff. .jpeg, PDF, PDF/A
• Scan to onboard USB Stick
• Availability for 24”, 36” or 44” widths
• Options, I know have additional cost savings options that I can present to my clients

Looking for more information on these? If you’re in NJ, you can email me arthurkpost@gmail.com , if you’re a dealer looking to get pricing, please contact National Azon, or you can get general information from Contex.

-=Good Selling=-

Four days in to the new month and it already feels like I'm in the last week of the month!

My last day of the month for November falls on the 23, which is the day before Thanksgiving here in the US.  Thus, I figure I'm at least going to lose half a day at most. I've got three solid weeks to keep prospecting and closing

Last week was not one of my better weeks, a nagging sinus headache and then a flare up of arthritis in my left foot made my day start late on Friday and I had to scratch all of my in person visits that I had planned.

Never the less, there was much to do with prospecting, and moving deals forward.  The three orders that I thought would close this week did not, I didn't lose any of them, all just taking a little more time that I expected.

I was able to confirm my demonstration for Saturday with a net new client for the MP C8002SP.  I arrived at the office a little before 9AM, and there was my client pulling up behind me. 

My client brought in six different types of substrate to run on the MP C8002, and to also get a better understanding of how the Fiery can help with color matching (something he does not have now).  The demo was more of a sit down going over the features of the fiery, sending them to print and then evaluating the color quality on each substrate.  Two hours later we still had some other samples to run, however my client had to get back to his office to get a few things done. I agreed that I would print those other samples during the week and then bring them to him.

I'd love to talk about what he does, however his business is so unique that I'm afraid I'd let the cat out of the bag and would have others calling on him. The time I spent on Saturday was well worth it, because we were able to work together in a relaxed atmosphere and there were zero distractions.

Over the years, I'm scheduled many Saturday appointments, with most of them being demonstrations at the office.  Saturday demonstrations show commitment from the rep that he or she is willing to go the extra mile and work with the clients schedule. That's a plus for the client when they are looking at multiple vendors.  Any client that is willing to see you on a Saturday is serious about buying and has already developed a level of trust with that rep.

Next week here we come!!!

Amount Sold Today = $0K

Total Revenue to Date = $44K

New Opportunities Created Today= $0K

Total New Opportunities Created = $176K

Revenue Required $156K

In my prior my post, 5 Things Top Sales Reps Do And Why Most Just Shoot Themselves With Complacency Bullets, pinpoints what makes sales reps so successful.

Great salespeople do the same thing every day. They are purpose driven. They focus on the success and happiness of their prospective and current clients. They are able to see the business world through the eyes of the other party. They are naturally curious and love serving their clients.

The silent killer to sales success lies with one word... COMPLACENCY and this is why most sales reps continuously shoot themselves with silver complacency bullets.

What the heck is a sales monkey? Have you ever seen a sales monkey with a loaded gun?

HOW MANY SALES MONKEYS RUN AMUCK INSIDE SALES DEPARTMENTS TO

I take you back to your childhood as I ask you to all sing along with me...

Three little monkeys swinging in the tree

teasing Mr. Alligator can’t catch me….can’t catch me

along came Mr. Alligator quiet as can be

and snapped that monkey right out of that tree

SUCCESSFUL SALES REPS CATCH PROSPECTS RIGHT FROM THEIR COMPETITORS TREE

They continually prospect keeping their sales funnel full

Top sales reps divide their time between selling, prospecting and taking care of their clients. Top sales reps who crush their quotas are fully dedicated to prospecting and have modernized their prospecting approaches to align with the modern buyer.

It’s hard to sell something if you don’t have a prospect to talk to. The most important part of selling is prospecting – finding new, qualified people to talk to.

Brian Tracy

The primary differentiator of today's successful sales reps is their ability to prospect. Learn more in one of my recent posts... How To Use New School Prospecting Methods To Crush It In Sales In The 21st Century

Career Builder leveraged this rather funny video to help promote the slogan... "Want A New Job?" Follow the sales monkeys and you will be looking for a new job!

TOP SALES REPS AREN'T DISTRACTED BY SALES MONKEYS

3 Things Sales Reps Must Use So They Don't Look Like Sales Monkeys With A Loaded Gun

Top sales reps successfully use these three silver bullets...

Silver Bullet Number 1

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE - Top sales reps appreciate their CRM as this allows their sales data to be stored centrally and delivered to them in an easy-to-follow format allowing them to monitor current client and prospect information. They don't view this as another "sales tool" or just another way for their bosses to police their work.

According to The Tas Group, on the average 2/3 of all sales force (67%) miss their sales quota.

Top sales reps synchronize their daily schedules through their CRM and prioritize tasks to make sure customers are not ignored. This insures their key prospects are contacted on time. This alone helps to boost sales performance. These four areas of a CRM will help sales reps to excel...

• Better search, filtering and qualifying leads
• Improve follow up on sales opportunities systematically and on time
• Help to prioritize and rationalize follow up activities
• Help to increase target reach rates faster

Silver Bullet Number 2

CONTENT - Sales reps can't go one day without hearing, "You have now entered the world of buyer empowerment." Yes, thanks to Google buyers have the ability to research and make buying decisions independent of communication with sales reps. 

Successful sales reps who recognize this learn how to not only engage the new digital buyer but to align their online and offline resources to the buyer journey.

Successful sales reps realize the one critical part of addressing the new buyer’s journey is not merely creating digital tactics, but focusing on how they engage prospects and even clients once they engage digitally.

SUCCESSFUL SALES REPS CREATE ALIGNMENT WITH THE DIGITAL BUYER BY GOING FISHING

"Sales reps must learn how to become digital fishermen and content is the bait on the hook"

My friend Jack Kosakowski says it best, "Content drives value, value drives conversation, revenue is a result of both of these combined once you go offline."  Content includes blogs, social posts, videos, webinars, white papers and more. All the content your company produces to engage customers is marketing collateral which can then be used inside the sales process. Posting content online (LinkedIn as an example); the most important thing to remember is you are opening up a conversation.

Successful sales reps realize they learn something as well with all the content used to go fishing.

THE NEW MODERN SALES EQUATION

Fishing + Content / Learning x Conversations = Closing Opportunities

SirusDecision cite,The number one reason why sales reps were not meeting their numbers was, “Their inability to provide insight into a buyer, adding value and starting relevant conversations.”

Silver Bullet Number 3

CUSTOMERS - Sales reps must leverage their customers and ask for help! Wouldn't you agree a warm lead is better than cold lead? Then, referrals from happy clients are about as warm as it gets, correct? In fact, a Dale Carnegie study found that 91 percent of customers would be willing to give referrals if they were asked. Unfortunately, only 11 percent of sales reps actually do ask.

I find this crazy....

You work so hard to get clients then why on earth would you not ask them to help you?

TOP SALES REPS SET ASIDE THEIR FEAR AND EGO AND ASK FOR HELP

Sales reps continually face rejection. It is the fear of rejection which plays a role in a sales reps reluctance to ask for a referral. Asking a customer for a referral opens up potential negative feedback or "no's," and as a result, sales reps avoid it in order to keep their relationship positive. You work your ass off to help keep your clients happy, therefore; successful sales reps have earned the right and have no problem asking their current clients to help grow their business.

"46% of sales reps feel their sales pipeline is accurate", TAS Group

What sales rep doesn't have a big fat healthy ego? We have been trained to believe we can sell in the face of adversity. This is true as we have to in order to be successful sales reps, as we believe our sales method is the best and we can sell without any help. The notion of sales reps as lone wolf hunters means we are reluctant to ask for a referral as a referral is asking for help which depicts a potential sign of weakness.

"Do you know who works almost exclusively by referrals? High end consultants, surgeons, attorneys, accountants, the wealthy. Do you know who never asks for referrals? The incompetent.” 

Claude Whitacre, Sales Prospecting: The Ultimate Guide To Finding Highly Likely Prospects You Can Close In One Call

Please don't allow the sales monkeys to run amuck inside your sales department and distract you from achieving the success you deserve.

To borrow a line from Days of Our Lives,

"Like sand through the hourglass, so are the days of our sales lives"

I get where you all are coming from. I have walked a day in a life of your shoes.

Your comments, likes and shares are greatly appreciated.

In 2016, Larry was recognized by ENX Magazine, “The Difference Maker” as someone who is making a difference inside the copier channel. Larry is passionate about helping sales reps succeed in creating their online brand image

You can find more blog posts inside the Social Sales Academy website.

I appreciate getting the opportunity to share my LinkedIn stories. Integrating the use of LinkedIn was my “game-changer” in the highly competitive copier world. With great pride I transform, coach and inspire B2B Office Technology Sales Professionals to grow net new business by helping them tell their story and communicate on LinkedIn. My commitment is to help office technology dealers thrive in a changing marketplace. You can follow me on LinkedIn, Twitter, as well as at the Social Sales Academy

I was trying to look for something special in threads from ten years ago this week. However, not much to hang my hat on for a conversation.  I item that did cross my mind is that these threads are from 2006, and just a six month before I noticed a drop in wide format business in 07.  We all know what happened next.  Enjoy the threads from ten years ago this week!

Konica Minolta P4P Up and Running!

Last nights sinus headache became this mornings issue. I gave some serious thought about calling in sick, but decided to tuff it out and get my ass into the office. 

Thus, I finally arrived at the office about 10AM, not my idea of a good start, but never the less, I was there instead of sleeping on the couch.

My goal for the day? 

Was to get some of these opportunities to close and too schedule appointments for some of the larger opportunities that I have in the pipeline.  First things first, I followed up with my appointment from yesterday for the inexpensive wide format color scanner.  Had to leave him a voice mail, but also sent him and email asking for the order. 

BTW, I use this subject line almost all of the time in my emails, "sorry, I missed, you", I read this on Hubspot a few months ago and the blog stated that the "sorry, I missed you", subject title gets more opens than "following up".

If I have that the contacts email address and I'm down to leaving a voice mail, I will opt out of the voice mail and send the email.

After a few calls, a few emails, I was no close to closing a few orders than I was yesterday. I had completed all of my follow ups and moved nothing forward. 

Incoming

I received a call from one of my existing account prospect that's fighting for me, however I've got competition and I'm at my lowest price, and that also translates that I've also got the highest price out of my two other competitors.  My prospect agreed that service and support is key, however there was a very large margin from the lowest price copier to mine.  Stating he could pay more, but needs additional justify for his boss to obtain the OK to move forward. 

I had completed a side for side for him the other day vs the other two competitors. It was a simple side by side that picked out seven specs that makes my Ricoh stand out.  That side by side proved not to be the answer, thus while on the phone with him, I stated, let me go through all of the features again and let me see what I can come up with.

Rather than supplying a spec side by side, I decided to research the heck out of my features and pick out four to five of them that my competition did not have.  That was the easy part, what I needed to do next was to put those features to work as to what they could do for his workgroup.  I then racked my memory banks for a current client that was in the same vertical market.  One I found that client,  I then thought about how they benefitted from those features.  Thus the first line of the spreadsheet was the feature, the second line was a detailed outline of how they used the feature, and how the feature saved them time or money.  Yes, it's quite a bit of work, but that's why I'm at work.

Within an hour I had my customized side by side. I called my existing account prospect and read line by line, by the time I was done he was pretty excited and thinks he can put this to bed tomorrow.  What's another day at this point in time, right. Three days into the new month and I feel like it's been three weeks.

Later that day

Scheduled an appointment with an existing account that wants to upgrade to color. Bingo!  Another opportunity. More calls, more emails.  I scheduled an appointment for Saturday with a net new account!  So much for sleeping in.

Home

Dang, this getting longer than I thought. I had an email from an existing client that he wanted to move in a different direction. WHAT!, different direction I thought?  I had pitched him on a color wide format system and was in the follow up stage because he could not make the decision alone. I knew this going in.  After a half a dozen emails back and forth, no decision was made, the objection was the price, and he was looking for just a plotter.  Ok, I got those, and we agreed that we will talk more tomorrow.  WHEW! 

Till tomorrow!

Amount Sold Today = $0K

Total Revenue to Date = $44K

New Opportunities Created Today= $10K

Total New Opportunities Created = $176K

Revenue Required $156K

-=Good Selling=-

FYI, I've got a killer sinus headache tonight, gonna make this short and sweet for every one.

Had two appointments for today, one was for a wide format color scanner scheduled at 10AM and the second appointment was too follow up with an existing account that had the hots for improving their paper based workflow for purchase orders and the associated invoices and maybe the need to replace to older analog copiers with something pre-owed.  Still can't believe I'm seeing analog copiers still in the field.

My early morning was tasked with sending courtesy emails to existing clients with a teaser about document management software.  Thought I would put a little bait in the email and see what happens.

One of my deals, backed off some. I was suppose to have the order yesterday,  which prompted a call to my prospect.  My prospect then informed me that they are going to wait a bit, because they really didn't need the system right now and the buying time was moved back a few weeks. ARRRGGHH!

I thought the move was intentional and the prospect was hoping I might drop the price to get the deal done.  Well, there was no dropping of the price, because I'm holding the position of strength with a cream puff of a pre-owned system.  Just going to let the ball travel with this account and see how this plays out in a couple of weeks.

My first appointment was with an existing wide format client who bought from me ten years ago.  Yes, he still has an analog wide format device that just makes copies!  Thus, I was ready with and pre-filled order doc, a pre-filled lease and the intent was to get an order for a low end wide format scanner. 

The first thing my prospect hits me with is a print out from Craig's list for a used Ricoh Digital wide format that was reselling for about $3K. I was able to debunk this quite easily because there was no model number, no meter read, and no service history. I knew and my prospect knew that if a drum needed to be replaced,  the cost was more than want he wanted to spend.

My client then hands me a printout from a web site where they are offering a full color wide format scanner (24inch) for $1,995. At this point, I'm thinking.......why am I wasting my time with this?  However,  the product he showed me was interesting and I thought I would pick the system apart by reading the entire brochure.  I did not walk out with an order, nor did I lose an order, but I offered up a stall to do some additional research and get back to my client later that day.  Right now, it's more about revenue, and I think I can get the order tomorrow with one more phone call. It is a big deal, no it's not, is it worth my time, not actually.  "But meat is meat and a mans gotta eat".  Like I've stated it's more about revenue right now.

I was back to the office by noon, had lunch and then received a lead for a wide format systems.  WooHoo!  I did reach out by phone and could not connect, thus I sent an email right after the call.  Hoping this appointment can be scheduled tomorrow.

Afternoon appointment was with that existing account that had shown some interest in document management and two copiers.  My client met me in the hallway and stated, "I'd like to get those copiers, however not everyone is on board", I then stated to the client (Operations Manager), "maybe it's time to wield your power and just order the systems, it's not like you don't need them.", "maybe you're right" he stated, "give me a few days on this".  I could have hit him again, but I backed off because I wanted to secure the meeting for the document management.  I offered up a lunch and learn for him. I stated you get your people, I'll get my people, I'll buy lunch and we'll schedule the webinar in your office.  My client agreed that was good and we both agreed that we would get our peeps together and select a date for next week or the week after.

I arrived back at the office and concentrated on prospecting with existing clients for the rest of the day.  Left a little after 5PM

Not a great day, but not a bad day, still moving things forward and added another opp. Like I stated, I'm ok as long as I can add one opportunity per day, because sooner or later all of these opps are going to start dropping.

Amount Sold Today = $0K

Total Revenue to Date = $44K

New Opportunities Created Today= $11K

Total New Opportunities Created = $166K

Revenue Required $156K

-=Good Selling=-