Office Equipment Dealer Nirvana

Nirvana in Indian culture is described as a state of perfect quietude, freedom, and highest happiness.  We are not going to talk about it in the religious sense, but we will look at it in the business sense. 

If I were a betting man, I would bet that you would not describe your business using those adjectives.  You would probably discuss it in the sense of turmoil in the marketplace and in the challenges you face. This blog may help you move toward a more nirvana-like state in your business.    

Current Situation

Both within your business and with your dealings with customers there are issues causing challenges that impact your customer’s happiness.  

Challenges for Your Customers

There are several areas in dealing with your company that your customers find less than desirable, no matter how hard you try. Let's discuss four that are probably at the top of their list.

Meter readings. If you surveyed...

Early on in my career as a district service manager visiting dealers, I made a scheduled visit to see a service manager. When I walked into the dealership, the service manager told me that he did not have time to meet—he had to go run service calls. I have seen this misuse of time, in various forms, over and over in my career.

Value Categories of Labor

In each dealership, there are different levels of talent and responsibility, and I categorize them by assigning a numerical value to each one. The numbers are not necessarily what a person at that level earns. Instead, the number represents the relative value of his or her time.

$25 Labor

The highest value labor in each department or company is the most senior management. They need to focus their time and energy on tasks that only they can solve.

$20 Labor

The next highest value of labor is that of service supervisors. They need to focus their time on the teams they lead. They spend their time in the field solving customer and...

Disasters can come in a variety of flavors.  This year, we can think about the pandemic as a disaster and see that it affects every business differently. 

The pandemic was not something most people would have planned for, and most disaster plans probably didn't specifically address it.  However, the process of creating a disaster plan would have benefited those businesses with them.

Following is a story of an unexpected event and the impact of not having a disaster plan in place.  Again this was not something this company expected, and its effects on their customers show it.

My internet, which is the lifeblood of my business, is provided through a cellular reseller.  I had loved their service until this incident hit.

On December 31, 2020, ATT had a server fail. This particular server was the device that handled renewing the monthly service for many ATT resellers.  The result was thousands of customers like myself lost internet for an extended...

Many dealers still do not automatically protect the power of the devices they sell and of all the poor decisions that dealers make, this may be the worst. There seems to be a variety of excuses. The client does not want it. The salesperson does not want it included in the deal. It is too expensive. You do not really need it the power is ok.

But all of those are lame excuses. Build it into the deal just as you would build in the cost of setup and delivery. And don’t show it as a separate item on the invoice: that way neither the salesperson nor the customer can try to negotiate it out of the deal.

My Experiences

When I owned my dealership, I had the opportunity to witness firsthand the ways that power protection saves equipment and therefore money. One of my clients had an electrical event that caused catastrophic failure to devices in one area of the building. Devices that were not even powered on were destroyed, including calculators, monitors, and PCs.

In that same area, I...

It is important to provide regular customer service training to your technicians. They are the face of your company. In most cases, your customers will see your technicians regularly and respect their opinions. If a positive relationship is maintained and the conversations properly filtered, the results will help your company grow.

Examples

Recently, I was helping a client with a major install and he related a conversation he’d had with the previous vendor. It was an example of a conversation that shouldn’t have happened. It was so bad, in fact, that it might have cost the previous vendor the account.

It seems that the technician for the previous vendor was constantly highlighting internal problems. For instance, he told the client that his company could not get the machine fixed because he had no assistance in troubleshooting the issue. He also stated that he could not order the parts that he needed because they were too expensive.

This client’s experience...

Creating Amazing Customer Service

As a business owner or as a manager, you should want to create not just good service but amazing customer service.  Yet, most businesses provide mediocre service.  Why?

To create the kind of customer service that turns customers into raving fans requires focus and effort.  It is worth the expenditure of both.

Ask the Hard Questions

I encourage you to ask the hard questions.  Ask questions that generate answers that are difficult to hear.  It is these questions and these answers that can transform your company.

You see businesses that talk about their unbelievable customer satisfaction scores.  Those scores could be the result of asking easy questions.  But those scores don't help the company improve.

I will share the two questions to ask if you want to improve.  But understand, if you ask these questions, you may not like the answers.

The first question is one that you ask customers that no longer do business...

If we're meeting for the first time, my name is Ken Edmonds. And on this blog, I share information to help managers get better at managing people, growing their profit, and achieving success in every area in their department.

In my experience working in the copier business, something I saw happens way too often was an owner would walk up to his best technician and tell him, “Congratulations! You're our new manager!” Then they turn around and walk away. And that was the end of their training.

Here is one experience where that happened. A technician who was probably one of the better technicians I met in my career was very good at fixing equipment. So the company wanted him to step up and be a supervisor and promoted him to the position of supervisor, but they didn't give him any training.

It was interesting because I got to see him struggle and try to succeed in leading his team. But he failed at that. The result was he quit working for the dealer and went to work...