Covid 19

Seems every morning is identical to the last one.  What keeps flashing through my mine is Bill Murray and Groundhog Day.  Still no end in site for the lock down in the tri-state area.  The infection rates continue to increase each and every day.

Enough about the bad stuff. Let's focus on the good stuff.

Today was CRM day and what I called soft prospecting today.  The first course of action was to weed out the crap (all the small stuff) and maintain a better focus on those larger accounts. I admit that sometimes I'll try to put too much on my plate and that's when I fall behind in my prospecting.

Today's approach was to contact all of the stalled opportunities and those larger accounts via email.  My approach as to title the subject line with "I hope you are". The body of the message was this:

Hope you and family are well in these crazy times.  Stratix is open for business since we were deemed an “essential business” because we support hospitals and municipalities with IT services.  I’ll reach out to you when this craziness is over.  

Simple, not selling anything, needed to let them know we are open for business. In addition I wanted to let them know about our IT services.  I was keeping track of all the emails sent.  Somewhere around 4PM I lost track and I'm thinking it was in between 60-70 emails.  What I can tell you is that I had many replies (around 20%).  Thus I completed my goal for the day. I'm sure there will be additional replies tomorrow, I also understand that about 70% of businesses are closed in New Jersey. Those that were not deemed essential.  The plan is to keep at it for the next week along with my other activities.

The highlight of my day what the working lunch chat I had with Greg Walters!  We started at noon and went for the full hour. Zoom has us capped at 100 users, thus my apologies for all that could not log on.  We do have a recorded however the first 16 minutes was lost. I'll be posting that up in the next blog within the hour.

Greg and I are not selling books, nor are we selling our services, nor did we sell sponsor space (wow, that maybe an idea!), we just felt it is a good thing to do for our industry.

Good news!  We've scheduled another working lunch chat for March 31st, I'm sure we'll rehash some of the content we covered today, and we'll have some new content to cover for everyone.  You can register for that chat here.

You can view our video chat here.

What's on tap for tomorrow?  More passive prospecting!

-=Good Selling=-

Day Six and not much relief in site in New Jersey.  We're still in lock down mode and now have the second largest number of infections in the US.  There's a few cluster of infections in New Jersey that keep growing at an alarming rate.

As of today there are no infections in the town where I live, however I don't think that will hold up much longer since more surrounding towns are reporting higher infections.  Maybe the only savings grace is that we have the Ocean to east and the Bay to the north. In addition it's not beach weather yet.

My day consisted of a few follow emails in the AM. After that it was off to the races with content management training.  After failing the first test twice with a two zero's I opted for the old fashioned way of reading, listening and writing notes. After about 30 minutes I was intent on learning as much as possible about the processes, the workflow and the marketplace. I was interrupted with a call from an existing client about 10:30am. Hey, whenever my cell rings right now I'm happy to answer. In fact I was even answering calls from telemarketers!

After that call I took a break and went outside for twenty minutes or so.  You just can't be staring at the computer screen all day long. I live on a highway close to the Ocean and my back yard gives a breath taking view of the ocean, the bay and New York City.  Out front is the highway, I was astonished at the amount of traffic on the road. Only essential businesses are suppose to be open, yet why are so many on the road?  My guess, this is why the infections continue to grow along with the testing that's now being done in Jersey.

I was back at training up until lunch. My lunch today was a working one, I attended a webinar that went into detail as to how accounts, web sites and businesses get hacked. Not that I'm going to become a hacker, but rather that I want to increase my knowledge on the subject matter.  Right now it's all about change.  Even though I love the copier industry I know I need to broaden my horizons.

Can you believe this?   At 4PM I was finally finished with all of the courses and the tests.  After putting up a couple of crooked scores I PASSED and earned by degree!  I was so excited that I posted it on Linkedin and after this blog I will add it to my profile.  That's a hint everyone, we need to keep updating our profiles and stay alive on social media.

After 4PM it was time to start prospecting again.  I've got about 100 or so that I need to roll through and got about ten done before I called it quits.  All of my contacts were via email, I also took the time to move accounts to a later date that I know are closed.  Out of the ten emails I sent I had six replies, now that's pretty good. My emails were to just check in (those Linkedin guru's will tell you never to check in), but my emails were more about "hey, how are you, how is your family, be well in these crazy times".

Tomorrow starts the real work, sifting though my stale opportunities and figuring out who is open and who is closed.

Don't forget tomorrow is another working lunch for me and I'm having a teleconference with the KING of MPS (Greg Walters) and our discussion will be about "How to sell Copiers during COVID19". Again it's not scripted, there's no cost, and we're not selling a book.  Here's the link if you want to register

HOW TO SELL COPIERS IN THE AGE OF CORONAVIRUS

We've got more than a hundred registered and I'm hoping we can all comes away with some additional ideas to make it happen.

-=Good Selling=-

My morning started off the same as the last three mornings.

"Got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head, made my way downstairs and drank a cup (coffee)."  That lyric is from the "A Day in the Life" by the Beatles and a song that was featured in 1967 from Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.  I thought that would be an appropriate lyric to start our blog with because I'm thinking there are many more mornings to come that will be identical to the last four.

I heard from a good source today that within 72 hours or less New Jersey  will issue an order for "Shelter in Place", just like California and Illinois.  All non-essential businesses will have to close except for healthcare, gas, grocery, stores. Other companies that can remain open would be the ones that support healthcare, police, fuel and food stores. It's my understanding that many of us will be in that group.l

Today I was able to clean my CRM.  The cleaning focused on scheduling calls and emails, updating emails and capturing emails to my constant contact account.  Next week I plan to send emails that will focus on educating my accounts about business continuity, collaborating and different software programs that enable a paperless workflow.  In four days I haven't printed one document although I've scanned all of my paper based files that I took from the office.

I did lose a deal today, at least that was a little bit of action.  I know why I lost and don't need to go into details about it in an open blog.  We all lose every now and then and I've always been a proponent that you need to lose in order to win.

Of course there was some email activity back and forth, mostly support for some clients that were still operating.  The plan for next week is to write content and get it out to the masses,. Couldn't be a more perfect time to get that done.  The plan thereafter is to generate weekly content for prospects and to get that out once a week.  I will continue that plan for the rest of the year.

Same deal for lunch as the rest of the days.  A little bit of news, food, chat with the wife, walk our dog and then back to work.  By 2:30PM I was shot, tired of looking at the laptop screen and I just felt mentally wiped out from this week.

Yes, I took some "me" time or what I like to call therapy time and put a couple of hours in making some jewelry.  I just may need to that business in the near future.

Ray S and I did have a chance to chat today, we didn't have time for the video. We were able to chat about things we've heard and seen over the past few days. It was good to finally chat with someone in the industry.

I was able able to have a private chat session with five other Print4Pay Hotel members today.  The general consensus is that this virus will not only change the imaging business but it will forever change the way we do business. If we go through a prolonged event many clients will develop paperless workflows. The good thing is that many will need help with the developing the bad means that we will see a dramatic shift with imaging devices.  At the start we could have a flurry of additional A4 devices as one P4P Hotel member told me today, buy mark my words things will change at lightning speed.

I remember a talk track from years ago at a Print Audit event in Utah or maybe San Diego.  That talk track was centered around how each recession has reduced the amount of paper printed in the office.  If I remember correctly the next recession could bring a 10% reduction.  After this is all over it may be more than that.

I hope that a miracle arrives next week and it seems there is some promise with mixing a malaria and a Z-Pak (azithromycin).  I will pray that this can be a workaround that gets all of us back to work.

I'm glad the weekend is here, time to recharge and get back at it on Monday. We never quit right!

Would love to hear from others what's going on in your area. What's working what's not working, what's the news in your state.  Would love to hear from everyone!

-=Good Selling=-

Starting today my wife is now working from home,  thus I had the pleasure of setting her office up in one of our spare bed rooms.  I really do hate being the IT guy at home.  Never fails that it's my fault that when there's a network or connectivity issue.

Never the less that telechat appointment I had for this AM cancelled early and rescheduled for next week.  The only saving grace to the day is that one of my clients asked me to provide them with final docs for a wide format MFP. Not holding my breath but maybe just maybe one good thing can happen to close the week.

One item that is starting to worry me a little is that I'm seeing more clients looking to purchase rather than lease.  I saw a lot of this back in late 2007 which was the time prior to the Great Recession. We can all hope and pray we're not going to see that again.

My day started off with those two emails that I just mentioned.  After I got the revised quote out the way I started on the last three sessions of the webinars that I was tasked with.  Just about an hour in to one of the webinars I received a text from one of my team mates needing help with the possible knock out of a KIP wide format with one our Ricoh wide format MFP's.

I probably spent about 30 or 40 minutes walking him through what I would look for in order to knock out a competitors device.  My team mate was also able to email me a copy of the current lease along with the cost per square foot. I'll try and get this up in our quotes section of this site on the weekend.  The reason why I want to post it is because I've never seen so many different cost per square foot charges for color.  The one missing item that we needed was the monthly volume of the current device.  Hoping we can get that tomorrow so it's doesn't linger.

Remember it's still the end of the quarter and the elephant is in the room waiting to smack down your deals. It's that time when manufacturers drop the crap out of their prices in order to hit their annual budget.  It also never fails that these deals end up making it to the clients desk also.  This time of year always presents some issues with some crazy pricing for hardware and cost per page. 

I went back to the webinars till about 11:45AM.  Along comes another email from another client I'm working on. There's a competitor in that account and dropping their pants to get the deal.  Alright I understand to many peeps that copier is a copier and they are all alike. NO, they are not all alike and in most cases there are reasons why the competitor has a lower price.  From 11:45 till about 1PM I worked on a side by side comparison for the client in an excel format.  It's my job to pick out the good, the bad and the ugly and present it. In this case there was a whole lot of UGLY with the competitors MFP.  Just about 6:30PM I received a copy of their quote which I'll review tomorrow and prep notes for Monday.

After lunch was CRM time! Oh how I love working on my laptop with that small ass screen for hours. My eyes took a beating today.

My goal was to clean it up along with gathering emails for my own constant contact campaign.  One of my goals is to weed out the crap, focus on the bigger stuff and grow my email list.  I spent the entire afternoon on this and by 5:30PM I gave up.  I'm probably going to have to spend another 3-4 hours on it tomorrow. The only saving grace about tomorrow is that it's going to 75 here in Jersey and the weekend is upon us.

The plan is now to educate, research, and build additional opportunities for the next three quarters.  I'm hoping by the end of March we're through this virus thing.

One other item, Ray S and I are scheduled for a 1PM video chat that he'll be posting on his YouTube channel. I'm thinking it should be fun.

-=Good Selling=-

Today is the day!

Spent most of the morning prepping for two on-line meetings from about 8AM-10AM.  I wanted to make sure I had shot at getting at least one of these in before the end of the month. Both are with two existing accounts. My first meeting was 11AM, my second was set for 2PM.  I also spent about and hour getting connected to Microsoft Teams which is also one of our requirements while working remotely. More to come on this.

Just about 10:AM I received an email from my 2PM and he had to bug out, just too much going on with staff working from home and the virus. I wasn't surprised, nor was I upset, I thanked him and we agreed to touch base next week.  Thirty minutes later I confirmed with my 11AM and they needed to reschedule also, claimed they were swamped with plans and procedures.

Alright, now I have the full day ahead of me.  It was time to finish some of those learning tasks that we were assigned to our team on Monday. Those tasks included listening to 7 recorded webinars from my friends from Ricoh.

In the past if you wanted to do some additional training you would pull out the brochure and read it from top to bottom. After you were finished you would read it again because years ago it was all about specs, speeds and feeds. The better you knew you device equaled having the leg up on the competition. That leg up is always something I've tried to have.

I was able to digest three of the webinars about the Ricoh IM (intelligent machine) series.  Even though I though I knew them inside and out, there was some ah ha moments with some of the advanced functionality.  Thus I felt that the time I used before lunch was extremely helpful.  One thing you can never stop doing in sales is to stop learning.  Reminds of my first job at a produce company where I was caught by the owner several times with my hands in my pockets. I was told there is always something to do get your hands out of your pockets and figure it out.  Even in sales if you're not selling there is always something to do.

Lunchtime yay!  The routine now is to go downstairs take our dog for a walk, prep lunch and then watch the news.  All day yesterday I had the news on in my office, today I turned it off because there is no good news.  After digesting all bad news for about thirty minutes it was back to work.

My afternoon went pretty fast because I had to prep documents for an order and then had an ongoing email exchange with the CEO for most of the afternoon.  After I sent the final docs I received an email at 4:59PM telling me that his IT department was also checking on copiers and he needs to digest that information.  I was hoping we could have finished that up today but what's another day right now?

While in and out of the email exchange I also put in time to research the specialty print deal that I'm working on.  Like I stated yesterday I needed a fall back position just in case my first recommendation does not fly.  We were able to schedule a call for tomorrow and hoping I can move this opportunity closer to home.

I did quit my day early because the wife and I had to go to my sons house for his wife's birthday.  Believe it or not we left early because of the 8PM - 5AM curfew that's in effect in New Jersey.

I live on a highway in New Jersey and there's always some sort of traffic on the road at any given time.  When I arrived home I took our dog for her walk to her favorite park. I do this every evening after dinner, tonight felt like one of those snow nights. That's when there's a lot of snow on the road and there's zero traffic. No cars, and no people for the entire walk, not that the walk is long but for 20 minutes there was nothing but silence.

Tomorrow?  More time to finish up those webinars and then I move to scrubbing my CRM. Can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to that.  Friday will prove to be my fun day with prospecting, stay tuned!

-=Good Selling=-

Over the years I've spent many days working from my home office. One thing I have going for me is that my office office is much bigger than my cube!

Today was a little sobering since I'm not sure when I'll be back in the office, could it be two weeks, two months or the end of the summer?  All uncharted territory for most of us in office equipment sales.

Today was the first day of our marching orders to work from home.  However, I did have to make a trip to the office to get a few addition items to make sure I can be as productive as possible.  By the time I arrived back at my home office (zero traffic) it was about 11AM.

I was plugging all kinds of stuff into outlets, then had to connect my MFP (A4) to my wifi (what a bear that was). Answered a few emails, sent a few emails and it was time for a lunch break.  I tell you watching the news can be a real bummer especially when they're showing you the stock ticker in the same screen.  The pain, the pain of not having what we once had in our 401Ks.  The way I figure it is that I never really had it and there was bound to be a correction, but this correction really hurts. After lunch I decided it was a good time to walk our dog and get some fresh air.  This entire being in the office all day is going to wear on me real quick. I like people!

After lunch I sent three emails and connected with three on-line meetings for tomorrow.  BTW,  I'm using ZOOM which is a free service for up to 40 minutes. At this point I'm still novice with ZOOM and just hoping I can get through a smooth meeting.  At this time I'm still trying to figure out if I can share documents also. I'll be doing that first thing in the AM along with some prep work.

Most of my afternoon was spent putting the final touches and research for a large opportunity for a specialty print solution.  I wasn't happy with just proposing one option thus I put in a few hours researching what I thought would be a great fallback option.  Fallback options, how many of us have those planned out in advance? As salespeople we all know there's going to be some type of objection and what happens if the objection crushes your entire plan?  I'm grateful that I learned how to play chess at a young age, that whole thought process of what happens next has allowed me to always have a fallback plan.  Not saying it will work, but having additional options is always a good thing.

I then spent some additional time on Ricoh's intranet site watching some webinars that were that were on my to do list.

By late afternoon I was on the phone with one of my Ricoh reps and confirming some specs about my fallback option.  AS I was ending the call my wife was telling me it's time for dinner.

All in all, I got quite a bit done today, thinking maybe this not being in the office may not be a bad thing at all.  More to come tomorrow.

-=Good Selling=-