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I Don't Walk Away from Many Opportunities, But this One was Crazy

I need to make a long story short, a few years ago there was a slug of a copier sales person/owner running around NJ selling equipment, doctoring leases, not returning equipment, not paying buy-outs on the equipment and who knows what else may have transpired.  Eventually you get caught, that person did get caught and was indicted for several offenses, and I believe one of the counts was wire fraud.

Me, I was lucky enough to get an appointment with one of the clients that had been taken to the cleaners by the slug of a sales person. Well, at least I thought I was lucky. 

After my initial presentation, the prospect asked,  "what is Stratix/Ricoh going to do for this non profit?"  My response was, what would you like us to do?  That's a logical response right? 

Wrong!!!

First, they wanted a service contract with no minimums, no increases and then no overages (unlimited).  The prospect then stated "well.. some months you'll win and some months we'll win". I thought..., this isn't going to go over well with my manager.  However, I continued to say nothing and continued to listen.  The last demand was that they wanted FREE service on 15 different A4 devices,  and if the system required a part we could then bill them for the repair.  I asked, "what happens when one of those devices can't be repaired", our prospect stated that they would take our recommendations for replacement.   I then asked about supplies for those A4 devices, and was told that we would need to match their current supplier.

Right, and one more item, they needed a replacement copier for another location and think that machine should be placed for free (it could be new or used).

Thus, for a deal that would have generated two 55 ppm color devices, I had to figure out how I could accommodate this customer.  I did figure out a way, and it was to simply say "no" to there demands and gave them a proposal based on our terms and not there terms.

A week later at the final meeting, I presented our equipment, along with our t's & c's.  I could sense the uneasy nature of the client.  The final chapter was to present my A4 solution for them.  At the end of the meeting, our prospect stated that there are multiple proposals and we'll need to get back to you sometime next week.

After the meeting, I sat in the car and reflected a bit about the entire process.  I then elected to send the  client an email stating that we are removing our proposal from consideration and hope that everything works well for them.

In the back of my mind, I believe that all of these "wants" were to flush out additional vendors. I'm thinking they already had a new vendor in mind, and did not have the testicles to tell me.  Instead they opted to put something on the table that they knew no other vendor could quote on.

You know what, walking away actually made me fell better!

-=Good Selling=-

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Comments (3)

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Yes, I had an account who had TWO Xerox down for over two months and would NEVER do business with them again.  I had been renting to this contractor for years and really made a great proposal and pretty much expected that sale.  They stayed with Xerox!!  You just wonder what their thought process is on these kind of deals.  They will end up in the exact same boat in 5 years and go through the motions and get absolutely nowhere.  Good Luck!!

Czech is right. You'd think the customer would learn. I've seen those customers who have been hosed and know it do business with the same crook again because they promised to make it right. Dealt with one recently who had two large canon devices and got hosed by the rep and turned around and bought two more from the guy again. Blows my mind.

 

ive walked away from a few deals with ridiculous demands (nothing as bad as the story) and usually the customer has said ok no problem. It's like they know it's coming and don't care. Unfortunately this industry has created s monster. The customers know they can make stupid demands because there will be someone who will always say yes. I see it most with the xerox and Konica directs. I feel like at times if the customer told the directs they had to pay them to do business with them one of them would do it.

 

Once you learn to walk away from bad business and do it a couple times it gets easier. At first I found it extremely difficult because as a sales rep I never wanted to lose, no matter what.

Last edited by Jason H
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