Selling Copiers "Making Sense of the Madness" #3

WHOA!  I had a gigantic headache after I ended a call with an incumbent customer. If this customer did not have 20-30 units I would have told the guy to....  well you know and I know.

Making a long story short (here I go again), an incumbent account had an old 1013 Ricoh system. The system has over 145K on it and is about 10 years old. I tell you that Ricoh engine 1013/1515/171/201 is an excellent engine. Anyway, the 1013 has seen better days and the incumbent account is on a "break and fix" program. Lately the 1013 has more getting more repairs and calls. 

I get the lead from my service department, do some number crunching, mind you I'm familiar with the account, they can't see past the purchase price, however I'm a persistent person and ran a spreadsheet for them with the MP171 and a small inexpensive MFP (one for around $300), of course there was a huge savings with the MP171 because of the low toner price.  A few days ago I made a follow up call to the PA and then heard back from a different manager, he wanted me to quote a Ricoh 3400, now this is a low cost 30ppm system that uses and AIO cartridge and the cost per page is .033 for Ricoh toner and through Internet it was something like .021.  The .021 includes no parts, no service, no maintenance.

He stated his volume was 1,200 per month, my records indicate it's 1,500 per month, so I'm trying to tell him that this system is not for them.  This guy is thinking the system will never need service, it's faster and will be less expensive, well he was right to a point because I had a maintenance agreement in place for full coverage.  So, I went back to dropping the maintenance agreement and just showed the same consumables as the 3400.  He couldn't see the forest through the trees!    Even though the cost of the 171 was over $1,300 there was still some savings and a much more reliable system.

I sent him a different spreadsheet and I'm hoping he goes and buys one of those pieces of crap low end machines and  I'll  be praying that the machine fails a few times a year and they need service, parts and labor.

Penny wise, Dollar Foolish!!!

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Printers, Copiers "Whats The Total Cost of Operation"

In 31 years of selling copiers to commerical accounts, well...I've pretty much seen it all. Over those years I've had many cleints who did not purchase a copier or a multifunctional unit from me.

Now, what peeves me the most is when I'm trying to communicate (help) the cost per page of a device or the total cost of ownership of the device. Many accounts will opt for the small MFP's where the manufacturer states "the up to 8,000-page-per-month duty cycle" (Duty cycle: the maximum possible number of pages that can be printed per month) I ask you, what the heck does Duty Cycle really mean? Does it mean, crap I can due up to 8,000 pages per month on this device that only cost me $199?

Let me show you what happens if you would print 8,000 pages per month on that device. The first device I looked at was an HP LaserJet Pro M1212nf (oh boy, it has Pro in the model name, it's just got have excellent reliabilty and I can print like a PRO).

I have this neat software package that can actually give the cost per page of most printers and multifunctional products and why shouldn't I. I'm the darn expert. Some software programs may vary in the price per page.

So, this neat HP Pro M1212nf sells for $199. While it has a nifty 35 page document feeder and a 150 sheet paper tray, the toner cartridge cost for this device is $67.99 with a yeild of 1,600 pages. Mind you that the 1,600 pages is based on probably 5% coverage of the page.

Now, you may ask what is 5% coverage of the page, pretty much if you condensed all of the black print area to one area, it means it can't cover more than 5% of the page. Pretty much a letter document with no pictures or logos. I ask you who the heck prints at 5% coverage?

Back to the cost per page, divide the cost of the cartridge by the yield and you have a cost per page of .0425. Ok, well, I wanna print my 8,000 pages per month, how much is that gonna cost me? It's gonna cost you $340 each and every month, and if you maintain that volume for 36 months, you'll be out a whopping $12,240!! Whoa, almost the price of a car!

How about if you print all your docs with 10% coverage or print legal size documents. Get a load of this number, simple math it's twice the cost. $24,480 for the total cost of operation and .0850 per page. That's the price of a decent car!

Wanna see more? At 15% coverge which has a bunch of text and a few pictures the Total Cost of Operation runs up to $36,720 and a cost per page over 12 cents. Now, that's a really nice number for a really nice car!

Hey, I understand that most users don't print all thier pages at 15%, and I understand (because I'm in the business) that this machine will probably blow a gasket before it prints 8,000 pages in one month, however how does the end user know this? There's no disclaimers, well maybe it can do 8,000 pages per month, but at 19 pages per minute that would take 421 minutes. Point is there needs to be some type of real measuring stick for these types of devices.

In closing, if you're thinking about doing on 8,000 pages per month, with 15% coverage on the page, opt for the really nice car, and call a Print4Pay Hotel member to save you some real cash. Here's a neat link (P4P Cafe) to get a quote on a Really Nice MFP so you can get that Really Nice Car!

-=Good Selling=-

Ricoh MPC Series "Best of the Best"

You think I could have gotten a little more creative with the title?

Just about eighteen months ago Ricoh launched the MPC series, this series Incorporated the same engine for 5 different models and 5 different speeds. Let me tell you this was genius, from a sales persons point of view, if I knew one I knew em all. From a technical side and I do have technical back ground, these units just keep running and running and the quality is awesome from print one to 1,000,000.

What did Ricoh do right, well for one they introduced PxP toner, where the toner is chemically grown and particles are more uniform in size. Fuser oil was eliminated thus creating less user involvement, preventative maintenance was increased to 80,000 pages, support for heavy paper was added and to top it off color speeds were equal to black and white speeds!

From a sales point of view this system kicks butt because of several options that Ricoh added, such as a booklet maker to all of the systems, before this booklet makers were only available on the higher speed units. We know have heavy paper with 140lb paper through the 100 sheet by-pass and 120lb index through all of the paper drawers (this was unheard of in a Ricoh product).

Features that I like best is fax4ward to email, this really acts as a mini fax server, all inbound faxes can be routed to a folder or a single email address (what a way to save paper). The ability to store documents on the hard drive, view them in color and then print the documents from the MPC series, did I mentioned that you can also load them on the hard drive via the print driver! How about the ability to print onto 12x18 paper, thus giving customer in the AEC market place the ability to print half size CAD documents.

Above all, the reliability of this unit has been awesome in the field, not one complaint from one customer over the last 18 months and I probably have about 60 of these in the field. Whether the customer is making 1,000 or 10,000 pages a month the system does its work flawlessly.

In the near future Ricoh will be expanding this line up with an 18 & 22ppm system, thus covering a wider range of speeds and volumes. So, if you're in the Print4Pay Market, AEC (Architects Engineers Construction) or anyone who needs and awesome color unit. Go buy it, or lease it, the MPC2000, MPC2500, MPC3000, MPC3500, and MPC4500 is an awesome value that just keeps on running.

-=Good Selling-=