Copier Sales Proposals "Pricing on the Street"

Just wanted to give you all a heads up. I've uploaded new "Pricing on the Street" with aggressive cpc pricing. Street Pricing from Ricoh, IKON, Xerox and KonicaMinolta.

Special thanks to the Print4Pay Hotel members that sent them to me for uploading.


If you're selling MFP's, or still calling them copiers, the Print4Pay Hotel currently has 6 active message boards for Ricoh Family Group, Sharp, KonicaMinolta, Kyocera , Canon and Xerox P4P In the early spring of 2009, we will launch Toshiba and OCE P4P Message Boards!

The Print4Pay Hotel averages 80,000 page views a month, 2,500 views a day and over 210,000 hits a month. Our message boards have over 60,000 threads related to copiers/MFP's, Solutions and Solutions Sales, we are the Global Resource on the Web for Copier Sales Professionals, Copier Sales Managers, and Dealer Owners and Principals!

These quotes were recently uploaded:

Ricoh PRo C900
IKON 660
KonicaMinolta bizhub PRO C6501
Xerox 700 DCP

Also uploaded were two bids, one for 36 MFP's and the other for 16 MFP's


You must be a member to view the pricing or the bids! Start by following the link below.

http://www.p4photel.org/

Copier Sales "Vertical Market Approach"

Today's offering from manufacturers is overwhelming to say the least. I can remember starting out on the business where one of the requirements is that you had to own or have access to a station wagon! One of the basic routines was to load a copier in the morning and then go cold calling, and it you found a hot prospect you would ask them if they would like to see a demonstration of the product. When they replied yes, you stated "great, I have one in the car, where can we do the demonstration? Yes, the good ole days when doors weren't locked, no soliciting signs were not the order of the day along with any intercoms and cameras to allow access.

Since, 2001 I have taken a vertical market approach to selling, having a territory that is high in NOPA ratings allows for a multitude of possible accounts. The vertical market that I concentrate on is Construction; which incorporates architects, engineers, general contractors, contractors, surveyors, mechanical contractors, and security systems companies.

Focusing on a vertical market allows me to learn more about each of this business and how they print, copy, fax and scan on a daily basis. I have become very familiar with the terms and their language, and boy does this help when trying to open the doors for discussion or attempting to dig for a solution that you might be able to present. Knowing their language positions you as the expert and the consultant that they can rely on for up to date solutions. It's really not as big a world as everyone thinks it is, most companies know of everyone else in their industry and have at last heard of them.

Here's how I started, I started with wide format systems for a few reasons. One the competition is not as fierce as regular copiers and the margins are usually higher due to the fact that there are only a few manufacturers. Plus the volume of paper that's needs to be copied, printed and faxed is enormous.

Focus on your smaller architectural firms that have 5-15 employees, most of the time when cold calling in person or when calling on the telephone you will be able to get to the owner of the firm. From there you need to use your skills to close for an appointment or a demonstration. Once you have sold an architectural firm you must ask for references, you can ask for Mechanical Engineers, General Contractors or Excavators and even Landscape Architects. All of these will have a need for wide format, copiers, scanners and fax. By the way, you can also go back to all of the wide format accounts and then solicit them for copiers, printers and fax.

Keep the ball rolling; use the "6 foot" approach when working the vertical market. Whenever you get within six feet of them ask them if they are need of saving time or saving money with their wide format documents.

I developed a mailing list for the wide format vertical market and every month I send out mailers to them. I do this in quarters, meaning the first month is for wide format, the second month is for MFP's and the third month is for software solutions (ecopy desktop, fax server software). Each quarter I repeat the process, after about one right or nine mailings, you will have clients calling you!

You can get your lists from Trade Associates, just go on the Internet and do a search for type of companies that you are interested. After the mailing I will also conduct phone calls and in person cold calls to the accounts. Conducting your prospecting this way will insure that you will get an audience sometime in the future.

Become a member for these trade organizations and offer to sponsor a meeting; most of these associations will have monthly or quarterly meetings. We have done a few of these and are always looking to do more. Nothing is better than having a captive audience and showing that you are recommended by their Trade Association.

Vertical Market Selling allows you to become an Expert in their business in a short amount of time and also allows you to spend more time with learning Features, Advantages and Benefits of the hardware that will be suit their needs.

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Weekend Indsutry Notes 5.24.09

The following is a quick review of copier/MFP industry news from various trade publications.

- Xerox stunned reporters when it announced that its popular CEO, Anne Mulcahy, would step down on 7/1/09. She will replaced by current president, Ursula Burns. She announced the company would reduce its research & development spend to $883 million.

- Hundreds of retired Xerox workers are picketing at the company headquarters as they are upset that Xerox stopped providing them with $1400 per year to cover healthcare costs. The move will supposedly save the Xerox $11 million per year.

- In a move to promote its managed print services program, PagePack, Xerox is now offering 250 free color clicks per month for the first year.

- Bowing to pressure from its Indigo printshop customers, Hewlett Packard announced it will scale back its MarketSplash on-line site that was supposed to sell printing to end users. HP has eliminated all advertising for the site and will shut down the site entirely in September. It will relaunch it later this year merely as a site to assist owners of HP desktop printers.

- Konica Minolta launched the Nassenger VII, which is a high speed, wide format, color inkjet printer designed to print on textile/fabric. It features 512 nozzle printheads to deliver a print speed of 210 square meters per hour, on fabric that is 1850 millimeter wide.

- Konica Minolta announced it is partnering with Guided Therapeutics Inc. of Norcross, GA to develop non-invasive cancer detection products using LightTouch technology.

- Kyocera launched its own managed print services program, FASTtrack, for its dealers, based on software from FMAudit.

- Competing against Kyocera color laser MFPs? Apparently their new models do not use polymerized toner, and use a fuser oil web. This old technology can create image consistency problems when the fuser rollers dry out over a long run.

- Borrell Associates released a stuffy that predicts that spending on direct mail will decline 39% during the next 5 years. The company believes that more marketers will move to e-mail advertisements. If this prediction is true, this does not bode well for growth of full color production print system volume.

- Former IBM Business Unit Executive, Michael Maupin, has joined The Water Training Institute, which will launch its Certified Managed Print Services Sells Program on 9/16/09 in Philadelphia, PA.

- Fedex Kinkos has sold its locations in England to The Color Company for an undisclosed sum.

- XPEDX launched a new line of paper designed for production color systems, called “Endurance Digital”
- advanced surface for uniform color application and toner adhesion
- 91 brightness
- Gloss and silk coatings
- Contains 15% post consumer waste fiber

- Ricoh announced that several of its production print systems won Editor’s Choice award from Better Buys For Business magazine, including the Pro C900, Pro 906EX, 1106EX and 1356EX.

- Ricoh announced its last quarter’s financials:
- total revenue declined from 579 billion yen to 523 billion yen
- copier/printer revenue down 10.6%
- copier/printer profit down 90%
- operating margin was negative 2.3% , as compared with 9% last year
- net income declined form a profit of 21 billion yen to a loss of 23 billion yen

- Ricoh announced it is now offering account tracking software from Technesis. The Technisis Print Control System offers:
- tracks by user, group and/or device
- can differentiate between color and b/w pages
- offer print assessments
- rules based messages promoting better printing efficiency
- delivers summary reporting
- tracks copies, scan, faxes and prints
- integrates with ODBS compliant databases, ERP systems

- Oce’ reported a 60% increase in sales of used copiers, claiming it sold 5,000 units in 2008. In addition, over 90% of these were leased, rather than purchased outright.

Xerox ColorQube Reveal "Part Deux"

Special thanx for a Print4Pay Hotel Member who posted this on the KonicaMinolta P4P Message Boards!!

Xerox revealed more details on how it plans on charging for color clicks with its new wax color copier, the ColorQube 9200 series:

- The “Useful Color “ mode will be billed at 1 cent per copy, the same as a b/w document. However, end user can only use a maximum of 1.2% color coverage on a letter size page. For example, this would be a logo that is less than 8 tenths of an inch wide, made with only one color
(cyan, magenta or yellow).

- The “Everyday Color” mode will be billed at 3 cents per copy. However, end user can only use a maximum of 8% color coverage on a letter size page. For example, this could be a logo that is slightly more than 1.3” wide, that uses all 4 colors of wax.

- The “Expressive Color” mode will be billed at 8 cents per copy, and will be charged if using more color than 8%.

- Neither the control panel or the print driver tells the end user how much color is on the page, so the end user will not know what they are being charged until they run a report showing which mode was used.

- Therefore, the end user may be quite surprised how much their click charge bill is even if they did not use much more color than a new logos or colored headlines.

- If end user chooses to buy the wax chunks separately, the cost is:
- Each color wax chunk has yield of 9,250 pages, but is based on letter size page with only 5% coverage, with box of 4 selling for $176
- Black wax yield of 10,000 pages, with box of 4 selling for $570
- Cleaning unit, with yield of 200,000 pages
- document feed roller kit has yield of 150,000 pages
- replacement feed tires for paper drawers have yield of 600,000 pages
- Details on the wax spray print heads:
- uses 4 printheads to cover width of paper
- each printhead is size of a deck of playing cards
- each hot wax nozzle is 37.5 microns wide
- nozzles fire at 43KHz
- each printhead as 880 nozzles (220 per color), which if clogged, causes lines in print
- produces 150 million drops of hot wax spray per second

Make sure you do your research on this unit, I can't verify all of the pixel usage for the cpc, all I can tell you is that it comes from a reliable source.

-=Good Selling=-

HP & Other Office Equipment Profits Plunge!

Special thanx to a Print4Pay Hotel member for this information:

- Canon reported its last quarter’s financials:

- Revenue down from 1 trillion yen to 700 billion yen
- Net income down from 107 billion yen to 17.7 billion yen
- Net sales down 31.8%
- imaging revenue down 35.1%
- operating earnings fell 63.8%
- printer sales down 41.9%
- cut its research & development spend from $808 million to $739 million
- Copier sales down 34.7%
- Profit down 63.8%
- forecasts that its operating margin will be only 5.1% compared with 12.1% last year

- Hewlett Packard gave out details of its second quarter fiscal
year performance:
- profits fell 17% to $1.7 billion
- sales dropped 5%
- currently has 321,000 employees
- will build a $260 data center in Colorado Springs,
will close a call center their that employs 800
- will build a call center in Rio Rancho, NM to employ 1,350
- overall, will let go of 6,400 employees to cut costs
- mandatory 5% cut in company wide salaries
- printer sales down 31%


- Fuji (maker of most Xerox products) reported its last quarter’s financials:

- Revenue down from 709 billion yen to 530 billion yen
- Operating income down 42.7%


- Lexmark reported its last quarter’s financials:

- operating profit down 40%
- revenue down 20% to $944 million
- printer/MSP sales down 30%
- announced it had won managed print services bids from
Boeing, Coca-Cola and Union Bank of California
- overhead will be cut by $47 million
- operating expenses cur by $32 million
- will close its Juarez, Mexico inkjet cartridge plant


- Epson reported its last quarter’s financials:

- Revenue declined from 310 billion yen to 216 billion yen
- Net income declined from a loss of 3 billion yen to loss of 123 billion yen
- Sales down 30.4%

- Peerless, maker of generic print controllers, announced its
last quaterfinancials
- Revenue declined from $9.3 million to $2.2 million
- Gross margin decreased from 65.2% to 30.3%

- Samsung announced its last quarter’s financials:

- Net income dropped 72%
- Revenue rose 9%


- Sharp reported its last quarter’s financials:

- Revenue was down from 3.4 trillion yen to 2.8 trillion yen
- Net income was down from 101.9 billion yen to a loss of 125 billion yen
- Copier sales down 14.4%

- Zoran, maker of generic print controllers, reported its last quarter’s financials:

- Revenue declined from $109 million to $68 million
- Net income declined from loss of $4.7 million to a loss of $21 million

- Brother reported its last quarter’s financials:

- Revenue fell 25% to $1.43 billion
- Posted operating loss of $39 million
- Printer sales down 20.4%

-=Good Selling=-

Xerox unveils breakthrough color technology with ColorQube!

To say the least, the Qube is hot, depending how you look at it. A little over a week ago we posted a poll on the board here, we asked "What do you think about "Xerox unveils breakthrough color technology?"

In a little over a week we've had 171 votes, this poll is hot and may top our all time poll in a few weeks. Here's the latest update for you.


Xerox "unveils breakthrough color technology"

Wow, this will turn the color market up side down! 63 37%
A lot of hype about nothing, not a big deal! 63 37%
I'm gonna have to see how this pans out! 45 26%

171 votes total

-=Good Selling=-

Major MPS Provider Reports 12 Million Stolen Pages!

Call da Cops Major MPS Provider Reports 12 Million Stolen Pages!

Crime Scene Investigation:

"This is the city. New York, New York, I work here...I'm a cop"

It was Monday May 18th, another day like any other day, but a scorcher in New York City. We were working bunko when we got a call from Dick Richards of HP's reporting that 12 million printed pages were stolen from them.

Pep and I drove out to Richards place early that morning at their Corporate Campus. Richards informed us that their largest account Acme Supply Company had been producing 500,000 pages a month on their laser printers. Richards also stated that Hewledd Packerd supplies ACME Supply Company with all of their printer cartridges and support. So we asked "Where's the crime?" Richards stated that every month they would receive orders totaling thousands of dollars for printers, supplies and service from Acme Supply Company, however in the last three months Acme Supply has not ordered any printers, printer cartridges nor needed service on any printers. Richards claims that someone or something stole his pages! Hm-mmm, so I suggested to Pep that we take a ride out to Acme Supply Company to investigate.

Later that day, we drove over to 54th Street and Lexington, on another blistering summer day in the City. When at Acme Supply Company we were scheduled to meet with Sally Smith (the IT Director).

Sally invited us into the office and we began the grilling process. Pep asked Sally "We've gotta crime here, Dick Richards at HP'S claims that 12 million printed pages were stolen from them", “What can you tell us?" Sally leaned forward and asked us if we were out of our minds, "no ma’am, we're not, just give us the facts", said Joe. Sally (IT Manager) stated that she had met with ALCO MFP Solutions Corp about four months ago (It seems that Alco has about 20 multifunctional print and copy devices along with their printers) and they demonstrated MIF (machines in field) review with fantastic software Print Audit 6 and Rules Based Printing. "hm-mmm" we thought. Joe asked “What’s so special about this Print Audit 6?” Sally then went on to tell us that  the  Print Audit 6 and rules based printing we were able to customize our print workflow to print to less expensive output devices, force printing to two sides, limit user access and we were able to decrease our wasted prints by at least 8%! . "I see, so we still have the crime of the missing pages, where did they go" stated Joe. "That's simple, all of the pages were redirected to ALCO MFP Solutions Corp, the Print Audit 6 software redirected all of those pages to their systems that saves us almost .02 cents a page" said Sally. Joe turned and looked at Ben, "So Joe, what we got here is that ACME Supply Company saved $240,000 dollars by enabling Print Audit 6 and Rules based printing" said Ben. "Hm-mmmm” Joe replied, "Maybe we need to go back to Dick Richards and arrest him for trying to rip off ACME"

Joe and Ben left Acme that afternoon with an understanding that there was no crime committed, just two savvy companies that got together and ousted some joker that was overcharging them for cartridges and service with some new gimmick.

"Joe whadda think, what kinda report are we gonna file" stated Ben. "People who saw it happen - but really didn't. People who insist they did it - but really didn't. People who don't remember - those who try to forget. Those who tell the truth - those who lie. You'll run the files until your eyes ache, it's just another case of someone being overcharged" Stated Joe.

I had fun with this and I hope you all enjoyed the story, Print Audit Rocks!!

-=Good Selling=-

Weekend MFP Industry Notes 5/10/09

Special thanks to the Print4Pay Hotel Member that supplied us with this update.

Canon may restart construction on its gigantic new headquarters building in Melville, NY. The company originally planned to move from Lake Success, NY to the new site, but then stopped its preparation for the new site, when the economy slowed. Now the state of New York and Suffolk County are offering $100 million in tax incentives to convince Canon to complete the project.

Oce’ announced it is now offering MICR toner capability for the VarioStream 8000 series of continuous feed production systems for high-speed check printing.

Konica Minolta now offers an option for its MFPs to use HID employee badges to authenticate to track and control usage and security. What some may not know is the origins of the HID cards:
- HID is acronym that stands for Hughes Identification Device
- Was invented by Hughes Aircraft, founded by inventor Howard Hughes
- This radio frequency technology was invented using 125 kilohertz to track aircraft parts
- Company was spun off and is now headquartered in Irvine, CA with 2000 employees and operates offices in 1,000 countries
- There are currently 500 million licensed cards in use

EFI announced its last quarter’s earnings:
- Total revenue down 28.9%
- Fiery revenue down 30%
- Inkjet products revenue down 33%

Xerox announced it has sold one of its iGen4 production color systems to Unite the Union, a trade union in England.

Xerox raised $750 million by selling senior notes, to help the company.

A collation of print shop owners is meeting with Hewlett Packard to express their displeasure over the new HP MarketSplash website, which sells printing on-line.

Hewlett Packard gave out details on its last quarter’s financials:
- total revenue of $27.4 billion, a decline 19%
- sales of PCs and laptops to fall more than 23%

During a demonstration of its color inkjet press, Hewlett Packard revealed that it takes 48 blade servers to RIP data fast enough to keep up with the speed of the 30” wide printing system.

A company is marketing business cards made out of beef jerky, using a 150 watt laser to etch an image into the surface. The company name is MeatCard.

After the company announced that it would sell more stock to raise $5 billion, Toshiba executive HP, Fumio Muraoka said; “If we don’t take any measures, we won’t get out of the gloom.”

After watching its sales decline by 6-8Oce’ in another cost cutting move, announced it would lay off another 800 employees.

A company in India has turned a vacuum cleaner into a printer. The Roomba, was originally a small device that was invented to clean floors, but a company in India has outfitted it with a printhead, and a container of powder. It is used to create patterns on the floor with greetings to guests who arrive for occasions like a wedding.

Fujitsu announced that it will now offer embedded software applications for its desktop, high-speed scanners, using a LCD control panel. It now offers applications from DocuWare and ABBY to allowing scanning directly into document management programs.

Pitney Bowes launched an advertising campaign to promote its managed print services. It is now offering the 13th month free if a customer signs up for 12 months of the program. The company claims it can service HP, Lexmark, Lexmark, Zebra and Datamax printers.

Lexmark released the results of a survey it conducted. It suggests that the federal government wastes more than $1 million daily on printing:
- The total amount it spends is $1.3 billion on printing.
- 92% of the employees surveyed say that they don’t need all the documents that
they print during the day
- average employee prints 7,200 pages annually
- 35% of pages are discarded the same day they are printed

Another copier dealer that sold out to IKON is back in the business. Gray & Creech, which was the largest copier dealer in North Carolina, sold out to IKON in 1994. Now the company has acquired Precise Business Solutions of Greensboro, and will change name to Gray & Creech Office Systems.

In an effort to cut costs, Citibank sent out a memo to its employees that said;
- “The use of color copying and printing dramatically increases our copying and printing costs. Color presentations are unnecessary for internal purposes’ therefore going forward color copying and printing should only be used for client presentations. Also whenever possible, presentations should be printed double sided to reduce unnecessary paper usage. Over time, we will be removing color copiers and printers from the locations where they are not essential for purposes of preparing client presentations”

- “As previously announced, in order to reduce costs and improve efficiency, Global Procurement Services (GPS) will retrieve all employee convenience desktop printers globally in favor of networked group or shared floor printers. Starting the week of May 18, members of IT Desktop Services will remove identified existing desktop printers at your location. We ask that you fully cooperate and provide the team with full access to your desktop printers. We will provide all employees whose printers are removed with detailed instructions on mapping to networked or shared printers and how to print confidential documents.”

Ricoh announced it is now offering classes in Georgia for version 8 of the EFI MicroPress system and the connection that allows it to drive the Ricoh Pro C900 production color system.

Paul Rickett was arrested at the Embers Bar & Grill in Sacramento when he was caught using fake $20 bills created on a color copier.

Xerox ColorQube "Reveal"

Xerox sent out tens of thousands of mailers to prospects this past week to promote its new wax color copier, the ColorQube 9200 series.

Notes:- inside mailer were print samples that showed typical shortcomings of wax prints, including fuzzy photos, and difficulty with fine lines and small text
- apparantly does NOT support coated stocks of any kind (issue with wax adhering to surface)
- note that sometimes banding appears in prints, meaning lines of light color or no color, and end user may choose the “Full Banding Fix” on the control panel, which will take 8 minutes to kick out test pages, and waste wax until complete
- End users are advised not to turn unit off if possible, due to waste of wax, and long warmup times
- End users are advised that if they need to move the unit, they should turn off and wait 30 minutes, so wax cools and hardens and does not splash when unit is moved.
- End users are warned that when replacing the “Cleaning Unit”, it is possible to spill the silicon oil inside, which is used to keep the drum clean
- End users are instructed to remove and replace the waste ink tray, as unit will not operate if it is full

Special thanx to a P4P member who sent me this, I am aware of all of this since it's in the Xerox op manual for the ColorQube. Most importantly is the one that turning "Off" the unit will eat more consumables. Seems to me, it's kinda like ink jet where the ink heads needs to flush.

You can read all of the press releases you want, however you usually don't find this type if info out until you have leased or purchased the system.

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Weekend Indsutry Notes 5/10/09

Xerox announced it sold notes to raise $750 million in cash

Xerox announced the “Color Unleashed” road show to demonstrate the ColorQube to prospective customers:
- Washington, DC on 5/7/09
- Chicago, IL on 5/7/09
- Houston, TX on 5/7/09
- Bloomington, IL on 5/13/09
- Phoenix, AZ on 5/14/09
- Dallas, TX on 5/14/09
- Philadelphia, PA on 5/14/09
- Los Angeles, CA on 5/15/09
- Universal City, CA on 5/19/09

Xerox announced that 300 workers at its Webster, NY campus will be forced to take 6 weeks off.

Xerox announced it has promoted Paul Schulman to President and COO of Global Imaging, reporting to Michael Shea, who is Global’s CEO.

Xerox ended a contract it had with a print-for-pay franchise company in England after the franchise owners found out about kickbacks back to the corp. office. On Demand Communications (ODC) had a preferred supplier contract with Xerox for its Kall Kwik and Prontaprint franchisees, however, apparently ODC never informed its store owners that rebates were going to ODC when the stores acquired Xerox equipment.

Canon, in an effort to make up for loss of distribution through IKON and DANKA, announced it has signed up 11 new dealers in the U.S. Up to 75 more could be added in the next couple of years. Unlike some other manufacturers, with Canon this is a very slow and tedious process.

Canon announced that it has won the “MFP Line of the Year” award for 2008 from Buyers Labs Inc.

Canon announced it sold an imagePRESS C6000 and a C6000VP to a Minuteman Press print shop in Cambridge, MA.

Canon Europe hired Orange Business Services of France to operate its customer call center in Europe.

Toshiba announced that it will hold two regional dealer meetings instead of one large event:
- July 14-16, 2009 at the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas
- July 27-29, 2009 at Hyatt Regency in Jersey City

Toshiba Corp. announced that during last quarter the company lost 184 billion in yen, and did not expect to show a profit this year. It also stated plans to buy a 52% stake in Nuclear Fuel Enterprises of Japan, to expand it nuclear plant division.

Sharp launched three new b/w laser MFPs, the MX-M363N, MX-M453N & MX-M503N featuring:
- Has same cosmetic look as the Sharp “Frontier Series”
- A3 designs, up to 11”x17”
- 36, 45 & 50ppm top speeds
- Optional fax board
- Uses pulverized micro-fine toner
- Auto duplex standard
- 8.5” full color touchscreen LCD control panel
- retractable keyboards
- 35ppm scan speed
- 600x600dpi copy
- 600x600dpi scan
- 1200x1200dpi print
- Maximum paper supply of 5600 sheets with options
- 100 sheet document feeder that scans both sides of original at same time
- While unit only outputs in b/w, it can also scan in color
- Optional internal stapling finisher
- Built-in print/scan controller standard
- 800MHz processor
- 10/100/1000BaseT & USB ports
- 512MB RAM
- 80GB hard drive
- PCL & PostScript print drivers
- OSA technology which allows embedded applications

IKON, a division of Ricoh, announced a new product from EFI, called DocSend Server featuring:
- The original IKON DocSend, is a relabeled version of the EFI SendMe, a competitor of eCopy ScanStation, that is an external device which stands next to an MFP for touch screen
scanning functionality.
- DocSend Server instead uses an embedded application in the Ricoh MFP’s control panel, coupled with an application loaded on to the customer’s server.
- Includes OCR for file conversion to readable PDF, MS Word or MS Excel files.
- Pricing not announced

Ricoh makes a big change at its InfoPrint division, which was acquired from IBM. Out is Tony Romero, in is Ricoh Japan executive, Daisuke Segawa as CEO and President.

Cenveo Corp. of Connecticut, distributor of graphic arts supplies, announced it is purchasing Nashua Corp. of New Hampshire for $44.4 million. At one time, Nashua made generic toner and other consumables that fit Ricoh copiers. As part of a settlement of a lawsuit with Ricoh in 2006, the company left the toner business and focused on supplies and paper for wide format printers.

Seneca Data, a distributor and repair center for Okidata printers, has purchased one of its competitors. It has acquired Agson, Inc.,, which does the same for Lexmark, HP and Citizen printers.

Kyocera announced that it has partnered with three leasing company to offer its dealers a unified leasing program:
- GE Capital
- GreatAmerica
- Wells Fargo

Hewlett Packard conducted an open house to show its beta install of its HP Inket Web Press. The test install is at O’Neil Data Systems in Los Angeles, CA. Details:
- Will ship commercially in late 2009 or early 2010
- 1200x600dpi
- Top speed of 400 feet per minute using rolls of paper
- Uses printhead technology found in the Edgeline MFP
- Two others have asked for beta installs, Courier Corp. and Consolidated Graphics
- 30” wide paper handling
- Uses HP Exstream print server software

A British managed print services company announced plans to open office in the U.S. NewField IT will open office in Clearwater, FL and will be run by Ed Mostellar, VP. He was hired from Lexmark.

Microsoft, which is getting ready to launch its new operating system, Windows 7, has already been hit with anti-trust lawsuits from some of its competitors in the web browsing category.

Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, announced that he would not resign from the board of Apple Computer despite a probe launched by the FTC into whether involvement in both tech companies violates federal antitrust law.

Marvell, maker of generic print controllers, is suing a competitor as it claims the company gained trade secrets when it taped a voice mail inadvertently left by a Marvell lawyer who forgot to hangup his speakerphone.

DocuWare, maker of document management software, announced:
- recorded its 20th year in business
- installed 845 licenses in 2007
- installed 1011 licenses in 2008
- growth rate of 20%
- total revenue of 11.5 million Euro

Top 5 secrets on How to Make $100,000 a Year Selling Printers

Want sell more printers, take a look at what Jesse Harwell does, and the tools that he uses.

Top 5 secrets on How to Make $100,000 a Year Selling Printers:

Tip 1: Color is King.

When you walk into a customer location it is absolutely essential that you ask where the color printers are at and discern what sort of volume they run. The typical copier rep makes the mistake of immediately trying for the home run with a color printer when it is often unnecessary or hard to justify. Let's take an example. A customer prints 2,500 pages a month with 40% coverage (real estate offices, for instance). Most copier reps will work to try and sell a $6,000 to $8,000 copier. These agents don't want to spend that much. If you have them at $.07 per print to $.09 per print... maybe you will make $.02 per click as profit given the coverage numbers. You can make the same amount if you sell the Xerox 8860 and put it on a cost per print plan. For the standard rep, you could charge $.10 per print and make $.05 per click. The added advantage is the box can be sold for $2,400 instead of $8,000. So, let's do the math... 2,500 X $.04 (per color click) X 48 (standard lease term for color lasers) = $4,800GP for supplies plus about $400 for the printer plus a little more for the maintenance contact. You would likely have 1 printer here which resulted in $5,500 in GP. It would be even higher if coverage % was low.

COPIER
Copier Profit (estimate) -- $1,000
Supplies Profit (estimate) -- $2,500
Total Profit -- $3,500
Total Cost to Customer -- $6,000 (let's be conservative) + ($.085 *2,500 * 48) = $16,200

PRINTER
Printer Profit -- $400
Supplies Profit (estimate) -- $4,800
Total Profit -- $5,200 (or $5,500 with maintenance included)
Total Cost to Customer -- $2,400 + ($.09 * 2,500 * 48) = $13,200

So, as a printer rep, I can come in and tell the customer they will spend $4,000 less and I make about $2,000 more in GP. If people have a color printer, they think that's what they need, so there is much less resistance to get them into another printer. It's good for the customer, and it's good for me.

TIP #2 -- What Else do you Have?

When a customer calls in looking for a printer, they often have a fleet of printers. It is important to see what they have because there is pretty much always the printer they are looking at AND the one they SHOULD BE looking at. If they are doing 4,000 prints a month on a HP 2300, do you know how much the 2300 costs per print? If you sell Kyocera, Ricoh, or Konica... you have solutions where you can "give them" a printer and have it be cheaper for them per month when you factor out equipment + supplies + maintenance costs. We can typically give a customer a Kyocera printer with all the toner and maintenance included for the same cost per print as just the toner for an HP 4250. Once you can get a customer to see they are already paying $.02 per click, it is easy to get them into a contract at $.018 per click which INCLUDES a NEW printer and maintenance for the device.

TIP #3 -- IT Professionals are Experts

Most IT people want to feel like an expert, they do not want to feel special like the typical office manager. What does this mean? They want options, they want it to be succinct and they want raw numbers. IT Professionals will not "trust you..." they want to see your numbers on paper where they can go to a favorite shopping or blog site and make sure you are telling them the truth. They want people to respect their choices and derive great satisfaction from being informed and up to date with current technology. They generally care very little about cookies on Fridays or if you remember their birthday or their kids names. Remember that you are speaking to someone who thinks they know more than you do, so you need to help shortcut their research and make them feel comfortable you are giving them good data.


Tip # 4 -- Scratch What Itches --

Too many copier reps are trying so hard to replace a whole fleet of printers with copiers. Many IT people and clients don't want to walk 30 - 100 feet for a print. You need to know what printers are the ones they find the most frustrating. The only thing an IT professional hates more than having a printer every 20 feet is having one that breaks all the time. They know their user won't let the printer go, but they get tired of being bothered with printer problems. Gartner estimates up to 30% of helpdesk calls are printer related. I go through my company service records every few weeks see if there are repeat offenders. When a printer comes up several times, I call up the contact and let them know I noticed they are having a lot of problems with XYZ brand printer. I let them know how much it cost when it was new, what a comparable printer is worth now and then give them a choice. For instance, I will let them know that the HP 4000 they keep repairing was sold for about $1,400. The last 3 service calls cost a combined $600 and a refurbished unit would go for about $600. Since they are having so many problems and since the machine is 8 years old or more, have they considered just putting a sticker on it for the next problem which says "do not repair, call Jesse @ Chess" so that we can help them stip the bleeding. This will get a replacement in mind when they are frustrated and they appreciate I was paying enough attention to call them and let them know I saw a problem.

Tip # 5

Since this is a public forum, I don't intend to publish it online. email me if you want to hear about #5...jesseharwell@gmail.com

Ten Commandments of the Xerox ColorQube

1. Thou shall not leave prints or copies on the dashboard of your car, (water boils at 212 degrees)
2. Thou shall think twice about folding or creasing prints or copies
3. Thou shall wait ???? minutes for system to warm up from cold start
4. Thou shall not tipeth the system when wax is molten
5. Thou shall trust a machine to decide what price tier to charge you when making copies
6. Thou shall trust software to decide what price tier to charge you when making prints
7. Thou shall trust that research shows 75% of all users color print or copy in "everyday color"
8. Thou shall replace the cleaning unit when needed, WARNING SILICON FLUIDS ARE AN EXTREME SLIP HAZARD! Do not spill!
9. Thou shall replace the waste ink tray, since these are not recycled
10. Thou shall not turn the system off, for it is recommended that the device only be turned off if there is an error or the system needs to be moved
    

I know there's only ten, but I'm adding this one:

11. Thou shall dispose of all waste material in accordance with National, Local, State or Federal regulations which are applicable.

Alright, before I get the whiners, I went through the ColorQube manual for and found some of this information.

-=Good Selling=-

Xerox ColorQube in Review

Xerox ColorQube details:- Xerox apparently offers a service/supply contract with three different click rates:

- “Black Plus Useful Color” which is 1 cent per page, and allows a very small amount of color
- “Everyday Color”, is 3 cents per click, is for low quality color, with a moderate use of color
- “Expressive Color” is 8 cents per click, is for high quality color with photos
- Hewlett Packard launched a similar plan when it unveiled the Edgeline color inkjet copier, with very limited success.
- 100 sheet document feeder with top scan speed of 51opm for color and 75opm for b/w
- Up to 300K/month maximum duty cycle
- Xerox claims that this device has one third the moving parts of a traditional color laser MFP, and therefore should require less service.
- Full color touch screen LCD display control panel on top (not on armature)
- Comes standard with two 550 sheet paper drawers that holds up to 11”x17” paper
- Comes standard with tandem letter size paper drawer that holds up to 2100 sheets
- Comes standard with 100 sheet stack bypass that can hold up to 12”x18”
- Optional LCT holds up to 4,000 sheets
- Maximum paper weight is 220gsm/80lb. cover (can not handle 10pt. postcards)
- Optional fax board
- Built-in print controller features:- 1GHz processor
- 1GB RAM for copier memory
- 512MB RAM printer memory
- 80GB hard drive for spooling
- PCL and PostScript printer drivers
- Scan to SMB, FTP, e-mail, LDAP
- 10/100/1000BaseT & USB ports
- Actual maker unknown
- Xerox EIP for embedded applications
- Finishing options include:
- 100 sheet stapling
- z-fold, c-fold
- post process inserter
- booklet making of 15 sheets maximum
- hole-punching
- Submits meter reads automatically with optional Xerox Smart eSoluitions MeterAssistant
- Optional ID card swipe reader for authentication

Keep in mind that if you visit the Xerox site, there is a disclaimed after the Qube calculator that states that these (cost per page pricing) are representative prices and may not be applicable in your area.

Special thanx to a good P4P'er that sent me this!

-=Good Selling=-

Selling Copiers "Selling Against Xerox ColorQube"

Xerox launched the world’s first A3 color wax MFP, the ColorQube 9200 series formerly codenamed Jupiter.

Details:

- Advertised as offering full color pages at 85ppm for $23,500
- Called “Solid Ink” technology, it was first developed by Tektronix Corp. of Wilsonville, Oregon, in 1991, in its original Phaser 300 and 500 series of desktop A4 color printers.
- Xerox bought Tektronix’s color printer division in 2001 for $925 million
- Uses 4 colors of wax chunks (cyan, magenta, yellow & black), which are placed into holes in the top of the unit.
- Each color is a different shape, so you can not put the wrong color in the wrong hole, similar to the Fisher-Price Mailbox toy.
- The machine can hold enough wax to generate up to 58,000 pages based on 5% fill per color per letter size page.
- The wax chunks/crayons, each fall into their own cast iron bathtub, where an internal heater warms up the tubs until the wax melts into a liquid state
- The hot, liquid wax is then sprayed onto a large metal drum
- The metal drum then rolls over the sheet of paper applying the 4 color image
- The wax cools and solidifies before the paper exits the machine
- If the machine is bumped while the wax is hot, the wax can splash out of its cast iron tubs inside the machine, causing damage. Therefore, machine must be unplugged, and allowed to cool down before it is moved. This is also true if technician is going to service the device.
- The machine must stay on all the time**. While it does have a lower power mode, it must still generate heat to keep the wax liquid, otherwise if it hardens, the machine must purge itself of the hardened wax. This purging can use up most of the wax loaded into the unit. This purging is also done during the units cleaning mode, and puts unused wax into an end user replaceable cleaning cartridge, and this is not reusable.
- From a cold start, the machine has a very long warm up time, up to 20 minutes
- When warm, and not in lower power mode, its first copy out time is 7.2 seconds
- From sleep mode, it takes 3 and ½ minutes to warmup
- Unit uses wax spray print heads with 900 nozzles per head, with each nozzle is only 37.5 microns wide
- Xerox spent 5 years and $24 million to build plant to make the wax for this unit.
- Xerox claims that in 4 years the unit will produce only 88lbs. of packaging waste versus the average color laser MFP which supposedly generates 815lbs. of waste. Since most packaging and cartridges used by color laser printers are recyclable, this is very misleading.
- Xerox claims that it will save a customer up to 62% over using a traditional color laser MFP
- Image quality is advertised as offering 600x600dpi, but high quality only achieved when engine slows way down and does not offer true 8 bits per pixel.
- Since the device uses wax, instead of toner, the output can have a waxy look and feel which may be less than desirable. In addition, there is the risk that the wax could re-melt and cause pages to stick together, for example, if the pages were left on the dashboard of an automobile.
- The waxy pages may also stick together if too much pressure is applies, perhaps in a large ring binder.
- Pages that come in contact with the vinyl cover of a folder or ring binder may also stick to the surface as well due to the waxy image.
- Image is not permanent any may smear (in a review of the Phaser 8400, PC World magazine said; “gave the printers a Poor rating as the waxy, solid ink scratches off more easily than does plastic toner fused to paper”
- May have trouble getting waxy pages to run through the document feeder of a copier/MFP
- The waxy pages may also cause difficulty with mailing, handling, archiving, recycling or writing notes on pages

This feed was supplied to me by a p4photel remember, do your research and collaborate on all of this information. There's an old saying "believe nothing of what you hear and only half of what you see"

5/12/09 Update:

-The Xerox ColorQube unit is 2009 Energy Star Certified.
-There is an "on/off" switch for the unit and it does not have to stay on all of the time, the unit also has an intelligent mode to turn on at a programmed time and off at a programmed time.


-=Good Selling=-

Stolen Checks form MFP's and Printers

Tired of having empty paper drawers, could someone be taking your paper, sensitive forms, letterhead or better yet taking your checks from your printer or copier? Check out this new gadjet from Lucas Distibution LLC.

-=Good Selling-=

Copier Sales Proposals "Pricing on the Street"

Just wanted to give you all a heads up. I've uploaded new "Pricing on the Street" with aggressive cpc pricing. Street Pricing from Canon, Ricoh, Xerox and KonicaMinolta.

Special thanks to the Print4Pay Hotel members that sent them to me for uploading.


If you're selling MFP's, or still calling them copiers, the Print4Pay Hotel currently has 6 active message boards for Ricoh Family Group, Sharp, KonicaMinolta, Kyocera , Canon and Xerox P4P In the early spring of 2009, we will launch Toshiba and OCE P4P Message Boards!

The Print4Pay Hotel averages 80,000 page views a month, 2,500 views a day and over 210,000 hits a month. Our message boards have over 60,000 threads related to copiers/MFP's, Solutions and Solutions Sales, we are the Global Resource on the Web for Copier Sales Professionals, Copier Sales Managers, and Dealer Owners and Principals!

These quotes were recently uploaded:

KonicaMinolta bizhub Pro C5501
Xerox DocuColor 242
KonicaMinolta bizhub920
Canon imageRUNNER 105
Canon iR7105
Ricoh Pro 1106ex

Become a member while it's still FREE, talk to your peers, share inspirations, success stories, sales tips, quotes and much more. Start by following the link below.

http://www.p4photel.org/

Who's Afraid of Xerox ColorQube?

The hype was building for weeks about Xerox's substantial breakthrough in the cost of color for the general office. Today at 11:AM in Chicago, Xerox broke the news to the work that we need to use their solid ink multifunctional systems in order to "save the environment" and save money. I'm all about saving money and creating less waste, so I was exciting to see what the hub bub was all about. Late last night I heard it was their solid ink technology that came with the purchase of Textronix many years ago.

So, here's a few didja knows that I found out:

1. The solid ink in held in a molten state which uses more power than an idle laser printer. Statement from Xerox: "The ColorQube does indeed have to keep its ink heated, said Jim Rise, Xerox vice president in charge of solid ink. Some is kept in a "molten" state, which means using more power than a laser machine when it's idle". So, I ask is this something we need in the office place? Will technicians have to wait for the ink to become solid before they work on the device? Wjat about the waste solid chucks, where do they go?
2. From what I remember users can't make notes on the image with either a pen or pencil because of the polymeric resin. Does this still hold true for the ColorQube? You see it all the time in the office, paper documents are marked up, notes, scribble, will I not be able to scribble on my print or copies anymore?
3. Another one from the memory banks and if I'm wrong someone please let me know, when folding color pages with full color the image may crack and peel. I'm about to mail and fold some brochures and the ink will be cracked?
4. I'm impressed with the ability for the paper drawers to accommodate 80lb cover, very nice.
5. I also love the embedded help Videos, but why do we need an illuminated paper path? Is it a long paper path, or is it hard to remove jammed paper, or is it illuminated because the system may jam more often, could it be the paper is harder to remove than a laser multifunctional system?

I'm just playing a little devils advocate here, what's the big deal if there is no savings or I only save four percent a month. Go ahead and take a trip to Xerox's cost saving calculator. Put these numbers in 10,000 for total volume, 20% color, your current color cost is .08 per page and your current black cost is .01 (for SMB, this could be a real scenario for them or for a workgroup), and then when the calculator asks to "choose color" enter 100% for expressive color. Select the enter key and Xerox will tell you there is NO savings for this scenario!

So, I tried another, everything was the same as above expect at the last "choose color", I entered 90% for Expressive Color and 10% for Everyday Color, hit the enter key and my savings was $10 per month! So, for my $10 savings what do I get? A system that has a slow First Copy Out Time of 8.1 compared to competitors that are at or under 6.5 seconds, molten ink in the office, copies and prints I may not be able to mark up, and the possibility of color pages that may crack or peel when they are folded. Plus the fact that after you run the calculator there is a disclaimer from Xerox stating that these are representative prices and may not be applicable in your area.

Now, onto the money question who, what or how determines the difference between "Useful Color, Everyday Color and Expressive Color", is this done with software embedded in the unit? If it is whats the break point between the three different tiers, will the ColorQube alert you before you press the print or copy button and tell you which pricing plan your copy or print falls under? I think not. Will the system at the end of the month print a report stating how many pages fell under the different pricing tiers? It's kinda like Xerox is saying go ahead make the copy or print and trust us the software will put you in the right pricing spot. Xerox shows samples on their site, however wouldn't it be nice if the machine told you in advance?

Here's a neat video that was posted on the P4P Hotel today in reference to solid ink, take a look, its very cool and gives some insight in reference to the things you may not know about solid ink.

I'm not sold yet if this will be a game changer, with print for pay pricing coming in at under .005 for black and .05 for color, I see further erosion of cost per page pricing in the mainstream office. I guess you would have to be a big user of a little bit of color to make this work for you. We'll see right!

-=Good Selling=-

Xerox "unveils breakthrough technology"

Yup, so at 11AM tomorrow in Chicago, Xerox will have a webcast touting "breakthrough technology" that significantly reduces the cost of office color printing. Ho hum......yawn....as you can tell I'm really looking forward to this however I did take the bait and registered for the webcast.

I'm hoping this will be something earth shattering, however I'm thinking it may be as big as HP's Edgeline promo from a few years ago, and we all know how well HP's Edgeline has fared. I heard some talk about wax (crayon) technology, but I'm really not sure what they are going to introduce as the BIG COST SAVINGS of Color in the office. Of course, it all starts with what is their perception of the cost of office color printing. If they assume the average cost is 10 cents a page and get it down to a nickel that's pretty big IF it includes service and parts. So, it all depends on their perception as to where the main stream market is for the cost of a color page.

I'm not holding my breath, but I am interested to learn more!

-=Good Selling=-

Kyocera Expands Office Equipment Leasing Program

Kyocera Mita announces expansion of it's leasing program with Great America Leasing Corp and Wells Fargo Financial Leasing. Betcha, you thought this was going to be one of those boring Press Releases eh!

When I read the press release I was pleased to see Great America Leasing Corp as a new partner for Kyocera Mita. I have used them in the past and find them to be one of the premier office equipment leasing companies in the US today. Yes, you'll pay a little bit more to have them finance your lease however at the end of the term, you'll be happy with the return policy and the way they conduct business.

On the other hand, I was appalled to see that Kyocera Mita also hooked up with Wells Fargo Leasing. If you're a member of the Print4Pay Hotel message boards, you would have read the horror stories that reps have posted in reference to Wells Fargo Financial Leasing. Did someone not do their homework??

I can tell you of one situation from two of my customers, nearing the end of the term of the lease, where Wells Fargo Financial Leasing actually released the old equipment back to the customer for "x" amount of years with a $1.00 buyout. They did not notify the dealer in advance, they just took it upon themselves to call the customer and offer to release them the copier. One of my customers bit and the other did not. Traditionally, all Wells Fargo leases have a small window of time where the customer can send their letter of intent to return the equipment at the end of term, and if the customer misses this window, Wells Fargo will renew the lease for ONE YEAR! No ifs ands or buts, they are locked in. I hope the people at Kyocera negotiated different lease terms for their customers.

A word to the wise, read the lease you are going to to give to the customer, and if you're not happy with it, neither will the customer.

-=Good Selling=-

Weekend MFP Industry Notes 5/3/09

Copier/MFP industry news from various trade publications.

- Notable Solutions Inc. (NSi) of Maryland announced its first outside funding:
- Received $5 million from Edison Ventures of New Jersey
- Annual revenue between $15 and $20 million
- 75 employees
- Recently recruited away the VPs of sales and marketing of Kofax, a competitor
- Maker of the AutoStore document management software
- supports over 450 different MFP models
- offers over 24 different connectors for other document management programs
- Has 2500 customers worldwide
- Originally started making software for Hewlett Packard’s Digital Sender product
- IKON resells as DocAccel
- Xerox sells as SMARTdocument Travel
- Kyocera sells as KYOcapture

- X-Solutions of Denmark, made the following announcements:
- Makes ScanFlowStore, a scanning solution
- Was founded by a former Xerox agent
- Now has office in North Carolina
- 48 employees
- Xerox sells as ScanFlowStore
- Ricoh sells as DigiDocFlow
- MSRP of $1500 for first device
- MSRP of $500 per additional device
- Has 110 connectors for document management platforms

- Ricoh announced it is launching a service for end users to upload and store data. It will be called “Ricoh Quanp” and allowing on-line storing of photos, music, videos and documents. Possible cost will be $3.00 per month for 10GB, or $10 per month for 100GB.

- Ricoh gave out details on its past acquisition of DANKA Europe:
- Was originally established as InfoTec in 1972
- Was acquired by DANKA in 1995
- Was then purchased by Ricoh in 2006 for $210 million
- Originally sold Mita (now Kyocera) before switching to Ricoh products in mid 1990s
- In 2006, had $524 million in annual revenue
- Has 2,100 employees
- In contrast, IKON Europe, now also owned by Ricoh, had $549 million in annual revenue or 13% of IKON’s total revenue

- IKON announced it has sold a CPP650 (relabeled Konica Minolta bizhub PRO 6501) to Linden Print Co., a printshop in Ferndale, WA.

- Kofax, maker of document management software, announced:
- Kofax Capture is licensed to 140,000 users
- Kofax Virtual ReScan now has 300,000 licensed users

- Update from Silverbrook Research, inventor of the Memjet high speed color inkjet technology, and its struggles to finally bring a product to market:
- Headquartered in Australia
- U.S. office is in Boise, Idaho (ironically HP also has a printer facility there)
- designed a new ARM-based system on a chip to integrate functions
- has completed design of an A4 printhead
- printhead has 70,000 nozzles
- top speed of 60ppm for full color, which would disrupt the marketplace
- projected selling price for desktop printer of $300 to $500
- product might finally ship at end of 2009

- Kodak announced that its first quarter sales declined 29% due to slow economy.
- reported a loss of $360 million
- total sales of $1.477 billion
- revenue from digital business was $972 million
- GP was 13.1% of sales
- R&D expense of $110 million
- has $1.309 billion in cash on hand
- total debt of $1.306 billion

- Xerox won a bid to supply copiers to the Aberdeen Proving Ground of the U.S. Army in Maryland.

- Xerox announced it is sponsoring the 2009 Xerox Corporate Golf Challenge, which starts on 5/9/2009 at the Abu Dhabi Golf Club in Dubai.

- Xerox announced that it spent $145 million to buy COMDOC of Ohio, which was the largest independent Ricoh dealer in the U.S.

- Samsung announced that it is introducing its own management print services program, with its CEO predicting that by 2012 it will be the largest provider in the industry.

- Apparently, in an effort to grow marketshare, Toshiba is now supposedly allowing Kyocera to relabel three of its color laser MFPs. The new Kyocera TASKalfa 550C, 650C and 750C models are most likely relabeled Toshiba models. This is odd because:
- it will certainly cause issues in the Toshiba dealer community
- Toshiba itself relabels Ricoh color models

- Toshiba, using a $4.9 million tax break from North Carolina, announced it will open a project management office in the state for its nuclear plant technology division.

- While it sales declined, EFI, maker of Fiery controllers, announced a $26.7 million profit last quarter.

- In a survey of end users conducted by the Business Equipment Research & Testing Labs (BERTL), Kyocera won the award for most reliable b/w MFPs and printers.

- An analyst predicts that Hewlett Packard will move strong into the IT Services market. Gary Peterson, of GAP Intelligence, predicts that HP will use the profits from its printer division to fund its expansion into this other market.

- Hewlett Packard reported details on its last quarter’s financials:
- printer division, called Imaging & Printing Division (IPD) reported revenue fell 18% to $5.98 billion
- this group employs 2,000 people at its headquarters in San Diego, CA
- business printer sales fell 39%
- consumer printer sales fell 31%

- Hewlett Packard celebrated the 25th anniversary of its first b/w A4 laser printer, called simply “LaserJet”
- Introduced in 1984
- MSRP was $3495
- Weight of 70lbs.
- 300x300dpi
- 8ppm top speed

- Kodak, in a cost cutting move, announced it is closing its high-end digital camera plant in Israel, that was part of its Creo acquisition. The plant employed 50.

- Angelo Reid and Jameila Thane of Toronto, Canada were arrested when they were caught buying firearms using fake $50 bills they made on a color copier.

- A Texas jury handed down a $19 million verdict against Apple Inc., ruling that the company infringed on a patent related to predictive snooping technology, held by OPTi Inc.

- Seiko Epson, maker of Epson printers and MFPs, announced last quarter that it lost $1.1 billion.

- One dealer recruits from another. Randy Allen, former general sales manager of Datamax, is now VP of Marketing for ASI Business Solutions of Dallas, TX., a Lanier and HP dealer.

- Ingram Micro, a distributor of computer technology to VARs in the U.S., announced it is launching its own managed print services program, called “SEISMIC”. Unknown what software platform is being used.

- FMAudit, maker of managed print services software, announced it is moving to a larger headquarters in Jefferson City, MO.

-=Good Selling=-

TWIC "This Week in Canon"

- In a survey of copier technicians, conducted by Industry Analysts, the Canon imageRUNNER 3035, 5055 & 7095 were chosen as favorite units to service. (future survey may be impacted as IKON’s Canon technicians will be switching to Ricoh)

- Canon reported a drop of 88% drop in profit last quarter, and a 32% drop in sales. It will take steps to cut costs:
- “Nothing is sacred for us now when it comes to cost cuts. Market conditions are still tougher than we had originally expected” said Masahiro Osawa, the senior managing director of accounting.
- cuts will total 172 billion yen, which is 60 billion more than originally planned
- R&D will be reduced to 320 billion yen

-=Good Selling=-

Copier Sales Proposals "Pricing on the Street"

Just wanted to give you all a heads up. I've uploaded new "Pricing on the Street" with aggressive cpc pricing. Street Pricing from Canon, Ricoh, Xerox and KonicaMinolta.

Special thanks to the Print4Pay Hotel members that sent them to me for uploading.


If you're selling MFP's, or still calling them copiers, the Print4Pay Hotel currently has 6 active message boards for Ricoh Family Group, Sharp, KonicaMinolta, Kyocera , Canon and Xerox P4P In the early spring of 2009, we will launch Toshiba and OCE P4P Message Boards!

The Print4Pay Hotel averages 80,000 page views a month, 2,500 views a day and over 210,000 hits a month. Our message boards have over 60,000 threads related to copiers/MFP's, Solutions and Solutions Sales, we are the Global Resource on the Web for Copier Sales Professionals.

These quotes were recently uploaded:

KonicaMinolta bizhub Pro C6500
Xerox 700 Digital Press
KonicaMinolta bizhub920
Canon imageRUNNER 110
KonicaMinolta Pro C5501
Ricoh Pro 1106ex

Become a member while it's still FREE, talk to your peers, share inspirations, success stories, sales tips, quotes and much more. Start by following the link below.

http://www.p4photel.org/

Selling Copiers - "things I would do differently"

What's cool? Having two surnames as your given name and your family name, thus Philip John is our Guest Blogger this month! Philips territory is New York City, I can only guess at what it's like to sell in the city every day.

Philip John is in the process of enabling Wiztech Inc to provide document management solutions in the Tristate Region. Wiztech, a Michigan based firm has traditionally been in technology consulting for Oracle & SAP systems, project staffing and Healthcare IT. When you have time check out Philip Johns NY Minute Blog


From a decade ago – things I would do differently.

Over the years as a copier sales professional, the goal has always been the same – generate maximum sales. The way I have been doing it recently is completely different from 10 years ago when I started in the business. All I ever did in the beginning was cold call and telemarketing. They were the main sources of business for me. I was taught to sell and move on to the next. More cold-calling and more telemarketing.

I wish I could undo three things in my copier sales career.

1. Excellent CRM/ database system
It is almost unbelievable to me that I never had any kind of CRM system from day one. The innumerable meetings, contacts and calls made over the years have gone to waste. A few scribbled notes in a planner combined with more scribbled notes in a notepad – that all I have. Just last year I started maintaining my database and I already have a prospect base that exceeds 500 firms – with their complete competitor leasing information, contact details , etc – apart from my existing customers database. I guess if I had started a long time ago, it would have been close to 5000 prospects and a whole lot more clients that I currently have. Right now, although I have an Excel based system it is better than nothing. I tried a few CRM packages and they did not meet my requirements. I just might end up with salesforce.com. If someone knows of a specific CRM system made for our industry– preferably hosted, let me know. (I have tried SalesChain)

2. Corporate Marketing & Lead Generation
Secondly, I wish I worked for firms that did sufficient marketing (other than telemarketing) and lead generation. Very very very few copier dealerships do any kind of systematic marketing. The marketing is normally left to the sales people (send 10 letters a week, cold call 25 places, etc). This has to be taken over by corporate with a certain involvement of the sales staff. It is even more important for firms to do their marketing and lead generation as the dependence on sales staff to generate all the leads becomes an eventual thorn.

3. Client Management
Thirdly, I wish I was not taught to sell and move on. I wish I had created a system to be in contact with my customers on a regular basis. I wish my company created a system for me to adopt to ensure that I am making that periodic contact as a phone call, email, newsletter, new products info, added services, surveys, polls, invitation to events, tradeshows, etc etc.

I have realized that more sales can easily be generated with a structured effort which is beneficial to the dealership as well as the sales person. I love the Microsoft chant “ Change the World or Go Home”. There is so much that can be done differently in our industry. Right from the manufacturers, leasing companies, dealership managements, sales metrics and of-course service standards. New benchmarks are waiting to be set and a different thinking set of people will swoop down and make their indelible mark on this industry of ours. Art is definitely one of them and I would want to be there too.

-=Good Selling=-