Success Story
Today is about a success story. I’m here to tell you a quick anecdote how I walked out of a FIRST meeting with a potential customer with an order that would impact their bottom line so greatly that they would have signed it for double what I was asking for on the spot.
Every time I have a face to face meeting with a buyer I ask them them to grab the person (or people) from their company who spend the most time in front of the office copier. While the person signing lease docs and checks is important in the meeting, the user who spends the most time at the office copier is the best way for me to find a way to demonstrate my value as a trusted advisor.
Through a brief chat with who I call a power user I discovered that this user was scanning invoices one at a time, then going back to her computer and renaming the files by Customer Name and Invoice Number, then dragging and dropping them into a specific folder on the file server. She went on to tell me this was the most time consuming part of her day, and she spent AN HOUR EVERY DAY(!!!) doing this. That’s music to my ears, because the old phrase “time is money” will always ring true. I asked to pause the conversation and I pulled my phone out of my pocket, typically a no-no in meetings, and opened the Calculator App.
Let’s do the math.
1 hour per day is 5 hours per week. 52 weeks a year x 5 hours per week is 260 hours! Even if this employee is out of the office, SOMEBODY is doing this task, likely taking longer to do it since they’re filling in. If this employee is making $20/hr, and likely makes more at this particular company I was meeting with, that is $5,200 per year in labor the company was paying this employee to complete this task.
Here comes the part where being an expert in my field comes into play. I asked the customer a simple question that was met with bewilderment at first. “What if you could press one button at the copier’s touch screen and it would scan your document, file it in the appropriate folder on your server, and name the file “Customer – 123456″ automatically?” As I mentioned this was met with a blank stare while the gears were turning in their heads, “You can do that? What if this is a new customer and we don’t have a folder for them on the server yet? Can we do this with other types of documents?” Absolutely. Let me explain how.
We have an inexpensive 3rd party software that integrates flawlessly with our Sharp scanners that includes a feature called zonal OCR (optical character recognition). By defining zones on your documents for the software to look inside of, the software takes that information and uses it to route the file where it needs to go in their file tree and name it, just as the user would, automatically. This would essentially take this task that takes an hour down to 1-2 minutes a day. Using the same calculator we go from 260 HOURS per year, to 260 MINUTES per year. That’s only 4.333 hours, or $86.88 PER YEAR! That is a savings of over $5,000 in labor per year!
Demonstrating the Value
The next question from the customer was what you might expect. “What is this going to cost?” This software is licensed by number of devices, and even with their 2 large network copier/printer/scanners this particular software was a fraction of what their realized cost was for all of the labor for his particular time-consuming task. I was able to bundle the software into my proposal for 2 full-size MFPs, make a nice commission, and still save my new customer thousands per year. The cost of the lease + software was more than they were currently spending with their service provider, but the bigger picture was clear – there were a ton of savings overall, and more importantly, more VALUE.
If i wouldn’t have pulled the power user into the meeting and started asking questions about their workflow I would have been just another sales rep in there doing the industry standard “feeds and speeds” sales pitch the buyer has no doubt heard a dozen times. By prying a bit and talking to the right person I was able to identify something to demonstrate my value as a seasoned pro. These differentiators are what earns me a customer for life, and they’ll remember me – – and are more inclined to refer business to me, the ultimate compliment.
This is one of many success stories that goes to show expertise is key in technology sales. I’m proud to say for the 3rd year in a row I have sold over $1,000,000 in revenue for Platinum Copier Solutions, largely because I find ways to make my customers have an AHA! moment and self stand out from the crowd. If you’d like to have an appointment with me for a free consultation, I guarantee I can find a way to improve your workflow, save your company money, and be the Tylenol to your printer related headaches! Contact me today – scan the QR code to find me, or ask for me by name from our contact form.
Collin Grimes