Today was awesome day, as long as you’re a Met fan! First win of the season and just maybe, just maybe we won’t stink this year.
Winning is an awesome thing, whether it’s winning at sport’s, winning with games or winning the sale. Winning breeds confidence, winning is addictive, once you’ve won a few, you just want to keep on winning.
I learned a long time ago that you can’t sell everyone, but you can stack the deck in your favor. Stacking the deck can mean that you’ve pinpointed the DM’s pain, you’ve learned to read upside down really, really well, and or your deealership has some awesome marketing plans that can help you win additional net new business or keep existing business. The reason I mention “keep existing business” is because most have “net new business” incentives, which means while I’m stealing your customer you’re stealing my customer. How the heck does that make sense?
So, dig this, you go the pharmacy to get a prescription and you can get that prescription in generic or the brand name. The generic is just as good as the brand and the generic is way less than the brand name prescription. The key is that you have the choice to choose which is best for you financially.
Why, why can’t we offer our customers two choices for maintenance and supply agreements? One where we are offering the brand name supplies (toner) and the other offering generic supplies? Give our customers a choice, right? Years ago, you wouldn’t even think of this because most all generic toners were so-so at best. Generic had developed a bad rap in our business. Yeah, we would laugh at the customers who bought generic and really messed up their systems.
However, everything changes, even generic toner. While at the BTA show, I had the chance to speak with Chris Polek of Polek & Polek. He told me how overwhelmed he is with the sales of his Ricoh generic toner for the Ricoh color 03 series. He’s so happy with the quality and sales results that he started crunching some numbers about how much additional profit can be realized from just changing a few systems to generic toner.
Think about it this way, if you take just 10 color systems, and they only use three full sets of toner per year, during the term of the lease (60 months) you could realize an additional profit of more than $20K. I’ve heard the objections; we can’t change because of our supply quota. But, I’d bet that you could get a good trip for a lot less than $20K right? Take a look at this chart, click here.
My point, why are we not offering more choices to our customers? Why can’t we offer a 10 percent discount for a generic contract? Why can’t we have more plans in place that help us keep existing accounts? If we’re not looking out for our accounts, then someone else will be looking for them.
Good selling!
