enx magazine

in every area. They’re 10 percent off in their sales coverage model, 10 percent off in the types of companies they’re calling on, 10 percent off in how they price their deals, and you run all those 10 percents together and they’re not getting any sales.”

Callinan was a dealer himself so he knows the drill. He recalls the story of a successful copier company that asked one of their more competent sales reps to focus on print management. During the course of a year, that sales rep gave 63 print management proposals without one sale.

“One of the bigger mistakes dealers make is that they try to sell print management the way they sell copiers,” says Callinan. “They’re trying to sell a lot of equipment up front and I think they’re missing a lot of opportunities.”

He also cautions against expecting instant gratification. “What print management doesn’t do is evolve a customer from four employees per asset to 10 employees per asset overnight. I’m not even sure if 10 employees per asset is the right number,” says Callinan. “I see very few environments that are actually at that type of efficiency. It’s more or less getting the right asset into the right output environment. Where I really see the ability to consolidate assets is where they have scanners, fax, and printers all right next to one another and you can clearly put an MFP in that area, so you take them from three devices to one.”

Is print management too complicated for the average office equipment dealer? “I think they have the impression that you can’t make money with printers,” opines Callinan. “I can debate that, but you don’t ever have to sell a printer to be in print management because of the aftermarket. That said, if you sold copiers the way printers are currently sold, and you put a price on your website, you’d be in the low single digits as well. But you don’t— you wrap them into a lease, you wrap them into a CPP agreement, and people don’t know what they’re spending and next thing you know, you’re making 35 percent off of your copier. Do the same thing with the printer—wrap it into a lease on a CPP agreement. Don’t tell them the cost is $599. Say, ‘We’ll cover your 100,000 prints a month and we’ll give you these five new printers and it’s .017 cents a page.’ They don’t have to know what they’re paying for the printer.”

The customer is another obstacle to success. “You’ll go into a customer and they’re spending $2,700 a month on their imaging and print fleet, but it’s completely under the radar screen—a $50 invoice here, a $125 invoice there,” explains Callinan. “Then you go in and do all this work and save them a little money—five percent or whatever, and you come in at $2,500 a month with a single invoice from one vendor. Now they start getting an invoice for $2,500 a month and all of a sudden it’s an irritant.”

This is why Callinan says a print management sale differs from the traditional copier sale. “It’s not a copier sale where you sell and come back three years later,” he says. “You must have quarterly reviews with the customer and stay engaged with them.”

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