My Top 4 Office Sales Traditions

There was a recent Print Audit thread on linkedin that asked "What are your Office Traditions"? 

I responded with one that we have a sales genie, in fact we just started the sales genie thing when I came back from the Photizo Transform Conference in May of this year.  While at the airport waiting on another delayed flight, I visited one of the Southwest themed gift shops at Sky Harbor.  I was able to pick up something for the wife and then I caught size of a neat looking handcrafted Native Indian Hopi Doll.

I bought the doll and brought it back to the office, and not one to believe in superstitions I'm named it our Sales Genie. 

We have it sitting on the front counter and for the last few weeks we would give it a rub or two before we went on appointments.  When I get into the office on Monday I'm going to burn the son of bitch because sales have been horrible for the last 30 days or since I got back from Phoenix. 

Another tradition around the office centers on some of the new hires for sales.  In our office we have eight cubicles, but doesn't it always seem like there is one of two cubicles that just can't seem to hold onto a salesperson.  With any new hire we'll make sure they don't take up residence in that cubicle.  

I've been told by others that some offices will actually have a cash pool for how long the new sales person will last.  Every one picks out how many weeks the new rep will last, if the new rep goes beyond the weeks that were picked the cash pool stays in effect for the next sales person hired and then the pool doubles. Dang, I wish I could in on some of that action.

We have another tradition to break in the new reps, we'll make up a phoney lead, but not just any lead.  We'll make up a legit lead sheet and give the phone number and address of the local zoo. From there we'll have them call for Mr. Gee Raft or Mrs. Ele Phant. 

I tell you, if you haven't done this you've got to do it.  We do it when we're all in the office, and it's a riot, on one occasion we had the rep ask for Mr. Gee Raft (Giraffe), you can here the person on the other end (cause they don't get it either) state, there is no Gee Raft that works here, and then our rep stated, "well Mr. Gee Raft called our office and left a message that he was interested in a copier and to call", with that the secretary gets it and blurts out "very funny", our rep went with, "I'm not trying to be funny but just asking to speak to Mr. Gee Raft", the secretary then states to the rep, "do you realize who you are calling, it's a zoo"  and "don't you get it"?  With that the rep finally got it and hung up.  We had a great laugh all afternoon that day!  Who says you can't make work fun!

-=Good Selling=-

Scan2Fax with "Eric the Office Worker"

When we last heard from Eric "the office worker" he was was our featured office worker in these blogs:  Eric the "Office Worker" Gets a Supra Wide Format!, Print Audit Green with "Eric the Office Worker" and Ecopy Desktop & "Eric the Office Worker" along with Ricoh's PPDM enables an Epiphany for Eric the  "Office Worker"

The last we heard of Eric, he was working for DigDug Systems in Frostberg, MD, since then Eric the "Office Worker" has moved back to New Jersey (home of Rhutts Hot Dogs) and found a job with GigaHertz Power System in Wannakopier, NJ.

Over the years Eric has developed into a techie guru of sorts.  Eric's new job was to process order that were faxed to the company daily. He was one of 12 people that gathered the incoming order, entered the order in the system and then made of copy of the order for filing.  Eric alone (cause he was on top of his game) would process almost 100 orders per day and keep in mind that he was one of 12 users gathering documents from the three fax machines that were dedicated for inbound faxing.

Did I ever tell you Eric's last name?  It used to be Betterbid (sounds like a copier sales person name to me) and he got tired of that and had it changed to Sakash (whoa, sounds like another copier salesman's name too), but enough with Eric's name.  With three fax machines and 12 users there was a lot of jam ups at the fax machines, orders were getting mixed up, misplaced and lost!  Eric was also having a hard time with Wanda (you know Wanda, large girl, ornery and quite intimidating at the fax machines), Eric always waited for Wanda to finish getting her documents and then he'd meander and slither to the fax and lift his documents.

After many months of gathering faxes, processing, misplacing and losing faxes, our "Office Worker" that would be Eric make a mental note that there's gotta be a better way! So Eric went on a mission to see if there was a better way so he didn't have to deal with Wanda anymore.  Eric started search for all sorts of fax terms on the Internet, on one particular search Eric found this link MFP's can now Scan2Fax with UDOCX .

Why Are Copy Machines Always Such a Pain?

"We’ve all had the experience.  You’re pushing a deadline, your anxiety is high, you need to make a few copies and get to a meeting ASAP.  There is no time to spare.

Everything is ticking along fine, coming together nicely, until you get to the copier.  It jams.  A light comes on.  It’s out of toner.  It’s out of paper.  A light is blinking and it won’t budge.  You open and close a few drawers.  You pop the front panel.  You peer around the back.  You switch it off and on.  Nothing happens.  Time is running out.  You’re screwed.  The copy machine has defeated you again".

I can't even remember where I picked this up, but it was in my google alerts and thought it would be a good topic about copier karma.

What comes around goes around, and I'm thinking this may be a case of Copier Karma coming back to haunt the people the in the office.  Some may ask how do you get Copier Karma, for those of us in the industry it's simple, the copier salesperson put a hex on the copier before we delivered it to you!

Yup there are those of us that have that ability to put a curse on your copier, and we do it for a good reason.  Here's a few tips

When Was the Last Time You Named your Printer or Copier?

"Can anyone come up with a fun and creative name for a Canon copier/printer? It's my job to name it since the office just got a new one the other day and I'm the new work study employee. All the other ones were named by previous work studies and were good like a leased Canon was Lisa Canon...since they leased a Canon. Thanks!"

Whoa, this was a thread I picked up the other day in my google alerts for a yahoo forum.  After 32 years in the industry, WTF,  I now find out that office workers actually give a name to the copier?

I have to admit that the old name for the Canon for Lisa Canon was pretty creative! Of course everyone could use the Lisa for Ricoh, Xerox, KonicaMinolta and the rest. So, I thought I would try my hand at thinking up some names for copiers.

Here we go ( I took these names that were popular in the Victorian Era:

Hope Xerox (hoping it works all the time)
Lottie Ricoh (we make a lot of copies)
Lulu Kyocera (our copier is a loser)
Benedict Arnold Toshiba (the copier never works right)
Dick KonicaMinolta (our copier sucks)
Nimrod Sharp (odd name for an odd copier)
Owen Savin (we owe a lot of money on this copier)
Pleasant Muratec (we like our copier)
Zebulon Xerox (it's our prized copier)
Newton Ricoh (we just got it)
August Kyocera (the month the new copier was purchased)
Merlin Toshiba (our system is amazing)
Avis KonicaMinolta (we're only leasing this system for a short time)
Beaton Sharp (we beat on this system all the time)
Charity Savin (a hand me down)
Eustace Muratec (our system is useless)
Faithful Xerox (always works well)
Hercules Ricoh (our system is a workhorse)
Marmaduke Kyocera (our system is huge)
Patience Toshiba (it'll work just give it time)
Postumus KonicaMinolta (our last copier died unexpectadly)
Temperance Sharp (sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't)
Thurstan Savin (our system is always going through toner so fast)
Wy Muratec (why did we ever get this system)

I'm done, my favorites would be Hope, Benedict Arnold, Dick, Owen, Avis, Charity and Marmaduke.  But maybe we can name copiers and printers after rock stars right, these copiers and printers keep the wheels turning at the office everyday and with out them the paper process does start.  Think about Bruce, Billy, Mick, Ringo, Frank (I'm aging myself), and another thought might be to name them after songs like Sweet Home Alabama, Stairway to Heaven, Under My Thumb, Wild Horses.  

So, the next time I sell a copier, I will ask the new owner what name they would like to use for their new copier or printer, and I'm sure I'll get one of those strange New Jersey looks and be escorted to the door. Hey!  If you've got any really cool names drop them here in the response section!!

-=Good Selling=-

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=-

A Great Voice Activated Copier Prank

It's always fun to have a laugh with the office copier.  In this you tube video, a prankster makes up an official looking document that states the existing copier was upgraded to voice activation and the legacy keys have been disabled, thus you need to give the copier "verbal commands", which makes a whole lot of fun when the copier does not react.

A traditional prank around our office on the newbie reps is to give them a lead for the local zoo (we make it look real official though), type in what system they are interested in the phone number and the name of the contact person. The contact person is either Mr. Gee Raft or Mrs. Eli Fant.  It's a dam riot in the office and we have a lot of fun with it.

See the video on the side for some additional laughs.

Top Ten MFP Copier Industry Predictions for 2013

2012 a not so good year for the MFP copier industry or a good year for the MFP copier industry.  

I'm thinking that most will answer a not so good year at least for the industry as a whole. I guess the biggest question that will need to be answered in 2013 is related to Sharp.  Will Sharp continue as it once was, or will they be forced to sell off divisions to remain in business.  Lately there's been a little good news with the investment from Qualcom. 

Another question is how many more dealers will make the jump to managed services and will managed services live up the hype?  Anyone you slice it I can see that 2013 will be another year of change in an industry that is in turmoil.

Last year we posted this blog Top Ten MFP & Copier Predictions for 2012, and it seems we got a few of these right such as: 

• Kodak files for Bankruptcy or is bought
• Ricoh USA finally comes clean and announces that Ricoh Corp USA is headquarter is Malvern, PA
• Managed Print Services...the hype continues
• Xerox announces additional layoffs in the US
• USA MFP Copier manufacturer sees the introduction of the first A4 Segment 5 MFP (Lexmark MX812 & there was also an announcement of an HP 70ppm color A4 device for 2013)

5 out of 10 is not so bad since some of the predictions are off the wall and meant to be lighthearted. 

Without further ado listed below is our Top Ten MFP Predictions for 2013

What if Your Copier Copier Could Talk?

I thought that a few years ago it was either Sharp or Toshiba that had launched or was going to launch a copy machine that  would give the end user audible instructions on how to remove a paper jam or walk them through a series of prompts to solve an issue  I did a quick google search however I couldn't find anything.

But, what if you're copier could talk or at least pass a snide comment every now and then?  Thus I put together some of my favorites that I'd like to hear, if you've got others please post them in the comments section. We could have a lot of fun with this!

Here's a few:

1. Could you please get your butt off of me!

2. Everyone step away, whadda think I am, the water cooler!

3. Go ahead, kick me again and I'll send a virus to everyone in your LDAP directory!

4. Hello Cutie!

5. Hey You El Cheapo, how about give me the real stuff instead of this crappy generic toner!

6. I think I'm turning Japanese, I really think so!

7. I really, really hope when you came outta there you washed your hands before you touch me!

8. Of course I'm jammed! You may want to think about reading the manual ONE TIME!!

9. I'm not feeling that well today and I will be taking the day off!

10. Psst! You the technician, can you convince the owners to let me retire!

Please if you've got some good ones, please post them in the comment section!

-=Good Selling=-

Sharp Corp's Swan SONG "We did it Our Way"

A Print4Pay Hotel sing along!  A classic, just use the lyrics below!


And now, the end is near
And so we face the final curtain
My dealers, We'll say it clear
Did we make our last MFP, of which we're not certain
We spanned a century of business
We manufactured copiers, tv's and fax machines
And more, much more than this, we messed it up our way

Regrets, we've had a few
But then again, many more to mention
We did what we had to do to try and save our business
We planned each charted course, each careful step along this last year
And more, much more than this, We did it our way

Yes, there were times, I'm sure you knew
When we bit off more than we could chew
But through it all, when there was doubt
We screwed it up and accepted a bank bailout
We faced it all and we stood tall and did it our way

We copied, we faxed and printed
We've had our time, our share of losing
As the debt draws near, you'll find us boozing
To think we did all that
And may we say, not in a great way,
"Oh, no, oh, no, we are Sharp, we did it our way"

For what is Sharp? is sincerity and creativity
If not ourself, then we have naught
We made some aweful choices and suffered some terrible losses
The record shows we took blows and we did our way!

Yes, it was our way

This is intended for entertainment, have fun with it!

-=Good Selling=-

Bucks County "A Case for a Managed Print Services Detective"

Amazing, it simply is....I picked up this press release for Bucks County today titled "Commissioner calls for copy paper investigation". 

Bucks County, PA just approved a bid for copy paper in the amount of $167,000 dollars.  I'm going to go out on a limb and figure this was all for letter size paper and the each case of paper has 5,000 sheets of paper. I'm also going to make an assumption that the cost per case was $20 per case, since I've seen it on sale for that low a few times and this was a rather large bid.

At $20 per case the County of Bucks would have received 8,350 cases of paper. Cases of paper have 5,000 sheets of paper, thus we can figure that the total of sheets is 41.75 million sheets of paper! 

What does Buck County do with all  of this paper? 

Well it seems it's all used in the copiers, printers and fax machines.  Forty Two Million sheets of paper is...well... a whole heck of a lot of paper. I can only think of how many useless and out of date print devices they have!

Since we know how many sheets of paper they have, we can take and educated guess at what Bucks County is paying to put ink and toner on paper.  Since the average cost per page is for a decent size multifunctional copier/printer is around a penny and the cost for most stand alone printers and fax can range from 3 cents to 12 cents per page (and I'm not even thinking about color, just black). I would say the average cost per page printed/copier and faxed would be .03 cents.

Do the math and lets round it off to 42 million pages, 42 million times .03 cents is $1,260,000 dollars!  That's a cool $1.26 million dollars is spent every year for output!  Again this does not factor the cost of the hardware, nor does it assume that there are any color devices and I'll bet dollars to doughnuts there are many color devices.

So, what can Bucks County do to lower their costs? 

Well for starters they could call me to do a print assessment of all of their output devices.  I could be their Managed Print/Copy Detective and find out where there is waste, find the obsolete printers/copiers, evaluate the high cost printer/copiers, and recommend print management software, toner reduction algorithms and A4 MFP hardware that will lower the amount of prints and paper, redirect prints to lower cost devices and recommend a better security system than walk up users inputting a four or six digit code in the copier. I'm thinking there could be as much as a 25% savings to the county when it's all said and done. 

Of course this would be a huge assessment and take quite of bit of time to map and record every print device and of course someone with my ability does not work for free.  Consultants are people who tell other people how to do something that they don't know how to do.

So, Commissioner Martin, I'm here at your service, give me call and let' see how much we can save the Bucks County!

BTW, I already sent Commissioner Martin and email on this, and I hope he enjoys it!  the investigation has been launched!


-=Good Selling=-

Dr. Print Offers to Cure Your Print Pain

Who says you can't have fun and offer up FREE print solutions?  We've just landed the guru of print to our Print4Pay Hotel forums!

Just about a week ago me and the wife paid a visit to the boardwalk at Seaside Heights, NJ aka Jersey Shore. The sweet smell of the salt water, the blistering sun, the throngs of people and who the heck do I run into?  The Doctor of Print....aka Dr. Pcl5, it was like old times again!

Geesh, I hadn't seen DP in almost 20 years!  So what do people from Jersey do when they're at the boardwalk, you guessed it we drank together, ate Italian hot dogs, clams, lobster, laughed together and reminisced about the glory days of selling copiers.

But there's more to this than you think,  I took the time to show Dr. Pcl5 the Print4Pay Hotel forums, and convinced him with about 5 beers and 5 shots of tequila (we poured the tequila in the beer) to come on board as our Print Doctor.  After the 5th beer and tequila we were in bad shape, Dr. Pcl5 decided it was time to pack it in the for the night and I had to be driven home by the wife. But, it was an eventful time with an old friend and a new member of the Print4Pay Hotel forums.
Here's a small sampling of Dr. Pcl5 knowledge. In the past has offered up customized print solutions for Fortune 500 companies and is experienced with almost every Operating System and applications being used by some of the largest companies in the world!  Both Dr. Pcl5 and I agree that print is NOT dead, it's just more of a moving target and niche print systems and solutions will continue to grow and provide print stream management opportunities that will increase click, revenue and professional services. 

Think about it, does anyone of your customers or potential customers experiencing pain with their printing? Do they have this pain every day or is it just once in awhile, does the pain subside on different days of the week and increase on other days?  Have you been avoiding your customer because you couldn't offer them a pain free solution or you just couldn't find the right Doctor to collaborate with? 

I say, the wait is over!  Dr. Pcl5 wants you to post your toughest print questions and he promises that he can offer up a customized solution that will cure your customer, earn your respect and win you additional business with new and existing accounts. It's starting to sound like Ron Popiel now right?

What's the cost........, well there is NO cost, all you have to do is be a member of the Print4Pay Hotel forums, post you thread about your print pain and Dr. Pcl5 will analyze and offer up a solution to cure the print pain! Click here to find your pain free print solution!

At this time, I can't tell you who Dr. Pcl5 is, all I can tell you is that Dr. Pcl5 is the Guru of print, the King of SAP, the Duke of ERP, and the Lord of Linux and residing somewhere at the Jersey Shore.
-=Good Selling=-

Can Multifunctional Copiers or Printers be Infected with Malware?

Multifunctional Copiers or Printers be Infected with a Malware?

My first thought was….. this is AWESOME! 

Finally all of those tree huggers than complain about the world’s most re-usable resource (paper) may be affected by this new malware infection.  My second thought was, how can I get a hold of this and get this malware to all those rotten people out there that have hung up on me, not called me back (ever), or went with a cheap price!  Can we all remember this one, “the thought of a cheap price is long forgotten after poor service”. 

This also reminds me of the early days of faxing; this is when all plain paper/thermal fax machines were using roll paper.  Guys in the office would send an endless fax to a business that either ticked them off.  The trick was to take and original document, place it in the feeder of the fax machine and then roll the original and the tape the end of the sheet of paper to the front.  The result is that you would have a rolled original document that would be an endless loop.  You would then dial the fax number, press the start key and the document would be set to endless scan.  The result on the receiving machine is that it would continue to print until the roll of paper ran out!  I can remember that some of the paper rolls lengths were 500 feet.  Can you im agine walking in the office in the AM and seeing 500 feet of fax paper all over the floor, or sitting at your desk and just seeing the fax keep printing for hours!

Luckily there was no caller ID then, and one of our guys in the office got caught because he forgot to clear out the sender TTI, this actually told the customer where the document was being transmitted from.  It was not the professional thing to do, however some customers did deserve payback!

With this current malware named Trojan.Milicenso, the infected PC will print out pages of garbled data to the connected printer.  The article I read also indicated that this virus was most prevalent in the US, Europe and India.

The garbled pages of data reminds me of when I first started with installing print drivers, seems when I installed the wrong the print driver and then selected a file to print, we would then get pages and pages of garbled data and the only way to stop it was to turn the printer or multifunctional copier off!

So, can multifunctional copiers become infected with a virus? After doing a Google search and scanning through the first ten pages I came up with nothing. I’m thinking it may have something to do with Operating Systems that multifunctional copiers use that would make them less susceptible to viruses.

If anyone has any additional information on this I’d love to hear about it.

-=Good Selling=-

Is my Copier covered under the maintenance plan?

There's always one in every crowd, and usually it's me!  However one of the guys from my office (he's still a newbie in my eyes) sent me this with the caption "Is my Copier covered under the maintenance plan"?

Gosh, this about the worst one I ever seen, a real toner bomb so to speak, if anyone has photo's like this one, email them to me so I can post them on the p4photel forums.

Actually, this newbie is getting to be pretty good at sales and is actually does his homework about the industry.  BTW, he is working with one of the best :).  Kudos to him!

-=Good Selling=-

Good Copier Gone Bad!

A few weeks ago I came across an article on the web that was titled "TD Bank attorneys blame copier for ‘high risk’ error".

I thought I'd give it a read because after 33 years selling copiers,  and I've never seen a copier make a mistake, or not until I read this article.

Anyway seems TD Bank was being sued by a group of investors because TD Bank had loaned money to some dude in Texas that had perpetrated a Ponzi scheme.  One of the key pieces of evidence was a Bank form called a Customer Due Diligence Form or CDD.  This form would have been generated when the dude from Texas started banking with TD.

During the trial TD Bank had produced a form that had a black bar across the top of the page. The form with the black bar was used to question the witnesses in the case.  After the trial had concluded the attorney for the investors noticed that the same Customer Due Diligence Form had been used in another case, however that form was in color and there was a bright red bar across the top of the page and the words "High Risk" in white (knockout) letters.  The investors attorney wanted TD Bank to be penalized for the error. 

However TD Bank argued that the error was not material to the outcome of the case because the words "High Risk" was used in other parts of the CDD form.

TD also stated “The printing and copying process inadvertently blackened all of the words in all of the colored headers of the CDD, including not only the words "high risk," but also the other words in those headers. We sincerely regret this copying error,”  I'm claiming BS!

Selling Copiers & MFP's "Beancounters Enable More Sales"

Last month saw me not being able to maintain my monthly quota, and that really sucks!  Our month is suppose to close on the 24th of each month, however due to Thanksgiving and being closed on Friday and then the weekend we would have had until the 28th of the month.

Heck, I was good with that since Wednesday the 23rd is travel day before Thanksgiving and the 28th would have been a full business day to close additional business!    Thus I had the month of November at 23 Selling Days!!  Dam, just what I needed and extra day right?

Kinda, and not so fast, on or about the second week into the month we had a notice that we're closing the month on the 23rd which is the busiest travel day in the US. 

Basically means that you'd have to have all your sales completed by the 22nd of the month. So what was to be a bonus day, turned into one less day in the selling month, that's just like losing 10% of the month.  I'm not making excuses, however let me see some of those dam beancounters do my job and then let me take away a couple of selling days here and there, right!

But, you know, there is a shining light at the end of the tunnel.  When I'm back to work on Monday the 28, I'll still have 3 days left in the calendar month. So, I'll be back in the swing of things trying to get business closed with urgency before the calendar "end of the month".  In essence the beancounters need to close the month early gives me an additional "end of the month" closing tool.

Looking back, I kinda like having two "end of the month" opportunities, it gives me the additional desire to close things up and start the "new month" on a high note.

With that, we're into the last month of the year. I had a lot of business push to December and I'm hoping I can get it all done by the 14th, cause after that I'm closing shop until the end of the year!

Just a side note here from 1/20/2012, I was not able to finish the month by the 14th.  I was working all the way until the 23rd of the month.  For those that give up a few days before Christmas and pack it in. I was able close almost $100K in business on the 22nd and 23rd.  Just goes to show you that everyone is in buying mode around the Holidays!!!

-=Good Selling=-

Daily Copier & MFP Industry Notes from around the World

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., Sep 21, 2011 -- Conexant Systems Inc., a leading supplier of innovative semiconductor solutions for imaging, audio, embedded modem, and video surveillance applications, today announced the CX92161, a highly integrated system-on-chip (SoC) optimized for laser...read more

FOSTER CITY, Calif., Sept. 22, 2011  -- EFI™ (Nasdaq:EFII) concluded a very successful GRAPH EXPO 2011 last week, with high visitor attendance, strong orders on the show floor, hundreds of qualified leads, and the most awards won by a single company in the Must See 'em award program's history...read more

The combined serial inkjet and page printer, copier and multifunction product (MFP) market in India totalled 666,859 units in the second quarter of 2011, a 0.8% decline vis-a-vis the same period of the previous calendar year, according to research firm Gartner, Inc. Some of the ripples caused by... need to know more? 

Mayberry R.F.D. (S1E05) - The Copy Machine...watch the video

-=Good Selling=-

5 Great Ways to Lose Your Best MFP Sales People

Over the years I've had many emails from long time reps that have thrown in the towel.

These are the top 5 reasons why seasoned reps have stated they are moving on from the MFP industry.

Just thought I'd enlighten everyone with these.

1. Make sure you give them last months commission report a few days before you need to pay them. This way if there is a mistake, the rep will have to wait until next month.

2. Selling managers are too interested in selling, and not teaching/training new reps on sales techiniques nor solutions.

3. They can't get new equipment delivered in a timely manner.

4. Sorry, our pricing model had a mistake, it's not what you thought and we have to charge you back!

5. Promise them roads paved with gold and the don't give them the tools to reach those goals.

-=Good Selling=-

Selling Copiers & MFp's "Tell em it's God Calling"

I tell ya, when you get down to the last few days of the month and you're sitting on 105K that can close, anything can happen.

While I was taking a break from making some follow up calls, and I had just made a boat load of them (all of this was before the earthquake).  I overheard one of the reps state his name and our company on the phone. 

Well, I knew what the question was "Who is calling"? 

After he got off the phone I stated the next time I'm gonna tell someone it's GOD calling and see what happens (of course I was just kidding).

 However here's few things that will irrate GOD!

• Don't leave God on hold forever
• Don't have a nasty attitude towards GOD
• Don't hate GOD for calling
• Don't put GOD into voice mail (ever)
• Don't tell GOD he or she is away from their desk
• Don't tell GOD we're not interested
• Don't tell GOD we just leased a machine a week ago (that irrates GOD more than ever, it's like "you shoulda been here yesterday the fish were all over the place)
• Don't ask GOD what are you calling in reference to
• Don't tell GOD not to call again
• Don't tell GOD that person isout to lunch at 3PM in the afternoon 
• Don't tell GOD he or she just stepped out
• Don't tell GOD he or she is busy
• Last but not least DON'T EVER HANG UP ON GOD!

So, the next time you've had a busy day on the phone, maybe you can use the GOD card, I'm sure it will either get a laugh or someone will hang up on GOD!

-=Good Selling=-

Top Ten Favorite Copier Moments!

We started this topic on the Print4Pay Hotel forums a few months ago and I thought I'd share some of the threads that were posted for everyone.

Check out the YouTube video on the left it's pretty good also!

If you'd like to add your own go to this link and register to be a member, don't worry it's FREE!

"Several years back, I installed a fleet of Gestetner 60ppm MFP's in a large private school in DFW. The day after they were installed, a teacher decided to make transparencies (this was only 6 years ago, but they still used them) on the new machine. She made the mistake of grabbing transparencies that were not approved for use on a high-speed copier and proceeded to melt several transparencies onto the fusing unit. Not realizing what happened, she just thought the new machine was broken. So, why not try another machine down the hall. Obviously, the same result. This infuriated our VP of Service who started threatening to bill them for (2) new fusing units as part of the "User abuse" clause of their contract. The bill would've been nearly $2,000. The service technician who received the calls visited the machines and upon confirming that the transparencies had melted onto the fusing units, he abruptly left and grabbed several cans of compressed air from the Staples down the street. When he returned, he sprayed the compressed air onto the fusing units and dropped them on the floor, at which point the transparencies shattered into pieces on the floor & put the fusers back into the machines. They ran perfectly. He's basically a legend on that campus now." by TXEAGLE

"Years ago had a Lawyer come into our warehouse all angry yelling that her Fax machine we just sold her did not work at all.

So we took the fax back to product support and did some testing and could not find anything wrong with it.

After listening to her rant about documents not being sent we kindly asked her to come back to demonstrate what she was seeing as an error.

She takes a sheet of paper fed it in, dialed the test number, hit send, and started yelling

"See the paper just spits back out!"

"that piece of paper is not going anywhere!"

We had to explain to her that a Fax only transfers the image not the actual piece of paper."  by YETI


I was doing a demo when the newer bottles came out it was on a 22 cpm. Open the door and pulled the bottle and flipped it upside down and said look no more spilled toner and looked to see I was pouring toner on their new carpet.The top was still in the chuck.

The funniest one I ever heard was told to be by a technician it was in the mid 80's he dumped the developer out a customers machine and did not have a bag to put it in, so he went into the rest room and put it in the commode, but when he flushed it just spun around in the bowl. He flushed so many time the customer started knocking the door asking if he was ok and needed any help." by Aficio 400

If you'd like to read the others then click here and if you'd like to learn more about the Print4Pay Hotel, then click here.

-=Good Selling=-

Copiers, MFPs and "The Power of the .001 (one thousands of a penny)"

The Power of the .001 (one thousands of a penny)

It's getting kind of late but thought I'd give a stab at this.  The lowly penny and the power of profit that can be collected from Copiers, Printers and MFP's that are under maintenance contract is astounding.  

Years ago, with out the aid of copier maintenance software it was interesting to see what machines were pulling a profit and which were not.  When I was a newbie in the industry I can remember the service manager coming to me with a service card that outlined the cost that incurred with "x" machine and he had to make the call either try and get the system out of the field (thanx for the lead, just what I wanted to deal with a customer whose machine was breaking all the time) or to lose money on the system and raise the maintenance contract next year.

Today, maintenance software to monitor and track profits is now the norm for all dealers and manufacturers.  Thus with low profit systems or those systems producing a loss can be identified ASAP and measures can be put in place to make the system profitable.  The easiest way to make them profitable is to raise the cost of the maintenance agreement.  Most maintenance agreements sold now are all inclusive, meaning all parts, PM kits, consumables (toner, developer) and labor are included. Thus the cost per copy (I call it the cost per page) now rules the industry for most contracts.

So, what the heck does a penny get you?  Not much anymore, can you add a penny per page to a cost per page program, well you can if you 'd like to lose customers!

Here's some quick calculations on the power of the penny or in this case .001 (one thousands of a penny).  We'll deal with assumptions here for easy math.

XYZ Dealership has 500 systems that are on a cost per page contract. Each system generates 5,000 pages per month on average for a total of 2.5 million pages per month.  The XYZ dealership needs to generate additional profit because the owner needs a new boat. By adding .001 to each renewing contract each month, the added profit is $2,500 per month. Over the course of a year that's $30,000.  That's enough for the boat payments!  Really, if your current contract cost was .01 (penny) would you (the customer) be upset if the monthly increase was .001(one thousands of a penny) = $5 per month (Don't think so). What about an increase of .002 for each page, well now we're talking $5,000 per month and gee the owner can get an even bigger BOAT!

Now, here's some really crazy numbers for you.  The XYZ Dealership has 3,000 systems that are under a cost per page contract and each machine averages 10,000 pages per month.  The average monthly page volume is 30 million pages!  Adding just .001(one thousands of a penny) per page will give a profit of $30,000 dollars per month and a cool $360,000 dollars for the year. Now we're talking about a really really big boat!

Can the 3,000 systems averaging 10,000 pages a month be achieved, you betcha, it may take awhile but the opportunities are there especially with the emergence of managed print services in the last few years. 

Most profits from dealers go right back into the company, higher wages, additional people, new technology, cost of living.  I just thought it was neat run the numbers and see where they came out and have some fun!!

-=Good Selling=-