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MFP Wars, basically I've never seen anything like the past year in the last 27 years of selling copiers. Direct Branches from KonicaMinolta, Ricoh, and Toshiba are basically selling MFP systems at cost or a few dollars above in order to acquire the aftermarket business. How long can this last? My bet is it will last as long as the deep pockets of the manufacturers will permit it.

rest of aritcle is here http://www.mfpsolutions.blogspot.com
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Art...it's all about market share, especially in color! the head of our service department said that last 2006 our color was only 1% of total placement, but made up for 6% of total aftermarket/service revenue. After the 2nd quarter of this year it was 3% of units, but nearly 23% of aftermarket/service. so the direct writers could give a rip about GP on the units when there is that much to be made on the backend. for them, if the rep makes it, fine. if not there are replacements graduating every semester to take their place. sad...but true
gotcha, we have to continue re-iventing and re-investing in our solutions and our offerings to the end users.

It seems in the past two months were I have developed the lead, developed the need and then took them through the process at the last moment a Direct Rep stumbled across the customer and then took all of the margin out of the deal, thats fustrating!

At times I thought it was too co-incendental that two of the 3 accounts were incumbments and RBS ran across them, makes me wonder sometimes where the Aficio League Spiff information goes, gee I wonder if it ever filters down to the RBS channel, if so I'd be selling my soul for $100. Hoping I am way off base here and that info is kept confidential.
i am in the same situation with an account right now. did an analysis for a business and had everything set, demo went out and everything was fine then a dealer came in undercut the deal and all of the hard work AND gp went out the window. the nice thing is it doesn't happen all of the time.

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