By West McDonald, Vice President of Business Development, Print Audit & Owner, FocusMPS

Are you the owner of an office equipment dealership looking to grow your MPS (Managed Print Services) business in the next 10 years?  There are 3 dark secrets threatening your livelihood that you may already be aware of (or should be!).  The question is, how can you turn them to your advantage?  Read on!

Volumes/User are declining: You can hardly turn around without somebody telling you that office users are printing less.  Digitized workflows, shifts in user demographics (millennials anyone?) and more intelligent printing tools are all having an impact.  You’ve run the numbers yourself and know this to be true.

Less equipment is needed to do the same job:  Hardware sales are down, period.  All the big OEMs have annual reports, read them and you’ll know this is true.  Consolidation of devices for the same volumes has been driven by competitive pressures as well as impacts from point #1 above.

Contract renewals are often smaller: When it comes time for contract renewal we cringe because we know the customer is going to ask us to sharpen our pencils.  Most times we are forced to comply because they bring in a competitor to keep us on our toes.

All bad news, right?  Well it doesn’t have to be.  Here are the secrets that industry insiders don’t want you to know about how you can fight these 3 dark truths and come out making more money than ever before!

Change the model:  Declining volumes doesn’t mean you have to make less money.  CPP is long in the tooth but there are alternatives.  How about SBB (Seat Based Billing)?  This new model will allow you to make less revenue while increasing the amount of Gross Profit you get to keep.  There are also far fewer competitors that know how to sell this way and customers prefer the ability to budget for their print.  You can learn more about SBB bydownloading a free 15 page guide produced by Print Audit.  There is actually a SBB Council that has over 30 of the leading office equipment dealers engaged on refining the model so it can start to replace CPP.  SBB is coming people, time to get on the train.

Join CompTIA:  Fill the hardware void by selling more services.  All the OEMs are doing it because they know that becoming a services led business is critical for their survival and prosperity.  Document management solutions, scanning, Managed IT Services, telephony and Cloud are all good options to explore.  Educate yourself on options by becoming a member of CompTIA because they span all areas of the office ecosystems.  Managed IT, 3D printing, telephony, Cloud, mobility, all of it!  It’s time to not just talk about diversification but to get out and immerse yourself in communities that will train you.  Earning the prestigious Managed Print Trustmark could be the easiest way to get started.