Charles Lamb

I was rushing around this week trying to get a few more deals closed. It’s the last week of the month and we all know what that means. I have a fair amount of leases throughout the year, which keeps me at quota. My Sales Manager pushes us every week and although he’s a friend, he Read More

Look at any day’s worth of emails or cruise through any group in LinkedIn and you’ll find a hundred different opinions on cold calling. “Cold calls are dead!” “Five new ways not to make cold calls!” “Cold calling best practices!” For over 30 years in most marketplaces, sales reps Read More

Trying to predict the future of technology and how long your solutions will be valuable is impossible. Still, as the owner of a company that sells and installs technology you must have a strong vision and understanding about where technology is headed. Since you can’t predict it, Read More

“In our company the sales guys have all the fun and make the big money,” someone said at a dealer onsite training event. After the training was over, I went in and asked the meaning of his comment and he said again, “They [the sales guys] have all the fun and make a lot of money Read More

There are many ways to analyze a business and equally as many ways to break down the details around it. Below are the ten most popular topics discussed with dealers over the last few years. Finding Your Way To The Future Building “Differentiation” Selling Deliverables Clients Read More

There are many ways to analyze a business and equally as many ways to break down the details around it. Recently, I asked my team to look back over the last few years to see if we could identify a pattern or somehow gather the ten most popular topics discussed with dealers. Read More

I’ve written a lot about the ups and downs of sales and marketing execution. I don’t know that I’ve ever encountered a perfect organization but there are certainly companies that execute very well. Naturally, there are those that don’t. When a dealer engages a consultant, it Read More

With the amount of hype surrounding Managed Services one might think that it’s the perfect panacea for all the ills plaguing the document imaging industry. If you’re a dealer, you’d be a fool to ignore this trend. At least that seems to be the prevailing sentiment throughout the Read More

Everybody makes mistakes and the dealer community has made its share as they struggle to make a go of it in the Managed Services business. This month in the print version of ENX magazine the main feature is “Managed Services Made Easy.” The individuals we interviewed for that Read More

The main feature in the July issue of ENX is “Managed Services Made Easy.” That piece examines how to get started in Managed Services and whether or not buying an IT company is the easy answer. I also asked the experts I interviewed for that story to identify the biggest fears Read More

Across our industry there is often an underlying understanding with dealer principals that the salary they provide to attract sales talent is only bait used to catch the next sales rep. It’s an attraction and comes without clear expectations or authority to define any of the Read More

  Sales and marketing are often considered to be the same thing, but nothing could be farther from the truth. In our industry, or any industry for that matter, you often see positions offered for a VP of Sales & Marketing. While I do believe there are talented and Read More

When I talk about compensation and commissions that drive success, many people assume that I mean, pay out more money, but I assure you, that is not the point.  I simply mean, put your money where your plan is!  When I look at today’s sales organizations and watch how the day to Read More

Like a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly, I’ve seen many copier dealers try to transform their company and find their way to the future.  The natural progression is to morph their business offerings to include deliverables that involve technology services. Although, I Read More

It’s not uncommon today to get into deep conversations about sales compensation. Typically, it’s a business owner looking to refocus and energize their sales team and to drive the best possible behavior and thus sales results.  Compensation is a serious topic for seriou Read More