In his younger years, Erik Crane had two great loves in his life: his wife Heidi and coaching basketball. That kind of information will invariably cause someone—a friend or a family member perhaps—to pose the challenge “What if you had to choose one or the other? Which would it be?” It’s a hollow hypothetical question that is almost never put to the test. Well, almost never.
Crane had been working for the Kansas State men’s basketball program, and he’d recently married Heidi. But in order for him to take the next step up in the coaching ranks, it required moving on to a different school, likely in another part of the country. But Crane heard the request that’s been made by fathers-in-law since time immemorial: Please don’t take our daughter far away.
So while it wasn’t really a choice between two loves, he didn’t want to take Heidi away from her family. Vern Starks, her father, made Crane an offer: open a copier store in Springfield, Missouri, for him that would complement another the Starks owned in Joplin. Crane reasoned he could go back to coaching in a year if the business didn’t stick, so he gave it a shot. In the process, Crane added a third love: sales.
“I loved the competition aspect of it,” said Crane, a 2025 ENX Magazine Difference Maker. “It was a different industry in the early to mid-1990s. It was cutthroat; competitors would try to beat you by undercutting you by $5. In my mind, every deal was a knock-down, drag-out fight. If you beat me once, that’s fine. I’ll just kick your [butt] the next 10 times. I had a competitor diving in our dumpster behind my building, trying to find old proposals. That kind of competition fit my A-plus, hard-charging personality.”
The Cranes would eventually buy the business, Copy Products Inc. (now CPI Technologies) from Vern and Toni Starks. While he still loves the gamesmanship of business competition—where hating to lose was a greater driving force than loving to win—Crane is more Fran Dunphy chill than Bobby Knight rabid these days. He now reaps the satisfaction of coaching CPI team members, and watching them grow professionally. That also means he occasionally sees great sales reps and techs get recruited by the manufacturers, but that validates the dealer’s employee development.
It’s the cost of doing business, and Crane loves seeing the CPI teammates strive for their full potential, which has a salutary impact on the dealership’s ability to flourish. Delegating responsibilities is a virtue he’s come to appreciate, as is the notion that employees need the opportunity to fail if they’re truly going to succeed.
That’s not to say the competitive fires have dwindled. That first sale still resonates with Crane—he can remember the account and the rep who bought from him, the type of machine that was sold. He’s sold so much more since then, but the first win is forever etched in his mind.
Over time, Crane has become fearless when it comes to taking on the unknown, trying something new. “I’m willing to go out on a limb, because that’s where the fruit is,” he observed. “I think if you are averse to change, that makes it tough to grow. I try to let my work speak for itself. I trust in my people and give them the tools they need to do their job.”
The Starks certainly played a role in his development. One thing that stuck with Crane is Vern’s assertion that there should be reason behind what they do as a company.
“If it’s not a revenue-producing opportunity, why are we doing it?” he said. “The things we’re doing should be appropriate. We need to make good deals, and not just take every opportunity that comes to us.”
CPI is coming off a successful 2024 driven by substantial, profitable growth in the managed IT business. Plus, the Cranes made their final payment on the company, which was another reason to celebrate. As 2025 drives forward, Crane hopes to add market share in some of the dealer’s more rural territories, which will entail growing the sales department. Streamlining processes will be important moving forward as CPI seeks to eliminate any bottlenecks.
Gaining wallet share will go a long way toward elevating Crane’s, and CPI’s, game. “We can cultivate more business within our client base. They already trust us, so we need to get more of their dollars. If it’s not with us, they’ll go somewhere else.”
The Cranes have been married 33 years and have two children—Emily, an attorney in Kansas City, and Ethan, who works in the county administrative department in Duluth, Minnesota. Emily gave her father a grandson, with a granddaughter on the way. The Cranes love to travel and visit Cabo San Lucas at least once a year. Hunting, fishing and golf are some of Erik’s favorite pastimes.
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