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Find ideas to align your marketing and sales enablement to grow your revenue.
The Importance of Looking Trustworthy
“People will accept the advice of insight sellers only to the extent that they trust them.” - Mike Schultz & John Doerr, Insight Selling Trust is a critical component to sales success. In their buyer research, the authors of Insight Selling learned what we know...
How Much Money Will Ineffective Sales Prospecting Cost You This Year?
Stephen Covey says that highly effective people put the “big rocks in first” because if you don’t do the important things first, they get crowded out by the smaller things. The biggest rock for any sales professional is prospecting. It’s the #1 driver of success and...
How 30 Years of the World Wide Web Has Improved the Sales Profession
Today is the 30th anniversary of the world wide web! Nothing has changed the sales profession more than this technology. As I reflect back over my 26 years in sales, allow me to offer some observations on how the internet has changed sales for good. 1. From Brochures...
Sales Discipline Equals Financial Freedom
“Although discipline demands control and asceticism, it actually results in freedom.” - Jocko Willink Jocko provides helpful insight for sales professionals and leaders in the final chapter of Extreme Ownership : Discipline Equals Freedom. If you want the freedom of...
Consistent Execution: The Secret To Revenue Growth
“Execution is the single greatest market differentiator. Great companies and successful individuals execute better than the competition.” - Brian P. Moran, The 12 Week Year If you want to be successful in growing a company as a business owner, or growing a territory...
Flipping MIF Is Easy. Net-New Is Hard.
In the office technology industry I serve, we talk about Machines-in-Field (MIF). Every 3-5 years the leases on these machines expire or the machine wears out. Sales reps “flip the MIF” when they upgrade customers to new equipment. MIF-flipping plays a critical role....
Don’t Give Up Too Soon On Your New Initiatives (i.e. Managed Services)
"All the storytelling we do requires frequency. You’ll try something new, issue a statement, explore a new market… and when it doesn’t work right away, the instinct is to walk away and try something else. But frequency teaches us that there is a very real dip--a gap...
Geometric Growth By Mining the Gold From Your Client Base
Every (smart) business and sales professional wants to sell more to their current clients. In my favorite marketing book, Getting Everything You Can From All You've Got, Jay Abraham shares the geometric principle of business growth. He says there are only three ways...
Why Navy Suits and Colorful Socks Work: Building a Personal or Company Brand
Both sales professionals and companies have brands. In our world of overwhelming options and distractions, a brand becomes shorthand to communicate things like: You’re in the right place You can trust me In his book, This Is Marketing, Seth Godin says that as...
What’s In Your Net-New Business Playbook?
How consistent is your sales team at bringing in net-new business? Without a consistent stream of opportunities entering the top of the funnel, the end-of-month results will be disappointing. Instead of net-new, the revenue will be primarily be from flipping the MIF....
Fill the Sales Funnel: Capitalizing on Sales and Marketing Trends
There are only two types of prospects: those who are looking for your products and services, and those who aren’t. If you want to grow sales, you’ll need to find ways to connect with both groups: Prospects who are actively looking for solutions to their problems need...
Building an Effective Sales Culture
As the manager of a sales team what is the biggest thing you can do to drive success? The answer may be to build a culture of success. Why? You can only be physically present with the members of your team for a small amount of time. The culture you create is...
What is a Prospecting Sequence?
You need net-new business to hit your number. Net-new business requires appointments. When sales reps fail to consistently schedule appointments it shows up at the end of the month. What does it take to get appointments? Could there be a way that is more effective,...
Why the Inside Sales Model Makes Sense For The Office Technology Industry
Every dealership wants to grow net-new business. However, using field sales reps as the sole source of prospecting leads to inconsistent results. That’s why most technology companies outside the office equipment industry have inside sales teams with Sales Development...
How To Recruit Great Players To Your Sales Team
As a VP of Sales or Sales Manager of a copier dealership, the number one driver of your success is recruiting a great sales team. If you don’t have great players, you’re going to struggle. A sales team is similar to a college football team. If the team recruits great...
Want More Appointments? The Trend Is Your Friend
Sales reps and marketing professionals struggle to get attention with decision makers when talking about copiers since these products are viewed as commodities. Yet if we don’t get the attention of decision makers we cannot sell anything. How do you get the attention...
Position Your Dealership as a Team of Experts
Your prospects have a long list of business problems. They also have many questions related to how technology could be used to solve these business problems. Most business leaders are open to getting help in solving their business problems. However, most people have...
Why You Need Case Studies
As you grow new business areas like Managed Services, Document Solutions, Production Print or Wide Format one of the most valuable tools you can have are case studies. Let’s face it -- everyone knows and trusts you as a great provider of copiers. And, the value...
Getting More At-Bats: The New Way To More Buyer’s Short Lists
Today as the Arkansas Razorbacks get ready to play in the College World Series there is one thing I know for sure: the more at bats they get, the higher chance they will get on base and score runs. Whether you are a business owner, sales manager, or sales rep, you...
Selling Technology That Requires Change? Two Overlooked Essentials You Need To Consider
What do you sell? Every business owner, sales rep, and marketing professional needs to ask this question on a regular basis. The answer to this question is typically different than the actual products, services, or solutions you sell. Essentially, you don’t sell a...
Be Wary of Misleading Stats on Email Marketing
At a recent industry trade show, I saw some ridiculous statistics about the effectiveness of email marketing. Yes, email can be highly effective. However, done the wrong way, it can be destructive. How do you take advantage of email to get results without the risks?...
What IT Company Logos Should I Have On My Dealership’s Website?
As you grow your dealership’s Managed IT Services business you need to look like a credible source of IT services. In our recent webinar (How To Position Your Dealership For Success In Managed IT Services) we talked about the importance of passing the IT grunt test....
How To Position Your Dealership For Success In Managed IT Services [Webinar Replay]
Get practical tactics you can put to work right away to successfully expand your business. The Managed IT Services business offers the promise of new recurring revenue while protecting the hardware base — two critical initiatives in today’s marketplace. Unfortunately,...
Copier Dealer Websites: HubSpot or WordPress?
One question we frequently get asked by copier dealers and managed IT providers is, "Should we build our website on Hubspot or Wordpress?" At Convergo, we manage websites on a variety of platforms including WordPress, HubSpot, and Drupal. Like anything, there are pros...
[Webinar Replay] Three Strategies To Grow Copier Sales In a Competitive Market
Discover practical tactics you can put to work right away to grow your business. To increase your earnings, you need to grow sales. In this 35 minute webinar replay, we’ll share new strategies you can use to grow your hardware sales. You’ll learn proven tactics you...
Three Managed IT Speed Bumps That May Slow Down Your Dealership’s Success
Most of the copier dealers we serve either have Managed IT Services offerings or are planning to add this to their business. However, in many cases, the growth hasn't accelerated as quickly as they'd planned. And even if the growth has been good, who doesn't want more...
The New Way to Win More Deals: Sales and Marketing as Co-Creators of Value
Why do sales people win? Until recently, the primary points of differentiation for companies have been based on two factors: We provide great products We back them up with great service While that may be true, the challenge is that these provide little differentiation...
Capitalizing on Convergence To Grow Your Dealership
If you want to grow your business, you need to look for areas of opportunity. These opportunities are typically found in areas of change. In our channel, we find change where things converge. Where you find convergence, you find opportunity. Here are three convergence...
Credibility: Building Your Critical Sales Success Factor
Do you want net-new business? Your buyers must see you and your company as credible. When asked what behaviors a seller could exhibit that would increase the likelihood of meeting or buying, more than 1/3 of the responses were related to credibility as presented in...
Does Your Dealership Resonate With Buyers?
As competitive dealer principals, sales leaders, and sales reps, we all want to win. But in our highly commoditized industry it can be hard for buyers to differentiate between products that seem to have the same features and dealerships that all promise to deliver...
Why Your Website and Sales Collateral Fall Flat
Are you frustrated that you're not getting more from your website? After all, everyone keeps quoting the stats that 94% of B2B buyers begin their journey online. And, if you hang out with me for more than 10 minutes, you'll be reminded of the Corporate Executive...
Will Content Marketing Be Around in 20 Years?
Hang around with me for any amount of time and you’ll hear about Buyer 2.0 and how buyers are on average 71% of the way through their buying process before contacting a vendor or sales rep. Why? Because when we have questions the fastest and most unbiased way to get...
Three Reasons Dealers Should Add Live Chat Functionality To Their Websites
If I want to communicate with my twenty-something kids who are learning to adult, I better use text messages. Getting them on the phone is nearly impossible. There is an entire generation raised on text messaging. And while we can pin the rise of texting on...
Why Search Engine Placement is Important For Your Copier Dealership–And How To Get Top Rankings
Current research shows that 93% of B2B technology buyers look to Google as their first source of information. Given that reality, technology dealers that want to succeed need to consider their Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy. The good news is that Search...
What Younger Customers Want From a Service Provider
The older I get, the faster time slips by. Sometimes I wake up and realize things have changed. That’s how I felt when I read that the average age of a network administrator is 36 years old. Let that sink in for a minute. That means over half of the network...
What Copier Dealer Service Departments Can Learn From Taxis and Uber
On my way to and from the airport to speak to a group of CDA service managers in Austin, TX, I was forced to take a regular taxi since Uber and Lyft are not allowed in Austin for some reason. After several years of not having to endure taxis, I began to see the taxi...
The Average Age of a Network Administrator is 36-What This Means For Your Copier Dealership
In doing research for a presentation I’m doing for a Copier Dealer Association's service manager’s meeting, I discovered a statistic that should make all of us pay attention: 36 is the average age of a network administrator according to a recent New York Times...
Three Ways Copier Dealers Can Convert More Website Traffic To Sales Leads
In a similar way that copier sales reps drive appointments, copier dealers work hard to drive traffic to their websites in the hopes of converting visitors to potential sales leads. With effective Search Engine Optimization strategies, backed up by consistent blogging...
Six Reasons Your Copier Dealership Needs an Annual Marketing Calendar
Do you have an annual marketing calendar for your dealership? Successful copier dealer marketing programs have a calendar. This document begins with your business and marketing goals. It includes a full calendar of events, promotions, and product launches. It also...
Five Critical Components of an Effective Copier Dealership Blog
Smart copier dealers blog regularly on their websites to enhance their search engine placement, fuel their social media strategy and position themselves as subject matter experts. Sadly, many dealerships miss key aspects in their blogs, sabotaging their effectiveness....
Why Should a Successful Copier Dealer Care About Blogging?
Yesterday a successful copier dealer principal asked me an honest question: "Why should I care about blogging?" Traditional sales tactics are working well for him. The dealership is growing and sales reps are crushing quotas with tried-and-true prospecting techniques....
Do People Buy Copiers Online?
Over the years one of the most common questions I get from copier dealer principals and sales reps is, "When do you think people will start buying copiers online?" My answer: "They already are and have been buying copiers online for years now." Really. Yes, but not...
How To Use LinkedIn to Drive Sales Conversations
Originally published by Darrell Amy on LinkedIn Pulse. Since the dawn of time sales people have possessed one critical skill: they are able to drive conversations. As we step into the bold new world of social selling, nothing changes. Until you start a conversation...
Why You Need More Than Great Customer Service To Win Copier Deals
Originally published by Darrell Amy on LinkedIn Pulse. As I talk to dealers around the world I keep hearing frustration that there isn’t more customer loyalty. While our equipment and solutions get more sophisticated, the actual purchase gets more commoditized....
Confessions of a Gen-X Decision Maker
This is a picture of the Tandy TRS-80, the first computer that showed up on a rolling cart in my elementary school when I was in fourth grade. This started a journey for me that led to buying a laptop in my first year as a sales person so I could use Act. The...
Inbound Marketing – It Takes A Village
As more dealerships discover inbound marketing, they often jump to the benefits and overlook what has to be done to achieve those benefits. The concept of inbound is straightforward: providing useful information to your existing customers and potential buyers will...
Constructing an Inbound Lead Generation Strategy: 5 Observations
Yesterday evening, I was visiting with a friend who is a project manager for a construction company that builds high-end homes. It got me thinking. How crazy would people think you were if you expected a new home to be built in one month? Yet that is sometimes...
Growth Opportunities in the Growing Green Market
In preparing for a previous webinar on New Green Marketing Strategies with Jordan Darragh of PrintReleaf, I've uncovered some very interesting data about the market for green solutions. I'll have to admit that until yesterday, I thought that "green" was nice window...
Copier Dealers and Search Engine Optimization: What Keywords Do You Want?
“We want to be on page one of Google!” As I talk to copier dealer principals every day, this is a common statement. But the question that always follows is, “What search terms do you want to get found for?” Typically, the answer is, “We want to get found for ‘copiers...