Tagged With "Dealer Sales Reps Owners"
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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: 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: COVID-19 Impact on Dealers and the Channel?
I was on the MPSA call today. Here's some points of interest I was going to post on another thread but will put it here for everyone. One major MPS company reported 29% decline in pages or revenue Another major MPS company reported a 71% decline Healthcare for one of those clients saw a 40% increase More inquires from clients in respect to file sharing and content Expecting continuing decline for another 30 days in revenue and prints First week of April they hit bottom and has stayed that...
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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?
@Old Glory I don't think they will walk away from servicing the car also. The service department will need the business. However the owner of the company can set the mark with giving "preferred service" to clients that buy from them. I don't know when it comes right down to it, I can spend hours researching cars, reviews and pricing before I buy on-line. How much could I really save? $1,000 or $2,000 could that really be worth it, if I spend 40 hours doing the research or would I pay a price...
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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: Print Copy Tool versus Plotworks
John, The PrintCopy Tool compares pretty favorably to Plotworks. I attached two documents to this post. The Product Support Guide lists differences between the two products. The PowerPoint has screen shots of all the settings in PrintCopy Tool. I hope this helps.
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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: 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: Rumor Alert!
I haven't heard anything, would be interesting, and I guess it's a move that has to be done
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Re: Rumor Alert!
I can't confirm these specifics, but the Global dealer down here stopped selling Sharp and Konica Minolta a few years ago, so I assumed this happened awhile back.
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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: Target GP Margins
tx I agree. Our owner, who happens to be my father, is still trying to do things like its the 80's. We hold our own in a major market but we do not have the growth I want. It is tough to get him on board with anything new age as this is an industry he has made truck loads of money on doing it the same old way year after year.
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Re: Budget Document Technology given 2015 Pro-Tech Service Award
Great Job Tom. This award reinforces what everyone already knows that works with your company- your focus is on taking care of your customers and run a great company.
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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: Need Kyocera Copier (dealer) Price List
Hi Art, I am with a Kyocera dealer and would love a premium upgrade. What exacly are you looking for?
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Re: Need Kyocera Copier (dealer) Price List
Hey Jason: Thank you for joining!! I have the Kyocera pricing I needed. However, I will need it again in the future. We can do something then. But, we have a promo for a Premium/VIP. For each competitive (recent) quote or proposal that you email me, I will comp you a FREE month for each one. Will that work for you? Art
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Re: 6 Reasons Why Flat Rate Service Program Will Change the Copier Industry
Art, a terrific take on the changing forces in the business model of the industry. Moneyball has arrived in the imaging business.
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Re: 6 Reasons Why Flat Rate Service Program Will Change the Copier Industry
Thank you Tom, writing it brought back some awesome memories
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Re: Question: Xerox technicians
I can confirm a new offering. Xerox has a new program for signing on new dealers and not putting them in the Global or Agent bucket. These dealers can then be trained to use thier own technicians. I will check with my source about them using Xerox techs.
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Re: Are Copier Sales Reps Asking the Right Questions
As you said, this blog wasn't meant to cover all the bases but your comments about brand loyalty and brand/service provider loyalty are only true if the decision maker has been the same for each decision. If you aren't talking to the owner, you may be talking to a totally different person than the one that made past decisions. You need to know that before you decide whether to pack your bags and walk away. Also, in a leased equipment environment, the decision to stay with the same brand and...
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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
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: MFP Purchase Decision Makers?
Depends on the size of the account. My big accounts......say companies with more than 100 employees......the decision maker is the Director Of I.T. in every case. Perhaps the IT Director runs it by his upline but I deal directly with IT. The mid-sized customers it tends to be a management level person other than the owner like a GM or CFO. In my small clients it tends to be the owner.
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Re: MFP Purchase Decision Makers?
It depends on the value proposition I want to bring forward. If I am going with the whole "we'll save you money" pitch, I'll start with a CFO or Director of Finance. If it's regarding document management or a fleet replacement, I'll start with IT Director/IT Manager and go from there. Larry Levine's teachings on LinkedIn have been really useful with cracking into appointments/conversations with these types of people. C-level execs and directors are very career-orientated, so they tend to...
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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: 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...
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Re: A Halloween Tale of an A3 Copier’s Death
What is even more scary is how your commission cheques will fall in $ value if you only sell A4 copiers. The copier/printer market is not getting any larger and if a commission sales rep focuses on selling lower $ value A4 boxes, they are going to have to make a lot more sales calls and sell a lot more boxes to earn the same money.