enx magazine

Service and maintenance are critical aspects to be considered when trying to sell your services to a prospective customer. If your rates are too high, the customer may not call you again, but on the other hand, if you try to low-ball the competition, you will not even make expenses. One ISO from the New England area told me that he would do the first service call for free (parts and supplies were not included) just to show the client how well he worked with the equipment and how well he did his job. It’s a cute gimmick to get you into the shop and other ISO’s have reported they had similar introductory, first call/ visits as well. In retrospect, I think the customer is always wondering about the capabilities and experience when selecting a new ISO to repair or maintain their equipment. On the other hand, our customers have to realize that we offer a service that is fairly priced and we do have an overhead as well. There are three types of service strategies available: The right way, the wrong way and the customer’s way. When you talk to prospective customers, you get the distinct impression that they want it for free or at least a lot less than the manufacturer. I have discovered that the best way to approach a new customer is to be frank with him and discuss your fees upfront and the terms that you are willing to accept for services and parts. When I first started my business I was so happy that I was able to find an account that I never bothered to talk with the principals involved concerning the service fees until I was finished with the service call. With the system up and running, the customer doesn’t have to be in a rush to pay you, and they will usually say something like: “Send me an invoice and I will send it through the system for you”. Now you are at their mercy and probably will not pay you until the next time there is a service call. I have an account in Long Island City like that, and they call about once every three months for service. They are self-maintainers and usually do not call me unless they have a serious problem they can’t resolve. That scenario happened more than once and that bothered me. My partner suggested that we go to our bank and apply for a credit card machine that we can use to charge our customers for services rendered. That worked out quite well until we started to get the bills for the credit card services. It appeared that we had a silent partner scoffing up what small profits we were making and destroyed the intrinsic value of the credit card idea. So, here we were back to square one with a stupid expression on our faces. It has been my experience, and many ISO’s as well, that most commercial printers don’t really care what a dynamite job you are doing but rather how soon they can get their machine back on the production line and at the cheapest cost. No matter what the part costs, there is always doubt in their heads that you are ripping them off with the high cost of the parts and services.

Xerox®, in their infinite wisdom, uses a simple system in marking up parts and some supplies. They use a 10x multiplier for everything they sell. So, if they pay $ 5.00 for a part, they mark it up to $ 50.00 and by law, it’s yours to purchase. If you purchase parts from Xerox to keep the copier running smoothly and you mark up the part by 10% plus shipping, the $ 50.00 part will cost the customer about $ 65.00. And the customer thinks we are ripping him off. So with that in mind, I developed “Plan A”.

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