Vision Imaging Partners had it’s annual RSNA Breakfast meeting at the Hyatt Regency, McCormick Place on Monday November 30, 2009. We had a great turnout with over 165 people in attendance. New Vendors such as Genesis Digital Imaging, Graham Medical, TXR and The Tape Company along with a few long time Vendors had a chance to introduce themselves or new product offerings to the Membership.

There was a total of 23 door prizes donated by our Vendor Partners which included:

CFI Medical Solutions - IPOD
Genesis Digital Imaging –IPOD
Huetsis Medical -(3) $25.00 AmericanExpress Gift Cards
Medlink Imaging - Garmin Nuvi GPS
Pyromet Silver Refiners - (15) 1 Troy Oz. coins of Silver
Rochester Cassette Sales & Service - $100.00 Visa Gift Card
The Tape Company – $25.00 Best Buy Gift Card
Ti- Ba Enterprises – (3) $75.00 Visa Gift Cards
TXR – IPOD Touch
UMI International - (2) $25.00 Staples Gift Cards
United Marketing Group (UMG) - Three $100.00 American Express Gift Cards
USI - (3) $50.00 Amazon Gift Card

The following dealerships won the above door prizes are:

Amis Systems - Huntington WV
Bay X-Ray - Daphne, AL
Commonwealth X-Ray - Nicholasville, KY
Cranford X-Ray - Houston, TX
CT Harris Imaging - Salisbury, NC
Electromek Diagnostic Systems - Troy, IL
GXC Imaging - Buffalo, NY
Lake Superior X-Ray - Duluth, MN
Medical Equipment Services-Dayton, OH
R& F Imaging - Marietta, GA
RPS Imaging - Michigan City, IN
Radiation Services- Greenwood, IN
Radiology Services - Topsfield, MA
Richardson Imaging- New Albany, IN
Silver Lining - Corinth, MS
TG X-Ray- Denver, CO
Tri-State Medical- Gretna, LA
X-Ray Visions - Springfield, VA

The 2010 National Meeting will be held at the Hyatt Regency Riverfront Jacksonville, FL from April 28 - May 1, 2010. More information and sign-up sheets will be sent out shortly.

Digital Photo Handling

Now that the holidays are past, it is a good time to discuss the handling of all the digital photos that you took. We all know that it is convenient to print pictures at home with your inkjet printer on photo paper. What most of don’t realize is that printing those pictures at home is expensive and the prints are not as clear or as durable as a real photo print. Taking into account the cost of ink and photo paper, printing from your inkjet printer results in a cost in excess of fifty cents per print. Printing from a photo lab costs about ten cents per print. Photo lab printing is easier most home printers think. Photos may be sent to print via the Internet or in person at a photo lab. The prints may be picked up at the lab in as little as one hour or shipped in the mail. Even with the highest resolution inkjet printers, the image produced in not as clear or color accurate as a lab print. Lab prints also hold up better over time. They are more resistant to fading due to light or color changes due to age.

Backing up your photos is even more important than printing them. Placing your photos on the hard drive of your computer will allow you to reuse your memory card to take more pictures but, it is not a safe place to keep them archived. Computer hard drives are prone to failure and data loss. Be sure to take a few minutes to burn your photos to CD or DVD. Keep at least one copy in your safe deposit box. In the event that there is a catastrophic loss of the place that you have your computer, you will be able to salvage the memories in your pictures if you have a copy in another location. While you are burning your pictures to DVD, you may wish to burn a slide show of pictures to a DVD for grandma and grandpa in Florida. All video editing packages including the free Microsoft Movie Maker are capable of creating slide shows out of your pictures and mp3 music.

Wishing You a Happy New Year!
 

Data Jugglers Computing, Inc.
877-DJC-Tech

I have been in business for 30 years. I got started in this business by answering an add in the paper for an x-ray salesman job. After learning about this business for approximately four years, in January of 1983, I opened my own company in the garage of my home. I remember mixing the chemicals in my kitchen sink and thought I was really improving when the weather got warmer and I was able to step-up to a garden hose. I slowly grew and bought a 7,500 sq. ft. building in August of 1990. I was the 11th person to sign up with Vision back when we could have had our meetings at a Motel 6. I have watched Vision grow dramatically over the years and I am very proud to be a member.

EDI recently celebrated the benchmark of having its third consecutive year in business growth, thanks to the much appreciated support of many of you reading this vendor spotlight. .

EDI remanufactures x-ray equipment, including GE R/F rooms with CPI
generators and Infimed Digital Fluoroscopy systems, OEC 9600, 9800 and 6600
C-Arms, GE AMX-4 portables and OEC 2600 and 2800 Urology systems. And EDI may only be three years old, but our collective experience in remanufacturing
x-ray equipment totals over a hundred. But the important thing is, at EDI pay attention to the details of our quality work, and we pay attention to you, our dealers. We believe that if we do our job well, we will make your job easier. Our goal is customer satisfaction, because we believe that it’s not about any one order. It’s all about relationships. We believe that once you form a strong relationship, the orders will come.

We have TWO new products we are offering. First, the EDI AMX-4 DR Upgrade uses the Carestream wireless DR panel and the Infimed i5 software to make the AMX-4 portable a state-of-the-art DR solution. Second, the NEW EDI eVision U-Arc DR system uses the CPI Rad Vision workstation, CPI generator and Varian flat panel technology to create a high-throughput U-Arc suitable for any x-ray facility. We expect both these products to provide you with more quality products to sell, and to make your customers like you even better.

Gary Shaw
EDI

Start the New Year with an old favorite!

AFP Imaging is proud to begin 2010 with its recently improved EVA Vet Plus Veterinary Dental Digital Sensor. EVA Vet Plus now features a more robust capsule design made to withstand the rigors of the veterinary environment. The rounded corners make placing and securing the sensor easier than ever. Superior image quality, along with instant secure image storage and retrieval makes EVA Vet Plus the preferred choice for veterinarians and vet clinics. DICOM compatibility is also available with the addition of a ViewAll Vet software upgrade.

AFP Imaging has had over 5000 installation of EVA Vet and Image Vet, and continues to meet the full needs of veterinary clinics AFP Imaging has raised the standard of veterinary care by their commitment to veterinary dental imaging. No modern practice can ignore the advantages of intraoral radiology introduced by them."

~ Jan Bellows, DVM, Diplomate AVDC All Pets Dental Clinic and Hometown Animal Hospital, Weston FL

Happy New Year from the staff at Rochester Cassette! We are wishing for a successful and prosperous year for our Vision partners.

We are very close to launching yet another proprietary solution to help you and your customers. Our Clean Screen cleaning kit will be available shortly, so look for an e-mail in January detailing this "must have" kit. Our universal screen solution has been developed to safely clean any phosphor imaging plate for any CR system. Coupled with soft dust free clothes and a carrying caddy, we predict that this cleaning kit will be a huge success. We’ll send each of you a sample as soon as it’s available.

Thank you for your continued support and for working with us. It’s a pleasure dealing with each and every one of you.

Happy New Year: We are so excited that 2010 is finally here! Our New catalog should be arriving at your mailbox any day now and it’s packed with over 200 new and redesigned products and accessories to meet your customers’ needs. We are really excited to announce that we now have the ability to fabricate foam positioning blocks and are offering over 100+ new coated and un-coated shapes to choose from, and at prices you can’t afford to miss! We have also expanded our marker line to include Fun Lead-Free X-Ray Markers in an effort to help our medical facilities go and stay green; eliminating lead from our radiology markers is a step in a "green" direction.

It was great seeing everyone at the VIP Breakfast in Chicago and appreciate all the dealers who took time to visit our booth and learn more about all the big-moneyopportunities that are available to you. If you had the chance to come by, you noticed our enhanced line of FUSIOn Ergonomic Furniture that is created to "blend body, work and motion."

We also showcased our motorized monitor mounts and new desk designs that offer an expanded range of standard configurations, customized work surfaces, electric and manual height adjustments, plus new design services to optimize your customers’ space. We have expanded our basic furniture line to include more comfort seating options, enhanced vertical workstations, a large breadth of monitor supports and accessories to meet all unique situations and work issues. And, if that’s not enough, we showcased our all new Digital Support Carts that provide the proper workflow solution for digitizers, CR readers and other tasks and equipment for today’s digital imaging environment.

While today’s sales focus is mainly on capital equipment, Techno-Aide is making it easy for you to jump into some high margin product sales that can generate you some serious income with our new FUSIOn Furniture line. We are also making it easy for you to go to one source for your immediate high quality accessory needs. Our vastly expanded product mix will make your accessory ordering a breeze!

Techno-Aide E-Newsletter: Are you getting the latest edition of the "Techno-Brief?" This bi-monthly newsletter is packed full of information on our new products, special pricing, discounts, highlights of the month, and sales tips to help you navigate through 2010 with a bang. Email us today to sign up: tquirante@techno-aide.com

Del Medical is Now a UMG Company! This is a very exciting time for both companies and our combined dealer base. This strategic partnership adds the heritage and quality of the Del Medical and Universal branded X-ray products to the robust product portfolio of UMG.

Watch for our 1st Quarter promotions coming soon!

From everyone at TI-BA Enterprises, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! We are excited about the coming year and we look forward to working with our Vision partners to make 2010 a big success!

The coming year is brimming with promise and we look forward to the opportunity to show you what TI-BA support and service is all about. Aside from our robust CR and PACS portfolio, we’re anxiously awaiting the release of our wireless flat panel DR product, due out April 1st. As we move closer to that target date, we will inform the Vision membership of what that package will include and present pricing. We have also made some significant changes to our PACS offering, particularly the Web-based PACS options. Please review our Digital Price Book on the Visions Website for updated pricing.

As always all dealers and their employees are eligible for FREE training on PoC CR products here in Rochester. If you’re brave enough to come to Western NY in the winter, we’ll buy you dinner!

Please call us with questions on any of our products or services @
585-247-1212. Happy Holidays!

Thank you to all vision members for your support through 2009 & wish everyone a safe & successful Happy New Year and we’d Thank you for letting Radiation Concepts keep your company protected for the next years to come. Please take advantage of our "New Years Special" - Reduced Pricing from January 1 - 31, 2010. You can find more information in the Radiation Concepts folder on the Vision web-site.

JPI America
Committed to a higher level of service

JPI would like to highlight our line of portable x-ray which includes the
equine-specific 9020HF "Stifle-ator", the135HF high-powered portable for mixed animals, the "Advance Step" podiatry system, and our Mobile Medical X-ray for nursing home/sports rehabilitation use.

Our line of high frequency portables are all versatile, compact, lightweight, and are designed with simplicity & durability in mind. They are priced right for the market, while uncompromising in quality. They all come with a 2-yr. parts warranty and a supplier who delivers on service when you need it.

Determine the Close-ability of Your Sales Prospects - By: Bill Stinnett

For many sales professionals the question, "Is this deal qualified?" is one they dread to hear.

It comes from fellow sales people, from pre-sales and marketing types, from his or her own boss, and from their boss, and their boss, and their boss. It’s a question that is difficult to answer because qualifying sales opportunities is not simply a step in a process that is "checked off" as a yes or a no.

The purpose of sales qualification is to determine the "quality" or close-ability of each sales opportunity in our pipeline in order to prioritize our efforts and properly allocate sales resources. Therefore, answering a question like, "How many do they want to buy and when do they want to buy them?" hardly scratches the surface of what we need to know.

What we really want to know is why they would want to buy something in the first place, and how could they buy it if they wanted to. We need to qualify our prospective customers for why and how by qualifying for motive and means.

Understanding motive requires a knowledge of the client’s business, their business goals and objectives, and how the business is performing against those goals and objectives. A business need, which precedes a motive to buy, shows up as a discrepancy between where they are today, and where they want or need to be in the future. Whether the buyer discovers their need on their own or with our help, we then proceed to help them find a suitable solution.

Sales qualification starts with a powerful one-word question: Why? To fully understand motive we need to ask questions like:

- Why does this discrepancy you’ve discovered constitute a problem?

- Why does this discrepancy exist?

- Why haven’t you done something about it before?

- What "good" would come from solving this problem?

- Why would you invest money to solve this problem rather than investing that money to address a different need that the company has?

- What are the risks involved in tackling this issue?

- Why couldn’t you let someone else in the company worry about solving this problem?

- Why not just "do nothing" and hope it works itself out on its own?

The answers to questions like these reveal not only corporate motives to buy, but individual motives as well.

If we are able to determine that our prospect has a motive to buy, then we will want to qualify for means. We will need to know:

- Can they afford the solution we will propose?

- How will they justify the purchase?

- How will it ultimately be approved?

- How do they plan to pay for it or finance it?

- Will there be a lending party involved?

- Who will execute the contract or release the Purchase Order?

- Who must give their approval before the contract signer can sign?

- Do they have the resources to fully utilize your solution?

- Can they really derive the value that they are seeking?

- Once they do, will they be willing to act as a reference for your next prospective client?

Unless we have a clear understanding all of these elements we have not fully qualified the deal, because many of these can significantly impact the close-ability of the opportunity. It is very common to discover that your buyer hasn’t yet considered all of these things. But, to conduct a bullet-proof sales campaign, you’ll want to understand all of these variables and many more.

If your prospective customer has the motive to buy and the means to buy, you can provide them the opportunity to buy. But, we should only do so in proportion to their motive and means. In many industries providing a client the opportunity to buy involves a significant investment on the seller’s part.

Beyond time and effort - both of which cost money - there may be:

travel required, products to demonstrate, proposals to prepare, and reference clients to talk to or visit.

There could easily be a dozen or more people involved. An investment of this kind should be approached the same as any other investment, by carefully weighing the possible risks verses the potential rewards.

Understanding your prospective client’s motive and means will involve a little research, and asking a whole lot of questions. But, having the information with which to analyze and prioritize opportunities, and thereby optimize the investment of valuable resources, is well worth the work to collect it. Once collected, we can use this information to communicate the "quality" of an
opportunity throughout the organization to everyone who needs or wants to know.

Ask any sales manager and they’ll probably tell you that they would love to

be able to forecast sales revenue more accurately. Many managers struggle with getting a true understanding of which deals are likely to close and which ones are simply wishful thinking. At some companies, forecasting has become more like "fore-guessing" or "hope-casting" and with all the uncertainties of today’s marketplace, the problem is getting worse not better .

The root cause of poor sales forecasting is usually not poor salesmanship, more often it is the lack of a good method for forecasting, or the existence of a bad one. Forecasting by "gut feel" or "seat-of-the-pants" is a major contributor to the consistent sale of antacid and headache medicine, but it usually does very little to accurately anticipate the sale of our own product or service.

Many companies use an inferior or outdated forecasting methodology and some have no formal forecasting process at all. They ask their salespeople to, "Tell us what is going to close," and when their people don’t "commit" enough business, they ask them to "commit" additional business that is nowhere near closure. In this manner, some managers set themselves up to be disappointed, or even worse: surprised.

The most effective sales forecasting methodologies are based on the observable milestones of the customer’s buying process. Note that these are not milestones of our own sales process. Actions we take or activities we engage in may actually do nothing to move a deal toward closure. Checking the box next to "Delivered the final proposal" might make us feel good, but it probably won’t increase the likelihood that the sale is going close.

What an accurate forecast considers is:

This requires a lot of research and questioning, but good sales forecasting should be less soothsaying and more investigative reporting. If what we discover suggests less forecast-able business than our quota requires, then at least we know where we stand. Most managers would agree that they’d rather know where they are, than make believe they’re somewhere that they’re not.