MFP & MPS Dealers Have Options in a Tough Economy

At a recent BTA event I was able to finally meet Chris Polek (CEO) of Polek and Polek.  Many years ago when I had my own dealership (13 years) we relied on Polek & Polek for imaging supplies.  Just this past fall when Hurricane Sandy devastated Highlands, NJ.  Polek & Polek and their employees sent boxes upon boxes of much needed supplies to my church (with out a call from me).  I urge you to include Polek & Polek as a valued vendor for your imaging supplies and I'm proud to have Polek & Polek as a long term sponsor of the Print4Pay Hotel.

 Polek & Polek, a family owned wholesale distributor of parts and supplies for copiers, faxes, and printers in business since 1974. Take a good read of Dan's article, its quite good!

You Have Options in a Tough Economy

The headlines of today’s economic news are adding to the already challenging environment in the imaging industry. OEM’s, now more than ever, are operating in your territory. This is bringing concerns to dealer management all over the United States. Pricing pressure coming from CPC pricing in the .0029 vicinity is challenging even the best dealers to search for ways to compete and reduce costs. Here are some other forces that are creating serious headwinds for the dealer community.

 OEM quotas are demanding on your resources, stuffing warehouses all over the country to the benefit of the OEM and to the detriment of the dealer community.

 Cash flow is slowing down as a result of this and the slowing economic environment.

 OEM’s threaten cancellation or to open competing dealers down the street.

 Color printing and page coverage is squeezing the dealer between the customer and the OEM supplier more than anyone else in the supply chain.

 OEM direct competition is still going on at or below your lowest price with all discounts included at retail.

 Some dealers are seeing machine placements, copy counts and new business slowing to a trickle.

 Operating expenses are all going up.

 Tech salaries are being challenged and competed for from the IT industry.

 The burden of producing profit is on service and supplies.

There ARE ways to overcome these tough setbacks and situations.

Become part of a buying group or Industry organization ‐ IBPI, BTA, BPCA, CDA or SDG groups.

These groups provide buying

Why Buy or Lease from an Authorized Copier Dealer

Many years ago you could only buy copy machines from Authorized Dealers. An Authorized Dealer is usually a privately owned company that is local to your geographic area. That has changed and most copier manufacturers now have direct branches. A Direct Branch is owned by the manufacturer and may or may not be local to your geographic area.

For many years the debate has raged who should I buy from. Too me it plain and simple, you should buy from the company or the sales person that you trust, that has the best support, and the best people.

Local Authorized Dealers can have more that one brand to offer and they can choose which copier/mfp or software solution is best for you.  Typically Manufacturers Direct branches will only offer their brand or their software solution and it just might not be the best fit for you. You can think of it like buying car insurance you can go to the agent that reps for Prudential, Allstate and Farmers and they can find the right insurance solution for you.  The same is true for the Authorized local Copier Dealer, most have two or three brands that they sell, support and service.

Typically you should ask these 8 questions from your sales person.

1. Ask the sales person how long they have worked with their current company. A sales person who has less than 2 years experience may not have the resources nor the knowledge to meet your needs.

10 Awesome Tips to Keep Your Best Sales Producers

Seems to me like this would be just the opposite of "10 Tips on How to Lose Your Top Sales Producers"   blog I wrote....., well, not entirely.

1.  Don't lie to them, if you do and you're found out to be a liar, the rep will have no respect for you or your company.
2.  Double and triple check commissions to make sure they are correct, who knows maybe you'll find and error in your favor and you didn't see in on the first pass.
3. Check and approve the commission form before the new system or service is installed, this way if there is a discrepancy it can be resolved before the pay period or the install.  This will also help the sales person too see exactly what they are getting paid and they can then "count" x amount of funds in order to pay their bills.  Side Note:  Over the years I've been amazed at the amount of people who think our commission money is extra money, mad money or our slush fund.  Get a grip people we use our commission money to pay or bills and support our family.

Top 5 (#2) Solutions/Products at BTA East Grand Slam Event

As many of you know I attended the BTA (Business Technology Association) BTA Grand Slam Event last week in White Plains, NY.  One of the bigger vibes from the show was the Yankee game that was scheduled for the last night of the show.  The Yankees were playing the last game of the season and still chasing the American League East Pennant, my what a difference a week and a half makes right?

So, I'm in sitting in the restaurant in the Doral Arrowwood Resort for lunch, a few minutes later two guys sit down in the next table, and they were talking about the Yankees. Mind you I'm a Yankee hater, ever since they traded Roger Maris back inb the 60's.  But one of the guys wasn't sure what time the game was on Wednesday night, so I chimed in with the time and to my surprise it was Chris Polek (CE0) of Polek & Polek.  I had never met Chris before and it was a pleasure to meet one of my long time sponsors of the Print4Pay Hotel forums.

Polek & Polek is a supplier of generic toner for printers and copiers, I know first hand that they spend a lot of time to have the best quality aftermarket supplies in the business.  I used to do business with them when I had my own dealership back in the eighties, I never had a problem with any of the products that they sold. 

While at the BTA Event, after every speaker there was a 45 minute break that allowed dealers to go and meet the vendors (awesome), and after one of the breaks I went over to talk to Chris to catch up and to ask me to tell him more about the products he has available.  He mentioned staples, I said what? Staples... Polek & Polek carries aftermarket staples for all of the MFP manufactures, better yet they are manufactured by Swingline (who can ask for a better product manufacturer, right).  Chris explained the dealers can save up to 40-45% off th manufacturers wholesale price.  Chris told me that one of his largest dealers had told him that by just buying the staples from Polek & Polek that they had saved over $10K in one year! That's awesome.

Whether you're in need of aftermarket drums, toners, developers, staples and I'm sure a heck of a lot of other stuff maybe it's time to fatten your profits and give them a call and tell me the Print4Pay Hotel mentioned that they are one of the "go to" vendors in our industry!

BTW,  Polek & Polek is a sponsor of the Print4Pay Hotel forums and I'd like to thank them for their years of support.

-=Good Selling=-

Why Sell Copier and Managed Print Solutions by the Penny

I'm going to borrow something from This Week in Imaging and Scott Cullen.  Scott reported that while having breakfast with at the Kyocera Dealer Meeting that a Dealer stated that “the truth is 80 percent of the people out there don’t need solutions.”

Mind you I have no clue who the dealer is or if they are a Kyocera Dealer only or have multiple lines, however the statement that "the truth is 80% of the people (think he meant customers) don't need solutions." is just plain wrong! I'm thinking maybe that Dealer Owner (if it was a dealer owner) doesn't go out much in the field anymore and is listening to reps who don't want to sell solutions or just don't understand the solutions that they have.

I'll admit getting the customer to commit to buying, installing, implementing and training on any of the solutions (Equitrac, Ecopy, NSI Autostore, UDOCX, Global Scan, Digi Docflow) is a tall task. I speak about solutions all of the time for every appointment, I'm finding interest, and in some cases I can sell the solution but have had to back down because "we didn't feel comfortable supporting the solution." What I find in the field is at least 50%-60% would like to have the solutions that we offer. The stumbling blocks that I run across are many and I'll list a few from my point of view and from other Print4Pay Hotel members that I've spoken to or communicated with through the Print4Pay Hotel forums.

• Upfront cost of the solution
• The Cost of  the Implementation of Solution (time in the customers eyes)
• Training (what happens when the person or people I have trained leave, retire or are replaced)
• Maintenance/Upgrades (who's going to monitor or keep track of the maintenance costs and upgrade when needed and will I need additional training for an upgrade)
• Change the Process (we're to thin with staff already and to change the process would be a burden on productivity)
• Support (Who do I call, are you/they proactive, can I get them on the phone asap)
• What Solutions Can We Support (this is from the dealers perspective, do I have the personnel that is capable of doing this right, or will we dabble and flounder)

Ricoh Innovates with Scan2iPhone & Scan2iPod App

I've had an iPod touch for awhile, but never had the chance to play around with it. Over the last week or so, I've been having some fun with all of the different apps and games. I'll have to admit I love some of the games but hate the fact that they give you the opportunity to pay for additional features. Whatever, the game cost .99 cents and I think I dumped $20 bucks or so on upgrades, kinda wish I had that opportunity with PACMAN when I use to sit at the bar for hours dumping quarters into the machine.

Anyway, I downloaded the app for Ricoh Innovations for scanning documents on my iPod touch and this will also work with the iphone, not sure about the new droid phones.

So, under some not so good light at my desk I used the app to scan some pages. It's easy!!! You open the Ricoh app, take the picture and you'll then have the opportunity to deskew the document, clean the document or keep as is. When you're done you can them export to all these Google docs, email, Evernote, Dropbox, or export to your picture gallery. When exporting to everything but your picture gallery you send as a .pdf or .jpeg.

Within a minute or less I had the document in my Google docs and then sent to my email account. One of the nice features that I noticed is that once the document is sent it's not deleted, this enables you to send the document to another if needed. It kinda almost felt James Bondish, being able to take a picture of the document and have it captured and secured with one of my accounts.

The image quality is good. Keep in mind that you can tap the screen of the iPod or iPhone and you'll be able to focus and then see the AE lock on the screen.  I did not have the chance to export as a jpeg to see that quality. Keep in mind it's more for documents, sketches and stuff like that. Once I opened the doc, of course it was readable, but the quality kinda reminded me of a poor quality fax (but, I then realized that the document I captured was printed via inkjet printer and it was taken from an image from the web, thus 72dpi). I printed the document to my printer and it printed exactly what I scanned.

I'm thinking a better quality document will produce much better results and I really didn't have the time to run out to the car to get some good originals nor did I want to print from the inkjet. When I'm back in the office I'll give this a shot with some clean documents.

So, I'm thinking this is an awesome app, especially for those of us in the field. Instead of using scan2email or faxing the documents to the office. I can take a picture of them and email them or upload to my Google docs (this way I always have a copy of the documents).

It's the sizzle that sells the steak right? I'll going to incorporate this app into my presentations, and I was just thinking a neat demonstration would be to have email2print setup at the office and then just email the scanned page to the MFP's email address. That would be the sizzle!

Dam, I couldn't wait till I got to the office so I went to the car and pulled a clean original and processed through the Ricoh app. You know it did a very good job, not A1 perfect, but good enough for FREE and good enough to read and process documents!!!

-=Good Selling=-

Top 20 Copier & MFP Discussion @ The Print4Pay Hotel

Just thought I'd give everyone a quick update on the latest threads on the Print4Pay Hotel forums.

P4P Value Page get access to all forums, rfp's, rfq's, proposals, quotes, and leads! pssst! We've now linked and uploaded leads, RFP's and RFQ's for more than 2,000 systems in the past three months!


We've added New Content to our P4P Document Library! Every week, I'll be uploading a new files or documents that I've used for research, quotes, pricing or marketing pieces!!

P4P Document Library
Dealer vs Direct Pitch Document
Production Print Glossary II
Specification, BK5010e System Ricoh
Legality of Digital Image Copies.
Sizzle off the Press - Xerox ColorQube 9300 series

Interesting P4P Forum Threads
Check this ^%$^ out!
Chester C makes the Hall of Fame!!
Energy Consumption Specs
Ricoh C2057
ECI and Digital Gateway join forces

Most Viewed P4P Forum Threads
Is giving away free stuff to the DM (built into your cost) ethical?
copier_1700Srs_Short_Launch[1]
Canon iR2525 is Killer!
Questions regarding Konica Minolta MFP's
Adobe X not working with Konica Twain Scanning

New Leads, RFP's & RFQ's Uploaded!
Copier Lease and Maintenance in Arkansas
TN needs copier
Indiana
Indiana MPS
Michigan




The Print4Hotel Team

Selling Copiers "Is Your Dealership Prepared for the Future?"

The blog below was posted some time ago on the Print4Pay Hotel forums. It was intended for P4P Members on how to gauge the type of dealership or direct channel that they are working for and if they should continue or look elsewhere.

Mike K had written this for us and has since left the industry and he worked for one of the largest direct dealers in the US.  Do I need to say more?  Anyway it's good stuff and it's a good read. ENJOY!

Are you working for a dealership prepared for the future of Office Technology?

This might sound like I am making a big deal out of nothing, but I am not.  You are making good money and the deals are closing, but you are losing some of the bigger deals, people in immediate need and you cannot compete in bids or large deals.  Your dealership could be a sinking ship and you better be one of the first out and not the last because your reputation will be tarnished.

I had asked myself these exact questions a year ago. My answer was mostly no for each one. Below are questions that you should answer yes for at least 80% of them.  Questions with the # next to them are “a must.”

#Does your dealership have inventory?

          -What good is a sale if you have no product!!!

Does your dealership have demo/loaner inventory?

          -You need to show and make sure it is the correct solution.

#Does your dealership have Certified Network Engineers?

          -What if something happens while doing network install?

Does your dealership have a software solution expert?

          -You need someone with completely understands all possible software.

#Does your dealership have delivery staff?

          -You need to be selling and not delivering!

#Does your dealership have a real retirement plan that they contribute?

          -The dealership should invest in the well being of their employees.

Does your dealership have a gated commission plan for each deal?

          -This way you or they will not lose money later on.

#Can your dealership pay you all you commissions on time? 

          (Ex: March commissions paid by April 30^th)

         

Does your dealership have an internal bonus program?

          -They need to invest in the strongest reps and keep them happy.

          80/20 rule applies here!

Does your dealership have President Club Trips?

          -They need to invest in the strongest reps and keep them happy.

          Not to Dealer Sales Meetings!

          80/20 rule applies here also!

Possibly moving to Ricoh....

Possibly moving to Ricoh....was the title of a recent thread on the Print4Pay Hotel Forums. Click here to find our more about the forums.

A junior member of the P4P Hotel stated that he or she is currently in sales with a dealer that sells for "xyz" equipment and thinks the prospects of the dealer, even short term is not viable and she or he is considering a move to a Ricoh Dealer. So, the question was asked "Can any of you give me info on the advantages of Ricoh products vs XYZ products?

From here I'm just going to give a partial list of the threads for everyone:

Ricoh has tremendous market share

Top four and not in this order KonicaMinolta, Ricoh , Xerox and Canon
Ricoh puts much more into R & D for MFP's (from Jersey)

Ricoh product ranks at the top of the industry. That being said, selling today is about far more than the box. What other value can you bring to the table with a given vendor/dealer? How about ......
(from NE)

Unfortunately, I am already at a place that only sells "boxes". I don't know which companies in my area do those other services, of if the Ricoh.......... (from Montana)

I'm going to say something here from my experience of being a copier buyer BEFORE I started working in the copier industry. Yes, it's true, I was a client of the very dealership that I came to work for.



You're not going to like what I have to say because you're sales reps and you trained to think a certain way. Please, for once, listen with an open mind to someone with experience being on the other side of the proposal. Ponder it, don't spin it.


Most buyers don't care one bit what.......... (from WI)

Excellent post, makes me think twice about everything I do! Kudos (from Jersey)

best post in quite some time! I cannot agree anymore with what you said about the reason a customer will buy from you or not...... (from JAX)

Jack Daly said it best "People buy from people they like"

I know a local RBS where.......... (from CA)

One of our P4P members gave us six paragraphs on "What do buyers care about?", this member used to be a copier buyer before they went to work in the copier industry.  The post/thread is awesome and a good read for all of us who are in the field day in and day out. 

Take some time to sign up for the P4P Hotel forums, there's no cost, no hassle and communicate with your peers in a closed and secure forum.

-=Good Selling=-

Dirty MFP Leases, Done Dirt Cheap!

Who owns the customer when an Office Equipment Dealer or Direct Branch introduces a third party vendor (Leasing Company) for the financing of the MFP System? 

This question has been asked over and over in our industry.  Here's paragraph from Frank G. Cannata that is posted on Great America Leasing Corp's web site.

"The leasing companies who provide these "low rates" have to inflate the residuals in order to make it work. With the transition from analog to digital, it became painfully obvious that the residual values on the leased inventory were inordinately high and totally unsupportable.



The problem arises at the end of the lease when the dealer elects to go with another leasing provider. That is when the fun begins. It starts with fuzzy or vague end-of-lease requirements. The term "evergreen" is used when the customer has passed the period that allows him or her to terminate the lease. They often are extended without the consent or even knowledge of the customer. But that is only half of the story."

Frank also mentions the evergreen clause and also comments on how dealers try to maneuver around some of the end of lease terms to help the customer.  All of this has been going on for years, it's nothing new to us in the business. 

What's new? The first time I saw it was from Wells Fargo (if you know me you know how I feel about them, making a church make 12 extra payments on a lease because the church notified them a month earlier than what the lease contract called for), after the customer requested to return (customer sent Letter of Intent) the system, WF would then contact the customer and offer the customer to buy the unit from them, plus they would finance it!  Basically, cutting out the dealer and offering a lower buy price to the customer than what may have been offered to the Dealer or Direct Branch.  For all intentions Wells Fargo was now in the business of selling "off lease" copiers to the end user or the Dealers/Direct customer.

Now, just the other day I received a "ship to" location to return a Ricoh device to CIT.  Low and behold at the bottom of the page CIT had a quote for the customer to keep (buy) the unit, along with that they were willing to refinance the unit.  I'm guessing that CIT is now in the business of selling "off lease" copiers also.

My beef is that in all of these deals, the Dealer or Branch brought the leasing company to the party. If it were not for the Dealer/Direct Branch the leasing company would have never had the opportunity to engage with the customer. Is nothing sacred anymore?  Personally with this kind of end of lease behavior I couldn't give a rats ass about  either CIT or Wells Fargo and what happens with their device.  It's our (Dealer/Direct) customer and if you want them back then give the dealer incentives to keep the old unit instead of massing hundreds of thousands of old copiers in copier bone yards that are scattered across the country.

On the other hand there are those that say that Dealers and Direct Branches made their own bed by engaging Leasing Companies that had the lowest rate factor and the highest return on the copier. That's a good point, and you get what you pay for.  All Leasing companies are not created equal, some are very good like Great America and Clune Leasing, some are learning by their mistake and making changes, and some are still out their to enforce their contracts to make headaches for everyone.

Dealers/Direct need to take a more long term approach with who they make their bed with and those who lease need to read the fine print before they sign on the bottom line!

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Dealer Incentives "What Now!'

This is a recent topic of disucssion on the Print4Pay Hotel Forums.

 Here's the question that was raised by a Print4Pay Hotel member.

Can anyone comment on which dealer incentives or programs work best for your market? Which manufacturers offer the best/worst programs? Do any of your manufacturers have ridiculous terms and conditions? Just curious...

I have limited knowledge of this area, and have only seen a few manufacturer-to-dealer programs. Your feedback will help me think. Thanks!

We've had about eight responses to thread in the last week. Seems to me that over the years in the business that a lot of the dealer incentive programs do work! However, the paper work involved to get these incentives can be mind blowing. To keep things simple, wouldn't it be easier just to lower the price on the box to do the dealer and cut out all of the bs paperwork?

Here's a few short clips of the responses for you:

If most dealers are like mine, most incentives do not get passed on to the customer and/or the sales force. The only ones that are passed on are passed on due to the fact that ......

You need to be more specific when you say dealer incentives. What do you mean? From my standpoint some of the programs Ricoh offer are quite good. I am speaking about ..........

I can see you'd say they are an incentive to the client, who gets to choose between commercial and the discounted contract. But, on the admin side of things, these special contracts aren't always the great value to the dealership that manufacturers........

Oh, don't worry, the manufacturers find ways to heap paperwork.........

If you'd like to read the full threads, please become a member of the Print4Pay Hotel.

-=Good Selling=-

Copier Dealers "How to Increase Your Success"

Tired of selling Digital Copiers, tired of the competition and pricing pressures that comes with it.

Look no further! I'm gonna tell you that if you're not selling color wide format multifunctional systems or wide format color scanners, then you're missing a whole lotta sales!


In the last two years after hooking up with Paradigm Imaging in Costa Mesa, CA., I've been able to place several wide format color scanners, several wide format color printers and a little over a handful of the color wide format multifunctional systems.

Look around, check your competition and I'll be dollars to doughnuts there's not that many dealers or companies that carry these products. It's not because they don't work well, nor because their is a ton of support, more like it's one of the best kept secrets in the industry. Take another look around and see how many dealers are selling copiers in your area, quite a few right, so why not take a page from Captain Kirk's famous Kobayashi Maru test and change the programing, or better yet change your tactics. When cold calling focus on the AEC market place, most owners will be engaging because you're not just another copier guy. Hey, if you can sell and support multifunctional copiers, you can sell and support wide format color products.

What I love about Paradigm Imaging is the level of support, they actually helped me with my first few installations! Even when I had to make a few calls about why is this doing it this way or way won't this work that way, there was someone on the phone to support me.

From what I've seen over the years from cold calling is that companies that have wide format plotters or scanners wish they had local support and not someone coming from 60 or 100 miles away. Just think today a wide format scanner, and tomorrow they buy 5 mfp's from you. You know the saying "last sale get the first sale", actually just made that one up. But, I've seen it, sold em a plotter and three months later I got a call about quoting on the mfp.

Besides having almost no competition in the market place the EIS Supra is a Color Multifunctional Wide Format system that will Scan, Print & Copy in color! Margins are good and the competition is minimal at best.

Be different, be bold, and offer something that everyone else is not offering! Psst, Direct Branches have nothing like this, get my drift!!!!!!

-=Good Selling=-

Copier Sales "Position Yourself as an Expert"

Do you feel that you are the one of the best at selling MFP's? Do you consult more to the end user and then let the customer buy from you? Are you consistently producing print assessment reports for customers that have and instant ROI?

If so, you need to add this weapon to your arsenal. In your territory look up the 10 largest CPA firms. Once you have them, be prepared to make the calls to success!

CPA firms are in the business of making money as are all of us, they have many business clients that have trusted their services for years and years. What we want to do is to add value to the CPA's service's that they provide to their business clients, by added a new service for their customers. A customized Print Assessment Report for their clients.

Positioning yourself as an expert in the field of print assessments, meaning you are offering your services to the CPA firm for their clients, the CPA firm can either bill out this service or include it as an additional service that they offer for their clients. Your goal is to sell your knowledge and nothing else. Have copies of Print Assessments that you have completed to show the accounting firm what the typical report entails, here you are breaking the mold from the common copier salesperson and establishing yourself as the expert. You can even offer a FREE print assessment to the accounting firm to show them your expertise and your creative ideas for print assessment and print migration.

You can start by telling them about the high cost of printing to multiple devices and that you specialize in provided a detailed print assessment cost of what they are spending and a solution to save their clients money and or productivity. Your fees can be as much as $150 per hour plus expenses for your work.

All of the information needed is at your finger tips, companies like Ricoh offer a COG (customer opportunity generator), this software program gives you real life per page cost for about 95% of all the print devices that are on the market. For the other 5% you can do your research on the Internet.

In reference to all of the print device software that is on the market..... they are ok, however nothing is better than visiting every single print device, generating a report and then interviewing the end user for their needs. Interview can uncover tremendous savings and opportunities for all.

If you would like a copy of my print assessment report please log in to the Print4Pay Hotel and become a member www.p4photel.com/eve. I'll have the document posted in the Industry Proposals and Quotes forum (you'll need to purchase a Premium Membership for $15.00)

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Wars "Death of the A3 MFP" Part II

So, what's a dealer to do?

Dealers need to become more like VARs (Valued Added Resellers). Recently there was an article I read in CRN magazine about a company that specialized in networks. Over time, the owner noticed that they were getting calls from customers to add additional network drops for printers, mfp's, and telephone systems. Along with that they would also get trouble shooting calls for the printers and scanners that were on the network. He thought, why not have be the sole source for all of the hardware in the office, the benefit to the customer is that they did not have to have multiple vendors for hardware, so a company could reduce their workload with having one vendor to support all of their products.

So, this company decided to revamp their whole business model, he stated it took about a year, however they became and authorized dealer for printers, mfp's, telephone equipment and mailing equipment. Sales, are up along with new profit centers for consumables.

Here's my point, it's so hard and costly to get new customers. This guy found a way to increase his business by offering more products and services to his existing account base, plus the fact that some new additional business was accumulated by acquiring the new hardware lines. We all have the tech departments for on-site service, we are experts in technology.

Of course this type of business model may not work for everyone, there has to be a well laid out business and marketing plan along with acquiring the right people to staff those departments.

If you're not one for adding new hardware vendors then you need to get the solution thing figured out NOW! Figure out where you want to play in solutions market, do you want to capture more clicks with forms solutions, how about transpromo, or can you make the leap into document management. You could also just specialize in moving clicks from existing customer laser printers to your devices with a print management solution. Whatever it maybe, you need to focus on a few core items and become an expert in those solutions.

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Wars "Death of the A3 MFP"

You've read about them, you've seen them in the field, and you've heard some manufacturers dismiss A4 MFP devices as a flash in the pan. HP started the A4 MFP trend a few years ago by releasing the HP4345 (I hope that model number is correct), Samsung followed with their own A4 MFP design which is also sold by Xerox and Muratec.

Hold on a moment we're talking about high speed A4 MFP's not the small printer centric stuff sold at superstores and some of the recent low end devices that have been released. We're talking 35 page per minute speed or above. Now that I've got the straight, we'll continue..., Sharp then released their Frontier Line of A4 MFP's (Sharp was the first to release a copier centric device, all of the others are more of a printer centric device). Now, just the other day I heard from a pretty good source that Ricoh will release a copier centric A4 MFP device (this is the first I heard of this and I am still trying hear from others to confirm this).

If this proves to be true, you can bet dollars to donuts that Canon, Toshiba, KonicaMinolta, Kyocera and Xerox will follow with their own devices. Some of you may ask, well what's the big deal? Traditional 45 page per minute A3 MFP devices (will copy or print up to 11x17) with all of the bells and whistles will have a street price of $10K - $15K. The A4 MFP devices (will copy or print up to 8.5x14) with all of the bells and whistles has a street price of $5K-$7K or a third to half the cost of the traditional systems.

Manufacturers will see a decrease in margins along with decreased revenue in total sales. Dealers will also see a decrease in margins and lower revenues as the market heats up for these devices. Dealers and Salespeople will have to sell even more hardware wo keep up with Quotas, while adjusting to accepting lower margins for these devices. A good example would be a dealer had sold 100 A3 MFP devices last year at an average of $11,000 for a total of $1.1 million dollars. So, according to HP's study done many years ago, 78 out of 100 of these machines would now resell for $6,000 and 22% (A3) at the $11,000 for a combined total sales revenue of $710K. Which result in a revenue drop of $390,000 or about 35%. Now to look at profit, just using a 10% profit... a dealer would lose $40K in profit for selling and supporting the same amount of boxes and would also fall behind in quota dollars.

A4 MFP devices are here to stay and with recent rumors of 70 & 90 page per minute devices somewhere down the road, what's can a dealer do? Dealers need to become......I'll have part two of this next week.

Just read this 5 minutes ago that Panasonic just announced a 35 page per minute A4 device for $495, what piece of ..... weighing in at a mere 21 lbs..

-=Good Selling=-

Five Tips for Collecting in Today’s Economic Times

Dan Donahue from Polek and Polek sent this to me today and thought it would be valuable info for all of P4P Hotel Dealer Principal members. ENJOY!

By Alicia Leary, Credit Manager

Are you having trouble collecting from your customers? Do they say their customers aren’t paying them and they can’t pay you?

It’s a vicious cycle I know. I know it’s a tough time and you have probably heard every excuse in the book, but I am here to tell you, don’t give up. You may not get paid as quickly as you’d like but ,you can get paid. The best thing you can do right now is WORK with your customers. They will remember that you did and when this bad economy is over, who do you think they will remember helped them out during their rough time? YOU! That’s right.

Here are some strategies that have worked for Polek & Polek that I would like to share with you as they may be helpful:

1. Make calling your customers your TOP priority.

Cash is the most important asset of your business. Go through your Aging report at least once a week. If you need it, request help with your other duties so you can get on the phone. Your customers are most likely going to pay those vendors who call them first as opposed to those who don’t call at all. You will be at the top of the list.

2. Be nice and courteous.

Don’t call with a bad attitude because no one likes that, and you will only hurt yourself in the process. The nicer you are the further you will get.

3. Constantly Calling?

If you are constantly calling a customer who doesn’t return your phone calls, try sending them a letter or an email.

4. For those customers that you have had for years and who normally pay you well, but have gotten into a little financial trouble, work with them.

Offer a solution and a helping hand. For example, suggest a weekly payment plan; $50, $100, $500 a week until they catch up. In the meantime, keep selling to them, but do it on a COD or credit card basis. This way, you are getting paid for your product/services and they can continue doing business as well. They will be very happy you helped them through their difficult financial period and they will remember in the future.

*Some studies show the following statistics: You have a 90% chance of collection within the first 60 days. After that, this drops to

50% after an account gets to 90 days and 20% on accounts over 180 days.

5. If customers are very past due, and you have exhausted every possible avenue in collecting money, then send them a collections letter.

Once an account is over 60 days your probability of collecting your money gets less and less. The longer you wait the worse chance you will have of collecting what is owed you. I suggest you send a collections letter if you have exhausted every possible avenue and the customer has not responded. When you send this letter, include a deadline for payment or to set up a weekly payment plan, and a date that you will put them in collections if this deadline is not met. In my experience this letter, gets the customer to contact you before the deadline 90% of the time. If you do not hear from them, put them in collections on the date you said you would. Once this letter is sent out, you MUST follow through on your end.

*information provided by http://www.crfonline.org

Since 1992, Alicia Leary has been the Credit Manager at Polek and Polek, a family owned wholesale distributor of parts and supplies for copiers, faxes, and printers in business since 1974. To learn more visit http://www.polek.com