Tagged With "Dumb Sales Questions Smart Reps"
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Re: What's the weirdest place you've sold a copier to?
Lol, those were two good ones! I can't remember if I've ever had weird sale.
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Re: A Couple of True & Not So True Humerous Copier Incidents
On a cold call I stopped in at a doctors office. The Office Manager was so glad to see me. She said that she was having fax issues and every time they received a fax it jammed. I told her I wasn't a tech but I would take a look. She escorted me to the fax and I looked down to see some questionably cheap paper. I simply asked if she had tried changing paper. She said "I don't have any control of the paper the hospital sends when they fax me." OooooK. She obviously didn't understand the...
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Re: All Ricoh A4 devices = no stapler
If it helps, Canon A4 staplers are usually around $900 whole sale.
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Re: All Ricoh A4 devices = no stapler
$650 on a B&W A4, $615 on a color A4. Ricoh is missing the boat one this one...
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Re: Post-Virus We Must Defeat The Zombie Companies!
Although I am 60% on board with your move to A4 strategy, most of the rest of the stuff you are posting is "knocking it out of the park"! I would like to see a poll. As a business owner, during COVID-19 would you prefer? 1). No lease payments for 90 days 2). 1/2 price lease payments for one year The auto industry is pushing no payments for 90 days but I think business owners are more concerned about cash flow for the next year. I think the correct strategy is to offer as part of your...
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Re: Post-Virus We Must Defeat The Zombie Companies!
We generally do not build in prepaid copy/ print blocks into our leases. We do give away free copy prints up front but only intended as a short term bonus. We do normally charge a $25.00 minimum monthly maintenance fee but have waived that until the economy rebuilds momentum. I am in Canada, lease vendors are currently offering 90 day payment deferrals added back on at the end of term for those customers who request them. Leases expire every month and customers are happy with the equipment...
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Re: Will outside Sales Rep's go away?
@Jason H it's my understanding that Canon has a rep dedicated to Amazon for the ImagePASS mfp's already
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Re: Will outside Sales Rep's go away?
ImageClass?? If so that’s throw away junk just like the HP’s etc. I believe that stuff has been sold online for some time now. We don’t sell that series due to the extremely high cpc’s
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Re: Will outside Sales Rep's go away?
@Monte I hope/think that even though buyers will research online that they will still want some interaction with a salesperson. If in fact the manufacturers allow the sale of high end MFP's online then the dealers will have to change a lot of how they do business. My hope though is that it does not come down to this. I buy a lot online and my wife grocery shops online and has them delivered to the house, BUT I don't look at most things like groceries. I want to go talk to my insurance agent.
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Re: Will outside Sales Rep's go away?
Even if they meet a rep, that doesn't mean that they won't oftentimes turn-around and order online. Building relationships and providing solutions is all good and I have accounts that I am very tight with. However, when the day comes that all the business I get is only from those accounts, I will starve.
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Re: Will outside Sales Rep's go away?
All excellent points. My son (35) asked me the other day about Carvana and my thoughts about them. The first thing that came to mind is warranty, and service. I guess the question becomes (at least for me), what will be the relationship with the dealer for service and warranty when you bought the car from Carvana? Why should the local dealer expedite service, parts or put you at the top of the list for support when you did not buy from them?
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Re: Will outside Sales Rep's go away?
In a way its already gone to the internet and away from the outside sales rep........at least for stand alone printers and A4 devices. If all someone needs is a printer or an A4 to be used for basic printing,scanning and copying.....face it, they really don't need us already. If you've been at this a long time you probably remember the days when you sold a lot of A4 machines to small offices. 20 years ago if you needed an A4 you called a copier dealer. Those days are gone for the most part.
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Re: Will outside Sales Rep's go away?
@fisher I agree almost completely, but to play devils advocate I will say that we are selling more desktop printers now than we ever have before. Mostly brother, as we became a partner a couple years ago. I think people are looking for reps to show them a better way than just buying another HP off amazon, but the rep still has to have a higher level conversation with the client...not just hey buy your printers from us.
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Re: Will outside Sales Rep's go away?
I believe it will be a mixed environment, just like with PC's and other peripherals. For the small number of placements, onesie-twosie, I see E-commerce and inside sales taking over the role of the outside sales rep. For the larger accounts a sales rep will continue to play a role.
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Re: Will outside Sales Rep's go away?
In 10 years there WILL be outside sales reps, and many of them will be the committed, true professionals of today. The E-Commence platform have changed our business and how we do it. For example gone are the days when you could duck into a 15 story office building and cold call. But electronic format can still be your attention getter and facilitate your efforts in creating interest. I can buy anything on line and cut out the sales person. Try doing your own investing and getting the right...
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Re: Will outside Sales Rep's go away?
I'll chime in. Like TML I'm in my early 30's and have been selling copy hardware for nearly 10 years. I think good sales people as a whole are quickly becoming scarce. Millennials don't seem to like to interact with others if they don't have to and as most "print" decisions move to IT, online buying is already what they know. Overall it is a convenience factor, they don't have to submit a form to a website and wait a couple days for salesperson to try and up-sell them to an A3 MFP. They...
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Re: Quality Digital Office Technology
Art, we've got a rep that covers York / Gettysburg and he confirmed this. He said he heard it went down ~ 6 months ago and they started reaching out to clients towards the end of 2019 to let them know. Gonna be a big change as Quality had a lot of loyal clients (also were giving away service at rates like .003 & .032- > I've gotta imagine that'll change quickly)
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Re: Ricoh Pro C5300
I tried to get more details from my Ricoh production rep, he tells me more info will be available towards the end of the month and that was it, hoping for some big changes, especially in the LCT area.
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Re: Your Copiers Are Storing Confidential Information: What You Can Do About It
Question on this - do any of you that sell Lexmark get questioned about the ultimate ownership of the Chinese government? If so, what is it that you say to get them comfortable that they're safe?
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Re: Your Copiers Are Storing Confidential Information: What You Can Do About It
@Jason H curious if you can help with this question
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Re: Your Copiers Are Storing Confidential Information: What You Can Do About It
We are still a dealer but we have not sold a LEXMARK in quite a while. They eliminated the MPS Elite program we were own, or at the least removed us from that program. I never had anyone ask about the security due to the Chinese ownership but it’s a great point. Honestly, I have found their support, to us at least, to be very subpar. Our support from brother has been phenomenal the last 2 years. Most of my printer clients are replacing the lexmarks with the brothers as fast as they can.
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Re: 7 Deadly Topics from 7 Deadly Sinners at Top 100 Summit (Part One)
Is it just me, it seems that the general rule of thumb for the copier industry to end users is "the take or leave approach". Meaning, come hell or high water we're not going to change the way we bill, the way we support, or the financial solutions that we offer. While I was at the Top 100 conference, a rep from Wells Fargo spoke about the billing options that they now have in their leases. One of the options was for seat billing for managed IT services. My thought is that if it's available...
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Re: When is Net New Business not Net New Business?
Interesting perspective. We constantly have the talks about competitive machines we took on service, especially brands we don't carry. I tend to consider is taking a Konica on service and then a year or two later upgrading it to our equipment net new business from the sales side. Obviously we had net new business on the service side but not net new for "x" with the equipment sale. I'd be interested to hear how others see this. I hear a lot of people say it doesn't matter but if I bring a...
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Re: When is Net New Business not Net New Business?
I was wondering if the subject of those customers who were acquired through service was going to come up, & Jason's comment is certainly "food for thought"... In his example, he brought on the service customer (with the obvious intention of upgrading them at the first opportunity) & the dealer gets a contract & machine sale that they otherwise wouldn't have. Sounds like net new to me. In my experience, though, most of these service to machine sale conversions are from customers...
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Re: When is Net New Business not Net New Business?
Jay, We typically go after about any machine other than a Xerox. If someone wants us to service their machine and its not a complete piece of junk we will take it on and will get parts and supplies from dealers etc. until we can upgrade to one of our lines; Savin, Canon, or Samsung. We expect our reps to go out and take service agreements and we pay them the first months billing. Most don't like to mess with 30.00 agreements but they add up and eventually you find a big one. We had a rep who...
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Re: Canon SPIN Training
not here, although a friend of mine has. I can question him on it, the next time I speak with him. Mine is probably better thou
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Re: Nsi Autostore
I can't answer your question but would like to add another: I understand that you can set this software to enable scanning to email, which in turn you can set up electronic signature for authorising invoices for a work flow? Is this true and what modules do you need?
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Re: Ricoh & Epson = "perfect together" NOT!
Call that KIP sales Rep again and make a deal with him. If you can get the deal with 2 KIP 9900s (those will replace the 4 Oce's), then you get to be a KIP dealer. He will also spend half as much in toner as those Oce machines just eat toner.
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Re: Nsi Autostore
Art, the big thing is for Nuance/Copitrak do this you need external tablets, and people are pretty sick of ecopy. We embed right in the MFP for Ricoh, Konica, Canon and Xerox so even if there's too many months left in the current lease we can embed the software in the current equipment and then just move the license to your MFPS when it's time to change hardware. I just did that with a POA rep in Denver, the customer had Canons and when they're ready switch we'll move it for a very small...
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Re: Charge for IT support
We had never charged for it after the sale until about 6 months ago due to people calling all the time for driver installs, scanning issues related to their internet etc. We used to offer an optional network/it yearly agreement and people would decline and then start calling for help. We decided to send out, initially an opt-out to ever customer who had current devices, and after every sale send one out. We did it as an opt out due to the fact that customers would decline the option and...
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Re: up against the Xerox Phaser 7800 with a SP C831dn
Thanks and congrats on your sale and the others. Also thank you for the link and your advice. The company is a small design firm and I don't think they go all out with the Pantone matching and that calibration tool. I will let you know if I sell it.
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Re: The Death Of The B2B Salesperson [Infographic]
Art, I call Bull ****! At least for our industry, the copier industry! This may be true of a commodity (like envelopes, or coffee, or even a PC) but copiers, really MFDs require a lot of attention, both before and after a customer buys it. This article seems to be written by an old brick & mortar company that successfully transitioned to internet sales. This will work for any company that drop ships their products. And I agree that the MFD manufacturers would LOVE for this to be, or...
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Re: Leasing, Insurance, Padded Rates, Buy Out Price
I've had the question come up a few times over the year and I simply give them full MSRP for the machine and all accessories as the amount.
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Re: Five Reasons Why I'm Stoked About the New Ricoh SP8400DN Printer
Thanks! Same functionality regarding scanning? Scan to email, smb, ftp? Secure printing? Authentication and account track? Ability to implement solutions like paper cut? I guess this will be my last question
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Re: Why Social Selling Stinks for Most Copier Sales Reps
Art, love this! You know my take on the integration of social into the sales process. Sales requires hard work as most will not put forth the effort. The reason why ones social anything stinks is their effort, plain and simple. Operating with an analig mindset in a digital world = death blow to a sales rep.
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Re: Color clicks
JWS- Good luck getting your machine to count correctly! We went round and round with Ricoh and our rep about this. They swear it counts correctly, we know it doesn't. You are correct in that it can be application- dependent; some apps will click correctly, but Acrobat prints, when there are mixed originals, usually treat the whole job as color. I experimented with different drivers (PCL / PS3 / Universal PCL), but could never resolve the issue for our client (a church). BTW, the ame doc...
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Re: Copier Parts & Accessories China Tariff Starts in 9 Working Days
Responding to this question could immediately dissolve into a political debate. One fact is clear and that is that tariffs are essentially taxes that become Federal Gov't general revenue that can be used anyway the Gov't desires such as fund its massive deficit. Whatever money the Trump Administration gave away to its citizens in its tax cuts of 2017 it is now going to claw back with higher taxes disguised as tariffs.
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Re: Copier Parts & Accessories China Tariff Starts in 9 Working Days
" Whatever money the Trump Administration gave away to its citizens in its tax cuts of 2017 it is now going to claw back with higher taxes disguised as tariffs. " When one door closes another door opens. Many US companies can benefit from the higher tariffs placed on goods from China. In fact I spoke to one of those companies last Thursday. I disagree that the tax cuts are going to claw their way back with higher taxes disguised as tariffs. In the end, what Trump wants is fair trade practice...
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Re: Copier Parts & Accessories China Tariff Starts in 9 Working Days
I suspect that you are retired from the copier industry and do not have to earn commissions each month to support your family. As an active sales rep, I do not have the luxury of hoping that things will run their course when I have budgets and quotas to meet each month. The people who are going to be adversely effected will be US copier sales reps with a higher cost of goods.
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Re: Top Ten "Why Copiers Should Have Warning Labels"
Ty Jason! Had fun with this!! Ty for the email about your rep, that was very humorous sale!! Maybe post in on the forums?
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Re: Compensation Question
I get a salary, mediocre commissions, bit have a revenue bonus for the month and the quarter. If I hit the revenue marks it's good money. Problem is to hit those revenue marks on a consistent basis. But to answer your question, no I don't receive anything for volume of systems sold. Jason, are you in North Carolina or South Carolina, can't remember.
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Re: Sales And Branding Must Get Married, And Larry Levine Is The Priest
What is a recovering copier rep?
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Re: Sales And Branding Must Get Married, And Larry Levine Is The Priest
Art, you will figure it out one of these days!
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Re: Sales And Branding Must Get Married, And Larry Levine Is The Priest
Do you mean former copier rep? The only way I can see myself as former is when I retire. Recovering almost sounds like selling copiers was a "bad thing"?
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Re: 57 Days of Selling "Day 16"
Quick question Art. I am starting my pipeline for 2017. I have a goal set but my question is what % of that goal should I already have in my pipeline before the year starts to hit my annual goal for next year. Just your thoughts.
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Re: 3 Things Sales Reps Must Use So They Don't Look Like Sales Monkeys With A Loaded Gun
Kind a reminds me of the "six foot question". TY
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Re: 3 Things Sales Reps Must Use So They Don't Look Like Sales Monkeys With A Loaded Gun
What would the question be?
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Re: Manufacturer Support on Bids
I agree. My KM rep and his boss were in the office yesterday and I asked him why he didn't show any interest in this opportunity and he said because you are buying at the lowest I can give you right now and there is nothing else I can do from a support part. He said he gave it about a 3-5% chance of winning the account based on what he read and what he could do. I am ok with that as most of our bid opportunities are not set up around here for dealers to participate. They always have some...