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As Page After Page embarked on the transition from toner company to managed print service provider, they found the sales cycle to be longer and the customer indoctrination process to be arduous and challenging to their sales team in a number of ways. Years ago, Dr Elizabeth Kubler-Ross identified the five stages for change: denial, anger, negotiating, depression, and acceptance. When confronted with the transition to managed print services, the staff at Page After Page experienced this same full range of emotional characteristics associated with the stress of rapid change.
• People are uncomfortable.
• People will resist.
• People think change is a problem.
• People will revert back to the old way of doing things at every opportunity.
• People accept change at different rates.
To counteract this, Page After Page’s management articulates the strategic vision at every opportunity and holds weekly teleconferences with Tom Callinan of Strategy Development. Still, Page After Page’s management finds the required changes slow to gain traction with the sales team. Fortunately, Frank Topinka has a lot of experience with company transition and realized before he started that a change as significant as moving into print management would require time and education. He is committed, and the change is taking hold.
To initiate and motivate the sales group through the transition to managed print services, Page After Page implemented a revised sales commission plan that emphasizes contractual relationships, spends time on weekly role-play sale presentations and initially targeted current customers to introduce the managed print services program.
Frank Topinka’s next step for redefining Page After Page was centered around document management. Frank’s research found that most of Page After Page’s customers did not know the cost of filing and retrieving documents. They just knew that they are drowning in paper. Once filed, over 90 percent of paper stored is never seen again, and 30 percent of these documents have more than two copies. In some organizations, filing can even be a full time job. So Page After Page decided to specialize in helping small and mid-sized offices create a “paperless” work structure with an affordable solution.
Most of the products Frank previewed were priced at over $25,000 and he knew that Page After Page would have a difficult time convincing their customers to spend that much money while Page After Page was still in the document management startup mode. Plus, the learning curve for high end products can be pretty steep and time consuming.
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