How Aussie partners sell print solutions

While sometimes lost in the sea of discussion that spans cloud, networking, security, data centre infrastructure, and software-as-a-service, print remains an important business function in Australia. 

Print demand requires providers, and we rounded up four partners who deal in-part or exclusively with print to share with us how they go about selling print solutions.

Christian Lovelace, EFEX

We spend a lot of time training our sales staff and that's a bit of a rarity in our industry, you would probably think it's not but sales training, in general, is something that is not focused on. Once people get into sales in this industry with other businesses, they fall short around continuing to upskill their salespeople.

We really try to detach ourselves from print, and what I mean by that is when we go and talk to a customer, we don't really talk about the printer as such, we don't talk about the speed, we don't talk about the specifications or the brand really. We just talk about the outcome that the customer is after. 

Nobody wakes up and says: “I want to buy a printer today.”

Alex Pinkerton, Conekt Australia

Our sales and management teams bring long-term industry experience to each engagement, and we have an understanding of our own strengths and our competitors’ weaknesses.

We also bundle software with our products, like adding capture and workflow and/or Robotic Process Automation software to achieve accounts payable automation or another business process automation, with print-related hardware (scanners) being one of the ingestion points in the overall workflow offering.

Diversification is another key point. We offer other ICT services with our managed print offering such as managed IT services, cybersecurity, offsite backup, cloud & networking services, help desk support and telecommunications (to name a few).

Michael Franco, MicrotechDPS

In our experience we find business executives understand that embracing new technology is key to delivering a more efficient and effective service to their clients.

Current day print equipment enables a service provider the opportunity to move our focus past the traditional "offramp" of just printing pages, and concentrate on the ability to build additional value for customers via the "onramp" concept for all forms of printed communication within their business.

By embracing technologies that surround print devices such as intelligent scanning and data capture, and automation of business workflow activities we can build value far beyond the traditional output of printed pages, and deliver better organisational outcomes for our customers.

Michael Manton, RBC Group

Creating significant points of value to a more sophisticated client will ensure revenue streams continue to grow.  In a world driven by our ability to adapt and change RBC is providing a level of innovation that will give our clients the competitive advantage they need to stay ahead.   

“The RBC Group developed apps have created an annuity revenue stream that is exceptional value for our clients delivering automation and seamless integration into the many cloud based applications saving time and boosting productivity.  This also creates a deeper level of partnership and trust with our clients by taking the conversation to process rather than price.