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If you talk
to the managed print services pundits, few dealers are doing
it effectively, although you can bet the house that number
will grow over time with education and experience. Industry
estimates of how many dealers are offering managed print
services are in the 25-30 percent range although no concrete
figures exist on how many are truly doing it effectively. “The only way this can be successful is by attaching it to their comp plan,” opines Mawby. “They’ve got to see it as almost a punishment. If they don’t see activity in their territory, they’re going to lose the right [to sell it]. That’s how we did it with color. We let them taste it for awhile and then said, ‘If you don’t sell it, you’re going to lose the right.’” Finding an MPS champion among a dealership’s existing sales force is not always easy and dealer principles that have been able to do that should consider themselves fortunate. “Having dealt with a lot of successful hybrid resellers—guys who have transitioned to this model and been successful with it—there’s pretty unanimous agreement when you ask how many of your sales guys are going to transition to MPS sales guys. The consistent answer is, if one in ten turns into a good MPS sales guy, you did pretty well,” says Ed Crowley, CEO of Photizo Group. As far as Crowley is considered, it takes one MPS consultant per dealership or one per branch if a dealer has multiple branches. “Start out with one guy who can be successful,” he recommends. “Once you have one who is successful, it’s going to do a couple of things for you; it’s going to show you who else in your organization can say, ‘Yes I can do that too,’ the other thing it does is let you manage your investment. You’re not trying to churn the whole sales force all at once.” There will be mistakes along the way and dealers who have successfully made the transition have certainly made their share. One of the most common is thinking because someone is successful selling hardware they can be successful selling services too. “They’ve got a guy busting it out on hardware sales and he’s a great producer so they think he’s going to be great at selling this and they find nine times out of ten they’re not,” notes Crowley. It’s a very different set of skills. It’s almost a warning flag. If they’re really good at selling hardware or transactional sales, they may not be so good at selling services. That’s probably the biggest mistake, taking their best sales guy and putting them into this role.” Crowley acknowledges he’s speaking generally and some dealer principles, like Mawby, have been able to do just that. He also feels that an MPS consultant needs to have a certain kind of attitude. “Look for the missionaries who really like to make the customer’s business better and that makes them happy more than just getting the deal,” states Crowley. “Surprisingly most resellers I talk to will find one person on their staff who can do it. Often times it’s a younger person not as set in their ways. In some cases to really build up the momentum they’re going to have to hire from the outside.” Crowley says when hiring from the outside look for people who have been successful in a relationship-type sales model or someone in a services business. “You can teach basic sales skills,” contends Crowley. “It’s a little harder to teach relationship building. Look for people with strong relationship-building skills, and then you’ll need to train them. Obviously you have to look at the gamut, understanding services, understanding technology, understanding the sales model; there’s sales training associated with each one of those, you’ll need to tailor it to what your sales force needs.” And where are those people? “All over the place,” says Crowley. “Some have been in everything from finance companies to banking organizations—high service, customer relationship types of organizations. Some have come from clients. I know dealers who have found people who are good at internal client relationship building. They manage to bring them out of the client and put them into that role. They’re out there, and more so than ever because of the economic situation.” Joe Barganier, an MPS consultant with MT Business Technologies in Mansfield, Ohio, and president of the Managed Print Services Association (MPSA), knows a thing or two about managed print services. He’s a strong advocate of bringing in an MPS specialist. Using Barganier’s rule of thumb, the magic number is one MPS specialist to every 10 sales reps. However, he acknowledges that a lot of the industry emphasis on MPS doesn’t necessarily fit the business model of the sub-$10 million dealer. “If you’re a copier dealer that doesn’t have 10 reps, and only have one, you’ve got problems,” opines Barganier. “When you bring on a new offering or two or focus in different areas like MPS you have to dedicate a body. If you only have six guys, you still have to get that one because none of the six you have are going to go after it, nor can you afford to retrain them if they’re successful and have them get out of their productivity mode to pursue something new. That’s core and we all try to go around it because that’s painful.” Barganier recommends finding someone with a printer background, preferably non HP, which coincidentally happens to be the background of many of the current MPS consultants plying their trade in the industry. He’s seen a lot of ex Lexmark and ex QMS people who have been in the field competing against HP, selling network printers, selling network printing strategies, and selling printing strategies enter the business. “They have a natural tendency to pick up managed print,” he says. He also agrees with Crowley that sometimes it’s an individual with a good head for business, who may not have any experience in the printer or office technology industry selling hardware. “In my
organization two of our best guys came from outside of the
industry,” states Barganier. One ran a logistics company and
the other came out of an auto dealership doing finance type
work. Both of those guys took to it like a duck to water.” “It didn’t surprise me that these people could be good at that; what surprised me was, being a printer geek, how with the support of a champion they could adapt to it so quickly.” Tom Callinan, president of Strategy Development, has long been an advocate of hiring dedicated MPS specialists to do the MPS dirty work. “A, they absolutely must have specialists, but the number one thing is commitment. The first area you see MPS fail is when senior management isn’t engaged. Top level management driving the program is what makes it successful.” He too acknowledges that traditional copier sales reps aren’t likely to go that extra mile to sell MPS. “I call it economic comfort level,” says Callinan. “You have one rep, he wants to make his $70 grand a year, another wants to make $90 grand, another $150 grand. Guess what they do to make their $70, $90, or $150 grand? The least possible. So they do what they’re comfortable with—sell segment three copiers. For years we’ve been trying to get them to sell content management or software, or whatever, but they keep selling the same devices because they can make their economic comfort level doing that. Until they can’t make their economic comfort level, they’re not going to adapt new things and MPS is new.” Callinan underscores some of the earlier comments by noting another reason you need MPS specialists is because the copier rep is paying the bills. “He’s out selling copiers,” says Callinan. “He pays for the admin and the owner’s salary, so the last thing you want to do is stop that guy from selling copiers. That’s why you hire specialists—it’s less of a cash flow hit than trying to transform your copier guys.” He doesn’t believe it’s necessary for the copier rep to be part of the MPS sale either. “There are two types of sales,” notes Callinan. “The copier is a replacement, fairly commoditized sale. One thing about selling, the more the risk, the higher the level the decision is made. Buying a copier is not a high risk decision, therefore it’s a very low-level decision maker. Moving to MPS and outsourcing your processes is a higher risk than a normal sale which means you’re dealing with a different decision maker, usually IT or a senior level manager versus purchasing or facilities.” The challenge Callinan sees through his consulting and educational sessions is that many dealers, including those reading this article, will continue to make mistakes when trying to figure out how many people in their organization can sell MPS. As he points out, his organization and others can help dealers minimize mistakes and accelerate the time involved in making the transition to an MPS sales model, but still some clients feel they can take the basic template and tweak it to their liking. “Some will take our template, go back to their dealership, and before they’ve sold their first MPS deal, they [think] they’re experts and start tweaking the process,” reveals Callinan. “‘I don’t like this, I’m going to do it this way,’ and before you know it, what started out as an orange becomes an apple.” Going back to the original question of how many dealers does it take to sell MPS, the general consensus is one—and that person is an MPS specialist, not a successful copier sales rep turned MPS specialist. Of course there are exceptions to the rule, but let’s go with that answer for now. Scott Cullen has been writing about office technology and dealer issues since 1986 |
How
Many Dealers Does It Take To Sell MPS?