Kyocera’s back with a brand new invention. Something to grab resellers tightly, so profits flow like a harpoon daily and nightly.
Q: What is peaking your interest in the print industry at the moment?
Steve Pearce, Head of Marketing at Kyocera:
“At Kyocera, we want to give our channel partners alternative tech and support, like cloud hosting, migration opportunities, and cybersecurity, to give them the opportunity to grow into new areas. Therefore we will be focusing on more vertical approached sales and marketing to enable them to target opportunities in specific markets.”
Q: What is it about a vertical strategy? Do you see a gap in the market there?
SP: “Our resellers will know if they are good at dealing with a specific vertical, and we’re not telling everyone to focus on specific verticals if it won’t benefit them. But as a broad approach we supply resellers with support in key print-heavy verticals.
“We also want to point out the horizontal opportunity too. Printers are required for accounts payable applications and HR onboarding, so our advice is that, even if you go into a gin distiller in Kent, they will have an HR department, they will have an accounts team, and our resellers can offer them some great hardware and software to to enable them to be more agile organisations.”
Q: Are you changing your relationship with resellers?
SP: “What we’re trying to do is offer an advisory service. We’re asking them: ‘Do you know what your biggest area of businesses is? Are you talking to the HR departments within the business you already sell to? Do you help automate the processes of accounts of customers that are already on your books?’ These are the questions we’re asking to get our partners to stop, collaborate, and listen.
Q: What!?
SP: “One of the biggest challenges our resellers have is future proofing themselves. IT purchasers often just want one provider for everything, and the reality is it’s easier to bolt on print to a cloud solution than the other way around.
• Stop
“We’re asking resellers to think about what IoT solutions they can offer, and importantly, whether they can offer it as a service. Recently there’s been a big push towards IP telephony or UC and in that vein, Kyocera will offer partners these cloud based systems.
In return, we’re asking resellers to have a think about areas of IoT, that their current buyers are purchasing somewhere else, that they feel they could add to their business.
• Collaborate
“As I mentioned, IT buyers want a one stop shop, but unfortunately it’s unlikely print resellers will transform into that business overnight. Therefore, we’re suggesting that the best way forward for print partners is to collaborate with like-minded IT companies, whether in the same geographical area, or within a specific vertical.
“By forging a relationship like this, our partners can offer their portfolio of print solutions as well as telephony, door entry systems and CCTV. That collaboration between print and IT specialists opens up
lots of cross selling opportunities and provides customers with the ‘one-stop-shop’ they want.”
• Listen
“Having an ear to the ground and understanding what the market is concerned about is vital. For example, environment-conscious buying has rocketed in importance when it comes to the decision making process. What was once a nice to have is now becoming a major influence when it comes to awarding business and contracts.
This is why Kyocera has launched carbon neutral printers, so resellers will be buying from carbon neutral companies, and delivering devices that can save up to 70% of energy.
“That’s just one example of listening to the market, listening to the new buying signals, understanding customers, and working out the technology areas they will be interested in moving forward.
