A Model Multi-Line Dealership
Of those three segments, which ones are doing particularly well right now?
Miller: Furniture seems to be going gangbusters, copiers are down a touch, service revenues are strong and supplies are the most consistent and are up a couple points this year.
Looking at the three segments what percent of your business do each of those encompass?
Miller: Hardware is about 30 percent and that includes the subsequent aftermarket of service and supplies; office products is about 40 percent; and furniture is about 30 percent.
Who are your customers?
Miller: There’s a demographic that comes with being rural in that there’s probably not a Fortune 1000 customer in our market. Most of our economy is agricultural based and most of our customers are in agriculture or related to agriculture. We don’t really limit our scope to vertical markets. We’re stronger in some than others, and my contention is, in a market this rural, you have to sell to everyone and you have to sell everything to everyone.
What percentage of your customers use you for their hardware, office products, and office furniture needs?
Miller: About half. We do a good job and continue to try and do better at leveraging one segment with the other.
Clearly you leverage that one-stop shop approach and it’s flying with some of your customers?
Miller: We think so. It’s important to note our sales specialization. We believe that by having sales reps become experts in their product category, we can better serve customers. Therefore, our reps sell only the product in their specific category (Copiers, Supplies, Furniture) A customer can theoretically have three sales reps from Eakes visit them in one a day selling them three different products. We have a product manager responsible for running each of those three product categories. For example, the product manager for copiers is ultimately responsible for supporting the reps, acquiring the product, and identifying programs and processes that will make things work better in copiers. In each product category we look at it the same way, if we were only a copier dealer or furniture dealer or supplies dealer, we need to be as good or better as the competition in that category.
What made you decide to offer managed print services?
Miller: We started our first MPS program at the beginning of 2004. We were one of the first dealers to partner with HP in what they used to call their VIP program. We started to understand that IT folks thought that our designation as an HP VIP dealer was pretty cool. They like HP and it caught their attention. We married that attention of the IT manager to the lower cost output of copier devices. Our customers saw that as valuable. They still do.
Where did your people acquire the knowledge to sell MPS?
Miller: It’s all pretty organic. Our product manager, Doug Galloway, got us into the HP VIP program and has kept us in the HP Advanced Managed Print Specialist program; he has the knowledge along with the help of our manufacturer reps. It’s primarily his task to train our folks.
Who in your company is responsible for selling managed print services?
Miller: Each of the copier division sales reps are required to sell MPS. We also have an MPS program for our supply reps to sell.
What types of customers seem to be the most interested in managed print services?
Miller: The no brainer answer is a customer who is willing to listen. Seriously, we know the sales cycle is a little longer so the customer has to be patient with us to show them how it works, but ultimately if they want to save money they’re going to listen to us about that program. If you’re a larger company you’re probably going to save more money. Remembering our world is not one of the Fortune 1000 world, the customers who buy MPS from us are typically mid to large companies as we define them. However, customers with a single copier and a couple of printers can save money too.
What are the one or two biggest lessons you’ve learned since you first started offering managed print services?
Miller: Remember, we have a supplies sales force as well. Our supplies reps have forever been transactional toner sales people, and very successful at it. However, now a competitive copier company can apply a full MPS program to one of our transactional toner customers pretty quickly. These MPS takedowns create immediate loss of toner business for our company. In 2010 we implemented a program for our supplies reps to contract toner, which was great because that tied up the toner business within our company. It was also a natural lead-in. Once the customer felt good about our delivery of service and supplies, they would be more apt to consider moving up to the copier total CPC program. The greatest lesson learned was we didn’t get into that MPS supply toner delivery system nearly early enough.
How do you compete in managed print against some of the bigger office technology only dealers in your market who also offer managed print services?
Miller: The big guys aren’t going to focus on the complete solution. More importantly, the nationals can’t deliver the personal touch we can. Direct sales copier manufacturers can definitely be good competitors, but they tend to be a little bit slower to hit the MPS curve. That has allowed us to establish ourselves pretty well.
Why is the combination of Sharp, HP, and Muratec products a good fit for Eakes?
Miller: We’re a Sharp-only dealer and that’s been the case for decades. That is very unusual in this day and age. We feel right now that Sharp’s lineup is very strong and our relationship with them remains good. From the perspective of why do we partner with HP, it’s because they appeal to the IT side so we can get the MPS deals. And Muratec has been a good niche player for us.
Eakes is one of the Top 10 independent Sharp dealers in the U.S. How did you make that happen?
Miller: We’ve been a partner of Sharp for a long time, they’re good to us. We understand the nature of the relationship between dealers and manufacturers is not always rosy, but our relationship with Sharp has been very good. We’ve been a top Sharp dealer for the last several years and their product lineup has gotten better during that time. Our focus is really with our sell-through programs that include Sharp copiers. Our copier division continues to grow, our company continues to grow geographically and all of that adds up to some pretty good sales of Sharp product.
What’s the biggest change you’ve seen at Eakes since you’ve been in the business?
Miller: Keep in mind I look at our product categories as separate companies and each of them has had significant changes over time, but none more than the evolution of the copier. When I got here it was a box, then you attached it to a network, then came color, then came solutions. We now see the emergence of managed network solutions. That’s five critical game-changing events that happened in the copier world in the last 20 years.
Do you still enjoy the business? If so, what do you like most about it?
Miller: I absolutely love it. I get the opportunity to play in all three worlds every day. It probably will never become boring in any one of them but I see it becoming a bit monotonous if I only focused on one product category. I move back and forth from supplies to furniture to copiers multiple times every day. In each, the over-riding challenge is knowing where to go before the competition gets there. I work with very capable people in each category. We collaborate pretty well together to meet that challenge. That effort works the mind and keeps you fresh.
What’s next for Eakes?
Miller: We’re in a position to continue to focus on things that have gotten us to where we are now. We’ll never stop focusing on customer care. We’ll never stop making certain we have employees that are developed and taken care of. And, we’ll continue to grow. We have an active strategic planning process and our growth is specific and targeted. We’ll grow organically and we’ll grow geographically. Maybe from a product line perspective we won’t add a new product category, but will continue to pop products into those existing product categories that are new. Between customer care and employee development and growth that keeps us pretty busy.
