I have to deal with copi­er sales­men from two com­pet­ing com­pa­nies at work. I hon­est­ly nev­er under­stood how one could be pure­ly a sell­er of copiers until they showed up. It’s a huge mar­ket, with lots of busi­ness and a ton of prod­ucts to deal with. They’re both, very obvi­ous­ly, sales­men, and present every­thing with smoke and mir­rors. The thing is, I’m actu­al­ly look­ing to lease a new print­er here, because the com­pa­ny could poten­tial­ly save a few hun­dred dol­lars a month with the new, more aggres­sive mar­ket­ing cam­paign that I’m try­ing to push. It’s a has­sle to have to see through all the bull­shit and sort out the rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion. I’m try­ing to give them both a fair chance any­way, since a new print­er would def­i­nite­ly ben­e­fit the com­pa­ny.

It’s fun­ny to see how they try to han­dle clients my age. They come in with their suits and ties, have these gener­ic sales­per­son char­ac­ters, and talk with lofty words. I don’t think they expect to be deal­ing with some­one my age, who looks and dress­es the way I do. I’m extreme­ly com­fort­able with it though; I com­mu­ni­cate well with peo­ple who are old­er than me, and these guys must be twice my age. They think it’s going to be easy to get a con­tract signed, just by telling me what the com­pa­ny sup­pos­ed­ly needs. I may be green, but I’m not stu­pid when it comes to busi­ness.

The only advan­tage to all of this is being treat­ed like a real client with respect and hav­ing things pre­sent­ed to me the way I want to see them. I sup­pose it’s only fair though, if they’re try­ing to get a 60-month lease signed, with quar­ter­ly pay­ments of over $1000.