By Muhammed El-Hasan Staff Writer
Posted: 06/04/2009 02:30:26 PM PDT
Patricia Rios grew up wanting to become a teacher - possibly for second-graders because "they're so cute."
But Rios ended up selling out her teaching dreams for a career in sales.
Rios, 30, of Lakewood, has worked in sales for the past 11 years, with the last six months at Canon Business Solutions in Torrance.
Earlier in her career, she had sold Canon copiers for about three years.
A big part of Rios' job is to help companies lower their printing and copier costs through simple money-saving tricks.
What does your job entail?
I help organizations lower their overall operating costs.
How do you do that?
I look at everything, what's outsourced, what's spent in printing. I look at the entire organization, even down to the paper. We install software to collect all the data that we used to collect manually. We gather the information. We look at what's currently being leased and when the leases are up. We can reallocate the printer to certain places to lower the costs.
How was the assessment done before the software?
It was manual. I would walk the entire facility. I'd walk to a printer and pull the print configuration pages. It gives the volume the printer is running. Two weeks later, I go there again and pull them so I could get the two-week volume. Then I'd put those on a spreadsheet. I'd go online to Staples or another company and see what the costs are of toner for that machine and I'd calculate how much they're spending per print on that printer. We also did it for faxes.
Give me examples of how you use that information to lower a company's costs?
We can figure out which printers or copiers use the most toner and shift the print jobs to the machines that are least expensive to use. Let's say customers are printing everything on single-sided paper. A way to cut costs on paper is to print everything double-sided. And it's good for the environment. Instead of faxing things, they can scan it and e-mail it. And it ensures confidentiality instead of papers lying next to the fax machine.
How do you sell Canon copiers in the process?
They may not need a Canon right then, but hopefully they'll trust me and if they need a new machine in the future they'll come to me.
What's the best part of your job?
I like my current customers and meeting new clients.
And the worst part?
When I don't hit sales, because I have a family to take care of.
Do you have any copier-related hobbies?
No, but I love to run. I love going to the sand dunes in Manhattan Beach. I have my two little ones, so we do a lot of stuff, watch movies. I like salsa dancing.
Do you know any copier jokes?
No. There was a comment made that I heard from someone who was telling his child to "do good in school or else you'll end up in copier sales."
At office parties, do employees get wild with the copiers?
No, I haven't seen that. I've seen cartoons where people take copies of their butts, but I haven't seen that at Canon.
If you were a copier, which would you be?
I'd be the Image Press 700. It can do everything. What doesn't it do? It doesn't make coffee, but neither do I
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