The following was written by Scott Cullen, scott_cullen@verizon.net editor and publisher of The Week in Imaging
It always amazes me how some dealers, industry consultants, and other industry types can rattle off the model numbers of copiers and MFPs that go back, 5, 10, 20, 30 years. How do they remember that stuff?
With so many makes and models still in operation, what’s the best way for a sales rep to sell against competitive equipment, especially when a steady stream of new products from his or her OEM mean more products to learn about? For sales reps with a need for competitive information there’s various tools on the market that can help and one of those is Industry Analysts’ Printer Benchmark Service.
The Rochester-based consulting and testing organization has been marketing this service for the past three years in partnership with DataMaster Online (DMO), a European organization based in Rennes, France, that does all of the heavy lifting for Industry Analysts who resells the service here in the U.S.
According to Industry Analysts’ President Andy Slawetsky, the service originally had more of a European flavor to it, but over the past couple of years DMO has done a better job of making it not only suitable to the North American market, but the global market as well.
“They’ve done a good job of laying this out in a way that makes sense to all markets,” says Slawetsky. “It’s similar to what [sales reps] are used to seeing from other services as far as the information they’re looking for, the specs and they way it’s laid out.”
DMO developed the service, built the Website, and collects all of the information and specs. They also test equipment at dealer locations. Unlike some other organizations in this industry, DMO doesn’t market awards or certificates although it recently began issuing certificates, which can be downloaded from the DMO Website at no charge. “It’s more of a marketing tool to build awareness for the service,” explains Slawetsky. “That adds a lot of value.”
Three versions of the service are available. A basic version that includes technical specifications and comparison tools; an intermediate version that offers the same features as the basic version plus a comparison of strengths and weaknesses as wells and photos and videos; and a Premium version that includes all of the features of the basic and intermediate services along with results of productivity tests, a comparison tool output to PDF and XLSX, a search tool for filling in bids for office and production devices, the ability to search by function, and access to DMO from a smartphone.
The service provides sales reps with an array of search criteria, information on copier and scanning productivity for different types of jobs, test reports, and a device’s pros and cons. For example, a sales rep can compare his machine against a comparable competitive device and the program will identify all the positives in green and the negatives in red along with brief explanations about those plusses and minuses. If a rep wants to compare two products, the program can find every other machine that device competes against in the DMO database. It offers side-by-side comparisons of up to eight machine’s technical specs, finishing options, speeds and feeds, and electrical consumption and highlights the areas where the reps’ machine wins and where it loses compared to a competitive product.
“It’s a useful way to compare your machine to their machine,” says Slawetsky. “It helps you be a little proactive about what your competitor is going to say about your machine so you can bring up your shortcomings before the other guy comes in and starts making a big deal about it.”
The service even offers comparisons of solutions. Reps can view side-by-side comparisons of Equitrac and PaperCut, for example.
Dealerships with single-user licenses as well as dealers with as many as 45 sales reps represent the typical Industry Analyst customer for this service. “The program is great, it’s super flexible, and we’ve put together outstanding pricing,” states Slawetsky. “It’s considerably less than you would find for other comparable services.”
Pricing ranges from $18 per month per user for the basic version to $63 per month per user for the Premium version. Discounts are offered for 6-month, 1-year, or 2-year packages. “There’s nothing like that in the industry,” says Slawetsky. “The people who use it a lot really love it.”
Although a lot of the specs and information contained in the service is available online, compiling that information is a time-consuming process. With the Printer Benchmark Service all it takes is a couple of clicks and the information is on the sale rep’s computer screen.
DMO’s database contains more than 2,000 machines. If a machine is not in the database and a customer needs that information, DMO will find it for them. Industry Analysts recently had a customer request specs for one of Canon’s early digital products—a product that wasn’t in the database. Within 24 hours that information was in the database.
“If we don’t have it in the database we’ll get it there,” says Slawetsky.
For more articles from Scott Cullen click here: The Week in Imaging