The New York metropolitan area is a copier dealers dream with an amazing amount of business and potential business squeezed into a small footprint. It’s also one of the most competitive markets in the United States with a host of large, successful dealerships and manufacturer direct branches slugging it out on a daily basis. One of the independents who seems to be doing a fine job in this market—especially if $70 million in yearly revenues is indicative of a fine job—is TGI Office Automation in Brooklyn, NY. Led by CEO Frank Grasso, the company has done a terrific job selling Toshiba, Lanier, Ricoh, Kyocera, HP, Riso, and KIP devices as well as mailing systems, document management, managed print services as well as security and compliance and scanning and mobile print solutions.
Recently, I sat down with Grasso to talk about the business, the challenges of competing in a major metropolitan market, MPS, his tenure in the industry, and how TGI has become such a successful business.
How’d last year turn out for TGI?
Grasso: It was a notable year. We had the highest revenue year in company history and were named top dealer nationwide for Lanier and Toshiba. We also expanded into New Jersey with an additional distribution center. We now have a new Website and we’re celebrating our 50th anniversary in 2014.
What were TGI’s biggest accomplishments of 2013?
Grasso: Increased attention/penetration in the healthcare market, affiliation with GPO’s, securing a contract for a large healthcare provider in the New York Metropolitan area. We implemented 700 multifunction devices at their 4 hospitals and 20 satellite offices.
You mentioned expansion into New Jersey and the recent opening of a warehouse in West Caldwell, NJ, what was the motivation for that?
Grasso: To better serve our customers nationwide, quicker product delivery, streamlining order fulfillment, improving parts distribution to our field service organization, and to fully leverage our distribution capacity and enhance our value proposition in the New Jersey market.
I know you do a great job of taking care of your customers plus you’ve got a VIP Client Program, which sounds interesting. Tell me more about that.
Grasso: Paramount to our almost 50 years of success has been the relationships we build with each of our clients. In order to properly maintain these crucial relationships, we need the support of our trusted partners. We are a very influential partner due to our success. What that means to our clients is that TGI can provide the most competitive value in the marketplace along with undeniable support all backed by global leaders in the industry. The difference being that we can do it with the agility and personal touch of a family owned business.
Our VIP Client Program attracts large corporate and governmental organizations by offering customized solutions as unique as the institutions we serve. We offer all VIP Accounts:
o Customer Call Center (includes software and application level support) to relieve overburdened internal corporate IT help desks
o Custom Built Services Portals making it easy to gather equipment fleet and contract related information
o A diverse portfolio of products that meet the specific needs of the large organization
o Flexible, customizable finance options
o Standardized pricing and contract terms for all locations nationwide
o Centralized, customizable account management/usage/financial reporting
o Customized and specialized billing
o Expertly planned and managed implementation strategies based on best practices and 50+ years of experience
You’ve got clients nationwide, what’s the biggest challenge of serving a nationwide customer base?
Grasso: Working with the manufacturers to get product delivered in a timely manner.
You’re based in a major metropolitan area and you’ve got some serious competition not only from other independents but the manufacturers, how do you set yourself apart from that competition?
Grasso: We have trained our salespeople to have impactful business conversations with our customers and prospects. TGI has matured to become an indispensable business partner by providing our clients with solutions to their most pressing business problems. We have identified through our experiences that most companies are looking for guidance on issues such as increasing efficiency, improving security, lowering their environmental impact and becoming more profitable. By implementing strategies within our 6 value propositions, TGI can help our customers realize a significant, positive impact to their bottom line. We believe that by developing this partnership along with adapting to the latest technology on the market TGI will continue to see growth.
Your MPS program, GPS(Green Print Saves), is growing like crazy, which you attribute to a more prepared and better educated sales force with a more compelling story to tell about how MPS can impact a company’s bottom line. What steps did you take to prepare and better educate your sales force?
Grasso: We created a simple straightforward talk track written from the point of view of our clients, which the reps can use to create a business conversation. We provide the same great benefits as most MPS programs; however, we add a completely new stage to our GPS offering, business process improvement strategies, which are aimed at lowering overall print output and further lowering costs. We have also crystallized our success stories and published them for our reps to use when talking about our GPs program. We also developed GPS Light which is meant to help organizations with smaller fleets gain the benefit of lowering costs and improving efficiency.
How soon after doing that did you start to notice a difference in MPS engagements?
Grasso: Almost immediately.
You’ve enhanced your Website to make it easier for customers to engage with your products and services. What can they do now that they couldn’t before?
Grasso: The biggest change was in the way we tailored the Web experience. Current and future clients can come to our site and get an experience centered not on selling a product but on educating the client on how to improve their businesses processes. We also improved accessibility by adding a mobile site. We reduced the number of clicks required to do things like order supplies, request service and get live support and we’ve built the site to increase our SEO. We also added information features such as community involvement, events, press, etc.
Are you doing anything special to encourage customers to visit your Website?
Grasso: New interactive tools like our Business Application Center helps visitors understand the latest features of a multifunction device. Countless individuals and an increasing number of businesses have embraced the latest smartphone and tablet technology because the platform enables you to download thousands of apps to make your life easier and more fun. We urge the visitor to imagine that they could do the same thing with their multifunctional copier. We also focus on providing valuable business information, positioning ourselves as a trusted partner.
And we’re having success with e-mail marketing campaigns and landing pages that will direct people to the site as well as using social media.
What enhancements are you making to your programs and services and to make TGI even better in 2014?
Grasso: We have been attracting talented individuals to help our organization continually improve the customer experience and we are offering more services from disaster recovery, cloud based storage, and managed services.
You’ve been doing this for how many years now?
Grasso: I’m 42 and I’ve been in this business for 40 years…straight out of diapers. I have had almost every position in the company; I started when I was a kid shipping out packages. I felt I learned the most in this business in the role of service dispatcher.
What’s the best thing about running an office technology dealership?
Grasso: Never a dull moment.
What’s the most challenging thing?
Grasso: Staying ahead of the curve, constantly keeping up with the latest advances in technology and finding the proper balance in life.
What do you do to relax?
Grasso: I go boating with my family.
What’s the one thing you know today about this business that you wish you knew when you first started?
Grasso: Go back to the accounts that you’ve lost to the competition in the past; more times than not you will find that the current provider has not overachieved the customers’ expectations and they are willing to give you another chance to compete for their business.
