(Editor’s note: While we’re on the topic of solutions I thought it would be interesting to resurrect this article I wrote for ENX magazine back in 2006. I’ve condensed it for a quicker read and will leave it up to you to draw any parallels between today and eight years ago.)
Obstacle #1: There are too many solutions to choose from. Between third party solutions providers and a manufacturer’s home-grown solutions, there’s a lot to learn not to mention understanding the pros and cons of the competitive solutions you’re selling against.
How to overcome: The best way to overcome the plethora of solutions is to focus on a select few, suggests Ray Belanger, president of Bay Copy in Rockland, MA. “Decide what you’re not going to do and pick the one or two things that you think you have the best chance to be successful with.”
Obstacle #2: You’re sales reps are so busy trying to hit your manufacturer’s hardware quota, that they don’t have time to sell a solution. “There’s a dichotomy in the channel,” says Glenn Plank service engineer for Spectrum Business Centers in Huntington Beach, CA. “They talk, talk, talk solutions, but how do they pay sales reps? On boxes sold.”
“Culturally, manufacturers talk solutions, but at the end of the day it’s how many boxes did you move?” adds Belanger. A survey from Sostilio & Associates backs up those statements. “We asked dealers if they were offering incentives for selling solutions and the answer was no,” says Bob Sostilio, president.
How to overcome: “You’re not really committed to solutions if you’re not committed to realigning the compensation to reward and compensate the sales reps for selling software and solutions,” maintains an eCopy representative (name deleted because he is no longer with the company).
Obstacle #3: IT thinks of you as a hardware vendor. As IT becomes more involved in the purchasing decision, many still think of the office equipment dealer as the guy who sells hardware and not as someone knowledgeable on the software side of the business.
How to overcome: “That’s where you need as much training as you can get so when you’re in front of them you’re talking about the total solution instead of just hardware,” says Spectrum’s Plank.
For Plank, gaining IT’s confidence means first getting your foot in the door with a copier, fax, or a printer, and then setting up simple functions such as scan-to-email or connecting the device to the network with as little involvement from IT as possible. “If you set it up perfectly and make their lives easy, now you start to gain that credibility,” says Plank.
Obstacle #4: Your customers say they don’t have the budget to invest in solutions. After buying the hardware the customer says there’s nothing left in the budget for the solution even though implementing it will save them money in the long term.
How to overcome: “One of the obstacles a lot of dealers face is that they’re so conditioned to ask what a customer has in their office equipment budget,” says eCopy. “It’s always such a price game and they’re trying to get as much equipment into that budget as they possibly can. What we’re trying to teach them is that as a general rule the IT budget in most companies is anywhere from three to ten times that of the office equipment budget. We try to educate them to go in with the software and professional services wrapped around the copier and try to attack the IT budget as well.”
Obstacle #5: Finding a champion within your account to champion the solution. You can have the concept and be good at it, but if you don’t have someone within your customer’s or prospect’s organization that is willing to go to bat to change the process to do things differently, you probably aren’t going to get too far.
How to overcome: “You need to identify early on if you have somebody like that and if they have enough clout to get something done,” suggests Belanger.
How do you identify them in the first place? “By knowing your account well, contends Belanger. “That’s one advantage [independent] dealers have over the big guys is that we can get more intimate with the account and become familiar with their different departments and what they do.”
Obstacle #6: A lack of commitment from the top of the organization. If you don’t have the top-down support, everybody underneath who wants to make the change to solutions selling is going to fail.
How to overcome: This support must include internal and external communications. Internal communications is about the transition and the benefits of the transition to the organization, what the vision is, what it’s going to do for their business in the long term and building an infrastructure for the long term to more effectively compete in the changing landscape. Also essential is ongoing promotions and recognizing personnel within the organization who are making the transition. On the external communications side it’s all about letting the customer and installed base know that the dealership is making the transition and the tangible things they’re doing to make the transition.
Obstacle #7: You don’t have the time or the money to train your sales reps to sell solutions. Some office equipment dealers have a reputation for being penny pinchers. Yes, this is a gross generalization, but there are some dealers that fit this description otherwise it wouldn’t continue to be noted again and again by manufacturers and dealers themselves.
How to overcome: Look at implementing solutions as an investment. Some dealers have found that the cost of entering the solutions business was more than they thought, but they’re happy they made the investment and have generally received a ROI in less than a year. Plus some dealers are making every bit the margin they get on the hardware side—in the 40 percent range at least—and they’re able to book out the time of their technicians at a higher rate than for copier service.
Obstacle #8: Digital solutions are missing from your showroom. “How many dealers have set up their showrooms to be a showcase for the digital solutions they’re selling?” asks Sostilio. “I’ll bet if you go to the larger dealers everyone has a digital showroom, but when you start visiting smaller dealers, it’s just hardware. There’s no networking, no monitors, nothing to demonstrate the solution capability of the product.”
How to overcome: Show me the digital showroom!
Obstacle #9: Manufacturers aren’t doing enough to train dealers to sell solutions. “Every time they launch a solution they just can’t think that the dealer is going to learn it through osmosis,” says Sostilio. “In many cases the manufacturer more or less does a brain dump.”
How to overcome: “Manufacturers need to go back to an education model and invest more in education,” contends Sostilio. He also believes manufacturers should sponsor more regional solutions seminars and encourage personnel in regional offices to train all dealers on how to use and leverage those solutions among their customer base.
Obstacle #10: The ability to conduct an onsite document management assessment. “Selling solutions requires an onsite document management assessment. A lot of sales reps don’t know how to do that,” claims Sostilio.
How to overcome: Sostilio believes the industry needs to come up with an industry standard on how to conduct a document management site survey. This should detail how the survey should be conducted, whether or not to charge for it, etc. “A lot of the larger manufacturers include it in a sale, they go out and do a site survey and then they’re able to sell a product or survey because of it and they include the survey in the final fee,” says Sostilio. “But a lot of times a smaller operation can’t afford to have someone go out and call on a customer 3-4 times and do a site survey and then come back and make a recommendation.”
