Tagged With "Clients"
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COVID19 "Remote Working" Day Twenty-One of Sales
Another day, another dollar. Actually a great reminder that we can make what ever we want when we want. I may need to bag that for the better days that lie ahead. Our brilliant Governor just extended the "stay at home" order until May 20th! That's what I heard on the news today. I need to double check that, and if it's true I'm thinking that he'll be bumping heads with our President in the near future. Says he'll re-evaluate the states progress at that time. We need to open the state back up...
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MSP & MSSP Industry Notes for April 18th, 2020
MSP & MSSP Industry Notes Sponsored by Arcoa Group ARCOA Group is here to help you successfully manage your IT Asset Disposition process. We help you recover value from retired electronic equipment through responsible methods of reuse and recycling. We ensure proper handling of assets which may contain data, while being environment stewards for assets that have no reuse value and are headed for recycling. We’ve built a robust de-manufacturing process to offer additional options for asset...
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COVID19 "Remote Working" Day Forty-Seven of Sales
I am so looking forward to having an extra day off next week! The last 75 days have been extremely stressful. It will be nice to have three days to wind down a bit. Does anyone feel like me that this year is taking forever to unfold? Most years it seems that the months and quarters fly by. So far this year seems like everything is going in slow motion. I had a plan for today and it consisted of researching three possible existing clients for upgrades along with prospecting via the phone,...
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COVID19 "Remote Working" Day Thirty-Nine of Sales
For some reason sleeping last night didn't go that well. I worked late and by the time I finished last nights blog my mind was running at full speed as I tried to get to to sleep. Too many deals in my head! Last night my wife mentioned that she wanted to go see our granddaughter today. Am I bad guy? All I thought about was how much I wanted to get done today. I had a 1PM appointment that I moved to 3PM with a net new suspect late yesterday. i made the time because it's what we do. This...
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COVID19 "Remote Working" Day Three of Sales
Starting today my wife is now working from home, thus I had the pleasure of setting her office up in one of our spare bed rooms. I really do hate being the IT guy at home. Never fails that it's my fault that when there's a network or connectivity issue. Never the less that telechat appointment I had for this AM cancelled early and rescheduled for next week. The only saving grace to the day is that one of my clients asked me to provide them with final docs for a wide format MFP. Not holding...
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COVID19 "Remote Working" Day Thirty-Three of Sales
Yippee! Tomorrow is Friday woohoo! Seems like Sunday will be the best day of the week and finally a day in the seventies. Can you guess what I'll be doing? Nope, not the beach since Sandy Hook National Recreation Area is still closed. Give up yet? My day will be spent pulling weeds and not the weed you smoke. From about 5PM till about 9PM tonight I was thinking about what the frak am I going to write about tonight? It's not an easy task to write every day let alone find that one thing you...
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COVID19 "Remote Working" Day Thirty-Seven of Sales
Thirty-seven business days now since I was optioned to working from my home office. The average number of selling days is twenty-two per month. Five days from now it will be two solid business months and 66% of the quarter. Our fearless and blessed Governor just extended his Executive Order for his Emergency Act for another thirty days in the State of New Jersey. I'm kinda torn about this now, 30 more days of working from home could be a good thing since I'm on such a roll and who wants to...
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Re: Share The Wonder of New Technology With Your Prospects and Clients
Darrel, nice post. I've actually made the commitment to develop my own list of clients that embrace technology. From here on in, once a month I will publish my own "technology hub" newsletter and send through constant contact. May take me a few hours to do the first one, however, after that it should take no more than an hour per month. That one hour per month is time well spent and I hope to generate additional sales by keeping my clients updated with technology. Art
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Re: What is Business Workflow? "Part One"
Hi Art Dan Cellucci here from Copiers Plus. I have been at CP for 26 years. I have been doing a lot of workflow solution thru ricoh champs program and on our own with NSI Autostore etc I would love to be included in the blog etc Just wrapped up a workflow with Barcodes. Talk to you soon Happy Holidays. Dan
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Re: Selling Copiers "Reading Between the Lines"
Art, this article is a quandary that I'm sure everyone's experiencing more of. It's often you field the email request or phone request with the information they think they need and "just send me a quote". Unless they're a solid customer I almost always push for and get the appointment. I usually leave a voicemail, but not with the information requested, typically I ask for a call back and then also follow that up with a quick email saying I left a voicemail, give me a call back. I can attest...
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Re: Selling Copiers "Reading Between the Lines"
Art, well put and so true. We have to use the technology advances of email and vmail to keep up with the pace. We have to be very careful on choosing between the live personal transaction or electronic. First, if someone doesn't know who you are through a preceding live chat, there can be misinterpretation of what you leave them. They may not know how to take it, or ignore it regardless if the message conveys value. We always need to take into account that we don't know when an electronic...
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Re: Selling Copiers "Reading Between the Lines"
TML Hopefully our VP of Major will be in today and we'll find out how that went. I will let you know. Art
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Re: Selling Copiers "Reading Between the Lines"
John I'm going back to the eighties now, I will not email, fax, mail or give a pricing over the phone. If that's not acceptable for the client then they can go find someone else.
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Re: Selling Copiers "Reading Between the Lines"
In the scenario your VP asked you about, I would let them know our typically delivery/install process and the associated timelines and would ask if they would like me to email them the necessary paperwork or schedule a time to review it together. If the contact says yes, we're likely moving forward in the process. If he says no, it makes it easy for me to find out why he is asking & gives me a platform for uncovering and addressing his objections. I would withhold any mention of...
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How Much Do I Insure My Leased Copier For?
How much do I insure my leased copier for? Was a discussion I had with one of the sales rep in our office yesterday. From time to time, we will field calls from the clients asking how much to insure the leased copier for. The client then needs to submit that information to their insurance agent in order to produce a rider for the leasing company. Let me back up a moment. When a copier is leased, whether it's a dollar buy-out option or Fair Market Value, all of the leasing companies require...
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Selling Copiers "Reading Between the Lines"
Cone of Silence Muchof the content that I use for my blogs comes from the daily grind of selling hardware & software. There will be days when I hear something unique,have a conversation witha client or aspark if imagination that will cause me to write. Actually, yesterday wasone of those days.Our VP of Major Accounts came over to my humble abode of 24 square feet and asked me about an he email he had received from a potential...
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A Few Reasons Why We Still Need to be Closers
In recent months I've been reading more blogs and LinkedIn pulse articles that are touting the new sales methodology , the more I read the more I hate them. After doing research on the author I find that the author was never in sales or had a really short career (thus the reason they are writing and not selling). The one common thread in most of these articles, is the point that clients aka prospects do not want to be closed with the old traditional selling...
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10 Ways to Close Net New Business #2 of #10
Ah, net new business has been a hot topic with me in recent days. Adding net new customers at the rate of three per month can add up quickly. Thirty six net new accounts per year can per a tremendous upside when the renewals come due, in...
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How Do You Get Most of Your Appointments?
Appointments, we love to have em, and we hate to have to prospect for them. Wouldn't it be grand to wake up every day and have four appointments scheduled for each day of the week that you didn't have to spend the time...
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What is Business Workflow? "Part One"
Workflow has been on my mind a lot in recent months. In order to remain current and successful in this industry I need to step it up a bit and be looking for additional workflow opportunities. What is workflow? It's my guess that we'll see many different definitions of workflow from the different guest bloggers I have lined up. For me, workflow means that I can shorten a manual business process, which would then save the client hours of labor. In addition, the client...
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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...
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A Great Tip for "Why Referrals Still Matter"
Wrote this many years ago when I first started writing, I clean up a few things and added a few things to keep the blog current. Clients are more skeptical than ever. How do you win the sale when your prospect knows nothing about you,...
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Position Yourself as the Print Assessment Guru
Do you feel that you're the one of the best at selling MFP's & MPS? Do you consult more to the end user and then let the customerpry the orderfrom you? Are you consistently producing print assessment reports for customers that have an ROI? If so, you need to add this weapon to your arsenal. In your territory look up the 10 largest CPA firms. Once you have them, be prepared to make the calls to success! CPA firms rely on selling their services. They have...
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Share The Wonder of New Technology With Your Prospects and Clients
Yesterday I joined Tim Cook in child-like wonder as he demonstrated how to answer a phone call on a watch—something I’ve wanted to do since I was a child. It was a simple and powerful moment. Of the long list of incredible things an...
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Why Do Copier Reps Want to Push Document Management to My Company?
Document management is becoming a bit more popular as some systems have come down in price enough for smaller businesses to be able to afford. With every technology, there is a push to get new clients. Document management is no...
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Four Common Mistakes Rookie Copier Sales Rep Make
Thirty seven years of copier sales has been a blessing. In those years, I've seen it all, and just when I think I can't learn anything new about copiers or sales is when I'm proven wrong. You can never stop increasing your knowledge of the industry nor your selling skills. 1) Resting on Your Laurels: Fantastic, you've made your annual quota, you're also in route to your first Presidents Club Trip. Golly, you did all of this in your first year! You're thinking this is pretty easy right? Now...
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Copier Reps: 3 Alternatives To Avoid Getting Beat Up On Price
This product sucks! No one is buying now! Our competitor has a lock on the business! It is our service department's fault! Our pricing is way out of whack! The more copier reps and their managers can be honest with themselves about what went wrong in a sales opportunity, the easier it will be to correct mistakes and limit the number of lost sales in the future. A commodity mindset has developed with buyers inside the copier channel because copier reps, sales managers and dealer principals...
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57 Days of Selling Copiers "Day One"
Had a bit of extra time this AM, since my first appointment was at 9AM. No sense in leaving the house at 7AM to get to the office at 8AM and then travel an hour to my 9AM appointment. I scheduled the 9AM appointment (net new) last week, it was more of a follow up appointment to make sure I'm in play for 100 plus units. Still many months away, but I already know the players, it's gonna be tough to knock out the incumbent. Appointment went well, I squeezed some additional info out of them.
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57 Days of Selling Copiers "Day 6"
For the rest of the blog series, I'll be posting pictures from Previous President's Club trips. That should only increase the desire to get there this time around! You ever have one of those days where something happens in the AM, and then the rest of the day turns to crap? Yup, happened to me this AM. I arrived in the office just about 8:30AM after my minor fiasco. I had an email from a current client last night stating they wanted to move forward with an A4 color system. Thus, I needed to...
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57 Days of Selling Copiers "Day 9"
Today was a day like another other day at the Jersey Shore, the Sun still rose in the East, the ocean still sent it's countless waves ashore and I was off to work. Dagnabit, it was such a beautiful day for October in New Jersey! I had one early appointment at 9AM for that wide format color scanner I spoke about the other day. Funny, how thrifty some clients can be. The first question was centered around, "can I rent a wide format color scanners for a few months?", the second, "do you have...
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57 Days of Selling Copiers "Day 10"
Woke up, fell out of bed Dragged a comb across my head Found my way downstairs and drank a cup And looking up, I noticed I was late Found my jacket grabbed my hat Made my car in seconds flat Arrived at the office and had a smoke And somebody spoke and I went into a dream Ah, I read the sales board today, oh boy Four hundred copiers sold in one month And though the copiers were kind of small They had excellent spiffs for them all Then, I woke up and it was the beginning of "Day 10". I do love...
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57 Days of Selling "Day 49"
I figure by the end of this week, I'll down to counting the hours left until the end of the sales year rather than the days. I need quite a lot of meetings and appointments to go just right, and I'm coming around the notion that I may not be able to get to where I want to be. I've never been a quitter and at this point, I'm not going to lay down and give up. There was not much going on today, it was my plan to be in the office all day to see if I can gather some additional appointments for...
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Little Diddy about our vCIO
There's an old saying that excellent CEO's and business owners surround themselves with excellent people. Popamora Point Last Saturday morning, the wife and I decided to take a short 5 minute ride to our poor persons beach club on Sandy Hook Bay. Popamora Point offers a secluded sandy beach, calm waters, and a kick butt view of the NYC skyline. There's no more than twenty parking spots, thus we needed to get there early. That weekend, just like any other weekend is time for me to turn off my...
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Copier Sales, Realationship Building and Commonality Garners Orders
Short story about two appointments I had later in the day. Well, not really appointments but rather stop ins with two existing accounts. One of those accounts was a net new from three months ago, where we were able to place a new wide format. The other was a seasoned account that had informed me months ago, that he was interested in upgrading to a faster system for printing and scanning. Up until about a week ago, I didn't have a system that was available that I felt comfortable in selling.
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Attention Sales Reps: Is Your Digital Self, Digitally Referrable?
"Referrals aren't easily given. If you don't take the time to establish credibility, you're not going to get the referral. People have to get to know you. They have to feel comfortable with who you are and what you do" Ivan Misner How is your digital sales rep doing? I know, what the heck are you talking about? As a sales professional think of your online presence as the digital sales representation of you. How you choose to use your digital self will have a direct effect on your sales...
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Why Should I Talk To You? Does Your Value Proposition Open Sales Doors?
"How do we differentiate ourselves enough that they (prospects) want to talk to us and not feel as if they are getting the same story they hear from every other sales rep?" What language are you speaking to your clients and prospects? Speaking their language will accelerate your sales and make the brand YOU more engaging. Quite simple, cut out the fancy words, cut out the B.S. sales jargon and stop trying to develop creative ways to describe your value proposition. Just describe how you help...
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Why Should I Talk With You Continued... Don't Be An Empty Suit!
What makes you valuable as a sales professional? People won’t ever engage in a business conversation nor buy from you if they don’t even understand why they should pay attention to you. In Why Should I Talk To You? Does Your Value Proposition Open Sales Doors? I asked you to think about what sets you apart from your competitors? It is up to you to prove it. The sad state is most sales reps just don’t flat do it. Instead, they try to impress prospects with general promises, corporate...
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Sometimes We Forget to Mention all of the Value We Provide When Selling Copiers
Tonight, I find myself doing an over night in Philadelphia, PA. My day tomorrow will consist of consuming additional knowledge about ink technology which will one day replace toner technology. However, that's not want I want to blog about tonight. Last night i found my self working two quotes an emailing potential new clients all the way up until 10:30PM or so. I had to put in the extra hours for the hours I would lose tomorrow. One of those clients was in the market for a replacement of...
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The Death of the Cost Per Page Billing Model
Guess what's coming to your business neighborhood? Did ya give up yet? Yes, the cost per click aka the cost page could become the billing model of the past. Seat Based Billing with Print Audit About a year ago Print Audit released a Seat Based Billing model for MPS engagements, The gist of the billing model is to bill a monthly flat fee per employee in order for the user to have printing rights. The amount billed per employee covers support, parts, software and consumable items for those...
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Many Reasons Why You Don't Buy A Copier from from the Web
With a recent appointment, my sales process took a few steps back when my prospect (net new client) challenged my pricing for a new A3 black Ricoh device. They stated that the price of the same device on the web was $2,500 less than my price and wanted to know WHY we were so much more expensive. Just as my prospect has the power of the web, so do I. After asking a few questions I was able to find the same web store and model that they were referencing. After a few minutes I was able to...
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Why We Still Need Legacy Sales Skills
I'm probably going to go a little off topic here and there, however please bear with me. A few minutes ago I finished up reading "Why a Lifelong Salesperson Thinks Salespeople Are Unnecessary". That the 80%of the purchasing process will take place without human to human contact by 2020, threw me for a loop! Dang, that's only three years from now! The blogger wrote about a software company that has NO salespeople, and that they grew to 450 million in revenue in 15 years. The gist of the blog...
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What is a Zero Turn Scanning Productivity Center?
Hand feed a wide format sheet of paper to be scanned, baby sit that sheet of paper while it's being scanned, then remove the scanned sheet of paper from the scanner. Wait, we're not done yet, and then place that scanned sheet of paper in the "scanned" area. Imagine having to do this one to three hundred times a day, and five days a week. What an incredible waste of time, right? When it comes to wide format scanners and most wide format multifunctional devices, our clients are doomed to that...
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Sales Leaders... Why Is Your Sales Team Referring To Your Customers As Customers?
"The quality of your life as a sales rep is based upon the quality of your relationships" We would all agree, customer experience matters more now than ever before and sales reps who don’t adapt to a customer-led mindset through personalization will fall further behind and suffer major customer churn. In today's modern business world, full of business intelligence, marketing automation tools and social media, your customers and prospects are expecting a different type of interaction; one...
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Transforming How Sales Professionals Develop New Business by Integrating Social into the Sales Process
Mediocre, average, unexceptional, ordinary, complacent - these aren’t qualities that usually come to mind when we consider successful salespeople. What is one key trait to expect of salespeople who make an impact, achieve success and smash their sales targets? Being insanely curious is a required character trait if you wish to master business disruptions. All sales professionals put learning on overdrive. A naturally curious salesperson can put themselves in the customer’s shoes, get to the...
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57 Days of Selling "Day 23"
I'm not going to get into a lot of details, because there was not much going on for Friday. I had two stops and one appointment scheduled for the day. The stops were due to some issues with one client about supplies and another client with mobile printing. I could have handled one of them on the phone, but I wanted to get in from of the client fort two reasons. One is that mobile print tends to be a little tricky and I wanted to make sure I asked for a referral in person rather than over the...
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Enabling Innovation is both Old and New
I'd like to introduce Mitch Filby as our guest blogger. I had the chance to catch up with Mitch at Itex 2019 in Las Vegas earlier this year. Mitch and I connected many years ago through this site and I've been asking if he would write a blog for us. Mitch is from Australia and is Managing Director of First Rock Consulting. Enabling Innovation is both Old and New Will divestment, organisational and structural splits, re-investment and a greater focus on core business help to save the office...
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Want to SEE an actual copier quote get created in under 3 minutes?
Note from Art; I use this tool almost everyday, it saves incredible amounts of time and can simplify the process for new reps for quoting. In addition many of us senior reps need manage our clients with emails, phone calls, on-site and your time becomes limited. Thus this tool becomes the perfect choice when you need to get a quote/proposal finished in minutes. As @Ray Stasiezcko would say Jesse is bring the future of quoting to the present Enjoy ! Want to SEE an actual quote...
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Why Don't You Have a Copier Technology Budget?
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...