Leasing is math under contract. The dealer buys a device from distribution or manufacturer. The leasing company pays the dealer his cost, all upfront.
The leasing company bills the ultimate customer periodically until the cost of the machine to the dealer and profit is covered.
Benefits to each player:
Lease company - profit
Dealer - profit all upfront
Customer - monthly payment instead of a large, one-time outlay
Example:
A customer wishes to 'own' a large piece of equipment. The purchase price is $20,000.00. Instead of paying 20k all at once, the customer would like to pay over time.
The dealer would like to sell the customer equipment, installation, and software needed for the device to function. The dealer cannot offer pay overtime to the customer directly.
The leasing company approves the client and the sale moves forward.
For decades, at least since the 70's, sales reps have been posing their products as "solutions to problems". From Wiki:
"Frank Watts developed the sales process dubbed "solution selling" in 1975. Watts perfected his method at Wang Laboratories. He began teaching solution selling as an independent consultant in 1982."
This was big through the '80s, 90's and still stands today. Yet, "Solution sales" has become little more than a slogan. Closer to the truth, "Solution Sales: As long as the solution is my product or services."
Don't get me wrong, solution selling was a great advancement in the field of B2B sales. Solution selling is foundational in professional selling. Billions of dollars have traded hands based on this approach. Anything I promote rests on the shoulders of people greater than I.
Evolution happens. I believe an enhancement to solution selling is Business Acumen Selling. (BAS)
BAS is not about working leads through the selling cycle, understanding your leasing strategies, building good cases and presentations. It does not refer to a salesperson's ability to demonstrate a device or piece of software nor does BAS have anything to do with how well you update the CRM or forecast the next 90 days.
Business Acumen for Selling is:
Understanding - Recognizing the business model your prospects work within, understanding if you have and exactly where your place in their model resides, and the impact of your presence.
Comparative Analysis - Consistently acquiring knowledge, building acumen across commercial industries, vertical markets, and niches, and utilizing that knowledge.
Deep Conversations - Conveying your understanding of the existing environment and articulating your value within their ecosystem.
Most seasoned professionals have a sense of BAS honed through years of fieldwork and thousands of appointments. My goal is to formalize and shorten the timeline required to learn and apply BAS; especially for the new sales representative.
Our courses are designed to give selling professionals the tools necessary to gain knowledge, distill knowledge into acumen and articulate both an understanding of prospects' environment and the impact of adding the sales reps offering into the client's business model.
"We have to start doing what was said we were doing but never did."
We're all talking about the "new" ways to sell.
Covid19 is forcing galactic shifts in the way we do business; from the back-office to the sales trenches. What I find striking is the more we talk about what needs to be done in a post Covid19 sales engagement, the more we find the basic selling skills apply more than ever.
Here are a few of the concepts and skills presented over the decades regarding sales and selling:
Build Trust
Attract Like-Minded Prospects
Consult
Be the Trusted advisor
Increase Your Business Acumen
The books, lectures, and classes of the past decades all told us to be more a consultant and experts in our industry. Lately, in the last decade, salespeople have been told to become thought leaders, create content, find a 'good match', and help the prospect in their purchasing journey.
We've been saying it for decades. These are basic skills. Now is the time to ACTUALLY do what we have been saying we do. Engage the basics, and get to the root of the art of selling. Once we do this, virtual selling will return to 'Selling'.
The game is changing, but it always has been. The way businesses align purchasing is shifting, but it always has been. New marketing platforms are emerging but always have been. Sales are evolving but always have been.
There is talk of a selling rebellion, but there always has been.
There's chatter about the new selling, the new way businesses are buying, and how the sales professionals of today had better change their ways. We've got to multiply our efforts tenfold, continue to cold call and embrace social media.
Today, "Kings", "Cowboys" and "Warriors" populate our little niche and we've got professionals "saving the industry one copier at a time". Worthy, noble, and authentic efforts - I'm all for self-branding and rebellion. I question the focus of our current emotional revolt.
Words mean things -
Revolt: refuse to acknowledge someone or something as having authority
Revolution: a forcible overthrow of a government or social order, in favor of a new system
So yes, we as a profession, are in the mood for revolt and revolution. It's understood the selling representatives are the Rebels but who are we 'rebelling' against? Who are the bad guys?
Are we taking on the old-school mentality? Assaulting old techniques is one thing, but these are outdated tools, not the root of evil.
Maybe we're rebelling against our prospects and customers - not the brightest idea.
Conducting a revolution against other sales people is self-destructive and most likely a strategy our nemesis relies upon. From the outside, it must look like we're a bunch of self-loathing, never good enough yahoo's running around spewing "transformation, this" and "the new way of that...".
To summarize:
Revolting against prospects and clients is not the way.
We are not our greatest enemy, we will not self-destruct.
The "Evil Empire" is not the past.
Again, who is the enemy?
I know who. If you're a sales trainer, you're not going to like it. If you're a sales manager, you're not going to like it. If you're selling anything through a tiered channel, you are not going to like it. Heck, I don't even like it.
The target of our revolution are those who inflict quotas, false ideals and untrustworthy sales techniques: OEMs, Mega dealers, and vendors of the day are the enemy.
I have moved from certainty to doubt, from devotion to rebellion.
- Phil Donahue
I am the last one to call for unionization - unions kill - but an organized resistance is the only alternative. I'm talking about a guild of selling professionals - similar to the Screen Actor's Guild.
So who is in a position to organize contemporary selling professionals? I have no idea but a great start would be for sales people to think differently:
start selling for yourself
form your own brand
invest in yourself
CAUTION: Rebellions require blood. The cost of freedom is never free and all revolutions, have casualties. Who, in this cause, will give all? Who will create change through sacrifice?
Will any of the new sales trainers step up to form The Guild or continue taking money from the establishment?
Will mega-dealers change the way reps are paid or continue to support an archaic standard?
Will OEMs get rid of their tiered approach?
And who in their right mind would join such a movement, let alone LEAD against these most formidable foes?
I don't have the answer to that question. I can say finding a leader within the Empire(OEM,Trainers, MegaDealers) is at best dubious. Perhaps an older, wiser Rebel will make their way center stage.
Caution: As a metaphor, in the movie Rogue One, can you recall how many of the small rebel team survived?
The move into managed services is well on its way and traditional copier reps are getting caught in the middle between selling boxes and selling services. Pundits and consultants lament "copier people cannot sell managed services" unless they attend a day of specialized sales training.
It is true, I've seen plenty of managed services or IT sales destroyed by copier sales reps - from Cali to N.C. I've written about a couple of instances.
The thing is, for all the challenges and failures, the rep is not to blame. We train them to always be closing, find pain and twist, to hunt, take-down, close, trap and "increase share of wallet" - armed with this mentality, its a miracle anybody sells anything, let alone a nuanced offering like managed services.
So, as a copier rep, what can you do to secure more managed services contracts/agreements? Should you heed your sales manager's advice and treat help desk like a fax board? Does your OEM offer any clues? How about a few days of off-site training followed up with a phone blitz?
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