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Friday, September 14, 2018

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."

Monday, September 10, 2018

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.





Tuesday, September 4, 2018

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.


Sunday, August 26, 2018

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

Thursday, August 23, 2018

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

Monday, August 6, 2018

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.



Contact Me

Greg Walters, Incorporated
greg@grwalters.com
262.370.4193