What Customers Say About You...After you Leave the Room(Zoom)

Edited, 9/2018

For all the managed print services sales classes, books, seminars, webinars, and white papers I've seen, nobody talks about the "Golden Minutes".

Wouldn't it be interesting to hang around after a customer presentation and hear what your prospect says about you, your presentation, and your offer?

Think about it, you've planned, written, or created the perfect proposal and slide deck. After 45 minutes of flawless, formulaic presentation you've trialed for a signature, clarified, isolated, and answered objections, moving the opportunity down the sales funnel - you can practically smell the 'share of wallet'.

"I am telling you, from coast to coast to coast, you, the sales professional, and your prospects ARE NOT ALIGNED."

9-1-1 Seventeen Years Later

For years DOTC has paid tribute.

Go sell copiers.

Go sell managed IT.

Go sell water coolers, medical devices, or vitamins...sell something.  And remember many of those on the North and South towers were selling as well.

Copiers: Let Go of the Past

Copiers, printers, scanners, fax, print servers, cloud print, duplex, scan-once-print-many, color, analog to digital, laser, inkjet, managed print services, to managed services...our turbulent path has crossed many borders, hills, and valleys.

Lots of things have changed since Chester pulled together his seven steps and yet, much remains the same. The print world moves slowly.  Like a river cutting the Grand Canyon, a real, significant change occurs over decades(which seem like eons).

For the Change Agents, this is the apogee of frustration.  We saw the true meaning of managed print services and the future of print.  The signs were there before the HP split, before the debacle that was Xerox/Fuji.  

We predicted the need to shift from selling from boxes to solutions to business acumen, in 2007. We saw the "P" change to "p" in MpS.  The time was then.

Along the way, a few early adopters burned the ships.  Back then, what we saw as secular most experts called a fad.  I remember presenting the Internet of Things back in 2012.  Interesting and way ahead of the curve.

No longer frustration; we're morose. It is sad to look at the missed opportunities. Volumes are dropping so how can an OEM still release 13 or more new models?

Is it ignorance? No, everybody is printing less and has been for a decade.  It's not a secret.
Is it stupidity? No, back in the day, these folks were THE technology innovators.
Is it the continued propagation of a bygone belief that if you build it, they will buy? Yes.  More succinctly, it is the undying grip on the past, unrelenting fear of change, and stubborn faith that if "we can hang on, we'll flourish".

Although purchasing devices, customers are placing a reduced number - worse, if there is a copier on every floor, nobody is using it.  Volumes are down to around 2,000 images a month.

The consolidation continues, independent dealers coagulate and OEMs dissolve, as the niche works through its annihilation.

Options are getting scarce, but there are painful opportunities: Medical equipment, BI, Energy Management, and more.  We've just got to let go.

Fortunately, we see the end is near.

We can make plans, see friends, write letters and move to the next stage, confident and aware.

Advice for New Copier Sales Reps: What Have You Gotten Yourself Into?

The following content is intended for new copier representatives. But if you’ve been around the copier block a couple of times, participated in demo-ramas and are considered a seasoned selling professional, I implore you to read and comment. Not for my edification - you owe it to the industry to help fix the future and advise the next generation. So let them know what’s up, the good, the bad and the ugly.

So you’re new to selling. Welcome to the greatest show on Earth where all the clichés apply:

"Learning here is like drinking from a fire hydrant.”

“This is baptism by fire.”

“It’s sink or swim.”

“Remain calm, everything will be OK.”

Over the next few months, it will be my honor to regale you with legends of glory and doom; with stories of heroic tragedies and mundane existence; with tales for your enjoyment and possible tutelage.

My story is a simple one. I began selling technology in 1988 and tripped into “copiers” in 1999. I’ve worked with AFLAC, Cintas, Océ, Panasonic, Industrial Videos, IKON and multiple VARs, from Michigan to California to North Carolina to Wisconsin.

Let me be clear - I am NOT A SELLING EXPERT. There was a time when..

Read the rest, here

Ten Things All Great MpS Practices Have

1. MPS Specialists
2. Separate P/L
3. Outside MpS training
4. MpS specific software tools
5. Comp plan that includes:

• Hardware
• Monthly service revenue from:
• A3 & A4
• Managed(IT) Services
• Renewals
• Separate service team

6. Separate help desk
7. MpS vendors(vs. copier)
8. OEM neutral
9. Single Services contract for:

• Copiers & Printers(A3 & A4), Paper

10. IT services

BONUS: All Managed Services Network Assessments embed an MpS study; MpS is part of the Managed Services proposal

#managedprintservices #gregwalters #MPS

DOTC/AOTC: Annihilation of The Copier #copiers #managedprintservices

Death: the passing or destruction of something inanimate

The Death of The Copier isn't about the end of you - like looms and typewriters, - DOTC is a lens into the passing of an industry; growth and expansion, not a terminus.

The industry is NOT dying.  It is being annihilated.

Annihilation: the conversion of matter into energy, especially the mutual conversion of a particle and an antiparticle into electromagnetic radiation.

"...conversion of matter into energy..."

We're living in the organic process of evolution, that's all.

Notice we aren't "moving through an organic process..."  Because we're not moving, more specifically, Xerox, Ricoh, HP, Canon, Konica Minolta, Epson, Kyocera, and everyone else have been standing firm believing the new world will flow around them/Us.

The tide has been coming, the signs blatant for all to see:

• Why didn't Xerox start the move from hardware into services back in 2010? (or 1973)
• Canon has alternatives but hasn't made the move. 
• Ricoh seemed to be on the right path back in 2009 but took a left turn somewhere between here and MpS nirvana, which was the door to the managed services panacea.
• Lady Blue(HP), the most expensive dustpan in history,  will sweep the fragments and splinters, toss them into some 3D printer, spitting out picnic tables.

They all saw it coming, they all knew.  But why believe in the revival of paper?

It is the human tendency toward self-destruction.

Everybody appears to be self-destructive. Some people are very obviously self-destructive because they’re addicted to heroin or alcohol or they act in a psychotic way or whatever, and they offer their self-destruction to you. Other people are very comfortable in their own skin, and they’ve got a fantastic job and a fantastic life and everything seems to be bulletproof. They feel like they’ve sort of cracked something about life.

But then when you get to know them, you discover odd bits of self-destruction, which then become significant bits of self-destruction. It was the universality of it, that even the people who’d cracked it all had not cracked it all. And then I started trying to think – Where does it come from? Why is it that you have a really good marriage and you dismantle it? Why do you have a really good friendship and you dismantle it? Why do you have a really good job and you dismantle it? Whatever it happens to be. 

- Alex Garland

Transformation flows around the pillars of a bygone era. Some abdicate early while others define stopgap tactics as strategies - consolidating on higher ground.

What once was, the dogma of xerography and toner will never again be.  The age of paper is ending - consolidation, turmoil and dwindling sales reflect the shattering of the realm.

Here's the thing - the industry has mass, but no velocity.  Without movement, change will not be internally driven; true evolution will be affected from the outside - like an asteroid hitting the Earth.  The coming wave will dismantle everything, ejecting the bad, and re-configuring the good creating something completely alien. (to us now)

So, do you wait for the force to change you or walk in, confronting the past, present, and future?

Move-in.

• Take in all the generic training you can - stay away from hardware or software specification training. 
• I loath the demo.
• Recognize value propositions, slide decks, 30-day cycles, and Sales Managers as fodder for the future.
• Brand yourself, not your dealership or OEM.

Embrace the Shimmer.

"The Things We Think And Do Not Say. The Future of Our Business..."

"I began writing what's known as a Mission Statement...Fewer Clients, Less Money..."

During the 2011 MPS Conference, at the end of the MPS Expert Panel session titled, The Best MPS Program, I gave a little bit of what I like to call, the Jerry Maguire Experience.

Some of these panels end up being all 'doom and gloom'. You know, people get to say "I did it this way, so you should too" and "change or die", "the sky is falling".

Ken was wrapping up, the urge was there, I couldn't help it.

I wanted - no,  I felt, words were needed. Good words, positive energy let out for the world.

I have no idea if anybody heard what I said or if anyone remembers - and that's okay.  It was about the moment, a chance criss-cross of time and place.

An opportunity like that doesn't come along very often. I seized it.

"So much to say, and no one to listen..."

The words stumbled out and into the air, drifting.

I said,  "Now is the time.  This is the place.  An opportunity to remember.  To remember why you got in this crazy industry in the first place. Those times, the way it felt to get that first sale, install those devices...

To remember what it was like to NOT know. To guess, to make it up as you went along.

To remember when your existence wasn't dictated by the beliefs and dogma of the few.

Do you remember? Do you remember that blind jump, that a Leap of Faith?

To be young, to be amazed, to just...be.

It's here.  It's here for us now.  This very second.  How happy are you with your place in the world? The World is moving."

As much as I love having the mic, I know that the Global 2011 MPS Conference does not approach the scale and gravity of a major motion picture, arguably one of the best American films ever released.

Or does it?

"Breakdown. Breakthrough."

What are we here to discover?  What are the simple pleasures we look for and endeavor to find?

Direction? Validation?  Yes.

It's okay to sell copiers.  It's okay to sell MPS.  It's okay to sell.   It's okay to try and fail.  To tumble.  Get up, do it again.

MPS isn't the end-all, it isn't the only reason to exist - it never has been.  Still, with everybody getting in and as many as 50% failing, what now?

With all the OEMs defining MPS as S1/S2 and reclassifying direct accounts how can we continue?

Touch More.

More Human Touch.  Less PowerPoint.  No more WebEx meetings, toss the 50 slide business summaries.  Instead, press the flesh.  Draw on a napkin.

Do that thing we do as sales professionals, look him in the eye and say "thank you, what more can we do, today?"

"Oddest, most unexpected thing..."

Success and change are hardly the results of design.  Innovation encroaches from another direction; from the left as we look right, from behind as we look ahead. Few ever see it coming.

So it is today.  As some deny the paperless revolution is near, companies like Alaska Air outfit their 1,400 pilots with iPads.  Apple is making the textbook obsolete and banks now accept pictures of checks for deposits.  Your kids, don't call each other anymore, they use their thumbs.

From social media to MpS, everything is new and scarcely predicted - there are no experts - the world is moving faster.  No benchmarks, no 'metrics', no comparison, no rules.

Waiting for the revolution?  It's already here.

"The Me I always wanted to be" - Trust

Trust. It is a very big word and one of the first MPS Conference keynote speaker attempted to rally behind stating, "...Trust is something this industry has got to reclaim."

He is new.  He doesn't see that to reclaim something, one must have first possessed it.

Again, now is the time.  This Great Financial Crisis is secular, not cyclical - everything is changed and in flux. Now is the time to get out and see your clients re-establishing yourself as a trusted advisor, a Business Partner.

Be you.

"I had lost the ability to bullshit, ..."

Our journey continues.

The path is less bumpy when we build partnerships. Partnerships are easier to forge over a foundation of truth.  Can you be true?

Can you lose the ability to bullshit? If not to your prospects, at least with yourself.  Or are you just another shark in a suit?

Can you see the entire ecosystem?

How about instead of optimizing a smidgen of hardware and some toner, you envision Optimizing Everything.

That's right, everything.   Managed Optimization Services. 

"That's how you become great, man. Hang your balls out there."

GET MORE LIKE THIS, IN THE BOOK - HERE.

One of the absolute best reviews of Jerry Maguire.  Started, 4/30/2011

Originally, 5/16/11

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