Print4Pay Hotel Earns More than 1.9 Million....

Print4Pay Hotel Earns More than 1.9 Million ( I wish it were dollars ), page views for 2012!  It was an incredible year of page growth for us and of course we'd like to thank all of our Print4Pay Hotel Members and readers for the continued growth of page views.

January 2013 is also proving to be a banner month with over 175,000 page views for the forums and we may hit 25,000 page views for the blog. We're hoping we can top 2 million page views for 2013.

If you're not familiar with the forums we have two, one is a non secure forum platform and the second is a secure forum platform.  The secure forum platform is specifically designed for people that are in the Imaging Industry, and we offer the secure forums so members can communicate with their peers in the industry.  We offer forums for all of the Imaging Manufacturers along with forums for Managed Print, Document Management, Managed Network Services and many other forums that keep our members up to date with the Imaging Industry.

-=Good Selling=-

5 questions to ask BEFORE buying a new printer

5 questions to ask BEFORE buying a new printer was a google alert I received the other day. I took a peek to see what someone else had to say about printers or MFP's. Headlining the article was

Essential home-office equipment for the accounting and finance professional

The article was targeted for Accountants and Finance Professionals

Here's the 5 points that he spoke about, I'll follow with rebuttal:

Here are some key questions to ask yourself:

1)  Is most of your printing producing monochrome (black & white) output? If so, an inexpensive mono laser printer might be the best choice. These are available in the $100 range, and have great looking output as well as fast print speed. Black and white printers.

These $100 printers will cost a small fortune to keep them running, it's estimated

that a $100 laser printer can have a monochrome per page cost as high as 5 cents a page depending upon the make and model of the unit. Plus the fact, that if the system does break the cost to fix will be more than the printer, and off to the municipal landfill goes another printer.

Copier Salespeople Need to Wake up Before they get...

If you're still in the copier industry we all know what we've been through for the last four years, and times are still stuff.  But if you thought we were coming out of the woods you might want to think again.

One of the most alarming trends that I've witnessed and read about is the fact that there are consulting companies in our industry that are proclaiming that they can save dealerships thousands to tens of thousands of dollars by conducting an internal audit of the sales process for each dealership.  These consultants (hacks as I call them) are charging thousands of dollars for the internal audit.  It is in their best interest to return a favorable report to the dealer principals an analysis of the sales department.  The audit takes certain benchmarks that they have data, such as salaries, commissions, bonuses, trips, cost of goods, training, deliveries, support, etc...

The end result is that they will return an analysis that states,

Has The Time Come for Sales People to be Paid on Click Revenue?

In the world of MPS (Managed Print Service), commission for clicks is the common method pay compensation for reps.  Most time commissions are paid off the monthly revenue click from systems that our under a MPS agreement and in some cases commissions are paid one time for the first months worth of billing.

The copier commission world is a completely different story, reps are paid either paid on the percentage of gross profit or a percentage of the revenue for each copier that is sold.

Traditionally copier reps can also make commissions on the maintenance or cost per page agreement, the commissions range from 5%-10% of the annual agreement. In recent months I've heard some grumblings that dealers are pulling back and not offering commissions on maintenance agreements or cost per page programs.  Which I find surprising since maintenance and cost per page agreements are the life blood of the dealership.

If I were not getting a commission to sell a cost per page agreement or a maintenance agreement I would hard pressed to sell an agreement at the time of the sale.  Matter of fact, if I thought the break and fix model was better for the customer I would make the recommendation to go that way, my thought process is why muddy the waters and fight the battle with pricing on the maintenance or cost per page agreement if I'm not getting paid on that.

Personally, I would like to see some kind of ongoing

This History of Fax "According to Art"

Go ahead, you can do it, no one will see you. It's ok to hug your fax.

Facsimile "make similar", "make a copy" was invented in 1843 by Scottish mechanic and inventor Alexander Bain. He received a British patent for “improvements in producing and regulating electric currents and improvements in timepieces and in electric printing and signal telegraphs”, and the fax was born, well not entirely.

Alexander Bain's fax machine transmitter scanned a flat metal surface using a stylus mounted on a pendulum. The stylus picked up images from the metal surface. An amateur clock maker, Alexander Bain combined parts from clock mechanisms together with telegraph machines to invent his fax machine.

I can remember one of the main applications for fax was that of military use, when we demonstrated the technology we also spoke of how it was first used by the military. In fact the military adopted faxing in 1943 to transmit maps, orders and weather charts during World War II.

8 Talking Points for Selecting an Imaging/Copier Vendor

I've been in down the street office equipment sales for 33 years, over that time I've seen and heard it all when I meet with prospects who are considering a new vendor or manufacturer.

Many times... and by the way I just had a prospect email me today that price only is the driving factor as to who they will buy from.  I sent then back an email declining to offer a proposal. I work for a well respected dealer with an excellent support team and I won't compete with many of the fly by night dealerships that are out their.  Having one of my customers wait two to three days for on-service, a week for parts or not getting a return call is not an option!

Please consider the below points as more of an educational process to choose the right vendor for your needs.

Know your present and analyze your future needs: Since almost all MFP/Copiers are leased, you need to have a handle on your present and future needs. Will I need Network faxing or walk-up faxing, scan documents to email, scan to folder, walk up authentication, TWAIN scanning, Apple Air Print, envelopes, scan2cloud, scan2folders to a network drive, paper sizes needed to print, scan, fax or copy, color scan, color copy, color print.

Know what your existing costs are: How can you make a decision on a new product or service if you don't know your existing costs. Consider the cost of the current lease if any, cost of current print devices, costs for supplies, cost for service, cost for maintenance agreement, how many sheets of paper you have used for printing or copying in a week, month or year.

Top Ten Copier Proposals for December 2012

Alarming it's all I can say about a recent price/proposal I saw from a Kyocera Dealer that was quoting a penny per page for full color!  As I stated in a recent email to Print4Pay Hotel members if you're not aware of this new pricing strategy, well...then you're going to lose every deal!  Take a gander at these recent proposals from Kyocera and you'll see what I mean!

Each month on the Print4Pay Hotel forums we'll upload "Pricing on the Street" quotes, these quotes are certified as accurate since the pricing information is emailed to us from other Print4Pay Hotel members in the field.

We'll also receive and upload quotes and proposals from other Print4Pay Hotel members and these quotes will be "the proposal or quote" that was emailed to the end user.

Each month I'll list those proposals/quotes and "Pricing on the Street" here with the associated links.  You need to be a Premium Member in order to download the documents.  So without further ado here's the top quotes from Decemner 2012.  Enjoy!

• "Pricing on the Street" for Kyocera TASKalfa 3050ci
• "Pricing on the Street" for Kyocera TASKalfa 4550ci Color & Kyocera TASKalpha 4550
• "Pricing on the Street" for Kyocera TASKalfa 4550ci
• "Pricing on the Street" for Kyocera TASKalfa 3500i
• "Pricing on the Street" for kyocera taskalpha 3500i v2
• "Pricing on the Street" for toshiba e-studio 4540C
• Sharp MX-B402SC
• "Pricing on the Street" for ricoh mpc2051sp
• "Pricing on the Street" for ricoh mp4002sp
• "Pricing on the Street" for ricoh mp301pf

-=Good Selling=-

Ricoh MPCW220SP Scanner Reveal

Within a few days Ricoh will be launching the new Ricoh CW2200SP wide format system.  For those of us that sell Savin, Lanier and Ricoh wide format, we've been waiting a long time for a color wide format multifunctional system that will copy, print and scan.

The CW2200SP will be Ricoh's first attempt at their own color wide format system,  they've had the piezo ink technology for quite some time however it was limited to their Gelsprinter line of color ink printers.

I was going to do a spec review, however I changed my mind and wanted point out what's unique and special in reference to the scanning function of this system.

Scan2 features:

If you're familiar with scanning on Ricoh MFP devices, then you're in luck, all of the functionality of scanning from Ricoh's popular MFP's has been adopted with the CW2200SP.

You'll be able to perform walk up on-the-fly color scan2email, just enter a users email address, you can also add a cc: a bcc:, a subject line and even a message (the large color screen will turn into a qwerty keyboard for easy typing), with a touch of the button the wide format document will be scanned and attached as a .pdf.

If you're not interested in color scan2email, you can adopt the color scan2folder. Just setup a folder on any ones PC, or you can even set up folders on your server.  With the AEC (Architects, Engineers, Construction)  industry you can set multiple folders maybe one for proposals, specs, bids, etc.

How about color scan2cloud, yup I've tested Ricoh MFP's with scan2dropbox and it works very well, you might even want to think about getting a middleware product like UDOCX for scanning to
sharepoint or MS 365.

An additional nice feature is

What is "Print Management"?

Kudos to Trevor Hoffer from Print Audit for this article. Trevor is our featured "Guest Blogger" for the month of January!

What is Print Management? How will it benefit you and your customers?

Despite the fact that print management has become a ubiquitous term there is still considerable 

confusion about what exactly it is and what its benefits are. Many people confuse print management and fleet management solutions, but the two perform very different functions.

Fleet management (or device management) solutions are used to collect meter reads on imaging devices and perform service functions such as supplies management and service history tracking.

In contrast, a comprehensive print management solution allows organizations to capture and control every print job that occurs in an environment. Print management solutions also enable organizations to control who can print to where and can be used to alter user behavior by setting printing limits, restricting color usage and forcing duplexing. 

Copiers & MFP's "Scan2Cloud Middleware Reveal"

Scanning from MFP's, every business is doing it, everyone I speak to admits it's been a boon to saving them time.

All of your current manufacturers MFP's now have standard scan2email and scan2folder. In recent months MFP manufacturers have sweetened the pie by adding additional background functionality when you scan2folder.

Such as creating a text searchable .pdf, performing OCR (optical character recognition) back to a word doc or an excel doc, or even scan2 a power point file, and least we no forget scan2cloud functionality.

It's  truly is amazing that you can walk up to the MFP and have these time saving features at the touch of a button, right?

Well, kinda, if you're a small account and all you need is to create searchable /pdf's here and there, or the occasional scan2word or scan2excel, these systems will work fine.  But what about more intensive users, lets say accounts that want every document scanned as a searchable .pdf and every document is 30-50 pages and you want to drop them off to the cloud?  This is where it can get

"Do you think Sharp will sell the MFP division"?

Back in early November I posted a poll on the Print4Pay Hotel forums. We asked "Do you think Sharp will sell the MFP division"?  The response was a simple yes or no.

If you're a new reader, please let me give you a little background about the Print4Pay Hotel. The short and sweet of the Print4Pay Hotel is that we started a web forums for imaging industry people back in 2003.  To date we have close to 2,000 registered members, we also cull the membership to keep our email list up to date (since many in our industry come and go).  It's my belief and I've heard this from many others, that the Print4Pay Hotel members is a conglomerate of the best of breed sales people, managers and dealers owners from around the globe.

If you've not been hiding under a rock for the last six months then you know that Sharp, Japan has been overburdened with debt. This debt was accumulated from large losses, the mortgaging of almost all of their properties and recent titanic bank loans from Japanese banks.  Lately, Sharp is in somewhat of a small rebound due to the recent yen declining against the US dollar, a small investment from Qualcom (small compared to the debt that Sharp owes) and the recent statement that Sharp expects to turn a profit  for the last fiscal quarter of this year (ends March 31st).

Some recent threads that were posted on the Print4Pay Hotel forums were this:

The Worst Copier Web Sites in the World Contest!

This was a recent thread that we posted on the Print4Pay Hotel forums. It all started the other day with a Press Release from Sharp USA that they had signed on another new Copier/MFP Dealer.  Over the last six months Sharp has been issuing Press Releases about the signings of these new Copier/MFP Dealers, the Press Releases about signing new MFP dealers is something that Sharp had not done in the past prior to an analysts report that Sharp may sells it's MFP/Copier business.

One bold Print4Pay Hotel member has been researching these new dealers and visiting their web sites. In a recent Sharp Press Release our Print4Pay Hotel member posted a link the new Sharp Dealers web site. Which lead us to probably one of the worst copier dealer web sites we've ever seen. If the web site is indicative of the Dealerships technical capabilities and solutions, then.... well better to read the thread from our Print4Pay Hotel Member,

"Another technology giant and world power of copier dealers that doesnt even put there name, phone number or address on the web site, let alone that they handle sharp. That will turn it all around".

With that one thread our Print4Pay Hotel members launched a campaign to post links for the "The Worst Copier Web Sites in the World".  We then added a contest that would allow our members to vote for the "The Worst Copier Web Site in the World".  In just one day we've had 13 threads and 6 Dealers web sites listed.  Another Print4Pay Hotel member made this comment,

"BAAAAAAAHHHHHHAAAAAA LMFAO! Is that a sorter?

If you have a copier dealerships web site that you'd like to add, then go here for the Print4Pay Hotel forums, post your link, and then take a gander at the sites that are listed. At the end of the month we'll open up the polls so every one can vote on the "The Worst Copier Web Site in the World".  Hmmmm, seems to me I mentioned "contest", what will the winner get?  You'll have to tune in to the forums to find out.

As an added incentive for new members to join, after you've registered here (it's free), I'll send you one of my Print4Pay Hotel Publications at no charge. You can have your choice for one publication. They are located on the eight side of this blog under Print4Pay Hotel Publications. Make sure you send me and email about the FREE publication! art@p4photel.com

-=Good Selling=-

The "Art" of the Copier & MFP Demo

When was the last time you packed a copier on a sales cart, wheeled it into the customers office, performed the on-site demonstration and left with an empty sales cart and a check?

For those of you that have never had this experience, I can tell you this was the zenith of the sales cycle!

In days gone by I can remember practicing demo's a few times a week.  We would practice with fellow sales reps, sales managers or the District Sales Manager of the manufacturer.  Usually every year there was some type of demo contest either run by the dealership or the manufacturer.  It's really a shame that our industry has moved away from the demonstration.   I'm still a big fan of the demonstration and will push for one when I can't get the DM to move forward or is the sales cycle is stalled.

So, what makes a good demonstration?  Here's a few tips that I've put together for everyone.

10 Questions for the Manual MPS Assessment

Recently, I had an appointment with a "net" new account that was interested in our Managed Print Service Program. This was not a large account (about 30 employees).  Of course the first item of business was to close on the assessment. In this particular business there were over 15 assorted printers from Dell, HP & Okidata.

In smaller accounts I'm not a big fan of all the assessment software tools that are available. When doing a manual assessment one of the items of business is to inventory the entire fleet. I'm a big fan of doing a walk through and collecting my data the old fashioned way.

Of course the manual assessments will take time, however I'm introduced to every person in every department that prints. Not only do I get to meet that person, but I also get a few minutes to interview that person about how they use the printer. After I print the configuration sheet from the printer I'll then have a short interview with the main user/users of the printer.

1.  What size of paper do you print onto?

10 Clues to Keep Your Sales Pipeline Full

What does it take to be successful in the imaging industry for a long period of time? Some might say product knowledge, some may say closing skills, some may also tell you its about hard work.

All of these are true, but the most successful people in the copier industry have a huge pipeline of potential customers! My rule of thumb is that I always need to have 30 or more potential sales to customers every month with a monthly GP potential of at least $200,000.

Keeping the pipeline full is quite a daunting task because as you close sales you still have to make sure you are adding potential clients each and day, week and month. Even if you've only been in the business a short time you've already seen many reasons why sales are delayed, lost and sitting out there in space.

Listed below are tips that may help you keep the pipeline full. We all know we have to prospect each and every day right?

1. Do an email blast once every month to existing clients & new prospects about new products, new promotions, press releases, or just a plain old, "how ya been".

A Potential Customer Lost is a Prospect Gained!

How long have you been in the business, five years, ten, fifteen, 20 or more years? The cliches never stop do they, one that comes too mind is "what comes around goes around". For those of us who have been in the business a long time, we've seen it all, new tactics get old and old tactics get new again.

Do you remember the name of the prospect of the name of the company for your first sale? How bout the first deal you lost? sorry to say, I can't remember any of them!

How did you first schedule your appointments? I can remember getting a Doctors appointment book to write down the locations, appointment times, directions, things to do and phone numbers. As the days turned into months and the months turned to years I would find myself getting another appointment book for every year. After about four years I realized that could go back and review the accounts that I didn't sell and contact them again for the potential upgrade, gee wasn't that smart of me to keep those books.

These days most of us keep our

I'm Listening, Are You Listening to Your Prospect?

How well do you listen to your customer?

Really, are you listening and have an understanding of what they want and how they want you to get them there?  Over the years of selling "down the street", I've learned to let the client do most of the talking and I'll do most of the listening.

Of course I'll ask a few key questions like "why are you considering a new solution", or "how much is that costing you", and even "do you have any pains in your day to day business that involve your printing or copying hardware". It took many years to understanding that listening is the key to consultative selling and the key to success in being a top producer.

Most customers have a round about way of telling you what they want from you and your company. Like telling a story about a previous experience and or a bad rep that they had to deal with (listen to this carefully, they are telling you what they want from you when they tell you about their past experiences). I hear many complaints from clients about the pushy reps, the ones who only want to sell what they thing they should have and not what the customer really needs. Heck, we had one guy at the office and 90% of his sales has been a 35ppm box, how is that? Customers will appreciate that you listened and comprehended their needs, in return they will shower you with references down the road.

Today, I was at a clients account and would have liked to pitched a 25ppm color system to them, this customer has an 18ppm digital system that scans, prints, copies and faxes, plus they also a have a color laser printer that prints up to 11x17. They printed more than 100,000 pages on the printer and only copied, faxed or printed 36,000 pages on their 18ppm digital system, plus they get service as they need it (break & fix) for both units.

I would have loved to sell them a 25 page per minute color device to replace both of the units, however the customer stated that business was slow and that they may look to buy the 18ppm from the leasing company. I listened..... and then asked to schedule another appointment to discuss their needs for the next three years.

What to Do?

From listening to the customer and finding out that they were at least in favor of getting a price from the leasing company for the 18ppm system, I knew that in order for them to lease or buy that I would need to present and cost analysis for them.  That's right put the time and effort into figuring out their existing costs for both devices.  Then cross your fingers and hope that you'll be able to save them "x" amount of dollars per year with a new system. If the cost analysis was not presented, then the customer would have bought the 18ppm from the leasing company and continued to do business the same way.

The key to listening in this case was that their current business is slow (lower revenues, profit, etc).  Most companies when presented with a cost analysis that presents the existing costs and proposed cost will move forward with the new proposal as long as they have a savings!  Another tip to keep in mind is that is the monthly savings is low 20-30 per month, then show the yearly and term of lease savings.  When the monthly savings is high per month, show the month and not the yearly or term of lease savings.

Listening is some you develop over time, and in some cases prospects will close themselves and hand you the order if you let them talk enough.

-= Good Selling=-

12 Days of Christmas "What my Copier Company Offered to Me"

I have two of these, one my wife did and I did another. I got her point of view, typical office worker scenario. My wife helped me with some of these and thank you dear!

We'll see which one is liked best by all of you!

On the 12th day of Christmas, my Copier Company offered to me:

12 Document Management Solutions

On the 11th day of Christmas, my Copier
Company gave to me:

11 Cartridges of Toner

On the 10th day of Christmas, my Copier Company gave to me:

10 Boxes of Staples

On the 9th day of Christmas, my Copier Company gave to me:

9 Ways to Save Paper

On the 8th day of Christmas, my Copier Company gave to me:

8 Boxes of Paper

On the 7th day of Christmas, my Copier Company gave to me:

7 More Invoices

On the 6th day of Christmas, my Copier Company gave to me:

6 New Print Drivers

On the 5th day of Christmas, my Copier Company gave to me:

5 New Proposals

On the 4th day of Christmas, my Copier Company gave to me:

4 Buy it now end of month emails

On the 3rd day of Christmas, my Copier Company gave to me:

3 more phone calls for end of quarter sales

On the 2nd day of Christmas, my Copier Company gave to me:

2 New Broken Copiers

On the 1st day of Christmas, my Copier Company gave to me:

1 Print Management  Service Plan for all

-=Good Selling=-

7 Cold Calling Tips for Managed Print Services

Some of us like it and most of us of don’t like it. It’s the COLD CALL.

I like to call it GOLD CALLING!  It's usually the day from hell or the day to have find some GOLDEN accounts. If you've been doing it as long as I have, you've had success and have found some of your best accounts this way!

I must say the most daunting task is to open a door where you can’t see what is on the other side, will there be rejection or jubilation! Most times it will be rejection. Get use to it, its part of the job and comes with the territory. Attitude, Attitude and more tude will help you overcome the rejection and plow ahead. You always must keep in mind that you are there to give them a better solution or a better way of doing things, and if they are not interested then that’s their loss!

What, I hate most is a NO SOLICITING sign on the door. I think it’s rude and vulgar, every single one of these companies sell something to someone. Full speed ahead right? You may want to think twice about this and send the owner or CEO a fedex letter or package. That will get their attention.
Here are a few tips to get you going.

Tip: If someone won't provide you with a business card, get out your phone and take a picture of the company name on the business directory.

Make Quality Cold Calls

Make a plan to visit those companies you'd like to do business with. Before you’re on your merry way, do some research on those companies via the Internet. Find out the name of the CEO, CFO or the principal, find out what they do and who they do business with. When you're in the office, ask for help. “Can you help me? I like to know who is the person who takes care of your managing your documents”, then ask for additional help such as “When I speak to him or her, can you help with some additional information so I can be prepared when we speak” Your main objective is to get the “right” name and you also may want to ask what the best time to contact that person is.

Send Literature

As soon as you get back to the office, send an opening letter and some literature. Be specific when you are going to call that person such as naming the date and the time of the phone call. Get more attention by ending the letter next day air, it may cost a little however for the right account it may well open the door!

Follow up call

Remember that date and time that you gave them for the follow up call. Use it to your advantage and stage your call at the precise time you said you would. Even if you don’t get through, the message will leave a big impression that you followed up when you said you would.

Create Interest in the first 5 seconds

Hello Mr. or Mrs. Smith. Our company specializes in the cost reduction with managing the printed page. Most companies do not know how much document printing is costing them. We'd like to present a cost free analysis of your existing costs and make recommendations for improvement if needed.

ABC (Always Be Cold Calling)

Over the years I have found Cold Calling to be the best way to find new business. Try some vertical market cold calling next time. For instance let’s say you want to focus on the Managed Print Services. Do the research on the Internet in your territory and pick out ten firms that you think would need your services. Vertical Market Cold Calls are awesome, the more you do, the more you’ll become proficient in their needs and applications.

Tip: Ask the receptionist for help, state that you're new and your objective is to just get the name of the correct contact person. Always as for help!


-=Good Selling=-

Those Magnificent Men and Their Copy Machines

 In 1965 I was eight years old, entertainment for me     came in the form of movies (my how times have changed) and one of my favorite movies as a child (and still now) is a comedy classic titled "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines". 

Four years later we would be landing men on the moon!  Watching this movie gave an 8 year old a chance to dream about the future.

For those not familiar with the movie, I've added the youtube (takes about 20 seconds for the sound to start) trailer to the left column of this blog.

My thought was to change the title up somewhat to "Those Magnificent Men (and Women) and Their Copy Machines" and give every one a short reveal of how Print4Pay Hotel Members and their Copier Dealerships give back to the community.  Giving back to our communities is what make our Dealerships unique and special.  Special thanx to all of the Print4Pay Hotel members that responded in our forums.

 Muratec America, Inc. takes an active role in community service. For the past several years our employees have volunteered time helping to build houses in Plano, Texas for Habitat for Humanity and collected food, clothing and cash donations for The Friendship House, Plano Food Pantry and The Buckner Children’s home. Our company has raised funds for The V Foundation, Race for the Cure and St. Jude’s Children Hospital, and we’ve provided discounted/no charge office equipment to several job outreach centers and disaster relief agencies throughout North Texas and the Gulf Coast region.


ASI Business Solutions in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas: Over the years we've donated many devices to non-profits in the DFW area. We are currently wrapping up a 30 day fund-raising campaign for Friends of Wednesday's Child. The money will be used to assist them this weekend in their annual Winter Hugs event.

Martin Group in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin: For more than 15 years, we have donated free use of a copier to the Walworth County 4-H Extension for the run of the annual Walworth County Fair. The Extension has to make a lot of copies in a hurry during the Fair's six day run to support their youth programs, including the bulletins for the Sunday Award Ceremony. It is so convenient for them to be able to do their copying right on site. Every year, we lend them a good size copier; install in in their temporary office on the fairgrounds; donate the supplies, toner and staples; and pick the copier back up as the fair concludes.

Digital Office Solutions in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin donated a printer to Morgan Grove Family Center last year and they also donated a Holiday Giving Tree in December 2012 Saint Vince de Paul Society and Santa to provide gifts for children.

Mac-Durgin Business Systems in Laconia, New Hampshire last year donated a Kyocera 1820 to their local Salvation Army Center.

NECS New England: During Hurricane Sandy my old neighborhood in Brooklym was severly damaged. NECS responded by raising over $5,000 from the employees and then a match from the company that allowed me to buy much needed supplies (generators, heaters, fuel, wood cleaning supplies, and other items in short supply in the greater NY area) and drive them down using the company truck.  Vince McHugh also posted this thank you email to all of the employees and management of NECS, you can read that here.

Polek & Polek in New Jersey: Donated 20 huge boxes of supplies (clothes, cleaning supplies, person products) to the relief effort at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Highlands, New Jersey for Hurricane Sandy.  Special thanks you the employees and management of Polek & Polek, your donation was tremendous.

Leppert Business Systems Inc of Burlington, Ontario: Support charitable activities where our employees are involved through donations, goods in kind, prizes, etc. Sponsorship of organizations giving back to the community through donations, sponserships and services.  Special reduced IT pricing for charity companies we support, a couple of food banks, Habitat for Humanity.


-=Good Selling=-

Any ideas for new leads for Print Management Solutions?

The above title was taken from a thread I found on linkedin. I'm assuming the person is asking the group for new ideas for Print Management leads.  Of course the solutions part may mean the utilization of print management software like Print Audit, Preton, etc...  The person who posted the thread works for a company that sells print and copy management solutions.  There were some replies to this thread however all of them were not related to a "new idea for print management leads".

I paid a visit to the web site of the company that the person who posted the thread works for.  The web site was as generic as you can get for copiers, printers, document management etc.  It's no wonder that the sales person is looking for new ideas, one look at the web site would tell me that the website is not generating any leads.

So, what can be some new ideas to generate print management leads for this person?

1. Dang, put something on the website that tells your potential prospects or existing customers that you are in that business (print management).

2. You need to enable your current customers to