Five Reasons Why Dealers Should Lead with Panasonic Scanners
Today had me with a working lunch and I wanted to connect with Brian Szoke (Partner Sales Manager for Document Imaging with Panasonic) to educate us more about Panasonic and their document scanners. It's my belief that we all need to educate ourselves (including me) with different products and solutions that can create additional opportunities for us in the field. Below is our short chat.
Art: Hey Brian hope you and family had a great Thanksgiving. As you know there are many manufacturers that offer document scanners. Why would should we lead with Panasonic?
Brian: First and foremost, Panasonic as a whole is a 100+ year company with a long list of B2B products. From Toughbook tablet, audio and visual to Tesla batteries to name a few. For over 27 years Panasonic has also manufactured award winning document scanners and scanning solutions. We were awarded the 2019 BLI scanner line of the year. Which is a major accomplishment in the scanner industry.
We offer a breath of product and solutions a partner can sell to any client. From a scanner to a back end ECM.
One of of the biggest reasons a dealership like yourself would want to lead with Panasonic is our customer service and programs.
Customer service is very important to us at Panasonic. We are aligned in a way that we have an outside sales rep and an inside sales rep in each territory.
Where obviously myself being an outside sales rep, I'm more the feet on the street guy and willing to going onsite with any sales rep representing the manufacturer or just to be an extension to their sales force. The inside sales rep is waiting to assist with any needs a value added reseller asks. This team together can turn around information in minutes and provide you all the information you need to be successful and win the opportunity.
Art: You mentioned dealer programs. How does your programs differ from other manufacturers?
Our programs are designed with two key important factors Protection and Margin. In my past 25 years + in this industry and working for the other competitors. I can confidently say Panasonic does far more to make sure the reseller opportunities are protected. Most manufacturers have the mentality of we don’t care who drives the opportunity as long as someone wins with their products. Panasonic takes a different approach to the market. We do everything in our power to protect and make sure the person driving the opportunity wins the sale. Big or small!!
Art: Got it, so can you tell me more about how that works for the dealer?
Brian: One of the ways we can protect our partner is with our no-nonsense deal registration which give the dealers an 8% advantage . All we require is the partner to get us involved early in the sales cycle. This allows us to register the opportunity quickly and protect the sale from other partners. Also we can be aggressive on price especially if the partner is up against a competitive manufacturer.
Art: One of the biggest problems I've seen over the years with selling scanners is that the margins for dealer and salespeople stink. Price checking is something that almost every client does and I'm tired of losing deals because pricing on the web is the same as my sales rep cost or less. How does Panasonic deal with this?
One of the ways to combat against this, Panasonic has a strict MAP policy. As a manufacturer we dictate what the online stores price will be. We police this as well. My manager Fred Scherman takes a strict approach to this and if we find an online store advertising below MAP we jump on it. We will allow them to change their price and if they don’t they will de-authorized Immediately.
We set the MAP pricing higher than our competitors because this allows dealers to garner more margin with every opportunity. We have partners that make upwards of 20% on scanners.
Our Panasonic partner program earns our VAR's a back end rebate. Depending the tier of the dealership, your dealership could earn you up to 12% back at the end of a quarter.
Art: That's a pretty cool program and something you don't see from the likes of Fujitsu and Epson. With Ricoh, sales people get spiffs on most of the MFP's that reps sell. For many of us we rely on those spiffs to make up dollars with competitive opportunities. Does Panasonic offer something like that?
Brian: Yup we also have a lucrative Spiff program. We spiff dollars not points. Our spiff program can earn a sales rep or company 30 to 600 dollars per scanner. Both the Back End rebate and Spiff program are based on the more you sell the more you earn.
If you're in the Northeast to Mid-Atlantic region please feel free to hook up with Brian. If you're in other areas you can also reach out to Fred.
Now let's go sell some scanners!
-=Good Selling=-
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