At a time in business when the sale of bread-and-butter offerings such as copiers and MFPs have been severely curtailed by COVID-induced conditions, dealers may be seeking to supplement their revenues by branching into ancillary offerings or even products that are far removed from the traditional office realm. Temperature-measuring kiosks and monitoring systems have proven to be popular bolt-ons for dealers.
But whether times are good or challenging, a methodical approach is prudent to ensuring your dealership can annex an offering with a minimum of equity expended—including time and energy—and can be applied across a substantial portion of your client roster. Melissa Confalone, vice president of sales for Fraser Advanced Information Systems of West Reading, Pennsylvania, believes a strategic plan needs to address the following points:
- Identify your target market
- Know what current clients may be able to take advantage of the offering
- Know the market for new clients for the offering
- Thoroughly know the problem you’re solving for businesses
- Know if your competition has something similar or the same offering
- Know how you’re going to generate revenue and gross profit
- Make sure your marketing and sales messaging are aligned
- Review your plan in three to six months to see your successes and to evaluate any changes you need to make to make the offering successful
“When offering a new product or service, you have to know what your goal is first and foremost,” Confalone said. “Are you looking for client acquisition? Is it specifically revenue and gross profit for the product you’re seeking? With any new offering, you have to lay out your strategic plan.”
Managed network services has proven to be somewhat elusive for Woodhull LLC, based in Springboro, Ohio. CEO Susie Woodhull notes the company has been frustrated in its attempts over the last two years to acquire a specialized company to fold within her own. The dealer recently hired a director of operations with extensive experience on the service side, and may well forge its own path to developing MNS competency.
One newer area in which the firm has enjoyed success is with commercial imaging. While the margins are somewhat lower, Woodhull points out the dealership found fertile ground in dealing with court systems and municipalities for scanning of historical documents.
“We found, even though the margins are lower, that we can get a lot of quantity,” she said. “In the case of municipalities and court systems, they’re required by law to have all their files available to the public. It gets to the point where it’s unmanageable in hard copy form, so they want to scan it and have it available for people to search. It’s a service play and (the customer) ends up with a disc or whatever format they want the scanned documents in.”
Brad Yocum, market director for Function4 of Sugar Land, Texas, points out that his dealership had previously made strategic investments in areas such as software-as-a-service, MNS and VoIP/unified communications prior to the pandemic. Although any addition can be taxing on resources at the onset, he prefers to take a longer view of the investment.
“We want to find those areas where the additional offerings are valuable,” he said. “Adding products and offerings that we have never done before can strain resources and provide bad experiences for customers. We believe this is a temporary disruption and want to be relevant far into the future.”
When the pandemic hit, Pulse Technology President and CEO Chip Miceli huddled with his team to take a deeper look at some of the offerings that had been shelved because it was busy with IT service and other business. That opened the door for document management solutions and VoIP, which really took off after businesses were sent home.
COVID-19 provided multiple opportunities for the dealer to explore. “In our Indiana location, we made a push for hand sanitizer and teamed up with a distillery in Michigan to help us produce the product,” Miceli said. “In tandem with that, we have ramped up sales of masks, wipes, seal guards and products that will keep businesses in business. Other products that caught on include face-recognition products and thermo-scan products to take temperatures.”
Another tack a dealership can take is to identify new vertical markets that can provide opportunities. For years, Bay Copy of Rockland, Massachusetts, has focused on two markets, health care and education, that were dramatically impacted by the pandemic. According to CEO Ray Belanger, Bay Copy is looking to expand its work in the financial industry with both banks and credit unions.
“We utilize our sales team and also engage through a variety of means, including email blasts, direct mail where appropriate, and some visibility through other marketing strategies,” he said.
