Sales Hacks

This evening I had a call with one my friends in the office equipment industry.  Our chat was to introduce one on our long time members via a Better Call Art video. 

We'll have that video ready in a few days.  The last question I asked inspired me to write this blog today for everyone. I just love the word "inspired" and I try to capture that everyday.

How Can I Help You

Of course our topics were all over the place, however I want to focus one of the questions that I always ask and that is "how can I help you?".

My answer to that question was and I'm paraphrasing "we need help with our sales people to want to earn/sell more than just a receiving a paycheck".  Wow, this is one I really had to think about and I didn't have an immediate answer. 

I did speak about "desire". I find desire is the most missing quality in many sales people today. Can we really call them sales people if they don't have desire?

Most peeps seems to be happy working 9-5 work and most are happy with 9-5 pay.  Then three to six months later those reps will leave to accept a job that has a higher base pay.  To put it bluntly,  they appeared to be a good choice with you pre-hire assessments, however the rubber hit the road three to six months down later when there was no sign of desire.

Born With It

I stated this before and it's my belief that you can't teach desire, and you can't coach desire to anyone.  Desire to make the extra backs, hit that monthly or quarterly bonus comes from within a person.  Desire is that innate quality or ability that you're born with.  You either have it or you don't have it. Sorry everyone that doesn't have it.

Looking for Desire

I believe that most people that hire don't look for desire in the person, nor they know how to interview the client to see if they have desire.  Just maybe when you're hiring for sales people you should also include your top rep in the interview.  Everyone's top rep has desire and they know what to look for or what questions to ask.

Thinking two or three questions could be:

• Are you okay with getting an automatic cost of living increase to your base pay each year or would rather have the ability to an unlimited amount of money?
• If you had the chance to work more than 40 hours a week to earn more would you?
• Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

There are good questions that you can add to your current list of hire interview questions.

I'm no expert with sales interviews or pre-hire assessments, however I will admit that I'm an expert in detecting desire in people.

-=Good Selling=-

This blog is from 15 years ago, I changed up a few items with some of today's offerings for us. Enjoy!

Selling Copiers "How to Maximize GP"

Thought about this the other day in car, made myself pull over and jotted down a few notes for everyone. I've complied a laundry list of points that I have adhered to in order to maximize Gross Profit.

Over the years I've also concentrated on moving boxes no matter what the cost. I will address this in a blog later this month.

Maximize GP

1.   Stay away from Clients who are just looking to replace a box. If you are aware there are multiple players quoting, be prepared to get a low GP and not get the deal. These Clients are buying on price, it will take an extra special effort to get the deal and also get a decent GP. Do you have the time or the fortitude to hang in there? Why not set your sites on sales that will pay the bills.

2.    Search for Clients who are NOT in the market! While cold calling in person, take a good look at how they do things. Ask the receptionist if they are scanning, LAN Faxing, printing to inkjets etc... Try to get an appointment to introduce yourself and when you're there and don't about replacing a piece of hardware. Do ask if they are experiencing document problems, such as lost documents, making too many copies, high maintenance bills, excess breakdown of hardware, how their document workflow is conducted. Selling like this enables you to find their pain and may help you introduce a solution that can be bundled with a new piece of hardware.

3.   Sell the Extras! As you are writing the order or as you are drawing up the lease ask again about any accessories that may benefit the customer. Finishing, Paper-trays, 3-Hole Punching, cloud scanning, scan worflows,  etc... the Client will be more apt to spend the extra money at this time to conclude the order.

4.   Lead With Solution Software! Look at what your manufacturer has to offer for embedded solutions along with third party solutions that your dealership has to offer. Lead with offerings for embedded print management, document management and LAN Fax solutions. Here you are setting yourself apart from the BOX seller (trust me, there are too many reps that still just sell boxes).

5.   Upgrade Your Account Base Early! Do not wait for them to call you or for the last 90 days of the lease. You've got to be in there at lease one year or more prior to the end of the lease. If you're not, then someone else is,

6.  Become an Expert in Secondary Systems! Specialize in Wide Format, Digital Duplicators, Envelope Presses, Standalone scanners if your company offers these hardware solutions. There is is less competition and less reps who are competent with the solutions that come with these system. Take the time to learn your Vertical Markets for AEC, Print4Pay, Schools and Religion Accounts. Once you become an expert, you will stand out among the crowd.

In order to be successful you have to be the best at what you are doing. Put your self in opportunities to succeed and make a move to break away from the pack. Our job can be very rewarding, however being an order taker and just relying on Clients who are in the market will be the kiss of death.

-=Good Selling=-

Short video with sample of FAB selling

This could be and probably will be one of the shortest blogs I've ever written.  When I used to have a lot of newbies reps around I would always ask them "what type of day is it today?".

Kinda makes you think right?  I could also see the puzzled look on their faces and thinking there's got to be more than this to the weather right?  Yes, most if not all of the answers to my question was weather related. Raining, sunny, cold, hot, humid and not a one gave me the answer I was looking for.

The answer is simple and should be easy to figure out when you're in the business of selling. Ah, that key word of "selling", for those that are new they don't understand the art of selling.  Their early entry to the sales world is more about being an order taker because most don't know how or when to ask for the order.

Are we really teaching the art of sales anymore or are we just teaching reps about prospecting and finding opportunities?

Back in eighties when I learned it was all about asking for the order and we all understood that if we don't ask we don't get.  Those who didn't get the order by asking for it and still got the order were the "order takers".  Who the frak wants to be an "order taker?"

Those that listened to their clients and heard those key words; warranty, maintenance, availability, and support knew that these were buying signals and the next question of course would be the trial close.  Of course it took many orders lost for us to understand what the client was trying to tell us.  However over time we learned from listening and asked more questions that would lead to a yes.

Is there a moral to this?  Well yes and no, times have changed from those days when you had to sell a client hard and on the spot. We've learned to be a bit more patient and be more consultative in our approach.  That's a great thing, but from time to time we still need to ask those closing questions that move the order into the win column. If you don't ask you don't get.

Ah yes, the answer to the question is.  It's a Great Day to Sell Something!

-=Good Selling=-

Years ago and I'm talking before the dawn of the internet. There were only a few ways you could get information on other manufacturers copiers.

BI (before internet)

1) Call your competitor and ask to speak to a sales person and fib about who you are, your company, and give a BS call back number. We did this many times in order to get answers to those speed, feed and feature questions.  In many cases we got snagged and had to hang up.

2) Another way was to get your significant other to do your dirty work and in most cases she wanted no part of that.

3) Another way was to lift the brochure and or the proposal from the clients desk.  You would put your brochures on top of an existing brochure or proposal that you saw.  Once you had your deal signed you would pick up the entire stack of documents.  Thinking many DM's may have spent hours looking for those other brochures or proposals.

4) Send in reply card from one of the manufactures that you were interested in a copier.  In a few days you would have the brochure in the mail and thinking about what your were going to say when that sales person followed up if you were dumb enough to give them the right phone numbers. 

5) Spec check books, these were GOLD in the office. Some would come every spring and fall with the new models.  One that I remember is Minnella's Pocket Guide to Copiers. With the pocket guide you could read every spec, and feature that your heart desired. Armed with one of these and you were the resident expert when talking about copiers with the DMs!

Today with caller ID, phone number search, and Linkedin those tactics have long since died to get competitive information.  Nowadays you can get everything you want from either the internet or those pay subscriptions that allow you to do side by side analysis of all the copiers. 

For the newbies or novice copier sales peeps these pay subscriptions are the bees knees for finding out what brands can and can't do.  I've had a chance to view all of them at one time or another. I can tell you that none of these pay subscriptions are 100% accurate for all of the copiers.  Heck, there's a ton of data that has to be entered and people make mistakes.  Whether it's a typo or someone just getting bleary eyed and entered the wrong data.

I would bet that there's many of us that don't have access to these paid subscriptions on a regular basis. I'm one of them. 

AI (after internet)

1) Go the the manufacturers web and read the entire brochure, don't browse, read it several times.

2) If you have a question about a certain feature, when the copier was launched , street price, cost per page or even what apps are available.  Post (lol) your question here on the forums!  There are peeps that will help you, can't tell you how many fellow P4Per's have helped me and how many I've helped over the years. We're a community that wants to help each other, make sales and support our families.

3) Configurators!  All of the copier manufacturers have them and most of these  sites are open to everyone.  If you know you're up against a certain model how can you not go and pull a configurator on it?  Believe it or not all copiers are not equal especially when it comes to paper trays, finishers, staplers, locking paper drawers, by-pass and feeders!

Several months ago I was up against a competitor and the DM told me what they were looking for feature wise, the brand and the budget.  I researched my brand and kept coming up with a much higher budget for my brand. I ended up question the DM for the model number.  I then went that brands configurator and found out the model that the other salesperson had quoted could NOT have a finisher.  I was told they had to have one. I told my DM about what I found and stated you'd better double check what you're getting. A day later on the follow I was right and that other brand could not take a finisher when the sales person stated it would.  We all know the end of the story.

Thus I wanted share what I've found (these links are listed on this site). Please if you know of others please reply with the links. It's good info for all of us!

Kyocera MFP Configurator

Ricoh MFP Configurator

KonicaMinolta Production Configurator

Canon MPF Configurator

Xerox Production Configurator

-=Good Selling=-

I was in the field today and was helping one of my clients figure out an issue with his desktop MFP.  This client is also on the board of a non-profit organization that has a seven year old color A3 MFP.  Yes Ray, they need 11x17!

Why do some clients have seven year old MFPs?  It's because they made a purchase and can't come to grips with spending additional dollars to get a new MFP.

Thus, I told the story of WHY ninety percent of my clients lease their MFPs.  In fact a little more than eighty percent lease for 60 months.  One of the main reasons for leasing is that clients don't get trapped with old technology and rising maintenance and supply costs. You see once you purchase the MFP and let's say the purchase was $12K, you'll be hard pressed to purchase another one if there is no immediate ROI (return on investment). Thus the client gets "trapped" with out dated technology and rising maintenance & supply costs. In addition the risk of downtime increases year after year.

In this case there was not an immediate ROI to the client.  The client will have to pay more this year. There are no WOW features that will make the case to retire the seven year old copier. The only driving factor is the cost....until I found out that the organization is considering purchasing a folding machine for 2020. 

Okay, I've got a play here.

I know that a decent folding machine (one that doesn't suck) will cost around $3,000 plus you'll have to factor in a maintenance agreement or at least factor in some dollars for when the folder needs service (they always do).

With my A3 Color MFP I can add a multi-fold unit for about the half the price that the  client would pay to add the standalone folder.  Thus I did the math for them by amortizing the cost of the standalone folder over 5 years with a few more dollars thrown in for maintenance.

The monthly cost for the folder with maintenance over 5 years would be about $70 per month (figured $20 per month for service which is fair).  I added that $70 per month to their current cost for the maintenance agreement on the old A3 color MFP. Well, there was my immediate ROI savings.

I had to produce everything as a monthly cost because there was still no way they were going to spend another $12K.  But they were planning on spending at least $3k for the folding machine. That's $3K a top of their current annual cost for maintenance and supplies.

I took those numbers and showed the monthly cost of the folder, the maintenance on the folder and the monthly cost of service and supplies for the existing copier.

The next monthly number was the new copier with the folder and maintenance and supplies.  Yes, my monthly number saved  money and cash out of pocket.

Did I do a good enough job selling the lease?  I'm not sure, but hoping to find out in the next couple of days.

-=Good Selling=-

What you'll read here is a series of threads that was posted on one of our forums about 5 years ago.  The threads have some excellent content about buyers and their habits.  Please excuse some of the spelling errors since I'm capturing the series of threads and can't correct them.

There's some great comments from many peeps who might know in the industry.  Enjoy and please feel free to comment!

If you'd like to read the original thread you can go here.

-=Good Selling=-

Hoping I can keep this short tonight.  The last four weeks have been a bit of a struggle for me.  For the year I'm ahead of the game (quota) moving in the last quarter of the year.

Thus far I've been doing okay, but that okay came to an end with a half a dozen stalled deals along with losing a few. Yes, I lose also But in my eyes losing is always a part of winning.

I took a good long look at my funnel and thought WTF?  Where did it go?  Well I was fortunate to close many orders over the last two months. The appointments, the documents, the chasing of documents, phone calls, email, follow up emails all took their toll on prospecting.  I didn't have a lot of extra time to make the calls and stops required to keep the funnel full.

Mind you, I have a lot opportunities pending, however I can see that some aren't going anywhere, others have stalled and the picture of the future wasn't that awesome. Thus I needed to bring the future to the present @Ray Stasiezcko

When the going gets tough the tough get going. I knew it was time to pick up the phone and make things happen, because waiting for things to happen was not an option.

While taking to the phones last week I remembered what my Director of Sales Enablement had been preaching for the last few months.  I know at times we tend to forget some of the basics that got us to where we are today.  That one tip was to ask for referrals.  Yeah, I remember learning that way back when, but somehow that memory faded into the past and I hadn't used it in years.

Well last week I used it. I didn't use it for every call, but made mention of asking for a referral about 75% of the time.

I remember the call I made to an existing account (this is where you want to use it). The principal of the company was not in, in fact he was on vacation. I left a short message with the receptionist and stated that I would send him an email. 

At least that's what I wanted, but I changed to sending him an inmail (linkedin).  My reasoning for choosing the inmail was simple, since he was on vacation I'm thinking his in-box is going to be flooded and I would be one of the last emails he would look at. Thus I knew sending an in-mail would give him an alert via Linkedin.

My message was simple, "Hi Bob, it's been more than a year since we last spoke, how has the wide format been doing, any questions, any issues or anything that needs to be addressed? BTW, would you happen to know of anyone that might be interested in a wide format like yours?"  Simple right?

Today I took a call on my cell from a number that I didn't recognize.  Turns out it was a business friend of the principal that I in-mailed last week.  He's interested in a new wide format along with a color MFP!  We scheduled a meeting for later this week.  Now that's a decent add to the pipeline.

One thing I repeat over and over as long as your work had you never know what tomorrow will bring you. In this case I also am grateful that our Director of Sales Enablement kept pushing that button.

-=Good Selling=-

In between appointments today I had made a short list of three net new suspects that I wanted to cold call.  All three of those cold calls turned up a fat ZERO. I'm okay with that because I'll be following up in the near future with phone call and email.  Sooner or later I'll get an appointment but hoping it doesn't take 10 or more years like some of the ones I've had. At my age 10 years is not going to cut it.

In Between Drives

About mid-day I pulled into a park so that I could check my emails and voice messages. No big news in the email and there was one voice message from a friend of mine that worked in marketing a few years back.  Thus, I made the call and left Chris a message.  A few hours later Chris was able to call me back and we got caught up on what we've been doing for the past year in our personal and business lives.

I was delighted to hear that Chris had hooked up with a office equipment dealer in the mid-south.  Thought that was awesome and I later found out that he took a job offer in sales. Which led me to ask how things are working out for him. Chris told me he closed a decent size deal for multiple units for about $40K with an existing account, has about 100 existing accounts and a **** load of net news .  As I thought we were getting close to the end of the call, Chris stated that he wanted to ask me a few questions related to prospecting.  Chris stated that he's been having a hard time with getting appointments and conversations going with net new clients.

Prospecting Cold Call Dials

I was in full agreement to help,  however I had many questions for him before I could help. I'll bullet out those questions for us.

• How many cold calls are you doing per week?  The answer I got was 100
• How many of those are walk in cold calls? Answer was 20

This meant that our new rep that was making 80 dials a week. Ah, right, been doing this long enough to know that fudging is common practice.  I told him 16 calls a day is not going to cut, even with the walk in cold calls.  I told him he sucks at prospecting and he needs to be making at least 60 calls every day. Anything less and you're going to wash out. With only having 100 existing accounts there is plenty of time.

Prospecting Cold Calls Walk-ins

We know that Chris is doing around 20 cold calls a week which is not that bad. But when we you only have 100 existing accounts, dude you need to step up your game! 

• How do you cold call walk-ins? Answer was that when he picks a company to cold call he will cold call additional companies in that area. 

Okay I thought, not so bad, however you should plan your cold calls. What I mean by that is to comb your CRM and look for accounts that you haven't been able to get through to yet. Pick 25 of those accounts and make sure they are "paper intensive" type of accounts.  Look to your verticals of Healthcare, AEC, Law and pick other one, just make sure they are accounts that could result in multiple placements.  Don't ever willy nilly walk-in cold calls because you are wasting valuable time.  In addition your only goal is to get the name of the decision maker and scope the place out.

Tip: Don't add new suspects to the CRM when you haven't defined the suspects in your CRM (if you see one or two accounts that you'd like to break into that's fine).

Personally, before I ever speak to the Decision Maker or Person in Charge I want to do the research on the company.   What they do to make money, how many employees, the more you know the better.  Facebook, Linkedin, Manta, and Google are my favorite sources. Next you want to do the research on the DM. Who they are connected to, where they worked, their existing and previous position and if you can find it what they like or care about.

In the next installment I'll tell you what we spoke about with the following titles

The Pitch,  Work Ethic,  Prime Time,  The Email,  Breaking the Bank

-=Good Selling=-