MFP Copier Blog

Decreased margins, introduction of A4 MFPs aka MFD, lower MSRPs, increased competition for net new business equals a whole heck of a lot of work!! 

Years ago you could sell four or five 40 & 50 page per minute multifunctional devices and the average selling price with accessories would be in the $13-$18k range.  Over the years I've pretty much tracked about 6 systems per month, thus it was easier to hit your total revenue number and or your GP number than it is now.  Continued pressure from Direct, introduction of A4's, lower MSRPs and the pressure to win net new business has lowered revenue and profits.

So, what is one to do?  For starters one needs to prospect more, and some will say that I have no time left to add for additional prospecting. By the time I've made my calls, updated my CRM, did the appointments and created the proposals there is NO MORE time left in the week!

Yoda, would then tell you "Luke, it's time management, if you want to play with the big dogs, hit the revenue for each month and quarter, then you'll need to....."PROSEPCT BY DAY AND QUOTE BY NIGHT", and may the force be with you!

Prospect by Day and Quote by Night is one of the other sales quotes that I try to live by. Ours is not a 9 to 5 job, and if you need to add more prospecting time then you need to move one of your tasks out of prime prospecting time.  Those who can't quote at night (family time), can maybe approach it by getting to the office an hour earlier and leaving 30-45 minutes later.  Using this type of time management you can have an additional 7.5 hours of prospecting by moving your quote time!!

Newbies in the industry are probably not generating as many quotes and proposals, thus most of their time will be spent prospecting.  Usually within to 3-4 weeks they have generated enough interest or gathered leads that they too will need to find the time to quote and prepare proposals.  Point of the matter is that newbies will then sacrifice prospecting time to generate proposals and quotes, which then takes them on that downward spiral because there're not prospecting as much.

For instance this month (for me), is already 25% over, I have the next 3 weeks or 14 selling days to hit my number. Thus, I've already made a plan to be in by 7AM and leave by 5PM, and I'll save all of the quotes and proposal work for when I get to my home office.  Don't have a home office?  The I suggest you start one...NOW.

So from 7AM to 9AM, I will update my CRM, send emails, read emails, and prepare a few mailers. If I have no appointments for the day I will prospect all day long, since this is a short week in the US, I've got Wednesday and Thursday booked with half the day Tuesday and all day Friday ready for prospecting. 

Prospect by Day and Quote by Night works, and I hope you'll be giving it a go!

-=Good Selling=-

Whether you're selling MFP's, Document Management, and even Managed IT, there is always a time to close.  A good sales person is an excellent listener, and if you listen well enough in most cases, you'll know when to ask for the order. Asking for the order can be as simple as......

3.      Lease or Buy Close (either or):  When you’re asking the questions, save this one for last.  “Were you planning on leasing of buying the system?” If leasing, bring out the lease form and start filling in the blanks for them, if buying fill out the price and see how far you’ll go.  I’ve had customers that bought that way.  You don’t know until you try it.

Better yet, have the forms filled out before you meet with them. Do your homework, have a system, solution and price in mind.  In some cases I;ve brought out two leases, two order forms, two maintenance agreements for different systems.  Also bring a blank for this "just in case" scenario's.

-=Good Selling=-

If you asked my sales manager, he would probably say NEVER! 

Many of us know that only the strong (tough minded) will survive more than three years when it comes to selling copiers, printers, and managed print services.  Those who survive more than 20 years of selling (not managing) to commercial accounts should be viewed as Olympians and those of us that have been selling 30 plus years should be viewed as Titans.

So, every year I struggle with when to take my vacation time. Do I take the time in December right after Christmas, or maybe in August for the week before Labor day, or maybe the week that leads up to Easter?  I've been fortunate to be at the same dealership for the last 15 years, thus I've been able to acquire some extra vacation time. But, when is the right time to take vacation when my sales won't suffer. I've also considered taking a week during the first week of the new quarter.

But, is a vacation really a vacation when you still have to hit your monthly and quarterly sales quotas.  My answer would be NO! It's never a true vacation, because if it was a true vacation then my quota should be reduced for the month that I took a weeks vacation, right? If I'm not working for a week then why can't my quota drop by 25%? WTF, I'm not working!!!!

If you ask your sales managers of Veeps of Sales about reducing your quota most of them will stare at you for a few seconds and then give you some smart ass answer why your quota shouldn't drop.  So, the real answer is even though we get vacations in our industry we really never get that much of the mental break that is needed from time to time.  Thus, this is one of the reasons why there aren't that many Olympians and Titans in the field or in the business anymore.

Ok, I've had my rant, I try to take time during the last week of the year from Christmas to New Years.  Thus, it's a mad dash to try and get all of my business finished by the 22nd or 23rd of the month.  The next time I will try and book is the week before Labor Day, there's just too many people on vacation already during the month of August and the week leading up to Labor Day over the years has usually been a dud.  If you're allowed to take two weeks in a row then I would suggest that you take the week of Christmas and the week after leading into New Years.  Past experience has proved that taking two weeks at this time of the year can really recharge your batteries.

One of my other thoughts was to take every Friday in the summer and turn the summer into a four day work week.  I haven't done this yet because I'm afraid that losing 4 selling days each month for three months would create too much stress with trying to hit the monthly and quarterly quota.  Hmmmm, if they would only reduce my quota when I'M NOT WORKING, this could be doable right?

When it comes right down to it, we really never get a vacation that we can never think about selling.  Why?, I think for most of us that have been doing this for so many years that we just can't turn the switch off.  The switch is always on, even when we're away.

With vacation time I always come back to a saying I heard and I can't remember from who, that selling is not a horse race for who is the fasted to the finishing line, but it's more like turtle that keeps on going and going and never gives UP!

-=Good Selling=-

Figured I would use some Jersey slang for the "gotta attend" part.  I was able to attend the BTA event last year in White Plains, NY and was impressed. This years event is  Thursday & Friday in late September at the Inner Harbor in Baltimore.

The Inner Harbor of Baltimore: I've heard so much about it and I've never been there. The harbor is within walking distance of Camden Yards and M&T Bank Stadium. A water taxi connects passengers to Fells Point, Canton, and Fort McHenry.  If you're a sports fan, there's the Orioles and the Ravens. If you're patriotic then you can also visit Fort McHenry where Francis Scott Key was inspired to write our National Anthem the Star Spangled Banner!

Tod Pike of Samsung will give the keynote presentation. I've heard more good things about their equipment and dealer programs that I'm making this one of my top choices for the event!

Frank Cannata will moderate on the dealer panel for "Our Industry is Changing! Where Do We Go From Here". In my thirty plus years in the industry I've never been able to met him. I for one will be in attendance and also be fortunate to hear from other industry veterans.

Baseball with the Baltimore Orioles, here's another first for me!! I'm an avid baseball fan and I've never been to Camden Yards.  The home of Ripken!  The Orioles against the Red Sox with both teams in contention for the playoffs, what could be better, the house will be rockin!

The Six Education Seminars are always informative and can have a dramatic impact on what's new, what's changed, and what's happening in our industry!

Personally, I'm looking forward to see the many vendors, many Print4Pay Hotel members and writing about some of the new products and services!

BTA East will host its annual district event, open to BTA members and non-members from across the country, on Sept. 26-27, 2013, at the Hyatt Regency Baltimore in Baltimore, Md. This event will be a great setting to learn from industry leaders, gather new ideas and network with your peers. Register here!

See you in Baltimore!!!

-=Good Selling=-

I had posted this a few years ago and thought it would be good to get up on the new site.  While I was on the old site I was amazed that the site received 13,000 page views last month. (www.mfpsolutions.blogspot.com) Thus I added some additional information to the blog for everyone.

Since I started blogging about multifunctional copiers a few years ago, this question is at top of everyone’s list in the emails I receive.

Who Makes the Best Multifunctional Copy Machine?

To me it's not a question of who makes the best, the question that should be asked is "Who gives the best support and service?"

It's my general belief that most multifunctional copiers are equal when it comes to performance, quality, features and reliability. When leasing or buying a multifunctional copier you need to pay attention to the people that stand behind the piece of equipment. There's a saying in our industry, "that the lowest priced copier (equipment) is long forgotten after poor service", isn’t that the truth!

It's the people, the guy or gal next store, the cousin, the uncle or the friend. When you select good professional sales people and dealers even the worst machine ever manufactured could be the best system you ever purchased or leased.

How do you find these professionals?

Well there’re out there, and they’re usually not the companies that have the lowest price. Dealers and Direct Branches that excel have additional layers of support that are designed to support the customer at a moment’s notice, by either repairing the equipment right the first time, having a large inventory of parts and having experienced expert professionals to help with the complexity of these systems. Many of your local sales people can be found on linkedin, search for their company or you can search for them by name.

In essence when shopping for a multifunctional copier system, do yourself a few favors. Check out the people in the organization. Ask them how long they've been doing this and how long they've been with the company. If there is tenure, odds are the company that they work for are true professionals and experts with multifunctional systems. Also, do a credit check on that company, see if they are paying their bills, a so credit report could mean that you'll get so so support/service and may be indicative that they may soon be out of business. I can't stress how important the credit check is!!!

Ok, so some of you may still be asking what's the best? I believe there are three tiers of manufacturers for multifunctional copiers. Here they are in the tiers.

Tier I: Canon (includes Oce), Ricoh (includes Savin and Lanier), Xerox and KonicaMinolta (all are equal in my eyes, it will come down what features work best for you)

Tier II: Kyocera, Toshiba, Sharp (market share is lower than the above group)

Tier III: Muratec, Samsung, Okidata, HP, Lexmark

Did I leave anyone out?

In one week I had two emails from reps asking for help. I thought I would do a blog on it, FYI the "Distance Yourself from the Pack" (I can't believe that I wrote this almost four years ago), the last resource is reserved for Print4Pay Hotel members.

Go here and join for free, and then send me and email and I'll send you the last resource.

Hello Art,

I recently stumbled upon your blog and think it's great. I'm brand new to the industry and have been given a sales territory with no existing customer base and have been asked to grow it. I'm about 3 months in the field and have had few wins so far. I was wondering if you had any tips for me that could help me get set on the path to success.

I'd also like to know that last resource from the article "Distance Yourself From the Pack".
Thanks!

Jon:

First things first in order to get more wins you need to have countless opportunities that can be closed in any given month!  Let me give you an example.  Our month ended on the 23rd of July (dam bean counters), moving into August 6th, I've already closed four deals and have two closes scheduled of this coming week.  But, I have another 10 accounts listed that I feel will order/close (with me or someone else) and then another 8 accounts that I consider are long shots to order/close this month. In total I have 22 opportunities that I have a shot at closing. 

It's all about prospecting, more potential buyers in sales funnel will equal additional sales per month.  The really tough part to get to this point is that you need to prospect your ass off.  Someone once stated that 50 calls a week is a "hobby", and that's true you'll need to make at least 120 cold calls per week  (since you're new and have no book of accounts), plus you'll have to get out in your territory and do a few meet and greets. 

Here's a few things that may help you:

1. Join the local Chamber of Commerce and get involved with being on a committee or an officer and make sure when you go the the meeting you go alone, this forces you to talk to others.
2. Join a local network group if you have any in your area.
3. Chart how many calls you make every day, how many DM's you get on the phone and how many appointments you make, at the very minimum you will need 6 appointments per week.
4. Set a goal of 15 points each week. Use one point for appointments, 2 points for a demo and 3 points for an opportunity. An opportunity is a prospect that you've generated a quote/proposal and may order/close in the next 90 days.

5. Join the Premium Print4Pay Hotel forums, and collaborate with other industry sales professionals and see what they are doing on a daily basis to keep their sales funnel full! If you're really serious about your sales career you should access the Premium Membership here.

I also use my 5 Step Box approach, all of this works, even if it sounds corny, hard work will get results.  Always keep this in mind, "the harder I work, the luckier I get".

-=Good Selling=-

What started as a great head start for August sales turned into a crap show leading up to the last day of the month for me. 

I had 36K booked at the end of the first week, thus needing a minimum of $25K seemed like a no brainer, right?  Things happen, and I call these conditions and these would be items or happenings that are out of your control (I hate conditions).  One deal was pushed to September since the customer could not take delivery on time and every other deal did not move forward enough to make the deadline!

However, I always like to tell a good story and this story has a somewhat of a good ending.  Probably all of us or I hope most of us have that one special inside person that can help get things done for you.  Whether it's with lease approvals, maintenance, supply costs, meter reads, etc.. I am fortunate to have one of those people that I work with.  She has been with the company for probably 25 years, she can runs rings around most sales people, knows the leasing side for the business inside and out, has excellent rapport with the customers and pretty much knows the copier business inside and out.  I would call her "The Most Interesting Woman in the Copier Industry", actually I've never called her that until now, but she deserves the title.

Since we've both been with the company for many years, she is very familiar with most of my accounts.  Thus, while I was out trying to secure new business, keep up with appointments, proposals and all of the things that we need to do.  The Most Interesting Woman in the Copier Industry was working her magic with one of my accounts.  She had been keeping me in the loop with this current customer about two systems, and since she was already engaged with the customer on another front I was ok with her helping me out. 

The end result was that her efforts helped me close to additional sales for the month!  So, when all seemed it was lost, an awesome co-worked helped me out and also helped the company out.  I would hope that most of us would have a person like this on their staff, and if not I wish you did.  It's a pleasure to work with others that are just as knowledgeable about the industry, wants the company to do well and in general is a good person.

To the Most Interesting Woman is Copier Industry, kudos and thank you for your help a few days ago, but more importantly thanx for all of your help over the last 15 years!!!!

-=Good Selling=-

Every now and then you may get something that you wished for.  A little birdy put me on the hunt today for additional information about the smart operation panel that is used on the new Ricoh MPC 03 color series aka Metis.

Sometimes you can find the information by reading between the lines, the new smart operation panel from Ricoh is available as an option. That option will set users back a cool $380.00  I thought, "that's a pretty steep price for an LCD screen that you allows you to pinch, swipe and flick an image. Just maybe there is more in the naming of the screen "operation", could it be that simple?

All of this leads me back to an article that was published by Photizo on August 6th of 2013 where Ann Priede reported that "Ricoh released multifunction printers (MFPs) running Google Inc.’s Android operating system", along with that statement Ricoh is also actively seeking to recruit developers to create commercial software applications for their MFP's.  A recent google search also showed a Ricoh article that was posted on the Nikkei.

When Sharp first introduced their swipe & wipe screen on their MFP's there were quite a few threads on the Print4Pay Hotel discussion forums about the need for the industry to move to a standardized OS (operating systems) for all MFP manufacturers. One of the threads made mention of the lower manufacturing and development costs.

Thinking forward, I've always been a big fan of having the ability to maybe plug my smart phone into the MFP and use my phone to do what I want with the MFP, whether it's to print documents and photo's that are stored on my cloud service (dropbox, box, google drive, etc) or to scan docs to my cloud service. I would also be able to print a web page or a document from that web page.  I don't think that I'll be able to plug my smart phone into an MFP in the near future. 

But, what I do think is that with an Android OS I would be able to access any document or print any document from any cloud service that I desired.  There's also a lot of people out there that are much smarter than me and I'm sure there could be some awesome apps that would be developed that could change entire business processes for the better. In a recent blog I spoke about the ability of a KonicaMinolta mfp that had the ability to display a corporate message at the copier. Our members took it a step further and offered up, "why not have a sponsor ad running on the mfp that could generate revenue dollars for the dealer and lower costs for the customer".

Yes, it's somewhat farfetched but in reality copiers with an Android OS is the future, especially for authentication and security purposes. If I were a developer I would develop a biometric log in app and then that app would track all usage of all operators at the MFP. I would track what documents were copied, what was scanned, where it was scanned, what was faxed and have a timeline report for every user.  The vertical market applications are endless. I wonder if I just gave someone a million dollar idea?

As our industry continues to evolve, our ongoing revenue streams could become quite different than just getting revenue from the click stream. I'm looking forward to seeing the first smart operation panel from Ricoh and I'm looking forward to see who will be the next wave of creative thinkers and developers in our industry. 

-=Good Selling=-

To my "little birdy" egads I couldn't help myself!!

We continue to work to bring you the latest Copier, Copy Machines RFP's & RFQ's that become available on a weekly basis. However it's always good to check in every day to see what's new.  A little game that's played by many is that the dates between the official start of the RFP to the close date may only be a few weeks, thus it's important to get notified ASAP.  If you're a premium member of the Print4Pay Hotel, you'll get immediate email notification when any RFP or RFQ is posted (within minutes).     Enjoy!

3 Coin Operated Copiers Needed in New Jersey

Production System (Color) and Monochrome needed in Illinois

15 Copiers required in Ontario (close 9/2013)

14 Copiers needed in Washington (Closes 9/10/2013)

Digital Copier Cost Per Copy Program (closes 9/16/2013)

Copiers Needed in Missouri

5 Copiers Needed in Washington, DC

Copier Needed in Michigan

84 Copier Needed in California

22 Copiers Needed in Kansas

In total there are more than 166 copiers that are up for grabs!!!  You can secure your Premium Membership here.

-=Good Selling=-

Yup, with the new site and still having to keep down my day job.....I've been a little busy.  But before I post these I just wanted to tell you that I received a call from a Print4Pay Hotel member that is quitting his job of selling MPS and Copiers after 20 years with that company.  Basically, it came down that a new manager was hired and that manager wanted to micro manage the sales people to death.  I call this type of Management "Ikonisum", which relates to the many managers that were let go and found themselves a position at a Dealer.  They took those over bearing rules, reports, meetings and stuck them right where you know where.  It's a dam shame.....but someone else will benefit from their loss and this guy will surely land on his feet!!!

Canon 2525 Monochrome.pdf

Konica Minolta BizHub 363 System.pdf

kyocera C250i proposal.pdf

Copystar CS2560 pricing.pdf

Multi Konica Minolta BizHub25,36,42.pdf

savin c9075_Savin c9065_Savin C5502 price quote one dollar.pdf

savin c9075_Savin c9065_Savin C5502 price quote FMV.pdf

xerox WC7775PC.pdf

konicaminolta bizhub c452 proposal.pdf

konicaminolts c654 proposal.pdf

Please keep in mind that you need to pay the piper in order to view these, but you'll also have a one year Premium Membership for the Greatest Imaging site for Imaging Professionals in the World!!!

-=Good Selling=-