Adapted from ‘‘Reach Your Managed Print Services Targets: How to Use an Adoption Model to Win the Big Contracts,’’ Photizo Group White Paper, 2008

It’s impossible to sell anything without understanding the needs of your prospect. Yet all too often, sales and marketing professionals sit at the negotiation table unprepared. It’s not lack of effort, but rather a lack of information.

Lucrative MPS contracts come down to relationships, and the best way to form these is to develop an in-depth knowledge of your client’s device fleet and document processes. Once given the opportunity to present solutions, MPS providers must position themselves correctly, providing the right answers for the right customers. This can’t be done without knowing the issues a customer faces.

A great resource to capture useful answers is a data-driven framework for classifying customers and understanding their needs at each stage of the document cycle. Photizo Group’s MPS Customer Adoption Model is a great resource for this, as the model can help you structure a basic strategy for each unique situation, regardless of the customer’s current state. When you know where a customer is along the adoption model, you can more accurately read their situation, allowing you to develop a clearer picture of the customer’s current state. You will waste less time and avoid asking ill-advised questions or pitching the wrong solution or service.

Ten years ago, device fleet decisions came from facility managers or the purchasing department. Today, MPS salespeople are more likely to face an IT or finance executive. This group is less concerned with the product specifications that once dominated point-to-point sales, instead looking to business processes, financial impacts and overall workflow strategy. While these issues may intimidate traditional sales representatives, they spell opportunity for the provider who knows how to read the customer and respond with useful, pertinent information.

Sales Value of the MPS Customer Adoption Model

  • Targeting your message

When approaching MPS business, many vendors go in with the same strategy, focused on eliminating devices. This can be successful, but it doesn’t always address specific needs that can be a differentiator between you and your competitor. Customized messages work best for large and small organizations alike, for early MPS adopters and newcomers.

To make your case and demonstrate real return on investment, you must understand how different customers will measure the ROI of outsourcing their printer and output fleets. Every company is in a different place regarding MPS readiness. Starting out, enterprise goals for MPS strategies are to reduce imaging and print costs without sacrificing quality or productivity. With time, goals will evolve across a continuum of MPS adoption.

One of the most important benefits of the MPS Customer Adoption Model is that it gives you a target for messaging and allows you to better understand how to position your service. It gives you ways to measure, compare and understand the best way to support different customers. It facilitates the transition from box vendor to consultative solution provider. Many of the major OEMs in the industry are using Photizo’s model in their messaging today and have formed similar models in their own branding.

You can position and pitch with greater confidence and understanding. Marketing strategies can be more precisely crafted around guidelines of an adoption model. Sales professionals can make better decisions about the right services mix, capabilities and skill set for a given customer.

  • Managing MPS accounts for the long-term

The adoption model not only allows for better focus in regards to potential clients, it gives you a road map of where customers will likely take their MPS strategy. The model defines the typical growth path for MPS adoption, so you can build a long-term campaign for winning and keeping contracts.

Regular feedback and reports can help lock in MPS relationships by showing progress and areas for controlled growth into the next MPS phase. Problems can be identified and solved faster as a more strategic approach is applied. Graphs are very well suited to this type of reporting information. When reports are used in conjunction with an adoption model, vendors and their customers can compare their progress with what others have done.

  • Rely on a Research-backed Adoption Model

An adoption model should be based on the most current research collected from a broad spectrum of companies and industries. It should offer quantitative data that compares MPS across multiple companies and industries. Photizo’s MPS Customer Adoption Model derives data from quarterly research captured by tracking of the MPS industry in North America, Western Europe and Asia Pacific.

Because no two customers are alike, an adoption model also requires a descriptive framework and flexibility to allow a customization for specific circumstances. It needs nuance and depth so every client and every situation fits somewhere.

  • Assessments: Getting inside Your Customer’s Head—and Fleet

Knowledge is one of the most powerful competitive advantages in MPS engagements, paired with relevance. Understanding the customer’s business needs is the foundation of any successful sales and marketing strategy. Yet this knowledge is a moving target, so MPS initiatives should be revisited at least every three to five years.

An assessment will help identify where your prospect is now. Printing and output assessments are followed by cycles of deployment and optimization. Thus, assessments work in parallel with the life cycle framework of the MPS Customer Adoption Model.  By using them in tandem, your picture of the customer comes into focus.

The MPS Customer Adoption Model enhances every tool at your disposal and will boost your chances for contract wins. Photizo’s adoption model is the benchmark for the managed print services industry. We encourage you to take full advantage of the tool, use it to win deals, use it to deliver better service and use it to be more successful!