When Reed Melnick talks, the imaging equipment industry
listens. If they don’t, they should. The CEO of Carrollton,
Texas-based Nevill Imaging Solutions and new president of Kyocera
Mita America’s (KMA) Dealer Council has been in the industry for
nearly 30 years, which means he’s acquired a boatload of wisdom
from his positions at all levels of the industry. Over the course
of his career, Melnick has served as sales manager for Advanced
Imaging Systems, branch and regional high volume manager for Danka
Business Machines in Irving, Texas, and now as CEO of Nevill where
he oversees six locations in Texas, Nevill Financial Lease and
Professional Office Products in Reynosa Mexico.
Nevill has more than 100 employees and revenues between $15 and
$20 million. The company has been recognized as a Total Service
Solution provider and Kyocera’s “Diamond Premier Dealer” for 13
consecutive years and is in the top 10 largest Kyocera dealers in
the U.S.
In May, Melnick was named president of the KMA Dealer Council. The
Council represents more than 600 KMA dealers throughout the U.S.
Its primary purpose is to improve communication, develop marketing
and product planning strategies, and act as the liaison between
KMA executives and the KMA dealer channel.
In this interview Melnick talks about his work with the Council,
Nevill Imaging Solutions, and issues affecting Nevill and the rest
of the imaging solutions dealer community.
What have you as a Kyocera Mita dealer gotten out of being on
the dealer council?
Melnick: With my first role on the Council as head of the
product committee, I understand how the products are designed. As
we look to help implement changes, we know the time frame in which
we can have a positive effect on the product features and the time
frames in which we
can’t.
Reed Allan
Melnick
From a standpoint of Nevill, this has helped us move one step up
as far as being recognized in the KMA dealer community. I get to
bond with dealers nationwide; hear what’s going on, and what
they’d like to see change within KMA. I find it very interesting
all the different ways the dealerships work to get things
accomplished. Also, participating with the Dealer Council gives
you a stronger voice within KMA.
Can you give us an example of what comes up at the Dealer
Council meeting that you end up sharing with KMA executives?
Melnick: When the Council first began meeting, KMA didn’t
have any high-speed color products and the Council was pushing
Kyocera to find some type of solution. Kyocera addressed that
issue within the first six months of the Council meeting. Also,
one of the things Michael Pietrunti (President & CEO of KMA)
talked about at the most recent KMA dealer meeting was that
national accounts and retail were going to work closer together as
a team. The Council brought forth this concern to KMA and how each
group was going in their own direction. KMA saw this was an issue
and they implemented changes so that the National Account and
Retail divisions work together. Since that’s happened, it’s much
more cohesive in that everyone is working in the same direction
and the same goals to win.
Occasionally we focus on issues related to an individual
dealership, and we’re able to bring that to the attention of KMA
executives. We’ve found that all the issues we’ve brought to them
are resolved almost instantaneously. I think the Council has
helped KMA keep their finger on the pulse of what’s going on with
their dealers. KMA is truly a manufacturer that cares and supports
its dealers.
What are your responsibilities as president of the Dealer
Council?
Melnick: My direction as president is to help bring the knowledge
of all the KMA independent dealerships together and form a good
family of dealers that share best practices to make all our
dealers successful. When talking with the dealers, there are some
who are in the process of initiating a MPS program, others who are
in the middle of it, and others who just went through the whole
process. If we all talked to each other and shared information,
albeit an MPS program or any other situation, the time spent
mastering the task would be cut tremendously. Sharing best
practices reduces the learning time or the time it takes for
success.
Okay, let’s switch gears and talk about Nevill Imaging
Solutions. How’s it going?
Melnick: Our business is up about 8 percent for the first
four months of the year and profits are up 40 percent.
Why is that?
Melnick: In January the leasing companies started to free
up money and began lending again. With the stock market moving up
and the economy improving, our customers began upgrading their
equipment. The attitude is more of a ‘buy now’ instead of ‘let’s
put it off as long as we can.’ It’s ‘let’s move forward, let
technology help us improve our business practices and we’re ready
to pull that trigger.’
Also last year our sales people became stronger, more aggressive,
fought harder, and became more perceptive to the buying patterns
of our customers. As a company we designed state of the art
marketing and gave them better tools. So, with us fighting harder
and having better tools, the leasing companies lending again, and
customers buying again, the results have been truly positive.
What tools and measures did you take at Nevill to see the
company through this downturn in the economy?
Melnick: We implemented an MPS workflow. We started automating our
customers by using data capture. We began automating meter reads
to increase productivity, monitoring toner levels, and responding
to customer service alerts before the customer calls. With the MPS
strategy, we capture informative data on our present customers and
see every other Non-Nevill product they have. This is instrumental
in helping us manage our accounts and execute either a
cost-per-page program for their print devices or go to a platinum
type of toner program and improve our margins. Within the first
four months of having our Nevill Knowledge program, we are
capturing information from more than 3,000 units.
Another strategy is capturing information on the systems of
prospects with whom we are not doing business. This allows them to
actually see what volumes they are doing, what kind of service
issues they have, and whether or not their present vendor is
taking care of their needs.
We provide them real data that nobody can argue against in
assessing their needs as well as what kind of issues they are
having.
How do you convince a prospect to let you come in and do this?
Melnick: Everything is built on rapport, trust, and
relationships. It certainly doesn’t hurt having a company that has
been in business for 35 years with our reputation. We validate our
reputation with letters of recommendation and offer references. We
provide a presentation of the benefits we have done for other
customers so they see exactly what we do and how we do it as they
gain a sense of comfort and understand the Nevill value in
allowing us to capture this information.
How do you see that number of devices you’re tracking, which is
3,000 today, growing?
Melnick: By this time next year we expect to have at least
10,000 devices under Nevill Knowledge and by the second year at
least 20,000.
Have you had to work out some sort of compensation package with
your sales reps for MPS engagements that would be different from
how they are compensated for a hardware sale?
Melnick: We haven’t yet and probably won’t do anything like
that until 2011. Our sales reps understand the investment Nevill
has spent and the benefits of having a data capture and a MPS
strategy with the right proposal wizard embedded in a backend CRM.
They value the money we’re spending to give them the tools to sell
more and take care of their customer. I’ve talked to other dealers
on the KMA Dealer Council, and they compensate the reps for
putting the DCA’s out there, but we have not gone in that
direction yet.
What do you need to do to keep business moving in the right
direction?
Melnick: On the sales side, we’ve increased our attendance
and participation with more Chamber of Commerce events as well as
events that tend to have 30-70 businesses represented in order to
let the community know who we are and what we do as we discover
where they are in the buying cycle or discuss how they want to
save money. In all of our major cities, we’re working with all of
the Chamber of Commerce and we have become Gold level sponsors of
different events. In these events, we’re seeing all the people
there and finding leads at each one. We use a CRM platform that
keeps track who and when we need to call.
We’re also doing a great deal of Nevill press. We’ve recently been
named one of the Comerica Collin 60 winners, which honors us as
one of the fastest growing, privately-held companies in Collin
County for the second consecutive year.
Why is Kyocera Mita a good fit for Nevill?
Melnick: Out of all the manufacturers we’ve worked with,
Kyocera makes their dealers feel the most important. You can
communicate directly with the executives. It is important to
Michael Pietrunti that his dealers are heard. There’s really a
great level of communication between Nevill and KMA. We have other
lines that don’t make us feel as important. I can’t say I’ve ever
met the president of our other manufacturer or if I walk down the
street, he would even know who I am. How is that possible when we
spend millions of dollars a year with them?
Who are your customers?
Melnick: We really relate well to the entrepreneurial
companies who are very service driven and original like us. That’s
why, for instance on the Collin County 60, we’re doing business
with many of them. We have the same philosophies and we network
for each other. We do down- the-street business—one or two
copiers, five or six printers, and that is the area in which we
have always focused.
How has the customer changed since you first started in the
business?
Melnick: Thirty years ago when I was selling copiers, I
used to wax the outside of the copier, Armor All the lid and I’d
walk in and set it up. Before the demonstration I would ask, ‘How
does the copier look?’ They’d say, ‘The copier looks great, it’s
nice and clean.’ My immediate response was ‘Let’s go sign the
order’ because I knew when I made a copy on it, it was all over.
Back then I needed a bag of tricks because copiers really didn’t
make good copies nor did they do much else. Customers were not
educated in a lot of ways. They’d say, ‘I need a copy of this,’
and I can’t tell you how many times we’ve made the worst copy in
the world, and the customer would say, ‘That copy looks really
good.’
Today you have an educated consumer. They study the information on
the Internet whether it’s applications, needs, or all the
different copiers in their current unit’s segment. They know
exactly what they are looking for. Now the salesperson must really
qualify the opportunity, understand what the customer is looking
at and their current situation in order to help them achieve their
goals. You need to sell the service and the benefits of automating
their processes. Customers also want two-hour response times. Back
in the day, within a week they were satisfied.
For decades, being a copier person wasn’t very glamorous. Today
you have the greatest ability to go in and help an organization be
more productive. There are many options to help them reduce
operational expenses, especially on the printers, and you are
offering a great solution. It’s an adrenalin rush being able to do
that. The consumer is better educated, they want more, and you
have to help them down the path with the great solutions you have
today.
What gets you out of bed in the morning and excited about
coming to work other than talking to me?
Melnick: What gets me there is looking at that next level
of success for our organization with all the new technology. It’s
not just winning from a copier standpoint, but using technology
within the customer’s office to create a win-win situation. The
second part is mentoring the people who will continue on with our
company as they grow in their profession. I love getting out of
bed and into the office to discover what kind of opportunities we
have, how many more systems we are monitoring, and which customers
have low toner on their HPs in which we’ve never serviced before
and can now sell those supplies or put together a cost-per-page
program. It’s still exciting every single day.
Scott Cullen has been writing about the office equipment
industry for almost as long as Reed Melnick has been selling
copiers.
