Attention! Turn Off The Blinking Blue Light! Watching some of the print industry’s actors have blue light specials is scary! Yes, Kmart is being reincarnated within some print/copier dealers as they move from a product-centric to a service-centric deliverable.
What the hell is value-added selling when your marketing is based on saving people 30-40%, bragging about never raising prices, and quoting prices on services as if they were commodity products found on aisle four at the old Kmart store?
The reality of an industry focused on selling products becoming an industry capable of selling services is still in a great struggle. A struggle made apparent by the lack of clear articulation from within the industry’s ranks and the evident lack of substance and details in their marketplace messaging.
The industry’s actors must quickly realize that selling print, its supplies, and services is nothing compared to selling the intellectual capabilities needed in delivering managed IT or cyber security services profitably.
If the industry continues promoting IT services as it promotes its commodity deliverable of print. The industry’s actors will find themselves with all the IT clients that successful IT service providers refuse to accept as clients.
In Closing: Your success in delivering excellent managed services will result from your remarkability. A remarkability your clients will be excited to make the appropriate investment to receive. Excellent services are not born from blue light specials.
Status quo is the killer of all that will be invented.
Today's episode piggybacks on my last Ricoh episode as we prepare for Ricoh's 2nd quarter numbers. I dig into the massive reduction in workforce since 2018 and lack of reasonable operating profit. Ricoh needs major changes quickly!
Today I share my plead with the industry to shut down all subsidiaries of Ninestar! Banned or not including their largest. Lexmark! Ninestar's game playing with setting up new subsidiaries must end! We can do it! So let's do it! We are an industry of great people!
ray stasieczko
Author