Way back on March 2, 2020, my wife and I arrived in Newark Airport from my President’s Club trip to Aruba. It truly was a great week, though every day we were peppered with news headlines about COVID-19. I asked my wife, “is this something we should worry about?”
The first couple days back were no different than the normal selling days I’ve been accustomed to for the last 40 years. But later that week, some states in the northeast part of the country were beginning to shelter in place. Calls to offices were going unanswered, emails weren’t being returned and by the following week, our entire office and sales staff began working remotely. That was 13 months ago, and I’m still remote here in New Jersey.
March/April
I’m now 100% remote from my home office, and I was one of the fortunate ones, as years ago I had set up a home office for the Print4Pay Hotel. I had everything I needed, including a PC, printer/scanner/copier, desk and not-so-comfortable chair. But I’m guessing I had more than most people, considering the immediate optioning to remote working.
Those early days were spent making phone calls, and after a day or so I realized there was no one in the office who would answer. I had to decide on the best way to stay in touch with my clients, and that answer was email.
Since no one was in their offices, I accepted the fact that no one was going to be buying copiers. The only thing I could do was keep in touch with my existing clients and tell them about the IT services they might need for their remote workers. I also asked how they were coping with the new normal and how they were doing business. With every email I sent, I made sure I asked at least one question, positioning it as the last sentence of the email in the hopes of receiving a response.
Inserting those questions helped in a big way, because I was able to learn more about what my clients were experiencing, and that allowed me to continue asking questions. It was like texting, but in an email format.
Those types of emails persisted for more than a month. I believe I sent every existing account an email during March and April, and I believe that helped me in the coming months.
All my existing prospects fell of the table except for one account; we had a rather unique email chain going, and we were able to schedule a couple of MS Teams meetings in April. I give credit to Stratix for quickly adopting the MS Teams platform to help us stay engaged.
May/June
I asked myself early on, “What is the biggest driver for my clients now that many of them were in the same boat on the same creek as me?” If there was no revenue coming in, what was going to make clients listen and buy? I went through this type of scenario one other time in my career—the Great Recession of 2008–2010, which taught me that clients will listen if you can reduce their costs.
One thing I noticed while out grocery shopping with my wife was that there was still activity with construction projects. Commercial and residential business was still happening, and that told me that the AEC (architects, engineers and construction) market was still robust. So I set my sights on all of my AEC accounts and reviewed all the ones that had copiers and wide-format. I performed a cost analysis in advance of either sending them an email or speaking with them. When I had the final numbers for what I could save each account, I presented them with the potential savings. When most clients see the unknown of future revenues, they’ll hunker down and cut costs because they don’t want to go out of business.
With the help of a net-new client who purchased a production MICR printer, May turned out to be my best month ever in the industry and I was able to sell $200K of gear, with 75% of that coming from wide-format devices. By the end of the quarter, I believe I was over $300K in revenue.
July/August/September
The theme of concentrating on the AEC market and reducing costs was still the name of the game for these three months. I’ll admit that I also had a stroke of luck with that net-new client that bought the production printer, because they ended up buying another one from me. Each one was a $60K hit, and before the end of the year, they purchased a third.
Throughout these months, one thing I didn’t do was give up. Every week when we had our sales meeting, I wrote on my whiteboard a sales quote that I used to give me that mental edge to keep pushing forward. I thought to myself, “I can do this.”
Another key for me was having Zoom meetings with my peers in the industry approximately every two weeks. We’d discuss what’s working and what wasn’t, and learned from others what they were seeing and doing.
When it comes right down to it, I worked tremendously hard to ensure I wouldn’t fail.
October/November/December
After I had run the course with most of my AEC accounts, I turned towards my commercial accounts. With COVID-19 numbers dropping over the summer, more accounts were adopting a hybrid work schedule. Prints were down big time, but I kept with the theme of saving them money, and most of that came from analyzing their pre-COVID-19 print volumes against their current ones. It was about right-sizing the volume while still keeping the same style/speed MFP, because at some point in time people would be back to work and print volumes would migrate upward.
In addition, I partnered with a company that supplied me with leads. I did this out of my own pocket, because you need to spend money to make money. The lead service was so-so at best, but it gave me additional net-new prospects to keep me busy.
Another key to my success was that I never stopped prospecting through phone calls, text messages and my monthly email campaign for net-new clients. I never stopped believing that I could excel in this type of new normal.
I also started writing a daily blog about what I accomplished, which tactics worked and which ones didn’t. I did this for two reasons: to share my knowledge with P4P Hotel members and to inspire myself to do the best I could in an environment that was new to all of us. I’ve continued to write, though not at the same frequency, and have received many emails and phone calls from people who said the blogs helped them get through the tough times.
At the end of the year, I had my best revenue and commissions in 40 years. I’m a firm believer that, especially in tough times, the harder you work, the luckier you get.
