Andy Slawetsky
When Andy Slawetsky, president of Industry Analysts peers into his crystal ball for the coming year what he sees is a continued shift towards A4 products. “They’ve really ramped up in capability and robustness and have become a great alternative to A3 which is making it considerably more challenging for our channel. Nobody uses A3 paper anymore, nobody uses ledger, so where’s the hook and how do you stay viable in this business?”
Slawetsky has a lot of questions, but he also has answers for dealers looking to remain relevant amidst the A4 trend. “Go to your service capabilities and your product comparisons. As much as we like to say the machines are all the same, they’re really not. Manufacturers put considerable R&D into their user interfaces and the machines do way more now than they ever have. It’s getting back to basics in some respects. There’s still room for ‘My machine is better and here’s why.’”
He also believes dealers can remain relevant by focusing on educating customers about how they can remove steps from the customer’s processes and making them more efficient. “We’ve been so focused on solutions and everybody is trying to push those so hard, dealers and resellers have gotten away from traditional selling practices,” states Slawetsky.
As far as challenges in the coming year one that jumps out at Slawetsky is the fact that companies are printing less or at least trying to print less. That will likely cause some disruption in the channel from other competitors and their new business models. “We’ve heard that there are VARs out there using seat licenses—‘print all you want, we’ll help you print less, and we’ll just charge you for the number of people you have printing and print as much as you need to,’” reports Slawetsky. “There are other types of programs like that will be a challenge for the traditional dealer to work with because how do you sell against that?”
Also key for dealers and resellers is the need to focus on more services. Slawetsky specifically points out Konica Minolta’s All Covered program, which has been successful and well received as well as Ricoh’s CHAMPS program. “These are things manufacturers are doing to help their dealers be more competitive and grab other business,” notes Slawetsky.
Another area where some manufacturers are helping their dealers broaden their focus is in display technology. That, Slawetsky believes, has the potential to be big. Sharp has been touting it for a few years now, Samsung is playing there too, and now Toshiba is making inroads there as well. “It’s all about finding complementary services to help you remain a relevant supplier to your customers,” opines Slawetsky. “You can’t just be a copier/printer company anymore.”
In the meantime, Industry Analysts has some initiatives in the coming year to help its clients be successful. Expect to see an enhanced focus on new-hire training programs for new sales reps. “We’re trying to work with the manufacturers to either do their co-op program or integrate some of our training with what they’re doing,” reports Slawetsky.
Industry Analysts started their brand-agnostic training program about three months ago and so far it’s been going great. It addresses the high turnover rate among industry sales reps, especially young reps.
“The turnover in this industry is just as crazy as it’s ever been,” observes Slawetsky. “Dealers have two ways to go, either hire somebody with industry experience or hire somebody that’s brand new and unmolded. That’s the guy we want. We teach them what it means to be a copier rep, how to cold call, the acronyms in the industry, what’s gross profit, how to do demos, pre-closing, CRM, and what kind of information you need from a customer to start building a database to make sure you’re an option for that customer.”
