For some of our MSP partners, a hands-off approach will sufficiently meet their needs. When they have a client that needs print, they can send them our way, and we'll pay them when we close the deal.
However, for a large MSP with a gigantic book of business, this approach just won't cut it.
Some of our referral partners give us a list of ten or more customers they want to introduce us to (we have had almost 60 from one MSP). When there are so many introductions at once, MSPs often ask us to manage the process of determining how to wrangle their prospect list and keep everyone on the same page.
To help these large MSPs get the most out of Print Partner, we’ve built the Print Partner Sales Management Program with the goal of making prospecting for new print referrals as easy as possible.
In this article, we’ll review how this program works and which MSPs are best positioned to take advantage of it.
What is the Print Partner Sales Management Program?
The Print Partner Sales Management Program is a workflow strategy we’ve built to support larger MSPs with multiple opportunities to keep track of.
When your MSP joins our referral program, we offer to thoroughly review your book of business with your team to identify clients we identify as print-rich.
The sales management program offers value to our partners in two different ways:
- Determine which customers and in what order you should make introductions
- Track all active opportunities with your team
Here are some solutions our sales management program can provide.
1. Prospecting “Print-Rich” Clients
When you join Print Partner’s referral program, we start with identifying your clients that would be a good fit for our program.
When MSPs start working with us, they enter the program at different stages of the prospecting process. And so, we adjust our program to fit their needs.
If you come to us with a few cherry-picked prospects you want us to reach out to, fantastic! We will assign those prospects to your designated Green Office Partner sales rep and get the ball rolling immediately.
But many MSPs with large client bases need help finding where to start. That’s where our Sales Management Program kicks in - we’ll do all the work for you!
Scanning Your Book of Business
First, your designated sales rep at Green Office Partner will sit down with you to review your book of business.
We know the print market, and we know exactly what we’re looking for. We’ll ask all the right questions, and you can help point us in the right direction.
For new partners with a large book of clients, we help you identify 5-10 prospects we deem to be the best fit for our services.
These are your clients with the most locations, the highest reliance on print, and the greatest need for document workflow solutions (faxing, security, document routing, etc.) We lovingly refer to these as our print-rich prospects.
That being said, you know your clients better than we do. We'll always respect your judgment if you tell us that CFO may not be receptive to our offerings.
What is a ‘Print-Rich’ Client?
Print-rich clients rely on a robust printing infrastructure and require advanced print solutions to address their printing needs.
While not an exhaustive list, print-rich clients typically check the following boxes:
- They have 100+ office employees. A construction company with 99 field laborers and one accountant won’t qualify as a good opportunity.
- They operate across multiple locations that rely heavily on print.
- They rely on at least four big A3 copiers with some smaller printers—anything less, and they probably need to be printing more to meet our minimum.
- They print a decent amount of color pages or a TON of black and white pages. As a ballpark statistic, to spend $500/month, a client needs to print around 50,000 mono pages or 5,000 color pages. Or, some combination of both.
- They have complex faxing and printing needs and could benefit from solutions such as XMFax, PaperCut, PrinterLogic, Square 9, Umango, or other solutions that will incur a regular monthly spend.
In addition to the bullet points above, your client’s industry can speak volumes about their printing habits. For the kingpins of printing, think law firms, schools, hospitals, accountants, and real estate firms, among others.
To learn more about which industries have the highest print volumes, read: 5 Industries that Use the Most Print
Once your team and Green Office Partner select your target prospects, we will begin our research.
Installing Data Collection Agents
After proper planning, We will create a data collection agent (DCA) for each prospect that your engineering team can deploy on a server in their environment. (FWIW we can also just work with your NOC to pull the same data out of Auvik)
Once installed, the DCA will give us a glimpse into user habits. It helps us answer the following questions:
- How much do users print?
- How many clicks of color? How many clicks of mono?
- What models of devices do they have?
- What is the age of all their print devices?
- Which devices are generating lots of errors?
Answering these questions will help us plan our sales strategy, allowing us to fine-tune our service pitch to each client’s specific needs.
Collect Current Print Agreement and Invoices
After we examine the findings from the DCA we install, we will finally review a copy of their current print agreement.
The print agreement is not always available, and some clients may not even have a current managed print services provider.
However, when we do get our hands on the agreement, it gives us an unmatched glimpse into their printing needs. The agreement shows us their current rates, how much they can print, and other stipulations their fleet must adhere to.
It allows us to understand where they are so we know where we can take them.
That’s why we offer MSPs an additional $250 when they provide a current print agreement with a referral.
Along with the agreement, we review invoices to see precisely how much they spend on print. This helps us avoid giving them sticker shock when we sit with the CFO further down the sales cycle.
Using our hands-on prospecting methods, we can help your team refer us only to the best-fit clients, giving both your MSP and Print Partner the greatest odds of success.
2. Managing the Sales Process
Once prospecting is complete, we’ll rely on your MSP to make the introduction for us. Because you’ve built a solid relationship with your clients, they will trust you when you refer them to work with Green Office Partner.
Introduce us to your clients as your preferred print vendor, and we will handle everything that follows.
Pitching Our Service
Once you make the introduction, your dedicated sales representative will take complete ownership of the sale and will contact the customer to initiate the print assessment process.
During this assessment, we will use the fact-finding we conducted from the DCA, current print agreement, and invoices.
We will speak to the CFO and any key members of the prospective account’s team to learn about their needs, print-related pain points, etc.
And finally, we will produce a total cost of ownership (TCO) for their current print fleet and a proposal for what we offer.
For more information on our assessment process, read: What is a Print Assessment?
Tracking Sales
For the big fish clients, your MSP will likely have a strong interest in the status of each case.
We completely understand this sentiment - large clients can potentially yield your MSP tens of thousands of dollars in additional revenue.
At the same time, you probably don’t have time to organize and track all of the referrals you send our way.
That’s why, in our Sales Management Program, we do that for you! Think of us as your print secretary.
We’ll track the status of each prospect you refer to us in a neatly-organized spreadsheet that we share with you. By doing so, we are offering you full transparency into every referral you send our way.
Using this spreadsheet, you’ll be able to see exactly how far in the sales process we are. That way, if you see a sale towards the end of its pipeline, you can make some extra room in your wallet for that sweet, sweet commission.
Print Partner and Supporting Your MSP
At Print Partner, our #1 priority is to support our MSP partners throughout every step of the prospecting and sales process. When your referrals successfully make it through our sales pipeline, everyone wins.
When you refer clients to us, we offer you three core benefits:
- Collaboration: When your client works with us, we work together to provide top-tier support. No more finger-pointing when your client’s random print vendor drops the ball.
- Protection: Many print vendors that work with your clients also offer IT support. Nothing is stopping them from poaching your clients behind your back. Unlike so many others, we do NOT sell MSP-related services (never will), and we’ll protect you from print vendors that try to operate in your space.
- Compensation: We pay you! For every referral you send our way, we’ll pay you $250 plus an additional $250 if we get the client’s current print agreement. Once we make the sale, you’ll earn $1,000 per copier sold and 5% on their lifetime print allotment. Plus, you can earn on future sales.
So what are you waiting for? Take advantage of our program today, and we’ll support you with the Print Partner Sales Management Program.
Consider partnering with us, a Print Partner you can trust.
