Erik Cagle
State of the Industry
Be My Guest: Beyond Lead Generation, Dealer-Hosted Events Solidify Relationships with Business Community
I
t all begins with a simple idea. Let’s have a few customers come to our headquarters one Friday for a lunch-and-learn on a topic of common interest. We’ll feed them, do a 45-minute presentation on managed services, pull one of their business cards from a fishbowl and present a $100 Best Buy gift card to the winner. Then our sales reps will circle back with them the following week. Office technology dealers have dined with clients and prospects for as long as resellers have courted businesses with all manners of equipment and technology that make their work day easier and more efficient. In recent years, however, the idea of a hosted event has taken on new meaning. And what used to take a few hours of planning has escalated into a full-blown, sometimes even branded, event of Herculean proportions. Everything is bigger: the invite list, the venue, the educational program, guest speakers, catering, prizes and contests—not to mention the budget and the time invested in bringing hundreds of guests to a third-party venue for an afternoon of education, fun and networking. It’s all designed to ultimately solidify relations with clients and prospects while generating business. In the end, the point of a hosted event is to portray the dealer as a thought leader and instill confidence in attendees. The hope is that attendees will trust their dealer partners to provide guidance regarding the tools and technology that enable them to achieve more with less. We’ve assembled a selection of dealers to share their experiences taking hosted events to the next level, so you can find an idea or three to take away from their efforts and implement into your own marketing endeavors.
Bob Maxwell, KOMAX Business Systems
As is the case with several dealers, the idea of KOMAX Business Systems doing a hosted event evolved from its advertising agreement with a local sports team—in this case, the West Virginia Power minor league baseball team in Charleston, West Virginia (an affiliate of the Seattle Mariners). As part of the deal, KOMAX is allotted space in one of the facility’s luxury boxes, where the dealer can host employees or clients for a night at Appalachian Power Park. During the first year of the dealer’s agreement with the Power, KOMAX President/Owner Bob Maxwell decided to host a night at the park, which attracted nearly 100 customers and prospects. There were several copier models on display, but many attendees viewed the opportunity as a free night out to have some food and drink while taking in a game. “We didn’t realize a lot of new selling opportunities from it,” Maxwell noted. After that experience, Maxwell decided to take a different approach. Instead of inviting a broad array of clients and prospects, he decided to position the show from a vertical perspective. Subsequent years have centered on the educational space, the legal market, finance, and architects/engineers. Presentations
WE’RE TAKING ON MORE OF THE CONSULTANT’S ROLE, MAKING THEM AWARE OF THE LATEST TRENDS IN OUR MARKETPLACE AND THE GIVEN TECHNOLOGIES WE’RE TALKING ABOUT. THAT’S PROVEN TO BE QUITE SUCCESSFUL FOR US. – Bob Maxwell, KOMAX Business Systems Attendees enjoy a night at Appalachian Power Park, courtesy of KOMAX 16
•
www.enxmag.com | March 2020
continued on page 18 We Saw It In ENX Magazine
