What Makes a Great Management Print Services Customer? The Same Things that Make Any Customer a Great One: You

I know this will be a tough concept for some sales people, because it has been driven into us that the only way to be successful is to be subservient and scared.

Subservient to the unreasonable whims of shallow and weak prospects and scared of rejection.

Fearful of simpleton sales Managers, forecasts, cold calls and missing unproductive sales meetings.

Let not your heart be troubled.

Over the past months, hell the past year, I have told one prospect to 'pound sand', rekindled old relationships and forged great partnerships - partnerships that will follow me- partnerships with Great MPS Clients.

Thinking about this gave me pause, what makes a great MPS customer?

A client who recommends you to others over the weekend. One who will give you the names of his friends and call them for you. Someone you can have your prospects call - anytime. A person you mention in every cold call, every elevator pitch, and every presentation.

How does one find these clients?

One word kid, one word: Qualify.

Two important aspects of Qualification:

1. Qualification is a continuous Process not a Stage.
2. Not all prospects qualify.

Simply put, like most good finds in life, we all dig through a lot of crap before we uncover the diamond. You've got to go through lousy prospects before you find a good partner.

Your prospect must continually Qualify for your time and attention at each meeting, every discussion - does your prospect Qualify to move to the next step, today?

And of course, not everybody who has a pulse or can fog a mirror is a prospect.

One of the skills to be developed is recognizing a good match. More importantly, paramount even, is your confidence and fearless ability to say to yourself, your manager and the prospect,

"...this isn't going to work, we do not have a match..."

Ok, it's easy to say this if, for instance, the prospect has a real need that you can not satisfy - like when you are selling 75ppm units and the prospect really needs a new fleet of vans.

But what if you see a company that has 2 laser printers for every employee, a fax machine in every other cubicle, $10,000 worth of toner stuffed into multiple supply rooms, and 12 copiers all at lease termination?

Sounds good, doesn't it? Yes, it does.

But, let's say after a brief discussion you find:

The prospect is just too dense to get his head around "value add"?

The C-levels will have nothing to do with you and are all members of the family.

Your primary contact is a Purchaser who is taking on the project because "I.T. is too busy".

He hands you another vendor's analysis, with costs, proposed configs and pricing. And he proudly displays his huge spreadsheet filled with specifications, models and 32 other vendors' pricing.

His desktop is an IBM PS/2 Model 60.

He has been investigating vendors for the last 18 months and attended a dozen demo's.

He states that "cheaper is always better" and wonders aloud why he should ever be required to sign a service agreement.

Finally, the prospect's business model is all about providing his products for the cheapest price.

I know right now, somebody is thinking, "All right. Let the selling begin!"

Ahead of you are months of spinning wheels, false closes and dead ends. When you place this prospect on any type of forecast or enter it into your CRM - to management, it becomes real.

Soon to become one of those eternally forecasted opportunities - you know the one. The one that everybody else in the room but you knows how to close. The one your manager, the owner, or VP wants to see face to face.

"What can I do to help you close this one by the end of the month?"

- I think I just threw up a little, in mouth, just now.

So, I guess it's up to you. Invest hours, months, of your life in this well qualified opportunity...

Or

...let your rookie competitors eat it up. Let your competitor be the one to explain the long cycle to HIS manager, owner or VP. Let that poor schlep deal with all the head-aches.

Pray he gets the deal.

Imagine his service department taking care of this high-touch, low-value customer - while you pursue relationships with margin. Visualize this poor sales guy delivering toner on bended knee, because the customer didn't order any and thinks all copier people carry toner with them everywhere.

See Gumby, the rubber copier guy bend over backwards and jump through flaming hoops.

It comes down to this: do you have the guts, not only to walk away, but to journey beyond the cheap baubles in search of real diamonds? Qualification. It is not only about continuously qualifying the prospect, it's about you Qualifying for better and uncovering Great clients.

You won't find much treasure head down, shaking with fear.

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Just Doing His Job When Destiny Knocked...

American Hero's are everywhere.

"I happened to have the harness on...part of a team..." - that's what he said in an interview after the rescue, when asked if he volunteered!

"I happened to have the harness on..." -Jason Oglesbee, construction dude, Des Moines.




Is that great or what?

It's an unscripted, Hollywood moment.

A guy who saved another person's life, had his chance at the "15 Minutes", who walked away and WENT BACK TO WORK.

Everyone is going to be beating down his door; from TMZ to Fox News and I bet right now there is someone in "0"'s administration trying to angle this guy onto a teleprompter - I doubt he even has TWITTER!

Out of the Box Thinking - It's No Big Deal

We on the sidelines marvel at this rescue.

The display of heroism. And yet, to the hero it was no big deal. All in a days work. They had a crane, he was already in the harness, seemed only natural, rescue a lady then go back to doing whatever it was he was doing. Gee, maybe someone will buy him a brew after work?

Also, take a look at the picture.

No hardhat - OSHA violation.

No safety chair - OSHA violation.

No seat belt, he used a piece of rope - OSHA violation.

Possible contamination from construction site to river water as his boots no doubt dipped into the river - EPA violation.

Performed "out of job description" activity - union violations.


I Wonder If His Company has Comprehensive Managed Print Services Engagement -

Synnex Beats Q2 Estimates, Looks Ahead To UC, Health-Care Expansion

From an article at ChannelWeb:

"...On the managed print services front, Murai said Synnex had seen continued success with PrintSolv, its managed print services program for VARs, which he said is gaining support even from printer vendors such as Hewlett-Packard, Lexmark and Xerox that have managed print services programs of their own.

"HP has really embraced what we're doing, and we're working very cooperatively with both Xerox and Lexmark, which although they still have their own programs, understand and recognize what we have is gaining exposure and traction," Murai said.

"What it allows us to do is allow our reseller partners to gain much more visibility into the print environment, introduce new products, and consolidate. When we make a bet we go with both feet in.

The solution we have is what sets us apart. We support all manufacturers' print devices..."


See the complete article here.

Managed Print Services Appointment - Another Ticked Off Konica/Minolta Client:Leasing and "Integrity"

It's sounding like a broken record, she wasn't upset with the service, the response time, or even the performance of her eight Konica Minolta copiers.

I mean, the organization generates 179,000 images a month, why wouldn't they have FOUR, FULL BLOWN 1050'S? Right?

And of course, 36 months into this 60 month, why WOULDN'T the K/M rep come in to upgrade to "bigger, better, faster..." for less?

What?

Do you think this is wrong?

It's a little gift from Mother Nature.

I had a first appointment with a prospective MPS Engagement the other day.

Our primary contact was kind enough to send her current spending and three active proposals - all on one spreadsheet. The more perceptive of you will no doubt see the red flags associated with a prospect dumping this data prior to a first appointment.

It ended up better than I had expected. Although, I do not believe we will sell them anything more than a few small machines over the next 18 months.

Try explaining an 18-month cycle to your sales manager.

The Basic Problems - "This is like Deja Vu all over again."

There are nearly 100 employees in this organization and I expected her to say that they owned 90 plus desktop printers - instead, they have 9. So, that's eight copiers and nine "laser" based desktop units for around 100 users. Very good.

Also, as is my style, I challenged her on some of her internal findings which she quickly and assertively defended - not out of insecurity but because she knew them to be true. It was obvious that the copier dealers hadn't questioned her findings - they ignored them altogether.

Ok, that's TWO in the "plus" column, her stock was rising.

And then the clincher - the lease has two years remaining, these "copier guys are...ripping me off...and I don't know what to do about it". She wants to get out of her lease(impossible), she wants to combine the service volume on all the machines into one invoice(pool volume) and she believes that she does not need so many 1050's(Duh).

And to add insult to injury, she shopped out their existing equipment configurations as if she was engaging today, discovering she is paying double what they "should be paying"(times were different 3 years ago when the lease was initiated)

By now, everyone could see the huge chip on her shoulder, even her.

To make things more interesting, I asked her how it went when she presented all this to Konica/Minolta. Yeah, I know, it's like taking a stick and poking her with it - it's fun and sent her off.

An almost audible 'Click' goes off in my mind. Three check marks in the good column. I decided I could work with her.

So we sold nothing.

For the next 45 minutes, we discussed the Konica Minolta lease. Because she didn't have her copy handy, I pulled out my copy.(Yes, I have copies of almost everyone's lease) and we reviewed it together.

We outline the termination process - "...you mean to tell me when the lease termination date is reached, the lease doesn't really end?", she said, "My rep never told me this. As a matter of fact, when I was asking her and her boss questions about being oversold and their unwillingness to work with me, he said I had just questioned his integrity! Which is improbable, I doubt he has any to question." 

Ouch.

I was considering poking her again with that same stick but decided against it. A mans got to know his limitations.

When we landed on the subject of pooled volume, her attention piqued. You see, she has a minimum on the 1050s that is never reached and minimums on each of the smaller(750's)that they are always over. So if K/M were to put the entire fleet under one min and a single agreement, there would only be one invoice, no overages, and a slightly happier client.

My prospect could only hope, but hope is not a plan, is it?

We instructed her on what to negotiate for, who to negotiate with over what. (Service Manager for service, Sales director for lease) and to always line out whatever you do not like. Again, this point was illustrated with copies of some service agreements, showing bright, red lines through blocks of text.

This is not the first time I have had to do this - in this month alone, I have tutored 3 separate clients with three different copier manufactures in the Dark Art of lease and S.A. negotiation.

The Take-Aways -

This is a classic example of the kind of sales activity that will drive copier dealers bananas, make sales managers question your talent, and ultimately gain you LIFE LONG clients.

We didn't engage around lease payments, volume levels, CPC, CPI, or SLA's. Our discussion, and make no mistake, this was a discussion, revolved around solving problems - the benefits of one simple invoice, the reason to move from capital expenditures to operational, customer service beyond the one hour response time, and especially how a lease should be a lease, not a customer retention device.

And especially. When a copier Vendor's(or anyone's) only move is to argue his "integrity" - put down the pen, the point at him, and laugh in his face.
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Side Note:

It seems lately that I have slammed copier salespeople. I know plenty of really good copier guys/ladies; people who sell openly and upfront, who don't present anything more than what they are. They are professional and committed to helping their customers.

I do not dislike copier people, I like them. 

This is why it is important to point out the bad apples and terrible practices - they make my job so much more difficult.

The bad ones erode the already small amount of trust in the world today- we must confront them, when they are on the other side of an RFP or on the other side of a cubicle wall - fight them.

Check out these:

Again With The "Leasing"! Enough!

"Beware of DLL, a business nightmare..."

Bad Experiences with Leasing - Toshiba, IKON, Canon, Saxon

LeasingCopiers/Output Devices - UnMasked, Revealed, Cracked Open - EXPOSED

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Immelt Opposed to Separation from GE Capital

Jun 23, 2009

General Electric opposes any regulation that would force it to split off from GE Capital, its finance business, CEO Jeffery Immelt said in a memo to employees according to Reuters.


Some investors and analysts said the Obama administration’s proposed restructuring of the nation’s financial regulatory system could force GE to sell or exit its GE Capital unit, which has businesses ranging from leasing commercial aircraft to investing in real estate.

“One proposal in particular, pertaining to the separation of banking and commerce, has led to some media speculation that, if enacted, could require the separation of GE and GE Capital,” Immelt said in the memo.

“It is very early in the process, and Congress will now spend months reviewing and drafting legislation. We are certainly opposed to it, since this issue had nothing to do with the financial crisis,” he wrote, according to Reuters. “GE is and will remain committed to GE Capital and we like our strategy.”

The company is already trying to scale back its GE Capital unit, which accounted for half of the conglomerate’s profit in 2007. Immelt has said he plans to downsize the unit so GE would rely on it for just 30 percent of earnings.
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DOTC - Why is this important?

GE Capital finances a huge percentage of office equipment leases - you probably have many customers working with them already.

This could be big for those of us who offer leasing.

Farah and MJ

She adorned hundreds of thousands of bedroom walls...made the case for straight, white teeth.

Goodbye.


And also, Michael Jackson too...

Get Your Head Out the Managed Print Services Clouds: Let's Sing Together, "Why Can't You Fix My Printer?"

"...made a call to the printer repair shop, said we had a guy out on the road...pulled up in an old rusty van..."

Well, I guess this means Managed Print Services has really hit mainstream - somebody wrote a song about it.

Nathan Dube wrote and performed this little ditty - and it ain't too shabby - it's rather good.


I like the snappy beat, and appreciate the fact that the song is not "branded".

Check out the post here.

To listen to the song, go here


Enjoy.