At the end of September I attended the first day of BTA East in Baltimore. The keynote speaker was Senior Vice President of Samsung’s Enterprise Business Division, Tod Pike. His address on why dealers are great and seven ways they can remain great, particularly when competing head to head against the OEMs, was memorable and timeless. If you missed it, I’m going to do my best to summarize.
I don’t think Pike surprised anybody with his list of why dealers are great, but it’s nice to receive that validation every once in a while. To recap, dealers offer better service, provide the best of breed in terms of hardware and software as a means of differentiation, they’re local and a certain number of customers will buy from them for that reason alone, they’re adaptable and can react to changes and shifts in the marketplace in a way that no national organization can, and they’ve got good, tenured people who aren’t being shifted all around the country as they might be if working for a national organization.
Pike’s example of how an independent dealer provides better service than a national organization played right to the dealer audience. “If there are two customers who call their vendor on a Friday afternoon and need a machine moved on a Sunday and one calls a BTA dealer and the other calls a manufacturer, two different outcomes happen. In the case of the BTA dealer, that machine gets moved on Sunday, in the other case, a form gets filled out on Monday.”
Now let’s take a look at Pike’s take on what it’s going to take for dealers to stay great.
Be committed to the things you do well – “Be committed to the things you do well and display it, sell it, and promote it,” he said. “Emphasize your current greatness. This is where the OEM is going to lose most [of the time].”
Managed Print Services – “The competitive landscape is changing, there is a share of wallet opportunity, new accounts, why wouldn’t you want to sell A4 along with A3 and overall supplies and services and go after that business?” asked Pike rhetorically. He added that this is an excellent way to pursue new accounts even if you have no chance to sell them copier-based products. “Sell anything to get a foot in the door. It’s not difficult to get into managed print. It paves the road and once you’re a services provider, and once you get that print down, it gives you an opportunity to grow other services.”
Managed Imaging Services – “Be VAR like and provide services customers want in terms of system integration and other capabilities,” recommended Pike. His reasons for doing this are many, including share of wallet, declining hardware sales, diversification, differentiation from the manufacturer, and to offset competition from IT resellers and VARs who are going into a dealer’s accounts and devaluing print.
Be trendy – Pike served up seven opportunities to be trendy and all seven revolve around bringing in young people into the organization who understand new technology, trends, and ways to communicate with the customer. Those seven items on his list included the cloud; the environment (sustainability, saving paper, saving energy); mobility; vertical (talking to customers in languages they’re familiar with rather than taking a horizontal approach); BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) or what Samsung feels is going to be more prevalent, CYOD (Choose Your Own Device); the virtual office (Pike noted there aren’t companies Samsung is talking to now that aren’t talking about downsizing real estate); and security. “These are the seven things you need to be expert on and you need to hire people who are experts or train people to be experts,” emphasized Pike.
The impact of mobility on printing – “There are offices now that are 100 percent wireless,” noted Pike. “The ability to print in a facility from anyplace any time is just the way it is, and the ability to sell that solution into that market takes a different skill set.”
The shift inside – “The way customers are buying has changed so dramatically,” noted Pike. “What happens now, and it depends on the size of the organization you’re calling on, the IT buyer they’ll get three phone calls from vendors, and when they get three calls on the same subject that they’re not familiar and it’s called managed print services, they don’t call those people back,” said Pike. “They’re not interested in people who call them. “They’ll go to Websites and get information about a subject they’re newly interested in and that’s what initiates the process.”
Because of this shift he feels it’s more cost effective to have inside sales reps to contend with this shift. He recommended a strong Website and aligning with a manufacturer on your Website. “You’ve got to get leads because they’re not coming to your Website, but once they start to evaluate you they will,” he explained. “The Website will not necessarily be demand generation, but credibility—the price tag you’re going to need to pay in order to get consideration to move forward.
Integral to responding to the ‘shift inside’ is taking advantage of social media and social selling. “All your sales force ought to be on LinkedIn,” said Pike. “Train your sales force on what you can or can’t do on LinkedIn. There’s this whole opportunity with social selling.”
CRM is another component that’s important for dealers to leverage with this new breed of buyer. Pike suggested that there needs to be an ongoing relationship with a CRM system that you’re comfortable with. He further emphasized that decision makers aren’t going to the dealer’s Website. “They’re going to the manufacturer’s Website,” said Pike. “And if they’re in your geography, what they do with that information is of great importance to you. If I were in meetings with my manufacturers those are the type of fundamental things I’d be talking to them about.”
It’s about sharing leads and figuring out how to get at that business. “More and more future demand generation is going to come through those relationships,” stated Pike. “Manufacturers have a great responsibility to help the dealer channel with these issues as well.”
Power disruption – “Evolution is necessary, the enterprise office today is changing swiftly and dramatically and what are dealers going to do about it,” asked Pike. “Device management, document management some of you have gotten good at; it’s more complex but makes sense and is a good revenue producer.”
The game changer, he added, is output management (i.e., Papercut, Pharos, Equitrac) and enterprise integration. “It’s a game changer for some of the features associated with output management, such as job routing, but fundamentally the ability to take your employee badge and go anywhere in the organization, scan your badge, then decide what you want to do, what you don’t want, and have management track that; it’s a game changer, because you don’t need copier-based technology in every workgroup anymore.”
When Pike said, “power disruption,” he added that dealers need to target competitive installations that are similarly configured with an aggressive proposal as to how they’re going to save that customer money through a combination of a better array of hardware along with output management software that drives a better configuration for the customer. “Some manufacturers can do this, but in a local market it’s an opportunity for you to power that disruption,” noted Pike.
Size Matters/Partnerships – “You’re competing with the manufacturers who are big, and you need to show you’re big enough to support them,” explained Pike. “There’s a certain threshold of size where it’s impossible [to do that]. I think $5 million is fine for some locations, but $10 million may not be big enough in some urban areas. There has to be size so you can amortize the expense that you made and investment you made in supporting all these other things I talked about in order to counteract [larger competition, i.e., national organizations]. What that means are mergers and acquisitions and making sure you’ve gotten yourself to a size that you think is sustainable.”
