As we bid adieu to this month’s State of the Industry focus on achieving vertical market excellence and visibility, we queried our esteemed dealer panel on their forward-looking plans to ensure they are garnering increased mind share among the various markets, and perhaps opening the door to untapped segments.
For Advanced Imaging Solutions of Las Vegas, the plan is to emulate its 2020 approach throughout this year, with the additional focus on vertical marketing, notes Jeff Miller, vice president of sales. This will further underscore the dealer’s standing as a thought leader while increasing search visibility.
“Due to customers becoming more demanding for online content, we are currently looking at developing our content marketing strategy further with more vertical-specific content—both written and video—making customers aware of our business and brand while becoming more discoverable online,” Miller said.
Mindful of the notion that “generalists get commoditized” and that it takes an expert in a given vertical to solve specific problems for specific markets, Cincinnati-based Prosource plans to burrow deeper into the verticals it serves, according to President and CEO Brad Cates.
“We intend to increase our knowledge and know-how in specific markets such as health care and education but also continue to develop and roll out specific solutions and critical business applications across all three areas of our business,” Cates said.
“It could be associated with our managed print services offering and moving information through a hospital,” he added. “Or it’s in our document automation and content management business where we are automating and digitizing critical processes in a hospital, bank, or manufacturing environment, or it’s in managed IT services, where we’re taking our cybersecurity expertise to specific markets.”
At Offix of Gainesville, Virginia, the dealer will look to bolster its standing within both the education and health care spaces. On the latter count, Offix is working with Canon to promote the group purchasing organization agreement with Premier, a health care improvement company. According to Matteo Recanatini, Offix marketing director, membership is able to sign on for free and receive beneficial terms and conditions when they purchase Canon equipment. Members can enjoy pre-negotiated prices for the lease, maintenance and actual cost of the hardware.
As for the education front, Recanatini expects a flurry of opportunities to present themselves in the not-too-distant future. “We’re waiting with bated breath for that to reopen, because we know there’s going to be quite a bit of pent-up demand,” he said. “Hopefully, Q4 of 2021 will be the time to start opening up our activities. We have a few things up our sleeve, a couple of plans that are very aggressive.”
Alex Kusters, sales manager and partner with Impact Networking of Lake Forest, Illinois, notes the firm’s leadership development team—Impact Leadership Institute—has done a phenomenal job of creating and delivering vertical market-specific training to its sales force, focused on classroom education, role-playing and practical application.
“The investment Impact has made in the internal growth of our employees using multichannel engagement and adult learning theory have really allowed our frontline account managers to serve as subject matter experts and thought leaders in all of the vertical markets we serve,” Kusters added.
