Printers and copiers are not a fun topic for MSP owners or their technicians.
Generally speaking, print devices often create frustrating, time-consuming issues for your team to resolve. A pressing need to print out a presentation could turn a support request from your client into a red-alert type of scenario if not promptly resolved.
There are more makes and models of print devices than any other item your team will troubleshoot, yet your clients expect you to fix them with expert ease.
Your team has higher-priority tasks to handle.
Handling print devices yields minimal returns on your team’s precious time - your technicians could spend hours tinkering with a device that some random print vendor sold to them years ago. Yet, the profitability of your agreement doesn’t accommodate supporting another vendor’s equipment.
The unfortunate truth about print vendors is that many sell their boxes and move on, leaving MSPs and clients to pick up the pieces when things don’t work as intended.
To save your team from cleaning up the messes left behind by messy print vendors, we recommend that you work with a partner that actively supports your MSP’s needs and your clients’ print, acting as a resource both of you can depend on to minimize the troubleshooting time and frustration.
If you’re in the market for such a vendor, look no further than Print Partner. With the help of our parent company, Green Office Partner, we aim to deliver an exceptional experience for both our clients and our MSP partners.
In this article, we’ll go over why Print Partner stands above other print vendors in the eyes of the MSP community and why working with us is a no-brainer.
1.Alignment with MSPs
The first and most obvious reason many MSPs choose to work with Print Partner is that we position ourselves as an ally of the MSP space, the only managed print services company genuinely aligned with the needs of MSP.
Too often, print vendors will set and forget the copiers and printers they sell to clients. Many of your clients only hear from their print vendors when their machines’ parts need replacement (or when the print vendors want to upsell them!).
Instead, we’ve built a different approach to the client-vendor-MSP relationship. Rather than forcing our mutual clients to play phone tag, we collaborate with you to fulfill support requests as quickly and as painlessly as possible.
Here’s how it works: when your client calls you about an issue they have with their print device, your team will check if the issue is something they are trained to handle. If not, they’ll call our support team at Green Office Partner, and we’ll handle it from there.
That’s it! No more headaches, no more hours of wasted time. We have a team of professionals that specialize in servicing the devices we sell and support.
You will no longer be expected to handle devices on your own, and your clients won’t have to call their MSP and their print vendor back and forth to get the job done.
With the help of Xerox, we even offer a 24-hour support fulfillment guarantee. For more information, read: 5 Reasons Xerox is a Top Choice for National Accounts
So stop banging your head against the copier, and work with a print vendor that handles print requests for you!
2. Our Generous Commission Structure
It’s hard enough to find print vendors that even bother to support their clients properly, let alone a vendor that supports your MSP.
But at Print Partner, we take it a step further. Not only do we support our MSPs with collaborative troubleshooting, but we also pay you for new referrals!
Our commission structure for MSP partners is unmatched by the rest of the industry. For every referral you send our way, we pay you at multiple intervals. Here’s how it works:
- When you send us a qualified referral, we pay you $250 for the introduction and an additional $250 if you send us their print agreement. (Read more about print agreements here) Win or lose, we appreciate your efforts, and we want you to get rewarded for it!
- Should we close the sale, we’ll pay you $1,000 per A3 copier sold and $100 per A4 copier sold. Huge wins for both Print Partner and your MSP! We have sent commission checks as much as $28,000 for a single deal to an MSP.
- Get ready for your mailbox money. After the sale, we’ll pay you 5% commission on the contracted value of your clients’ annual print allotment for the life of the agreement. This can be a nice revenue stream for years after the sale closes. (Read more about Print Partner’s recurring revenue here)
- We’ll pay you on future deals closed - if your clients buy additional devices years after your introduction, we’ll still pay you on everything that closes, even if you have no clue that we are in another sales cycle with your customer.
Sound enticing? We’ve found that for the minimal amount of time and effort it takes to introduce us to your clients, the commission we offer is well worth it in the eyes of every MSP we chat with.
3. Industry Experience
Have you ever read one of our articles and wondered if we were mind-readers? How could we possibly be so in tune with the needs and concerns held by the MSP industry?
The answer is simple, dear reader. We have multiple members of our leadership team who have decades of experience running MSPs.
Mitch Kranitz, founder of Print Partner, has been a resident nerd of the MSP community for over 20 years. Before Print Partner, Mitch founded, ran, and sold two MSP businesses.
Print Partner was born from Mitch’s eternal struggle with dealing with all the frustrating variety that came with his client’s print needs: Lack of standardization, rogue purchasing, supporting other vendors’ print equipment, and the hot-button crisis that occasionally comes with a failing print device.
In the same way that Mitch wanted a “go-to” resource or partner to fill the gaps when it came to BDR, Antivirus, PDF, Firewalls and infrastructure hardware, servers, desktops, and laptops, he also wanted a partner that he could count on to alleviate all the above pain points for his MSP.
Mitch’s MSP was the original “Print Partner Referral Partner” as back in 2011, he aligned his MSP to work exclusively with Green Office Partner, and he reaped the rewards for this relationship exactly as our current referral partners do.
Mitch isn’t the only member of leadership with experience running an MSP. We also have the remarkable DeAndre Hodo, Vice President of Service at Green Office Partner and a former MSP business owner. DeAndre oversees the service our clients receive and understands precisely what both clients and MSP owners expect from us in the service arena.
Consider this again: Our service director is intimately familiar with everything that MSPs are up against and is responsible for ensuring our SLA and key service metrics are kept in the green.
While MSP industry experts have been precious to our success, perhaps the most significant key has been our experience building and evolving the Print Partner channel program.
Since founding Print Partner in 2020, we’ve signed up and worked with hundreds of MSPs across the United States and Canada. In that time, we’ve fine-tuned and crafted how we support our MSPs and clients to offer the best possible experience for all parties involved in the managed print process. Your feedback is critical to our quality growth and success!
4. We Don’t Compete With You
When dealing with international print vendors, the vast majority of what you’ll find are not “pure” print vendors - instead, they are print-MSP hybrids.
So often, print vendors elect to “slap on” IT services along with their print management in an attempt to compete with MSPs, which has caused distrust between the print vendor and MSP communities.
At QBRs, print vendors will ask their clients about their IT service and probe for pain points. You know the old trick of a print vendor talking smack about the appearance of anything IT in the customer environment, suggesting “things would look/run way better if we were handling it…”. If the client gives them any opening in the conversation - any reason they’d be open to “learning more” - the print vendor will pounce and attempt to poach the clients behind their current MSP’s back.
This is why the importance of partnering with a print vendor you trust cannot be overstated.
This type of asymmetrical competition is why Print Partner was created. Building trust with your print vendor is more than building an additional revenue stream.
It’s about keeping the clients you’ve earned.
Unlike nearly every other widespread print vendor, Print Partner does NOT sell MSP-related services, and we never will.
When you sign up as a partner with us, we’ll sign a non-compete that serves as a 100-year non-compete with your MSP. Since Green Office Partner and Print Partner do not even offer MSP services, there is no way we could even compete with you. The only services we will provide any customer you introduce us to will be print and print workflow-related.
So rest easy at night; no more nightmares about your clients getting snatched up by print vendors. We got your back.
Print Partner’s MSP Support
In a sea of mediocre, unreliable print vendors, Print Partner stands tall above the crowd.
We’ve tuned our support and service to meet the needs of both our clients and our MSP partners, offering a collaborative experience that benefits all parties involved.
If you’re sick of dealing with random print vendors operating in your client space that offer your MSP zero benefits, please consider partnering with us, a Print Partner you can trust.
