The Print Partner Buyer's Guide

Are you looking for ways to improve your MSP by offloading your staff’s workload, protecting your customers from competitors and building additional revenue streams?

If so, Print Partner can help you achieve all of these!

Print Partner is the MSP partner channel created by Green Office Partner, a national provider of managed print services based in Chicago. 

Print Partner is the preferred print vendor for hundreds of MSPs throughout the country. Our partners refer their clients to us for print service, and in return, we provide a variety of benefits. We’ve collaborated with enough MSPs to know what kind of support you need to achieve success.

In this buyer’s guide, we’ll provide you with all the information you need to begin working with Print Partner. We’ll detail what you can expect from our onboarding process, and how we support you throughout the lifetime of our partnership.

Why Work with Print Partner?

Before you ask how to work with us, you should probably first ask why you should work with us?

The value we provide to our MSP partners is clear - this is a topic that we’ve covered in our content at great lengths.

We provide value to our MSP partners in three primary ways:

1. Collaboration

Let’s face it. Most MSPs don’t have the time, interest, or resources to bother dealing with their client’s print.

Print devices are a pain in the neck to deal with - most copiers are big, expensive machines that can be complex and time-consuming to deal with. And clients just assume their MSP will take care of them.

But for all the trouble they cause, MSPs often don’t see a dime from the many hours they spend considering, planning, purchasing, implementing, managing, and troubleshooting copiers and printers.

The first major perk you get from working with Print Partner is collaboration on print service.

When you partner with us, you’ll no longer have to handle print devices alone. 

Our team at Green Office Partner will handle every aspect of your client’s print suite, including the planning, purchasing, implementing and managing print devices.

When clients need help with their print devices, you’ll no longer be on the hook to troubleshoot them to the extent you presently are. You will still need to grind out five to fifteen minutes of the typical fixes: Restart the print spooler service, clear the queue in the print server - these are the quick things that you guys have ready access to do. Anything more complicated than that, kick the issue over to our team and we will own it through to resolution.

If we run into an issue while troubleshooting a device and we require a password or server access to complete the task, we triage your MSP and pull you into the active call so we can COLLABORATE through to resolution. Read: No more bouncing the customer back and forth between MSP and print vendor… We aim for as close to first call resolution as possible, and depend on collaboration to be successful.

Green Office Partner handles everything related to sales, installation, training, and phone/email support. They coordinate onsite service to your clients nationally within 4-24 hours. If a service issue comes up, a badged Xerox or HP employee will fix it. 

Our team will take complete ownership of your client’s print, and handle their related issues so you don’t have to!

2. Protection

It’s no secret that many managed print vendors have started selling their own MSP-related services.

MSPs and managed print vendors operate in similar spaces, and their business often overlaps with one another. It shouldn't surprise anyone that print vendors got a whiff of the success MSPs have found and want a slice of the pie.

To learn more about why print vendors have entered the MSP space, read: The Greatest Threat to Your MSP Clients: Managed Print Providers

Because so many print vendors now compete in your marketplace, it’s important that you have a pulse on your client’s print.

Otherwise, it’s likely that they could be getting print services from an MPS vendor that is trying to pitch their MSP suite behind your back. Do you really want these types of vendors having regular QBRs with your clients? 

It’s like letting the fox in the henhouse.

When you work with Print Partner, you’ll always know that we have your back. We don’t offer MSP-related services (never, ever will) - in fact, we are the only nationwide managed print vendor that is wholly aligned with supporting MSPs every step of the way.

Rest easy knowing that your client is getting print from your trusted partner, and not from a direct competitor trying to steal your business.

3. Commission

Last but certainly not least: when you refer business to Print Partner, you get paid!

When you send a new client our way, we pay you in all of the following ways:

• When you make the introduction, we pay you $250. Win or lose the opportunity, we compensate you for the effort. If we receive a copy of the client’s current print agreement with that introduction, you’ll earn an additional $250.
  
  
• If we close the sale, you’ll earn $1,000 per copier sold, and 5% on the client’s lifetime print allotment.
  
  
• You’ll receive the same benefits if we sell the referral additional products and services in the future.
  
  
• You’ll earn 5% on the sales of one-time payment solutions, and 2% on any subscriptions to solutions that the client pays for.

Along with freeing up your support resources and protecting your business from the competition, Print Partner helps you build an additional revenue stream.

Now that you know why you should work with us, let’s review how to work with us.

Signing Up with Print Partner

Enrolling in our MSP Referral program for MSPs is fast and straightforward.

To start working with us, visit our ‘Join’ page, which will allow you to fill out a brief form with all of our required information to begin our partnership.

This page walks you through our straightforward onboarding process.

We ask the following general questions about your MSP:

• How many "Print Rich" customers do you have?

How many customers of yours would you guess have a "print rich" environment, meaning they have way more than average print equipment and needs?

• How many customers with more than 100 employees does your MSP have?

Companies with over 100 employees typically have more complicated, robust print needs.

• How many customers do you have with more than five physical locations?

These tend to be fantastic opportunities when their print agreements are ready for renewal, many time because they have multiple print vendors handling print as opposed to one vendor handling everything.. 

• Does your MSP have a minimum spend for new customers?

Does your MSP require a minimum monthly spend in order for you to take on a new customer? We ask this in case we are able to refer business back your way.

We’ll then collect general information about you and your business, including your name, MSP’s name, phone number, website, etc.

And finally, we require a W9. For commission checks over $600, we cannot pay them to you until we receive your W9.

Once you register with us as a referral partner, one of our sales representatives from Green Office Partner will be associated with your MSP as the primary point of contact. 

They will reach out to you and set up an introductory meeting to say hello and learn more about your business. They’ll also be able to help you identify the clients that could be high-quality opportunities for referrals.

Prospecting Opportunities

There are many ways you can go about finding new referrals. 

For a quick and easy solution, we recommend sending an email to your clients offering a no-cost print assessment. 

In fact, we offer templates that you can send directly to your clients - if they express interest, you can then offer to connect them with your preferred print vendor (that’s us!).

We also have templates for our social media posting if you want to expand your reach. If you have a significant following on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, we offer templates for social posts for each.

If you want a more focused or targeted campaign, we offer to collaborate with you to build customized collateral, which you can use to capture a specific audience.

For our largest MSP partners that need help prospecting and scanning over their large book of business, we offer the Print Partner Sales Management Program. To learn more, read: The Print Partner Sales Management Program

What Qualifies as a Good Referral?

Glad you asked!

When you consider referring a new client to Print Partner, you must consider whether or not they are a good fit for our managed print services.

In order for the opportunity to be worth pursuing, the prospect must have the potential to spend $500 per month or more with us.

The keyword here is: potential.

We understand that not every prospect will be ready to spend this much with us immediately, as they may have devices locked in under a contract with another print company.

Our goal is to find clients large enough to potentially spend $500 or more on our services in the future.

Typically, a client with the potential to hit our minimum print spend checks the following boxes:

• They have 100+ office employees. A construction company with 99 field laborers and one accountant won’t qualify as a good opportunity.
  
  
• They operate across multiple locations that rely heavily on print.
  
  
• They rely on at least four big A3 copiers with some smaller printers. Anything less, and they are probably not printing enough to meet our minimum.
  
  
• They either print a decent amount of color pages, or they print a TON of black and white pages. As a ballpark statistic, to spend $500/month on MPS services, a client needs to print around 50,000 mono pages or 5,000 color pages, or some combination of both.
  
  
• The prospect has complex faxing and printing needs and could benefit from solutions such as XMFax, PaperCut, PrinterLogic, Square 9, Umango, or similar solutions.

If your client falls within these categories, consider sending the opportunity over to us!

Submitting New Deals to Print Partner

When you’ve pinpointed one or more qualified referrals, you can submit them using the ‘Submit a Referral’ link, located at the top of the page at www.printpartner.biz. 

On this page, we’ll ask for information on your prospect, such as their name, email, website, etc.

Once you complete the form on this page, we ask that you do two tasks that have an enormous impact on our success rate.

1. Retrieve Current Print Agreement

When we onboard a new client, reviewing a copy of their current print agreement gives us important insights into their printing infrastructure and allows us to sharpen our edge on the approach well before the first meeting.

It tells us what devices they have under management, when the agreement started/expires, how much they are currently paying for print, estimated consumption, and other print-related information we should know about before entering into a partnership with them.

If we can see exactly what they spend, we can provide them with a total cost of ownership breakdown (TCO) that compares what they spend now compared to what they will spend with us, along with a comparison of our services vs. the competitor.

This amount of information is invaluable to our success rates, which is why we offer an additional $250 in commission when you send us the print agreement with your referral.

2. Install Data Collection Agent (DCA)

In addition to the client’s current print agreement, we request that you install our data collection agent (DCA) onto the prospect’s system, which is typically emailed to you shortly after registering a new opportunity.

The agent uses SMTP to query all network printers (even across subnets), and we need it to be deployed in order for us to make a quality recommendation to your customer about the future of their print environment.

We use the DCA to observe your client’s printing habits, giving us the information we need to strategize on relieving their print-related pain points.

Regarding the installation of the agent, we move at your pace - if you need to wait before you install, we will never rush you. We understand that there may be many moving parts in your relationship with the prospect, and it sometimes takes time before you can install the agent.

Between the print agreement and the DCA, we will have everything we need to show our value to the prospect.

3. Making the Introduction

Once you hit ‘submit’ on a new deal, your sales rep will connect with you within one business day to talk about the opportunity and collaborate on the best way to make the introduction. The introduction can just be a simple email, or if you want to take a more hands-on approach, we can jump on a call with you and the prospect.

It’s entirely up to you and what you think would be most effective.

After you position us in front of your customer, you can be as involved or as removed as you’d like to be from the sales process. 

Your sales rep will keep you up to date regarding any milestones that are reached throughout the process.

We handle everything once the intro is made. However, if the deal is massive, and you’d like to have a pulse on the flow of the sale, by all means, sit in on our meetings, go to lunch with us, have at it!

What Comes Next?

After the introduction is made for a qualified referral, you get paid! Win or lose the deal, you’ll get paid the introduction commission. 

As mentioned above, your sales rep will keep you up to date on how things are going through to the conclusion of the opportunity.

Then, if we close the sale, you’ll get paid $1,000 per copier sold. And throughout the lifetime of that customer, you’ll receive annual checks for 5% of their print allotment, paid once per year in January.

And if the client needs new devices down the road? You’ll get paid for those too!

If you have clients that fall within our guidelines of what a good referral looks like, what are you waiting for?

Protect your business, earn additional revenue, and offload your print-related tasks to a third party by referring clients to us! 

Consider partnering with us, a Print Partner you can trust.