It’s not enough to identify the vulnerabilities and strategic miscues that can take precious dollars from the bottom lines of dealers and resellers. We’ve asked our panel of manufacturers, suppliers, leasing companies, et al., to highlight the tools, products, services, training and other solutions that are designed to foster more success from a profitability standpoint.
Larry White, Toshiba: We have a number of programs and services to support a dealer’s bottom line while growing their business. One example is our major-accounts program that supports dealers targeting larger accounts in the public and private sectors through aggressive pricing and support. Another is our solutions business, which allows dealers to buy directly from Toshiba at improved margins while using our support personnel to help with assessments. The old saying of “where there’s mystery, there’s margin” is very true in the solutions area of our business. Lastly, we believe that sharing information is essential in today’s environment. For example, we recently had a conversation with a very successful dealer about his MPS business. He was not happy with their results in this area of the business and was looking for help. Our direct operations run a very good MPS business, so we connected him with one of our branches while scheduling a two-day visit to learn the strategic and tactical aspects of the business.
Laura Blackmer, Konica Minolta: Obviously, information is the key to making the flat-rate program work for your business. The more you understand the products you sell, the service costs and your customer’s printing history, the better chance you have of building a solid, profitable flat-rate program. BEI, now NEXERA, has incredible data for the dealers regarding most manufacturer models and their serviced costs. Forza, All Covered’s all-inclusive ERP offering, also provides the dealers with a deeper level of service information. And of course, knowing your customer, or at a minimum, the customer’s industry norms for printing, will protect the dealer from risk. The Konica Minolta team is also very well versed in this type of program, and we have been providing data, analysis and consulting to our dealers who are interested in moving to this type of model. And of course, the model itself; as we see more and more people working remotely and print volumes continue to decline, the flat-rate contract payments are fixed; the dealer will not see a decline in revenue because no one is pushing the copier button.
Although I can’t predict the future, I suspect the next few months will continue to be very volatile. No one knows when, or how many, people are going back to work in actual offices or work spaces. But we do know more businesses are allowing people to work remotely, so it will continue to be a challenge for business to gauge copies they are going to need and use, and to protect their margins now and in the future.
Jim Coriddi, Ricoh: We are always looking for ways to collaborate with dealers to help them succeed and help them help their customers succeed. We recently announced enhancements to the RICOH Smart Integration platform that enable workforces to better share and collaborate wherever work is being done. These kinds of capabilities are highly valued as employees continue to work from home. RICOH Smart Integration’s new features address emerging business needs that have, in many cases, been made more drastic in the current moment, including enhanced security and industry-specific workflows that simplify and automate traditionally manual processes. We work closely with dealers to help them select and sell solutions and services that fit their customers’ unique needs, including providing relevant training and resources, such as email templates, marketing collateral and “conversation-starter” copy.
Beyond developing marketing resources and training programs, we also loop dealers in to solution development. They are on the ground, talking with customers every day, so they often see emerging pain points before anyone else. On multiple occasions, Ricoh’s National Dealer Council has requested some form of new technology—from improved reporting software to augmented reality-powered technical support—that Ricoh has delivered for them and their customers.
We have also worked with dealers to adapt our processes and portfolio to better accommodate dealer and customer health and safety concerns during this pandemic. Ricoh implemented a drop-shipment program that helped streamline hardware deliveries while limiting person-to-person contact to help contain the spread of COVID-19. Ricoh has also collaborated with dealers on expanding visual communications, document management and other remote-work offerings’ presence in dealer portfolios. Dealers can offer support from Ricoh’s renowned call centers, helping to promote customer uptime and showcase the expertise dealers can make available. Ricoh support technicians increasingly talk customers through maintenance and repairs over the phone to reduce site visits. Our programs aim to go far beyond simply adding these offerings to a dealer’s catalog; extensive training and resources help develop sales representatives into bona fide subject matter experts in work-from-home workflows.
Dan Waldinger, Brother International: Brother’s partner support services are quite extensive, such as the Value Print Program. In addition, Brother’s unique Special Services Team is a customer-focused program that enables Brother products to be modified to meet special requests from our clients. This approach involves a collaborative process between customers, dealers and Brother field service engineers and business analysts. Brother provides this professional service at no cost to the resellers, and is an enormous advantage for our partners’ profit levels.
The Brother Knowledge Center is an online training tool that offers, among other features, key talk tracks for dealers to upsell value services and maintain margins. Of course, Brother’s numerous solutions, like the recently announced partnership with KOFAX, integrates Brother into customers’ strategic workflows. Adding software and solutions can make a reseller “sticky” in the account and hard to replace. Again, retaining the account and then building that relationship over time is the true key to long-term profitability.
Monte White, Supplies Network: Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) programs from OEMs are intended to preserve profitability throughout the channel. Playing by the rules is a must, but clearly adding value through product and service bundles is a way to differentiate, boost profitability and deliver a solution that cultivates customer loyalty. We have a wide array of services that help resellers who support solution selling.
Mason Olds, Canon U.S.A.: To continue meeting the needs of our authorized dealers, our Customer Solutions Center is equipped to support customers and dealers through tools that help specialists virtually reach out and see what the field technician is working on through their mobile device. Through solutions such as imageWARE Remote and service profit calculators, our team of professional service technicians has been able to smoothly transition into a remote environment as these tools help it to better assist and service our dealers.
Throughout July and August, Canon will also be offering virtual sessions for dealers in place of our in-person roadshows this year. These sessions will be focused around how to help dealers be profitable and get back to business, with an emphasis on cloud security solutions, leveraging technology and collaboration in the future of work, and effectively diversifying and expanding business offerings.
Ron Petrucci, Katun Corp.: One area that’s very hot where we have a solution is the ability to monitor home printer devices. That’s a big problem right now because people are working out of their homes. Dealers need to be able to capture those clicks and prevent people from going out to a big box store to buy a toner cartridge. We have a solution that can measure non-networked printers. That’s a big hole for dealers, to be able to capture that revenue stream, because right now they can’t do it effectively. We have solutions for that, as well as measuring days-to-empty.
Another tool Katun has is the ability to do assessments. We can take all the purchases with an e-view from a dealer and plug in our pricing right next to it, which allows them to do a direct comparison. Now they can cherry pick and get whatever the largest margin differentials are, and say “Let’s put Katun in there.” Doing a full assessment gives them the ability to really analyze and maximize their profitability.
There are different aspects that can be used for analytics. With the Pivot Program, they can use statistical data to be able to maximize ratios within their organization. Whether it’s on the sales or service side, territory management, comp management, opportunity management, tech efficiency management, all of that is available by using various platforms available in the market, including Pivot.
Key Kain, GreatAmerica Financial Services: GreatAmerica has a suite of tools and resources focused around profitability for our customers. I’ll highlight three areas, but know that we have many other resources:
- Training and education. When you partner with GreatAmerica, you soon find out we are invested in your success and have a robust set of training and education tools for our dealers. One example is our Managed IT Sales Training with Chartec (happening Aug. 25-26), which helps dealers/MSPs scale their managed IT services offerings profitably. Another is our Smarketing event (currently being rescheduled), which helps dealers understand and implement a more modern approach to sales and marketing. Finally, we dedicate a whole section of our website to education in the form of our resource center, where you can find case studies, informational blogs, recorded webinars and more.
- InteGREAT Web Services. Technology integrations with software providers can add real efficiencies and protect margins by saving on administrative expense. GreatAmerica has invested in our technology integrations, branded InteGREAT, and has been the market leader in offering new features to help reduce burden for our office technology providers. We do this by implementing automation in the finance process between GreatAmerica and the leading software providers of CRMs, ERPs, etc.
- Billing expertise. Our customers understand the value a single invoice solution can bring to their customers, and we have a suite of customizable offerings to help you deliver an invoice that meets your customers’ expectations, keeping them satisfied over time. Dealers we speak with are showing increased interest in a flat-rate billing approach, which if done well, can help protect margins. Our expertise around flat-rate billing stemmed from our work with industry thought leader West McDonald, and we’re proud to have been the first finance company to come out with a finance agreement for seat-based billing.
But don’t overlook some of the basic things that matter to your margins. Things like choosing partners that recognize the importance of cash flow in your sales process, make communicating easy, remove obstacles and, most importantly, are innovating by thinking about the future direction of your company.
