Memoirs of a Copier Sales Person

Only 5 more days for four full months of selling days that I've been working remote.

You may have noticed that I've been skipping a couple of days here and there with blogging on this series.  I had no idea that Covid19 would last in to the summer and usually my summers mean less posting of blogs and more time spent enjoying the great weather.

Just a short recap for Friday. I was able to secure two orders for two net new companies.  However the revenue fell short of what I was hoping for. With less than two weeks left in my month I'm starting to feel the pressure of hitting my monthly goal.

Today was spent  traveling to two accounts which were at opposite ends of the state.  One in lower Monmouth and the other in North Jersey.  I'm thinking I logged close to 200 miles of driving today.  By the time I got back to my office office it was 2:30PM and I needed a short break for lunch. 

By 3PM I was able to start making some dents into the early morning emails and within an hour I had those cleared up.  The last part of the day was spent with my third appointment of the day for a tele chat.

That last appointment was interesting to say the least.  The company is a consulting group in the healthcare industry.  For years they've been using an hi-speed color A3 Ricoh and now that device is approaching seven years of age.  Seven years is a long time and since it was a purchase there is no trigger for the upgrade.  Print volumes during COVID for them are down big time! In fact over the last five months the print volume is next to nothing.  But as we've learned to adapt during COVID this client has also redefined their process with printing.  More virtual meetings mean less print, less print will mean a smaller color device in the future.  This is our new world for many accounts.

One of my other net new prospects is suppose to be making a decision tomorrow on which vendor they will choose.  Four years ago I was second and second sucks. I found out on our last meeting then that I was the first choice four years ago. However one of the VP's did not want training outside of their office.  This lead to the client staying with their current vendor for another 4 years.  With this account this is the third time that I've been in the mix and just praying that the third time is the charm with this account.

So far July is sucking wind, I need one of my big hits to come through or it's going to **** show of smaller deals.  Look for another blog on Wednesday of this week.

-=Good Selling=-

Just a little heads up on a recent chat I had with my son a few days ago.

My son went to Staples and Best Buy the other day to get a new printer. Since his wife is working from home as a para-legal she still needs to print.  They had an older inkjet but even I couldn't get the heads unclogged. I recommended that he get a small black laser print.  After visiting both Staples and Bet Buy neither of them had any laser printers under $500 in stock!  Yes, standalone printers sales are up.

That tells me that there is probably a need for desktop scanners also. Panasonic Scanners is a Print4Pay Hotel sponsor please click their banner ad and find you how good the pricing and their scanners are. If you don't ask you don't get and some us maybe missing the boat for multiple placements of desktop scanners.

Let me start with tomorrow, I have two appointments one on site and another scheduled phone chat.  The on-site appointment is going to have to be rescheduled because we'll be under a tropical storm warning here on the coast.  Three to five inches of rain along with a potential for winds in excess of 60mph.  Nice way to finish the week, and hoping we don't lose power because the humidity for the last week has been terrible.

I just received an email (when I started writing this blog) with order docs for a net new client and it's for an A3 color MFP for a total of about $7K.  Around 5PM I had to revise yet another set of order docs for the other net new client that I've had on tap for some time. I should see those documents tomorrow, but it's only for one MFP out of the three I had hoped for.  That's 4K tops.  Nothing else will be closing tomorrow unless a long shot comes to fruition.  I'll be sitting at a crappy $14K for the month.  Monday I'm on site for a 40K appointment which means I'll be putting in time late tomorrow to prep for that appointment.

Another day with 4 appointments which brings me to 12 for the week ( I was off on Monday ) and so far one for tomorrow with the other one to be rescheduled.

It's not easy working alone. For more than 40 years I've always had people around me, whether it was in the office or out on sales calls.  At times I miss being able to stop at someones desk and have a chat about the industry or a chat about our personal lives.  

Today Jason Habbal posting something on Linkedin about he wasn't sure if he was liking this "first bumping" intros instead of hand shakes. I replied with "I wish I had someone to fist bump with".  So far summer in New Jersey has not been summer with not going to places or doing things that you do every summer.  Jason replied back with "I hear you" to my thread and then I posted that my summer is now "The Summer of Isolation" .

Here's another factoid about my summer, my home office does not have air conditioning. Since it's an older home central air is only in half of the house where we spend most of our time.  Who knew that I would be spending 8 hours a day in my home office. Yes I do have an AC unit that I could put in, however I'm kinda of liking working through the heat, it's the humidity that gets you. Maybe I'll get the AC unit in as soon as my back clears up.

Tomorrow will be an excellent day to play catch up and prep for the last two weeks of the month.

-=Good Selling-=

Geesh eighty work days now since I've been optioned to working from home.  In eight days we'll hit the four month mark of work days.  A third of the year spent working from the home office.  Guess I'll need to ask my accountant about this one for 2020 tax time.

One of my favorite sales expressions is "another day another dollar", in New Jersey another day means a new executive order from our Governor.  Today good ole Murphy signed an executive order that a mask is required outdoors now.  Something to the effect that if you can't social distance no matter where you are you are now required to wear a mask.  Violations can be subject to up to $1,000 or six months of jail.  Thus if I'm alone in a park or walking my dog I'm okay, however if someone gets withing six feet of me we need to mask up.

After speaking with my wife we both agreed that we will not be going anywhere this summer.  No beach, no boardwalk, no dining, no parks we are staying home because we want no part of being masked in summer heat and humidity,  In addition I believe the New Jersey economy will take a bigger hit than it already has. If we're going to stop going places then I'm sure many others are in the same camp as the wife and I.  Tourism is big in New Jersey with our beaches, parks, amusements and boardwalks.  People like me and my wife deciding not to go anywhere will mean we'll be spending less.

Today was smokin hot! I booked four additional appointments for today and one for tomorrow. I was off on Monday thus between yesterday and today I've completed eight appointments with another four left in the week.  In addition I was able to put checks marks (touches) next to seven opportunities.  Yes, I keep two paper pads on my desk and yes I still write notes.  One is for opportunities and the other is for my things to do list.  It's all about having that visual goal right in front of me that keeps me on pace to complete the tasks.

I did receive a verbal today for a net new A3 color, this account got hot last week during vacation.  However the order won't be signed off in until after the 23rd of this month, which means August for me.  This deal was kind of funky too since it was a non Authorized Dealer trying to sell a Ricoh device.  The cost per page for black was .006 and the color cost per page was .045.  Which brings me to cost per page.  I would say on average for A3 mfp's I'm seeing under a .01 and .039-.050 for color on a daily basis.  Can't remember the last time I saw or heard of a quote for .075 for color.  

Late in the evening I also received an email from another account that they could order if I was able to help with the price. Docs are going out for this account tomorrow. That one net new that I was working on for the better part of five weeks will finally come home to roost tomorrow. But it's not going to be for the three devices that we planned but just one. With the other two coming in the next 90 days. At this point in the month I'm sucking wind with one small order. I'm hoping by the end of day tomorrow to be somewhere around $15K for the month.  See what happens when you take vacations!

I guess the only saving grace is that I have two additional net news that could order by the end of month for a total of $70k.  But there also the chance I could lose both. I do have a handful of smaller opps working also.  There's eleven selling days in the month which means I'm at the 50% of the month to go or 50% of the month left.  

I had a talk with a dealer owner in the mid-west last night.  They are a traditional copier dealer in a major market.  I asked how things are and I was told sales are so so at best.  I made the recommendation that they move to focus on essential businesses that are open and still busy.  That list included healthcare, municipalities, construction, architects, and engineers. I'm sure there are others but my stakes have been planted for the last four months in those types of accounts.

Tomorrow means more hard work and some prospecting.

-=Good Selling-=

I guess I over did it on the weekend. My wife tells me I always "over due" everything and she's right.  Just dealing with some back pain for the last couple of days.

Today was my official first day back to work from my vacation.  I started my day at 7AM, took a half hour lunch and it was non stop until 4PM.  I had three appointments, and I couldn't even track of the emails sent and received.  It was good to be back doing what I love to do.

I've been working on this net new account for the better part of three weeks now. In those three weeks I believe I emailed at least five different proposals for three devices.  Yesterday that changed since the wide format is out of the picture for a few months.  However today it changed again, and there I was creating another set of proposals for yet another change.  Just hoping this opportunity will close this week.

Just a note on emailing and phone calls.  If someone emails me for information I take that as they want to communicate via email.  If they call me and I get a message I call them because they are telling me in a subtle way that they want a phone call in return.  Years ago if someone emailed me I would get back to them via phone because I thought I could get more done with a phone call.  In recent months I've found email to be a more effective than a phone call.  I'll make those follow up phone calls when an email goes too long with no response. 

With some of the recent leads I've received I'll ask them what is their preferred way of communication.  I posed that to a DM today and I had a return email that stated call me tomorrow.  Just something I thought my help others.

In addition I had a heavy email exchange with another net new opportunity that I've been working for 5 weeks.  I was notified that next week will the week that they select a new vendor.  There was also a request for references from that account. I had four clients in mind and before I sent that list to the client I sent each one of my clients a personal email asking if they would be open to a reference request. By the end of the day all responded and all accepted. 

I did the request emails because I did not want my opportunity to play phone tag with all four of these clients. Thus alerting my clients in advance will increase the chances that they will connect.  All I can hope is that my competition was lazy and just gave a contact and a phone number.  In the end hoping my opportunity will have connected with more of my clients rather than the competitions clients.

Tomorrow means back to the grind, which means following up with everyone in my funnel and making a dent in my to do list.

-=Good Selling=-

Looks like all signs in New Jersey is pointing to at lease 100 days of working remote.  Our Governor announced today is "pumping the brakes" for additional businesses to open.l  I have my own thoughts but I'll save them for another time.

Yup last week was a vacation week for me if I can really call it a vacation.  Each day saw me putting in about two hours in the AM and of course I was still doing some stuff for P4P in the evening.  One thing I like about this site is that I can schedule automated threads or blogs to post.  Which can really save some time.

I closed nothing last week.  I moved three deals further down the road, developed four opportunities and then had a set back today when one of my net news is putting the wide format on the back burner for a few months.  One of those opps is for $40K, and I almost forgot I lost a deal last week.  My first deal that I lost in the last four months.

Tomorrow if officially my first day back and it's going to be busy with two appointments and many installs happening this week.  All of those installs are from June orders. 

For the month of July I'm pretty empty right now with only a small A4 order.  But I did have a bunch of stuff carry over and hoping there's enough time in July to bring them home.

Just a short blog tonight and it's off to the races tomorrow.

-=Good Selling=-

It seems every morning I'm putting in a couple of hours doing just enough trying to move some these net new deals forward. I heard from one today with a question and the net new there was no response.  I'll send out another email in the AM wishing a happy 4th of July and see if I get a response.  Most deals will happen on the clients timeline and not ours.  Seems with COVID19 that clients timelines are dragging out more than normal.

I lost a deal today, thinking back it was the first deal I lost in the last three months.  It sucks to lose and I was told they took a holistic approach between two vendors and settled on the lowest price for hardware & service. In addition the client saw value in moving forward with a light production color A3 device.  I'm sorry there was no way I was quoting a light production device for less than 3,000 color pages per month.  Turns out I was correct because I lost on overall pricing for hardware and service.  I also would have lost with my light production A3 device. No worries here but it always sucks to lose.

I was also asked to inform them of how to cancel the agreements that are in place.  Of course one of them is a lease and the other a maintenance agreement.  Many years ago it used to be "read the agreements and you're on you're own to make sure you do everything properly".  I know the outfit that they are moving forward with, and I know service and support is sketchy at best and has been worse since COVID19 struck.  However I will do the honorable thing and coach them on the time lines.  You never know what could happen down the road.  Not like I want to do it but it's my job because they are still a client until the new equipment arrives from the other vendor.

Another morning with a couple of hours of work tomorrow.  That will make 8 hours in the last 4 days.  I'm still have hopes of writing an order this week but that would have to happen tomorrow. I also have a 10:30AM that I need to be on-site for.

As we roll into the 4th of July I'm concerned about some of the recent pricing I've been seeing from Direct.  No profit in the deals along with low low cost per pages.  Seems most of the competition is just looking for revenue now and anything goes until things change.

Not sure if I'll be writing a blog tomorrow night. If I get a deal that means yes and no deal means a night off!

-=Good Selling=-

Well another blog I did't think I was going to write this evening. 

Late in day I was able to catch a news interview with our Governor.  This is the same Governor that shut down indoor dining the day before it was scheduled to open yesterday.  He puts the blame on other states that are seeing infections increasing because those states have opened indoor dining. Thus he elected to shut it down.  He also based the decision on activities from the last weekend where many bars were packed and peeps not adhering to his social distancing.  To top it off he also stated (paraphrasing), that he does not know when any indoor activities can take place. That would mean health clubs, gyms and offices.  The offices part was the one that got me.  The statement was made that indoors with air conditioners is a recipe for spreading the virus.

Who knows maybe I will be working remote till.... the end of the year!  

I was up at 5AM got some coffee and enjoyed the sunrise over the ocean again.  By 6:30 AM I was at work preparing a proposal for a net new client for $10K.  I was able to send that off about 8AM and also secured and appointment with the client for early next week.

I thought I had an on-site appointment for 10AM today (yes I scheduled one on vacation), turns out it's for Thursday of this week. The appointment is to help the client prep for their new copier coming next week.  My job is to make sure the files on the hard drive are saved and then populated on their new copier.  I know I could have pawned this off on someone else, however I want to make sure it's a smooth transition for the client.

By 10AM I was finished for the day, however I did tune into our weekly sales meeting for about 30 minutes,  We had another awesome set of revenue numbers for last week.  Nice way to finish the quarter for those peeps.

I'll be putting in a couple of hours in the AM tomorrow.  Today was "let the ball travel" for two of the net news that will be making decisions this week. In the AM I'll be sending a few emails to see where we are.

In addition I received another lead from my Jersey Plotters site, I'm so glad I started this three years ago. It took some time but if paying dividends now.

The rest of the day is going to be dedicated to working on my tan and relaxing!

-=Good Selling=-

When I posted a blog on Friday of last week I had no intention of writing one today.   My thoughts moving into this week was to post the most important press releases, answer some topics and take a much needed break from both jobs. That also meant no Monday night email update.

As sales people are we every really on vacation?  Before email and the internet vacations were easier and that's because we really weren't  connected like we are today. I can still remember when vacations were real vacations no email, no cell phones, no computers. Now vacations are merely time off when people are not expecting you to work, however if you want to make the bucks then I guess we're always working in some fashion.

I had a few things to clean up this AM.  One was to process the small A4 order and other duties included following up via email with some opportunities that may have legs this week to close.

It was Saturday in about mid-day after pulling weed duty that I checked my email and saw that email.  The email was simple "cancel". It was from an account that was suppose to have a delivery last week, however due to a truck issue we had to reschedule.  I remained calm and thought WTF happened? I continued to scroll down and saw an email from our AR person about a snafu with the account that stated cancel.  Mind you this is Saturday mid-day now, my AR person emailed that account (and me) back and then placed a call to that account to clear things up.  Before I could do anything she had already straightened everything out and all was well with the account.  Now she probably won't read this but I thought a public shout out was in order for going above and beyond for the best of the company.  Awesome Job!

It was about 9:30AM and I already logged a couple of hours and was just about to wind down when I received a call.  That call turned about to be a referral (I do love referrals) and they were in need of replacing an ancient Xerox copier.  No time like the present, I asked if he had time for a quick meeting, the answer was yes and the proposal will be going out on Wednesday of this week.  I have no problem with doing the quote tomorrow night.

Thus my first day of vacation ended up with logging almost three hours.  The rest of the day was filled with errands, more weeding and then relaxing in the sun.  The only thing I had missing for the afternoon was a cold beer and tequila.   Drop the tequila in the beer and it's my favorite on a hot afternoon.  The beer and the tequila was taught to me by Ernersto while on a Presidents Club Trip in Cabo San Lucas some seven years ago.  It's now my go to drink during the summer.

Tomorrow will be work or vacation?  I had some things to do in the AM and hope I'm done by 9AM.

-=Good Selling=-

It's after 5PM and all I can post is what's below!

It was rise and shine at 5AM today!  I'm getting to like this early gig and getting more time to spend outside.  

Since I was up so early I made it the office a little before 7AM today.  That early time was used to develop and send both a proposal and order docs to the net new client that gave the verbal the other day.  Since the order is for three MPF's and two locations I spent about two hours developing those docs.  Normally I would just send the order docs, however the decision maker also wanted supporting docs since most of our communiques were via email.  It was two hours later when I received an email from the client with few additional questions.  It's still a long shot to have the documents tomorrow and my gut feeling is that I'll probably have them on Monday.  Monday is the first day of my vacation.  Oh well when you're in sales we really never have a true vacation.

I was also able to secure a verbal for the small A4 MFP today for about $2k. Docs went out late today and I'm hoping to have them back today.  It's always interesting when a client asks you for pricing for an additional MFP.  In this case the client had an older Brother MFP that they were using in accounting.  Mostly for printing and faxing......, yup I thought the same thing when I heard faxing. 

Since the Brother was so inexpensive the first thought is how can I justify my cost of $2,500?  All I could think about is that they client would remember that the paid maybe $500 for the Brother all those years ago. But I also knew that they had shopped a fuser for the Brother and it was $200 bucks.

At first I thought about our cheap A4's and the thought of placing a $400 MFP wasn't sitting well with me.  All I could think about is that the MFP would fail in the next year and I would get the first call.   This client had just received a new color A4 and a color wide format last week, with that I took to figuring the lease cost for the next 60 months.  I was a hair under the $50 per month and then had to add the service and supplies to get my final cost.   Before I send the emai; to the client I called and asked if he had 15 minutes to review the email I was going to send.  That answer was yes and the sent email was on the way.

The plan was to whittle down the cost of my MFP with telling the client about the savings over the Brother. I asked how many toner cartridges they bought per year, how many drum cartridges and then verified with the client what they spend for those consumables.  I then focused on the toner cartridges and the volume that we being printed and faxed.

The end result is that I was able to show that the client would save about $30 per month from what they were spending on the Brother each month.  That $30 savings made my MFP more palatable for them. In addition I spoke about the benefit of the all inclusive service and supplies along with having the same scanning features on the new device.  Within an hour we had the verbal for the order.  Not a big sale, but if your know your MFP inside and out along with having knowledge about their existing MFP you can make a case for spending more.

Having a plan and knowing your **** in advance of the call put me in a better position to sell the value of Ricoh and our brand for service and support.

I knocked out some smaller items on my to do list.  Tomorrow I'll be calling everyone in my funnel, and hoping to process these two orders along with another A3 that may have legs.  Hoping I can bank $26k by tomorrow. It's a long shot but I have the entire day to make it happen.

Depending on how I feel tomorrow because vacation does start at 5PM will dictate a blog tomorrow night. If I'm blogging that means I got ink on paper and if not I'll still like where I'm at for the month of July.

-=Good Selling-=  

The big 70! 

Since the weather has turned nice I find my self waking up earlier than every before.  This morning it was 5AM when I grabbed a cup of coffee and then sat in the back yard to see the sun rise over the ocean.  This morning was a little different from the others because I dozed off on the lounger after a half over or so.  I was brought back to reality when I felt a thump on my chest and was there was Angus.  Angus came to us a few years ago and adopted us as her people and yes she is a female cat and yes I named her Angus.  There I was face to face with Angus and she was sporting a dead mole in her mouth!  Guess she just wanted to show me what she caught.

By 8AM I took the long commute to my home office, gotta love no traffic,  no tolls, no gas to buy and the extra time I have every day.

This morning I had a 10AM appointment with an account that was about an hour away. I left the house at about 8:30AM because I promised the wife I would take her car for any oil change.  I've been going to the same place for the last ten years for those oil changes and every year I see a new printer that was purchased.  In every case it's one of those cheap A4's that are $400 bucks or so.  Today the old printer had been replaced with a Brother A4 MFP.  Every transaction produces and invoice for the client.  I would tend to think they do 300 plus oil changes or services every day.  Yes, I've tried to talk to them about getting a better product, however the owner is never there and it's been difficult to track that person.  I've got bigger fish to fry and get a chuckle every time I see a new device.  My paper invoice from today had dark shading along the left side of the invoice.  Thus where the toner cost per page is about 3 cents for clean pages they are probably paying double that and don't even know it.  I had another one of those chuckle moments when I saw the invoice.

I spent a good hour at my appointment today. A few weeks ago we replaced and A3 color with an A4 color and upgraded the wide format MFP.  Today was a discovery meeting to find out more about if they were a prospect for IT services.  After the first 20 minutes I saw a couple of issues with someone needing licensing information for Adobe, (they didn't know where it was) and then a printer driver issue that was of the employees was trying to fix.  After forty minutes I found out that they don't meet our minimums for IT services.  I think it was seven PC's and one server, however I did develop and opportunity to replace one of the smaller black A4 devices that's not working.  Small opp but everything counts to get to where I need in July.  Short month means everything is fair game.

While at the meeting I received a verbal from one of the net news that I'm working on. I believe it's $20K or maybe a little less.  I replied asap to that email and stated I would send the docs in the AM tomorrow.

My afternoon was filled with furniture hunting with my wife for our apartment. After three years it's complete and now we need to add furniture because out plan is to rent it out for weekends or a week at a time during the summer.

Tomorrow will be busy with another appointment (remote), develop the order docs and then catch up on prospecting, follow ups and I still need to create my constant contact email.

Yay, two days till vacation!

-=Good Selling=-

Today marked the last day of the month and the last day of the and quarter for me.  Nothing changed from yesterday, however I did get a tad bit exciting when I had a call from my net new prospect for a call meeting as soon as possible.  Of course I dropped everything and jumped on the call. That call was more about understanding the two proposals so that he could present to his team later today.  Keeping my toes and fingers crossed that this may happen tomorrow or the end of this week.

We had a weekly sales wrap us today at 11AM. I was impressed because we put up some great numbers for last week at almost $200K.  Then this week which we're only two days into it we logged another $150K.  Pretty awesome numbers and a pretty awesome team.  Seems no one has given up and as we enter the last half of the year those numbers will only get better.

In a day that I had no meetings scheduled I ended up with three.  One was the email that I spoke about and the other two were from a couple of calls I put in. One of those calls resulting in creating a small opportunity for $7K.

Today I read a thread from a Linkedin connection that posted a comment to one of my posts.  The headline was "82% of the workforce will be back to the office in the next 12-18 months".  That reply is below.

I really didn't think much into it but agreed that cold calling in person is not acceptable now. In addition I replied to the public sector bit and those that are working from home.  At least in NJ I'm thinking most that are working those public jobs will be back in the office at some time this year.

Later in the day I had a chat with our Major Accounts rep and the chat was about the tough time getting those majors to do something. I was told that many of the objections to not moving forward is because more majors are looking to reduce office staff (more remote) and reduce space.  Therefor the thought of the decision makers is that they will not print as much and will not require as many print devices.  Which makes sense from what I've been reading and what I've heard from others and then the reply on Linkedin today.

Sometimes right place, right time does matter.  I've never been a majors person and I believe that's because I don't have the metal capacity to wait months on end for orders.  Seems to me now that maybe there is a slight advantage to doing business with smaller companies that don't have the logistic issues that COVID19 has created. 

If someone asked me, how should I go about selling in COVID19?  My first suggestion would be to not focus on majors and go after those the low hanging fruit.  Of course the revenue won't be as much from majors but something is better than nothing.

Our sales meeting last for about 45 minutes and I was able to set up shop in my backyard.  It was quite awesome that I could soak up some sun for those 45 minutes.  Of course lunch was next course of action.

The afternoon was spent developing a quote for a smaller opportunity that popped up yesterday, crossing off to do's and then a meeting with that small opportunity.  This opportunity may have some legs later this week.

About 4PM I wrote another blog for my Jersey Plotters site.  This one was a little tough and took the better part of and hour. You can read that here if you wish.

Tomorrow I have one on-site appointment and I'll also spend time sending my once a month constant contact email to 700 net news that I want to stay in front of.  This email will mark the third one since I restarted doing them on the first day of the new selling month. I've generated one order for $7K for those two emails. Just something I need to keep doing because I'm thinking no other rep is doing their.  Set yourself apart from others, dare to be different right?

As always when I start a new month I take a look to see how many selling days there are.  With the Fourth of July there are only 21 selling days. In addition I'm taking a weeks vacation. July will be interesting!

-=Good Selling=-