Do you know what a transactional sales model is? It's the sales models used by Best Buy, Walmart, Amazon.com or Insight.com. They sell many products with very low prices and NO expertise or product knowledge. It's a model that's made America very dependent on cheap products from China; but I digress...
My industry is riddled with "newbie" sales guys, manufacturer dominated markets and transactional sales models. It's been this way as long as I can remember and it's gotten worse with the decline of the economy. The manufacturers are struggling to make profits due to smarter consumers and fierce competition. To combat lower margins, they hire more sales drones to peddle the products door to door and pray one of the twenty will "pan out". It's a fierce cycle and it's driving prices down and customer expectations to all time lows.
How was your last copier shopping experience? Where you in front of a transactional sales person? If you were, you'd know it. This person would be very quick to ask for a signature, pushy or even rude. This person doesn't care or listen to your concerns and would rather shy away from any real solutions due to the time, effort and research that may be involved. The transactional sales person wants a sale and will do or say whatever it takes to get it.
This type of selling breeds uncaring and unqualified people with quotas that force them to hunt for the next deal before the ink dries on your paperwork.
Will the pricing be aggressive? Yep.
Will you see that sales person again? Maybe, but only in 4 years when your lease matures.
You just signed on the dotted line; will that device hold up for 4 to 5 years? You better hope so because even the cheapest device was still expensive.
The process of printing documents is critical to your business and you should expect the best from the people providing the equipment! Qualify the transactional sales rep out of your bidding process; unless of course, you're simply looking for the cheapest price.
