Tagged With "Des Plaines"
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Re: Your Copier
Welcome backđ https://www.p4photel.com/blog/...-the-copier-industry 6 Reasons Why Flat Rate aka One Rate Will Change the Copier Industry Art Post 36 minutes ago I remember when plain paper copiers used rolls of paper and not sheets. I remember when the glass on the copiers had to move back and forth. I remember when copiers used liquid ink (toner) to produce an image. I remember when you used a dial to set how many copies you wanted to make. Yup, it's been a pretty incredible journey to see...
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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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This Week in the Copier/Office Equipment Industry 5 Years Ago (1st Week of February 2014)
Were you in the industry five years ago? If not some of these threads will shed some insight on what was the top threads 5 years ago this week. If you've been in this industry longer than five years, then many of these threads may bring back some memories. In any case enjoy these threads from 5 years ago this week! EFI Launches Fiery Digital Front Ends for New Konica Minolta Bizhub Presses Art Post ¡ 2/6/149:20 PM EFI Launches Fiery Digital Front Ends for New Konica Minolta Bizhub Presses...
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Sales Professionals Get To The Heart Of What Matters
Heart is greatly misunderstood. Heart is relevant in sales, culture, and in leadership yet so many get it wrong. Getting to the heart of the matter, if sales reps are unable to uncover a personal or emotional need for the prospect to make a change, then they might consider breaking off the meeting, thanking them for their time and move on to the next prospect. Yes, I know it may be harsh BUT all too often many sales reps will continue down the journey without finding what motivates the...
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6 Reasons Why Flat Rate Service Program Will Change the Copier Industry
I remember when plain paper copiers used rolls of paper and not sheets. I remember when the glass on the copiers had to move back and forth. I remember when copiers used liquid ink (toner) to produce an image. I remember when you used a dial to set how many copies you wanted to make. Yup, it's been a pretty incredible journey to see the industry evolve over the last 38 years! Back in the early eighties their was only one plan for a copier maintenance agreement. We included "x" amount of...
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3 Core Attributes Of A Selling From The Heart Professional
Getting to the heart of the matter, if sales people are unable to uncover a personal or emotional need for the prospect to make a change, then they might consider breaking off the meeting, thanking them for their time and move on to the next prospect. Yes, I know it may be harsh BUT all too often many sales people will continue down the journey without finding what motivates the prospect to buy, and then they wonder why they can't close the sale. No question about it, emotions play a part in...
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Selling Copiers in the Seventies with Darrell Leven
It was good to see Darrell Leven at the recent BTA National Event in New York City a few weeks ago. During one of the breaks we had the chance to chop it up a bit about the imaging industry. Where we started and how we go to where we are today. During that chat is when I found out that Darrell started selling copiers in the late seventies. I asked if he would mind contributing to our Selling Copiers in the Seventies blog. Here's Darrell! What year did you start in the industry and what was...
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Attention Sales Leaders... These 3 Blind Spots Could Be Holding Back Your Sales Team!
Blind spots, we all have them and they have the potential to be damaging. Unfortunately, everyone but ourselves can see these as clear as day. For sales leaders, these blind spots create unwelcome consequences. They interfere with decision-making, reduce our scope of awareness, and sabotage sales results. A blind spot could be an unrecognized weakness. Within this context, it has the potential to undermine sales growth. The most dangerous blind spots affect those sales leaders who are...
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Wide Format Technology Update- The Canon TX Series printers and MFP Systems
Just about a year ago, Canon USA released their new TX Series of Wide Format inkjet printers and MFP Systems. Canon has positioned the TX Series as a higher volume solution to capture opportunities on the production side of the aqueous inkjet technical documents market. There are two basic TX Series models available, the TX 3000 and TX 4000. The difference in these models is their supported print width, the 3000 being a 36â printer and the 4000 is a 44â printer. Both TX printers are single...
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Another Sales Tragedy Caused By Leaky Bucket Syndrome
What's your focus on keeping and growing your existing clients? A smart sales team doesn't chase new clients at the expense of keeping and growing existing clients. 80% of future revenue will come from just 20% of your existing clientsâ Gartner Group Itâs 50% easier to sell to existing clients than to new clientsâ Marketing Metrics Repeat clients spend 33% more compared to new clientsâ CMO.com What do you think is required to move your client relationships from good to great? GOOD TO GREAT...
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This Week in the Copier Industry 15 Years Ago, The Second Week in November 2003
So it was fifteen years ago that Ricoh launched the first GBC puncher. I remember it well, chads were evenly distributed through out the entire device! One of my accounts had to vacuum their GBC puncher once a week. Enjoy the threads from 15 years ago this week! Toshiba America Business Solutions Introduces the Flagship Model in its Workgroup Color Printer Line Boston Mike ¡ 11/10/036:05 PM in TABS color printer product line. Boasting a powerful 600 MHz processor and 256 MB of standard RAM...
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Are You Building Relationships Or Burning Bridges?
You can be credible, reliable and loving but if itâs painfully obvious you only have your own interests at heart people will see through your charade. They will call you out for what you are, an empty suit. Whatever the position you have in sales, youâre the face of the company. You're the living testament of the corporate brand and its values. This places you in a unique position whether you believe or not. I encourage everyone in sales to think about the following... all of you have blind...
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This Week in the Copier Industry 15 Years Ago (First Week of February 2005)
Struggle, struggle and more struggle seems to the topic for the month of January. I'm in a slump and need to pull out of it. Today I had three planned calls after driving back from our 2020 Kick-off meeting yesterday. It was more of laying the seeds to reap in coming months, actually more like the third quarter for this year. Two calls went well and the other company moved on me. Thus, I need to do more leg work. Seems next week will be a complete week of working the phones and emails! Enjoy...
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This Week in the Copier Industry 10 Years Ago (First Week of February 2010)
I mentioned in the previous blog that we had our Kickoff Sales meeting for 2020 yesterday. Rather than drive the three hours home I opted to stay over night and leave first thing in the AM. 2019 was a very good year, I was back in President's Club for the 7th time, got me a $50 gift card for winning a contest at our branch. Maybe an old timer like me can win the Grand Prize next week, we'll see we have some talented peeps and all will be out for the glory. It's time to bring out the old dog...
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This Week in the Copier Industry 10 Years Ago (Second Week of February 2010)
Some additional tidbits from the show I was at for the last three days. I learned along time ago that in order to be successful at these types of events that you need to engage with people when they walk by your booth. You need to greet everyone that walks by and then ask them a question. The question I asked the most is where they were from, after getting a response I would then ask if they have a plotter or ask if they've ever seen a white board before. The questions sparked conversations...
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In Times Of Crisis, Sales Professionals Get Reacquainted With And Recapture Their Hearts
Heart in sales, it's not a dirty word. Within the sales culture, an image of the heart is often associated with weakness or being too mushy gushy. However, the heart is strong and powerful, the driving force of life, one heartbeat at a time! Your ability to succeed becomes crippled when there's an unbalanced connection with your heart. Embracing a heart-centered approach to sales rests with your ability to stop, look inward, and reflect upon the course of action you know is the right one,...
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Is Buzzword Bingo Exposing You As An Empty Suit?
Buzz-riddled descriptive words may sound impressive but despite sounding important, there's usually little meaning nor substance behind the words. Way too many in sales are using the same standard sets of sales jargon to describe situations as a replacement for just speaking plain old normal language. They rely on buzzwords to communicate concepts rather than explaining what they mean. Let's get real for a moment... do you think this makes you sound or look smart? I bet it only adds more...
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This Week in the Copier Industry 5 Years Ago (Second Week of March 2015)
I arrived back in town from Aruba late on Monday. Yup, I took a vacation and rarely accessed the internet! Yay for me. To say the least I came back to state that is in pure panic mode with corona virus. Tuesday was not so bad as four opportunities went HOT. Did the work that I had to and subsequent days produced almost nothing, no email responses, no phone call responses and in four days I was only able to set four meetings for next week. Starting on Monday I'll be sending ZOOM requests for...
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Are You Building Lasting, Meaningful And Empathetic Relationships?
In today's business climate where many of us are operating with fear, anxiety and doubt; those that lead with an empathetic heart stand out. Empathy is defined by Psychology Today as âthe visceral experience of another personâs thoughts and feelings from his or her point of view, rather than from oneâs own.â It's mission critical to understand the true value of long-term relationships. I believe genuine, real and raw empathy cannot be faked. If you're saying or doing something merely to...
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Re: Smart Copier Sales Person or Not So Smart with Lost Deals
I remember the first copier I sold, it was an Olympia wet process job, and it happened back in the early 70's. I was actually a typewriter salesman at the time, but they wanted a copier as well, and I had to beat the guy from Apeco. Eventually I started in copiers full time, in mid-1976, and the first plain paper machine I sold was a U-Bix 101, which was quite remarkable, because the machine caught on fire during the demonstration. I can't remember what the excuse I gave was, but I got the...
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10 Ways to Close Net New Business #6 of #10
One awesome thing that I've learned over the years is that almost every business is a potential suspect. I used the word "almost" because there are not as many suspects as there were years ago. Going back 30 years or so, it was a...
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Does Your Copier Dealership Offer A Bakers Dozen?
It was the Eighties, we were in New Jersey, and I was leading the pack of six copier sales people. We were all in our twenties, single and making oodels and oodles of cash selling plain paper copiers! Station wagons, hatch backs, pickup trucks, copier guerney's, rolodex's, change for pay telephone calls, yellow page books, business street directory books, mucho phones, mucho demonstrations, delivering your own copiers, and training end users were the staple of the copier...
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It's the 21st Century, Is your Sales Team Stuck in the 1990's?
1988 has some great significance to me. As a raving Los Angeles Dodgers fan, I cringe knowing this was the last year they won the World Series. Kirk Gibson’s infamous homerun trot is a distant memory. More importantly, this was the year I...
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Ten plus Tips for Cold Calling in the Field
Good afternoon Art. Had a quick question for you. One of my new reps had asked what information I could give for his review on cold calling tips, instruction, and helps. He is looking for help in running a better cold call in the field. HARVEG ...
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Selling Copiers âThe Good Ole Daysâ
Selling Copiers “The Good Ole Days” Pac Man, Space Invaders and Donkey Kong were cool, everyone was wearing Raybans, Nike Sneakers and Members Only jackets. In 1982 I sold my first copier, I started in the...
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The Transition of the Copier Industry "According to Art"
The Transition of the Copier Industry "According to Art" Part One: I can only start from the early eighties. Six months after graduating a copier tech training school, I had sold my first copier. I'm pretty sure I remember the building, but not the name of the company. On a recent drive by that company was no longer in that building, I was kinda bummed because I would have enjoyed to cold call them again If you bought or leased a copier in 1981, the only function of that copier was to copy.
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Sometimes the Answer is Right at Your Finger Tips
Today, I had to do some research on the new HP PageWide XL 8000 system. For those of you that are not familiar with the HP PageWide XL 8000, plain and simply put, it's a beast! Able to print 30 "D" size full color pages in a minute!!...
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Top 19 Old Copier Manufacturers that FADED Away
Did you sell these copiers, did you ever see one, or maybe you weren't even a twinkle in your Mom's eye when these copier manufacturers were the King of the Road! "Tell Us About Some Old Copier Companies", was a question we posed to our...
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Sharing your story on LinkedIn
Let’s face it; we live in a world of constant change. Today it is cloud computing, mobility, big data and information management services. Who knows what the next five to 10 years hold in store for us. As I look back to when I first...
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5 End of Year Tips to Help You Sell More
Geesh, I should have written this the last week of September and not the first week of November! Well, it's still good and if you put these tips in practice you'll not wind up with the end of the year blues! Ah, the last quarter of...
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Stolen Container of KonicaMinolta Bizhubs
I love getting emails, in fact I never opt out from anyone. I'll do a quick glance, see if anything is interesting, if so, I'm gonna click an if not, I'm gonna move on. People get so upset about receiving emails, geesh get a grip! Case in...
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Twelve Days of Selling "Day 3"
Seventy Two hours until the close of the month, the quarter and the year. OH bother!  My first appointment of the day was with an existing account that had placed a $50k order with me last month. Just as I arrived our company delivery...
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Muratec Launches the MFX-3091
Compact, High-Performance Monochrome MFP for the Workgroup Plano, Texas (July 3, 2013) - Muratec America, Inc., manufacturer of multifunction office equipment and business-class document solutions, announces today the availability of the MFX-3091, an...
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Worst Copier Web Site in the World
Whoa, over the past 4 months, our Print4Pay Hotel members have had a lot of fun with this thread, so much fun that we turned it into a contest and had our members vote on it!!! Before I post the results we're going to post some of the comments...
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8 Tips from Selling Copy Machines in the 80's
When you've been in the business as long as I've been there always seems to be that little something that you can write about. I was taught that after every order/sale I would then ask Mr. or Mrs. Right for three referrals that I could call...
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Way Back When "We Did it Our Way" Selling Copiers
Today, I had to get some tires replaced and when you're on the road as much as I am, well.......I have a tendency to not clean my car as often as I'd like to. But, today was one of those days to find old faded toll receipts, a dried up banana...
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Ricoh MP C3003/3503/4503/5505 & 6003 Media Spec Review
As I prepare for the last week of the month I had some extra time to start reviewing the specs for the awesome 03 series (Metis). The Metis series include the C3003/3503/4503/5503 and 6003. In the past many of the engineering names of the Ricoh...
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Copier Dealers Need to Embrace the "Next Big Thing"
I was born in the late fifties, by the time I was three years old, Xerox had introduced the first plain paper copier. Â Â The Xerox 914 was capable of producing 400 copies per hour! Â The speed per minute was under 7 pages per minute....
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Selling Copiers "Bring Back the Eighties"
Tonight I caught a award show on TV titled "Golden Gods Awards 2014". On the screen was one of my favorite singers from the eighties. OMG, it was Joan Jett! At 58 years old, Joan Marie Larkin was still rocking out. Just hearing the lyrics...
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This Week in the Copier/Office Equipment Industry 10 Years Ago Third Week of July 2004
Barack Obama gives the Keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention , launching his career on the national stage. I remember that moment and I did think that someday he may become President. Kyocera aims for 2...
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ESP/Surge Hits Home Run with New Remote Portal for Real Time Power Events
One of the more interesting products I saw at the BTA Grand Slam event in Baltimore was the ESP/SurgeX Remote Portal. I'm going to use this paragraph from the recent Press Release. "The remote portal is designed to provide remote access...
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Remember When Everyone Owned a Murata Fax?
While at the Canatta Awards Dinner last week, I had asked a question to Lou Sticklin (Director of Marketing) how Muratec America got started. For those of us that are dinosaurs in the industry, we remember that Muratec America was once...
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Old Copier Brochures & Ads Preserved @ Print4Pay Hotel
The first plain paper copier was marketed in 1959 by Xerox. The model 914 weighed some 648 lbs and only made seven copies per minute. When people think about copiers, most will think that all copy machines made copies onto...
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The Transition of the Copier Industry "According to Art"
A blog from the past. Â Enjoy!! Â Part One: Â Once upon a time (back in the early eighties) we sold copy machines. Â It was a simple business. We had maybe three models of plain paper copiers. I can remember the EP (Eny Paper lol)...
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8 Tips to Help You Buy or Lease a Copier
Many years ago you could only buy copy machines from Authorized Dealers. An Authorized Dealer is usually a privately owned company that is local to your geographic area. That has changed and most copier manufacturers now have direct...
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MFP & Copier Stream of Payments Calculator
I remember the scratch pad, writing each month down and then calculating how many payments were left on the lease. This is something I used to do with every lease upgrade because I did not have the patience to wait for the upgrade numbers...
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9 Tips to Keep Your Best Copier & IT Sales Producers
I wrote this back in 2012 and thought this would be a good blog to re-post. I've also freshened it up in order to keep up with the changing conditions of our industry. Please feel free to reply with comments. 1. I had the unique experience of catching a dealer principal back in '98 with many un truths. It didn't take long for me to have no respect for the dealer principal nor the company. Within nine months I was outta there along with more than nine million dollars in revenue that I...
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Copier Reps: 3 Alternatives To Avoid Getting Beat Up On Price
This product sucks! No one is buying now! Our competitor has a lock on the business! It is our service department's fault! Our pricing is way out of whack! The more copier reps and their managers can be honest with themselves about what went wrong in a sales opportunity, the easier it will be to correct mistakes and limit the number of lost sales in the future. A commodity mindset has developed with buyers inside the copier channel because copier reps, sales managers and dealer principals...
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Top Twenty Old Copier Manufacturers that FADED Away!
Did you sell these, did you ever see one, or maybe you weren't even a twinkle in your Mom's eye when these copier manufacturers were the King of the Road! Copiers for sale or rent, copies to make, for three darn cents No finishers, no document feeders, no R & E, I aint got not accessories! "Tell Us About Some Old Copier Companies", was a question we posed to our Print4Pay Hotel members about a week ago, as you can see it was very popular thread. Special thanx to all of the P4P'ers for...