Every day businesses are faced with competing priorities for thier budget dollars.
Sometimes they don’t understand that spending a little more now will save them hundreds if not thousands over the life of a purchase.
Recently a customer contacted me about purchasing a new laser printer for a remote office. They had just bought a color laser printer from us and wanted a second color printer for the Los Angeles office.
I explained to the customer that they should buy another of the same model to save on supplies costs. They could save several hundreds of dollars by using the same supplies for both printers.
My contact thought that was an excellent idea and I submitted the quote.
A little later that day they emailed to say they need to buy a cheap laser printer instead of the one I quoted. Thier manager only looks at immediate price and wanted to spend half as much. I explained that the cheap laser printer the manager wanted would end up costing 3-4 times as much over the expected lifetime of the printer. In fact, since the cheap printers toner cartridge only held half as much toner, they would end up spending the difference between the cheap printer and the business class printer the first time they bought toner for it.
Learn about a better way to reduce your costs here.
It reminds me of the quote below from a 19th century economist John Ruskin.
| “There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man’s lawful prey.” | |
| - John Ruskin |
