Art Post
I’ve borrowed a few lines from a blog I wrote about three years ago in reference to finding leads and then updated it with a few new ones for everyone.
Have you ever heard of the “three foot rule”? It means that whenever you get within three feet of someone you should talk solutions/MFP’s or how do you do this or that? It sounds lame, but you need to sneak it in somewhere. I could have the worst week, month or quarter, however, I always look at it that I never know what tomorrow will bring. It’s inevitable that continued prospecting will always generate new opportunities that you were not counting on.
Over the years, I found leads I’ve generated have created opportunities because I always ask myself how did they print this or make it look this way. Here are five opportunities that came my way over the years.
1) The first happened at a paper store; I had to buy specialty paper to run some print samples for a client. As I was making my purchase, the clerk printed a sales order/sales receipt on a dot-matrix printer with pre-printed three part carbon less paper. It clicked; I asked the clerk why do you print these like this? He gave me a dumb look and stated “’cause that’s the way the boss does it.” Okay, I thought and then asked for the owner’s name and the best time to contact him. Done. It’s a lead and a solutions lead at that. Pre-printed carbonless forms can run as high as 25 cents each or higher. Now it’s just a case of finding out how many forms are printed each and every month to make a viable ROI presentation.
2) While buying lunch the one day at a WAWA (New Jersey is big on WAWA’s), I picked up a new homes booklet. While thumbing through the booklet I realized that this can be printed on a ComColor device. Thus another reason to call the publisher for additional details, such as how many books are printed monthly and how often they are printed. I made the call and found out that they print hundreds of thousands of these books and I was way out of my league. But, in my discovery process I found out that they needed a new MFP and I was able to schedule an appointment—another viable lead just from stopping at the WAWA to pick up lunch.
3) Another lead came on Sunday at church. It was the church bulletin, but my call was not to the church, but to the company that prints the bulletins in 11×17 format, saddle-stapled with the front and back cover in color. That call led to a discussion, demo, and opportunity for a production color system.
4) Years ago when I had some extra time, I took off work and went fishing for the day. In New Jersey there are signs everywhere you look, “don’t go here,” “don’t do that,” but one that caught my eye was a large trout stocking poster that was hung on a tree. It was probably printed on a press, but I thought why can’t a duplicator do this? I did some digging, got connected to the New Jersey State Print Shop and ended up selling two duplicators to them just for printing signs.
5) Of course my most recent lead came from selling a Ricoh duplexing duplicator printer to put red ink on flyers that my client would mail to his customers. We got to talking about how he generates his leads, which lead us to a discussion about where he got the forms printed, then the cost and time to get them done. Within minutes I was able to cost-justify leasing the duplicator. He especially liked the image quality because it “looked official,” which was helpful in his line of work. This eventually lend to selling them another color MFP, the SharePoint, then an envelope printer, and then a new folding machine.
Cutting to the chase, being a copier/MFP salesperson means you always need to be looking for leads. Ask yourself why is this printed like this, where is this printed, is there a different solution that will save the customer money and time. I always asking how they do this or that when it comes to documents, prints or just about anything printed on paper.
Good selling!
