Copier Sales "Top Ten Consulting Tips"

Whats made me successful in the field for so many years? I given this much thought and would like to share my top ten from my 28 years in down the street sales.

1. Be a consultant and not a sales person. Dig deep for their workflow and volume.
2. Always try to meet with the buyer/decision maker and not the gate keeper.
3. Be a professional at your job. Be on time, Courteous, Clean, speak their language.
4. Find out what your potential client does, what do they sell or manufacturer.
5. Position your self as the expert. Testimonials, Recommendations, Certificates..etc
6. Find out who they do business with. You may have common ground.
7. What is their buying time and why? (do they have pain)
8. What will make them buy or lease now. You won't know if you don't ask.
9. Know who your competition is.
10. Be creative, think outside the box, just because they have one unit does not mean they are not open to more units. Offer third party software solutions. Change the rules if you need to.

Too many sales people get lazy and look for an easy sale, believe me the days of easy sales are over. A Customer has a 35ppm system and the first thought is they need another 35ppm system. WRONG! They may need more or less, you've got to dig deep into their workflow, volumes and current costs. It's much easier to place your system if you can show the customer that they will save money, or increase productivity at no extra cost. It can be done, you just need to do the research, ask the right questions and be creative.

-=Good Selling=-

Toner Bomb in Allentown, PA

I came across this article on the web today. Being in the industry and once being a tech we are all too familiar with "toner bombs", however our interpretation of a "toner bomb" is when someone opens the toner cartridge and then drops it on the floor and wallaa, you have a "toner bomb" due to rush of toner that escapes from the cartridge! Take it me, I've done a few of these and seen a few of these happen, it's not a pretty sight.

Well, in Allentown, Pa, it seems that a suspicious package was found outside one of the cities buildings. Hence the entire building was evacuated, the contents x-rayed (which was inconclusive) and then the package was blown up in front of the building. Contents of the box you might ask? A toner cartridge. Result of the detonation.... a cloud of black smoke!

Click here Toner Bomb Article:

Better yet, here's the video of the "toner bomb"

Hoping that wasn't one of our cartridges!!

-=Good Selling=-

Samsung Launching New Line of A3 MFP's

Samsung of Korea recently held their annual dealer convention in Las Vegas, and announced that they plan on launching a new line of A3 models to compete against Japanese vendors. In addition, supposedly they also previewed a prototype 70ppm color laser MFP model.

The above was an post I caught on the Print4Pay Hotel forums tonight. I've put a few feelers out to Print4Pay members and we'll see what we get back in a few days. Just as others have posted here and along with me, we feel that Samsung is ready to launch a major mfp war to get additional marketshare from the Japanese vendors and Xerox. Stay tuned the best is yet to come!

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Industry Rumors on the Print4Pay Hotel!

Over the last few months there's been a bevy of rumors posted on the Print4Pay Hotel forums in reference to the copier industry. Thought I'd share some these before the GIANTS/EAGLES game. GO GIANTS!

* Samsung to introduce new A3 devices

* Samsung to release 70 and 90ppm A4 devices

* TABS (Toshiba American Business Solutions) is looking for a buyer again?

* Ricoh set to release wide format inkjet printers

* Matt Espe becomes the new CEO of Ricoh Americas Corp

* Major shakeout at Global Imaging Industries with top exec's

* Memjet will introduce something

Keep in mind that these are rumors and just that, read it, think about it, and above all have fun with it!

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Weekend Industry Notes 12/12/09

Gathered from Print4Pay Hotel Members from around the world and a few moles in very good places!

- The Business Equipment Research & Testing Laboratories (BERTL) announced it has given its highest award, 5 Stars, to the new integrated eCopy solution offered by Konica Minolta, where the solution can be accessed right from the color LCD control panel of the bizhub MFP.

- Mail Boxes Etc. aka The UPS Stores, gave out its annual outstanding Sales Support Award to Konica Minolta, for the second time in last 3 years.

- Kyocera Mita, which leases 300,000 square feet of commercial space in South Carolina for its toner plant, recently sublet 27,000 square feet to another firm, as the space was vacated due to downsizing.

- Samsung of Korea filed a lawsuit on 12/2/09 against Sharp regarding alleged patent infringement in regards to LCD HDTVs.

- eCopy and EMC won a bid for document management at Easton Vance Corp., an investment management firm. The customer plans on scanning 200,000 records per month into the Documentum application.

- A dealer in Georgia wins a document management bid. Computer Troubleshooters NRD, using Cabinet NG software and Kodak scanners won bid from National EMS, an ambulance service company. The company claims it will save the customer 80 labor hours per week with the new solution.

- Lexmark announced that LG Electronics (based in Korea) will relabel some of its inkjet and laser printer/MFPs.

- Lexmark won a managed print services contract from The Rexel Group. Details:
- headquartered in France
- distributor of electrical supplies
- has 30,000 employees
- 2,300 offices in 34 countries
- 5 year contract
- Will reduce costs 20% to 60% depending on country
- Reduced number of devices by 20%

- Hewlett Packard claims that the country of India is a huge growth market for printers and MFPs. Apparently for every employee that an IT firm takes on in India, generates 2,500 pages of printed material during the recruitment process. The company also claims to sell 70,000 devices per month in the country.

- Hewlett Packard announced it has sold two of its Indigo production color systems to Datamail Group, a print for pay in New Zealand.

- Hewlett Packard announced it won a managed print services contract from CZ Insurance of The Netherlands. Details:
- 3 year contract
- has 3,500 employees
- has 3.3 million customers in Europe
- Covers 60 million prints per year
- New hardware installed includes LaserJet M5035XS MFPs and LaserJet P4515x printers

- Hewlett Packard hired QualityLogic to perform tests of print quality and reliability on several desktop color laser printers. The test results revealed:
- Kyocera product had 2.5 times more unacceptable print quality pages as compared to HP
- Kyocera unit had to have its amorphous silicon ceramic drum cleaned every 2,600 pages, and took up to 15 minutes
- Kyocera unit had to have its waste toner container replaced every 2,650 pages
- Ricoh product had 3.5 times more unacceptable print quality pages as compared to HP
- Dell product had 3.5 times more unacceptable print quality pages as compared to HP

- Gartner Inc., a leading research firm that monitors the printer/MFP industry, announced it will spend $64 million in cash to acquire one of its competitors, AMR Research.

- Gartner also stated that computer server shipments are down 17% and server revenue is down 15%.

- According to Gartner, providing data storage as a service is on of the top 10 technologies that solutions providers cannot afford to ignore in 2010.

- Fuji of Japan announced it has hired a champion Sumo wrestler, Hakuho, to promote its printers and MFPs (which are sold under Xerox name in U.S.) The company wants to promote the products strong reliability to the Asian markets.

- Wayne Prinkey, a 79 year old man in Springfield, PA, was arrested for making fake $20 bills with a color copier and attempting to use them at a local store.

- Sharp named Rich Boomsma Senior Vice President of U.S. Sales. In his previous 9 years with Sharp, he worked with Government and Major Account Sales and Dealer Sales. Prior to Sharp, Rich spent 28 years with Xerox.

- Three men were arrested in Bensalem, Pennsylvania after they were caught ordering $90,000 worth of Xerox Phaser color printer supplies, and never paying for them using three shell companies.

- Google is about to launch its first computer operating system, called “Chrome”, which it hopes will compete with Microsoft Windows. Google stated that one of the reasons it will be more reliable is; “We want to get out of the business of printer drivers. All the problems related to drivers we want to go away.” This quote comes from Linus Upton, Google’s engineering director who has a new “wonderful printing solution”.

- Forrester Research gave out its rankings on leaders in enterprise content management:
- Leader in traditional ECM suite providers:
- IBM
- EMC
- Oracle
- OpenText
- Strong Performers, but lack breadth and sophistication of above:
- Hewlett Packard
- Hyland Software
- Microsoft

- Innerworkings Inc. of Chicago, won a print management contract from Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, headquartered in Marysville, Ohio.

- According to RMG Enterprises, the image capture software market appears to be bouncing back from the recession. Three vendors, Datacap, Top Image Systems and Kofax, all reported revenue growth during the last quarter.

- According to Kodak, in regards to color inkjet printer usage:
- Average consumer prints 1,500 pages per year
- Kodak shipped 800,000 printers in last three quarters
- Last year, during same time period, shipped 400,000 units
- In contrast, HP shipped 18.4 million units

- Electronics For Imaging(EFI), maker of Fiery print controllers, announced it won a patent litigation case against Durst Fototechnik of Germany, over EFI’s white ink technology used in its VUTEK large format color inkjet printers.

- Toshiba announced it has hired a former DANKA executive as VP of Operations. Jim Hawkins, formerly Senior VP of Field Operations for DANKA, will now report to Wayne Wilkinson, Senior VP and GM of Toshiba’s copier division in Irvine, CA.

- Have customers who wish to print from their Apple iPhone? As you may know, this cell phone does not offer Bluetooth technology for remote printing. Instead, an application named “Print Magic”, was launched, and sells for $6.99 and supposedly allows customer to print via WiFi to a printer connected to a Macintosh.

- In an effort to drive down the value of the Japanese yen, and help many Japanese equipment providers who rely on U.S. sales, the Japanese government announced it would make available $115 billion in three year loans at 0.1% interest to Japanese firms. (Japan’s companies lose a combined $369 million in annual operating profit for each 1 yen appreciation against the U.S. dollar according to Daiwa Research)

- IDC reported worldwide printer/MFP shipments for third quarter:
- B/w laser printer and MFP unit shipments were up 14%
- MFP units shipped were 17 million, representing 63% of all devices (laser and inkjet)
- Color laser MFP units up 1.3%
- Laser units trail inkjet by 42%
- Laser MFP market value of $2.8 billion
- Laser MFP units represented 11% of total market
- HP was top brand in units, followed by Canon, Epson, Brother and Samsung

-=Good Selling=-

This Week in Canon "TWIC Notes"

Gathered from Print4Pay Hotel Members from around the world and a few moles in very good places!

- Canon announced it is shipping a new line of calculators that are “anti-bacteria” equipped to help prevent the spread of H1N1. The new calculators apparently have a germ fighting agent embedded in the plastic casing.

- According to some industry analysts, Canon will be launching a program to authorize copier dealers in the U.S. to sell its products with the Hewlett Packard name on them. In theory, this would allow the company to create another wholesale distribution channel, and open up more distribution in cities where it already has Canon branches and Canon dealers.

- In an interview with Charles Holliday, chairman of DuPont, he related a story about his visit to Canon’s headquarters in Japan. He took a team to visit Canon’s CEO, Fujio Mitarai, and at end of visit, he noticed that someone had put a brand new Canon digital camera on each of his employee’s chairs. Mr. Holliday and his staff wondered what to do, as their company has an ethics policy which prevents them from accepting such a gift. They wondered if they would offend Mr. Mitarai if they returned the gifts. When they returned the gifts to Canon and explained why, Mr. Mitarai said; “you are a step above everybody else we deal with…what other company would have returned the cameras for such a good reason?” Canon has since adopted a similar policy.

-=Good Selling=-

This Week in Ricoh "TWIR Notes"

Gathered from Print4Pay Hotel Members from around the world and a few moles in very good places!

- IKON, a division of Ricoh, won a large managed print services bid at a Pennsylvania university. Clarion University replaced 540 Hewlett Packard printers with 27 color MFPs and 44 b/w MFPs. Total volume per year is 6 million b/w pages and 250,000 color pages. The university decided to make a change when it realized it was spending $60,000 per year just on print cartridges.

- According to survey conducted by Ricoh, the following responses were collected from businesses in countries who are trying to cut back on printing waste:
- France = 43.5%
- Italy = 42.7%
- Germany = 41.7%
- England = 38.5%
- Only 33% of companies claim to have implemented a strategy
- Total spent on documents per year in Europe = 14 billion euros
- 32% of business owners allow employees to do what they like

- Ricoh announced it is now shipping “biomass” black toner for some of its copiers in Japan. This is a test to try to replace traditional petroleum based toner resin.

- Are Ricoh dealers providing their customers with new parts or used parts? Equipment Brokers Unlimited of Van Nuys, CA announced that it is expanding its used Ricoh parts division due to increased sales of used parts to dealers. The company claims that used parts are 40%-80% less expensive than buying new parts from Ricoh.

- Ricoh announced it has sold an Aficio PRO C900 production color system to Genova Diagnostics of Ashville, NC, which prints out lab test reports for medical clinics.

- IKON, a division of Ricoh, announced it will hold a “Graphic Arts Digital Discovery” event for production color prospects on 12/8 at its Indianapolis, IN branch. Sessions will include Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, Acrobat and Enfocus PitStop.

-=Good Selling=-

Can Ricoh, Xerox, Canon & KonicaMinolta be the next GM & Chrysler?

For those who know me, they know that when I'm traveling from appointment to appointment I never listed to the radio, or cd's.

This was not by choice, my buddy Darby (185lb dog), knocked out the SIRRUS antenna one day while getting out of the car and along with the fact that I lost the code for my regular radio, well my rides are pretty dam quiet w, except for the rambling thoughts cruising through my head all day!

Thus this came to me the other day when speaking with a fellow p4p'er in Florida. We got on the topic of A4 devices, my question was "Why have the Big Dogs like Ricoh, Xerox (Xerox/Fuji), Canon and Konica Minolta not come to market with their own A4 devices? Well, the answer I got was surprising and made sense. My fellow p4p'er stated that the Japanese are reluctant to re-tool the factories due the cost involved. There is no money made on the hardware anymore, they are relying on the consumables for profits.

Hey, I'm the guy in the field, on the streets and in the trenches, my customers love the A4 devices that we have from Sammy (Samsung), and if you haven't heard Sammy is doing very well with their A4 devices.

About a year ago Sharp launched their Frontier Series which is an A4 multifunctional device made by Sharp. Just today BLI awarded them "BLI Pick of the Year Awards" for three different models. At a recent Sharp dealer meeting it was noted that 24% of placements in 2008 were A4 devices.

So, while the chickens are roosting in the hen house at night, companies like Sammy, Sharp and Muratec (relabled Sammies) are quietly taking market share from the likes of Ricoh, Xerox (they also relabel a few Sammies), Canon and KonicaMinolta. Gesh, I would have thought by this time that the Big Dogs would have at least stepped up to the plate.

I reached out and made another call to a prominent p4p'er and got these quotes:

* Samsung certainly is doing quite well with its A4s.

* I feel like the reason Sharp is so hot for A4 is because they realize they cannot beat the big dogs at their own game (A3s) so they are looking to build share through A4 while maintaining or slowly growing A3 share. Man do they say how great A4s are every chance they have though. Not sure where this was sourced from, but at Sharp's dealer meeting they said that A4s were 24% of all MFP units in 2008 and 35% of all 31ppm+ MFP unit growth between 2005 and 2008.

* Most of Xerox metered A4s are either sourced from Samsung or most recently Konica Minolta so that's a sign that they don't want to retool and are looking externally for their A4 lines. That said, FujiXerox does make A4 engines for Lexmark and Infoprint, so they have the ability.

* Considering Canon supplies HP with all those A4 engines I would think they would expand in A4 if they wanted. They are probably limiting A4 presence for different reasons.

Ah, Canon the biggest dog of them all and why haven't they entered the market? I'm thinking they have some type of agreement with HP. WOW, we forgot about HP, here's another instance where HP is now replacing their own laser printers and others with their own A4 Multifunctional devices. Yet, all of this is one of the least talked about topics and the mass migration of A3 to A4 is happening before our eyes.

I read an article today from Channel Web, where a representative from Gartner stated "recommended customers use fewer A3-sized printers, which print at 11 x 17 inches, and adopt more A4-sized devices, which print letter-sized documents, to cut costs."

Sammy is poised to steal even more business, if you think they're satisfied with four or five A4 multifunctional devices, well you're wrong. They want to be the manufacturer of choice for dealers in the near future.

So, back to the topic, if the Big Dogs don't a make a move soon with their own A4 platforms where will they be in two years. I'm thinking they could go the way of GM and Chrysler, they've rested on their laurels and their A3's engines far too long, and instead of investing money in new factories and re-tooling, they all opted to buy market share by purchasing the likes of Savin, Oce, Global, Danka, Gestener, Ikon, Monroe, and Imagagistics. Did I miss any?

BTW, special thanx to the p4p'ers that helped me out with the additional information. If you like to be a member of the largest and fasted growing group of copier professionals in the world, then take a trip here. Print4Pay Hotel

-=Good Selling=-

Christmas Dogs!

Truly, one of my favs for this Christmas Season!

Copier Sales "Position Yourself as an Expert"

Do you feel that you are the one of the best at selling MFP's? Do you consult more to the end user and then let the customer buy from you? Are you consistently producing print assessment reports for customers that have and instant ROI?

If so, you need to add this weapon to your arsenal. In your territory look up the 10 largest CPA firms. Once you have them, be prepared to make the calls to success!

CPA firms are in the business of making money as are all of us, they have many business clients that have trusted their services for years and years. What we want to do is to add value to the CPA's service's that they provide to their business clients, by added a new service for their customers. A customized Print Assessment Report for their clients.

Positioning yourself as an expert in the field of print assessments, meaning you are offering your services to the CPA firm for their clients, the CPA firm can either bill out this service or include it as an additional service that they offer for their clients. Your goal is to sell your knowledge and nothing else. Have copies of Print Assessments that you have completed to show the accounting firm what the typical report entails, here you are breaking the mold from the common copier salesperson and establishing yourself as the expert. You can even offer a FREE print assessment to the accounting firm to show them your expertise and your creative ideas for print assessment and print migration.

You can start by telling them about the high cost of printing to multiple devices and that you specialize in provided a detailed print assessment cost of what they are spending and a solution to save their clients money and or productivity. Your fees can be as much as $150 per hour plus expenses for your work.

All of the information needed is at your finger tips, companies like Ricoh offer a COG (customer opportunity generator), this software program gives you real life per page cost for about 95% of all the print devices that are on the market. For the other 5% you can do your research on the Internet.

In reference to all of the print device software that is on the market..... they are ok, however nothing is better than visiting every single print device, generating a report and then interviewing the end user for their needs. Interview can uncover tremendous savings and opportunities for all.

If you would like a copy of my print assessment report please log in to the Print4Pay Hotel and become a member www.p4photel.com/eve. I'll have the document posted in the Industry Proposals and Quotes forum (you'll need to purchase a Premium Membership for $15.00)

-=Good Selling=-

MFP Weekend Indsutry Notes 12/4/09

Gathered from Print4Pay Hotel Members from around the world and a few moles in very good places!

The falling value of the U.S. Dollar is having huge impact in Japanese manufacturers.

Details:

- Japanese yen was trading at its strongest against the dollar in 14 years, climbing to as high as 84.83
(in other words, the dollar is worth only 85 yen, in contrast, it was worth 110 yen a few years ago)
- Canon’s CEO, Fujio Mitarai, said Japan is “standing on edge of a cliff”, and that Japan needs “urgent steps to counter this critical situation”
- Japan’s electronics companies lose a combined $369 million in annual profit for each 1 yen appreciation against the dollar according to Daiwa Research Institute Ltd.
- In contrast, the South Korean won has fallen 20% against the U.S. dollar, thus helping
the record profits of Samsung.

According to research firm, IDC, Samsung is the number one supplier of A4 MFPs during the last two quarters worldwide.

Lexmark launched a new A3 series of b/w laser printers, the W850 series, featuring:
- Replaces W840 series
- Base MSRP of $2899.00
- Print engine made by Fuji of Japan (also sold by Xerox as Phaser 5550 series))
- Top speed of 50ppm print only
- 1200x1200dpi
- 35K yield toner cartridge that sells for $241.99
- 60K drum yield for $180.99
- Comes standard with two paper drawers and stack sheet bypass, with
total paper capacity of 1,100 sheets
- Maximum paper capacity with optional drawers of 5,100 sheets
- Adding paper drawers and/or cabinet make unit floor standing
- Built-in print controller
- 10/100/1000BaseT ports
- PCL, PostScript and XPS print drivers
- 800MHz processor
- 256MB RAM standard (can expand to 1GB
- Optional 80GB hard drive for spooling jobs from network
- Maximum duty cycle of 300K/month
- Auto duplex optional
- Optional finishers offer stapling and hole punching

Panasonic announced it has purchased India’s top electrical accessories company, Anchor Electricals, for 9.2 billion yen.

Hewlett Packard gave out information on using dots per inch (DPI) versus bit depth with color printing:
- “DPI (dots per inch) is the traditional measurement and indicator of a print device’s out quality. With the advent of color printing however, other factors have a dramatic effect. In particular, increasing the number of colors per dot (bit depth) greatly improves image quality. Amazingly, some inkjet printers with only 600dpi print resolution are able to produce photographic results due to the range of color they can fit in to a single dot. The image enhancement technology that provides this capability……has forever changed the usefulness of DPI as the sole metric for determining print quality”
- “Ironically, the historical emphasis on DPI as the critical factor for assessing print quality has made these print quality improvements difficult to explain.”
- “The bottom line, use your eye, not DPI, when evaluating image quality”

Hewlett Packard gave out more details of its last quarter’s financial performance:
- Net revenue down 8% to $30.8 billion
- down 3% in Americas
- down 17% in Europe
- Net revenue for full fiscal year down 3% to $114.6 billion
- Operating profit for full fiscal year was $10.1 billion
- Services revenue increased 8% to $8.9 billion
- Imaging and Printing Group (printers and MFPs) was down 15%
- Printer/MFP supplies revenue down 8%
- Commercial printer/MFP hardware sales down 32%
- Commercial printer/MFP unit shipments down 38%
- Profit of $1.2 billion
- CEO, Mark Hurd, stated the following on this division; “IPG is poised for recovery and is getting on the attack. Demand is improving for our printers. We are also encouraged by our managed print services funnel, which are at record levels. Now with a printer refresh coming, we feel pretty good about it.” (is he referring to the impending launch of the full Canon MFP product line?)
- CDO, Cathie Lesjak, stated; “if we have to trade off some operating dollars for growth we will”
- HP predicts that 2010 total revenue will be $119 billion

Ricoh announced that its Aficio MP 9001, a 90ppm b/w MFP, won 4.5 stars from Buyers Labs Inc. BLI’s duplex productivity test results were high on the Ricoh due to its document feeder that scans both sides of original at same time.

Ricoh won a court case in Wisconsin. Quanta Storage was ordered by a U.S. District judge to pay Ricoh $14.5 million as a penalty for violating Ricoh’s optical disk drive patents.

Ricoh announced that is C900 production color system won Fogra certification, a standard used in Europe.

Canon’s Senior Director of Production Print, Denis Grif, announced that the company sold a imagePRESS C6000 production color system to Urner Barry Printing & Mailing of Bayville, NJ. He also stated that Canon now has 61 factory direct offices in the U.S. serving 38 major metro areas.

PC Magazine gave Canon its “2009 Readers’ Choice Award for Service and Reliability” for its digital cameras and desktop color inkjet printers/AIOs.

A recent article in Graphic Arts magazine, had following statistics about toner:
- “companies persist in calling their toner “dry ink”, even though it’s really a minutely milled plastic powder”
- “with a couple of exceptions, toner is produced as blocks or sheets of plastic….these are pulverized”
- With pulverization process, toner particles are 4 to 15 microns in size, and are
random-sized, rough-edged, shards of plastic.
- Particle of talcum powder is 10 microns
- Human hair is 70 microns
- Hewlett Packard’s Indigo production color system uses toner particles that are pulverized in
Israel to as little as 1 micron, and then mixed with liquid carrier, to create a viscous paste.
- Indigo inventor, Benny Landa, stated that particles are so small that if they were not contained in liquid carrier they would just float around the room.
- HP’s Indigo is only digital system that offers option of white toner

Sony predicts that by the year 2013, over 50% of the HDTV’s it will produce will be three dimensional systems (3D). The company will launch its first 3D unit in late 2010.

MedAssets Supply Chain Systems announced that Konica Minolta is its preferred vendor for MFPs. The 3 year agreement is accessible by its 33,000 member locations in the U.S., including health systems, hospitals and non-acute care providers.

Xerox announced it sold one of its iGen4 production color systems to Angstrom Graphics, a print shop in Cleveland, OH and one to Manor Creative, a print shop in East Sussex, England.

QuoCirca Research, announced that Xerox is the Market Leader in its evaluation of managed print services in Europe.

Ursula Burns, CEO of Xerox, and Antonio Perez, CEO of Kodak, were named by President Barack Obama to lead a $260 million program called Educate to Innovate, which will explore how social networks can be used to connect teachers with companies and improve student performance.

Toshiba announced it will partner with Nantong Huada Microelectronics Group in China for computer system chip assembly, to move more manufacturing out of Japan.

Toshiba’s bid to build a nuclear plant near San Antonio, TX is for $8 billion.

Some questions have been raised about copier bid award in New York. Oneida County awarded a 5 year copier contract to Arlott Office Products, even though its president is Oneida County Legislator, James D’Onofrio.

PrintAudit, provider of managed print services software, announced that is won a contract from Pitney Bowes Management Services, Inc., which will use it to sell MPS to its customers in the U.S.

The country of Indonesia announced that it wants to have copiers made in the country, instead of bringing them in from Japanese manufacturers. Details:
- Currently spends $210 million per year on copiers in the country
- Dataproducts of Malaysia and Teco Group of Taiwan both will spend up to $25 million each to build copier plants in the country
- Indonesia’s Industry Minister, Ramon Bangun, stated; “I’ve promised them that the government will gradually stop imports once they have realized their plans.”
- Ramon also said he would invite three Chinese manufacturers to invest in copier plants in the country.

The Equipment Leasing and Finance Association (ELFA) announced:
- Business volume for month of October was down 32.8% year over year
- Receivable over 30 days increased 17%
- Charge-offs rose by 25%
- Credit approvals dropped 71.7%

Three 16 year old boys were arrested in Easton, MD for making fake $20 bills using a color copier.

Lafayette County Arkansas Sheriff Victor Rose announced that Demarcus Tucker, Dexter Lowe & Edzell Wyrick were arrested for making fake $10 bills using a color copier. They were caught when they attempted to buy cigars with the counterfeit money.

According to the Printing Industries of America:
- number of printshops in U.S. declined 18% compared to last year
- total industry employment is down 11.6%
- real output per employee is up 11.8%
- industry output down 4.5%

Madison Advisors of New York announced findings of a study of companies who are trying to reduce their employees’ printing habits:
- Average amount of suppression is 8% to 16%
- Some as high as 70%
- Majority of companies have a 5 year plan of 26% to 50% reduction of paper
- Financial institutions planning for 50% to 75% reduction in paper

-=Good Selling=-

WANTED Federal Printers "Dead or Alive"

Going through my alerts last night I ran across and article from the Washington Post, the Federal Bureau of Engraving and Printing has posted WANTED Posters for desktop printers.

Get this the Bureau of Engraving is offering to Federal employees $75 gift cards for their desktop printers.

From the Washington Post Article:

"For a limited time, to incentivize you to voluntarily give up your active personal printer, BEP will share the savings with you," the flyer said. "You will receive a gift card in the amount of $75 if you turn in an active personal printer."
Get this, our government paid for these printers and now they're giving employees gift cards to relinquish them! I've got a better idea, take them away, no gift cards given, use the network printer for you prints and get up off your butt!

There is an estimated 534 printers, at $75 a pop that represents a total cost of $40,050. Atta boy Feds, way to spend our money when you could easily just take them away and tell everyone to print to the network printer or multifunctional device.

I for one applaud the fact that finally the Bureau has recognized that small convenient lasers printers have an extremely high cost per page, and the work or 10 oer 12 small printers can be done by one network printer or one multifunctional device. However, giving out $75 gift cards to relinquish something the Bureau provided the employees with is downright wrong!

Here's a few facts that most people don't realize about networked multifunctional devices:

Lower cost per page, typically multifunctional devices can have a page cost of .007 or less compared to .03 cents per page for small desktop printers

Less consumable items, most desktop laser printer utilize and AIO (All in One Cartridge), and these are thrown away after a few thousand prints, multifunctional devices use bottles or cartridges of toner which can last as much as 30,000 pages and then the container is sent back to the factory to be refilled.

Longer life span (who the heck is going to repair a $300 laser printer when the cost to have someone on-site to replace a part will cost $200 or more, fact is the printer is thrown in the trash and another is purchased. How wasteful is that?

Virtual mailboxes, users of multifunctional products now have the luxury or printer to a mailbox (space on the hard drive) and then can walk to the printer, enter their pin code and have all of the documents print while they're at the printer!

These are just a few of the features that are available on most multifunctional devices and networked printers.

My God, what's next, we'll offer employees additional gift cards to print on both sides of the paper, or give them gift cards for not printing at all and creating electronic files?

The Bureau needs to get a set of balls and tell it like it is, we're taking your printer, get up off your butt. If you don't like it, show them the door!

-=Good Selling=-

Print4Pay Hotel Updates

This months winners for Premium Memberships were announced on the Print4Pay Hotel Message Boards.

These Premium Memberships are possible through the sponsorship from Print Audit and Dealer Marketing Systems.

Jason R (Top 5 Posters) wins a 6 Month Premium Membership from Print Audit

jswinberlin (Top 5 Topic Starters) wins a 6 Month Premium Membership from Dealer Marketing Systems.

For those of you not familiar with the Print4Pay Hotel, P4P Hotel is social site dedicated to Imaging Industry Professionals. We have over 2,300 members from around the world and average 75 plus new members every month. The Print4Pay Hotel forums has generated over 75,000 threads in 45 forums related to Imaging Industry.

We share information, inspiration and ideas about our industry. The site is FREE, and new members are welcome! Click anyone of the links and you'll get to the registration page.

Updates:

5 Most Active Topics

UPDATE 3-Canon buys Dutch Oce for $1.1 bln, fights Ricoh by Art Post (with 34 posts and 540 page views)

A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Copier Demo/Appointment by Art Post (with 16 posts and 173 page views)

Dealer and Direct Branch Counts by GIntel (with 9 posts and 133 page views)

Weekend Industry Notes from 11/01/09 by Neal (with 9 posts and 127 page views)

How long have you been in the copier industry? by Art Post (with 4 posts and 128 page views)

Weekend Industry Notes from 11/01/09 by Neal (with 9 posts and 127 page views)

-=Good Selling=-