He Takes Office Machines On the Road

Frank Mendicina started out in the photocopier sales and service business before the superstores of the office supply industry had come along. As the mega-retailers began cropping up, he was determined not to let them put him out of business. Key decisions he made early on--to hire young salespeople and develop their talent and to concentrate on service and convenience--have helped him achieve his goal of surviving and thriving as a David amid the Goliaths of the industry. Mendicina was interviewed by freelance writer Karen E. Klein.

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I used to sell insurance, and when I started this business I ran the sales and marketing department. The standard theory in sales is that you should go out and hire experienced guys who will get you to the top real fast. The problem with some of those seasoned salespeople is that they have jumped around a lot and the grass is always greener somewhere else, as far as they’re concerned.

We went a different route, hiring young college grads with talent, smarts and an education who really didn’t know what they wanted to do in life. There’s not a lot of glamour in loading a copier into the back of your car and schlepping it around to your clients, so I had to convince these young people that there was a future for them in the office-products industry. I laid out a career path for them.

Over the years, we trained them and taught them good work habits and job responsibility. As we grew, so did they. That has really helped us. My sales management team is made up of kids who have been here anywhere from 12 to 17 years. They really understand our products and have been available to step up into management when the time came, so we did not have to hire from outside.

Our salespeople use “mobile showrooms” to take our 5,000-pound, industrial-sized copiers right out to our clients. About a dozen years ago, I was visiting a friend in Kansas who sold mobile homes. He had this customized mobile home that a customer had ordered but not purchased, and he asked if I could sell it in California. I had it outfitted with a power supply, loaded up two copiers and drove it around to some of our best customers for a couple months.

It worked so well we now have five 32-foot Winnebagos. Our salespeople make appointments with clients who don’t have time to shop for copiers or go down to someone else’s headquarters and watch a dog-and-pony show. Within half an hour, they’ve seen our machines, know what they can do and they’ve never had to leave their own parking lots.

Over time, we have offered new products and services. If you can stabilize your customer base and retain longtime clients, they are the easiest people to sell another product to. So we now sell color digital copiers out of our mobile showrooms as well. A lot of our larger clients have creative departments and marketing departments and we realized a few years back that they were dealing with color more than ever before. Adding the color option has made it very effective for them to do hands-on marketing pieces right in-house.

It is more expensive for us to have 40 people out in the field, calling on customers, but we started out in the service business and that has always been the strength of our company. A lot of companies rely on telemarketing. We have emphasized personal relationships--inside and outside the company--and I think it’s made all the difference.

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AT A GLANCE

* Company: Select Office solutions

* Owner: Frank Medicina

* Nature of business: Sales and service of high-end copiers, computers and facsimilie machines.

* Location: 6229 Santos Diaz St., Irwindale

* Year founded: 1981

* Number of employees: 145

* Annual sales: $20 million