Real Copier Sales

For the past couple of years I've been posting short snippets of comments from me and our members about selling copiers.  These are posting in our weekly series below.

This Week in the Copier Industry 5 Years Ago

This Week in the Copier Industry 10 Years Ago

This Week in the Copier Industry 15 Years Ago

I'm not sure how many are clicking the links to those stories, thus I thought I would start a blog series dedicated to our members and their experiences with selling copiers.

A sales rep sold a Ricoh MP C4504ex

So here's a new one that has me stumped.

A sales rep sold a Ricoh MP C4504ex to a real estate company. The company was hoping to bill back the realtors for copies and prints and have the  users authenticate via the key cards with the Ricoh QCA  and card reader.

Everything is great on paper but no one brought up to the rep (and they didn't involve their solutions manager , yours truly, on the initial conversation) that 60% of the realtors use macs and lo and behold QCA doesn't work with Macs at this time.

This landed in my lap 2 days ago and after a lot of looking I found out that Print Audit should be able to fix this, but it's still stuck in Ricoh QC  so we're looking at a few months before this is ready for prime time.

What I figured was maybe we could just do some sort of faux 2-step authentication for 90 days where:

Users would use the Ricoh print drivers with a user code to send jobs.

Badge swipe would only unlock the Ricoh.

Old-school Ricoh user codes would be turned on  so users would still have to enter their user code to completely unlock the device to retrieve print jobs or copy.

Not the prettiest way to make this work but for 2-3 months until Print Audit rolled out but it's the only thing I could think of to make this work.

Received a call this morning from a Ricoh engineer who shot me down this morning saying that if card authentication is turned on it turns off user codes so that idea is dead.

The only other idea I can think of would be PaperCut but as a Print Audit IUM partner just rigging something for 90-days or so would make this so much easier with out eating all of the reps profits. 

I'm fresh out of ideas on this, anybody else have anything? If it works I'll instruct the rep that we owe the winning solution a nice bottle of something to send over your way.

Thanks as always,

John Mooney

Just an FYI, going through my worst drought in the last 13 months.  Nothing on the books, a crap load of opportunities and 3 days left in the month.  What does one do?  Go out and find more opportunities.  Fill the bucket t0 the brim and then some more.  Sooner or later the bucket will explode.

Tonight's blog is not about my crappy month, but about the steps that are required to get your self to final step of winning or losing.

Some Tough Years

In a two months I'll start my 43rd year of down the street sales with office equipment aka copiers.  The first couple years were tough and at times I thought I could relax when I thought there was nothing to do.  In our industry there is never nothing to do. When I've made all my calls, set the appointments for the week and prepared the quotes you may think what's next?

I made mention today to a friend in the industry that many reps do not read the brochures of the products that they sell. In fact I would bet dollars to doughnuts that 80% of the reps in the industry can't explain how the print process works with our laser print devices.  Is the print process something they need to know? Probably not, but most can't speak to the client about FAB (features, advantage and benefit) of the device they are selling. I'm sorry to say FAB is almost a lost art in our industry.

Discovery

Discovery is one of the keys that you need to prefect to win the order.  If you perform a great list of questions for the client, the answers and comments from the client will get you to the closing table.  Using discovery and getting to the closing table means you're a sales person whether you win or lose. If you're the type of sales person that has a poor discovery process or you assume the client needs the same type of device that they have, then you're nothing more than an order taker even if you get to the closing table.

Discovery is more about building your case to put your product in the best light for the client.  Of course discovery is all about asking the right questions.

Wide Format Discovery Questions

Since wide format is my forte I'll put some down some questions that I'll ask when I'm in for the appointment.

• How long has you had your present device?
  • Do you own or lease your device?
  • If lease, how many months are left on your lease
    • Who is the leasing company
    • Can I see a copy of the lease
  • Do you pay insurance on your current lease
  • Is there anything you don't like or like about your current device
  • Prior to your current device that what was the device you had before this one
• Do you have a maintenance/supply agreement in place?
  • What is the name if your vendor that provides support
    • Can I get a copy of your current maintenance agreement
  • Are you happy with their support/service
  • Is there anything you like or dislike with your current vendor
  • With your previous device, did you do business with the same support vendor
• Are you the decision maker?
  • If not can you tell me how the process works for choosing the right vendor
  • When are you looking to make a decision
  • Where you looking to lease or buy
• Besides paper is there anything else you have to purchase for your device?
  • Do you use any special media/substrates
  • Do you outsource any prints/drawings
    • if so, tell me more about what you outsource
  • If so, do you know what your average cost per month is
  • If so, do you know how many square feet is outsourced each month

Build a Strong Case

These are just a few of the questions I'll ask for wide format discovery and the most important in my book.  Once I have this information I can build a strong case for my devices and services.

There's another secret to my madness

You have to be the guru of your device!

You have to know what your device can and can't do.  If you don't know the closing table is not yours to go to.  In addition you'll also need to know as much about their current device like you do for yours.  In fact you'll also need to know your competitions devices as well.  Sales is not an easy job and sales is not 9AM-5PM.  For those that have the desire to learn and do the research are those that will also be at the closing table.

-=Good Selling=-

Recently I've ben uploading my certifications to Linkedin.  The only problem is Linkedin does not offer a place for you to upload your pdf document. I could be wrong, however in the mean time I added a Certifications tab to our site.

This is for our members to use to upload their certifications and then link the url to Linkedin.  See below

There are many potential prospects or suspects that lurk behind the scenes. Uploading your certifications can make you stand out in the ocean of sameness with all of the other reps.  I ask you, who the frak wants to be the same!

The link for adding is here for our site, then make sure to check certifications on the right side of the page and then save.

-=Good Selling=-