01732 759725 48 For us, it’s about people being able to pick up the phone and not go through ten different options, click the wrong one, and have to start again. With us, you go straight through to a person, you’re asked a couple of questions, you’re not on the phone for more than 10–15 seconds, and the call is logged. They know an engineer will come out and fix it. That matters. Q: How have you changed/are you changing business operations to exploit new opportunities? A: The honest answer is we’re not, and I think we’re probably one of the few left who haven’t diversified. We’ve thought about it, we’ve talked about it, but the trouble is we don’t really know what diversification looks like for us. Ultimately, we’re good at print. We know print. We’re good at MPS. If we move into IT, comms, or anything else, are we going to be as good at it? And would that have a detrimental effect on our customers? Q: When selling MFPs, what are the most popular software solutions you provide and why? A: We do a lot of PaperCut, I think about 20% of our machines have PaperCut embedded, we have a lot of education customers and the rules-based printing works for them. Q: If you could change one aspect of your job, what would it be and why? A: Admin! If that was less timeconsuming, I’d have more time to get out and sell more. Q: How do you spend your week – time on phone, face to face meetings with customers etc.? A: I kind of mix it up a little bit, I have a lot of customer meetings, my preference is always face to face and again being in Norfolk, people like that. I spend time supporting the internal sales team and I also like to get out and do a bit of oldfashioned door knocking which is where we find most of our new business! challenges as well. The other big issue is finding good salespeople. We have successfully developed a sales team in our Colchester office who are doing really, really well, but trying to replicate that is difficult. We’ve got ambitions to replicate that success in two or three other locations, but it all comes down to the people. Finding good salespeople who are prepared to go out, win new business, and put the hard graft in, is getting harder and harder. Q: Which OEMs do you partner with and why? A: What we get from Develop is, in all honesty, second to none. The attention to detail from a service perspective and the level of support we receive are outstanding. Their ethos and desire to please is very similar to us in many ways. The product is great and we have a lot of customers that have used the brand for many years. We also supply Epson; we brought them on for the sustainability piece. And six months ago, we partnered with Brother, who is a manufacturer that sat in both the managed print arena but more importantly to us also the AutoID sector, which has filled some gaps requested by our client base. Q: What are your customers most interested in currently? A: Customers have always been interested in saving money, that goes without saying. It’s usually the number one factor in most people’s decision‑making, not for everyone, but for the majority. The second thing, and something I’m seeing more now than I have for a long time, is the value of the local touch. I don’t know whether it’s a Norfolk, Suffolk, East Anglia thing, but because there’s been so much acquisition of smaller dealers by larger ones over the last five or six years, people are fed up with it. For people to know we’re genuinely local, is more important now than at any point since I started in copiers. The third thing is approachability. Q: What do you see as the biggest challenges facing channel businesses today? A: There are two things. The obvious one is the reduction in print volumes. It annoys me when people constantly bring it up because it turns into a negative conversation about our industry. There is more to managed print than just print volume. But at the same time, you can’t be naive about the fact that people are printing less. You have to add value with managed print in areas such as enablement, security and sustainability. The industry has recovered from COVID, but not fully. You generally hear that it’s recovered to around 75–80%, and that brings its own Tom McCarthy, Sales Director, Officeflow View from the channel Tom McCarthy Q&A
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