My early sales career involved the printing and photocopier industry.

Fast-paced, suit & tie, calls, calls, more calls, meetings, meetings, deals, deals, another deal.

Repeat, train, learn, calls, meetings, deals.

We also used to play hard too.

Every year we would either go to Perth Races and sit in the Galileo suite and have a ball.

3-course lunch, beer and wine at the table, racecard and compere for the day. Bets on.

Or we would have an away day to the rugby and some 'product' training. Any excuse.

I miss those days. Corporate must return soon.

In those days......

Colour prints cost ten times the cost of a mono print.

Black & white printing was ten times more cost-effective.

We used to automate lockdown mono as default to multiple businesses.

This controlled departments blasting out prints that only had a smidge of colour and would still be charged at the full rate. So lockdown mono prints. Keycode. Job done.

Cost-effective, better to control the commercials, better for business.

Colour printing is great, but only when it is required.

Business and people working from home now must be challenging for the copier and print industry. Both as employees in the industry, clients and prospects alike.

Offices are having fewer people in them, which in turn leads to less printing getting done,

which in turn leads to fewer upgrades being signed and new business being executed.

Deloitte Global predicted that home printer sales would grow 15% in 2020 to about $5 billion or about 30 million units. The home printer market is mainly made up of inkjet all-in-one printers costing less than $400 and laser/LED multifunction printers (MFP) costing less than $500.1 

As part of COVID-19 lockdowns, hundreds of millions of teleworkers (many of whose kids are learning from home too) brought their laptops home in a bag…but left their office printers behind! 

When we 'turn the page' on the pandemic, the 'flip side' will be a world here home printers matter more than they used to.

They also go onto say that in 2010, the death of print books was forecast as being on five years off. But in 2019, print books were about 80% of the market and rising, while eBooks were actually in decline. And although vinyl record sales looked like they might disappear entirely at one point, they came back: from a low of just under one million units in the US in 2006, to over 19 million in 2019.

It also showed concern in the return to face to face anytime soon.

A recent poll by Printweek showed the levels of concern in the below infographic.

Just pipping the poll was 'next year' in regards to getting back to face to face meetings and interaction with customers and new logos.

Time will tell on this.

So more working from home and more efficient ways of working.

The tie here to social is clear. Less time in the office, more time at home, more time online.

What are you doing as a business in the copier & print world to educate and connect with your prospects about the challenges they face, the problems you can solve and innovate them with knowledge in these new ways of working?

Social is where you can do that. They are watching and waiting.

Being colourful takes the lead here.

• Post relevant guidance and advice about new tech, new ways of connecting, interacting
• Share your stories about how you are managing the home life, ask them how they are.
• Introduce the team, develop an understanding of your customer's new challenges.
• Keep it engaging, keep it personal, keep your community and followers in the loop.
• They will want to know more, they will trust you, they will return to you.

Engage, listen, build trust, relationship, own your sector.

Let me know how things are. I loved that time in my career. Hard yards but good yards.

Thanks.

Kevin Milne

Social Selling Advisor

Saleshire

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