It’s time to talk about that frustration shared among virtually all office technology dealers. There are few things more frustrating than finding out a prospect or client—particularly the latter—is unaware that your company offers (fill in the blank).
Potential clients get a pass—after all, they’re dealing with you for the first time, so the courtship period allows them to learn what your dealership is all about. No, we’re talking about clients, particularly long-term partnerships, where the end-user didn’t know that you offered VoIP, postal equipment and EV chargers. Those, of course, are the diversifications we chose to focus on for the February State of the Industry report.
But let’s not stop there. How about water and coffee? Managed IT? Security cameras? Audio/visual and interactive white boards? Well, many dealers have branded IT arms or even incorporated IT into their name, as it’s a bread-and-butter offering. But it’s impossible to conjure up a name that entails everything you offer, which means you need to do a better job of marketing.
Hell, even magazines fall victim to a lack of awareness. I’m amazed that when we send out final email notices reminding readers about deadlines for Difference Makers (March 11, BTW) and Elite Dealers, we always get reactions such as “why am I just hearing about it now?” Geez, it’s plastered all over our website. This tells me the same thing it should tell you: don’t assume your industry partners know everything about you, or that they faithfully keep tabs on you via your website.
Often, when businesses need to make tough staffing decisions, marketing is one of the first departments to get cut. It really shouldn’t be. Marketing, in tandem with sales, drives awareness. You want your reps out there selling, right? Then keep your marketing in-house and drive inbound traffic. Clients and prospects don’t know what you have because NO ONE IS TELLING THEM. That’s especially true of newer diversifications.
“You’d be amazed at how many folks that, even to this day, don’t know or remember that we have postal equipment, VoIP and digital signage,” noted Stephen Valenta, president of Offix in Gainesville, Virginia. “I could throw out a million pieces of marketing material, and it seems like you have to catch clients at the right time because they’ll buy a machine from someone else and completely forget that you offer it. It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Valenta has tried lunch and learn sessions to mixed results and is looking at trying online sessions. He prefers hard-copy mail over emails, mindful of the deluge of queries the average business receives in a day. The so-called “snail mail” has actually produced better results than email.
Sometimes, it’s good to return to the basics. “We’re going out cold calling and meeting folks,” Valenta added. “We’re having much better success with it than sitting behind a computer. You need to build a rapport with someone, and that means getting in front of people.”
The best of technology partners won’t make you spread the gospel completely on your own. In the case of Green Bay-based Wisconsin Document Imaging (WDI), it relies on a plethora of marketing tools and support from Zultys to help proliferate information regarding their VoIP systems. The tools include add-ons to WDI’s website, social media posts they employ, and marketing collateral in other forms.
“That really limits the time we’ve needed to spend developing those resources,” stressed WDI President Cory Spice. “And since we are primarily marketing this to existing clients, we have not needed to do much in terms of marketing campaigns beyond that. The biggest learning curve is ensuring our sales team understands what to be on the lookout for at client locations in terms of what their phone system needs might be and asking the right questions to see where Zultys might be the right fit for a client.”
Pacific Office Automation (POA) in Beaverton, Oregon, has been using event advertising to draw more attention to its electric vehicle (EV) charger addition to its portfolio. The dealer has marketed at the NW Natural Street of Dreams, an annual event targeting residential home construction trends in the Pacific Northwest.
According to Scott Brenton, director of mailing, security cameras and EV charging stations services for POA, the company has them installed in their own parking lot. Professional sports engagement, including product displays during “suite nights” at games, augment the awareness campaign, along with branch road shows and trade shows.
