CPI Technologies

There are no guarantees in business. Given the lack of certainties, most business owners try to position themselves to experience optimal outcomes. This takes on many forms: investing in people and equipment. Adding products or services that can be introduced to current clients Read More

Are you currently thinking about adding a new non-MFP hardware item to your product catalog, or is it something you’ve kicked around in the past? Would you benefit from ancillary revenue to offset the volume loss from the big boxes? The second question is silly; of course, you Read More

There’s nothing a salesperson loves more than having a strong conversation starter when they’re going belly to belly with a prospect. And we’re not talking about hailing from the same university or growing up in the same town as the person on the other side of the table. No, in Read More

There’s something really special about the term recurring revenue. It’s a siren song without the nefarious undertones. It’s the Mister Softee jingle, sans the excess pounds from drinking black-and-white milkshakes. There’s something quite Pavlovian about the term; it elicits a Read More

As anticipated, President Trump’s tariffs have arrived (sort of), creating volatility on Wall Street and Main Street. Across the nation, 401Ks took a massive hit (160 million people are invested in the market, per Time) while the Trump Administration maintained that the tariff Read More

When we last visited the topic of hiring and retention a few years ago, conditions were especially favorable toward job hunters. It was the era of the Great Resignation, an extended period when four million members of the workforce were switching jobs each month. And while the Read More

In the past five years, office technology dealers have increasingly sought to lock down their most valued employees. Obviously, having long-tenured employees has always been a feather in the cap of companies that stress corporate unity and strong core values, so it’s not exactly Read More

If it were only a set-it-and-forget-it, one-time investment proposition, managed IT would be so much more palatable to a wider range of dealers. That’s simply not the way it is, for if it were that easy, then everyone would offer this MSP gem. If you close your eyes and listen, Read More

Success is rarely an absolute, at least for the majority of businesses. Unless a company sets lofty goals that are accomplished—and if you did, proper kudos go out to you—it will take stock of all the pluses and minuses and reach an overall conclusion. For example, perhaps your Read More

At a time when supply chain delays have cost dealers millions of dollars due to product backlogs, the domino effect has toppled the humble account representative in the process. It’s left dealers in a precarious position in handling compensation. Just how long the delay lasts can Read More

Coming off a year when the ability of account executives to peddle MFPs and other varieties of hardware became severely cramped by supply chain issues, one might gather that dealers across the United States would tamp down expectations and perhaps revisit the quotas they’ve Read More

In the dealer sales rep world, nothing beats a sale. Unless it’s a bigger sale. And one that brings in monthly recurring revenue (MRR). That monthly splash is the heartbeat of a dealer; not all items in a company’s product and service revenue lend themselves to service Read More

The majority of the glass-half-full crowd tends to take a critical view of performance and results when reflecting on the previous year. We sometimes tend to be our own biggest critics, focusing on the areas in which we came up short as a team, and that’s not necessarily a bad Read More

Ah, the joys of being a service technician during the age of COVID-19. Face mask? Check. Hand sanitizer? Check. Gloves? Got ‘em. Disinfectant spray for machines? Right here. Maybe disposable work mats and booties, or anything else that makes a tech look more like a surgeon? Sigh. Read More

When a business disruption pushes the business community from its base of operations, communication takes on greater emphasis, which holds true with employees, partners, clients or other stakeholders critical to success. When the pandemic forced companies to resort to remote Read More