Sales Hacks

This evening I had a call with one my friends in the office equipment industry.  Our chat was to introduce one on our long time members via a Better Call Art video. 

We'll have that video ready in a few days.  The last question I asked inspired me to write this blog today for everyone. I just love the word "inspired" and I try to capture that everyday.

How Can I Help You

Of course our topics were all over the place, however I want to focus one of the questions that I always ask and that is "how can I help you?".

My answer to that question was and I'm paraphrasing "we need help with our sales people to want to earn/sell more than just a receiving a paycheck".  Wow, this is one I really had to think about and I didn't have an immediate answer. 

I did speak about "desire". I find desire is the most missing quality in many sales people today. Can we really call them sales people if they don't have desire?

Most peeps seems to be happy working 9-5 work and most are happy with 9-5 pay.  Then three to six months later those reps will leave to accept a job that has a higher base pay.  To put it bluntly,  they appeared to be a good choice with you pre-hire assessments, however the rubber hit the road three to six months down later when there was no sign of desire.

Born With It

I stated this before and it's my belief that you can't teach desire, and you can't coach desire to anyone.  Desire to make the extra backs, hit that monthly or quarterly bonus comes from within a person.  Desire is that innate quality or ability that you're born with.  You either have it or you don't have it. Sorry everyone that doesn't have it.

Looking for Desire

I believe that most people that hire don't look for desire in the person, nor they know how to interview the client to see if they have desire.  Just maybe when you're hiring for sales people you should also include your top rep in the interview.  Everyone's top rep has desire and they know what to look for or what questions to ask.

Thinking two or three questions could be:

• Are you okay with getting an automatic cost of living increase to your base pay each year or would rather have the ability to an unlimited amount of money?
• If you had the chance to work more than 40 hours a week to earn more would you?
• Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

There are good questions that you can add to your current list of hire interview questions.

I'm no expert with sales interviews or pre-hire assessments, however I will admit that I'm an expert in detecting desire in people.

-=Good Selling=-

This blog is from 15 years ago, I changed up a few items with some of today's offerings for us. Enjoy!

Selling Copiers "How to Maximize GP"

Thought about this the other day in car, made myself pull over and jotted down a few notes for everyone. I've complied a laundry list of points that I have adhered to in order to maximize Gross Profit.

Over the years I've also concentrated on moving boxes no matter what the cost. I will address this in a blog later this month.

Maximize GP

1.   Stay away from Clients who are just looking to replace a box. If you are aware there are multiple players quoting, be prepared to get a low GP and not get the deal. These Clients are buying on price, it will take an extra special effort to get the deal and also get a decent GP. Do you have the time or the fortitude to hang in there? Why not set your sites on sales that will pay the bills.

2.    Search for Clients who are NOT in the market! While cold calling in person, take a good look at how they do things. Ask the receptionist if they are scanning, LAN Faxing, printing to inkjets etc... Try to get an appointment to introduce yourself and when you're there and don't about replacing a piece of hardware. Do ask if they are experiencing document problems, such as lost documents, making too many copies, high maintenance bills, excess breakdown of hardware, how their document workflow is conducted. Selling like this enables you to find their pain and may help you introduce a solution that can be bundled with a new piece of hardware.

3.   Sell the Extras! As you are writing the order or as you are drawing up the lease ask again about any accessories that may benefit the customer. Finishing, Paper-trays, 3-Hole Punching, cloud scanning, scan worflows,  etc... the Client will be more apt to spend the extra money at this time to conclude the order.

4.   Lead With Solution Software! Look at what your manufacturer has to offer for embedded solutions along with third party solutions that your dealership has to offer. Lead with offerings for embedded print management, document management and LAN Fax solutions. Here you are setting yourself apart from the BOX seller (trust me, there are too many reps that still just sell boxes).

5.   Upgrade Your Account Base Early! Do not wait for them to call you or for the last 90 days of the lease. You've got to be in there at lease one year or more prior to the end of the lease. If you're not, then someone else is,

6.  Become an Expert in Secondary Systems! Specialize in Wide Format, Digital Duplicators, Envelope Presses, Standalone scanners if your company offers these hardware solutions. There is is less competition and less reps who are competent with the solutions that come with these system. Take the time to learn your Vertical Markets for AEC, Print4Pay, Schools and Religion Accounts. Once you become an expert, you will stand out among the crowd.

In order to be successful you have to be the best at what you are doing. Put your self in opportunities to succeed and make a move to break away from the pack. Our job can be very rewarding, however being an order taker and just relying on Clients who are in the market will be the kiss of death.

-=Good Selling=-

Short video with sample of FAB selling

This could be and probably will be one of the shortest blogs I've ever written.  When I used to have a lot of newbies reps around I would always ask them "what type of day is it today?".

Kinda makes you think right?  I could also see the puzzled look on their faces and thinking there's got to be more than this to the weather right?  Yes, most if not all of the answers to my question was weather related. Raining, sunny, cold, hot, humid and not a one gave me the answer I was looking for.

The answer is simple and should be easy to figure out when you're in the business of selling. Ah, that key word of "selling", for those that are new they don't understand the art of selling.  Their early entry to the sales world is more about being an order taker because most don't know how or when to ask for the order.

Are we really teaching the art of sales anymore or are we just teaching reps about prospecting and finding opportunities?

Back in eighties when I learned it was all about asking for the order and we all understood that if we don't ask we don't get.  Those who didn't get the order by asking for it and still got the order were the "order takers".  Who the frak wants to be an "order taker?"

Those that listened to their clients and heard those key words; warranty, maintenance, availability, and support knew that these were buying signals and the next question of course would be the trial close.  Of course it took many orders lost for us to understand what the client was trying to tell us.  However over time we learned from listening and asked more questions that would lead to a yes.

Is there a moral to this?  Well yes and no, times have changed from those days when you had to sell a client hard and on the spot. We've learned to be a bit more patient and be more consultative in our approach.  That's a great thing, but from time to time we still need to ask those closing questions that move the order into the win column. If you don't ask you don't get.

Ah yes, the answer to the question is.  It's a Great Day to Sell Something!

-=Good Selling=-

Years ago and I'm talking before the dawn of the internet. There were only a few ways you could get information on other manufacturers copiers.

BI (before internet)

1) Call your competitor and ask to speak to a sales person and fib about who you are, your company, and give a BS call back number. We did this many times in order to get answers to those speed, feed and feature questions.  In many cases we got snagged and had to hang up.

2) Another way was to get your significant other to do your dirty work and in most cases she wanted no part of that.

3) Another way was to lift the brochure and or the proposal from the clients desk.  You would put your brochures on top of an existing brochure or proposal that you saw.  Once you had your deal signed you would pick up the entire stack of documents.  Thinking many DM's may have spent hours looking for those other brochures or proposals.

4) Send in reply card from one of the manufactures that you were interested in a copier.  In a few days you would have the brochure in the mail and thinking about what your were going to say when that sales person followed up if you were dumb enough to give them the right phone numbers. 

5) Spec check books, these were GOLD in the office. Some would come every spring and fall with the new models.  One that I remember is Minnella's Pocket Guide to Copiers. With the pocket guide you could read every spec, and feature that your heart desired. Armed with one of these and you were the resident expert when talking about copiers with the DMs!

Today with caller ID, phone number search, and Linkedin those tactics have long since died to get competitive information.  Nowadays you can get everything you want from either the internet or those pay subscriptions that allow you to do side by side analysis of all the copiers. 

For the newbies or novice copier sales peeps these pay subscriptions are the bees knees for finding out what brands can and can't do.  I've had a chance to view all of them at one time or another. I can tell you that none of these pay subscriptions are 100% accurate for all of the copiers.  Heck, there's a ton of data that has to be entered and people make mistakes.  Whether it's a typo or someone just getting bleary eyed and entered the wrong data.

I would bet that there's many of us that don't have access to these paid subscriptions on a regular basis. I'm one of them. 

AI (after internet)

1) Go the the manufacturers web and read the entire brochure, don't browse, read it several times.

2) If you have a question about a certain feature, when the copier was launched , street price, cost per page or even what apps are available.  Post (lol) your question here on the forums!  There are peeps that will help you, can't tell you how many fellow P4Per's have helped me and how many I've helped over the years. We're a community that wants to help each other, make sales and support our families.

3) Configurators!  All of the copier manufacturers have them and most of these  sites are open to everyone.  If you know you're up against a certain model how can you not go and pull a configurator on it?  Believe it or not all copiers are not equal especially when it comes to paper trays, finishers, staplers, locking paper drawers, by-pass and feeders!

Several months ago I was up against a competitor and the DM told me what they were looking for feature wise, the brand and the budget.  I researched my brand and kept coming up with a much higher budget for my brand. I ended up question the DM for the model number.  I then went that brands configurator and found out the model that the other salesperson had quoted could NOT have a finisher.  I was told they had to have one. I told my DM about what I found and stated you'd better double check what you're getting. A day later on the follow I was right and that other brand could not take a finisher when the sales person stated it would.  We all know the end of the story.

Thus I wanted share what I've found (these links are listed on this site). Please if you know of others please reply with the links. It's good info for all of us!

Kyocera MFP Configurator

Ricoh MFP Configurator

KonicaMinolta Production Configurator

Canon MPF Configurator

Xerox Production Configurator

-=Good Selling=-

I was in the field today, helping one of my clients resolve an issue with his desktop MFP. This client also happens to be on the board of a non-profit organization that owns a seven-year-old color A3 MFP. And yes, Ray, they need 11x17!

Why do some clients hold onto seven-year-old MFPs? It’s because they made a purchase and struggle to justify spending additional money on a new MFP.

To address this, I shared the story of why 90% of my clients lease their MFPs. In fact, a little more than 80% of them opt for 60-month leases. One of the main benefits of leasing is that clients avoid being stuck with outdated technology and the rising costs of maintenance and supplies.

Let’s say a client purchases an MFP for $12K. Once that purchase is made, they’ll likely hesitate to replace it unless there’s an immediate ROI (return on investment). As a result, they get "trapped" with outdated technology, increasing maintenance and supply costs, and a higher risk of downtime as the years go by.

In this case, there was no immediate ROI to persuade the client to upgrade. They would have to spend more this year without any “WOW” features to justify retiring the seven-year-old copier. The only driving factor seemed to be cost—until I learned that the organization was considering purchasing a folding machine in 2020.

This presented an opportunity.

A decent folding machine (one that actually works well) costs around $3,000. On top of that, they’d need to account for a maintenance agreement or at least budget for repairs (because folding machines always need service).

Instead, I proposed an alternative: upgrading to a new A3 color MFP with an integrated multi-fold unit. The cost of adding the multi-fold unit was about half the price of a standalone folder. I ran the numbers, amortizing the cost of a standalone folder over five years and adding a modest maintenance budget.

The monthly cost of the standalone folder, including maintenance, came to about $70 per month ($50 for the folder and $20 for maintenance). I added this $70 to the cost of maintaining their old A3 color MFP. This gave me a clear comparison: the monthly cost of keeping the current setup versus upgrading to a new copier with the folder included.

The new monthly number—covering the copier, the folder, and maintenance—was lower than their current costs. It also avoided the upfront $3K expense for the standalone folder while reducing their cash outlay over time.

I presented everything as a monthly cost because they weren’t ready to spend another $12K outright. However, since they were already planning to spend at least $3K on the folder, this approach highlighted the cost savings and ROI of leasing the new copier.

Now, I wait. Did I do a good enough job selling the lease? I hope to find out in the next couple of days.

-=Good Selling=-

What you'll read here is a series of threads that was posted on one of our forums about 5 years ago.  The threads have some excellent content about buyers and their habits.  Please excuse some of the spelling errors since I'm capturing the series of threads and can't correct them.

There's some great comments from many peeps who might know in the industry.  Enjoy and please feel free to comment!

If you'd like to read the original thread you can go here.

-=Good Selling=-

The last four weeks have been a bit challenging. Although I’m ahead of quota for the year, the final quarter hasn't started as smoothly as I hoped.

Things were going well until a handful of deals stalled, and I lost a few. Yes, I lose too, but I believe that losing is part of winning. However, when I took a long look at my funnel, I thought, What happened? The truth is, I had been fortunate to close many orders over the last two months. Between appointments, chasing documents, phone calls, follow-ups, and emails, prospecting fell by the wayside. I didn’t have the extra time to make the calls and visits necessary to keep my funnel full.

While I still have several opportunities pending, some are going nowhere, others are stalled, and the future pipeline doesn't look as promising as it should. So, I knew I had to bring the future to the present, as Ray Stasieczko would say.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going. It was time to pick up the phone and make things happen—waiting around wasn’t an option.

Last week, I recalled a key piece of advice from our Director of Sales Enablement. It’s funny how we sometimes forget the basics that got us where we are. That one tip was to ask for referrals—something I learned a long time ago but hadn’t used in years.

So, last week I started asking. I didn’t do it in every call, but I mentioned it about 75% of the time.

I remember one call in particular to an existing account. The principal wasn’t in—he was on vacation—so I left a brief message with the receptionist and said I’d follow up via email. But instead of emailing, I opted for LinkedIn InMail, reasoning that his inbox would be flooded, and my message might get lost. LinkedIn, on the other hand, would send him an alert.

My message was simple:
"Hi Bob, it’s been over a year since we last spoke. How’s the wide format working out? Any questions, issues, or anything that needs to be addressed? By the way, do you happen to know anyone who might be interested in a wide format like yours?"

Today, I got a call on my cell from an unknown number. It turned out to be a business acquaintance of Bob, the principal I messaged last week. He’s interested in a new wide format and a color MFP! We scheduled a meeting for later this week—a solid pipeline addition.

The takeaway? As long as you're working hard, you never know what tomorrow will bring. And I’m grateful our Director of Sales Enablement kept pushing that button.

-=Good Selling=-

In between appointments today I had made a short list of three net new suspects that I wanted to cold call.  All three of those cold calls turned up a fat ZERO. I'm okay with that because I'll be following up in the near future with phone call and email.  Sooner or later I'll get an appointment but hoping it doesn't take 10 or more years like some of the ones I've had. At my age 10 years is not going to cut it.

In Between Drives

About mid-day I pulled into a park so that I could check my emails and voice messages. No big news in the email and there was one voice message from a friend of mine that worked in marketing a few years back.  Thus, I made the call and left Chris a message.  A few hours later Chris was able to call me back and we got caught up on what we've been doing for the past year in our personal and business lives.

I was delighted to hear that Chris had hooked up with a office equipment dealer in the mid-south.  Thought that was awesome and I later found out that he took a job offer in sales. Which led me to ask how things are working out for him. Chris told me he closed a decent size deal for multiple units for about $40K with an existing account, has about 100 existing accounts and a **** load of net news .  As I thought we were getting close to the end of the call, Chris stated that he wanted to ask me a few questions related to prospecting.  Chris stated that he's been having a hard time with getting appointments and conversations going with net new clients.

Prospecting Cold Call Dials

I was in full agreement to help,  however I had many questions for him before I could help. I'll bullet out those questions for us.

• How many cold calls are you doing per week?  The answer I got was 100
• How many of those are walk in cold calls? Answer was 20

This meant that our new rep that was making 80 dials a week. Ah, right, been doing this long enough to know that fudging is common practice.  I told him 16 calls a day is not going to cut, even with the walk in cold calls.  I told him he sucks at prospecting and he needs to be making at least 60 calls every day. Anything less and you're going to wash out. With only having 100 existing accounts there is plenty of time.

Prospecting Cold Calls Walk-ins

We know that Chris is doing around 20 cold calls a week which is not that bad. But when we you only have 100 existing accounts, dude you need to step up your game! 

• How do you cold call walk-ins? Answer was that when he picks a company to cold call he will cold call additional companies in that area. 

Okay I thought, not so bad, however you should plan your cold calls. What I mean by that is to comb your CRM and look for accounts that you haven't been able to get through to yet. Pick 25 of those accounts and make sure they are "paper intensive" type of accounts.  Look to your verticals of Healthcare, AEC, Law and pick other one, just make sure they are accounts that could result in multiple placements.  Don't ever willy nilly walk-in cold calls because you are wasting valuable time.  In addition your only goal is to get the name of the decision maker and scope the place out.

Tip: Don't add new suspects to the CRM when you haven't defined the suspects in your CRM (if you see one or two accounts that you'd like to break into that's fine).

Personally, before I ever speak to the Decision Maker or Person in Charge I want to do the research on the company.   What they do to make money, how many employees, the more you know the better.  Facebook, Linkedin, Manta, and Google are my favorite sources. Next you want to do the research on the DM. Who they are connected to, where they worked, their existing and previous position and if you can find it what they like or care about.

In the next installment I'll tell you what we spoke about with the following titles

The Pitch,  Work Ethic,  Prime Time,  The Email,  Breaking the Bank

-=Good Selling=-