{"id":4884,"date":"2013-04-26T08:38:31","date_gmt":"2013-04-26T12:38:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theweekinimaging.com\/?p=4884"},"modified":"2013-05-02T09:55:19","modified_gmt":"2013-05-02T13:55:19","slug":"the-new-reality-for-todays-copier-sales-reps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/feature-articles\/2013\/04\/the-new-reality-for-todays-copier-sales-reps\/","title":{"rendered":"The New Reality for Today\u2019s Copier Sales Reps"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"reality-check\"<\/a>Whenever I speak with Andrew Ritschel, president of Electronic Office Systems (EOS) in Fairfield, NJ, I can count on him to share his concerns about the latest goings on in the office technology industry. This time at the end of our conversation, Ritschel made one thing perfectly clear so that I or readers don\u2019t get the wrong impression.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to be the chronic complainer and moaner becomes I\u2019m an optimist not a pessimist,\u201d he told me. \u201cI\u2019m not a realist either, which is a pessimist in disguise. \u201cI look at things and try to come up with solutions and ideas and try and alter or change the course of my business and how we\u2019re doing things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ritschel is on the front lines every day, selling alongside his nine sales people. \u201cI see prospects and customers and I\u2019m very in touch with the marketplace and not in some tower having things filtered up to me,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

His main concerns of late is what he calls the industry\u2019s race to zero and the new reality for today\u2019s copier sales reps.<\/p>\n

Rewind to a recent EOS sales meeting where Ritschel, who is turning 55 in June, told his reps that 55 is the new 40. That comment elicited some snickers, but then he went on to say that if today\u2019s reps aren\u2019t working 55 hours a week, they\u2019re not getting done what reps were able to get done in 40 hours 15 years ago. \u201cThe need to work 55 hours is critical,\u201d he emphasized. \u201cIf you\u2019re working 40 hours or cheating and only working 35 hours or 32, your income level will be dramatically less than it\u2019s ever been.\u201d<\/p>\n

His solution is working harder and smarter. That\u2019s only the beginning as Ritschel explained to me the challenges sales reps face day in and day out in today\u2019s marketplace. Let\u2019s examine a few of those:<\/p>\n

Providing a quote without looking like a thief and still making a profit<\/b> \u2013 Ritschel recommends always utilizing whenever possible special group pricing from manufacturers. \u201cMeaning I can\u2019t use our normal acquisition costs based on low dealer cost without utilizing these programs,\u201d explains Ritschel. \u201cI am regularly up against other people in the market who are cheating on the programs available from the manufacturers whether it\u2019s medical account pricing, national account pricing, or pricing for non-profit and government.\u201d<\/p>\n

He contends that program cheating is rampant in the marketplace right now. \u201cIf you quote at normal wholesale pricing with your markup for shipping, setup, and delivery you\u2019re dead,\u201d he warns.<\/p>\n

Proposals that disappear into black holes –<\/strong> \u201cMany times once you get a proposal into a customer\u2019s or prospect\u2019s hands you get no response; you can\u2019t get people on the phone, or you can\u2019t get them to answer e-mails,\u201d laments Ritschel.<\/p>\n

Prospects who don\u2019t want to meet face to face, or to qualify, or to review their proposal with them \u2013<\/strong> \u201cThey just want you to e-mail them,\u201d says Ritschel. \u201cThat\u2019s a pervasive attitude in the marketplace. No one wants to build relationships, no one wants to make it personal, no one wants to deal with loyalty. They just want your expertise and prices for free like they get on the Internet.\u201d<\/p>\n

The current marketplace is another frustration as Ritschel is witnessing single-unit sales down the street being sold at best major account pricing levels. Add to that maintenance agreement rates being sold at record lows and fixed for 48-month or 60-month terms, and manufacturer branches selling down the street to end users at or below dealership wholesale. At the same time he\u2019s seeing leasing companies make end-of-term buyout deals with their dealer\u2019s customers, manufacturers acquiring their own dealers, and MPS service going sub penny. \u201cWe just had a competitor offer .0072 on a fleet of new desktops fixed for 60 months,\u201d reports Ritschel. \u201cIt\u2019s beyond insanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is an environment that Ritschel says dealers and sales reps have to accept. The solution, or at least his solution for dealing with this new reality, is to be all things to all customers. He uses the example of a general contractor and the various trades he uses when constructing a home. As far as the home owner is concerned, they\u2019re only dealing with the contractor not the individual trades for services like plumbing, flooring, HVAC, etc.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe independent dealer needs to become a general contractor for their customers and the sales rep must become the site manager,\u201d opines Ritschel. \u201cSo instead of just selling them their office equipment, managed print services, managed services, they\u2019re looking to also capture anything else in that office that they can have a trusted affiliate or associate company do the work and them getting a percentage of the revenue.\u201d<\/p>\n

That way they\u2019re remaining sticky with their customer and have become a valuable resource for them while the dealer is making a profit on a lot of different things (color MFPs, document management, graphic art works, electronic medical records, IT, phone systems, postage equipment, bass back-file scanning, etc.). \u201cYou\u2019re able to touch the customer on a regular basis and sell them something, and also go into new prospects and convert them into a new customer by selling one of your laundry list of goods or services,\u201d states Ritschel.<\/p>\n

The bottom line he says is making a profit, what some dealers and manufacturers have lost sight of in Ritschel\u2019s estimation. \u201cYou cannot work every day, gain knowledge, give your knowledge away, and sell, and when you do sell, make nothing. If our margins are coming down, we\u2019re going to have to sell a whole lot more of a whole lot of different things maybe with a lot less competition and through third parties to make profits so we can add value again. This is the future of our business. It\u2019s not something we can control, it\u2019s where things are going and we need to come up with strategies to live with this new reality.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whenever I speak with Andrew Ritschel, president of Electronic Office Systems (EOS) in Fairfield, NJ, I can count on him to share his concerns about the latest goings on in the office technology industry. This time at the end of our conversation, Ritschel made one thing perfectly clear so that I or readers don\u2019t get the wrong impression. \u201cI don\u2019t want to be the chronic complainer and moaner becomes I\u2019m an optimist not a pessimist,\u201d he told me. \u201cI\u2019m not a realist either, which is a pessimist in disguise. \u201cI look at things and try to come up with solutions and ideas and try and alter or change the course of my business and how we\u2019re doing things.\u201d Ritschel is on the front lines every day, selling alongside his nine sales people. \u201cI see prospects and customers and I\u2019m very in touch with the marketplace and not in some tower having things filtered up to me,\u201d he says. His main concerns of late is what he calls the industry\u2019s race to zero and the new reality for today\u2019s copier sales reps. Rewind to a recent EOS sales meeting where Ritschel, who is turning 55 in June, told his reps that 55 is the new 40. That comment elicited some snickers, but then he went on to say that if today\u2019s reps aren\u2019t working 55 hours a week, they\u2019re not getting done what reps were able to get done in 40 hours 15 years ago. \u201cThe need to work 55 hours is critical,\u201d he emphasized. \u201cIf you\u2019re working 40 hours or cheating and only working 35 hours or 32, your income level will be dramatically less than it\u2019s ever been.\u201d His solution is working harder and smarter. That\u2019s only the beginning as Ritschel explained to me the challenges sales reps face day in and day out in today\u2019s marketplace. Let\u2019s examine a few of those: Providing a quote without looking like a thief and still making a profit \u2013 Ritschel recommends always utilizing whenever possible special group pricing from manufacturers. \u201cMeaning I can\u2019t use our normal acquisition costs based on low dealer cost without utilizing these programs,\u201d explains Ritschel. \u201cI am regularly up against other people in the market who are cheating on the programs available from the manufacturers whether it\u2019s medical account pricing, national account pricing, or pricing for non-profit and government.\u201d He contends that program cheating is rampant in the marketplace right now. \u201cIf you quote at normal wholesale pricing with your markup for shipping, setup, and delivery you\u2019re dead,\u201d he warns. Proposals that disappear into black holes – \u201cMany times once you get a proposal into a customer\u2019s or prospect\u2019s hands you get no response; you can\u2019t get people on the phone, or you can\u2019t get them to answer e-mails,\u201d laments Ritschel. Prospects who don\u2019t want to meet face to face, or to qualify, or to review their proposal with them \u2013 \u201cThey just want you to e-mail them,\u201d says Ritschel. \u201cThat\u2019s a pervasive attitude in the marketplace. No one wants to build relationships, no one wants to make it personal, no one wants to deal with loyalty. They just want your expertise and prices for free like they get on the Internet.\u201d The current marketplace is another frustration as Ritschel is witnessing single-unit sales down the street being sold at best major account pricing levels. Add to that maintenance agreement rates being sold at record lows and fixed for 48-month or 60-month terms, and manufacturer branches selling down the street to end users at or below dealership wholesale. At the same time he\u2019s seeing leasing companies make end-of-term buyout deals with their dealer\u2019s customers, manufacturers acquiring their own dealers, and MPS service going sub penny. \u201cWe just had a competitor offer .0072 on a fleet of new desktops fixed for 60 months,\u201d reports Ritschel. \u201cIt\u2019s beyond insanity.\u201d This is an environment that Ritschel says dealers and sales reps have to accept. The solution, or at least his solution for dealing with this new reality, is to be all things to all customers. He uses the example of a general contractor and the various trades he uses when constructing a home. As far as the home owner is concerned, they\u2019re only dealing with the contractor not the individual trades for services like plumbing, flooring, HVAC, etc. \u201cThe independent dealer needs to become a general contractor for their customers and the sales rep must become the site manager,\u201d opines Ritschel. \u201cSo instead of just selling them their office equipment, managed print services, managed services, they\u2019re looking to also capture anything else in that office that they can have a trusted affiliate or associate company do the work and them getting a percentage of the revenue.\u201d That way they\u2019re remaining sticky with their customer and have become a valuable resource for them while the dealer is making a profit on a lot of different things (color MFPs, document management, graphic art works, electronic medical records, IT, phone systems, postage equipment, bass back-file scanning, etc.). \u201cYou\u2019re able to touch the customer on a regular basis and sell them something, and also go into new prospects and convert them into a new customer by selling one of your laundry list of goods or services,\u201d states Ritschel. The bottom line he says is making a profit, what some dealers and manufacturers have lost sight of in Ritschel\u2019s estimation. \u201cYou cannot work every day, gain knowledge, give your knowledge away, and sell, and when you do sell, make nothing. If our margins are coming down, we\u2019re going to have to sell a whole lot more of a whole lot of different things maybe with a lot less competition and through third parties to make profits so we can add value again. This is the future of our business. It\u2019s not something we can control, it\u2019s where things are going and we need to come up with strategies to live with this new reality.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[82],"tags":[483,152,484],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4884"}],"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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4884"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4937,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4884\/revisions\/4937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}