Following the broadcast of the BBC’s Panorama: Reading, Writing and Rip-offs, 20 year industry veteran and Director of Kanban Phil Matthews shares his thoughts on the copier industry and what remanufacturers can glean from the findings.
On Monday 24 September 
2012 the BBC aired its long-awaited programme Reading, Writing and Rip-offs. While it may not have been the industry wide exposé of the copier industry many predicted, it did raise an interesting question: how does a reseller of remanufactured supplies attract and keep customers when faced with such aggressive and corrupt competition?
If we go back five years, the response may have been to lease printers on a click. Certainly when I first went from copier vendor to printer vendor, that was their view; though not mine. Having worked with many copier salespeople, I knew even the “nice’ ones would win that battle. 90 percent of the training that copier representatives receive is about selling finance, not print.
Three years ago, the answer for many was to get an MPS programme. However MPS is not as straightforward as people were led to believe. Typically falling into one of two camps: either it is simply a lease and click, which is 82 percent vendor direct, or it’s a Professional Service. Neither are competencies of the average supplies company. One MPS software vendor recently confided that 50 percent of MPS offerings fail in the first year, which is why they charge upfront.
In 2012 and the midst of a terrible economic downturn, some remanufactures are enjoying double digit growth. The key to their success was recognising that they have what customers want. They no longer strive to replicate hard nosed financial sales or chase elusive MPS glory. Instead they understand what customers do and don’t want in 2012 and onwards.
Customers don’t want:
MPS – 70 percent of customers buy printer supplies via transactions.
Hardware – Sales are down 40 percent. Manufactures are spending millions of pounds reducing their copier and printer divisions.
Contracts – Customers need to be agile and are more wary of contracts than ever before.
Change – Change is disruptive, costly, and risky.
Exploitation – The wastage in many contracts is the difference between colleagues keeping their jobs or being laid off.
Understanding what customers don’t want enables us to define the path of least resistance to sell them what they do want.
They want to self manage their existing fleet, replenish the supplies they use, trust their suppliers, support the needs of their business and ensure they are around tomorrow.
When Kanban speak to customers the first thing we say is “we are not here to rip & replace your printers”. You can see the relief on their faces. We talk to them about what supplies they are buying and why, and what they have under contract. We start with replenishing the supplies and customers quickly asked us to organise more. At least 80 percent of their printers are good for another year at least.
We do monitor the printers wherever possible, simply because it makes our selling job that much easier. What we spend on monitoring we save on cold calling and shipping. In fact we can sell far more as it gives us a pipeline of when customers need supplies.
In conclusion, the hardest part of selling against copier resellers has been the belief that we needed to match their offering rather than differentiate ourselves and define our own value additions. Fortunately that job is getting easier as customers are actively looking for alternative solutions and suppliers that understand their needs.
BBC Panorama: Reading, Writing and Rip-offs is available to view on BBC iPlayer.