Anticipate and Plan Your Attack: A Blueprint for Carving Out a Successful A4 Strategy

A consultant I hired when I was VP of sales and marketing for a $30 million MSP told me about the secret behind successful salespeople.

He said they’re great at finding growth trends, and once they do, they focus their efforts on those trends because that’s where the opportunity is. Even a mediocre sales rep can be successful in a market on the rise.

Fast forward to 2022. My role as a B2B sales coach and digital marketing strategist for many of North America’s most recognized MSPs is to find and seize growth opportunities using talent and technology. I do this every day for our clients whose tech stacks go well beyond copiers and printers to include document management, managed IT services, cybersecurity services and unified communications.

I tell you this so you know I’m not a die-hard copier guy suggesting you water down your 2022 value proposition talking about printers; I’m simply suggesting you consider an A4 sales strategy. Think about a baseball pitcher: do they only have one pitch, or do they change things up based on the batter? You can never have enough great value propositions to book appointments in your competitors’ accounts.

To explore this more deeply, let’s start with why you should consider a “Sell A4 to Win” strategy:

• Print volumes have declined: Ask any toner provider and they’ll tell you their shipments are down 20%-30% since the pandemic began.
• Underutilized A3 copiers/MFPs: How many oversized/underutilized A3 devices are on lease in your competitors’ accounts?
• Competitors are vulnerable: Most copier dealers haven’t asked customers to right-size their printer/copier fleet.
• Short sales cycles: Selling an A4 solution is a simple replacement strategy and a great reason to collect copier lease positions.
• Huge gross profits: The substantial savings on the hardware component of your TCO packs more margin in every deal.
• Upsell to managed services: You may start with printers to gain access in to the account and then upsell from there!

When the pandemic hit in March 2020, we all witnessed the acceleration of print decline with the rise of remote workplaces and the immediate need to replace paper with digital workflows. This is when my team created our “Selling A4 to Win” program, a combination of sales coaching video modules, hard-hitting digital marketing assets, a demand generation video and a customer presentation tool your competitors won’t want you showing in their A3 accounts.

Now let’s talk about the steps to implement “Sell A4 to Win”:

1. Target paper-intensive verticals: They’re most likely to be sitting ducks with oversized/underutilized A3 devices on leases.
2. Create a horizontal hit list: Just like with paper-intensive verticals, prioritize campaigns into departments that would have seen the biggest print decline such as human resources, accounts payable, accounts receivable and sales and marketing.
3. Call the top leaders in your competitors’ accounts: Avoid procurement-level people as your point of entry—they may have relationships with your competitors and/or be covering up overspending on A3 devices.
4. Ask high-gain business questions: Make people think and want to open the door to more conversation. For example: Has your current vendor already provided you cost relief to reflect the recent decline in print volumes? Reps tell me they need questions such as these to start sales cycles in their competitors’ accounts.
5. Anticipate common A4 objections: It’s surprising how few salespeople have prepared and practiced responses to objections that will come up when selling an A4 device to replace a bigger A3 device. You might hear “we’re in a lease” or “a smaller printer will need more service” and of course “the toner is much more expensive.” There are more, but you know what I mean—be prepared.
6. Create a compelling A4 story: To sell anything, first you need to believe that your suggestions makes sense. Then you need to share that confidence and passion in your engagement strategies. This will motivate your reps to make more calls and stand in the ring longer when they’re taking a few on the nose.
7. Show and sell: Use visuals to support your claims and engage potential buyers in your first meeting. As one study suggests, people understand things 30,000 times faster when you show them a visual versus explaining something verbally. Plus, with the right visuals, you’ll keep your rep on track so they follow your prescribed selling method.
8. Use A4 references: Nobody wants to go first. Be sure to show prospects relevant examples of other organizations that transitioned from A3 to A4 and have been pleased with the results.
9. Expect A3 attack strategies: Don’t expect the incumbent copier dealer to let you walk away with their customer without putting up a fight. Unless they pivot to their own A4 strategy, expect your competitor to attack your strategy to save their business with some good old fashion fear, uncertainty and doubt.
10. Optimize your own customers first: Beat your competitors to the punch—offer to optimize your customers’ print environment with the appropriate mix of A4 and A3 devices before the competition does. In many cases, these discussions have spurred 30-day sales cycles and managed print opportunities.

Selling A4 could be the lowest of hanging fruit in the imaging industry in 2022. The tremendous demand for our “Selling A4 to Win” package is evidence that you and I are not the only ones who see the A4 potential in today’s market.

As my fellow Canadian Wayne Gretzky, “The Great One,” once said, “Don’t skate to where the puck is, skate to where it’s going.” Think about it—someone’s going to get to the customer first with an A4 strategy. Why shouldn’t that be you?