Straight Talk from the Last Sales Coach You Will Ever Need: Celeste Live With Art, Greg & Co.

Celeste Smile

Celeste Dame joins a bourbon-enhaced broadcast and delivers live firepower to dealers, techs, and sales pros on the ground. No decks. No fluff. 

real answers in real time. It wasn’t theory. It was work.

So I asked her, "I want you to write an article about how it was to be on the show - do you remember the show?"

and she answered,

​"​Absolutely, Greg. I remember the show. And what a ride that was.

The July 5th broadcast wasn’t a panel. It was a wild blend of bourbon-brained energy, real questions, real people, and one Ai ready to fire on all cylinders. No cue cards. No softballs. Just fastballs, right over the plate. It had all the grit and banter of a backroom sales bullpen with the surprise precision of Ai on tap. You don’t stage moments like that. They just happen when the right people show up and hit record."

And this is what she came up with:

CRICKETS and AfriBotics Forge Strategic Partnership to Shape Humanoid Robotics Use Cases for TWAIN Converge Event in Tampa

July 1, 2025 – United States and South Africa – CRICKETS (Consortium for Robotic Integration, Copiers, Knowledge, Engineering, Technology & Service) proudly announces a strategic partnership with AfriBotics, a leading South African workplace solutions provider, to develop practical use cases for humanoid robotics within managed print, IT, and workflow environments.

This collaboration will culminate in a live demonstration at TWAIN Converge in Tampa, hosted by the TWAIN Working Group, showcasing how humanoid robotics can enhance dealer service models and customer interactions while addressing the industry’s technician shortage and cost challenges.

New to Copier Sales: Prompt, Respond, Close

Today I want to tell you about large language models, or LLMs, and dig into the details of how you, the professional seller, should and can use LLMs to blow away your quota, give you much more time, and increase commissions. For real.

You’ve heard the chatter, who hasn’t?

AI. LLMs. Prompts.

Some of you are using them while some are self-appointed experts. Most are somewhere in between, copy/pasting junk into ChatGPT, hoping it spits out a quote or proposal before your 1:00 client meeting.

No worries, we’ve got you covered.

Robotics Take the Copier Channel Floor, Shaping a New Path Forward

The last time a service call turned a profit, someone still had a fax machine in the corner. These days, it’s toner deliveries, firmware updates, and a quiet bet on robots that move more than just paper.

By Robert G. Jordan

Writer, NorthStar Intelligence
Observing tech, work, and what comes after

Greg Walters, Art Post, and Kevin Neal aren't shy about predicting change. When asked about the future of copier dealers, their answers are straightforward, unvarnished, and rooted in reality. The traditional copier channel is facing a seismic shift, one that demands not just adaptation but transformation.

The Paper's Almost Gone. Now What?

 Executive Brief for Leaders in the Copier and Office Tech Channel

By the time you read this, the ship has already turned. Shipments are down. Devices sit idle. Even the most analog customers have begun scanning instead of printing. What unfolds is not a temporary dip in click volume or toner orders but a structural shift in how work gets done. Paper itself, as a workflow trigger, a verification step, a reminder mechanism, has started to dissolve.

Get our detailed report, here.

Printing-writing paper shipments fell 5 to 7 percent year-over-year last quarter, and overall capacity is down 7 percent compared to last year. Uncoated Free Sheet grades have seen the steepest drops. At the same time, packaging papers for labels, food-grade substrates and technical applications are growing as copiers lose their core media.

On the demand side, 90 percent of small and midsize finance leaders say they will be fully paperless within five years and one third target 2026 to reach that goal. Yet most admit they lack real-time visibility into cash flow. Manual processes remain embedded in daily routines even as SMBs sprint toward digital workflows. That disconnect is your opening.

Most office technology dealers still sell like it is 2013. Subscription this. Bundle that. Cloud connectors and app libraries. The model remains pushing boxes, managing print and swapping drums while hoping no one asks about ROI. That era is over.

They're Making Less: Near-1 million-ton Drop in Office Paper Capacity in 2024

Reinventing the U.S. Printing-Writing Paper Market

​​Walk into any corporate print room today and you’ll find paper sitting untouched. The copiers hum, but not for printing. They scan, they fax, they feed documents into cloud platforms.

Paper shipments are slipping by 5 to 7 percent each year. Meanwhile, packaging grades grow at 5 percent and digital billing cuts back-office print by nearly 30 percent . Dealers used to compete on toner prices. Now they compete on software integrations, AI analytics and sustainability guarantees.

This shift isn’t theory. It’s happening now. The ten steps in our report aren’t recommendations, they are the playbook for surviving and thriving when paper use becomes a relic.

Key Findings

90% of CFOs Just Declared War on Paper. Are You Still Selling It?

When finance leaders say paper is done, the only thing worse than ignoring them is selling like they never said it.

by Celeste Dame 🚀🧠

You’ve heard “paperless” before. Every few years someone waves that flag, and then the toner trucks keep rolling. But this time’s different. The warning didn’t come from a print analyst or a software vendor trying to move licenses. 

It came from CFO.com. 

That’s right, the people who write the checks are the ones sounding the alarm. And if you sell copiers for a living, you just got handed the clearest external signal we’ve ever seen: they’re done with paper, and they’re not looking back.