Taking a look at business in general but the business equipment industry specifically, I see a trend towards collaboration. Technology certainly drives a great deal of what we can and should be able to do in today’s business. What I see in our industry is that technology has carried us to new levels. Today a dealer can integrate all of their products and install them on a company’s network.
The collaboration piece comes into place as our industry must coordinate the hardware, software, service, and supply piece of the full integration and utilization of these elements. In the traditional model of sales in the industry a salesman would approach the customer or prospect and sell them equipment. Normally training, service, and supplies followed the sale. This was a very simplistic approach but it worked until the network came into place.
Today that same sale does not take place without a collaborative effort by sales, service, connectivity, and software involvement. It becomes a team approach to the customer or prospect. The key is finding out not as much what equipment to place, but what the customer or prospect wants the equipment to do for them. In other words, the impact it will have on the organization. Do they also need to scan or fax documents through the network? After scanning do they want to store documents digitally for retrieval later? How and where do they want the documents to be stored and at what levels of access do they want employees to have to these documents?
The list goes on and on and gets deeper and deeper into a company’s needs and requirements. The sales professional today acts more as a consultant and a quarterback in the account. He must be able to bring various members of the team into the account to develop the areas of expertise that are required to put all the pieces together. The sales cycle does get lengthened in this manner but in the end the customer get what they need and the implementation is done correctly. As a customer you would not want it any other way.
What do you want your office equipment to do for you?
