Do you invest most of your day in business development, looking to grow relationships and win new business?
This post is for you if you are specifically a salesperson/account manager in the office equipment industry.
Have you ever had a meeting teed up from your marketing department or an inbound Google lead, only to realize that the customer has another two years left on the copier lease? The early termination fees are too high to justify buying out the old lease agreement and the customer is not motivated enough to change. So now the copier opportunity is two years away, which for a commission-based salesperson might as well be two decades.
Naturally, you explore looking for opportunity with that same customer offering various IT support services. The customer has an IT company, of course, and is fearful to switch providers. Even though their back-ups and computer network are a one step above a disaster, the customer just isn’t ready to seriously look into changing. You offer insights and ask great questions but Mr. Small Business Owner is not making a change any time soon.
So now what do you do? You probably already met with the client twice, invested hours of your valuable time and offered both of your services and are left with zilch, nada, except a dangling carrot 24 months away.
Even though your company may not directly sell phone system technology, there are a few basic tips to uncover opportunity.
- Find out when their carrier phone line agreement ends. Request a copy of the phone line statement and phone system maintenance cost for an audit. The same way you get a copy of the lease statement, request a copy of their phone statements.
- Is the customer physically moving their offices within 3-12 months? A majority of businesses upgrade their phone technology when they relocate offices because it’s easier than moving traditional and dated phone technology.
- If they are a multi-location office, ask them if they can three-digit intercom the other locations? If they cannot, it means they have old phone system technology.
- Find out what actual brand of phone they are using. It is very common for phone systems to need major updates like many brands of Toshiba, Avaya, Panasonic, ESI, and more.
At times when you are in situations that you can’t sell your office equipment or IT services, it’s a great opportunity to help uncover business elsewhere. A natural transition is the phone industry since it’s so related to office equipment and IT solutions and the customers are so similar. A referral is a great way to get paid commission and also get future introductions/leads that you could benefit from.
If you’d like to learn more about our referral program please email vin@tele-datasolutions.com or give us a call at 908-378-1218.
By Vincent Finaldi
Vice-President, Tele-Data Solutions
E-mail: vin@tele-datasolutions.com | Direct Line: (908) 378-1218
What brings me satisfaction is meeting with New Jersey–based businesses and genuinely helping them solve communication and business problems. As someone who has lived in New Jersey my entire life, I love working and playing here. I live in Morristown with my wife, Lisa, and root for the New York Giants
