It’s not often that an office technology dealership with less than 20 years under its belt has developed a reputation to the degree of Pearson-Kelly Technology (PKT). In fact, the Springfield, Missouri-based firm is celebrating just its 18th birthday this year. However, for anyone familiar with owner Chelsey Bode and her crew of 44 employees, adjectives such as competitive, young and vibrant are apt and frequently repeated.
In an industry that’s oftentimes pigeonholed as mature and waning, PKT offers a refreshing optimism that’s difficult to resist. The company is somehow youth-laden and experienced, guided by Bode and a leadership team that is entirely under-40: Executive Vice President Lee Flood, Marketing Coordinator Kenzie Ward, Operations Manager Taylor Wells, Director of Sales Derris Butler and Internal IT Tyler Stilley. It’s easy to forget that Bode—who officially took full ownership of PKT from founding father Mike Kelly last September—has already logged more than 10 years of critical decision-making experience and actually summered at former office juggernaut IKON Office Solutions during her college years.
Still, don’t get the impression that PKT is just a haven for millennials and Gen Z employees; the company boasts its share of Gen X performers. To truly drill down to the common denominator of PKT is to understand the culture and core vision that Bode and Co. employ. Youthful is often a code word for idealistic and energetic, and as PKT transforms itself from the traditional copier model it embraced when Kelly decided to start out on his own, those individuals who align with that vision and culture have organically gravitated toward the dealer.
One of the values PKT has incorporated is “always hungry,” and it’s a critical tick box that any prospective team member must check off before joining the ranks. “Anyone can be hungry, but there’s a danger of slipping back into a lazy state,” Bode observed. “If you want to find an employer where you can be comfortable, this isn’t the place for you. We end up attracting people who want to grow, continue to be better than they were yesterday, and learn.”
Bode also believes the millennial rap that diminishes the age group as job-hoppers is overblown and detracts from the need for employers to ensure they’re cultivating team members and positioning them for personal growth and job satisfaction. PKT averted the Great Resignation epidemic because it facilitates movement within its ranks. Bode cited one example of an employee in accounts receivable who pivoted and became fully ensconced as the go-to person who handles all the installations and configurations for PKT’s hosted voice platform.
“She wanted to challenge herself and grow into that role,” Bode said. “This happens because we’re very specific about the type of person we want to go after and recruit. The result is that DNA of a young, vibrant go-getter with a competitive personality.”
Building Blocks
Bode was employee No. 6 when she came on board in 2007, three years into the firm’s existence. Sales were just south of $500,000 in those formative years, and she immersed herself in the quest to grow PKT’s base (“everything was net-new to me,” she noted). By 2011, the company had grown to $1.7 million a year; Kelly bought out his co-founder and carved out a buy/sell agreement with Bode in a succession plan. Bode still wore her sales hat, but her focus shifted to recruiting, team building and fostering organic growth.
PKT offers the Konica Minolta and Kyocera lines, accentuated by Epson wide-format inkjet technology, while its solutions have billowed to incorporate Verkada surveillance products and Intermedia VoIP phone systems. Its geographic target is a 100-mile radius where Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Kansas meet. PKT has a second branch in Joplin, Missouri.
While the dealer’s foundation includes managed print, document management and MFPs, PKT made the bold move of introducing managed IT to its portfolio in 2018. In the process, it rebranded from Pearson-Kelly Office Products as the company continued to recruit experts for its IT services division. When 2019 rolled around, PKT’s leadership felt it was necessary to reconfigure its strategic plan, employing the Traction Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) to meet its objectives.
“When we transitioned into IT services, that changed our culture,” she said. “How we communicated these changes was pretty important, so that people would know we weren’t completely scrapping what had gotten us to that point. We didn’t want to become Uber-ed or be the next Blockbuster. We needed to diversify our offerings because our clients were asking for these services.”
Pandemic-monium
Bode called 2021 a “year of humility for us” as the $8-$10 million company needed to reconcile business aspects that were out of PKT’s control, such as $650,000 worth of written orders stuck in supply chain dry dock. Even prior to the pandemic, Bode reflected on the practice of pursuing top-line revenue and growth for the sake of growth. The foundation, and really the elixir for PKT during the height of the pandemic, was laid through service contracts and recurring revenue, and recognizing the need to become more intentional about its pursuit, particularly in the IT space.
“Those recurring three-to-five year agreements, around which you can really start making long-term hiring decisions, enable you to have a better opportunity when something such as a pandemic hits and allow you to weather that storm,” she said. “We really focused our targets for the year, and all our reps have two different quotas: a transactional quota and a monthly recurring quota. We comp well on the recurring revenue, which is important and has enabled us to be more successful.”
While clicks have basically returned to 2019 levels, the inability to deliver on MFP orders has made the stunning growth in solutions (830%), security products (385%) and VoIP (63%) all the more critical to PKT’s pandemic endurance. Bode credits the firm’s “hunter reps” with asking probing questions that can quickly drill down to pain points and desired outcomes. They’re backed by subject-matter experts who can add technical perspective to the elements that are beyond a typical rep’s knowledge base, such as phones, security cameras or the various flavors of IT.
A new wrinkle sees PKT requiring its new territory reps to sell only recurring services during the first 90 days of employment as a supplement to training and onboarding. Bode notes it’s difficult to steer reps toward recurring services when they focus on transactional sales at the onset. PKT has employed this practice for less than a year, but Bode feels the early returns indicate it’s a strong MO to follow in order to seek out and drive more recurring services agreements.
The 2019 launch of the dealer’s security program was another major stepping stone in its beyond-the-box offerings. Bode hired a CISO, who offered the dealer a bevy of best practices to implement, which has benefitted PKT internally and boosted its ability to educate clients. However, it’s been a difficult journey to gain traction, particularly among SMB clients loathe to acquire security products despite the overwhelming incidence of high-visibility hacks, vulnerabilities and exposure of sensitive information.
“We’ve really put a lot more emphasis on us internally and changing that thinking when it comes to security first, and we’re seeing that start to trickle out and change the conversation with the clients,” Bode remarked. “We still have a long way to go, and security continues to be changing. We’ve had the really fun Log4j vulnerability that has been rearing its head and we’re still chasing things such as that. It’s a scary world, and I think that’s going to continue to be the focus. I’m really concerned for companies that don’t embrace security first.”
Marketing Success
From high-value blog content to conversation-bolstering swag enticements, PKT devised a marketing platform that’s been critical for fostering a buyer’s journey path that leads to the dealer’s front door. Bode counts on Ward’s marketing department to drive 70% of the buyer’s journey for clients and prospects, and to synergize with sales through its messaging. Marketing provides that educational and why-to track that enables sales to bring deals to fruition.
PKT takes a more passive approach to its marketing message, as opposed to gating content that can be accessed for the price of contact information. Education and thought leadership adds more value in the eyes of the buyer, according to Bode, rather than a glorified infomercial extolling the dealer’s capabilities.
Expansion Blueprints: It’s All About People and Processes
Chelsey Bode freely admits that she isn’t keen on the concept of business acquisitions. Though she remains open to opportunities that would represent an optimal fit, the PKT owner would rather focus her attention on acquiring people and perfecting repeatable processes.
Expansion is certainly on the radar for 2022, but a more preferred option is to clone the company’s best practices and apply them to potential additions in new markets, with the goal of producing the same deliverable regardless of proximity to the corporate headquarters. Thus, adding new people piecemeal as opposed to en masse is likely to produce better results.
Still, Bode has mulled over a few acquisition opportunities, but given the way PKT has defined IT services, grown its hosted voice and cultivated surveillance solutions, introducing an entire company to the corporate culture at this juncture would be challenging.
“For us to fold another culture of people that might not mesh into our culture, and add a client list that perhaps isn’t ideal for our team, it would really take a unique opportunity to make a business acquisition attractive,” she said.
“Kenzie has done a great job in terms of content development, and she trains the sales team on the content that she’s putting out there,” Bode said. “That way, when our reps are on their calls, they’re reinforcing the content that’s out there, whether it’s on social media or an event on security where we brought in a keynote speaker. We want them to use that platform in their sales meetings to keep some synergy with the content.”
Change Culture
Like all dealers—and indeed, the entire business community—the path forward from COVID-19 is pocked with disease variants, question marks and continued uncertainty. Bode has taken to “embracing the silver lining,” but during this period of change, she believes now is the opportune time to push forward with solution tools that provide efficiencies and enable business continuity. An example of this is electronic document signatures, an area that has traditionally been met with resistance among her Midwest clients. But the altered reality makes it essential. The same holds true for virtual meetings and letting the customer dictate preferences for virtual and in-person gatherings.
The Passing of the Torch Provides a Seamless Transition for PKT
While she knew the day was coming, Chelsey Bode was somewhat surprised when her father, Pearson-Kelly Technology founder Mike Kelly, decided to make 2021 his final year at the helm. While Kelly is still active in the company in a business development role, the reins are firmly planted in Bode’s hands.
Not much, if anything, has changed from an operational standpoint. Bode has been calling shots for PKT since 2011, thus the leadership shift has been opaque to employees, clients and business partners. If anything, Bode’s buyout last September provided affirmation to the team that PKT was moving forward and not in danger of becoming consumed by private equity interests.
“Early on, we did a lot of communicating about what the succession plan looked like,” Bode explained. “It’s also an effective recruitment tool. When people see the typical office equipment owner, 62 years old and probably nearing retirement, they sometimes hesitate to join an organization like that because it’s probably going to transition. People don’t like change, don’t like the unknown. We tried to get ahead of that as much as we could.”
Bode is also part of an elite group of women in office technology dealer leadership positions, alongside noted executives Susie Woodhull (Woodhull LLC), Deb Dellaposta (Doing Better Business), Dawn Abbuhl (Repeat Business Systems), Mary Ann Bednar (Meritech), Mary Jo Johnson (EO Johnson Business Technologies) and Lola Tegeder (James Imaging Systems), to name a few. She relishes her role in a sector dominated by older men and sees the opportunity to help cultivate female leaders within her own organization.
When Kelly bought out his cofounder in 2011, he ensured that Bode was fully immersed with the business and sought to have her take an active role in developing the succession plan. And as the company began to evolve toward the end of the 2010s, he knew Bode’s vision for growth would provide the opportunity for his own transition.
“He made me embrace some decisions that I probably wasn’t ready for and put me in opportunities I didn’t even realize I was being exposed to at the time,” Bode said. “From that perspective, allowing us to change in 2018 and transition into a different type of organization than he was comfortable with—knowing we needed to do it—and trusting me was crucial. That’s allowed me to take the same approach with some of our leaders and do the same for them.
“The imprint I hope to make on the company is to do the same things my dad did for me in continuing to give strong leaders the opportunity to gain that experience as we grow teams. PKT needs intelligent individuals to take their roles and run with it, and do the same for their respective teams. I want to have an organization that challenges its leaders and challenges me with helping people to be better than they are on their own.”
Both 2020 and 2021 were rebuilding years, in Bode’s estimation. The company focused on repeatable practices, and she wants to ensure clients have more clarity on the dealer’s processes, which she believes will bear fruit in 2022. She would like to see 20% of the written orders from the past year delivered, which will help to keep PKT’s trainers and installers busy during the dormant periods.
Bode is heartened in seeing employees embrace obstacles as a challenge to learn. Failing forward, she notes, represents an opportunity to grow. And part of the magic behind PKT is team members being accountable to their respective teams, company leadership and the firm as a whole. Bode appreciates her own need to be held accountable and helping to push PKT in a direction that will serve it well moving forward.
“With all this disruption in the tech industry, we’re getting that opportunity to go in and redefine what we are going to be as a company, how do we want to define this? What are we after?” Bode posed. “Those are the kinds of things that make it exciting for me to get out of bed every morning, come to work and be a part of a team that challenges me to think stronger. And I hope that I challenge them to think differently. For me, that’s the fun part.”
