In an effort to simplify the document management sale, I have come up with five easy steps to hopefully help you narrow your search and breathe life into your company's document management sales.

Step One: Use CPR to Define Document Management

• Document management applies specifically to managing documents and images throughout their lifecycle, including acquisition, organization, versioning, access control, and archiving. Let's simplify this definition even further by using CPR as an acronym. Document management is how we Capture, Process and Route documents within an organization.

Step Two: Be Prepared To Answer "Why?"

As salespeople, it is our job to create a need or at least a perception of a need to the customer about why document management is important. Here are some staggering statistics to empower your sales staff when educating potential customers:

>  Filing a document costs 25-30 cents per sheet

>  From 3 to 5 percent of documents are lost or misfiled

>  The cost to recreate a misfiled document is $150-$250

>   Up to 7.4 percent of time is spent looking for misfiled documents

>  Counting lost or misfiled documents shoots the rate to $20/document.

>  Nearly 92 percent of information is in manila folders

Step Three: Implement a Marketing Plan

Sales personnel sell what they know, so it's best to create a basic way to market document management from the simplistic to the complex. One suggestion would be to create "Scan Packages" that offer three different levels to sell. For Example:

• Scan Package A: MFD, OCR Software, and Basic Retrieval Software
• Scan Package B: MFD, OCR Software, Workflow Software and Storage Solutions
• Scan   Package   C:   Full-Blown    Enterprise     Document/Content      Management Solutions

The key to these packages is breaking down the document management cycle into easy building blocks. This makes it easier for salespeople to understand and sell. Furthermore, having preset packages simplifies the entire process and empowers your reps to feel confident selling a solution.

Step Four: Ask the Right Questions

Many times sales personnel miss out on potential document management sales because they ask, "Do you have a need to scan documents?" or "Have you ever thought of a document management system?" When they are empowered with a marketing plan that they understand, it allows them to execute that plan by asking probing questions of the potential customer.

>  How many file cabinets do you have?

>   Why do you keep the file? What is the business purpose?

>   How many documents do you file daily? Monthly?

>  What is your system for filing documents?

>  How long is your document retrieval process?

>   What happens if a document is lost or misfiled?

>   How many people access stored documents?

>  Do off-site employees need access to stored files?

>  Is there time lost searching for documents?

>   Do you use off-site storage?

Step Five: Document Both Successes & Failures

As you venture down the document management road, you will have many successes and failures. These experiences are a necessary step to the eventual triumph in "value-added" sales. Remember, only through proper documentation can we change our behaviors to ensure our successes in the future.