Lee Pietrowski has made a difference at Imagetec L.P. by selling 75-100 production units a year.
Name: Lee Pietrowski
Title: VP Sales, K-12
Company: Imagetec, L.P., McHenry, IL
Years in industry: 30
New business revenue: $342,460
Gross revenue: $3,057,000
Units placed: 170 copiers and 107 printers/other = 277
What they’re saying about Lee: “Lee sells between 75 and 100 production print units a year and has since 2000,” reports Rich Cucco, managing partner at Imagetec L.P. “He has been extremely successful because of his dedication to ensuring each client gets the return on investment that was outlined in his proposal. He has amazing long-term relationships with hundreds of school Superintendents throughout the Chicagoland area. Lee is a true professional and has a great work ethic, ethical sales focus and is an expert in high speed document management. I have been in the industry 35 years and have worked with and been associated with hundreds of sales professionals; Lee is the best and has sustained this level of success for decades.”
After nearly three decades selling office technology, Lee Pietrowski, VP of sales for K-12 at Imagetec L.P. in McHenry, IL, still gets up every morning and sets off to do what he does so well. Why not, it’s a business that’s been good to him.
“It doesn’t matter if the economy is good or bad, if you sell correctly and have a good work ethic, you’ll always put food on your table,” says Pietrowski. “This career has been very good for me. My family never went hungry. There are always opportunities and people are going to need copiers whether the economy is down or up.”
Pietrowski has been smack dab in the middle of a number of transitions in this industry during his career, including the all-important analog to digital transition of the nineties, which he says wasn’t always as smooth as everyone would have liked.
“When it went from analog to digital and everything started connecting it was a gray area for the marketplace,” recalls Pietrowski. “There were many challenges in schools and companies that had multiple printing platforms whereas the system integration was difficult. It was a learning process for the manufacturers and copier dealers to move into that and it was a hit or miss thing [initially], but they kept revamping.”
Still, he found it an exciting time to be selling this new technology. “It was an exciting time when that transformation happened. You were able to have a talk track with clients as opposed to ‘here’s a copier, here’s what mine does, mine has this, theirs has this.’”
Although his focus is primarily on the K-12 market, Pietrowski also has a fair amount of corporate clients. That’s been more by design opposed to accident. He belongs to several organizations that are focused on education and attends conferences where he networks with other people from other companies who sometimes become prospects, and then customers. “You start talking to people and they say ‘I need to start talking to you’ and that’s helped me branch out into the private sector,” reports Pietrowski.
Prior to sales, he spent seven years managing the in-plant print shop for Hammond Organ Corp. That print shop background helped his career in copier sales. “Knowing the quality, the jobs done, how they were produced, you could talk the language with printers, that’s why I basically started getting involved in it,” notes Pietrowski. “Then I redirected myself into education. I had an educational client call me one time and when I found out what they do, how they operate, it took off from there.”
However, selling did not come naturally to Pietrowski when he first started and he was fired from his first copier sales job after 90 days. “I had never been fired in my life and I’d been working since I was a kid. I thought this was the most embarrassing thing in the world. I told the two owners of the company, ‘I’ve never been fired, give me 30 days, I’ll work straight commission and I can guarantee you I’ll get the job done.’”
In 30 days he had more sales then anyone in the history of the company in a one-month time period.
The difference was taking a more direct approach to closing. “One of the problems with salespeople is sometimes they don’t know how to close a deal or ask for it,” opines Pietrowski. “When your back is against the wall and you have pride, you’re not afraid to do that.”
That’s the origin of how he became a go getter. “It was just saying, ‘here’s a great deal for you let’s close it up now.’ It was as if a light bulb had clicked on. After I did the first two like that I got it and said this is the way it has to be done. Don’t wait for the customer to act, don’t take ‘let me think about it,’ it was just a straight ‘let’s get it done now and this way it’s off your plate.’”
Even though he’s been in the industry a long time, Pietrowski continues to learn new things every day.
“The biggest mistake sales people make is they worry about the competition too much. If you stay focused on the message you’re trying to relate to the client and you don’t lie and squirm as most of us never do and be totally honest with the client up front it makes the job much easier because you’re more focused on what your company does for you and what you’re going to do for the client. People are not necessarily looking at what’s right for the client or the right fit.”
Like many of his peers in the industry, he relaxes by playing golf and is good enough to have played in a few Pro-Am tournaments. “It’s a fun sport because you’re really only playing against yourself and once you get on the golf course it’s peaceful and you can think about a whole slew of things where you don’t get aggravated,” explains Pietrowski.
When not playing golf or working he’s into car racing. While we were talking he was preparing for a Memorial Day weekend trip to the Indy 500. Beyond that he contributes his time to the various schools and school associations he sells to. He’s also enjoys mentoring young reps in the company and sharing his knowledge on sales, sales strategy, solutions strategy and effective relationship selling with the entire team.
That’s another reason that Imagetec’s owner Rich Cucco says, “Lee is truly one of the best in our industry.”
