100 calls a day, 240 minutes talk time a day, 4 opps per day equals NO job

I was alarmed when I received and email from a very valued print4pay hotel member. I just spoke with him tonight and I'm hoping I can him connected with another job in his area. I also had his permission to post this and he may or may not want to remain anonymous. But I think this is a great topic of discussion and to see if any of us can help him. Below is the email to me:

Well...

A couple months ago they brought in a new sales manager and started changing our pay structure. Goals went to a 30% monthly incline and if you don't hit goal you don't get commission. Also, in order to hit goal you have to average 100 calls per day with an average talk time of 250 minutes per day and enter a minimum of 4 new business opportunities per day. If we miss any of these points we don't get paid.

On top of that the CEO has a very disrespectful and degrading management style to the point where he pretty much bullies the employees every day. He required that we call the office before and after every stop in the field and would call and email during meetings just to check up. He recently called the client's office because I wasn't answering. He had tracking devices on the work vans, which was fine, it let him know where we were but if I'm with a client I can't take calls for no reason.

Last week we had a total of 7 sales reps. He let 3 go early last week as well as the only accounting employee and 1 of the 3 customer service reps. Tuesday they called me out of the field to fire me along with 1 other sales person.

They now have 0 accounting employees, 2 customer service reps, 2 service techs and 2 sales reps that have only been in the industry for 4 months.

So...as hard as I work at hitting these sales goals I was let go with no notice, explanation or severance pay. They only thing I'm left with is a 4 page non-compete and bills to pay.

I've sent the non-compete to two different attorneys and they say it's solid. Since I saw this coming a head of time I tried to get a sales position with a local company, they really wanted me to work for them, but then had to turn it down once they read the non-compete.

As far as future plans, I sent a resume to xyz company  yesterday and didn't mention the non compete. We'll see how that goes...

I have a phone interview this morning with one of my clients, they're a large processing company. Since I'm going to school for a degree in network security I figured this could be a good option to get the experience since security is a major concern in the credit card processing industry.

I'm not sure where I'll end up but it seems like I've been kicked out of the industry with no explanation at all.

Would like to hear from others as to how we can help.

=-=Good Selling=-

7 Tips to Help Win Net New Competitive Copier & MPS Deals

"My pipeline is always 100,000k+ and I'm required to do 12-15 appointments per week.  I'm finding the opportunities, but not winning competitive deals. (I have a small base list of 10 accounts)."

Was one of the statements that was emailed to me by a Print4Pay Hotel member in Canada this week.  I thought this would make a good topic for this week to see if I can help.

Ok, I'm thinking if you only have a base of 10 accounts and you're not winning competitive deals that means all of your business is net new.  Here's a few things that I try and do with net new business.

1) Find out what brand of equipment they have now and who is servicing the product.

2) Once you've found out what brand they have, ask them what brand they had before their current brand along with who was servicing the equipment. If they had a different brand and servicing dealer this can tell you that they have no brand or service loyalty. If they have the same brand and the same servicing dealer or direct branch, then you've got a tough road to hoe since they have brand and service loyalty.

3) I will dig deep with the customer to see if there is some type of lockout feature or software that will position my company at the top of the pack. I've often found that many reps are lazy and won't take the time to explain many of the features, advantages and benefits of their systems.  Thus you may mention something as simple as embedded scanning to create searchable .pdf's and this could swing the decision in your favor.  Try not to leave any stones unturned when you are in a competitive situation. If you're selling MPS, make it more about the service, the reporting tools, and your fleet software advantages.

4) Make sure you meet with the DM, if not you need to put your best foot forward with the quality of your presentation and proposal.  Many times the DM may leave the decision making up to the person you met with, in this case the cheapest/lowest price may not be the right choice for the person you met with and most likely they will not select the highest price, nor the lowest price.

5) Ask "When will you be making a decision on acquiring the system and what is the process for choosing one vendor over another", make this one of your first few questions.

6) ABC, Always be closing, if a closing opportunity comes up, don't pass it buy. The worst that can happen is you'll get additional info on how the process will transpire.

7) I'm not sure of your market, however in large markets you've got to be prepared and I hate to say this, is to "offer your best deal" in order to get the business.  If you're in this for the long haul and your company services the product well, you'll be able to have an upgrade or additional units in the future that you'll be able to hold margin.

These are just a few items that came to mind.  What I can also tell you is that you need to remove yourself from competitive situations, you need to find the prospects who are NOT in the market. Basically this means that with your skill set you've been able to secure an appointment, assess their pain or challenges and offer a solution that will help them NOW.  Hard to do, but the opportunities are out there, all you need to do is find them.

-=Good Selling=-

8 Tips from Selling Copy Machines in the 80's

When you've been in the business as long as I've been there always seems to be that little something that you can write about.

I was taught that after every order/sale I would then ask Mr. or Mrs. Right for three referrals that I could call on.  Seems back in the 80's everyone needed a plain paper copier. Wait! Let me stop right there, I'll go out on limb and bet that at least 60% of today's reps that are selling copiers probably always thought that copiers always printed on plain paper! Yes, the 80's, everyone needed a plain paper copier, and at the end of every sale we asked "Would it be possible to get the name of two or three businesses that may be interested in our services"?   That was then, and to tell you the truth the last time I used that is when a prospect asked for a better price and I tied in, "If I give you a better price will you sign the order today and I'll need two or three businesses that may be interested in my services".

But, it does bring back memories of things we used to do. Here's a short list of how we did things in the 80's:

1) Send a Thank You card for every sale you made.
2) Send a check for $25 or an in house credit to a customer that gave us as a reference and we made the sale.
3) Ask for referrals after every sale you made.
4) Knock on the doors of the businesses next to the customer you just made the sale to.
5) Give a check to the technicians for leads (they loved this, and I was very generous to many, now it seems that most dealers are controlling this, because too many sales people never paid up).
6) Send Christmas cards (I sent them with my name and the dealership name).
7) Call an existing customer and ask them if they know of anyone who is interested in my services (offer them free toner if a sale goes down).
8) Call and ask for a letter of reference (now you can still call them and maybe email them and ask them to post a referral for you on linkedin. I include my linkedin signature link on my emails)

I'm sure that some of are still doing a few of these today, but I plan to pick up my game with mailing Thank You cards again, asking for referrals after the sale, calling an existing customer to see if they know of anyone they could refer me to along with adding more referrals on linkedin.

-=Good Selling=-

Does Brother Corporation Have it's Sights Set for Another Acquisition?

I was stunned when I read the report that Brother Corporation has signed an agreement to purchase certain assets of their document imaging division. The purchase agreement is to include document scanners. image capture software and technical services.  The price, mere 210 million US dollars. I wasn't stunned by the sale because I had heard and read that Kodak was shopping the document imaging business for quite sometime. The stunned part was that Brother Corporation was the buyer.

What were Ricoh, Kyocera, Xerox, Canon, Toshiba and KonicaMinolta thinking? Recently I had an opportunity to provide 20-30 production scanners to a large firm with over 3,000 employees. I was in with Fujitsu and had Kodak as the competition. I knew that Kodak was shopping the business and made sure I the prospect knew.

When you think about what types of companies need high production scanners you can only think that they would be some of the largest

How to Close More MFP & MPS Sales

The other day I read and article by Tom Callinan titled "Close More Sales" on The Week in Imaging.   I found the article enjoyable and a good read, in closing the article Tom presented this paragraph.

How do you actually close more sales? That’s easy; uncovering a solid business case by asking great questions, listening attentively, and focusing on moving the sale forward with every meeting. The best closers are those that spend their time to uncover specific issues their product or service will alleviate, and understands the precise value of addressing those issues before they ever move to their proof source. After you’ve uncovered a quantifiable business case and you’ve proven that your product or service can address that business case closing will be as easy as “It seems like it make sense to move forward with the (your product or service) acquisition/installation, doesn’t it?”

I agree with everything above, what I don't agree is that this will help you close more sales, it will help you close a sale.  For those of us in the business long enough we know that WE CAN'T close every opportunity.  There will be those appointments where you can be the best listener, you can ask great questions, you can uncover those specific issues, but you're just not going to get that deal for whatever the reason may be.  It could be price, value, a cousin pops up who is in the business, a neighbor is a friend of the CFO who has a guy, the list goes on and on.

The key to closing more sales is to have a bounty of opportunities and follow what Jim pointed out with every appointment. Let me put it this way, if your quota is 60K per month, you need three times that in opportunities that may close that month. That's $180K worth of potential business every month, if you don't have three times you quota in the monthly pipeline you won't close more sales.

This month alone I had two opportunities that went by the way side, one I lost and that opportunity was over $70k and the other was put on the back burner for a few months and that opp was $42K.   That's $112K lost, fortunately I still have another $60K that still may be able to close this month.

Many reps especially new reps will have a few good months or a few good quarters and then they'll relax, thus the activity will drop (which includes calls, emails, mailers, stop ins). When the activity drops then so does the opportunities. 

My belief is that you need to generate 3-5 opportunities each week to close more sales, we'll lose a lot of them but we'll also take our fair share also.

If you'd like to read more on this and become a member of the Print4Pay Hotel. We have more than 2,300 registered members from around the world that share sales information and tips on a daily basis. Registration is free and the forums are secure for members of our industry.

-=Good Selling=

WTF is a Copier Lease Forgiveness?

This week I was handed a quote from one of your reps in the office.  The system that was quoted was a Sharp MX-264N and the proposal in my eyes was weak at best.  The proposal addressed speeds, feeds, pricing and of course those meaning full laundry list of features such as scan2email, scan2folder and network printing.  Don't all of the MFPs have these as standard features now, the point I'm trying to make that in this proposal there was nothing that made the dealership, or the system stand out from all of the other proposal. 

The most I got out of this quote was this "Network printing utilizing PCL print board for fast efficient printing",  WTF!!!

The best line of the quote however was this "Includes Lease forgiveness of current lease and shipping unit back to leasing Co".  Buyer Beware right!!

If you're an end user reading this blog, if you ever see the above line I beg you to through out the proposal and the sales person and here's why.  First, there is no such thing as a Lease Forgiveness and if there was you would only be able to get that from the leasing company that you leased the equipment from and not the Dealer or Direct Branch.  If you think that the remaining payments are going to

Why Sales is a lot like Fishing

On my recent vacation in Deerfield Beach, Florida, I had the chance to catch up on some fishing. The day before I was to go fishing I thought I would check out the pier and see what types of rigs were being used, what was being caught, the type of bait they were using and possibly what was the best time to go fishing. So, off I went before the sun was up, I made it to the pier in about 15 minutes (walking).

The fishing pier was about a quarter mile long and shaped as a T, I noticed there were two types of fishing going on. One group of anglers were armed with five or six fishing poles each. They were fishing for the REALLY big ones, Tarpon, Wahoo, Cobia and Barracuda. The other group of anglers were fishing for the REALLY small ones, Grunts, Runners, Puffers and some other name I can't recall.

Our first group the Really Big Ones  would bait up all of the their poles, cast them out and then wait, and wait and wait some more. After being there for four hours there was not one REALLY big fish caught by the REALLY BIG ONES, as a matter of fact they caught none! They were caught up in the waiting game.....and what's the old saying "winners make things happen and losers wait for things to happen".

Our second group the REALLY SMALL ONES were only using one pole each. However this type of fishing seemed to best if you were there to catch fish. Once they lowered the lines they were getting hits and bringing fish in, no big fish, but never the less, they were bringing one and two pounders consistently. These guys were constantly changing their baits, cutting their baits and rail'in and pail'in fish! That's what they came for, heck they didn't even have the time to rest!

So, where's the meat in all of this? Well, the guys who fished hard and were willing to take the smaller fish were the guys who went home with fish. The guys who wanted the big ones, got nothing and went home with no fish. Seems to me this is a lot like sales, you can be the guy who only goes after the big ones or the guy who is willing to work harder and take the smaller ones. Day in and day out the guy who works hard and takes the smaller fish out fishes the guy who waits on the big ones. I've always stated that I may not be the best sales person nor the best closer, however what I will do is out work everyone else.

A friend of mine once said, "the hardier you work, the luckier you get"

-=Good Selling=-

Copier Sales People, Abe Lincoln & Baseball "What do they have in Common"?

Just back from Presidents Club and we lost a day coming home due to flight delays with another winter storm here in the Northeast.  I had just four days left in the month and quarter. Thus, I've not been able to write as much, so I thought I would go through some of the older Blogs that I liked and repost them and give some additional updates. The story below is awesome display of why we never quit.

We've all heard the story about Abe Lincoln and how many times he lost running office before he finally succeeded, one of the oldest sales success stories. Never give up, never lose faith, be a grinder, his law partner said of him "His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest." 

You know what?  I know a kid just like Abe Lincoln.

 

For those who know me, they know that my passion is for coaching. Since my son turned 5, I added my name to the ranks of those who have coached Little League, Babe Ruth, Pony League and then graduating to Summer Collegiate Teams and Fall High School Teams. Over the years I have coached these young men in three D's of Life or better referred to as the 3D's of Baseball. Desire, Dedication and Determination, I have always preached that if you have these three qualities you can reach what you've always dreamed for whether in baseball, life or work. I am honored that some of these guys still find the time to call me and "shoot the breeze".

Until, this summer, I would always recruit players or someone who knows someone would call me to be placed on the team. I don't run an elite team, just one where everyone gets to play no matter what the talent level is. This summer coming off the Collegiate season, I really didn't have the time to make a lot of calls and especially with the economy dragging. So, this summer I placed posts on local sports message boards in NJ looking for players.

I had a few calls, placed a few guys and then I had an email from a player. He stated that he was a LHP Pitcher and had pitched in HS and was looking for a fall team to play on. I responded with and email stated we would love to have you on the team. A few days passed and I didn't hear from him, then a few days later I heard from his father. I was a little surprised since I had not heard back from the player. His father and I spoke and he stated, "did my son tell you about his disability", (geez I thought), I responded with no he didn't. With that the father told me that his son has cerebral palsy in his right arm and has no use of it..........., however he is a hard worker and loves the game of baseball, his father stated that he son pitched like Jim Abbott . To tell you the truth, I was not sure what to do at that time. I then relied on why I coach, why I run the teams, its not for me its for the guys to get better and hopefully they will be able to advance and play baseball in college. With that I stated we would love to have him on the team.

The day came when Bryan arrived on the team. Bryan is about 6'0" and has good size for baseball. He had very limited use of his right arm and did a glove transfer similar to Jim Abbott.

I find it hard to describe all the great things about this kid. I saw it right away, he already had the 3 D's. His desire to succeed, his determination to get better and his dedication to the sport was probably more than all of the other guys on the team. He's enthusiasm to learn, to work hard and to soak up our knowledge was impressive. Did he throw hard, no, but he was a lefty, and all this kid needed was some confidence. Well, I must say that his attitude and perseverance won everyone over, team members, parents, coaches from other teams and players alike.

On one day he called me and asked if I thought he could pitch in college. I told him there is a college for everyone who still wants to play ball, and I thought he could pitch at some college. His outings kept on getting better and better and he quickly became one of our best pitchers. (confidence, desire, dedication and determination). I had spoken to Bryan and asked if he had contacted any colleges, he said he had however he was not getting much interest. I made a call to a local college and spoke to the coach and told him about Bryan, his demeanor and all of this kids attributes. A few days later the coach came to one of our games, saw Brian pitch and was impressed. He then called Brian and set up a visit with him and his parents to the college. As of a few days ago, Bryan will be going to college and will be playing college baseball.

On this past Sunday, we gave him the ball against one of the best fall teams in the State, we lost 2-1, however Brian pitched all 7 innings, allowed zero earned runs and only two hits. It was one of the finest memories that I will ever have and one that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. So many of us, will say why me and he says why not me? His Desire, Dedication and Determination hits home, and is a great story about a great kid who has the heart to compete, the heart to win and the heart to never give up.

My hats off to Bryan, way to go kid!

The next summer Bryan was invited to the Old Timers Yankee Game (yes, Bryan is a Yankee Fan) at the New Yankee Stadium where he was honored and got to met Jim Abbott.  Bryan reached out to me and my family and invited us to the game. I was honored and it was a wonderful experience.

=Good Selling=-

How to Add More Selling Days without Really Trying

How many sales days do you have in a year?  Betcha you don't know!  Sales aka Selling days or how many days per month, per quarter and per year has been something that I keep an eye on.  Try to take a sales day away from me because you want to close the month early drives me up a wall.  Let's face it I only have "x" amount of days each month and I need to make the best of them.

Some dealerships or direct branches will close on the calendar end of the month. Others will close the month early so their "bean counters" can get a better handle of closing all of the sales by the end of the calendar month.

Some months have more selling days and some less, your job is to get a handle on how many days you have each month to attain your quota.  There are ways to add to your selling days, and the first would be to stop doing

10 Ways to Increase Your Copier and MFP Sales

I dug this up from the past and made a few minor changes, something that stuck out right away was that I was mentioning "workflow" three years ago.  Workflow is now the buzz word for the industry.  Just thought I would share that.

Whats made me successful in the field for so many years? I given this much thought and would like to share my top ten from my 32 years in down the street sales.

1. Be a consultant and not a sales person. Dig deep for their workflow and volume.
2. Always try to meet with the buyer/decision maker and not the gate keeper.
3. Be a professional at your job. Be on time, Courteous, Clean, speak their language.
4. Find out what your potential client does, what do they sell or manufacturer.
5. Position your self as the expert. Testimonials, Recommendations, Certificates..etc
6. Find out who they do business with. You may have common ground.
7. What is their buying time and why? (do they have pain)

I Stink as a Salesperson

I really didn't want to use "I Suck as a Salesperson" in the title, so I'll use it here. Even though I had a OK month when it comes to revenue, it seemed that every sale or opportunity I touched had issues.

Personally, I had too much on my plate, February had me at 22 or 23 opportunities that could close, most of them came down the wire and a lot of them rolled to March.  In January of this year I asked for a higher quota to push my self.

I found the opportunities,  however with so many open opportunities I was overwhelmed and fell short of hitting quota by about 3K.  The good thing, I should have a super March, the bad thing, poor planning on my part on some of the deals and just not enough time in the day. Gee, if I only had another me! Yeah and I forgot I took two vacation days in a short month, that didn't help either.

Selling Days

Moving into March, I'll also be short on selling days due to our Presidents Club Trip. I will lose 22% of my selling days this month.  How many of you actually look at the calendar every month and count how many selling days you have?   I have the selling days mapped out for each month of the year in advance and it helps with knowing when we have a longer and shorter sales cycle.

What Will I Do Different This Month?

Selling MPS & MFP's "What Do Customers Want"?

Thought I would share this thread from the forums with everyone. It's an excellent read and from a retired copier guy and an awesome Print4Pay Hotel member!  Thanx, Chuck!

Art, quite a few years ago I copied from this site one of the most profound things that I had read about Customer Service. I've tried to search your archives with no luck so I'll re-type it here and if can find the source to attribute please post since it is not my intellectual property. Here goes . . .

WHAT DO CUSTOMERS REALLY WANT?

For years businesses have struggled to answer that question. Along the way slogans and discussions have come and gone - about customer satisfaction versus loyalty, selling outcomes and solutions versus products and services and technical processes versus interpersonal skills. Too often they missed the point. Research shows that independent of industry, geography, product or service, customers consistently report that they value four qualities in the services they receive:

SEAMLESS SERVICE: The ability to manage service factors that are invisible to the customer. Although customers want the benefit of all services an organization may offer, they don't want to be exposed to the details of behind-the-scenes operations. Nor do they want to deal with several individuals on the same issue. They expect frontline staff to coordinate everything for them.

TRUSTWORTHY SERVICE: The ability to provide what was promised - dependably and accurately. Customers want to feel they are in capable hands; that promises and commitments will be kept. They want things to be correct the first time, but if something goes wrong they expect quick, thorough recovery.

ATTENTIVE SERVICE: The ability to provide caring and individual attention to customers, recognizing both their human ans business needs. This quality, considered the most important by customers, is derived from the desire to be recognized quickly, politely and with respect.

RESOURCEFUL SERVICE: The ability to provide prompt service and creative solution. Customers like a fast, flexible approach to the service interaction. If needed, they expect prompt and creative problem solving in the service recovery.

Each person, every day is responsible for delivering stellar service experiences. At each interaction the customer is shaping an opinion of you and the organization. By integrating the four STAR Qualities into attitudes and behaviors, you will provide meaningful and memorable experiences that will build customer loyalty.

(emphasis added)

That my friend is what you did and why you are the success that you are. Now that I am retired I continue to use these Customer Service tenets in my daily life. Thanks.

=-=Good Selling=-

Commissions for Clicks "Is .002 Per Page To Much to Ask For"?

In a recent article from Lou Slawetsky of Industry Analysts titled "Your Reps are Starving; PART 2", Lou made mention that the going rate for commissions for clicks seems to be .002 per page.  Lou did not elaborate about color pages so I can only assume that he was referencing black pages.  I would tend to think that color clicks should pay a higher click rate.

Black Pages

So, how much is .002, I know, I know, well I think I know, however I though I would double check my math skills and .002 is two thousands of one cent. Seems pretty pitiful right?  One black maintenance and supply agreement for 10,000 page per month would generate $20 per month in commissions for the rep.  So, lets look try and find the average per page cost of a black maintenance agreement.  Now depending on your market, I'm sure the averages will vary, but lets take .01 as the average if you're a down the street rep.  Based on the .002 commission this would be 20% (geesh I hope I doing this right) .01 * 20% = .002.  What I'm trying to get a it what would be the commission rate for color pages.

Color Pages

We can now talk about color pages, in the down the street model (500-1,500 color pages per month) what would be the average color cost per page, according to a poll we had on the print4pay hotel forums that average would be about

MFP & MPS Sales Tips "Distance Yourself from The Pack"

Whew! I must say that the last fifteen years selling for a Ricoh Dealership has been interesting.

When I first started with my dealership back in 1998, Ricoh has just purchased Savin and Savin purchased Gestetner or something like that.

It was a heck of a lot easier to Copier and Managed Print Services in the past.

Now with some many providers for MFP and Managed Print Services there was a need to "Distance Myself from The Pack".

In essence there was a tremendous need to "Distance Myself from the Pack".

So, how do you make yourself different from the other MFP Copier Sales reps. Well, one of the first things I did was to give myself a NEW title. The title that I came up with was

The Harder I Work the Luckier I Get (in sales)

I've had this article around for awhile and it was picked up by a few major magazines in the industry, thought I would re-post it for all and I updated additional info to make the numbers current.

Is a saying I heard over and over former Dealer Owner (Jack Carrol), after I tell him about an amazing sale. He had actually quoted Samuel Goldwyn.

Good ole fashioned hard work, meaning working at least eight hours every day, working on proposals before or after prime time cold calling time (whether on the phone or in person), coupled with the expression... THAT THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT, has made my sales career in copiers highly successful.

I sell down the street, no major accounts, and no key account list, just a territory that borders the Atlantic Ocean up to the Raritan River and down to the trout laden Manasquan River in New Jersey (USA). I sell Ricoh products (the finest products in the world), the MFP's, fax, duplicators, wide format, software and whatever else I can learn that will help a customer reduce costs. Many times I have been able to place a new piece of equipment that will help client increase productivity while not increasing their existing payments. All you have to do is ask, most potential clients will allow you to do a cost analysis for them.

Here’s how I do it!

When speaking about replacing multiple pieces of equipment, let’s say a

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

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

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

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

The "Art" of the Copier & MFP Demo

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

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

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

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

10 Clues to Keep Your Sales Pipeline Full

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

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

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

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

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

7 Cold Calling Tips for Managed Print Services

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

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

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

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

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

Make Quality Cold Calls

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

Send Literature

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

Follow up call

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

Create Interest in the first 5 seconds

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

ABC (Always Be Cold Calling)

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

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


-=Good Selling=-

5 Tips to Reach the Decision Maker

Tired of the prospect not returned your calls?

Tired of getting the gate keeper?

To some this means that the prospect is not interested! To others (seasoned veterans) this means that the prospect is very busy and has not found the time to return your call. Use this to your advantage!!

There's a couple of techniques you can use, one of my favorites with a customer that I've already met is below.

1)  The next time you get the dreaded voice mail, leave them this message. Hi this is Mr. So & So with XYD company, I tried to reach you on several occasions, I am going to be in your area next week. What I'd like to do is to stop by at 1PM on Wednesday the 4th (you set the date) to meet with you, if this is not convenient for you, please call me at (phone number), other wise I'll see you then.