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,

Has The Time Come for Sales People to be Paid on Click Revenue?

In the world of MPS (Managed Print Service), commission for clicks is the common method pay compensation for reps.  Most time commissions are paid off the monthly revenue click from systems that our under a MPS agreement and in some cases commissions are paid one time for the first months worth of billing.

The copier commission world is a completely different story, reps are paid either paid on the percentage of gross profit or a percentage of the revenue for each copier that is sold.

Traditionally copier reps can also make commissions on the maintenance or cost per page agreement, the commissions range from 5%-10% of the annual agreement. In recent months I've heard some grumblings that dealers are pulling back and not offering commissions on maintenance agreements or cost per page programs.  Which I find surprising since maintenance and cost per page agreements are the life blood of the dealership.

If I were not getting a commission to sell a cost per page agreement or a maintenance agreement I would hard pressed to sell an agreement at the time of the sale.  Matter of fact, if I thought the break and fix model was better for the customer I would make the recommendation to go that way, my thought process is why muddy the waters and fight the battle with pricing on the maintenance or cost per page agreement if I'm not getting paid on that.

Personally, I would like to see some kind of ongoing