MFP Copier Blog

3D printers are hot, and they got even hotter after President Obama made mention of them in his State of the Union address this year.  My google alerts now carries at least 10-15 mentions of 3D printers each week, before the State of the Union address, maybe 5 or 6 per week.

Since you have or may be thinking about getting that 3D printer, could we possible see 3D MFP's (multifunctional device) that will scan 3D and copy 3D items in the near future?

Think about it, if I'm a novice user with a 3D printer and I'm really not good with engineering software or I'm tired of the template files that came with my 3D printer, why the heck would I want one?  Where I see the value at least for me, is the ability to place and item on the 3D MFP and then make copies of them. Think of it, you could make a copy of just about anything, whether it's a small part, a sculpture, nick knacks, flower pots, or whatever the heart desires. I'll admit I'm knew to the entire process of 3D printing, however if we had a 3D MFP would we'd be able to scan an item and then have that data transformed into a CAD or some type of engineering file.  Better yet, what about sending a copy of that item to another 3D printer that could be located anywhere in the world.  Could there be a 3D printer portable image format that's just dedicated to 3D MFP's for copying and scanning?  Would I be able to them email that to someone else?

Maybe 3D MFP's could be the first replicators that were used in Star Trek in the seventies.  I'm thinking there is a place for 3D MFP's in the very near future.  Would it be far fetched that we could scan out favorite pet and keep the likeness of them around forever?  Could we see color 3D MFP's in the near future?  The possibilities can become endless, but could also open up new businesses opportunities for those creative entrepreneurs.

Why haven't we seen any of the major copier manufacturers enter the industry?  It's a no brainer to me, closed consumables, service contracts, on site service and training it's all there. 3D printers would be a great additional to your dealerships portfolio of products and services offered also!

3D printers, 3D MFP's (maybe), but for right now it seems like it's the Wild, Wild West about this for this growing industry.

What does it take to be among the elite sales people at your branch or your dealership?

For starters you've got to have a passion for being number 1.  Nothing floats my boat more than being at the top of the totem poll each and every month. I like to win, don't like to lose and will do the extra work to make sure my numbers are the best they can be month in and month out.

I've spoken about the 3D's of selling before and they are Desire, Dedication and Determination.  Too often I see reps that will slack off once they've hit their number. The phone calls, the appointments and the opportunities drop. On the other hand I also understand why this can happen, our business unlike any other is filled with rejection, riddled with price driven customers and reps, along with countless hours of research that can lead to failure.

To be the best you've got to WANT IT!  Why would you be in sales if you didn't want to be at the top of the ladder each month, each quarter and year end?

For me, I pick out a goal each year, this years goal is to be number one, not only in percentage of quota but overall sales volume (it's gonna be a dog race to the finish).  This year in 2013 wanted to raise my quota by $10K per month, you know what I did?  I refused it and asked then to raise it by $25K per month. I'll admit, I'm driven and once I set my mind on something I'll try my hardest to achieve that goal.  Along with claiming the goal,  everything else seems to fall in place like the commissions, the spiffs, the placements and additional knowledge of the competition. It's a never ending learning cycle and what I like best about sales is that as long as you put the work and effort in, you never know what the next day is going to bring!

So, I've got these three targets that I try to hit every month, I know that as long as I hit these targets I'm going to be Number 1.

If you'd like those targets, then please email me and after you've registered for the forums and I'll send them to you. Feel free to log on and become a member of the largest group of Copier (Imaging) Professionals in the world!

If you're interested in raising the level of your sales team(s) excitement with a motivational seminar. I'm available to speak at your dealership or direct branch. I have an awesome story to tell that can inspire reps to stay in the industry, sell more, and have more passion.  Send an email to art@p4photel.com

-=Good Selling=-

The Beautiful Compensations of Corporate Philanthropy

By Paul Joe Watson, ESP/SurgeX

Corporate philanthropy isn’t a new idea, but it is often understated. It can be easy to forget that practicing generosity as a company can be good for business. Doing so doesn’t need to be complex or expensive, nor does it mean having a formal partnership with a nonprofit. Here are two examples: Every few months at ESP/SurgeX, our employees donate blood to a local hospital when their bloodmobile comes to our facility. In addition, recently some of our team members helped a local youth football event through volunteering and monetary donations. These are simple, proactive ways our business helps those in need. What corporate philanthropy looks like for each company will vary, and it often has beneficial impacts regarding three aspects:

1. The Personal Satisfaction Aspect

Ralph Waldo Emerson once stated, "It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself." A great thing about helping others is that it makes the giver feel good. When companies make the effort to practice generosity, their employees feel good, and morale is boosted.

2. The Human Aspect

I hear a lot about how necessary it is for businesses to humanize themselves in order to remain relevant. Philanthropy is a great way to do this because the practice reminds clients and consumers of the human side of a business. By doing good, companies show their humanity—that they care about others. This can make it easier to establish or maintain important relationships.

3. The News Aspect

By giving to others, companies are essentially saying, “Look what we’re doing to help people.” And with all the tools digital media provides to spread the word, it’s easier than ever for those philanthropic deeds to become known. If a business’s acts of goodness are disclosed in a classy, tactful way, the company could get some positive press.

Remember, corporate philanthropy often does not need to be complicated or burdensome. If you keep a lookout for opportunities to do some good, you’ll be surprised by how you can make a positive impact in a meaningful way.

Below is a brief overview of an email that I sent to our sales team. 

Believe it or not there are additional ways to close additional business at the end of the month.

We close our month early which can actually work to our advantage.

Also an important point is that we all have two end of the month closes to work with, one for the bean counters (our end of month the 23rd) and the calendar end of the month, which is the last day of the month.

What our VP stated is fact, other reps are calling to close on the phone, stopping in and in most cases offering "a deal that can't be refused".  We also need to be offering some type of calendar close, whether it's a "drop close" where you add additional service, supplies, make extra payments or drop the price to get the prospect to "fish or cut bait".

You can also give the prospect the "ultimatum close" that this is "the once in lifetime offer", and if you don't take it now you can do business with someone else because I don't have the time for you.  It works and many prospects are fearful that if they don't act now they will miss out on a great opportunity.

There are many closes that can be used, you just have think which one will work best for your prospect, address their pain points or address their greed.

Hope this helps!

-=Good Selling=-

On Wednesday of last week I scheduled an appointment with one of my prospects to go see a Plockmatic Booklet Maker in action at an existing account. 

The existing account is one of those accounts that... how can I say was a little tardy on keeping up with agreements and had to go and find supplies and service somewhere else if you get my drift.

I finished the demonstration (by the way, signed the order after the demo) and then went off to thank my account for the time they allotted me in their office and use of their system.  We got to talking and my client asked, "Do you know where I can get some OEM toner for the system"? I stated "What's wrong with your current toner provider"? The client went on to state that they were buying toner from ebay for the last year or so from one source and that source had dried up.  I was then then told that the person or persons that were supplying the toner had been actually stealing the toner and selling it on ebay!  They got caught by the US Post Office, and now face at least two Federal crimes, one for shipping across state lines, two for using the US Post Office and then the crime of stealing the product in the first place.   Odds are this person or group of persons may go directly to jail! As luck would have it my client had no idea they were receiving stolen goods, seems like they are off the hook.

Which leads me to ebay, there's no way to tell if you are buying stolen supplies that are posted on ebay, and when the price seems to be to good to be true then the product might just be stolen.  Consumers seem to be so caught up in getting the best price for a product or service and where does that get them?  Saving $10 for a toner cartridge that lasts 10,000 pages equates to one hundredth of a penny for each page. We all know copiers need to be maintained and repaired quite often, yet end users will buy copiers on ebay only to find out that they need to spend additional dollars to set up the system, replace what is missing and deal with many issues since there is no service records/history that come with the unit.

Two New Yorkers recently got nabbed for as Toner thieves. One stole more than 1.5 million dollars worth of the supplies and the other pilfered more than $375K worth of supplies.

The though of a CHEAP price is long forgotten after poor service.

-=Good Selling=-

More and more I find myself visiting Linkedin a few times a days. I like to scroll through the threads to see if any of my contacts have posted anything new, however I'm really bored with the three standard buttons of "Like, Comment and Share". Here's some additional buttons I wish Linkedin would add to the site!

• boo, hiss:  As much as I would root for a baseball player to get a hit and then boo them when they are bad, I think there's a place for a "boo-hiss" button. I would enjoy throwing out a boo or a hiss every now and then. (I'm sure I would get a few of them also)
• Dude, where the frack did you get that picture from?: I must say that most of the head shots and pics put a name with the face, but good golly what were you thinking of when you uploaded that picture of yourself!
• awesome: If you've really enjoyed a thread, blog or column give it an even better rating with an "awesome" button.
• thumbs down: I like to be able give a thumbs down (not the person), but to the article, link of thread. When there's a "like" button then there should be a "dislike" right, we can keep in tactful with the "thumbsdown" button.
• stop already:  You're putting too much information on my wall!  What a great way to tell someone that they need to get a life.  (I'm sure I would have many of these also).

All kidding aside, over the last 12 months or so, I've found Linkedin to be a great resource to see who I may be connected with.  I'm a BIG believer in Six degrees of separation and if we dig deep enough we can get connected the right person when we need to.

-=Good Selling=- 

Today, I had to get some tires replaced and when you're on the road as much as I am, well.......I have a tendency to not clean my car as often as I'd like to. But, today was one of those days to find old faded toll receipts, a dried up banana peel, some forgotten business cards and a copier prospect card from 1992!  Now, my car is not 21 years old and I'm really at a loss how the card got there, but it brought me back to my "golden" era of selling copiers.

In 1992 I was 32 years old and running my own Adler Royal & Copystar copier dealership out of Atlantic Highlands, NJ.  We had some desktop computers but they were mostly used to letters and keep the accounting part of the business up to date. I can remember that we used Peachtree accounting software and for the life of me I can't remember the word processing software.

What I do remember is the prospect index cards, my prospect box (it was orange), and the index field tab cards.  We had an index tab card for each month of the year.  When we cold called in the field or called from the telephone we would fill out a prospect card and when we got a lead or generated a hot prospect.  We would then hand write what we spoke about, the type of copier that they had, the contact information and the date and time that we spoke with the prospect. Following up was just a matter of putting the card in one of the future months, thus if the month was June and the prospect wanted a call in three months, we would then forward the card to the month September and mark the day of the week that we needed to follow up. If you took sloppy notes or put the card in the wrong month there was always the possibility that you would lose the opportunity! 

Before I had my dealership I worked as a sales rep for a Minolta dealership and looking back there was a five sales guys, we were all in our mid twenties and I could tell some stories about what we did to alleviate the stress of selling!!  As new sales guys rotated in and old ones rotated out there was always someone looking to swipe the their index (prospect card file box). 

These were the days that if we had no appointments we would load a copier in the car and go cold calling, we were hawking to find the right prospect to do a demo on the spot and we used every close possible to have the order signed, get the check and return to the office without the copier. My how times have changed. There were was no CRM software, there were no rules, you just knew that you needed to make the touches to find the prospects, whether by grabbing the yellow pages and calling right down the list or knocking on doors.  Funny back then the script was kinda like this:  Hi this Art and I'm with Copy Machine Specialists, who am I speaking with? HI so and so, the reason for my call is to see if your company is interested in a plain paper copier? If there was a yes, we would schedule the appointment and if there was a NO we would dial the next number (and we didn't have to ever call them back!!).

Yes, things have changed, but I can remember some really good tricks we used to play on each other in the sales room (like unscrewing the handset on the mouth piece of the telephone and then screwing the plastic cover back on, the rep would start making calls and would only hear on the person on the other end saying hello, hello, is anyone there and in the mean time the rep was screaming in to the mouthpiece of the phone), indeed it was a great time to sell.

Don, John, Kelvin, Matt & Kathy we had some great times.....

=Good Selling=-

          Contact: Art Post

          arthurkpost@gmail.com

Newly Revamped Print4Pay Hotel Website Provides

Members with Added Features and Value

Highlands, New Jersey, June 18, 2013 – Art Post, founder and proprietor of The Print4Pay Hotel www.p4photel.com, has announced the rollout of the new and improved Print4Pay Hotel Website. The original Website, which was designed by copier and MFP professionals for exchanging information among colleagues in the imaging industry and storing industry knowledge and information, has been enhanced with additional features and functionality with the look and feel of a social networking site.

The new Print4Pay Hotel site still offers the popular Forums that have been so critical to members for exchanging ideas and best practices, but now provides members an opportunity to have their own “wall” where they can upload videos and audio, post photos, post on each other’s walls, and send private messages to one another.

“It’s now more of a social site and is a hybrid between Facebook and LinkedIn for users in the imaging industry,” says Post. “I wanted to develop a unique user experience for imaging professionals in our industry.”

A new feature is “Grind My Gears,” a 15-30-second audio clip where once every two weeks Post will rant and rave in an audio file about something in the industry.

As with the original Website the revamped site will include weekly blogs, which are now available in a printable format. In addition, the site now features videos about hardware and solutions, and starting in 2014, the site will feature training videos for new salespeople.

Another new feature allows the user to elect to receive either an immediate verification whenever anybody posts a comment or replies to a post or just a notification when they log onto the site. The site also includes clip sets of images related to the imaging industry along with sales documents, photos, videos, audio files, and printable blogs as well as quotes or proposals shared by members. Members can also track street pricing, including information on what a machine was sold for or leased for, and the current cost per page on the maintenance agreement.

“The Print4Pay HOTEL was originally envisioned as a means to satisfy our need for knowledge and that mission continues with the new site and its many new features and enhancements,” states Post. “The new site just takes things to a whole new level and provides members with added value that is unmatched anywhere in the industry.  

The Print4Pay Hotel currently has more than 2,300 members. To become a member visit: https://www.p4photel.com/join

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Is it unreasonable to ask for ten calls per hour from a rep dedicated to setting a net new appointment?  Dang, ten calls an hour is sweet music to my years!  Just think that five hours of work will produce 50 calls and if you do this three times a week you'll have 150 calls and still have 25 hours (that's of you only work 40 hours a week) left in the week to travel to accounts, follow up with accounts, research, emails, mailers, educate and meet with prospects.

I have no clue what the industry average is for calls to appointments and frankly I don't care. I just make the calls and it seems that when I make the calls I can average 5 net new appointments per week. That's on top of the other appointments that I've made that can come from a variety of sources like leads (they few that I get), follow ups, or that rare occasion when someone calls in. 

When I look at a months worth of work I can have up to 20 appointments.  Out of those 20 appointments I can close 2 or maybe 3 of those the month that I call, I will lose some, some will not be interested and some will go on the back burner and a few may take longer than 30 days to mature. 

The amount of calls that you make directly impacts how many appointments you can make in the week and month along with how many orders you can write. Those 2.5 deals that I close each month could go down to 1.75  if I only make 75 calls per week, and 40 calls a week would not even eek out an order for that month.

Having a dedicated call plan in place where we'll have 5 hours of calls for 3 days a week for calling for new business. I will try not to set any appointments for those blocks of hours, however sometimes the plan will go awry and you'll have to change things up. But you pencil yourself in for another call block.

I'm 33 years in down the street sales and you can't rely on others to feed you leads, you've got to work hard and work many vertical markets and touch as many prospects as possible. Prospecting is like a dog looking for a bone, he's not going to give up until he finds it and after he finds it, he's right back to looking for another bone!

Oh, I forgot the real reason you need to make 150 calls a week is.... if you're not making the 150 calls a week, then your competitors are.

-=Good Selling=-

The Week in Imaging

A Sustainable Publishing Group Publication

21 Llanfair Lane

Ewing, NJ 08618

(609) 406-1424

www.theweekinimaging.com

              Contact: Scott Cullen

                       (609) 406-1424

                               scott@theweekinimaging.com

The Week in Imaging Seeks Nominations for 2013 Elite Dealer Awards

Ewing, New Jersey, July 17, 2013 – The Week in Imaging, a weekly online publication from Sustainable Publishing Group is seeking nominations for its 201 Elite Dealer Awards.

The Elite Dealer awards honor office technology dealers who exemplify an entrepreneurial spirit, exhibit innovation and creativity in the way they operate business, and display a commitment to their customers and the communities they serve as well as have the foresight to embrace new technologies and services that allow them to keep pace with ever-changing customer needs.

Dealers interested in a nomination form can download it at www.theweekinimaging.com or can request one from Editor Scott Cullen at scott@theweekinimaging.com or call (609) 406-1424

Deadline for Nominations is Sept. 6, 2013. Winners will be announced and profiled in The Week in Imaging throughout the month of October.

# # #

About The Week in Imaging: The Week in Imaging is an online, news and information resource that serves sellers of imaging technology, solutions, supplies and services, including independent dealers, VARs, and sales and service personnel in manufacturer direct branches. Content is developed by Scott Cullen, a long-time editor and contributor to imaging industry and office-related publications, who serves as publisher and editorial director.

Last week I posted Worst Copier Web Site in the World blog.  The Blog centered on the copier sites that were nominated and the threads about those sites from our Print4Pay Hotel members.

Even though our poll was not scientifc we had a lot of fun with the comments and just how terrible some of these sites are.  Unfortunatly these companies sell technology, however they can't find the time to update their sites, ingoring the site, or the layout is terrible!

In the #1 slot and the Winner of the Worst Copier Web Site in the World:  Baron Technology Group collected 33% of the votes.  One P4P member stated "They've successfully taken crappy web design to a whole new level".

Number #2, well we had three web sites tied at 12% each. Since I run the site, I made the call that The Copier Guy  web site is the runner up. I just checked in to the site and yup this would be #2, one page site actually displaying one of the old DiALTA series copiers.

Number #3, goes to Southeastern Business Machines which is OMG ugly with some horrible graphics. The site gives me a headache!

Number #4, Nevel Document Solutions (this was my vote for the worst web site), fonts are too small, too many logos next to each other, too much info on the home page. Bad desgin job, hope they got the design for FREE!

5th Place is awarded to Copier Tech Systems, Inc out fo Farmers Branch, Texas. Our members could not beleive that the copier graphic is one that is at last 20 years old and displaying an antique bin collator!! However, they do mention that they offer State of the Art Technology for copiers but are displaying a picture of a 20 copier that I sold 20 years ago!

Coming in at number 6 with 8% of the vote is Copier Plus out of Gaithersburg, Maryland.  They earned the 6th spot because they have not changed their products and news since 2005!!! Geesh that's eight years, why even have a site!!!

Sweet number 7 is Panalink with another terrible design, there are two links for "about us" and "contact" and both of them are not working.  Where are they located, no solutions which probably equals no business!!!

#8 Rapid Copier, take a look for yourself and you'll see why Rapid also made our top ten.

9th place goes to a jersey dealer Preferred Business Systems.

10th place is Associated Business Equipment from Oswego, Ill

Stay tuned to forums we've got another poll running for the BEST copier web sites in the world.

-=Good Selling=-