Providing an on-point, creative solution that increases a client’s return on technology investment and produces the Raving Results we constantly seek to deliver.

Competing on honesty, trust, and value, not simply on price. It’s a Datamax philosophy that Tyler’s Jerry MacClaren takes seriously across the board.
Copier upgrades (no net new devices on an existing account) can be considered “low-hanging fruit.”  Even still, Jerry was not thrilled with the results he was getting on obtaining these upgrades, as they arise month to month.

How could he create more value? What could he do differently to reinforce his role as a true consultant (not just a quick quote) to existing customers who simply needed an updated device?  Jerry wanted to put the CONSULTANT in Business Process Consultant.

The Business Challenge.

Jerry made a conscious decision to rethink the way he was approaching upgrades. That started on the phone.

“On the phone, before I would start the conversation explaining that their machine was old, service might be phasing out soon, and it’s time to upgrade,” Jerry said. “I would get a lot of ‘well our copier is working great,’ or ‘we don’t want to deal with that right now,’” Jerry said.

Instead of leading with the upgrade conversation, Jerry reframed his track toward “your contract is coming up for renewal, and I like to come out and do a review to make sure that your current contract is meeting your current needs.” This opened the door to a person-to-person visit, an actual review of their current landscape, and THEN the opportunity to explain some of the potential cost savings that he’d been previously leading with.

It gives him the opportunity to actually consult.

He revamped his proposal.

There’s no arguing that one of the most powerful components of any sales proposal is the “Summary of Benefits” page. He started integrating this page fully into his upgrades as well.

“A cost analysis doesn’t do enough for a lot of people to really understand,” Jerry said. “So what I did was I put myself in the shoes of the customer, and I began to ask myself ‘What would be some of my concerns if I were in their place? What benefits would I be searching for?’”

On the “Customer objectives” portion, he fills in items like reducing monthly expenses, reducing CPC rate, and also, knowing that many of these older machines would soon lose maintenance support capabilities, Jerry wrote in “maximize maintenance plan offering.”

“I’ll be the first to say that as salespeople, sometimes we can get a little lazy when it comes to these upgrades,” Jerry said. “My whole approach with this process was to become more customer-focused and to really show more evidence of value to what they’re trying to accomplish. I wanted to do much more than just say, ‘Hey, it’s time to upgrade.’”

The Prevailing Results.

The success has been resounding. Before, Jerry claimed to have won “about 50 percent of his upgrades,” and now is more around “80 percent.” He’s also building rapport that will hopefully roll into contracts for years and years to come.

Make no mistake, in something as seemingly straightforward as an upgrade, Jerry has put the CONSULTANT in Business Process Consultant.