Any time the prospect of venturing into a new discipline is broached, a dealer will have plenty of questions (and needs) addressed in order to move forward. And when it comes to advice, either slight or significant, insight from those who have already been down that road can be Read More

As much as she would love to wave a magic wand and make it disappear, Laura Blackmer knows the supply chain struggle confronting the industry isn’t going anywhere in the foreseeable future. That said, the recently promoted president of dealer sales for Konica Minolta Business Read More

There’s little doubt that Paul Hanna is an old-school sales guy. He comes from a generation of reps who made their bones by shaking hands and kissing babies, loading copiers into the back of a station wagon and demonstrating them in person, a.k.a., going belly to belly with the Read More

There’s little question that the Great Resignation is more than just a passing phenomenon ignited by the pandemic, causing millions of Americans (and workers worldwide) to take a hard, deep look at their occupational hopes and dreams. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Read More

Sarcasm alert: you may not have noticed, but the current economic situation entails high inflation, interest rates creeping skyward, $5-a-gallon gasoline, volatile markets (including intense hand-wringing in the cryptocurrency game) and general malaise regarding the economy. Read More

One of the challenges in dealing with ancillary products and services is that, depending on the category, it can diverge entirely away from the more traditional offerings in a dealer’s arsenal. Most salespeople are entirely comfortable with discussing the core products in their Read More

That Shane Nesbitt is a people person won’t draw any debate from those who work alongside or across the table from the ECMSI sales manager. There’s no carefully-crafted agenda lying just below the surface, either; he’s a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) personality who Read More

One of the best aspects of offering ancillary products and services is the lack of client objections. We’d insert the word “utter” in there, but let’s not get cocky. Every expenditure demands a raison d’etre, and in the current economic conditions, precious few end-users will Read More

A compliment can have the same impact as food. Sometimes, it’s a sweet, transitory experience that’s soon digested and forgotten. Other times, it can make one’s eyes light up, like a rich piece of chocolate, and stay with you for a long time (in the case of candy, that’s where 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

There have been a number of what one might call business “storms” during the course of the past two-plus years. The most recent one in the world of Carolina Wholesale Group International/ARLINGTON calls for riding the perfect wave as opposed to riding it out. Larry Huneycutt Read More

At a superficial level, Tony Titone and his father, John, share a common career in that both of their lines of work involve putting ink to paper. As a 44-year veteran of newspaper production, the elder Titone did it the old-fashioned way, in a more physical, hands-on nature. Read More

John Visentin, the vice chairman and CEO of Xerox, perhaps best known for attempting to acquire a larger manufacturer competitor just prior to the pandemic, passed away unexpectedly Tuesday due to complications from an ongoing illness, the company revealed. He was 59. Since Read More

The room filled with analysts, press and industry friends had barely settled into its seats at Marco’s new facility in Minnetonka, Minnesota on May 24 when CEO Doug Albregts dropped a bombshell. Fueled by an ambitious new go-to-market strategy that shouldn’t require a single new Read More

Since interest rates have shot up as the Federal Reserve continues to battle inflation, which has reached a 40-year high, tomorrow’s borrowing trends have certainly been impacted. But to what degree remains to be seen. Factoring in supply chain disruptions—the inability of OEMs Read More