In a recent review of over 35 dealerships that had engaged my team over some time, we analyzed the strengths and weaknesses in association to their ability to drive successful MPS sales. We see this requirement as paramount in their ability to transform their business to the future. In almost every case, their websites clearly displayed MPS capabilities and yet in almost every case few were actually closing real MPS deals. I still see this issue everywhere, so transforming to the future may be a big challenge for some.
What do I mean by a “real” MPS deal? Not many dealers actually understand the strategic values of their own MPS program and thus haven’t driven those values into his or her sales organization. There are all kinds of opinions regarding the life cycle of MPS, some say it’s a commodity, others say it’s past its prime, but mostly from hardware people who haven’t found their value speak for non-tangible deliverables. And yet, they’ll tell you, they’re looking for their next big “idea” with the hopes that they’ll be first to market. If you can’t sell MPS when you’re in the industry, what big “idea” would possibly be out there that you COULD sell?
MPS is often looked upon as just a large hardware lease with maintenance and I guess it could be explained that way if you were telling someone’s grandmother what you did for a living; it’s way more than that. If you’ve read my articles in ENX magazine over the years, you surely know that I’ve written many times on selling and presenting MPS to the right target and while it is harder to get there it can most certainly deliver a much larger sales funnel. But that’s not what we’re talking about today.
When we started to look at all of the things that were right or wrong in these dealerships it became clear how important the value speak was. If you’re going to sell to C-Level, you have to understand strategic level business concerns. That was it; even if they got a C-Level appointment they didn’t tell their story well. What’s more, some dealers use their manufacturer’s presentations and videos, which deliver a completely different set of values typically to a non-strategic target. Most manufacturer videos offer hardware centric values, like getting the competitive equipment out and getting yours in. They speak of “optimization” and “standardization” and they sound strategic, but in almost every case it puts the highest value on replacing competitive hardware with your hardware or older hardware with newer hardware. What business owners want is to STOP SPENDING MONEY and with a rock solid strategy, help the devices and technology they’ve already purchased last a very long time!
Now you might say, “But I am in the hardware business and if MPS is all about helping clients maximize their current technology spend, how do I get them to buy my MPS program and thus my hardware?” Welcome to Marketing Strategies 101! The fact that you just asked that question is one of the greatest things you can do!
MPS isn’t a hardware play; it’s a financial deliverable that may include hardware in some fashion. If you deliver a pertinent strategic high value message to a strategic leader looking for their next best idea, odds are you’ll have a great opportunity to move forward with your services.
So what is the value of MPS and is it still a viable product? Let me answer the second half of that question, first. On the Internet, it’s not hard to find the top five or 10 reasons as to why companies outsource. When an economy is flat, weak or wavering, outsourcing becomes extremely valuable. Being able to buy expertise, especially when you don’t have those skills within your company, can provide a great stop-loss safety net for strategic leaders. The good news is, acquiring that expertise through an outsource model almost always costs less than building it in-house. But notice I didn’t jump on cost savings as the greatest value. I remember in an article I read not too long ago that stated the C-Suite’s job was to increase the value and performance capabilities of their company. Helping them DO THAT is the value of your MPS program!
Company performance, organizational productivity, risk mitigation, and visibility are key concerns for today’s strategic leader. If you want to test your sales reps, ask them to share the values of your MPS program as if you were a prospect and simply compare their language to that above. If they don’t use that level of conversation, fix it!
So to answer the first part of the question, what is the value of MPS, let’s take a look at it from the C-Level point of view. The highest level of management in any company doesn’t necessarily dance to the same music that all of the other employees do. They are the music makers. They create the rules and corporate policies; they drive the “dream” and the culture of the business. They’re team builders, they have to be. They recruit, hopefully, other strong leaders to fill key positions in the company. Simply put, they drive the success of the company and if nothing else their reputation is on the line. They not only CARE more than anyone else about the success of the company, they don’t have to ask anyone if they can do something about it, should they hear a great idea!
That’s where you come in. The industry has told you that it’s ok to deliver your MPS values to an IT guy or share your idea with middle management and then help them help you sponsor it up to the top! I say hogwash! If you develop your value speak and begin an effort to only tell the music makers, you’ll grow your company exponentially! Get good at sharing your story to the right people.
These guys juggle many things to drive success in their company, so help them. The top issues you want to address with your values are: bottom-line results (it amazes me how many sales reps don’t know what that means), risk mitigation, organizational productivity, and, yes, cost savings or cost improvement. The bottom-line is simply reviewing if each period or each year the company is making money. It reflects on their management capabilities to drive successful bottom-line results. Can MPS help bottom-line results? Absolutely, when you do your assessment and you find that the company has no real visibility or control over what they spend for print, how could they possibly be controlling it? Your MPS program eliminates wayward spending and thus directly improves bottom-line results.
Most C-Levels would do anything to eliminate over-spending if they could just see it. It’s classified in the risk category and although it’s not as scary as someone hacking your company’s network, it can be as devastating. Your MPS program creates amazing visibility around the cost of image on paper, where they had no visibility before. You can completely eliminate erratic or surprise spending associated with their printing requirements. Hey, dollars are dollars and saving them and eliminating the uncontrolled, invisible waste of money, or risk, has great value.
Productivity is on everyone’s white board for improvement. As payroll represents 80% of most companies’ cost structure, anything they can do to eliminate more payroll has great value. When they implement your MPS program and find that your entire program functions within the cost of their current spend or expense, they LOVE it and the indirect but very important benefit to their company is that they get to point their IT team back to mission critical responsibilities. That increases the productivity and ultimate performance of their company and in itself has amazing value to senior management.
And then there is cost savings, the infamous phrase everyone jumps to the moment they get the microphone. Cost savings is only one objective among many. What’s most important is that your C-Level prospect is the only one who can define which values you should share. Don’t be a parrot and just repeat things that someone told you to say. Dig deep, study C-Level concerns and share the appropriate values from your MPS program that match their concerns. If you learn your value speak and you spend most of your time talking with the music makers, you might be surprised how easy success is.
