Although 2009 was difficult for many companies, Datamax Texas had what can only be described as a banner year. Indeed, Datamax Texas’ Jeff Flory attributes the reseller’s success—which included 20 upgrades to Laserfiche 8 and 13 upgrades to Avante—to its consultative sales methodology.

A recent Avante deal shows the effectiveness of this consultative approach. When Flory first contacted the prospect, the company’s knowledge of content management software was limited to a very basic four-user system. “It was the kind of thing a copier salesman was schlepping around—the ‘server’ was an XP Pro PC laptop,” he recalls. “They were really only prepared to invest about half of what it cost to purchase Avante.”

Business Value Beats the Basics

With two presentations in two weeks, Flory demonstrated to the company’s owner why investing substantially more in an Avante system and utilizing Workflow made more sense for his business. “I told him, ‘We can handle document management but you have bigger issues.’”

Flory set up a template and a workflow using the company’s documents. “In three steps they saw exactly how they’d process their orders and invoices,” he says. “The competitor talked about what his solution would do, but I showed them a real-world scenario.”

Flory also successfully demonstrated the system’s ease of use, which was important to the less technically inclined. “Everyone had their own ways of doing things, so I showed them how, if a user was unsure of something or did something incorrectly, another person could be notified to approve and correct it before it entered the workflow.”

Increasing the Size of the Sale

In addition to implementing a five-user Avante system, the company is now establishing its own network with the help of Datamax Texas’ Network Engineering and Strategic Applications teams to double the size of the sale.

“I have to credit our whole company for being able to capitalize on this opportunity,” says Flory. “It really came down to being able to communicate the difference between an XP Pro laptop and a full-blown server for what they really needed a system to do to positively impact their business.”

Weaving Workflow and Audit Trail into Your Sales Strategy

Datamax Texas’ strategy this year is to keep doing what worked so well last year: sell the efficacy of BPM and Workflow by addressing customer pain points with real-world demonstrations. “We’ve been able to position Workflow as such a necessary business tool that I’ve got a CFO and a VP of Financing at one company driving one of the upgrades,” Flory says. “They’re the ones saying, ‘Well, we’re already doing AP processing, what about Receivables?”

Datamax Texas also expects significant growth from financial services companies firming up their information management strategies in the face of changing regulations and oversight. “Compliance has been the big driver of our financial deals,” Flory says. “When you can say, ‘You have to show that you’ve reviewed every document—and Audit Trail does that,’ that’s very powerful.”

And—as Datamax Texas has proven—effective, for customer and reseller alike.

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Author Info

Laserfiche
Staff

Hobey Echlin is a Writer/Researcher in the Laserfiche Marketing department and is active in the Laserfiche Luminaries program.

Tags: Datamax Texas

Posted on Monday, January 11th, 2010 at 9:55 am under VAR of the Month. You can comment on this post.