Across the office technology channel, one theme continues to surface in conversations with dealers, partners, and customers alike: diversification is no longer optional. From IT services and managed print to water, security, and adjacent subscriptions, dealers understand the opportunity. Yet understanding the opportunity and executing on it are two very different things.
In recent conversations with dealers exploring diversification, a clear pattern emerged. Many organizations expect diversification to happen simply by declaring it. Leadership announces a new product line, assumes sales teams will pivot naturally, and hopes revenue will follow. The dealers who succeed, however, do not rely on hope. They commit time, money, structure, and accountability to making diversification real.
Expectation Does Not Equal Execution
One of the most common missteps we see is assuming that adding a new product category is a switch you can flip. In practice, diversification is a gradual operational change. Successful dealers set goals, establish timelines, assign ownership, and revisit progress regularly. Those that struggle often underestimate the investment required and lose momentum before the initiative takes hold.
Change is difficult, especially in organizations built around a single core offering for decades. Dealers who push through that discomfort are typically the ones who define success early and measure it consistently.
Tip: Set realistic goals with deadlines and work towards them progressively.
One Total Solution or Separate Specialties?
Another major question dealers face is how to bring diversified offerings to market. Should you present customers with a single, bundled solution covering print, IT, and services? Or should you maintain separate sales teams and even separate business entities?
There is no universal answer. Some dealers have found success positioning themselves as a one-stop shop, offering customers a single monthly bill that covers multiple services. In a subscription-driven economy, customers are comfortable with predictable monthly expenses, and bundling solutions can increase stickiness, deepen trust, and make replacement more difficult.
Other dealers prefer separation. Water, for example, has a vastly different lifecycle, installation model, and asset structure than copiers. Several dealers intentionally avoid tying water assets into copier leases to protect clarity, simplify financing, and preserve brand reputation. Separate entities can also reduce complexity and make costs more transparent for the client.
What matters most is not the structure itself, but whether your organization understands its ideal customer profile and can clearly identify cross-sell opportunities within it.
Tip: Sell Simplicity
The Role of Team Size and Structure
Diversification often assumes an organization is large enough to support separate sales teams and specialists. In reality, many dealers are not. Smaller organizations may be forced to ask a single team to sell everything, which introduces risk if not managed carefully.
Larger dealers often treat IT, MPS, or water as specialty sales, staffed by technically savvy experts or solution architects. These roles cost time and money, but they also drive higher success rates. Smaller dealers can still follow this model by creating internal subject matter experts (SMEs) rather than fully separate teams.
Tip: Teams work together on a referral basis. Commission incentives help incentivize referrals.
Pricing, Bundling, and Monthly Models
Deal structure plays a major role in diversification success. Monthly pricing does more than smooth cash flow. It also shifts the conversation away from haggling. When customers see a cash price, negotiation is almost inevitable. Monthly pricing allows dealers to target a payment and adjust term length or structure without sacrificing margin.
Several dealers highlighted the importance of scenario-based pricing, whether bundling solutions into one monthly rate or presenting them as parallel options. Customers may still request a cash price, and transparency matters, but successful dealers often incentivize financed or subscription-based models because they align better with long-term revenue goals.
This approach requires strong quoting tools that can handle complex pricing, multiple scenarios, and blended offerings without introducing errors. The ability to quickly generate clean, closable documents and collect electronic signatures has become an expectation rather than a luxury.
Tip: We found that best practice is a hybrid deal where dealer passes through the cost of the hardware to the lease and keeps the IT services outside of the lease.
The Biggest Pitfall: Lack of Training
Across all interviews, one challenge stood out above the rest: insufficient training. Diversified products are inherently more complex than traditional copier sales. Installation requirements, service models, pricing structures, and financing considerations vary widely.
Dealers who struggle often underestimate how different these products really are. Adding a software subscription or IT service is not the same as quoting hardware. Training must cover not just product knowledge, but also pricing logic, install costs, service time, and long-term support.
The dealers who succeed invest early in education and reinforce it continuously.
Tip: Create SMEs
Create Subject Matter Experts and Incentivize Collaboration
Perhaps the most consistent recommendation from successful organizations is the creation of internal subject matter experts (SMEs). Rather than expecting every salesperson to know everything, leading dealers designate individuals as experts in IT, water, MPS, or other specialties.
These SMEs are accountable for mastering their category and supporting deals when that product is involved. They are brought into conversations strategically, not as obstacles but as accelerators.
Incentives matter here. Cross-selling and referrals should be rewarded explicitly. When compensation plans encourage collaboration, trust builds naturally between teams. Over time, this trust leads to smoother handoffs, stronger proposals, and higher close rates.
One common fear among sales reps is that involving others will slow deals down or take deals away. In reality, the opposite is often true. Expertise reduces friction, prevents mistakes, and increases customer confidence.
Tip: Commission Incentivize Cross Selling.
Setting Your Team Up for Success
There is no single correct organizational model. Some dealers use a hunter model to identify opportunities, SMEs to handle demos and technical discussions, and customer experience teams to manage onboarding. Others rely on imaging reps to close core deals and then refer adjacent services post-close.
What matters is clarity. Roles must be defined, handoffs must be intentional, and systems must support collaboration rather than work against it.
Tip: Hold internal process audits to better understand how your team works currently. Use those findings to inform your strategy for diversifying product offerings.
Final Thoughts
Product diversification is not about selling more things. It is about building a stronger, more resilient business that aligns with how customers want to buy today. Dealers who succeed commit to structure, training, and collaboration. Those who struggle often underestimate the work required.
The takeaway is simple: do not bite off more than you can chew, but do not stand still either. Add specialties intentionally, support your teams properly, and make sure your tools and processes are designed to support cross-selling and long-term growth.
