When an office technology dealer takes time out of his/her busy schedule to attend a peer group meeting, the content of presentations and discussions must yield tangible benefits/insights that can be leveraged back at the home office. The time and expense involved dictate as much.
Fortunately, those who come armed with questions on a given topic and are willing to (in return) share their wisdom with fellow members invariably reap a strong return on the investment. In this week’s edition of our State of the Industry report on peer groups, our dealer panel discusses some of the most valued talking points that have benefitted them, and other members, the most.
Carter Hertzberg acknowledges having frank conversations regarding a dealer’s pain points can be a difficult ask. That’s why the president of Nauticon Office Solutions in Gaithersburg, Maryland, believes the smaller breakout groups held by Select Dealer Group (SDG) are particularly impactful. SDG has a subgroup called “sharing” that de-classifies those dealers who are willing to make their financials known to the rest of the sharing group.
These sessions cover a wide scope of topics, from best hiring practices to prospecting strategies and traversing macroeconomic influences such as supply chain or leasing rates. The net result for participants is actionable feedback, according to Hertzberg.
“This candid sharing has allowed many dealers to hone in on their specific issues without being veiled or overly general,” he said. “This has helped those who lean into the sharing to grow concerning the issues in which they are struggling.”
Some of the best takeaways gleaned by Dan Strull, CEO of GoodSuite in Woodland Hills, California, include diversification opportunities and the best utilization of technologies. Fellow PRO Dealer Group members have pointed out impactful integrated software for finance, marketing and service.
“We’ve grown a lot in the IT space, and we realize that it is important to be our own biggest client,” he said. “We’ve been getting better every day in having our systems, like e-automate and our CRM, talk to each other, which helps us make fewer mistakes. That frees our people up to do other things, which has been critical.”
Work on Business
What Jim George, president of Cincinnati-based Donnellon McCarthy Enterprises, sees as being particularly beneficial to membership in the Independent Copier Dealer Alliance (ICDA) as well as PDG, is that it allows smaller dealers to step away from their day-to-day operations and focus on improving it. Business practices can be difficult to change, especially when a dealer principal is constantly cloistered and not exposed to ideas and strategies that can yield process improvements.
“One of the best things we gleaned was the ecommerce piece and the platform we have launched,” George said. “It’s something I wouldn’t have thought to do even just two years ago, and now we have an ecommerce platform with several different categories on our website.”
As a member of American Co-Op Group, Joe Blatchford—CEO of Image 2000 in Valencia, California—notes that a lion’s share of topics are related to Sharp, as a vast majority of execs carry the line. Conversations also tend to skew heavily toward managed network services, to the point where it accounts for a majority of member businesses.
“There’s a lot of good information coming from members with significant network operations centers, and they share the ‘dos and don’ts’ of what it takes to be successful with managed IT,” Blatchford said. “There are a lot of topics we’ve discussed that are really outside the copier world that have been helpful to members.”
