![\"David](\"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/David-Pohlman-2x3-150x150.jpg\")
David Pohlman<\/p><\/div>\n
David Pohlman, Office of the President\/COO GreatAmerica Financial Services Corporation, who oversees the company\u2019s Collabrance Managed Services program, views education as an elementary first step, particularly for understanding what this business is all about and what drives success.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an entirely different business from the office imaging world,\u201d states Pohlman. \u201cWhen people fail to do the education piece they tend to approach it in a way that ultimately doesn\u2019t lead to success.\u201d<\/p>\n
After some basic education comes the business plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cDefine the new direction, objectives, and a market strategy, which should expose your target [audience] and prospect profile,\u201d says Charles Lamb, president & CEO Mps&it Sales Consulting, about creating a business plan.<\/p>\n
Focusing on these areas will help define what the dealership wants to do and who they want to do it with, meaning what types of services will be offered and what types of customers will be targeted.<\/p>\n
![\"Charles](\"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/charles-Lamb-headshot-e1435072018303-150x150.jpg\")
Charles Lamb<\/p><\/div>\n
\u201cIt should also include a thorough consideration of what changes need to be made in their business to support a successful outcome,\u201d adds Lamb. \u201cAnd projections must be reasonable. \u00a0Like changing the direction of a ship; sometimes it\u2019s not instant, it has to work its way through.\u201d<\/p>\n
He recalls one dealer who told him that his dealership was going to sell $1 million more this year than the previous year. When Lamb asked him, \u201cHow are you going to do that?\u201d the response was, \u201cWe\u2019re going to sell Managed Services.\u201d<\/p>\n
That meant an additional $250,000 per quarter. Considering it was already the middle of January it was obvious to Lamb that the dealer had no plan and he wasn\u2019t surprised when he asked him, \u201cYou already have some of that money, right?\u201d The dealer\u2019s response was, \u201cNo, not yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNow you kind of get my point,\u201d says Lamb. \u201cYou have to define your objective and what is a successful transition, and if they\u2019re starting out, what is success and ultimately who are you going to tell that value story to?\u201d<\/p>\n
Lamb also emphasizes the need to communicate this change in direction with your customers and prospects, particularly in the way the business is portrayed on its website.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour website can no longer be just a copier billboard, you\u2019re going to have to provide confidence in everything you portray in the marketplace,\u201d advises Lamb. \u201c[It should show] that your technology skill set is five years ahead of the customers, that you\u2019re pulling them forward, and there is a reasonable value for them to secure you<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n Dean Swenson<\/p><\/div>\n Dean Swenson, president of The Swenson Group has been taking advantage of Konica Minolta\u2019s All Covered program for nearly two years now. His inspiration for doing so was the recurring opportunity in the IT Services market. For Swenson the initial steps involved understanding how Managed Services was going to fit into his existing business. The dealership created its business plan using data points from All Covered once he had a better idea of their average project revenue, what the recurring contract looked like, who was selling it, and how reps were paid.<\/p>\n \u201cAdmittedly, we knew nothing about how to start it and the All Covered Playbook came out a little while afterwards, which was a nice way to jump start it,\u201d observes Swenson.<\/p>\n Even with the assistance of All Covered, a lot of the onus for long-term success is still on the dealer.<\/p>\n Nick Pegley<\/p><\/div>\n \u201cWe do a lot of the heavy lifting of the service delivery, but the dealer plays a critical role in the client relationship, the sales process, and the onsite response, so in order to get those plans together we\u2019ll often have our local team sit down with them and talk through the overall advice we\u2019d give them,\u201d explains All Covered\u2019s Nick Pegley. \u201cWe have a playbook\u2014a how-to manual\u2014that describes how to go to market, compensation plans, what the services are, and how the services will work operationally.\u201d<\/p>\n For Britt Siedentopf, Managed Services Manager for Leapfrog Managed Services by Muratec, a critical first step is identifying the target customer. The second is building out a technology staff around that target customer.<\/p>\n He suggests targeting customers with 20-80 users in their IT environment.<\/p>\n \u201cThe reason is anywhere below 20 users, those customers tend not to value IT,\u201d says Siedentopf. \u201cLook for a prospect that values IT, wants things to work, wants out of the IT business, and wants to hand it off to the dealer.\u201d<\/p>\n He acknowledges that narrowing the focus to certain types of customers is a difficult concept for some traditional office technology dealers. \u201cIn the world sales reps live in today, they see every business as a potential target customer,\u201d notes Seidentopf. \u201cThat\u2019s fine for selling a copier or a printer, but in Managed Services they need a laser-focused approach and must be able to say no to certain customers.\u201d<\/p>\n Lamb also believes that employees need to be taught the difference between a strategic and tactical plan and understand who within the customer\u2019s or prospect\u2019s organization needs to hear those values.<\/p>\n \u201cOur industry continually drives towards our front-line contacts, but that\u2019s not how Managed Services excels,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Lamb recommends educating the sales team to avoid middle and low management positions.<\/p>\n \u201cOutsourcing is almost always a C-level decision,\u201d emphasizes Lamb. \u201cCFO.com says 83 percent of companies mandate that their CEO or CFO be involved in contract decisions. If that\u2019s what they\u2019re expecting from their CFO there\u2019s got to be someone who can get to that person.\u201d<\/p>\n Part of that comes down to hiring the right people who can get in front of the right people.<\/p>\n \u201cThis isn\u2019t something most copier sales reps can go out and sell,\u201d says Siedentopf. \u201cThis is not a technical conversation with the customer. It\u2019s a business conversation with a C-level. They have to have some business acumen so they become more of a customer\u2019s virtual CTO.\u201d<\/p>\n Dave Sobel<\/p><\/div>\n David Sobel, Director of Partner Community at Logic Now, offers another perspective on how to get started in Managed Services.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I recommend as a first step is to introduce a monitoring service because it is an effective and profitable way to add and learn the logistics of delivering Managed Services. Right now [the dealer] has a healthy relationship with their customer, they\u2019re billing them for work they\u2019re doing on an ad hoc basis, and generally most dealers are going to find, if you ask them, their customers are going to say nice things about them such as, \u2018I like working with you, I don\u2019t think I need any more service, everything runs fine, you\u2019re doing a great job.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n This approach allows the dealer to proactively anticipate issues and fix them before they become a problem. He suggests doing this on a simple fixed fee style engagement, particularly for SMB customers.<\/p>\n \u201cAll you\u2019re going to do is alert the customer and call them when something happens and ask them if you want them to fix it or not,\u201d states Sobel. \u201cIt\u2019s still the break-fix relationship they\u2019re used to and now they have much better telemetry.\u201d<\/p>\n He adds that the cost of delivering a service is much lower and can deliver margins in the 80 percent range. This approach can also include anti-virus upgrades, backup monitoring, and asset management.<\/p>\n \u201cTypically those environments have between 5-20 devices,\u201d says Sobel. \u201cInstead of trying to count the number of devices, sell it for a fixed fee, something like $199 a month. That\u2019s kind of a magic price point, and people are willing to buy at $199 on an impulse, and it teaches them how to pay for things on a recurring basis.\u201d<\/p>\n For larger customers with 100 devices or more, Sobel suggests selling the service for $299 or $399.<\/p>\n \u201cSell it at a price that\u2019s appropriate to their need,\u201d he suggests. \u201cThe point is to avoid any per device or per user charge because it\u2019s easier to sell to them when there is no objection around variability. And as a growing MS provider I\u2019ve given myself a base to learn the logistics of recurring revenue and how to make the predictions of cash flow around that because I start having a revenue stream.\u201d<\/p>\n Buying an IT Company<\/strong><\/p>\n Asked if buying an IT company is the solution, Lamb responds, \u201cI wish it was. You have to ask yourself, if you\u2019re buying an IT company based on transactional sales, are you really moving forward? My research shows that most IT companies are not selling long-term contracts. They\u2019re selling mostly blocks of time at best with 12 month agreements. The fact is copier dealers are in a better position for driving long-term contracts. Buying a transactional IT company simply adds payroll without a promise of longer term revenue. If it doesn\u2019t have contracts that are long term, you\u2019re just rolling the dice.\u201d<\/p>\n He recalls one dealer that rolled the dice and bought a small IT company that was month to month on almost everything. Ultimately those customers decided to go in another direction, leaving the dealer with the payroll, but not the account.<\/p>\n Others aren\u2019t as dead set against an acquisition.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s dependent on the dealership,\u201d says Pohlman. \u201cIf you\u2019re a good sized dealership with good financial capabilities, it all comes down to buying the right organization. You\u2019re probably going to pay a premium, but you\u2019re going to want to buy someone who\u2019s operationally mature in this space and can demonstrate the ability of scale and to scale this business profitably.\u201d<\/p>\n Britt Siedentopf<\/p><\/div>\n Siedentopf thinks dealers should consider other options first, although he has a caveat. \u201cIf they are already successful and understand the model of Managed IT services and how to deliver it and how to sell it, then if they go out and buy an IT company, they know what they\u2019re looking for and the base they\u2019re looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n However, for those looking to get in for the first time, he doesn\u2019t advocate acquisition.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat will happen is they end up buying a company that may not be mature in Managed Services and the customers they\u2019re buying may not be customers they want,\u201d says Siedentopf.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re in a position to grow by acquisition, I\u2019m not going to dissuade you,\u201d adds Logic Now\u2019s Sobel. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of legitimacy to the idea of doing that. The trick is it\u2019s not just the matter of buying an IT company because not all are created equal; are you buying an IT company that understands how to deliver Managed Services? Do they offer Managed Services now, or are you buying a break-fix organization and just acquiring the technical skills? If they don\u2019t understand the business of bringing in recurring revenue you haven\u2019t actually solved the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n Even though he\u2019s headed down the right path with All Covered, Swenson still thinks about buying an IT company. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of got to be the right fit at the right time,\u201d he says. \u201cIf we have that opportunity it will bring additional talent in house, additional base, and hopefully complement the relationship we have with All Covered.\u201d<\/p>\n You Got to Be in It\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n Ultimately, Lamb considers Managed Services a must for the document imaging dealer.<\/p>\n \u201cIn today\u2019s business culture, transitioning to services is mostly driven because they have to as much as they want to,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Swenson has never doubted that Managed Services was the right direction for The Swenson Group.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re going to grow your business and bring more value, you can\u2019t sit on the sidelines. We can add more people and sell more copiers or we can diversify our portfolio. This is where we\u2019re going and it\u2019s a big chunk of our business model now and will be an even bigger chunk in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n A Partnered Approach<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s been a few years since Ricoh introduced its CHAMPS program, but it\u2019s only been within the past 12 months that it\u2019s truly taken off. \u201cWe had a lot of starts and stops, and it wasn\u2019t really taking hold for a lot of different reasons,\u201d acknowledges Jim Coriddi, vice president, Dealer Division, Ricoh USA.<\/p>\n Today, between 30-35 percent of Ricoh\u2019s 436 dealers are taking advantage of the program.<\/p>\n Dawn Abbuhl<\/p><\/div>\n One of those Ricoh dealers leveraging CHAMPS is Dawn Abbuhl, president, Repeat Business Systems, Inc. of Albany, NY and a member of Ricoh\u2019s National Dealer Council.<\/p>\n The program has enabled her to jumpstart her Managed Services business by meeting requests for projects that prior to CHAMPS might have been too big for her company to handle or for when a certain level of expertise is needed that Repeat doesn\u2019t have.<\/p>\n \u201cWe forward this to CHAMPS and they can put someone on that project or they send it back to me. All I have to do is add our margin to it and CHAMPS and myself present it to my customer,\u201d says Abbuhl. \u201cIt\u2019s great and has given us a depth we\u2019ve probably never had.\u201d<\/p>\n JIm Coriddi<\/p><\/div>\n Even though Managed Services is not a path that every dealer needs to travel or is equipped to travel, some like Abbuhl have discovered that these services allow them to make themselves stickier with their customers while establishing themselves in their market as a certain type of provider.<\/p>\n \u201cDealers are telling us, \u2018If we did not have this we would not have landed this deal,\u2019\u201d reports Coriddi. \u201cThat\u2019s how we know it\u2019s starting to take hold and that\u2019s what\u2019s grabbing the attention and the imagination of our dealers. We feel like we have a solid foundation and are starting to broaden the portfolio and broaden the view of how the customer looks at our dealer and that will ultimately result in growing the business.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If offering Managed Services were easy, then every office technology dealer would be offering it. But not so fast, it\u2019s not all that easy. And not many dealers offer it yet despite the many pundits who are promoting Managed Services as a way to offset declining hardware sales and sinking page volumes. The reality is Managed Services can\u2019t be ignored. Consider the high profile organizations that are making an impact in this space such as Konica Minolta\u2019s All Covered, GreatAmerica\u2019s Collabrance, Ricoh\u2019s CHAMPs, Muratec\u2019s Leapfrog, and so many others. Add to those a host of consultants who can help a dealership get started and maybe there\u2019s a way to make the transition easy after all. With that in mind we spoke with a few people who know a thing or two about Managed Services. They discuss how to get started in Managed Services and whether or not buying an IT company is the easy answer. Getting Started David Pohlman, Office of the President\/COO GreatAmerica Financial Services Corporation, who oversees the company\u2019s Collabrance Managed Services program, views education as an elementary first step, particularly for understanding what this business is all about and what drives success. \u201cIt\u2019s an entirely different business from the office imaging world,\u201d states Pohlman. \u201cWhen people fail to do the education piece they tend to approach it in a way that ultimately doesn\u2019t lead to success.\u201d After some basic education comes the business plan. \u201cDefine the new direction, objectives, and a market strategy, which should expose your target [audience] and prospect profile,\u201d says Charles Lamb, president & CEO Mps&it Sales Consulting, about creating a business plan. Focusing on these areas will help define what the dealership wants to do and who they want to do it with, meaning what types of services will be offered and what types of customers will be targeted. \u201cIt should also include a thorough consideration of what changes need to be made in their business to support a successful outcome,\u201d adds Lamb. \u201cAnd projections must be reasonable. \u00a0Like changing the direction of a ship; sometimes it\u2019s not instant, it has to work its way through.\u201d He recalls one dealer who told him that his dealership was going to sell $1 million more this year than the previous year. When Lamb asked him, \u201cHow are you going to do that?\u201d the response was, \u201cWe\u2019re going to sell Managed Services.\u201d That meant an additional $250,000 per quarter. Considering it was already the middle of January it was obvious to Lamb that the dealer had no plan and he wasn\u2019t surprised when he asked him, \u201cYou already have some of that money, right?\u201d The dealer\u2019s response was, \u201cNo, not yet.\u201d \u201cNow you kind of get my point,\u201d says Lamb. \u201cYou have to define your objective and what is a successful transition, and if they\u2019re starting out, what is success and ultimately who are you going to tell that value story to?\u201d Lamb also emphasizes the need to communicate this change in direction with your customers and prospects, particularly in the way the business is portrayed on its website. \u201cYour website can no longer be just a copier billboard, you\u2019re going to have to provide confidence in everything you portray in the marketplace,\u201d advises Lamb. \u201c[It should show] that your technology skill set is five years ahead of the customers, that you\u2019re pulling them forward, and there is a reasonable value for them to secure you.\u201d Dean Swenson, president of The Swenson Group has been taking advantage of Konica Minolta\u2019s All Covered program for nearly two years now. His inspiration for doing so was the recurring opportunity in the IT Services market. For Swenson the initial steps involved understanding how Managed Services was going to fit into his existing business. The dealership created its business plan using data points from All Covered once he had a better idea of their average project revenue, what the recurring contract looked like, who was selling it, and how reps were paid. \u201cAdmittedly, we knew nothing about how to start it and the All Covered Playbook came out a little while afterwards, which was a nice way to jump start it,\u201d observes Swenson. Even with the assistance of All Covered, a lot of the onus for long-term success is still on the dealer. \u201cWe do a lot of the heavy lifting of the service delivery, but the dealer plays a critical role in the client relationship, the sales process, and the onsite response, so in order to get those plans together we\u2019ll often have our local team sit down with them and talk through the overall advice we\u2019d give them,\u201d explains All Covered\u2019s Nick Pegley. \u201cWe have a playbook\u2014a how-to manual\u2014that describes how to go to market, compensation plans, what the services are, and how the services will work operationally.\u201d For Britt Siedentopf, Managed Services Manager for Leapfrog Managed Services by Muratec, a critical first step is identifying the target customer. The second is building out a technology staff around that target customer. He suggests targeting customers with 20-80 users in their IT environment. \u201cThe reason is anywhere below 20 users, those customers tend not to value IT,\u201d says Siedentopf. \u201cLook for a prospect that values IT, wants things to work, wants out of the IT business, and wants to hand it off to the dealer.\u201d He acknowledges that narrowing the focus to certain types of customers is a difficult concept for some traditional office technology dealers. \u201cIn the world sales reps live in today, they see every business as a potential target customer,\u201d notes Seidentopf. \u201cThat\u2019s fine for selling a copier or a printer, but in Managed Services they need a laser-focused approach and must be able to say no to certain customers.\u201d Lamb also believes that employees need to be taught the difference between a strategic and tactical plan and understand who within the customer\u2019s or prospect\u2019s organization needs to hear those values. \u201cOur industry continually drives towards our front-line contacts, but that\u2019s not how Managed Services excels,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1649,237],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13311"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13311"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13318,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13311\/revisions\/13318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Dean](\"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/SwensonDean-120030F-150x150.jpg\")
![\"Nick](\"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Nick-Pegley-VP-Marketing-All-Covered-e1432124743684-150x150.jpg\")
![\"Dave](\"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/Sobel_Dave_sm-120x150.jpg\")
![\"Brit](\"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/BSiedentopf_headshot-150x150.jpg\")
![\"Dawn](\"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Dawn-Abbuhl-150x150.jpg\")
![\"JIm](\"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/JIm-Coriddi.jpg\")