I work with a lot of great companies to help them improve their sales results. At one point in time I think many of these companies hired me as their consultant because I ran a business unit with 1,100 sales professionals and they thought I might have learned a thing or two in Read More

In the last month’s article, I spoke about the opportunities in the A4 space and how many dealers have thrown in the towel on MPS. In this article, I will address the common MPS mistakes and how to avoid them. The first mistake companies make when selling MPS is selling a blanket Read More

I was at the Lexmark dealer meeting in Fort Lauderdale in May and saw a great presentation from David Ramos of InfoTrends. In his presentation, Ramos highlighted historical and forecasted revenue for equipment, supplies and service (which are decreasing), unit placements for A4 Read More

People despise being micro managed yet many in the imaging industry seem to excel at this approach.  Why this obvious dichotomy when most managers are fairly intelligent people?  My belief is poor training, lack of analysis, and a desire to change things quickly.  As a person who Read More

“If we had more opportunities at bat we’d sell more” is a comment I commonly hear from dealer principals. It is true that all else being equal if you had more appointments you would generate more revenue, so the question to be asked is “Why don’t we have more appointments?”  Some Read More

The front line sales manager is one of the most important yet undeveloped positions in a company.  Many of these individuals are promoted out of a sales role where they excelled. The belief is that since they were successful sales professionals they can turn others into Read More

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.  In this article I’m going to focus on sales processes. Read More

I was driving to Atlantic City last Friday with a buddy that owns a technology company and he asked me that question.  This guy is no dummy: Wharton MBA, has owned his technology company for 25+ years, so he has had to reinvent himself numerous times, owns 50+ rental houses and Read More

Last Friday GE announced that they were selling most of GE Capital.  As a GE shareholder (I had one of those well timed “feelings,” combined with some research reports that made the stock look promising and I bought more GE shares last Monday to add to those that I already owned) Read More

Last week, in part one of this article, I reviewed for you the areas that would concern me with a sales manager: If they lacked tenure on their team that matches the efforts to add sales professionals If the productivity per sales professional is less than $550,000 If the team Read More

If your initial thought is that you hope he is in the field then watch your caller ID for “It’s the 80’s.”  I agree managers need to spend time with their sales professionals in the field, and I’ll get to that, but “being in the field” is not a proxy for being a good manager.  Read More

There are two distinct approaches to MPS and they don’t mix well.  In accounts with fewer than 30 total devices, copier and print centric devices, selling an outsourced version of MPS is detrimental.  An outsourced MPS program involves a company putting the laser printers under a Read More

First, there is no such thing as an e-mail “template.”  If you send a template it may as well start with a delete button. Every e-mail needs to be customized to the person/company.  Do a few minutes—that’s less than five—of research to determine the content of the e-mail. After Read More

There seems to be a movement with “copier dealers” to prefunding a year’s worth of aftermarket in lease agreements. In this scenario the leasing company pays you 12 months of service and/or supplies that are bundled into a lease and discounts this revenue by 6 percent.  I have Read More

I cringe every time a sales professional asks me that question.  I’d be perfectly fine if their question was directed at the structure of the email that they compose but they are asking me for a “plug and play” email: No such email exists.  I frequently ask the sales professional Read More