A Conversation with JD Sullivan, President of Image Matters
JD Sullivan – Image Matters
Founded in 1999, Image Matters is an office technology dealership based in Knoxville, TN. The dealership and its 36 employees serve a diverse customer base, providing technology from Konica Minolta, Sharp, and Muratec as well as MPS and commercial print and copy retail services. It’s a small business that makes a big difference in its customer’s operations. Recently I had the opportunity to speak with President JD Sullivan about the company, its success in MPS, and the industry.
How’s business?
Sullivan: Good, we’re continuing to grow, continuing to move forward.
What are you doing right?
Sullivan: The continued growth of managed print. Our structure is built around a managed print model; we transitioned out of a traditional office technology model and we’ve been extremely successful.
I’m curious, how’d you get into this business?
Sullivan: I graduated from the University of Tennessee in 1995 and went into retail management and was working in retail here [in Knoxville]. I had forgotten to take my résumé out of the UT career center and this guy named Bob Lovelace called me and asked if I’d be interested in outside sales. I had no interest, but I ended up going to work for Bob at a small office equipment dealership here and four years later he and I started Image Matters. I just kind of fell into it; I don’t think anybody gets into this business intentionally.
Tell me about Imagelink, your branded MPS program.
Sullivan: In 2007 we had clients asking us to service products for them. As you know traditional philosophy stated that we don’t service anything that we aren’t authorized to sell or can’t sell. If we can’t make GP on the sale we’re not going to service it. Then Bob and I came to the realization that was stupid, as people were asking to pay us to service a product that is much more simplified than what we currently do. So we started dabbling in it, and by 2008 we realized it was a model we could adapt. We just had to be committed to changing the way we think.
Tell me about that commitment.
Sullivan: That commitment piece is key and that’s why so many dealers fail. They just want to stick a toe in the water, but you’d better get scuba gear because you really have to jump into it. We committed time, we committed resources, and we created a team culture. All 35 of my employees can tell you about our managed print services program in detail, what it is, how it works. That’s what we’ve built our business around. When the economy started to fail people stopped buying office equipment, but they wanted to keep things going so we just ramped up managed print at that time. We launched our print shop around that time as well.
For us, that’s where we see Image Matters continuing to grow. Don’t get me wrong, we sell a lot of copiers—that’s our foundation, and our customer service model is built on that office technology platform. But we will walk by your copiers to help you with your printers because your printers are costing you more and we can be of better service to you by facilitating that printer.
Where are you finding opportunities for MPS?
Sullivan: We’re actually finding more outside of our base. I feel we need to do a better job of providing this opportunity to our clients. Our large MPS clients were not clients before. We don’t service the MFPs of our largest MPS clients, we just service their printers.
How did you hook up with these clients in the first place?
Sullivan: All of my sales team lead with managed print. I have six managed print specialists that also sell copiers. It’s a more technological sale, there are no speeds and feeds, there’s no demo. Dinosaurs like me can sell boxes, but these kids, and when I say kids, my oldest sales rep is 27 years old. Our reps range in age from 23 to 27 and every one of them can load a DCS, every one of them can log into a server, and every one of them can remote into a client site.
We didn’t teach them, they just know that; they’ve grown up in this technology world. What we think of copier sales is a big deal, but to them it’s just doing business. On the other hand, they don’t know what we know because they don’t have that tried and true sales call, cold calls to appointments, appointments to demos, and demos to sales [experience]. You’ll hear a lot of older dealers say, “That’s the way it’s always been; it’s never going to change.”
We didn’t teach them those steps so when they approach a decision maker who already has the script to keep the copier salesperson out of the building, the decision maker doesn’t have a script for a managed print specialist. They’re interested because they don’t know what they’re spending. They don’t know their toner costs, they don’t know their volumes, and that’s what my reps focus on. We’re not talking about their copiers. That’s not our focus. We want to speak to them about their 65 printers not their three copy machines. Our sales reps go after the fleet and their comp plan is built around service contracts.
How did everyone in your company acquire the knowledge to speak intelligently about MPS?
Sullivan: Bob and I are active owners. We’re here every day and we sell every day. We just have an open dialog. We are so passionate about the managed print space and that’s what we talk about. We enjoy it. It’s exciting and that excitement spreads through the company. We’re growing 12-15 percent for equipment sales, but have 600-1,000 percent growth in managed print. When our employees see what’s going on, they have to be involved because a down printer is different than a down copier. It has to be addressed differently, the protocol is different, the replacement methodology is different, and they all have to understand that, from the delivery team to the front office billing team. It’s a much more fluid process so everybody must be involved.
Who do you find yourself competing with on the MPS side of things?
Sullivan: There are very few people we compete with on a regular basis simply because there’s so little commitment and so much fear of the managed print space. Our close rate on competitive deals is about 95 percent because we service every make and model known to man.
Most dealers when they first do MPS want to go in and refresh somebody’s entire fleet. But at the end of the day they’re still dropping boxes. We truly do not care if we ever sell them a printer. And if they want to buy a printer from us they can. If not, give us a call and we’ll let you know about a unit with a low CPP and you can buy that from anywhere you like. That’s where we differentiate ourselves. We have always implemented into our program what’s best for the client. It may not always be profitable for the dealer; I’m not going to sell 100 printers that I could have probably sold. If they have a great printer in place and I know it’s a great printer, I’m not going to replace it, I’m just going to service it.
How do you differentiate yourself in your market whether it’s for MPS or for just the hardware sales?
Sullivan: We’re the only dealer in our area that focuses heavily on managed print and the only dealer with a print shop. We have a dedicated team of people and a dedicated person in my building that watches four huge screens all day long and monitors our PrintFleet servers and does real-time monitoring of supplies. A just-in-time program only works when you have someone that watches that program. That’s what Jenny, our dedicated person does, and she interacts with every managed print client on a one-on-one basis. If you have an office equipment call it goes into our customer service center for MFPs, if it’s a printer call and comes in over the phone it goes directly to our MPS advisor. She works with them so it’s almost like they have a personal concierge.
What’s the biggest challenge facing your dealership?
Sullivan: We have two. The first is to continue to maintain the rapid pace of growth and level of services and keep those consistent. The second is to fully launch a managed network offering in 2014. Anytime we launch a new product we take it to our best clients so over the next year we’ll be running our betas and getting feedback from key clients. We’ve got to make sure we stay diligent in that process as we learn this new business.
What are your expectations when it comes to growth in the next two to three years?
Sullivan: We’re at $6 million now, we’ll be happy with 12 percent a year, but anticipate it to be more like 20-25 percent a year.
What’s it going to take to do that?
Sullivan: Commitment and buy in from the Image Matters family because when everybody believes in the processes it just naturally progresses forward.
What’s the best thing about your job?
Sullivan: Realizing that you’ve built so many friendships and relationships through the process of providing for your family. Another is just coming into this office every day. That’s the best part, being able to come in and interact every day and keeping busy.
If you weren’t doing this, what do you think you’d be doing instead?
Sullivan: I’d probably be on the beach surfing somewhere, I don’t know if I’d have a job or not, but I’d be happy when the sun came up.
