MFP Copier Blog

This is the first night since I started writing this blog series that I wasn't sure what I was going to write about.  After 43 days of writing how much more can you cover or how much more content can you provide for other peeps with help they might need.

Tonight I'd like to cover a few things I've been doing everyday other than taking the occasional break and lunch.

Many weeks ago I learned that I can't work with the TV on in my office. It's too distracting especially when I have the news on all day.  Plus the fact that most of the news is bad news and I can't function with bad news.  Yup, there's stuff that will bring me down also.

What I Do Every Day

• Update my list of things to do. It's constant list and it never ends, learned many years ago that I can't remember everything
• Prospecting, whether it's a lot or a little I'm prospecting everyday.  It's more emails, and inmails (linkedin) and not us much phone work.  Once I find that there's an opportunity that leads to the phone call.
• Review my hand written opportunity list for the month.  Every time I make a touch on that opportunity I'll put a check mark next to the business name.  Seven touches is the goal, however with COVID19 it's taking many more touches to get to the order
• Search and offer up connections on Linkedin and send those inmails.
• Post content, share content, like content and make comments on threads from companies I follow
• Google search for motivational quotes and write it on my white board in my office
• Always thinking about good content to post on my blog or an article on Linkedin (doing more of this lately)
• Increase the amount people I'm connected with on social media (facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and Alignable)

Just a moment on Alignable,  it's something new for me and I'm on it everyday for a few minutes.  I do find it interesting because the site will suggest connections  for you.  In addition you don't have to belong to groups in order to  get alerted for new threads in your geographical area.  Kinda liking that part right now.

Moving to today I've declared that I'm back in a slump, nothing hot and few clients that are lukewarm at best.  The only way to break out of that slump is to keep getting up to the plate.  Of course that plate is prospecting.  There's nothing that will drain your emotions more than a day of prospecting.  Ending the day with not creating an opportunity or an appointment and you feel like crap.

Nothing much went on today.  Two meetings, one was internal and the other was a review.  Emailing, inmailing and phone calls produced nothing.

I've got 8 clients/prospects I need to reach tomorrow and the rest of the day is prospecting with one late appointment at 4PM.

With that it's now 10:19PM and it's time to check my google alerts.

-=Good Selling=-

The Global Pandemic has hit the Imaging Industry hard. We are not alone though. All businesses are experiencing extreme hardship, and that should make us feel better about that, correct? I agree; me neither!

This Global Pandemic is a first time for everyone. No one had a playbook on how to do business in a post pandemic world, however, here are three things your dealership can do to get things started on the road to recovery:

Reduce your inventory

Inventory is money. Converting that inventory to cash is money that you can put back to work in your business versus borrowing it from a bank. I talk with many dealers across the country, and I am surprised when I hear from some dealerships the level of supplies inventory they keep on average. From some dealers I hear that they keep an inventory level as high as three months; this is way too much!

It doesn’t take three months for your vendor to deliver it, so it doesn’t make sense to tie up your cash resources in that extra inventory. Maybe on some items for current machines you are selling where big placements would spike activity, however, outside of that, you should look to carry a maximum of one month of inventory.

Look at the bottom 10-20% of supplies and parts you sell, and look at the inventory value. Any excess inventory you should get rid of immediately.

How can you move this? Many dealers belong to industry peer groups. Leverage your group by communicating with dealers that sell similar brands you do. On inventory for equipment that has been discontinued for a while, you can communicate amongst your peers and each dealer share a list of inventory they have in this category that they are willing to take offers from any interested dealers. This type of inventory will eventually depreciate to $0.00, so you should be open minded to reasonable offers.

You will get more value from items that are more current, and you can work with your group providing a list of the items you have surplus inventory. Every dealer in the group will agree that when they need those items, they will check with the group first to see if they can make any purchase from their dealer network before turning to the manufacturer. In one month, your dealership (and your peers) would take a significant step in reducing your inventory towards an ideal level, and conserve cash.

Watch this helpful 7 minute video on inventory management

Be an Experimenter

You ever notice those times when ideas are suggested for change, that our minds immediately go to how that can’t work?

Something we are seeing talked about in the industry that is hotly debated is a flat rate billing program. Think about some of these services we all use: cable, cell phone, managed services; all flat rate subscription for cost certainty. Is it any surprise when it comes to print those customers would ask if they could buy it the same way?

30+ years ago, a new form of billing was introduced to the industry called Cost Per Copy (CPC). Pundits said it was doomed to fail, and today it is the standard way business is done. But at the beginning, this was very scary. 30+ years ago, the amount of data available was a sliver of what it is today, and it is simpler to construct a flat rate billing program with data available now.

Change is scary. I don’t recommend a scary big risk jumping off the high dive; I do recommend experimenting with minimal risk.

Use this down time from the pandemic to ask your team about a flat rate program:

• What type of customers are a fit?
• What new opportunities are available with a flat rate program?
• What model devices would work with a flat rate program?

Find a client or two that looks like a fit, and experiment with it. See what you learn. Make adjustments to improve it. The outcome you want to hear for the rest of 2020: we know who and where a flat rate program works; we’re prepared. If a customer asks us for a flat rate option, we are ready to present it.

When we suggest radical change our instinct is to resist and justify how it won’t work. When we experiment, we take smaller risks, see the possibilities, and believe there are alternatives. Then we implement actions that make a difference. So be an experimenter, and leverage your peer groups to reduce your inventory.

Check out these interesting flat rate billing articles from the April 2020 issue of ENX magazine:

State of the Industry From Bundling to Flat-Rate Billing: Making XaaS Work for Dealers, End-Users by Erik Cagle

XaaS and IT X Marks the Spot: Everything-as-a-Service Gaining Steam as a Way of Doing Business by Greg VanDeWalker

iDaaS and Print Device as a Service: The Hows and Whys of Flat-Rate Billing by Wes McArtor

Case Study Meter-less Billing: Marco Finds Success in Embracing Device- and Seat-Based Models by Erik Cagle

Make the Choice

It’s easy to feel paralyzed by the disruption caused by COVID-19. You know those times when you’re afraid to make a decision, because you are worried it, could be the wrong decision? Instead of choosing to make a decision, we do nothing and take a wait and see attitude. By the way, doing nothing, is making a choice.

I never believe that doing nothing is the best choice. When we choose a course of action that is the wrong one, we can make adjustments, and make a new decision, because we have learned what the right decision is. We can decide to do nothing, or we can decide to take actions to navigate through this difficult challenge, and come out through this better than we were before. That is hard work, however it is possible.

Watch this video from John O’Leary on making difficult choices to navigate through adversity (6 min.)

You have what it takes to recover from this pandemic. You’ll leverage the help and support of your peers to reduce your inventory, and put more cash to work in your dealership. You’re an experimenter, where you risk experimenting new ideas, seeing the possibilities, and understanding how other alternatives can grow your business. You’re a leader that knows better days are in front of you, and you will make the difficult choices to navigate through this storm, and become a better version of your dealership than it was yesterday.

Polek & Polek has helped hundreds of dealers get through and recover from some of the most difficult economic storms over the past five decades, and we can help your dealership through this one. Schedule a call with us, and we can show you how we are helping other dealers.

Polek & Polek check out what we do best

This will probably be one of those shorter blogs tonight, however you never know once I start writing.

A few minutes ago (it's 10PM) I just set an appointment for this Friday with a net new production prospect.  I had emailed him earlier in the day and a few minutes ago I received the reply that yes Friday at 10AM works.

Let me touch on the email a bit. The subject line was "hope you are well" and the base of the email spoke more about new 5th station color technology that could increase profits and revenue.  There was no mention of a model number nor speeds and feeds. It was more about peaking his interest that I have technology that could potentially grow his business.  At this point in time any appointment is better than no appointments and I'll see where this takes us.

Did you ever have one of those days were everything is a cluster ****? That was my day today, the ambition to put a dent in prospecting fell apart by 11:30AM.  I'm not going into details, however a fair amount of time is still required to fix a few things tomorrow morning.

I guess it was finally about 2PMish when I was able to get down to some real prospecting. About two weeks ago I signed up for Linkedin Navigator and yes I can't stomach the monthly fee of $80.  But with only 11 potential client upgrades coming due in the next eleven months (according to my CRM) I need to make **** happen.  BTW with those eleven upgrades there is something wrong in the CRM, back in 2015 I hit Presidents Club.  I did send an email out to question that but haven't heard anything back yet.

Back to Linkedin, this Navigator is new to me and there's a learning curve however I'm seeing some value in right away. I can locate decision makers in a company, also see who they are connected with and can send up to something like 60 inmails in a month. I probably sent a dozen inmails, but found it extremely awkward to have to go back to my CRM every time to enter notes.  In addition our CRM will not track anything sent from Linkedin.  Would be cool if there was a Linkedin button in our CRM, it would make prospecting much easier. It's something I need to learn and master in the coming weeks especially since I'm paying for it.

Yes, I received a lead today! YAY!  I was also able to speak with the client and scheduled a short meeting.  Seems there is a need to replace of their devices asap.  Thus right after the call I went to work in developing the proposal providing links to my blog and providing links to my YouTube channel.  When you're not able to be face to face with clients and have to email a proposal then your proposal needs to be thorough, clean and simple to comprehend.  Adding links and video can always help.  If something like what I did was sent to me I would be thinking this person is on top of their game.  Even though the process of completing the proposal was longer than I wanted. I was satisfied with what I sent.

Tomorrow in the AM I need to process the order from Tuesday, never did that today and that's on me.  Prospecting all day with one internal meeting scheduled. One opportunity created today, two appointments, no verbals, no other orders and eight days left in the month.

-=Good Selling=-

Sales Summary

• Create your own YouTube Channel for video of devices and demonstrations
• Rather than email about speeds and feeds focus on how you could grow their business or increase revenue
• Now more than ever proposal needs to be top notch with reference links (linked) and links for videos

I guess the day is not over until it's over.  Tonight I received text from a good industry friend of mine with some rather bad news.  Seems two calls went out to two groups of employees from Canon.  Those that were on one call were laid-off with no future employment, those on the other call were furloughed and hopefully will be getting their jobs back at some point in time.  My source could not tell me how many were affected but stated "a large group of employees, each call was no longer than 15 seconds and some of these folks had 25 years or more of service". 

Wow, something I was not expecting to hear.  I'm hoping that this does not create a groundswell with other manufacturers once the news breaks.

My day was awesome!  I received the docs back for the $20K existing account this AM.  I will be processing these tomorrow.  For the month I'm a little north of south of $170K.  My VP of Sales (Tim) congratulated me on a personal high water mark for business in one month. I thanked him and stated my goal is still $200K and I've got work to do with only ten days left in the month.  I thought our month would close on the 25th, but the 25th is Memorial Day, thus the last day of the month is the 26th.  Which also means that June will have less selling days than May.

I think I had two meetings with the same account today for a BDR opportunity.  More than one hour into the call we hit a couple of snags. I can't discuss those here but I think one can be resolved and the other snag we turned into a another opportunity that has a chance to close in June.  Good, because I need some June opportunities in a bad way.

We had a weekly sales meeting at 11AM and what can I say but "It's good to be the King", yeah I stole that from Mel Brooks. I also know you're only as good as your last month, thus I'm going to enjoy this as much as I can. The rest of the day was a lot of back and forth with clients. I did manage the three meetings (two were with clients), sent maybe 6 emails and made about 4 calls. 

One of those calls was pretty freaky and that's because I had a returned aka bounced email from the client about 30 days ago. I assumed she was laid off, and schedule the call back for today.  It's a $30K net new opp and I'm not about to let that slither away without a fight.  I made the call and who picks up the line but the gal that I thought was laid off.  We spoke for sometime and I was told the opportunity to change is still there however they wanted to wait until all is back to work. Dang, that's a pretty good call in my book.

Those few emails amounted to no return emails, maybe that will change tomorrow.  Later in the day I had a text from Coach Jerry. I'm not going to get into details about Coach but I can tell you that Coach is there if I need to bend an ear.  Coach wanted to give kudos on a good month, and I asked that we get on a TEAMS meeting when he had time.  Our chat was about 30 minutes or so, and he was able to give me a take away for the remaining nine days.  You want to know what that take away is?  "If you don't ask you don't get", something so simple yet so powerful.  The plan is to push for the next nine days to see what I can uncover because right now it's slim pickings.

Another call with Tim later in the day was the best call of all.  He had some type of meeting with others dealers, each person who was on the meeting had the time to speak about what was happening in their neck of the woods.  The picture that was painted wasn't that rosy from the others.  However Tim killed it when he spoke about how is team is crushing it in all of our markets.  In fact his outlook was referred to as "assumptive greatness".  That's really cool because when you think about it there is nothing holding us back but ourselves. The shock and awe of COVID19 is over! Our clients know it, our sales people know and know it's time to makes things happen.

Tomorrow means submitting the order in the AM and prospecting until my TEAMS content meeting starts.  After the meeting it's more prospecting.

-=Good Selling=-

By the end of the week it will be  two solid months since I was optioned to the home office.  Could this really last for an entire quarter? 

I'm somewhat worried that many businesses will cease to exist if the our Governor does not open up the state for business.  In today's address he was non-committal for releasing a time line of when we can re-open.  He hinted at maybe something coming this week.  All we can hope is that he comes to his senses and will realize that shutting down the state also shut down the states tax revenue.  Of course he is posturing for additional Federal funds so he can remain in control.   Then we have the issue of Contact Tracing, maybe it's time to ditch the cell phone because once this starts there's no turning back.

Today was somewhat of an easier day with not that much stress. Stress, right why would any of us be stressing.  My day started off with updating my CRM for all existing opportunities.  Next on the list was to process the $7.5K order from Friday of last week. Yes, and I also had to give my weekly forecast....

One interesting note from today was the lead that I received last week from my Jersey Plotters site.  Of course we can't be on-site thus we have to email the proposal and I did that.  It was then three days of ghosting by the prospect, finally this AM I sent an email asking if that person was okay and not mired with COVID19.  Behold a response came back to me, and the response was "my boss is leaning towards another manufacturer, however he hasn't made the final decision".  Right, where have I heard that before, instead of asking the gatekeeper for a meeting I went to Linkedin and found the company.  There were 15 people listed, after searching a few I found the owner. I then sent the owner a short message with a few bullets points why we are better.  I tell ya, there's not much you can do with 300 characters and the spaces count also.  At this point in time the DM has not accessed my profile, thus a phone call is in order tomorrow.  You just can't let a $12K net new walk away.

11AM was time for my Monday Mornings with Ricoh.  One of the things I like to do while on the call is too stalk all of those on the call. No, I'm not really stalking them but just curious who else has the zeal to garner more knowledge about their products.  As far as I'm concerned anyone that is selling Ricoh should be on these calls every Monday.  It's one of the better weekly gigs that Ricoh has going.

A few more calls and emails and it was time for lunch.  It's at this time that I listen to our great Governor give his 2 cents everyday of the week.  Blah, blah and more blah, and nothing!

The afternoon I was mired in emails, taking calls and then trying to figure out my plan of attack for the next two weeks.  Late today I received an email from my existing client that they received the docs for the $20k order, will review and get them back to me.  Hoping this happens tomorrow also.

The plan for the rest of the month will all hinge on wide format.  The plan is to get at least $15K this week. Then sign my contract for the lead service this and hoping I get a few leads to make the $15 for the last week of the month.  This week and next week is going to be tough, nothing is solid, all are possibles.  If I get the docs for for the $20k order I'll be sitting around $170K.  Maybe just maybe a little bit of luck will come my way.

The Harder You Work, the Luckier You Get!

-=Good Selling=-

Enjoy these threads from 15 years ago this week!

It's Sunday night just about 10:30PM.  Not a lot of time to write tonight.  Hope everyone enjoyed Mothers Day.  Now let's go sell something tomorrow!

Enjoy these threads from ten years ago this week!

It's Saturday morning here in NJ.  We've hit a snag in our spring weather today, although the sun is shinning the temp is only 41 degrees. Saturday's can be a fantastic day to prospect, whether it's a few phone calls, emails or inmails (Linkedin).  Our job is to inspire clients clients that we all need to be moving forward and continue our determination to succeed.

Enjoy these threads from 15 years ago this week