Have you ever heard of the "three foot rule"? It means that whenever you get within three feet of someone you should be talk solutions/MFP's or even how do you do this or that. It sounds kind of lame, but you need to sneak it in somewhere. I could have the worst week, month or even quarter however I always look at it that I never know what tomorrow will bring me, it's inevitable that continued prospecting will always generate new opportunities that you were not counting on.
Over the years, I found leads I've generated opportunities because I always ask myself how did they print this or make it look this way. Here are 5 opportunities that came my way over the years.
1) The first one was a paper store; I had to buy specialty paper to run some print samples for a client. As I was making my purchase, the clerk printed a sales order/sales receipt on a dot matrix printer with pre-printed three part carbon less paper.
It clicked; I asked the clerk why do you print these like this? He just gave me a dumb look and stated "cause that's the way the boss does it", okay I thought. I then asked for the owners name and the best time to contact him. Done, it's a lead and a solutions lead at that. Pre-printed carbon less forms can run as high as .25 cents each or higher. Now it's just a case of finding out how many forms are printed each and every month to make a viable ROI presentation.
2) While getting lunch the one day at a WAWA (NJ is big on WAWA's), I picked up a new homes booklet (just something to read at lunch). While thumbing through the booklet, I realized that this can be printed on a ComColor device. Thus another reason to call the publisher for additional details, such as how many book are printed monthly and how often are they printed. I made the call, and found out that they print hundreds of thousands and these books and I was way outta my league. But, in my discovery process I found out that they had a new for a new MFP and I was able to schedule an appointment. Thus, another viable lead from getting lunch.
3) Another came on Sunday at church, yes indeed it was the church bulletin, but my call was not to the church but to the company that prints the bulletins in 11x17 format, saddle-stapled and the front and back cover was color. The call lead to a discussion, demo and opportunity for a production color system.
4) Years ago when I had some extra time, I took off work and went fishing for the day. In New Jersey there are signs for everywhere you look, don't go here, don't do that, but one that caught my eye was a large trout stocking poster that was hung on a tree. It was probably printed on a press, but I thought why can't a duplicator do this? I did some digging got connected to the NJ State Print Shop and ended up selling two duplicators to just print signs.
5) Of course my most recent one was selling a Ricoh Duplexing Duplicator printer to put red ink on flyer's that he would mail to his customers. We got to talking one day about how he generates his leads which lead us to a discussion about where he got the forms printed, then the cost and time to get them done. Within minutes I was able to cost justify leasing the duplicator. He especially liked the image quality because it "looked official" because of his line of work. This eventually lend to selling them another color MFP, the Share point, then and envelope printer and then a new folding machine.
Cutting to the chase, being a Copier/MFP sales person means you've always need to be looking for leads. Ask yourself why is this printed like this, where is this printed, is there a different solution that will save the customer money and time. I'm asking how they do this or that when it comes to documents, prints or just about anything printed on paper!
-=Good Selling=-
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