{"id":12339,"date":"2015-05-06T09:06:34","date_gmt":"2015-05-06T16:06:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/?p=12339"},"modified":"2016-09-15T10:04:10","modified_gmt":"2016-09-15T17:04:10","slug":"do-people-still-use-copiers-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/the-week-in-imaging-twii\/2015\/05\/do-people-still-use-copiers-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Do People Still Use Copiers? Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"1970_xerox_printer\"In the first part <\/a>of this article I discussed changes in how paper is (not) being used, focusing on G&A expense reduction in your business, looking at service revenue that is unsustainable, and growing market share.\u00a0 In this article I\u2019m going to focus on sales processes.<\/p>\n

Selling copiers has become bigger, better, faster, less money. I constantly hear copier sales people trying to get into an account by promising they can \u201csave you money and provide better service.\u201d\u00a0 The second part of that value proposition would infer that your competitors are offering poor service, and frankly, I don\u2019t see that.\u00a0 When I make that statement to a sales professional I always get \u201cI took X account from Y competitor six months back because they were getting bad service.\u201d\u00a0 OK, if a company scored 98% on a survey question that said \u201cI\u2019d absolutely buy from this company again\u201d then 2% of their customers might leave at their next purchase.\u00a0 But if a company had a 98% retention rate they\u2019d probably be in the 99 percentile in any industry.\u00a0 That doesn\u2019t mean you won\u2019t lose customers.\u00a0 Yet if you stumble upon that 2% you\u2019d think the company couldn\u2019t satisfy their customers when the exact opposite is true.<\/p>\n

A few years ago some of the cell phone companies would highlight their coverage vs. their competitors; at that time, as companies were building out cell towers to keep up with demand, certain carriers had better service than other carriers.\u00a0 I never see one of those commercials these days and I rarely hear anybody say \u201cI don\u2019t get service with Y Company here\u201d when using their cell phone, which was a common complaint five years back. The cell phone companies stopped with that value proposition because of near parity in service.\u00a0 It\u2019s time to put the \u201cwe have better service\u201d on the back burner because it keeps us from conducting a good discovery and finding a real business case for a company to do business with us.<\/p>\n

And talk about distractions from a real business case\u2014saving a company money on their copier!\u00a0 That is one of the most absurd value propositions possible, given how much a copier actually costs a company.\u00a0 The average copier is under $8,000 but we\u2019ll use $8,000 on a 60-month lease, which today would be less than $160 a month.\u00a0 The average monthly aftermarket is $105 for a total monthly expense of $265. What are you going to save these folks, $15?\u00a0 That\u2019s your strongest value proposition for doing business with your company that you\u2019re going to save that $20 million a year company $15 a month?\u00a0 Do you see the absurdity of that approach?<\/p>\n

Back when 50-ppm devices cost $25,000 and interest rates were 8% and aftermarket rates were 50% higher than today maybe you could save a company money.\u00a0 Maybe, taking that $775 a month payment to $700 would have some value to the company, although in the scheme of running a business $75 a month isn\u2019t much of a needle mover. Today, I believe talking about price is detrimental as it makes the buyer believe they should shop you around and they lose focus of the lack of materiality of the expense.<\/p>\n

Consultative selling, strategic selling, it has many names, but my definition would be that you understand a customer\u2019s\/prospect\u2019s business and can help them fix issues they are having in that business.\u00a0 For my purpose I am going to call it consultative selling for the remainder of this article and to me consultative selling starts with prospect selection.<\/p>\n

Any of you who read my articles know that selecting the companies you call on has always been a major focus of my sales management but it is even more critical now that segment I and low end segment II, if not inside of a larger account with multiple devices, is basically going away in that these companies are buying MFPs from big box retailers. It is also critical because as your company expands your product offerings you want to ensure that your customer base can buy what you sell.\u00a0 Some three-person company, besides being a user of some small MFP, is also not a prospect for MPS, MNS, or document management.\u00a0 Don\u2019t waste your time with this customer.<\/p>\n

Business development also has to change. The days of calling a company to ask \u201cWho is in charge of your copiers?\u201d are long over.\u00a0 With tools like LinkedIn, where you can build an organizational chart for just about any company in the U.S., a sales professional needs to conduct research and target the correct buying level in an account. That sales professional also needs to do research on how your company has helped other companies in the same industry.\u00a0 Ridiculous statements like \u201cincreasing billable hours\u201d or general statements like \u201cincreasing productivity\u201d aren\u2019t going to get the attention of today\u2019s educated buyer. You need to provide specific and measurable examples of how you help companies with their processes.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s sales professional has to be very comfortable talking to a customer about business processes. \u201cI can save you $15 a month does not come close to that discussion.\u201d Understanding how a company uses paper in their processes will lead you in the right direction, but only if you have a decent understanding of business.\u00a0 If you\u2019re talking to a specialty chemical company that ships their products worldwide I\u2019d guess they have substantial paperwork that follows the shipments and needs to be retained for some extended period of time. If you were selling to sports medicine practice with multiple facilities in the geography there\u2019s a chance that a patient does their physical therapy at one facility at nights or weekends but at another on their lunch break from work.\u00a0 How does the paperwork flow between the facilities and comply with HIPPA?<\/p>\n

Are you researching the company before you make the first call and are you asking questions about their paper processes like the aforementioned examples?\u00a0 Between that research and asking the questions are you actually making an appointment at a level that knows a company\u2019s business processes, such as a director or VP level? You have to do all three to be successful in today\u2019s environment where senior managers and executives don\u2019t have time to waste with an ill prepared sales person.<\/p>\n

Now that you are asking the questions can you quantify the business case?\u00a0 This isn\u2019t as easy as it seems and I\u2019ll provide you with just one example from an account I was discussing with one of my clients recently. The sales professional was trying to get into a regional bank and I asked if the company had any other regional banks as customers, which they did.\u00a0 When I asked why they bought from us (my client) I was told we saved them money. That\u2019s the usual answer and I gave my usual reply: \u201cThat\u2019s not why they bought from you so tell me about the sales cycle.\u201d\u00a0 This is almost a verbatim description:<\/p>\n

We conducted and assessment and found out they were spending $3,100 per month. We also found out that they had a security issue in that their devices were storing confidential customer information on the hard drives. We were able to replace all of their copiers for $2,700, saving them $400 per month.<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The manager and sales professional were both accomplished, intelligent individuals. Yet they thought that the customer bought from them because they saved them $400 per month.\u00a0 Banking being a highly regulated business what do you think the fine would be if it were discovered that confidential customer information was being stored on a non-secure device? If a leak made it onto the front page of the local business press how many customers would that bank have lost?\u00a0 If those two professionals really understood business they would have charged this bank more for their solution because they identified and closed that security leak. That business case could clearly have been quantified with a few levels of questions.<\/p>\n

And for something to truly be a business case you have to be able to quantify the impact to the customer and I\u2019d do that with the customer at the discovery or validation meeting. I used a few examples so far: The chemical company, the physical therapy offices and the bank.<\/p>\n

The bank doesn\u2019t take a lot of work to have that \u201ccost\u201d discussion around the security issue, in either fines or lost customers if it became public. With the chemical company I\u2019d get into that paper flow in the export and import events. Had they ever had to wait to unload a ship\u2014paying fees at the dock\u2014because they didn\u2019t have the correct paperwork?\u00a0 What was the process to get it to the ship?\u00a0 At the PT firm were they ever unable to do work on a patient because they didn\u2019t have the paperwork?\u00a0 How frequently?\u00a0 What was the lost revenue?<\/p>\n

With the chemical company and PT firm these are hypothetical examples but those are the types of questions I\u2019d ask based on the type of businesses they are. When I put together my financial justification for the technology I am suggesting, in both of these cases that would include document management, I\u2019d be able to quantify their current situation to justify the investment in DocuWare or some other document management solution.<\/p>\n

To sell all of the products and services today\u2019s \u201ccopier companies\u201d offer the sales professional will need a structured and repeatable sales process.\u00a0 Bigger, better, faster, less money is dead.\u00a0 Focus on picking the correct prospects, identifying the buyers in those prospects using LinkedIn or other business social networks, use a business case to get the first appointment and on that appointment conduct a solid discovery that identifies a business case and then justify your recommendations based on the business case. Truly become a consultative sales professional.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the first part of this article I discussed changes in how paper is (not) being used, focusing on G&A expense reduction in your business, looking at service revenue that is unsustainable, and growing market share.\u00a0 In this article I\u2019m going to focus on sales processes. Selling copiers has become bigger, better, faster, less money. I constantly hear copier sales people trying to get into an account by promising they can \u201csave you money and provide better service.\u201d\u00a0 The second part of that value proposition would infer that your competitors are offering poor service, and frankly, I don\u2019t see that.\u00a0 When I make that statement to a sales professional I always get \u201cI took X account from Y competitor six months back because they were getting bad service.\u201d\u00a0 OK, if a company scored 98% on a survey question that said \u201cI\u2019d absolutely buy from this company again\u201d then 2% of their customers might leave at their next purchase.\u00a0 But if a company had a 98% retention rate they\u2019d probably be in the 99 percentile in any industry.\u00a0 That doesn\u2019t mean you won\u2019t lose customers.\u00a0 Yet if you stumble upon that 2% you\u2019d think the company couldn\u2019t satisfy their customers when the exact opposite is true. A few years ago some of the cell phone companies would highlight their coverage vs. their competitors; at that time, as companies were building out cell towers to keep up with demand, certain carriers had better service than other carriers.\u00a0 I never see one of those commercials these days and I rarely hear anybody say \u201cI don\u2019t get service with Y Company here\u201d when using their cell phone, which was a common complaint five years back. The cell phone companies stopped with that value proposition because of near parity in service.\u00a0 It\u2019s time to put the \u201cwe have better service\u201d on the back burner because it keeps us from conducting a good discovery and finding a real business case for a company to do business with us. And talk about distractions from a real business case\u2014saving a company money on their copier!\u00a0 That is one of the most absurd value propositions possible, given how much a copier actually costs a company.\u00a0 The average copier is under $8,000 but we\u2019ll use $8,000 on a 60-month lease, which today would be less than $160 a month.\u00a0 The average monthly aftermarket is $105 for a total monthly expense of $265. What are you going to save these folks, $15?\u00a0 That\u2019s your strongest value proposition for doing business with your company that you\u2019re going to save that $20 million a year company $15 a month?\u00a0 Do you see the absurdity of that approach? Back when 50-ppm devices cost $25,000 and interest rates were 8% and aftermarket rates were 50% higher than today maybe you could save a company money.\u00a0 Maybe, taking that $775 a month payment to $700 would have some value to the company, although in the scheme of running a business $75 a month isn\u2019t much of a needle mover. Today, I believe talking about price is detrimental as it makes the buyer believe they should shop you around and they lose focus of the lack of materiality of the expense. Consultative selling, strategic selling, it has many names, but my definition would be that you understand a customer\u2019s\/prospect\u2019s business and can help them fix issues they are having in that business.\u00a0 For my purpose I am going to call it consultative selling for the remainder of this article and to me consultative selling starts with prospect selection. Any of you who read my articles know that selecting the companies you call on has always been a major focus of my sales management but it is even more critical now that segment I and low end segment II, if not inside of a larger account with multiple devices, is basically going away in that these companies are buying MFPs from big box retailers. It is also critical because as your company expands your product offerings you want to ensure that your customer base can buy what you sell.\u00a0 Some three-person company, besides being a user of some small MFP, is also not a prospect for MPS, MNS, or document management.\u00a0 Don\u2019t waste your time with this customer. Business development also has to change. The days of calling a company to ask \u201cWho is in charge of your copiers?\u201d are long over.\u00a0 With tools like LinkedIn, where you can build an organizational chart for just about any company in the U.S., a sales professional needs to conduct research and target the correct buying level in an account. That sales professional also needs to do research on how your company has helped other companies in the same industry.\u00a0 Ridiculous statements like \u201cincreasing billable hours\u201d or general statements like \u201cincreasing productivity\u201d aren\u2019t going to get the attention of today\u2019s educated buyer. You need to provide specific and measurable examples of how you help companies with their processes. Today\u2019s sales professional has to be very comfortable talking to a customer about business processes. \u201cI can save you $15 a month does not come close to that discussion.\u201d Understanding how a company uses paper in their processes will lead you in the right direction, but only if you have a decent understanding of business.\u00a0 If you\u2019re talking to a specialty chemical company that ships their products worldwide I\u2019d guess they have substantial paperwork that follows the shipments and needs to be retained for some extended period of time. If you were selling to sports medicine practice with multiple facilities in the geography there\u2019s a chance that a patient does their physical therapy at one facility at nights or weekends but at another on their lunch break from work.\u00a0 How does the paperwork flow between the facilities and comply with HIPPA? Are you researching the company before you make the first call and are you asking questions about their paper processes like the aforementioned examples?\u00a0 Between that research and asking the questions are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":12340,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1638],"tags":[151,346],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12339"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12339"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12389,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12339\/revisions\/12389"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}