Pac Man, Space Invaders, and Donkey Kong were cool. Everyone was wearing RayBans, Nike sneakers and Members Only jackets.
In 1982 I sold my first copier. I started in the industry as a technician in late 1981. I was fantastic at taking developer units apart to perform PM’s. My only problem was I could never put them back together so they would work right. Thus my career in selling copiers started.
Looking back I believe the first copier I ever sold was a Minolta 310–moving platen, 1-99 copies, one paper tray (letter & legal) and an exit tray. I can also remember selling a few used Minolta 101’s early on (liquid plain paper). What pieces of junk those were!
A typical day was to get into the office early; wait, I forgot one of the pre-requisites of selling copiers, you had to own a station wagon or a hatchback in order to deliver and demo the copiers. Yep, I was the delivery guy, the pickup guy, the loaner guy, and brought copiers out for demonstrations.
I worked at a small Minolta dealership in central New Jersey. I arrived by 8 a.m. By 9:30 a.m. I would start calling potential clients to schedule copier demonstrations. Typically you would call for appointments in the morning and try to do the demo in the afternoon. The pitch was simple and went something like this, “Hi, my name is Art with Copy Machine Specialists, the reason for my call is to see if you have the need for a plain-paper copier. Would you be the right person to speak to about that?”
Plain-paper copiers were hot and it didn’t take too many phone calls to arrange a demonstration. Believe it or not we worked from stacks upon stacks of Yellow Pages books.
We always had our fair share of “I’m not interested” and hang ups when telemarketing. Being young and foolish, I called those people back and told them how polite they were and then hung up on them. In an average week we could usually schedule 10 appointments for demonstrations. Out of those 10 I may have sold one or two copiers—not great, however, for a young guy, it paid the bills.
There were days when you were sick and tired of making phone calls, and at any time you could pack a demo machine in the car and then knock on doors all day long. That was probably the best part of the job; you never knew what you were going to walk into.
There were no e-mails to answer, no advanced training; heck we had two or three models and all they did was make copies. What a wonderful life! I must admit the thrill of knocking on a client’s door, speaking to the right person, and then being able to give a demonstration all in the same day was nirvana. The only thing that could top that was to bring back a check and leave the copier at their office. Yes, we sold many copiers that way.
I can also remember some funky brands of copiers such as Apeco, Royfax, Yorktown, Rex Rotary (this one hung on a wall), 3M VQC’s , SCM, and of course Xerox. The Japanese were just starting to make inroads in the U.S. copier market. I can remember a customer telling me once that he was looking at a Ricoh. Our first response to the client was “What’s a Ricoh?” My how times have changed.
Over the years I have been kicked out of offices, had a customer drop off a machine and smash it on the ground at my office (bet you the leasing company liked that), had the hatchback open on the car while I was driving (the copier and the gurney went onto the highway and then into a patch of sticker bushes), dropped a machine and cart in downtown Princeton (not a good day), and then walked in on a lady who was nude sunbathing in her back yard (I had the wrong address for the demo).
Back then we had time to sell. Nowadays, our time is spent answering e-mails, trying to keep up on 30 different models of copiers, 10 models of laser printers, scanners, third-party solutions software, manufacturers’ solution software, forecast sheets, delivery forms, Return Goods Forms, co-coordinating deliveries, installations, training (I used to be able to train in 15 minutes, now it’s more like an hour or longer) helping customers with print, scan and fax issues. Let’s not forget about the five calls a week asking how can I do this with my machine or why won’t it do this.
Technology stinks bring back the eighties!
Good selling!
