Copier Leasing - The Only 11 Reasons You'd Ever Need A New Machine

If you are thinking of getting a new office copier printer, then you will probably find yourself in one of these situations:

1. You are Launching A New Business

If you are starting a new biz, or new division, you will eventually need a machine for copying, printing, scanning and maybe even faxing.

2. You are Relocating Your Business

When you move, it just becomes a good time to get rid of some old things and to buy some new things. A copier may be in view (just ask the ones on your staff who use it the most).

Your dealer should be willing to move it for you - possibly for free. If not, do NOT try to move it yourself, or even use professional movers! That copier is a highly-sensitive computer, scanner and printer all glued together. So you definitely want the service team moving it...even if they do charge you $100/hr to do so. Otherwise, they will be charging you $100/hr to fix what is damaged (because when you move it, it breaks the service agreement).

3. You are Expanding Your Business

Business is picking up and thus your copy/print/fax/scan volume and so you need to add to your "fleet" of machines, or you are adding an additional location and need something for the crew that works there.

4. You are at the End of Your Copier Lease

Its time to upgrade. If so, you might consider using a request-for-proposal tool called a "Pre-Quote." Its brilliant, takes just 60 seconds to fill out and will save you 20-30% off the price of your copier. It's a quick survey that you fill out that sends the features you want to the local copier reps in your area without spending hours interviewing them. They email you quotes within a day or so. Doing this tells them that you are all about price from the get-go, so they drop their prices just to get their foot in the door - and it gives quite a shock to your current sales rep, especially if you have not shopped his prices in years!

5. You Need a New Feature (Scanning, Color, Faxing, etc)

As technology rolls ahead, so should your paper flow. One of the biggest wastes of money in your office is toner...and you have NO idea how much! The average small business that has just one copier, a laser jet printer and fax, and maybe a few desktop inkjets could save over $30,000 over the lifetime of a 5 year copier lease.

The key is to reroute your paperflow in 3 ways:

- you must move your printing from your inkjet and laser jet printers/faxes to a networked copier, reducing your cost per print from 2-10 cents each, down to just a penny each (it adds up quickly),

- you must start routing all incoming faxes to email (instead of printing them out), and

- you must start using outbound desktop faxing from your screen (instead of printing out a document, and then walking it to the fax just to throw it away soon thereafter). Besides a stripped down version of this software that comes free with each copier, there is a better $100 version called Paperport.

6. You are Having Reliability Problems with the Copier

Copiers only do 2 things: they make copies and they break. When your machine is down, so is the spirit, morale and production levels of your staff. You better get a more reliable copier next time.

7. You are Having Service Problems with the Dealership

Ugh! They made all of these great promises about a "2 hour response time," but the fine print says that the "2 hours" is just a call from the tech saying that he is heading your way sometime...today or this week! That dealership better have cross-trained techs (who work on copiers, printers and faxes), have parts on hand, is fast and competent and has manufacturer training.

8. You are Outsourcing Printing That Could Be Done In-House Cheaper

This happens a lot. Especially with color. You can find color prints as cheap as a DIME each (if you know where to look). That is, there are these printers that you can find online, upload the file that you want them to print, choose the paper, etc and BAM - they can even FedEx it to you overnight, and it will STILL be cheaper than the copy shop next door. No kidding.

9. You are Spending Too Much Money on Toner for Your Desktop Printer/Fax Due to High Volume

Listen, those little machines are meant to print about 100-200 pages a month. Any more than that and you are wasting your money on toner. Again, its a cost per copy issue. Do you want to spend a few cents to a dime per print, or just a penny? Besides that, those smaller machines cannot do double-sided prints, or sort, or staple, etc.

10. Your Increase in Print/Copy Volume Has Overloaded the Current Machine

This could happen because business has picked up, because you stopped people from using their desktops (smart move) or even because the sales rep sold you too small of a machine for your volume (it happens).

11. You Have A Combination of These

This is self-explanatory.

Author: Brady Spencer, with Hustlewise Publishing, helps copier buyers get the upper hand by exposing the tricks, traps and GOTCHA's of the copier hustle. While most copier sites are focused on which copier brand is most reliable or which features to choose this time, NONE of them ever help the buyer see how nasty the copier business can be, the game that is being played or how the deck is stacked against them. Learn more of the industry-insider secrets, confessions and strategies at http://www.hustlewise.com. Also, learn about where to find color copies for a DIME each, as well as the Copier Pre-Quote and other common wastes of money in your paper flow.