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Memoirs of a Copier Sales Person

COVID19 "Remote Working" Day Twenty-Four of Sales

Yay!  Friday night and the weekend lays ahead!  Not so fast grasshopper since tomorrow is going to be in the high thirties and raining in the AM. Maybe we'll see a high of 50 degrees.  

Typically this time of year is prime for combing the beaches and finding money.  Well not really finding money but finding sea glass, jingle shells and hard clam shells that I turn into wampum.  For me each piece of sea glass can mean $10 a pop.  The shells are worth the effort because I'll also turn them into jewelry.  Spending a couple of hours at the beach can net me a few hundred dollars each time.   

Walking those beaches and looking for the odd color that stands out, that perfect flat jingle shell or the hard clam shell with the deep purple is a form of prospecting.  I'm fortunate that the shells and glass will not tell me to get lost or that we just leased our copiers last week.  lol

My favorite beaches are closed in New Jersey. In fact a few weeks ago a guy was arrested by the police for walking below the tide line on a beach.  No one around him in sight, someone called the police and he was promptly arrested. I'm not blaming the police because they are doing their job.  I do find fault with the person that called the police because one person was enjoying a solo walk on that beach not hurting or endangering anyone.

Apologies I kind of went off track there. 

Prospecting, it never ends in sales, those of us that are good at it have learned that it's what pays the bills and feeds the family.  It's those times when you walk into a new company and for some reason of fate that account or that person needs exactly what you have to offer.  It's those type of days that keeps us going, because we know every now and then we're going to find that special deal. 

Today I had three meetings with clients which ranged from one client that closed their office forever and all employees would be remote from here on in.  Thus there was no need for the 45ppm A3 color mfp anymore.  The problem was that they still had 11 payments left on the lease. I guiding and directed on the processes and what their obligations are.  There was no commission check to be made, and no opportunities in the near future, but they were still a client and they needed help.  Maybe somewhere down the road they may need content management or something else.  The end of the call was the best when the client stated "I really enjoy working with you".

Meeting number two was about educating the client about their maintenance agreement and a recent invoice.  Seems they went some 60K over their annual black base and the extra charge was a shock to them. Rather than see them move away from us (22 payments still left on this lease), I took the time to review the initial maintenance doc, review why we selected that type of maintenance agreement more than three years ago.  I also took the time to point out the costs associated with the A3 mono mfp if the client decided to cancel that agreement.  After all was said and one our client remained a client and understood why we billed what we did.

Call three, was the with the client that I have the $35K proposal with. Although today's meeting was not about the copier but about BDR (backup disaster recovery), by the end of the meeting I was able to get a copy of their BDR agreement.  The agreement did not have pricing, alas it was redacted but never the less it was more about seeing if they had the right plan.  I sent that copy off to my IT team for review and then had another short meeting with them.  The end result right now is that we need to perform an assessment to see how much storage is being used. Well that does count as an opportunity in my book! What I couldn't get today is the order for the $35K which kinda bummed me out.  Hoping Monday is the day to bring this home.

Since prospecting was the order of the day after all was said and done I managed about 15 calls and maybe handful of emails.  Monday needs to be a super busy day so I'm thinking I need to put a few hours in on the weekend.

Other than all of that a pretty quite Friday, personally I think most people who are working are burnt out by the time Friday rolls around.  There was less incoming calls and less emails and this has been a consistent pattern for the last three weeks.

The beach tomorrow?  That's a no because our beaches are also closed, thus my time will be spent with "honey do" things around the house.

Everyone be well and stay safe and enjoy what you can.

-=Good Selling=-

PS  Never ever stop prospecting!

COVID19 "Remote Working" Day Twenty-Three of Sales

There was some good news today in that the Feds released their plans for States to get back to work in a three phase operation.  Seems each State will have different time lines depending if they meet the conditions that were set forth today.  New Jersey is on lock down until the 15th of May.  Could we see some of the restrictions lifted soon? I'm thinking no since we're one of those nanny states. 

This may be one of my shorter blogs and the reason for that is because I spent 5 of my eight hours in meetings.  Three and half with training, half an hour with NJ branch meeting and then a one hour meeting with a client at the end of the day.

That one hour meeting was to put the final touches on the 35K order that I'm working on.  Thinking I'll have an answer tomorrow or Monday.   One of my other potential orders is now dragging a bit. The revenue was about $12K.  However I still may have shot to get it in by the 23rd (out month end).

I was only able to do 10 calls today along with 7 emails, not a great day by any means.  However if you factor in the two appointments then that makes the effort pretty darn good.  One of those appointments could be worth about $30k.

I didn't do anything creative today except for having some fun in one of our TEAMS meeting.  I set the background to show the beach, I then donned my Aruba hat, grabbed some shades, a tropical shirt and stoked up a cigar for the meeting.  I saw some smiles and a few laughs and that's what it was intended to do.  There was me with the virtual beach background and imagining I was far away from Covid.

After 23 days I've got this remote working from home down to a science now.  I guess no matter where you're working it's all about the effort you put in on a day to day basis.  Yes, it would be easy to take a couple hour break, and pretty easy watch a movie. But who the heck wants easy?  If I wanted easy I would have retired already.  As much as I say I want easy I really don't. I love when there's a challenge, and yes this entire episode with Covid is a challenge. This is the attitude to take, it;s that mental toughness that makes us great!

Can I succeed, can I write the same numbers pre-Covid, can I break the monthly quota? Yes, we can do all of that if we have those three D's of selling. 

Desire, Dedication and Determination

-=Good Selling=-

PS Don't forget to catch the Greg & Art show which starts at NOON tomorrow. It's my working lunch!

COVID19 "Remote Working" Day Twenty-Two of Sales

Ah day twenty-two which marks a full selling month of working remote.  No driving, no buying coffee, no traffic, no rude drivers, no tolls, no gas and not many buyers was the plot of month one.  Wow, could I really still be working remote for another month? 

Many times when I'm in the office and cutting it up with new reps I'll pose this question to them, "what type of day is it today?". Then I wait and wait and finally I'm told it's rainy, sunny, warm or cold. I then tell them the  correct answer, and that answer is always, "It's a good day to sell something!".

Did I sell something today?  Nope, but I did have an awesome 4PM Teams meeting that move my $35K deal a little closer to the finish line.  Friday will be the next appointment and I'm hoping we have a go. Absolutely nothing surprises me anymore, thus I'm still thinking this is a 50/50 shot with how the economy is right now.

However I think I did stick an extra feather in the hat this evening.

Tomorrow I need to work on a few additional data points for the prospect.  One of those data points was to do the research on cloud fax. Yup, I don't sell cloud fax but it was a good time to show the client that I'm working in their best interest and I'll do the leg work for you. From 5PM to 6PM I did the research (3 solutions) and then sent the email with my findings a little after 6PM. Low and behold I received a thank you around 8:30PM tonight.  I guess the prospect and I have something else in common and that's are workaholic nature.  If you're not working hard then your competition will out work you.

From 8:30AM until noon I worked on my special Teams meeting for existing clients for two weeks from now.  As of right now I'm waiting on an approval for the Evenbrite landing page I set up. The plan is to send out personalized invitations to one hundred existing accounts and prospects in the couple of days.  Then a test run at the end of next week.

After lunch it was back to calls and emails. In total I had about 22 calls, 6 emails, and two TEAMS appointments.  One for a QBR, one for IT at 9AM tomorrow and one for next week.

For most of us this entire remote aka virtual prospecting is something new, and there's a learning curve for those of us that are winging it.  Sales Service Guy posted a cool thread and link on my blog from yesterday. Here's the link to the forum.

It's some great content and I plan on listening to it tomorrow and over the weekend. It is has a good stretch of the legs in it, thus prepare for an hour.

Tomorrow has two training sessions along with prepping for two meetings of Friday.  BTW, if you're reading this I in dire need of dealer pricing or Canon Production, Xerox Production and Kyocera Production. I'll comp a one year Premium/VIP membership in exchange and you'll also get an invite to my secret stash.  Hoping you can help apost@p4photel.com

-=Good Selling=-

COVID19 "Remote Working" Day Twenty-One of Sales

Another day, another dollar.  Actually a great reminder that we can make what ever we want when we want.  I may need to bag that for the better days that lie ahead.

Our brilliant Governor just extended the "stay at home" order until May 20th! That's what I heard on the news today. I need to double check that, and if it's true I'm thinking that he'll be bumping heads with our President in the near future. Says he'll re-evaluate the states progress at that time. 

We need to open the state back up before there are no jobs to come back to.  In addition I heard another other statement on the news that seven of the northeastern states have banded together to perform their own assessment of when the region can open the economy.  That can get real interesting to see where something like this could go or backfire.  Enough on that.

Today was pretty cool because most of the day was dedicated to prospecting via the phone and email.  For those that I got through to, all were happy to hear from me (it was an existing account call day).  By the numbers I made 42-45 dials, sent 30-35 emails (not counting the incoming I answered) and set three appointments.  Two were for those existing accounts that I'm hoping to close this week and the other was for some tele training.  Overall a decent day.

Around 11AM we had our weekly sales TEAM meeting which went about an hour.  Of course there was lunch and then back at it for the afternoon.

I also spent some time on thinking how I can get clients, and prospects more engaged with some on-line meetings. The one I mentioned the other day has some merit. That was the one where I just invite clients for an open chat session about business in general. All good, but I really need to sow the seeds for future orders.

It was back to the drawing board again. Now what I think I'm going to try is a ZOOM or TEAMS meeting based on the theme mobile strategies.  In that meeting I'll pick out three technologies that could help businesses operate more efficiently with some of the technology that I have to offer. I'm thinking I could do ten minutes on each and bring in two other people for their ten minutes. I would handle PPDM, one of my other support peeps would do content management and the other would be for unified communications.  I would also use Eventbrite for the invitations and the registrations.  Using Evenbrite will help me develop the email list.

Anyway you slice it, it's going to be a fair amount of work to pull it off.  I'm sure we'll need to have a few minutes about the desired content and then have a short test.

This may not be the best or the worst idea, but it is something that can separate us from other sales people in our space.  Now more than ever we need to be the technology guru's that our clients want to turn to.  Holding events like these can be that difference maker. Am I going to give it shot, damn straight I am because what do I have to lose buy time? 

Time is now on my side!

-=Good Selling=-

COVID19 "Remote Working" Day Twenty of Sales

Okay, okay I did put a few hours in on Good Friday, however I made sure I finished up before noon. Good Friday was a listed company holiday but I wanted to put in the extra time since the company I work for has always been there for me.  Those are those months and or quarters when you kind of suck and aren't getting the job done.  We'll all had them and most of us are experiencing it right now.

Looking back on last week I was about to book $20K in revenue. Looking forward I've got a shot at getting $48K.  Right now it's 60/40 and there's still 4 work days left in the week.  Speaking of work days were you aware that there is an average of 22 work days each month?  Today marks twenty since I was optioned to working from home.  Two more days make an entire month! 

Jersey is starting to see a flattening of the curve, yay!  Does that mean we'll be brought back up to the team any time soon.  The answer seems to be NO, our nanny State of New Jersey stills sees another 30 days of this.  The question then becomes who and when will be allowed to go back to work. I mention "who" because there's been rumors thrown out there that those of us that are at high risk (meaning those over 55) would be required to work from home.  Under 55 and no underlying conditions means you're back on the team.

My personal opinion...., I can do this remote stuff, but I do need to get back on the road and meet with clients and prospects.  But will prospects and clients want to meet with sales people right away?  I mean with the virus still going around will they have new rules for who comes and goes?  Your guess is as good as mine, however I think that they'll be quite a few worry warts and the first time I sneeze or cough in an office will be the real test.  Can anyone say, I've been thrown out of better offices than this?

First and foremost early today comprised of a few follow up emails to two of those prospects that I wrote about for this week.  I was looking to set the stage for some Wednesday meetings.

At 11AM it was time for Monday Morning with Ricoh, this weeks theme was about unified communications.  Took some notes, captured some slides and will be attacking some new prospects in the next couple of weeks.  One thing I can tell you is that this remote working is giving me additional time to work on those projects I never seemed to have the time for.  Meeting lasted about 45 minutes and that meant it was time for lunch.

At 12:30 we had a two hour long webinar for training. After 2:30PM was a short break, made a few more calls, a few more emails and it was time for the NJ Teams meeting. Later in the day I had a short 4PM with Tim our VP of Sales.

Yes, not the toughest day but I was able to move stuff forward. Tomorrow is an entire day of calls and emails.

-=Good Selling=-

COVID19 "Remote Working" Day Eighteen of Sales

Make no bones about it, I'm mentally drained.  Jersey is still the same and I don't want to keep harping on what's going on here.

What was cool today is Greg Walters & I had our third installment of "How to Sell Copiers in the Age of Corona Virus.  For those that haven't caught the first three episodes it's basically me and Greg talking about what's going on and shooting ideas back and forth.

What I liked about today is that we turned the mics on to hear from others in our Zoom meeting. We heard from David Whitten (Nothern Cal), John Anderson (Central Florida), West MCDonald (from the Candadian shore of Lake Erie) and then Chris Polek (from Polek & Polek in New Jersey). All four shared what's going on in their neck of the woods and all four gave everyone insight as to what we can do to keep the pedal to the metal.  I forgot who it came from but one idea was for reps to invite their clients to an open discussion Zoom meeting.  Meaning,  we're not their to sell but to pull DM's together from various businesses and have open dialog about business in general during these times.

Personally I thought it was a splendid idea and I'm going to give it a whirl next week.  I'm thinking of inviting 15 people and hoping that 5 or so can make it.  It should be interesting if I can pull this off.

First thing this AM was to process the order that I received yesterday.  Yeah it took me the better part of the hour.  Next on tap was to prepare a slide presentation for my 3:30PM teams meeting with another account.  First I had to do some crunching of the numbers like current costs,  past volume, current volume (yes big drop in volume) and then migrate that volume to new MFP scenario.  That entire process took the better part of two hours.  I kept the power point to 4 slides and the reason for that is because the CFO told me he only had a few minutes.  Short and sweet it is.

Noon was the working lunch meeting with Greg Walters.  Then it was off to two webinars at the same time. One of the things I like about the Teams meeting is that I could turn on the captioning, thus while I was listening to one I was reading the other one.  The first webinar ended in 30 minutes and the other one went for two hours.

By the time we finished up it was a little after 3PM. Made two phone calls and then hoped on my 3:30PM.  Surprisingly the meeting went well, the data was well received and the meeting went almost 45 minutes.  Dang, I could get used to this.  We both agreed to schedule another meeting for Monday (key schedule that next step before you end the meeting).  After finishing I then jumped on our NJ Teams meeting for a recap of the day.

By the time I looked up it was after 4PM. I futzed around with a few calls and then finished the day with another producing another virtual demo video for PPDM.

Tomorrow is a scheduled holiday, however I'm going to put a few hours in early and then take some time off. Tomorrow night there will not be a blog installment. To everyone be safe, be well, enjoy Passover and Easter.

-=Good Selling=-

COVID19 "Remote Working" Day Seventeen of Sales

Before I get started on my day I'd like to share a Youtube video from BTA and Brent Hoskins.  BTA has some excellent resources for dealers to navigate through these tough times. COVID19

Today in New Jersey we had our highest one day death toll to date. I believe it was somewhere around 246 souls that passed in the last 24 hours.

Today our Governor notified us that all non-essential construction will be shut down as of Friday at 5PM.   There goes the next to last bit of the economy that was still chugging along in New Jersey.  Hate to say it but it looks like we're in this for a long time.

Yay!  No webinars today, which allowed me to play catch up with phone calls and emails. On a good note I received another order this morning for about $9k in revenue, again not the best of orders but any order is a good thing right now. 

I believe I made somewhere in the are of 40 some calls and sent around 15 emails.  Looking back I may have spoken to five people or so.  The plan right now is to try and pick as much as I can from 27 opportunities that I had for the first week of March.  Thus working on those and continued prospecting should keep me in decent shape, not great but decent.  One item I keep telling prospects is that we are getting orders and many of those orders can't be delivered yet.  Thus if you have a lease due or need a new device as soon as this breaks, then it's a good idea to get in line now.

After 3PM I had to prep for a 3:30PM TEAMS meeting with a client tomorrow. Rather than showing my confusing spreadsheets I'm going with a few short slides that list some bullets points that will get my message across.  It's that time you spend prepping that will help an on-line meeting go smoother.

Other than what I just wrote about there was nothing outstanding or unusual from the last 16 days.  I did get a chance to speak to my good buddy Monte a few minutes ago.  Monte sells out in Cali and is having a rough time of it also. 

At this time we all need to share as much as we can help each other get more educated and share ideas as to whats working and not working.

Tomorrow?  Finishing touches on my slides, prospecting again the AM.  After lunch for the two hour webinar and then the on-line meeting with a client.

I will get through this just as I know all of us will.  With a few orders in the books I'm thinking dang I might be able to hit my quota this month!

Forgot!  Tomorrow at Noon is the Greg & Art show! It's my working lunch and there's still time to register here. Would love to have you on the call, we changing up the format a bit and will be opening the mic up to others so we can share our collective knowledge!

-=Good Selling=-

COVID19 "Remote Working" Day Sixteen of Sales

This blog will be one of the longer running blog series. NJ just locked down for another 30 days, that statement from the Governors Office came today. In addition an additional lock down was placed on all county and state parks. 

While it seems that the infection rate is slowing down, the media is mostly giving us the bad along with a few specs of hope here and there.  I follow the numbers on a daily basis but I'm somewhat concerned that more peeps will be out and about as the better weather arrives.

Told my wife today that when this clears just you and me are going out.  For the last four weeks we've been feeding three other peeps each night for dinner.  That's a story for another day.

First thing in the AM I tackled developing my order docs for yesterdays order of the wide format mfp. Developing order docs from the home office is not an easy task since I was used to printing them and then scanning them off.  Yes, the process of printing is much easier that editing files, savings files, and then merging files to have one complete document.

It was then time to follow up on some emails. One of those emails was from a client looking for credit since they haven't used the copier. Rather than telling them that there's still a cost whether you use the copier or not I opted to send this to admin and let them sort it out. Actually this person at this account tends to try to beat me up a few times a year and I wasn't in the mood for a fight.

11AM rolled out pretty quick and it was time for our monthly TEAMS sales meeting.  We're still moving copiers and selling IT, maybe not as much as before but our sales peeps are doing a great job with the current conditions. It all comes from the top and the dealer principal is doing what he does best to keep moving forward and doing the grunt work to help us succeed. In addition our VP of Sales is doing a great job of keeping the moral up, allowing us to be creative and helping to get the job done.

After lunch we had a two hour training session for all of the reps. All I can say is it was dedicated to finding additional opportunities for a market we had just dabbled in before. I found the presenter to be excellent and looking forward to round 2.

We finished up a little after 3PM.  I need to take a break from the screen. By 3:30PM it was time for our NJ Teams meeting.  From 4PM to 5PM it was time to make a few additional calls and send some more emails.

Today was pretty good because I was able to schedule three virtual meetings for this week.  One for tomorrow, then Thursday and one Friday.  Friday's may not pan out because I forgot all about Friday being Good Friday.

Tomorrows plan?  More prospecting, more emails and I set aside a couple of hours to make some additional videos.

-=Good Selling=-

COVID19 "Remote Working" Day Fifteen of Sales

Yup, it's now been three solid weeks since I was optioned to the remote workforce. 

Look at that it's 8:35PM and I'm early for writing these blogs.  Hoping that means I'll get a nights sleep.

Let's see tonight I'll start with some numbers.  About forty calls made to mostly current clients, then another thirteen emails to those clients. One appointment (MS TEAMS), one share Stratix Linkedin thread, one shared Stratix Facebook thread and three Linkedin inmails.  Opportunities developed stands at one.

After lunch we had a mandatory webinar that went a little over ninety minutes.  At 2:45 I went back to the prospecting a bit and then switched over to scheduling additional calls for Tuesday and Wednesday.

It was about 3PM when I received my only call of the day.  The call was from an existing prospecting that had gone silent for the better part of two months.  After about 15 minutes of chatting I had my first order since I was optioned to work at home. It was a purchase and a decent one at that. I was so excited that I forgot to add the delivery cost to the copier and I wasn't go back to change. I'll let stand for what it is.  Ten minutes later I had emailed the documents that I needed signed and the request for the copy of check.

By the time I looked up it was 3:30PM and time for our NJ branch TEAMS chat. I'm starting to enjoy these more and more each day, this working alone crap is for the birds.  The TEAMS meeting allows all of us to chat about our day, compare notes and adds that virtual social aspect that we all need.

Four PM came around pretty quickly and it was back to work. At 4:15PM I sent another email to the prospect asking if they received the documents.   At 4:20PM I was getting a little nervous, and at 4:30 I ad a call from the client stating the document I sent her was really "tiny".  I was not sure what they meant by "tiny", thus I went back and checked the pdf file. Well it seems that I took the that letter size doc and pdf'd it to a 30x42 document! Couple of  minutes later I had the revised documents to them.

It's now 5:15PM and no signed order, no copy of check and I figured this was going until tomorrow.  A few minutes later my prospect called and asked if I received those docs.  Told then I didn't and what email did you send them to? Alas those docs were not sent to the right email address.  Five minutes later I had everything I needed.

Now I'm on a roll!  One in the books and a lot of time left in the month.  Maybe just maybe I can do this.

-=Good Selling=-

COVID19 "Remote Working" Day Fourteen of Sales

Arriving home from Aruba on the 2nd of March and all was fine on that late evening ride from Newark Airport to my home in Highlands.

Never ever did I think I would be confined to my house for this long. Never ever did I think that I would go three weeks without an order.

Never ever did I think I would be trapped in my home office and not be able to meet and greet prospects and clients.

Never ever did I think that a virus could virtually bring a country to it's knees.

This is our new normal, this what the next four to eight weeks will be like. I dread the thought that this could last longer than eight weeks. 

They say everything changes over time.  But sometimes the changes are so subtle that they go unnoticed over short period of time.  Time...., I guess that's one thing that we all have in common.  That law of commonality that we all look for as salespeople is now everything that we all have in common.

What as work like today? After not getting another good night of sleep my ass was dragging in the AM. I finally came out of my foggy head coma about 8:30AM and it was time to climb the flight of stairs to my office.

The first couple of hours I dedicated to sending a few emails and trying to make some calls.  It's Friday and just maybe the world has changed a bit from yesterday.  Alas nothing changed from the day before, phones were ringing and ringing, voice mails kicked in and it was another day of leaving messages and sending an email right after I hung.

I did take a departure from the madness and starting some training for PaperCut.  The training wasn't the bad and at least this time I aced the test and got my "sales" certification which means that I can now find PaperCut opportunities. Dang, I've been selling PaperCut for the last year and notched four accounts under my belt in that time.  All learning is good and you can never ever stop learning in this industry because once you stop learning your competitor will out learn you.

After lunch I had a little bit of a different plan.  I decided to dig around the CRM to see if I could find some additional opportunities.  My idea is simple it all of your funnel is cold then you need to add more to your funnel. I was able to identify a couple, made the calls and then sent the emails.

Remember that potential order that I blogged about yesterday? I wrote that it's time to **** or get off the pot.  Thus my email was straight to the point. Later in the day the client emailed me and asked me to sent him the order docs. You know in a different time, I would have stated "yes I'll get them ready ASAP and can I bring them by later today?" Time changes everything and today went more like "okay I'll get them done ASAP and send them to you".

After a few issues with my PDF software, actually many issues I was able to create new set of documents and I was able to email them out about 4:30PM.  I was not expecting them back because it was Friday and I knew how drained I was and I could only think that my DM was drained as well.

Yay!  The weekend is here..................

-=Good Selling=-

COVID19 "Remote Working" Day Thirteen of Sales

I was hoping that day thirteen would be a lucky number for me.  It wasn't and I'm still hanging in their with zero orders since I started working remotely.

I had a tough time going to sleep last night, the mind was still running, thoughts of what to if this that or the other thing happens.  Even with two sleeping pills it was not a good night.  Think I finally dozed off somewhere in the 1AM area.

Thursday has started just like every other day.  By 8am I was at the PC and going through my CRM to start the task of calls.  It wasn't until 9AM that I got around to calling peeps.  I'm thinking I did about 50 calls and spoke to 10 people in total, of those 10 it was maybe 4 DM's.  But the plan was if I couldn't get the DM on the phone I would send an email. Thus it was phone call, leave a message, send an email, frakking boring!

Later in the day in the Arli webinar I was asked, "how to you get energized when things aren't going that well"?  My answer is that I'll play one song that always puts me in a good mood.  That song is "Mister Blue Sky" by ELO (Electric Light Orchestra), funny until a few years ago it was not was of my fav's.

I was a calling machine all the way up till about 2PM.  At 2PM I took my working lunch break to be a guest on Arlingtons Weekly Webinar Series. They started running that a few weeks ago when all of this **** hit the fan.  BTW Arlington is a sponsor of this site and please click on their banners or give them a call.  The support of our sponsors allows me to dedicate the time to share all I know with our members.  

We spoke about many of the same things that Greg and I covered this week. What's going on, where we are heading, what's working, whats not working. I tell you Arlington it also doing a nice job of updating everyone of COVID19 stuff on each of these webinars. I catch them ever week. Brent and Kelly are doing a great job.

My one deal for the bakers dozen lease did not move forward yet and the reason for that is because I did not push the issue.  Tomorrow I will make the push to get them to **** or get off the pot.  Tomorrow for me will be more of the same with contacting existing clients. 

One of the items that I'd like to finish this week is the creation of at least one more video with PPDM that I can send out as a virtual demo.

 I believe we also need to be making our own content that we can send out to clients at this time. I know that some of the copier manufacturers have simulators for their operation panels. 

Thus if you want to make a few all you would need to do is open the simulator on your PC or Mac. I then use SNAG IT to make a video. It's capture software that will record your voice and capture everything you do on your screen. One idea is that you could do a demonstration on how to scan and save to a msword doc and msxcel doc.  When you're finished you hit stop record, the file is then converted to an MP4 file.  You can then take that file and upload to Youtube.  From YouTube you can do anything, push to social media, send an email with the video.

The point of all of this is to stay relevant with our clients.  Show them that you are the guru in your space!  If any of you need help please send me an email.

-=Good Selling=-

COVID19 "Remote Working" Day Twelve of Sales

I'm going to start this a little different tonight. I'll start at the end of my day because that part of the day had a profound effect on the rest of the evening.

Earlier in the day I text'd one of my clients that I have an opportunity with.  The text was simple with "how you holding up".  Since the churches are closed in NJ,  I opted for the text rather than the call. I was also mildly concerned since there were many cases of the virus in his town and he's a bit older than me. 

Thirty of forty minutes later I a call from my contact and he sounded horrible. He told me that today was the first day in a few weeks that he had stopped coughing.  In addition he went on to tell me that his entire family has/had Covid19.  Everyone is recovering however he spent two days in the hospital over the weekend.  

He was administered hydroxychloroquine & azithromycin (Z-Pak) at the hospital. My friend went on to tell me that this was the worst thing he has every gone through in his life.  Coughing so bad that he thought he would not recover.  I asked him if he knew how he had caught the virus and he claimed he had no idea and was exercising social distancing for weeks.  He also clued me into some additional warnings.

  • If you're out in public wear a mask and bring gloves, especially when food shopping
  • Keep hand sanitizer in your car
  • When you get back to your car, wipe down the door handles, the steering wheel, the gear shifter, the key fob and anything else you may have touched with your gloves
  • Dispose of the mask and gloves when finished
  • When you get out of the car wipe down the seat you sat on
  • When you get home, immediately take you clothes off (another set of gloves used here) and promptly put them in the washing machine and then wash your hands


Thus Covid19 came a little close to home today especially when it involves someone you know.  From here on in I'll be going with my wife to the food store (we go once a week) to make sure she is following these protocols.

I can only hope that those reading this will take these steps seriously, I know I will be from here on in.

Today was a pretty good day since I took the attitude that every day without garnering an order will get me close to the first one.  In total I made about 40 phone calls and set about 30 emails.  Not bad with 70 touches for the day.  I'd say I spoke to 7 clients in total and received about 12 responses in emails. I was able to move a couple of deals closer to the finish line.  One client was on the fence about a purchase at this time and also had concerns with a long term lease.  However he knew that his existing device was outdated and had a high cost for maintenance.  It was an objection aka concern,  I went back to the memory banks and offered a bakers dozen lease. At this point in time I'm thinking that may do it for us.  I'll find out tomorrow.

There was additional training for about an how for a print solution and later had a NJ TEAMS meeting.

Tomorrow it's all about more phone calls, and more emails. As I stated yesterday the SHOCK & AWE is over with the virus. This is our new normal for the next 4-8 weeks.

I'll be also doing a working lunch at 2PM and I'll be doing a guest appearance for Arlington with their weekly webinar series. If you've got the time please join us the details are listed on this site in our calendar section.

-=Good Selling & Stay Safe Out There=-

COVID19 "Remote Working" Day Eleven of Sales

WTF eleven days!  Another late night issue for me again.  It's sometime after 10PM, thus this will be another short blog again.

Today our dealership had a TEAMS meeting set for 11AM. The plan was to lay out the strategy for the next 30 days or so.  Yes, it seems like another 30 days of remote working is in order.  I am also very thankful for that, because at least I have the ability to produce.  I can't go over the details because it just doesn't make good business sense with competitors reading this blog.

What I can tell you is that I'm excited and pumped to get going.  Tomorrow starts a new path and a new future! I'm ready and raring to GO.

Since I wasn't sure what our marching orders were before 11AM I sent a few additional emails and arranged some contacts for later in the day.

By 12PM I had my working lunch chat with Greg Walters.  We had almost 80 peeps sign on for our 55 minute chat. I tell you the format is awesome, just Greg and I chatting about what we've heard, what we've seen and what we've done.  Towards the end of the call we've open the mics to two peeps. One was Martin Hofman from VZ Industries in the Netherlands and the operator of The Copier Solution Shop (sponsor).  The Copier Solution Shop offers dealers the ability to purchase copier cabinets, paper tray locks and a host of other accessories that will allow your copier to be different. Please make sure you check them out.  Martin gave us an overview of what the market is like in the Netherlands with Covid19. Sometimes we're so stuck in our own world we're not seeing the ramifications in other parts of the world.  Thanx Martin

Our second mic opening was to Deon Beshof in South Africa. Deon also provided insight to what's happening in his area but also enlightened us with some info regarding AI and what's coming down the road.  Special thanx to Deon also!

We have any another one planned for next week, stay tuned for details. We'll also be opening up the mic to other peeps here in the US to get a better understanding of what's working and what's not. It should be another great episode!

I'm not going to bore you with the rest of my day, because there wasn't much to it besides a couple more TEAMS meeting.  What I can tell you is that the SHOCK & AWE of Covid19 is OVER.  For the time being this is our new normal.

We owe it to ourselves to start getting creative and start selling.  You could say it's our duty, and on the other hand it's the duty of our clients to buy (I got that from Greg).  If anything is going to save the economy it's going to start with us and our clients.

Like I said this is a short one, I'll be back tomorrow.

-=Good Selling=-

COVID19 "Remote Working" Day Ten of Sales

Busy, busy day for me.  I started at 7:30AM and it's now 9:45PM, I figure I still have another 30 minutes or so to go.

One thing I noticed today is that the pace of industry press releases as slowed to a crawl.  Tomorrow marks the last day of the year for most copier manufacturers, I can only image the deals that are available for dealers right now. Yes, it's one of those years that will go down in the history of the industry.

Today was interesting to say the lease. I had 40-50 contacts in my CRM to tackle, most of them were earmarked to send an email.  Since I sent most of my emails last week I needed some different content.  I had just the content that arrived in my emails last week. A Print4Pay Hotel member from the west coast emailed me a link with a webinar recording.  That webinar was about the Federal Response for aid for medium and small businesses and how to apply for it.  This was awesome!  Content that any business owner would want to review (if you need that link please email me  apost@p4photel.com). FYI, I did have about ten responses thanking me for the content. In addition I believe I nudged a couple of opportunities closer to coming home. Special thanx to Joe!

There was an additional 8-10 accounts that I did not have email addresses for and that proved to take some time in getting those. I was able to acquire 7 of those addresses and left the rest for tomorrow.

I did have a couple of phone conversations, nothing great but it was better than last week.

At 3:30PM I had a local NJ TEAMS meeting which was fine by mean, I was pressing all day and needed some time to wind down a bit.

The best part of my day was from 4PM to 5PM. One of my ideas is to give clients "video demos'.  Of course I can't demo a copier, but I can demo software!  I made my first video using snagit.  It took seven takes to get it as good as I could. 

What I did was to pick put one feature of the software and demonstrate how it's used. All in all the video time was three minutes or so.  When I finished I posted on my YouTube channel. The plan is to do three each week for the next four weeks. Here's the link if you want to check it out.

All in all a pretty productive day. Tomorrow I have a TEAMS meeting with our sales team. NOON TIME means Greg Walters and I will have a second chat session about " How to Sell Copiers in the Age of Corona Virus". You can register here and please get in early!

-=Good Selling=-

COVID19 "Remote Working" Day Nine of Sales

Sorry everyone, I'm going to make this short and sweet tonight.

On a positive note today I receive and email from one of my clients that they like the first of 2 proposals that they reviewed and is looking at a May 1st timeline to move forward.  Now I won't count my chickens yet, but that's the best news I've had all week.  We scheduled a follow up in two weeks to see if we're still at square one with this virus. Oh ya, and this is a $60K opp.

I had a chat with Greg Walters this AM and he told me about a thread that he read on Linkedin from someone he is connected with. The thread kinda went like this.

Our country is built on capitalism it’s our duty as sales people to sell and it’s the duty of our clients to buy in order to bring us out of this economic downturn.

I may have paraphrased a bit because I did not jot it down word for word, however if we are true believers and patriots only we can turn this economic free fall around.  Not sure how and when I might use this but it's really something to think about.

Of course I finished up all of my emailing today, and set aside some prep time for Monday. In addition I finished my first constant contact drip email campaign. I'll be sending this out on April 1st.

If anyone would like to some help with CC, I ready and willing to help.

One other thing I've noticed in the last two days is that industry press releases for copier and IT stuff have virtually vanished. It's the first night in a long time that I have nothing to post.  That's cool because I'm beat from a very stressful week.

One more note Greg Walters and I will have another chat on March 31st at noon, we have some additional content to cover.  You can register for the chat here. Please keep in mind that the registration does not preserve you seat, so please log in on time.

-=Good Selling=-

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