Andrew Ritschel
If you know New Jersey you’re well aware that the highway’s often jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive. That’s not the case, however, with Electronic Office Systems (EOS) in Fairfield, NJ where this year business is booming like Thunder Road.
Bad Springsteen references aside, business is truly amazing of late for EOS. “Through June we’ve had the best six months in seven years in our marketplace,” reports EOS President Andrew Ritschel.
The reason?
“We like to think our sales people are working extra hard, but it’s the market. Customers are much more ready to upgrade and upgrade their technology,” responds Ritschel.
He adds that over the past few years the leasing companies were doing evergreen lease renewals for customers who weren’t in a position to upgrade their equipment. “Those evergreens are changing and people are more willing to replace their equipment that’s been a lease renewal for one, two, three, and even four years,” states Ritschel.
After a terrific first six months, things slowed down for EOS at the beginning of July before picking up again, providing the dealership with its best July in four years. “That’s a good sign and indicator of the marketplace,” opines Ritschel who is gratified to see marketplace activity back to pre 2008-2009 levels before the economic downturn.
What’s selling?
“Everything,” responds Ritschel.
Also having an impact are apps. “Our manufacturers are all introducing apps on top of their technology platforms and our focus is to find out all about the customer’s workflow and how they’re scanning, [handling] document security, and things like that and then sell the apps and have the equipment follow behind,” reports Ritschel.
Human nature has been a hindrance to selling apps, but that’s changing. The learning curve for sales reps, at least at EOS, has straightened out where it’s now almost second nature for reps to walk in the door and start talking apps before discussing hardware. Ritschel uses a little Psych and Marketing 101 to explain what’s happened. “It’s not hearing it once or twice or three times or four times from the manufacturer,” he says. “It’s like in marketing and advertising, the time they finally get the message is after hearing it for the sixth time. Hearing about the apps and how they apply, it’s not until the sixth exposure that sales people get it.”
Now his reps are looking to identify the needs in a prospect’s office where they can take pull one of these apps out of the bag from manufacturer A, manufacturer B, or manufacturer C and start selling the application and the benefit to the client. “And by the way, pull the machine in,” adds Ritschel.
The apps that are doing the heavy lifting for EOS’s sales reps are related to scanning and ECM with the latter being lower end document management/ECM solutions rather than a full-blown document management/ECM system.
Meanwhile, Ritschel is hoping that things continue along the same road. “I’m hoping August will be strong and September through December will carry through nicely.”
