Thursday, April 28, 2011

Selling Copiers "Making Sense of the Madness" #2

Just a short note tonight, btw I've been watching my revolver world map for hits from Northern Japan, since the quake it's been at zero.  Please keep these people in our prayers.

There's handful of copier (oops) multifunctional copier manufacturers that have A4 MFP devices with the A3 cost per page model. One that comes to mind is the new Ricoh MP201spf (I sell Ricoh so I'm familiar with this unit, my apologies for not posting the others now, will try to do so in the future).  Some may ask what's an A3 cost per page model. What it means to me is a low cost for for the toner, usually toner not costing more than .004 or less and or a total cost per page of not more than .02 for ON-SITE service, supplies (drum, fuser, developer..etc) and parts. The Ricoh MP201spf prints or copies at 21 pages per minute.

In our business, we're always told.... it's about the clicks man..., you've got to keep capturing additional clicks. Dam, this may turn into a logger blog than I wanted!

As I see it there's a tremendous opportunity to capture or steal clicks from the low end A4 printers. Most of these printers from HP, Brother, Lexmark, Oki..etc have an extremely high cost per page when compared to an A4 MFP, in most cases when you add the parts, the service, supplies (drum, fuser, developer) and if you can get ON-SITE service, the cost per page can be anywhere from .04 per page to .08 per page.  So, what drives customers to purchase these $200 -$300 systems?  It's price, it's much easier to cut a check for a $250 laser printer than to lay down $2,000 or more for the Ricoh MP201SPF, and no ones thinking about the total cost of operation for the $250 machine over a period of 5 years (if it will last than long).  Plus there is no low cost A4 printer on the market that has the cost per page model of the A4 Ricoh 201spf.

What if?  You did a chop shop on the Ricoh MP201SPF, cut the top half of the machine off, save the printer engine, the paper trays, the PSIII and the network card. What you'd have is an A4 printer with the A3 cost per page model.  How many of these could we place in the field?  Me, I'm thinking at least 30% of my accounts would have these, even if they cost $500 I could still present a cost savings image solution. Plus, I could tell the story of being green, why buy two or three low cost printers and throw them out when they break, spend a little more, save a lot and have one printer for 5 years!

Here's a short example. Small A4 laser printer doing 1,000 pages at .045 which includes ON-SITE service,  maintenance all parts, and supplies (toner, fuser and developer if any). Which means you'll spend $45 per month and at 60 months you'll have spent $2,700 plus the cost of the printer, so we can all it $3,000.

Take the Ricoh with a proposed purchase price of $500 and then $20 per month which includes ON-SITE service,  maintenance all parts, and supplies (toner, fuser and developer if any). The cost for 60 months would be $1,200 and then the cost of the CHOPPED Ricoh would be $1,700. What's that mean??  A mere savings of $1,700.  Plus I think I being fair because there's no way that $250 printer will last 5 years, if it breaks, the customer will just go buy another one, and then that would push the cost even higher for the small A4 laser printer. 

For a company that has 8 or 9 printers this could be LARGE!  Plus, how many of these unit could be placed for MPS?

So, why hasn't this A4 model with A3 cpp model been adapted in our industry?

-=Good Selling=-

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I've actually used this strategy with fax machines for medical offices. Why buy a fax machine that costs twice as much to run when you can buy the ricoh tabletop mfp or f model and I can do a service contract based on $0.015 per page.