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 .

The Week in Imaging Honors Art Post One of Most Influential in Imaging Industry

The Week in Imaging Honors Art Post One of Most Influential in Imaging Industry

Ewing, New Jersey, May 28, 2013 – The Week in Imaging (TWII), a weekly online publication focusing on news, information, and commentary about the imaging industry, has named Art Post, founder of the Print4Pay Hotel and The MFP Solutions Blog as one of its Top 40 Most Influential People in the Imaging Industry for 2013. This is the second time Post has been recognized in TWII’s Top 40, the first time in 2011 when the awards were first presented.

Every other year The Week in Imaging presents its Top 40 Most Influential People in the Imaging Industry. The broad mix of individuals consist of those who make the tough decisions either at the top or at various levels within their organizations, those who others in the industry follow or emulate as well as thought leaders whose commentary and experience help them navigate through the ever-changing landscape whether it be hardware, solutions or services that make up the imaging industry.

“While most of the folks on our most influential list are upper-level executives in dealerships; key executives with OEMs, services, and solutions providers; or industry consultants, it’s refreshing to know that plenty of feet-on-the-street sales reps and dealer principals still appreciate the opinions, sometimes controversial, of one of their peers,” states Scott Cullen, editor and publisher of The Week in Imaging. “What impresses us about Art is that he has thousands of readers all around the world, many just like him in sales positions, who appreciate his knack for telling it like it is.” 

“I’m honored to be included among such a distinguished group of individuals, many of whom have made a huge impact on the imaging industry and are people I respect,” adds Art Post. “To be acknowledged for something that began as a hobby and has evolved into something that has been so influential to so many people is especially gratifying. I’m looking forward to sharing my insights in my blog and allowing others to share their best practices and opinions in our various Print4Pay Hotel forums for many years to come.”

# # #

Looking for MFP & Copier Leads in All The Right Places

I've borrowed a few lines from a blog I did about three years ago in reference to finding leads and then updated with a few new ones for everyone. 

Have you ever heard of the "three foot rule"?  It means that whenever you get within three feet of someone you should be talk solutions/MFP's or even how do you do this or that.  It sounds kind of lame, but you need to sneak it in somewhere.  I could have the worst week, month or even quarter however I always look at it that I never know what tomorrow will bring me, it's inevitable that continued prospecting will always generate new opportunities that you were not counting on.

Over the years, I found leads I've generated opportunities because I always ask myself how did they print this or make it look this way.  Here are 5 opportunities that came my way over the years.

1) The first one was a paper store; I had to buy specialty paper to run some print samples for a client. As I was making my purchase, the clerk printed a sales order/sales receipt on a dot matrix printer with pre-printed three part carbon less paper.

It clicked; I asked the clerk why do you print these like this? He just gave me a dumb look and stated "cause that's the way the boss does it", okay I thought. I then asked for the owners name and the best time to contact him. Done, it's a lead and a solutions lead at that. Pre-printed carbon less forms can run as high as .25 cents each or higher. Now it's just a case of finding out how many forms are printed each and every month to make a viable ROI presentation.

The Transition of the Copier Industry Part V

What Can Copier/Printers Dealers Do?

You could do nothing and keep stealing pages from other vendors and have other vendors steal your pages.  There's no growth in pages!

Many traditional copier companies are now embracing and moving forward with Managed Network Services.  At one time I asked why the heck would we do that, the other day I got my answer, when it comes to on-site service and support no one does it better than copiers dealers, not IT companies, not phone system dealers nada they all stink. We are the best for on-site support within our channel.

Dealers need to diversify their offerings:

If you're just a traditional copier dealer then I might suggest adding systems where you can also can some maintenance agreement revenue along with break and fix.  Take a look at offering folding machines, folders/inserters, mailing equipment, paper cutters, scoring machines, business card cutters, and pressure sealers. I like the addition of pressure sealers because you can get more bang for your buck, you can sell the media, the pressure sealer and then reap the clicks from higher volume MFP's, light production units and even duplicators.  All of these devices will need service from time to time, most are very mechanical and with trained techs you should be able to garner a some nice margins with service.

Dang, I forgot this one, and it's huge, get on board with 3D printing, it's right up our alley, very little competition, high margins on supplies, high margins on maintenance agreements, the best is that they have to come to you for supplies. Typical users are Colleges, Universities, manufacturing, and Architects, when was the last time someone from a College or niversity call you for a product?  3D printers are on fire right now.

How about just becoming an expert with 3rd party MFP solutions?

I'm hearing and seeing  many dealers looking to add new services, but what about the MFP's that are in the office already. What about all of that neat software that can be embedded within the device that can drive BPO (Business Process Optimization). Many years ago dealers deployed specialized reps to visit accounts and sell the extras such as maintenance agreements, auto document feeders, and finisher/staplers. Why can't this be done with OEM or 3rd party solutions. New accounts are so dang hard to get, but it's your existing accounts where you can sell the extras and make some excellent margins. 

Pick 5 different solutions for 5 different vertical markets, train 5 sales people to sell these 3rd party solutions which could be programs like Print Audit 6, Doculex, Intellenetics, UDOCX. However, you also have depending on what manufacturer you represent all type of business process improvement solutions that can be embedded within the MFP. Before you jump on the MNS/Backup band wagon become and expert with your own solutions from your manufacturer.

One more idea, how about starting an hardware agnostic solution sales team that will go out and sell, install and train on 3rd party solutions. I don't have an accurate number but if I were a betting guy, I would bet that 90% of all mfp devices are not running and embedded software. There's treasure trove of opportunity!

Eat What You Cook:

If you decide to make the jump to offering BPO (Business Process Optimization) then I strongly suggest that you look at your own business processes first.  I'm sure there is pain in your organization with a process.  Look to solve those processes first, one I would fix at the place where I work is the sales process.  Here I would stream line the amount of paper needed and look into developing all of my forms on an ipad or a business type tablet, from here I would want the forms to go to my sale manager for review, he would sign off on them with a digital signature and then send them to order entry. Your company could then become an expert in that particular business process and pitch the solution process to other companies that have the same pain. I could go on and on, but look at your own company first, make the improvements and then sell the heck out of it.

Think about this for a second. you're selling BPO, curing a customers pain and then when they are ready to order you hand them sheets of paper to sign, DUH!


-=Good Selling=-

Copier Dealerships Use of Tablet Technology Saves the Day!

Rick Backus is a genuine genius when it comes to implementing time saving solutions for Copier & Managed Print Dealers.  We're also proud to have Rick as a member and sponsor of the Print4Pay Hotel forums, many times Rick has stepped up and offered a solution when most of thought there was not one.  This blog from Rick is a great example of how Rick's knowledge and expertise can help your company improve it's business processes.

Support revenue using mobile devices to capture signatures and data from the field

One of my clients was recently looking to refresh their field service technician's hardware and was considering whether they might be able to roll out tablets rather than upgrade the existing laptops.

Essentially the techs only needed storage for technical and part manuals, Internet access and email for communication. Tablets are certainly capable of fulfilling these requirements and are considerably less expensive which is always a powerful motivator.

During this same time period another dilemma was confronting the service department. They were losing a significant amount of revenue from chargeable, time and material calls where the customer was disputing the invoice and service could not produce a signed copy of the service call report to substantiate their invoice to the customer. It seems the existing procedure for processing the call reports no tracking ability to insure the techs a) Actually filled out and returned a signed copy of the report and b) once it was returned that it was properly filed and retrievable.

Many months ago I had setup a SharePoint site for them for a sales related project but at the time we also created a document library to scan date-batched service call reports to for archiving. You know, eliminate the paper and all... Well this process fell by the wayside and the department was losing revenue. A new solution was desperately needed.

Electronic forms would foot the bill but since they were using SharePoint Foundation they did not have access to InfoPath forms. After some research and testing on our in-house SharePoint Enterprise instance we came up with a solution to the problem. With a new mail-enabled, document library in the service department's sub-site we installed a new application to create electronic PDF forms. Using the original pdf file from the paper version as an underlay we inserted all the necessary data fields in the form including mapping specific fields to document library columns as metadata. The parts sales prices and final totals were setup to automatically calculate as well.

After some testing and training we rolled the solution out to the techs. It was a tremendous success. They have nearly 100% compliance, the completed forms are emailed back to the SharePoint document library and indexed automatically. Using views and/or filtering we can identify the chargeable reports, compare form count to tech closed calls as a cross check and we have all the customers emails for marketing purposes. The customers are impressed by the use of technology including using their finger to sign the forms which are emailed to them immediately. It was a huge win all the way around.

This technology opened up a whole variety of other opportunities with this client. The next step is to tackle the delivery and acceptance forms.

If this is something you think your organization could benefit from contact me here.

-=Good Selling=-


 

The End of Solution Sales? Are they Fracking Crazy?

The other night I came across an article/blog titled "The End of Solution Sales", as usual I gave it a read and was not in agreement with several of the statements that were made by the authors.

"But now, owing to increasingly sophisticated procurement teams and purchasing consultants armed with troves of data, companies can readily define solutions for themselves". 

Hey, if the procurement teams and purchasing teams are investigating pricing, they can pretty much find that anywhere for a specific piece of hardware or solution.  The trick is knowing which solution is the right fit and if  there is a better solution that will ease the pain or improve the business process to make it the corporation moer efficient.  You can look up tons of information on the web, however can you really find a solution to specific business problems?  In some cases, I'm thinking yes, however when it comes to true print stream management solutions I'm thinking, not really! 

Let's take this for example:  combine print stream to print 3 pages on NCR paper and staple, a google lookup returns this.  If you got to the second page of the google search you would have seen a few of my blog posts, however nothing on the acutally software that provides the solution.

There will always be Solution Sales and there will always be Solution Sales People, the "End of Solutions Sales" is catchy title and thats about all it is.   Vince from the P4P Hotel forums posting this in reference to the article;  "I hope like Hell my competition reads this and decides to fire their Solutions and Systems Engineers. Beucase then I will have an even easier time of cleaning their clocks!

Why RFPs don't work anymore!

The first couple of paragraphs don't seem to be supported by the end of the article, unless the Super Saleman that he speaks of have in depth technical knowledge of the products they sell and the network environments that they sell them into, Oh wait! That would be a Pre Sales Solution Engineer. Never mind!"

The other statement I am not in agreement with is "The top-performing reps have abandoned the traditional playbook and devised a novel, even radical, sales approach built on the three strategies outlined above. Let’s take a close look at each".  There is NO playbook! Top reps will always find a way to tweak strategiesnd if they don't they will be left in the dust.

I had to chance to look up the three writers for this article/blog and there was one common theme among them (lloed them up on linkedin), seems like none of them had real sales experience and the article/blog they wrote about was based on data.  Come on, if you're really going to claim that this is the end of Solution Sales at least have some experience in sales!

Solution Sales is here to stay, the rep or the company that seeks out new technologies and new solution vendors will always be one step ahead of the competition and always have a creative way to solve a business process. If you don't eat the bear, the bear will eat you!

BTW, here's the link for the article!

-=Good Selling=-

What is an MFP Copier Solution Worth?

I've been busy for the past week visiting my son at Fort Benning, Ga.  He's graduated boot camp and will be there for another month for advanced training.  I'm proud of his accomplishment and can't wait to see him for his final graduation in July.

Anyway one of the Print4Pay Hotel sponsor is a Stethos, if you're not familiar with Stethos they are a software company that offers different solutions to enhance and modify the printer data stream without interfering with existing processes. The pricing for these solutions is off the the charts, believe me you can sell a solution and make an excellent profit!

So last week I made a phone call to a Net New Account, this was my third call to this Health Care account and I was able to get through to the IT manager. I have to admit I had a little bit of help, meaning my wife had to make a few visits to this Health Care Group (she's fine). Like most medical plans we had to pay something, about three weeks ago we received billing from them and the billing was at 3 pages that were printed from some sort of laser device, however they were not stapled. Thus I assumed (and I was right), that someone had to fold each piece of paper that was printed and then stuffed in the envelope.  The folding part is mundane and is a real loss of time when it comes to productivity. 

The plan was to speak about the billing I received and then to ask questions:

Ricoh Convergence 2012 Update!

When Ricoh Americas holds a dealer event like Convergence, it's usually something special.  The Convergence theme was born a few years ago in an attempt to merge the Savin, Ricoh, Gestetner and Lanier Dealers all into one dealer meeting.  Before the Convergence dealer meeting each brand has it's own dealer meetings.  I can see why Ricoh made the move to one dealer meeting for all dealers, savings.... and one unified message.  

Before the Ricoh Convergence Dealers meetings the Ricoh Dealers meetings were called Vision.  I can remember many excellent Vision & Convergence Meetings. Tops on my list was San Diego and one Vision Meeting that was held in Orlando at the Disney's Contemporary Resort.  Since 1998 I've been with Century Office Products and most years as long as I hit my quotas I was off to the meetings with the owners of the company. 

When hard times struck in 08 and 09 I was not there. 2009 saw Century under new ownership and since then I've only attended one meeting last year in 2011 (I paid my way to go). More importantly, I do want to stress that these dealer meetings are awesome and a lot can be learned from the seminars, workshops, exhibitors and networking with other MFP dealers and sales people.  I'm also concerned that more salespeople aren't asked to attend the meetings by the dealer owners. Taking a break from the day to day drudgery of sales and attending an event such as Convergence can enlighten, and invigorate sales people so that when they are back in the field they are excited, knowledgeable, and feel that the dealership is committed to their success. Hell, I'd jump at the chance again even if I had to foot the bill.

This years Converegence may not go as well as planned, numerous changes with the top execuvtives in the last year are giving many dealers an. uneasy feeling. Rumors are flying that after the Ricoh Convergence Dealer meeting there will be another round of layoffs for Ricoh. Ricoh also seems to be struggling with an identity crisis when it comes to Managed Document Services.  Just maybe there's some good news, the Ikon brand has disappeared, there's now one unified culture and Ricoh has started the transition to a business services model.

This year I'll be sitting out, I was not invited and felt that I shouldn't have to ask if I can go. No big deal!  However, as the Print4Pay Hotel continues to grow our membership we will have Print4Pay Hotel members at Convergence 2012.  These guys and gals will be giving our Print4Pay Hotel members updates through the Print4Pay Hotel forums. 
Unlike last year when I wrote many blogs about Ricoh products after Convergence, the Convergence of 2012 will only have media coverage from people who never sold a copier, never went through the sales process, never had to prospect, never had rejection, never lost to competition and never had to rely on commissions to pay the bills.  So, I ask you how can they communicate the value proposition of a piece of hardware, software or solution?  We all know the answer right?  I'll be attending the Info 360 and Print On Demand Show in NYC (member of the press) continue to sell Ricoh hardware, software and solutions until the bitter end.

-Good Selling=-

Selling Copiers "Are you Selling the RIGHT Solutions?"

We all know we can't make any money with a box to box situation.  So, where can the profit be made? Usually it's made in non competitive situations that will produce an immediate ROI for the customer.

One of the keys is to know everything about your customer.  You may be able to see the hardware when you do a walk through, however if you don't ask how do you do this or how do you do that, you don't get, get what?  INFORMATION!!!

We need to ask what do you print on that printer or this printer. With this you'll get a better understanding of the media they are using.  Plus, you can then add questions like:

MFP Solutions to the Table and Hardware will Follow!

I've had a few emails in recent weeks to try and get some threads in reference to solutions. There certainly are enough of them out there.

Just today I had an appointment with an IT Manager in New Jersey, company size is about 40 and they have numerous print, copy and fax devices.

The first thing I did was to ask for a tour of the facility. Once I had the ok, I fumbled for the pen and paper and we went to see all of the devices.

This is probably the best way to start any appointment when you're engaging with a new client, so much can be learned from seeing how the machines are placed, where they are placed, how they are used and what type of media is being used. You really can get a firm grip on how they use their machines.

When we arrived at one of the MFP's, I questioned the IT person if they are scanning the documents as search able pdf's. The answer I got was, "well we had looked at document management...", I then replied "was it the expense why you didn't move forward?", the IT Manager agreed and then stated the cost was $20K to get started. With that I brought up NSI Autostore explaining that that you can get NSI for around $1,200 or so and at least start converting all of your scanned images to search able .pdfs.

I Want My....I Want My..... SMART MFP

MTV, the Eighties, what a special place in time for some of us!  So, where am I going with this??  Not really sure yet, however I wanted to give end users a little more insight on today's MFP's (Multifunctional Products/Printers).

Years ago we called them copy machines,  of course they were used to make copies, about ten to twelve years ago we saw the transformation of copy machines (analog) to digital copiers.  The only difference was that the manufacturers had the technology to convert the scanned page to a digital format and then use a laser beam to write the image to the photo conductor (drum).  The old copiers (analog) that were unreliable, service intensive and the butt of office jokes was transformed into reliable hi speed copiers that could scan and print from the network. 

So, a few years back, digital copiers took another leap forward with the ability to add software cards (Java) that would allow the digital copiers to become work flow and information hubs in the office.  This next generation is what I call a SMART MFP, pretty much they are designed to work with software that will enhance productivity and increase efficiencies in the office. 

Today's SMART MFP's will allow users to scan documents as scan2word, scan2excel, scan2ftp, scan2url, scan2sharepoint, scan2folder, scan2drive and process them as search able pdf's, editable pdfs, index, and OCR and that's just the tip of the iceberg.  I could probably bore you to tears with all of the applications that are available today.

What I see in the field is that most end users still treat the MFP as a commodity, clients looking to buy on price instead of buying on savings . Let me elaborate on the savings, the savings would come from saving countless hours of handling and managing a paper based work flow. If you can cut 10-20 hours a month of labor, that's a big savings. How about if you could cut 5 hours of labor per month per employee?  It can be done with today's SMART MFPs.

If I were an end user I'd want my MFP to process all of those mundane tasks related with the handling of paper. I'd also want my MFP to tell me who is printing what (files) and how many along with having restrictions of what files they can and can't print. If I were using forms, I'd like to be able to have my MFP print onto  NCR paper and auto staple these forms so I don't have to buy them from a print shop.  While I'm at it, why can't I have a virtual (cloud) fax numbers for all of my employees do they can send and received faxes from the PC's without wasting time going to and from the MFP. 

Good news is that everything I mentioned above can be done with SMART MFP's.

-=Good Selling=

Death of the Fax Machine "Finally"

I borrowed a line from Greg Walters from The Death of the Copier here.


It's my firm belief that the fax machine as we know it will cease to exist. Now, if you would have asked me three months ago, I would have told you never, ever, fax will always be here.

What's changed my mind? A few things, one I'm gonna keep to myself because I'm not sure if the person I spoke wants me to release that information to the public at this time. The other item would be emergence of "smart" MFP’s (multi functional product) that are capable of communicating to the "cloud".

In my way of selling and I'm always thinking about how to reduce a clients cost and how to get an immediate ROI so a decision can be made in a timely manner.

Here's my thinking with faxing when it comes to existing MFP's. Let's say I'm on an appointment for a new SMB (small to medium business) account, one of their requirements is that they need a fax option on the MFP. Depending on the cost of the MFP would also dictate the cost of the fax option. Most faxes for me are in between $995 & $1,375. We’ll take the middle of the road at $1,200; putting this on a 36 month lease we’d have a payment of $35.52 plus tax for a total of $38 even.

Since most fax lines in SMB accounts are dedicated and not VOIP (Voice over IP), typically the cost of the line, dialing plan, Federal Excise Tax, State Tax and other BS fees. An average fax line can cost $45-$78 (Verizon came in a $78 with unlimited local and long distance) per month. Here’s an interesting fact I found out when researching the “additional charges”, the Federal Excise Tax was passed in 1898 to fund the Spanish American War, and it’s not gone away. World War I saw the establishment of the Long Distance Tax and World War II saw in an increase in both Taxes and they’ve never gone away!!!

So, if you’re going to add a fax option to an MFP you have the monthly cost of the fax module at $38 and let’s call the monthly fee to have the line with $55.00. I think I’m being fair in calculating a total cost of $93 per month.

Let’s move onto a “smart” MFP, which is any MFP that can communicate through its browser with Cloud Services. The one that I have in mind is Fenestrae UDOCX Fax application. I’m mentioning them because I’m more familiar with that product than any other and at this time I don’t know of any other Cloud based Fax Solution.

The cost to buy the UDOCX fax application is $30 per month. For the $30 per month you don’t need the fax module for the MFP and you can do away with the fax line, thus a savings of $68 per month! Plus there’s a heck of a lot of additional features that are offered that can help improve any companies efficiencies. If you’re the Big Brother type and you want to see all inbound and outbound faxes, or send faxes and have notifications in your mailbox, then you’re in luck.

The main point I’m trying to make is that in today’s economy more clients want simple cost saving solutions. If you’re on the cutting edge of selling solutions, you can take this information and solution to bank. You won’t have to discount your hardware because you’re already $2,400 or so less the competition with a “smart” MFP Fax based Cloud Solution. So, I ask you who’s gonna get the sale, the rep with pick axe or the rep with the jackhammer?

There was a post on the Print4Pay Hotel forums many years ago, in the thread was this statement “Peter Drucker says, "Every business needs to prepare for the total abandonment of everything that it does."

Lastly, I had a conversation with someone today who spoke with a manufacturers rep and something to this effect was said “Why would we do this, we’ll lose all of our fax module revenue”. Pretty dumb huh?

Sell cost savings solutions, find ways to give a client and immediate ROI without sacrificing service, or productivity and increase their efficiencies, it’s a no brainer!!!

-=Good Selling=-

Ricoh Copiers that Scan to Sharepoint

If you're a Ricoh Family Group Provider, you've got to check out UDOCX. No software, no server, it's pretty much a lock out feature and gives you something more to talk about than speeds, feeds and more importantly it seperates us solutions sellers from the box sellers. Offer solutions, and value in turn command a higher price for your knowledge to being state of the art solutions to your customers. 
I went through one of their webinars about a month ago, just today I was trying to get one of my customers to move to a larger system. For the life of me, I could think of any additional items that would make them go with the larger (mp6001), I then asked the IT person "are you guys using sharepoint", the answer was yes, and I directed them to the www.udocx.com site. While he and I were on the site, my statement was that the new larger unit will be able to support UDOCX. The head of IT was impressed, so impressed that he was moving the MP6001SP and UDOCX solution up the ladder for approval.

We all know we need to seperate ourselves from BOX sellers and become more value added to the customer. UDOCX can help!!!!

We'll have a blog from them next week and then we'll be having webinars for P4P HOTEL members only!!! We all know the CLOUD is HOT and it's all going in the right direction!!!!!

http://www.udocx.com/

BTW, UDOCX is now a sponsor of the Print4Pay Hotel forums. Log in here and become a member of the largest social group of imaging professionals in the world!!!


-=Good Selling=-

Cashing in with MFP Solutions

Another Labor Day has come and gone. Schools are back, along with getting stuck behind the caravans of yellow buses, especially when I'm trying to get to an appointment. Why must New Jersey school buses stop every two blocks or so, come on kids, get up earlier and walk 6 miles to school every day! I did it, well kinda, I had almost a two mile walk to and from school everyday.

What are your thoughts about a solution? Does selling a solution means that you sold a software applcation such as PPDM, NSI or Digi Doc Flow? Well.......yes, and how about if you just sold and MFP with no software application, does that mean the deal was not a solution? Hell No, MFP's have embedded solutions too!

Finding a clients pain means and having a solution to the clients pain means you're going to get a decent margin on your system or you're of the top choices for the client.

We found such a solution with one of our Ricoh devices, however it didn't start out that way. The client presented thier pain to us (that made it simple and we didn't have to drag it outta them), they needed a way to capture all of the pages of a walkup out bound fax electronic and seemless to the end user (meaning the user did not have to anything but input the number and press start/send). MY first thoughts were.........uh...well....NSI, Document Mall, and ....and that was kinda it. With that I stated we'll get back to you, so off I went to collaborate with the team and after many emails, and many phone calls we were'nt getting anywhere with an easy, inexpensive solution. With that I decided to put a post on the Print4Pay Hotel forums and see what the P4P guru's had to say.

Within 48 hours and 9 threads we had our answer, the solution was already embedded in the Ricoh box! With a few touches in the user control panel we were able to capture all outbound faxes and have them routed to a folder on the network, along with that the person sending the fax just had to keep on doing what they were always doing, dial the number and hit start/send!

So, what's my point? First point is that the client had no need to shop us since the solution was embedded and thier was no additional cost. The second, is that I don't know all of the features that the MFP's are capable of. I now realize that I need to spend more time reviewing the product manuals for these devices, I could have saved countless hours, but thanx to the resource and efforts of collaborating with Print4Pay Hotel members I had found someone who had the used the same type of solution.

Guess, it's kinda like KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid), go the book, check out the FAB (Features, Advantages and Benefits), if your answer isn't there check out the Print4Pay Hotel forums and at last resort check out all of the software solutions.

In this case the solution was in the MFP already, and in my book, that's a darn good solution sale! Special thanx to the the P4P member who took the time to help and post the solution.

-=Good Selling=-

Ricoh HQ Duplicator on Steroids w/Envelope Feeder

I just ran across a thread on the net in reference to someone needing additional information about a Ricoh Digital Duplicator and if that system was capable of printing envelopes. I've had Digital Duplicators in print shops for a number of years and all of these printers are using these to print envelopes along with various other documents.

The Ricoh HQ9000 is capable of stacking about 100 envelopes and you can print to the device with either a PC or MAC. The one draw back is that you can only print single color envelopes, but the quality and reliability is awesome. At 150 pages per minute, you really have to baby sit the duplicator,  if you're doing runs of 500 - 10,000, again the feeder only takes 100 envelopes or there about. Cost? jesh....cost has be something like .0001 when you are doing runs of 1,000 or more.

Anyway, back to the thread about the envelope feeder on the duplicator. Take a look at the video from straight shooter, they have a device that will work with the Ricoh HQ9000 for long runs.

-=Good Selling=-

Lead with MFP Solutions to the Table and Hardware will Follow!

I've had a few emails in recent weeks to try and get some threads in reference to solutions. There certainly are enough of them out there.

Just today I had an appointment with an IT Manager in New Jersey, company size is about 40 and they have numerous print, copy and fax devices.

The first thing I did was to ask for a tour of the facility. Once I had the ok, I fumbled for the pen and paper and we went to see all of the devices. This is probably the best way to start any appointment when you are engaging with a new client, so much can be learned from seeing how the machines are placed, where they are placed, how they ........... want to read the rest, go here Print4Pay Hotel Forums and become a member for free!

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Wars "Samsung Poised for MFP Battle"

Who said Samsung was just selling A4 MFP's. Coming to the Americas in the near future the Samsung CLX-9350ND.

The Samsung CLX-9350ND is a full featured A3 (will copy, print or scan up to 11x17) that will print and copy at speeds of up to 35 pages per minute in color and monochrome. This system will offer a full color GUI (Graphic User Interface), multiple paper banks, document feeder, by-pass, duplex (copy and print) along with stapler finisher. Max print resolution is 9600 equivalent x 600 dpi, standard PCL, PCL5c, Post Script 3 and it will scan at a blistering 60 pages per minute in either monochrome or color.

Rumor has it that this system will be launched in the UK first and then the Americas.

As of right now Samsung is only marketing A4 (systems that do NOT copy, print or scan 11x17) devices in the US, when looking at their web site in Korea there's a treasure trove of A3 devices. Devices like the CLX-9250ND a 25ppm color & monochrome full featured MFP, the CLX-9035 another full featured color and monochrome system, the CLX-9000G  a 28ppm color and monochrome full featured MFP, the SCX-7600PG a full featured monochrome MFP (rumor has it that Samsung will also be coming to market with monochrome A3 devices in the US soon), there's also a 45ppm device and we're still waiting to see if the rumors of a 70 and 90ppm A4 device will come true. 

Point is, with the the recent mergers and acquisitions in the copier/mfp market place, Samsung seems poised to gain market share from the likes of Xerox, Ricoh, Canon and KonicaMinolta. When speaking with a Samsung Dealer Rep the other day, I heard of many success stories with multiple take downs of large accounts with their current A4 devices.  Word on the street is Samsung wants to be a Manufacturer of Choice and not a secondary line for dealers.  Personally, I think the products are awesome and the only way they could screw this up is if they opened up Direct Branches.

BTW, it was a Print4Pay Hotel member that posted information on this device in the P4P Hotel forums, kudos to that member!

-=Good Selling=-

Copier Hard Drive Security "Give it a Break"

A few weeks ago a story broke from a CBS reporter that traveled to New Jersey (of all places he had to pick New Jersey) to a copier bone yard aka used copier warehouse. Well, one thing he got right, New Jersey is one of the most corrupt states in the nation. However when it comes to copier hard drive security there were many Print4 Pay Hotel members that picked a few holes in his story.


Being an expert in the industry for over 30 years and being an avid Twitter user, I started seeing the comments come fast and furious about business and personal information on copier hard drives. I was aware of this years ago as were many copier manufacturers, most if not all manufacturers closed this loophole in the hard drive security many years ago.

The machines in question were bought for a few hundred dollars each, we all found it quite coincidental that all 4 machines had so much information. Here's what one Print4Pay Hotel member stated, "Not much chance that you'd buy 4 machines at random and then find out that you hit the jackpot with a police sex crimes division, a health care company and an architecture firm with plans of a building near ground zero, all on the day CBS decided to follow you with a camera", and another "I wonder how many copiers in that NJ warehouse have shipping paperwork attached or simply lying under the ADF. Wouldn’t an identity thief looking to purchase a copier be able to browse the NJ warehouse looking for shipping paperwork from financial institutions and turning down copiers being returned from “Mom & Pop” businesses?"

Another point with the report, in the video it showed the documents, I paused the video several times to get a date on the papers and none of them seemed newer than 2008, meaning that these copiers were most likely leased in 2003 time frame. Prior to 2003 Digital Copiers were in the infancy of development with only a few manufacturers had addressed security with hard drives on their units.

It's time to stop beating up on copiers, what about all of the old pc's that were thrown out or returned to leasing companies over the years, did anyone take the time to scrub those drives or remove them. Here's another post from a Print4Pay Hotel member "Did you know that if you format a hard drive that the data can still be recovered? There are wipe methods to prevent software recovery and hardware recovery. The dept. of defense has a specific 7 pass sanitize method that Sharp utilizes. That will prevent hardware recovery. However no matter where the hard drive comes from there have been documented cases of reverse engineering to bypass the wipe method. If know the wipe method used. This is why the specific methodologies are top secret and you can customize your sanitation method that is unique to prohibit this reversing process. The maximum security is 35 passes to sanitize the HD. This is based on Peter Gutmanns' paper "Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and Solid-State Memory". The method is designed to erase data regardless of disk raw encoding. It effectively removes the magnetic remnants from disk, preventing hardware recovery tools from restoring any data.

I knew someone that had a HD in which they took a sledge hammer to. Broke the HD platters in many chunks & pieces. Guess what? That was not enough. Data was still recovered from chunks that were encrypted.

So the best thing to do is pulverize your HD's to dust then you can rest assured everything is gone. Sharp was the first to address security in digital imaging and received the first Common Criteria Validation for an MFP in 2001."

Over at the Print4Pay Hotel there were over 25 threads in reference to the above topic, general consensus, the report made good TV, also its old news in the copier industry and the industry has incorporated numerous security measures on the latest devices.

BTW, when was the last time you checked to see if your high end laser printer had a hard drive? Most likely it does, but it's easier to bash copier companies.


-=Good Selling=-

Selling Multifunctional Solutions "Quarter Update"

It's been awhile since I posted.....hah, ya'll probably thought I was on vacation or something. No, no vacations for me yet, just trying to catch up on some business.

Our quarter and month just closed, seems I made the cut and had my monthly numbers along with quarterly. I'm beginning to see some light at the end of the tunnel, but if you keep listening to the news it's still pretty much doom and gloom for the economy.

When I'm in existing accounts one of the talk tracks we start with is "how's business?". My response is that I've had more activity and more opportunies in the last four months than I had for the last year, just can't seem to put back to back great months together. From what I hear frm my customers and Print4Pay Hotel members the same is also true. All of us agree that we've got to come out of this soon or else!

Is everyone else seeing that? Would like to hear from others on this.

Moving forward to the new quarter, I need to stay more focused on higher end systems, multiple placements and hunt for MFP solutions that will help the end user improve the way they do business. I'm seeing more attention being paid to solutions like NSI, PPDM and MS Sharepoint. I'm thinking once the economy rebounds all those stalled talk tracks on these solutions will come to fruition.

I'll be at the On Demand/AIIM show in Phili this month and will be scouting around for "cool" items and will be looking to learn more about production printing, variable data and taking an in depth look at different types of media and niche machines.

BTW, the three D's of slling are: Desire, Dedication and Determination!

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Solutions "The Next Big Thing!"

Yesterday I had an appointment at a new account, turns out this account was interested in an MFP that had SPF installed, they were also interested in embeded NSI, PCS Director, IPDS, PPDM, APP2ME and need a quarterly CPP. WHOA!

Whats the Next Big Thing in Multifunctional Systems, well it' confusing the heck out the sales people with multiple solutions that do the same thing!

Solutions, Solutions everwhere a Solution,
Blocking out the solutions breaking my mind,
Use this, don't use that, can't you see the solution.

That's pretty much my own version of the chorus from the song Signs by Five Man Electric Band from 1970.

Geesh, it seems every three to four months there's Next Big Thing! In all my years it's never been harder to keep up with the multitude of solutions offered. Once you get to know the existing ones, we'll then they've been replaced with additional solutions. Heck, it's gonna take a few weeks just to memorize what the acronyms stand for.

Can you all remember the first line of the chorus from Signs? Here it is.

And the sign said long haired freaky people need not apply

No joke, I can understand why it's so hard to have knowledgable salespeople, managers and support reps to keep up with the times. Solutions that are sold today are gone tomorrow.

But I guess it's just a SIGN of the times!

-=Good Selling=-