Customers doing business with you because your a "local" business

got it, so, I fight the battle here everyday in NJ. I have every Direct Branch in my backyard.  Yes, I will lose some of the battles, but win more than I lose. I then tell the story of our employees and how long they've been with the company, and especially our technicians.  The tenure of these guys are more than 20 years, and to keep employees for 20 years, well, you've got to be doing something right.

I stress the importance of having the same tech all of the time.  I paint Direct has having a revolving door for employees.  Most fall branches fall into the revolving door.  I also tell them about my support, me, the guy who will drop you off toner on the way home, or the guy who will bring you a small loaner if needed.  In some cases I've even mentioned this web site which enables me to get answers to issues that may take others days or weeks.

Just last week, I had a customer that met with an RBS rep after me. I think she had an appointment schedule on Monday and I meet with her on the prior Thursday.  Before we met, I had the phone interview, learned she has a new office, learned what her business line of software was, and learned that she needed to scan with the business line of software.  Before we met, I called the software provider and spoke with tech support that gave me the guidelines for scanning into the business line of software. When we met, I gave her those guidelines of what is needed.  I called her on Tuesday and she stated she was moving forward with us, because, we were more knowledgeable with her business line of software.  We sold the system for about 90% of MSRP.

It doesn't happen all of the time, however, you need to convince them that you are the expert, you are their lifeline to technology. I too would like to hear from others!!

Art

I would be interested in hearing more about this. Knowing their business line of software tells you what exactly? When you say business line of software, are you talking about low-end like Peachtree or Intuit or high-end accounting packages? What changes about your recommendation based on the software answers you get?

I'm just not real adept at turning scanning issues into sales advantages.

So, this was a new doctors office,  i asked what emr system they are using. They stated it was care cloud and that they would like to scan to it, initially i thought ecopy or Nsi. When i found no connectors i called care cloud n found out that care cloud only scans with a twain driver.  Geesh so that was easy, i verified how care old scans with careclouds support people.  When I was with the doctor i explained the process thats needed to scan to a patients record. Guess thats what sealed the deal.

I really try to push the local business as much as possible too.  We are one of two locally owned dealers in our area.  I have a hard time with the comment above about matching the price to keep the business.  Are you finding that you are needing to do that more often?  At the end of the day I look at the overall profitability of the contract and try to make the best decision.  Are you just trying to keep the clicks profitable at that point?

DTP313, I will match the price of these directs 1, if we can and 2, if it is still a deal that we can see profitablity in. There have been plenty of deals I have told the customer go ahead and buy from them that we didn't feel the deal was fair for both sides. Fortunately I have had several come back mid lease and have me "fix" their mistake.