I admit, I sold a Personal Copier

Remember these words

“It’s a Profit Deal!”  Steve Martin. The Jerk

   I make part of my living feeding off the smallest crumbs in the copier industry; personal copiers. The tiny (well not so tiny lately) and relatively cheap (though not to the people who buy them) multifunction machines. I do warranty work and sometimes, if I’m very lucky, they pay me to repair the machine after the warranty. If I’m not so lucky, they throw it away and buy a brand new machine and I make zip, zilch, squat, zero, nada. That’s my fault for staying in the bottom end of the industry. I used to sell 15-30 cpm machines way back in the 1980s. But personal copiers came along and were relatively service intensive and serviceable back then. Canon PC-25s, Sharp Z-50s, Xerox® equivalents and some lame attempts by other manufacturers. I made something of a conscious choice. I would service the personal copiers but still sell big machines and avoid selling the little copiers. There was never any profit to be made in their sales. Discounters sold them retail for less than they were available to us wholesale as far back as 1984. So I sold bigger machines to customers without making any real sales efforts.

   I liked the fact that there were no strings attached to servicing the small machines. Other than my responsibilities to the company that warranteed the machines, I had little to worry about.

Of course, being a bit more diplomatic, I don’t think I ever really said that to anyone, but those are the facts. They bought an over the counter/out of the box/catalog sale machine and it is limited in what it can do. It can do a very nice job but it costs a little to buy and a lot to operate and has other limitations.

What else can I do?

   For me, I felt, and still do feel, that my choices were limited. As someone who loves service and hates sales (except for when someone hands me a check) I am required to service what is sold, whether the product is my first choice or not. Since the days of selling used low-end machines for $750 is gone (by about 20+ years and $600) it is not that easy to make good use of my narrow skills of repairing broken machines at a profit. I take what I can get, which is the crumbs of servicing these small machines.

   There is an Up-side. In addition to getting paid for what I like to do (fix machines) I am in a no-pressure situation. If a small machine is down and my schedule causes it to wait a day for service or a week for a part, I don’t worry about losing a big customer. The most I lose is the possibility of not being called the next time they need someone, which may never occur anyway. Personal copier (and now, multifunction) customers tend to go years between service calls and loyalty is practically non-existent. As a result, I am able to run my life according to my schedule rather than my customers. The few 50 cpm, 20K per month customers that I have would not stand for that and I take better care of them. But if my entire business was made up of that type of customer, I wouldn’t be able to relax. As many of you know, big customers=big bucks=big expectations. Downtime is lost revenue.

   So, I’ve made a choice. I don’t work as hard or suffer as much.  So what you say! How does this affect you? Well, I had a revelation the other day. I recently “upgraded” a customer from one type of personal copier to another type. In the way I measure copiers, it was a slight upgrade. Machine is faster, cheaper cost per copy and higher retail price than what he had previously. But, in my mind, still a personal copier, a shade below what we once would have called “low end commercial” like Mita 1415s, Sharp 2414s, Toshiba 1370s of the “old days.”

   My customer likes certain things about their new machine (which they now have about four months and 7,000 copies). They like that it is fast, duplexes and cartridges last longer. They don’t like the document feeder (which always works for me) and the fact that it is not “instant on” like their previous machine. I was feeling a little guilty because these are drawbacks of the machine compared to their previous one. This machine cost them about $900, about $300 more than the previous one which came from Staples.

   I’m trying to think of how to make them happy, like offering them a “real” machine that is not what I consider a personal copier, but at a low price which will cause me to

sell it at cost or thereabouts, which will still seem like too much for them, I’m sure.

   Here is the situation I am (or was) blaming myself for: A customer who was content overpaying for cartridges for the last three years and is now saving money with a better machine becomes unhappy with me.

A Revelation

   Here is what I have concluded. I will tell the customer the truth, as I always do. I have always told people “this is a personal copier, you can’t expect much.” That was easy when I was not the person that sold it to them. Now, I have sold it to them so I’m on the hook for an explanation. My answer is now something like this. “I know you are used to spending small amounts on a copier. I found the machine which is best for you in that price range but was a little more substantial. However, it is still near the low end of the industry. If you want a machine with no compromises, we can talk about a commercial heavy duty machine.

What happens next?

   The customer may become unhappy. They still might feel they made a wrong decision. The facts are:

• I am being honest with them.
• I did not mislead them or cheat them.
• I have a clear conscience and a chance to sell them the right machine.
• If they choose to stay status quo, they know where they stand.
• If they choose to go elsewhere, so be it. I had them as a customer for a while, sold them a machine (made about $250 on the sale) and you can’t win em all.
•  

For me: No apologies, no guilt.

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