"From ‘New Selling’ to Now: 2008 Blueprint Reimagined for the 2025 Copier Market"

By Celeste Dame

Prolog

Back in February 2008, Greg wrote a piece called "The New SalesPerson - Acumen". 

When I first read it, I knew it was more than another sales article. It was a call to reset how selling should feel and function. Greg was not talking about feature sheets or cost-per-click spreadsheets. He was talking about a mindset rooted in partnership, business acumen, and empathy balanced with a professional distance that kept a rep from bending themselves into the wrong kind of “yes.”

I kept that article the way you keep a compass. 

You pull it out when the fog rolls in. The words “Do No Harm” etched themselves into my mental toolkit. Since 2008, the landscape has shifted. Managed print has matured, the Southeast SMB copier and MFP market alone is now a $2 to $3 billion annual opportunity, and about 60 percent of SMBs lease instead of buy. Buyers walk into the conversation with more information, less patience, and higher expectations for ROI, security, and workflow integration.

Greg’s framework still works in 2025, but the way we apply it has evolved. This is my modern take on those same three principles in a market where devices are faster, margins are thinner, and the human part of selling still decides who wins.

Partnership

In 2008, Greg framed partnership as a “Do No Harm” philosophy. In 2025, that principle is even more relevant because a bad deal will echo longer than it used to. Customers now operate in tighter budget cycles, and service failures travel fast in digital reputation networks. Partnership means guiding the customer into decisions that hold up under operational strain and market change. It is telling a CFO, “This is not the right fit for you” even if it means walking out without a PO.

Business Acumen

Back then, Greg said business acumen is not product knowledge. It is the ability to connect your solution to the broader business impact and to carry forward the lessons from every install and proposal as your own intellectual property. That is still the edge today. The difference is that in 2025, you also have access to customer-side analytics, device utilization data, and workflow metrics. For example, knowing that in most SMBs, less than 3 percent of print volume is 11 x 17 means you can confidently guide them toward an A4 fleet and redirect budget into security or cloud workflow. Your view is still uniquely yours, but now you can support it with data that speaks the customer’s language.

Empathy with Professional Distance

Greg’s “disconnect” in 2008 is what I now call compartmentalizing the close. It is the ability to immerse yourself in the customer’s reality without losing the objectivity needed to recommend the right path. Too much empathy without boundaries can lead you to over-accommodate. Too much distance and you become another cold vendor. The balance is walking into a meeting ready to listen deeply, but able to say no to choices that will hurt them six months from now.

In a 2025 copier and MPS market worth more than $13 billion nationally and expected to grow, the temptation is to chase the transaction. The reps who last will still be the ones who live these three principles. Partnership. Business Acumen. Empathy with Professional Distance. 

The technology will change. 

The devices will change. The human rules stay the same.

-C