I remember talking to a dealer principal several years back, and asked him for his e-mail address. He responded that he didn’t like computers, and told me to just send it to one of his admins.
I knew his business was in serious jeopardy, and in fact, it failed a few years later.
The point of that story is to emphasize that we are in an ever-changing business environment. And in many cases today, dealers and service departments are reluctant to get into the solutions business. Some have tried dipping their toes in and gotten burned; others just want to be old-school dealerships. But we must remember that we can’t afford to get trapped in the current way we do business, or we will soon be out of business.
The Reality
Office equipment today is designed to be part of a network’s infrastructure. Devices are no longer output-only or scan/fax/print devices, but now can—and often do—serve as portals for access to applications. If your company is not currently selling and supporting applications, that needs to change, or your company will be in jeopardy of failing.
With the increasing view of the multi-function printer (MFP) as an active part of the Internet of Things (IoT), clients are expecting the ability to use the MFP to do many things, including:
- Work with mobile devices;
- Serve as a gateway to their document management or enterprise content management systems;
- Provide secure access to these applications.
In more and more companies, controlling access to and output from devices is becoming a requirement as well.
The Challenge
For the service department, installing and supporting these applications can present difficulties. I heard a recent experience of a dealer, who found a national account opportunity that required a secure document-management solution. The company contacted the manufacturer’s solution representative, who performed a walk through, identified the customer’s requirements and found the appropriate software package. They contacted the vendor and verified that the solution would work with the client’s access-control badges. They then sold the client on the product and equipment, and got the order.
All is good, right? The client is happy, the sales reps involved are happy, so what could go wrong?
Eventually, the equipment shows up and the service department works with the software vendor to manage the setup and installation. This is where it goes downhill—the service department has IT technicians with good networking skills, but they had never seen the application that was sold. The service department had never installed the card readers. No one had verified that the configuration would work as sold for the client on their server.
Needless to say, the result was a disaster. After weeks of working with the software vendor and not having any success, they asked me to come in and help. I was able to get the card reader working without any issue on other applications, but it wouldn’t work with the vendor’s application. As it turns out, there were compatibility issues with the client’s server OS, the software and the firmware on the MFP. By this time everything was done, the client cancelled the order and the potential national account opportunity was history.
How to Prepare
The underlying issue with the scenario above was that no one was prepared for the opportunity. This lack of preparation existed in both the sales and service departments. The sales staffs, including those of the vendor, manufacturer and dealer, did not understand the potential issues that could arise. The service staff had no exposure to, or experience with, any of the pieces except the copier. From a dealer’s perspective, we will talk about how some or most of these issues could have been prevented.
Sales
To start with, the dealership needs to identify the vendors it wants to support. A decision should be made on which products the dealer will offer. There may be a rare exception, but the great majority of solutions sold should be from preselected packages and vendors. Make this decision before selling any solutions—this allows you to get the needed training on the process and the potential pitfalls before the opportunity arises.
My belief is that there is a need for specialized sales people to handle solutions. By having all sales people looking for solutions opportunities and then funneling them to the specialists, the specialist can then be trained on the software being sold, understand how the software functions and what the limitations of the software are.
Service
Just as the sales department will benefit from having a specialist, so will the service department. It may be that your department already is doing some network support and you have technicians with the computer skills to handle this role. If not, you may need to hire someone with these needed skills.
Once you have an individual selected, you need to get them trained. Going through the vendor’s or manufacturer’s training is not going to be the end of the training they will need.
Demo Room/Lab
For the solutions specialists, both from service and sales, the largest part of their real training will be the demo room. This will serve as both a training lab, and a pre-sales proof-of-concept lab. To create an appropriate lab, I recommend installing a dedicated virtual server that can be configured with various versions of the popular operating systems a client might use.
A virtual server can be configured, and then used over and over as practice for installing and testing the various configurations a client might want. In addition to the server, accessories such as card readers and biometric devices need to be available.
Solutions specialists from both departments need to work with and test the operations of the solutions and the equipment. This helps ensure they will be comfortable when they need to either demonstrate or install one of these configurations for a client. They will also want to practice the installation and use on different operating systems, both for the workstation and the server.
Process
The last important piece to being successful is developing a sales-and-deployment process that allows for a seamless installation. The process starts with proper qualifying of the client’s needs and expectations—his is imperative in choosing the correct application to be presented.
At the same time, all pertinent information about the client’s infrastructure needs to be collected. This would include, but not be limited to the network configuration, server and workstation OS, and the type of access control that is desired. If they are going to use a proximity or access-control card, a sample card needs to be obtained, as well as an understanding of where and how the credentials are stored.
Once you know the listed factors, the next step is creating a virtual environment that replicates the major components of the client’s environment. Use this environment to test the deployment and functionality of the recommended configuration before making a proposal to the client. I would also recommend the client be given the opportunity to test the configuration in the lab before completing the sales cycle. This would be an excellent way to instill confidence in all parties.
The first few times you go through this process, it may be slow getting the kinks worked out, but every time should get better and easier. The end result is that both the sales and service specialist will become very proficient, and installations will become routine and reassuring to the client.
