Salary.sg Forums - Copier sales job?

i've been in this line for 7 years, this industry's top 3 players ranking 1st is fuji xerox, with canon and ricoh fighting neck to neck for 2nd and 3rd, these 3 brands command about 2/3 of singapore market share with 4 other players namely konica minolta, toshiba, sharp and kyocera all japanese and newly korean entrant samsung.

the good side: the top 3 brands pay really good money if you are able to sellwith commission ranging 1 to 10% depending on selling price or at special discounted pricing for bulk tenders, any profit sharing if you can sell above selling price, there are also dangling carrots such as unit/model/colour/solution incentives. usually the hardware sold are somewhere in the range from 3K to 20K for office equipment and 10K to 1mil for production/industrial range hardware. the prices varies with full colour or monochrome only print output and output speed/print capacity built which usually is in tandem. there are salespersons whom managed to pull off selling entry level equipment markup selling price in excess of five figure digits, these are either luckier or skillful ones whom met no competition or the customer is just dumb believing they have all along been using that XYZ brand equipment and thinks what they are paying for is the market norm selling price or the customer so believes that the XYZ brand is the best unrivalled performance brand that they do not bother to do market reality price check. of course other shady x factors come in play which I will not want to divulge too detailed. yes top salespeople earn over 10K per month just on commissions, profit sharing and incentives and they count about less than 5% of the total sales force in the company. basic salary is dependant on your experience and education, the type of customers you will be tasked to handle e.g government, top mncs, sme, vertical industries, hunter (zero customer) or farmer (list of current customers). allowance is dependant if you have a car and it is a all-in sum which means the company don't reimburse you any petrol, parking, erp, servicing, insurance etc.

bad side: it's a daily frying hot pan if you are low or zero on sales figures which counts to about 40% of the total sales force. don't expect any customer comes to you with cash on hand that tells you explicitly he/she wants a copier from you! those whom work in retail sales that waits for customer walk up to you asking for queries about the company product and you just closed the sale with some sales pitch will not happen in this line! you will have to go out there in the vast wilderness to look for companies whom has or is thinking whether to buy this equipment via means of knocking door to door offices/buildings, cold call list, gatecrash visits. most of the times you have to create a sale out of no intention from the customer at all and previously mentioned in this thread by others, there are few thousands of the same salesperson as you doing the same thing selling the same type of equipment as you so be expected to have slammed doors on your face, scoldings that you are the 100000001th copier salesperson knocking or calling them and the equipments are still new bought or leased less than 1 year only and don't bother them. you will be fried every working day in morning by your superiors before you go out and evening when you are back with little or no results. your evenings are burnt by your managers reviewing your field day's work; what have you done, what went wrong, what will you do to improve; why customer never buy/no intention, how is your sales funnel pipeline and forecast, how can you generate more prospective buyers whom have the M.A.N (money, authority, need), what backup cases you have to fulfill your monthly sales target when a prospective buyer did not buy. you will think why these managers are so dumb, unrealistic and illogical whom will want to press on and on. you will think "i don't have magical powers how can I predict when will this customer wants to buy or not?!?!" You will face competition, price war, customer comparing apple to apple and thinks the other brand is better even though you are cheaper, comparing apple to xiaomi and still thinks you are higher priced, comparing xiaomi to xiaomi and thinks you are cheaper, your brand is seldom heard in the market that's why it seems to be lousier and less superior, comparing xiaomi to sh!t and wants you to match sh!t pricing which your company will not go to such extend or if even so at the expense of clinching the sale but no commission paid for your hard work, comparing sh!t to apple just because the customer wants to use your cheaper sh!t price to bring down apple price and eventually get a good deal from apple. a lot of times you need to have good sales skills, service attitude, psychology manipulation to convince why this customer should buy from you and not the other salesperson.

Likewise each brand also has their fair share of good and bad service experience from each customer, top rank companies spend a lot in their marketing campaigns that help drive up product awareness, illusion in good quality and gain market share of their products which in turn comes at the expense of higher equipment selling price. bottom rank companies don't have much marketing campaign budget which in turn reflects on their lower market share, illusion in inferior quality and lower equipment selling price. but at such competitive era nowadays, top rank companies dropped their prices to retain and grow their market share to stave off the competition heat.

I have given 2 sides of the coin, it's up to your decision if this industry or in general corporate B2B sales is cut out for you ;)