Thursday, August 27, 2009

5 Habits of Highly Ineffective Copier Sales People

Many of us in the business community grew up with Stephen Covey’s excellent book, the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It is both influential and insightful.

Well, I'd like to introduce you to "5 Habits of Ineffective Copier Sales People"

Be the most talkative person in the meeting – You know everything there is to know about copiers, so why ask the customer an questions that he or she can answer to get a better idea of their needs. Just keep spewing information and don't listen to what the customers want or needs are.

Sell What Makes You the Largest Commission– You can make extra money for selling a color unit, plus an additional incentive for contracting the customer "x" amount of pages, what do you care if the customer only needs a monochrome system and a contract for 1,000 pages a month. You've got them to agree for 10,000 pages a month and to lease a system that far out weighs their needs, plus you'll make more money!

End of the Month Deals – My price is my price until the end of the month and then all bets are off. There are no price conscious buyers just cheap customers, why do they need an ROI spreadsheet, is that gonna make them buy sooner? You're right and the customer is wrong, all customers want is the best price!

Interrupt people and talk as much as you can – Don’t be the sales guy or gals who listens. Cut the office manager off at the first chance you get to look good in front of the CEO. Make sure you finish their train of thought with your infinite wisdom in the copier industry. Make sure you bad mouth the competition every chance you get.

Complain About Sales Leads– You're not giving me good leads, all these people want is price, or all they need is a small system, they are not giving me the order when I walk in the door, You should not have to go out and find new customers and find solutions that will solve business problems for them.

There are many more ways to be very ineffective in copier sales, but if you can pull off these 5, you are sure to be a complete failure. Did I leave off anything?

Really, I got this idea from a another blog I read, thought it would be good to put a copier spin on it!

-=Good Selling=-

2 comments:

Greg_Walters said...

OMG!

That's the last time I let you ride-along with me on sales calls!!

...sheeeeeesh...

Unknown said...

Awe, come on, we would have alot of fun!

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