SOLUTION!!!! Yippee!!We're all in for the hardware sale, and we all know you can't make living (just yet) selling third party solution software. However for the savvy reps we do have Ecopy Desktop!!
While in an account today, I was sizing up the hardware specs with the IT Manager, I asked about adding a fax option to a high volume unit. The IT persons interest peeked when I told him that they could reduce the amount of pages printed on stand alone printers if they added the fax option to the unit. We then spoke about the ability to fax forward faxes to a network folder and or an email address. From here all in bound faxes could be monitored and then distributed electronically. So far, so good.
Next, we spoke about the advantages of LAN from from the desktop and here's where we hit a snag. The IT manager explained that all outbound faxes needed a cover page, and currently they were all using the same cover page that was created in an MS word document. In this fax cover page they had six different fields of information that needed input by the user. Now, my current LAN fax software only offers 5 different input fields, the one he was looking for was how many pages are being sent. Alas, we could not accomplish what he was looking for, I knew he wanted to reduce paper and I also sensed he liked the idea of reducing paper.
The solution that I proposed was e-copy desktop software. I explained how we can use his existing word template and keep this as a saved fax cover sheet for everyone. When they needed to fax from the PC, they would then print to ecopy desktop, then merge the file with the fax cover sheet that we saved in ecopy. From their, the users could use the markup feature for the fax cover page and input all of the information, plus when they selected the "view all" icon they could see how many pages were in that electronic document. This would then take the guess work out of figuring out how many pages were in a word, excel or something other type of document. Along with the feature of having the entire outbound fax saved to a file on the network.
In review, the speeds and feeds of the hardware were acceptable, however what made my system stand out from the others was the ability to combine E-Copy Desktop with the hardware to give the customer a real cost savings, real productivity savings along with a "green" solution. I also knew that no one else that the IT manager had brought attention to this type of solution.
We all need to sell hardware to live, however asking questions about "how do you do this and how do you do that" can lead to a very productive sales call.
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