Matthew Charles describes his journey from ski bum to the president of a thriving copier dealership.
Above: Complete Business Systems Arvada headquarters.
Everybody has to start their career somewhere, and for Matthew Charles, president of Complete Business Systems (CBS) in Arvada, Colorado, that place was selling Xerox copiers for his uncle, who owned a Xerox agency in New York City in 1996.
“I was living in Keystone, Colorado, doing the whole ski bum thing after college,” recalled Charles. “A college roommate of mine got a job in New York City and asked, ‘What about moving there with me?’ I’m originally from New York. I grew up in the Long Island area and had family throughout New York City and Brooklyn. I was like, “Sure,” and talked to my uncle who was looking for salespeople.”
Matthew Charles, president of Complete Business Systems.
It was July 1996 when Charles made that life-changing decision. “I had skied Arapahoe Basin in the morning, played golf in the afternoon, and a few days later I was in New York City’s Penn Station wearing a suit, rethinking my decision. But you know what, it wound up being a great decision.”
After undergoing Xerox sales training, he started making cold calls, was successful, and then eventually promoted to sales manager. The next chapter of Charles’ story takes him from New York City to Washington, D.C., and then back to Colorado. After working in New York City for five years, he transferred to a Xerox agency in Washington, D.C., to be closer to his future wife, who he had met in Colorado and was now in D.C. working on her master’s degree. After a year in the nation’s capital, they quit their jobs in the middle of 2001. They spent the next four months traveling the northern United States and Canadian Rockies, returning to Colorado in early September 2001.
The plan was for Charles to start a job in the sales department of a ski resort, but then 9/11 happened, the hospitality industry went bust, and the job fell through. Fortunately for Charles, his headhunter arranged an interview with a small copier dealer looking for a sales manager. “I took the interview and didn’t think much of it,” he recalled. “I thought I was done with the industry and would move on to something else.”
Then he met Brad Drake, the VP of sales at CBS at the time, and they hit it off. “I’ve been at CBS ever since,” said Charles. “I took the job because I needed a job and health insurance, and I knew I could sell copiers, but the opportunity was good. Brad said he wanted to grow through acquisition and put us in a new building. That happened within the first couple of years, and I stayed.”
Since then, Charles scaled CBS’s corporate ladder, spending three years as sales manager, five as general sales manager, and ten as VP of sales before Brad, who was now the owner and running the company, named him president in October 2022. “It was baptism by fire,” observed Charles, who described the new opportunity as a “learning experience.”
“Even though I’d been with this company for 18 years and I knew what each department did, I never fully understood how they operated, the cost of operating each department, or the efficiencies or inefficiencies of each department,” acknowledged Charles.
To better familiarize himself with the dealership, he embarked on a fact-finding mission, immersing himself in each department. “I wanted to understand what they were doing and what kind of people I had,” explained Charles. “I sat through IT and service meetings and tried to understand what was happening daily. I realized that we had good people in good places, and I needed to let them do their jobs, knowing that I would meet with them regularly and be a resource. Discovering that we had some superstars on staff has made my job easier.”
Complete Business Systems’ Growth Trajectory
Left to right, Ray Tannebaum, VP of IT sales; Dee Palmer, VP of finance; and Charles.
The dealership has been enjoying incremental growth over the past few years. Last year, it grew by nearly double digits. “We’ve experienced some nice growth through difficult times,” said Charles. “We still have challenges, as we all do, whether you’re in this business or not. But I’m excited. The growth has been steady and manageable.”
One of the secrets to the dealership’s longevity and growth is not venturing too far from its comfort zone. “I’m okay with introducing new products and services, but you can’t be a jack of all trades,” opined Charles. A former Minolta service technician started the dealership, so its lifeblood is service. “We do a great job servicing our copier and hardware customers as well as our IT and phone system customers,” said Charles.
CBS did venture out of its comfort zone 15 years ago when it entered the managed IT business. “We knew we needed to get into the IT space and debated whether to buy a company and jump in or do it organically,” said Charles. The dealership took the organic route, initially leaning on Ray Tannenbaum, now their VP of IT sales, who had a strong IT background. “He started looking for IT opportunities while doing copier installs, and it grew from there,” said Charles.
The dealership now has an internal help desk and a half dozen IT engineers on staff. They also offer managed network services, cloud services, and cybersecurity. “Of course, we have partners like ConnectWise for our software and things like that, but as far as the expertise, they are all CBS employees,” emphasized Charles.
Launching an IT business was another learning experience. “You learn and revamp day in and day out because it’s ever-changing,” said Charles. “There are always new threats and new technology, and you fight the urge to follow the new shiny thing and remain true to your core.”
Getting into the IT business can be challenging, and most dealers who do so learn other valuable lessons along the way. “If a copier is down, customers could live with that in the short term,” said Charles. “If their network is down or they can’t access their information, it is a break-glass-as-needed situation.”
The dealership is discerning about its IT customers, initially preferring to avoid larger organizations even if they were long-time CBS office technology customers. Charles and his team are savvy enough to realize that to offer the same level of service for IT services as they do copiers with a large client, they would need more bandwidth, which the 50-employee company didn’t have early on. “We’d be setting ourselves up for failure,” said Charles. “So, sometimes we had to walk away from some business and not expose ourselves to unnecessary risk.”
Matthew speaks from experience, noting how the dealership had outgrown its coverage at times when it was growing exponentially. “We bought a company that was a quarter of our size, and all of a sudden, the next day, we were larger and had more problems. So, we’re trying to manage that carefully.”
That said, some larger IT prospects are a good fit. “Each day, our expertise on the IT side grows, and we’re able to now start bringing on larger and larger multi-state IT customers,” revealed Charles. For one of its newest customers, the dealership handled installations in Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, and Denver. “We now have the capabilities to do that, whereas maybe three years ago, if they needed support outside of Denver, we probably would have shied away from that,” said Charles.
Another lesson learned from organically building an IT division is compensating staff. “How do you write a comp plan that works for the company and motivates your salespeople to pursue that business?” Charles asked rhetorically.
Has CBS mastered that formula?
“When we sell a managed network services account, it’s great because the MRR (monthly recurring revenue) total could be $100,000, but you only recognize a percentage of that revenue monthly over the length of the contract. It’s different than copiers. As you know, when you sell a copier, you get paid for it by the leasing company upfront, then pay the sales rep, and you’re done with the commission side of things, and then the company takes in the service revenue. Managed network services contracts are all deferred revenue, so you can’t pay a sales rep entirely upfront like you do with a copier sale. We pay them a percentage upfront and the remainder over the term of the contract. It’s been challenging, but our sales reps are excited to sell the products.”
A Savvy Diversification Strategy
The lobby of Complete Business Systems.
Beyond managed IT, the dealership has been prudent with its diversification strategy. CBS has been successful with Crexendo cloud-based phone systems and has ventured into production print. It recently left another OEM to partner with Xerox. Its other hardware OEM is Kyocera, which came through an acquisition. Although it hasn’t taken on Kyocera’s production print product yet, the current focus is the Xerox PrimeLink, which is more of a light production device. “We have the ability to move up to their Versant product, and potentially Iridesse, so there are many levels that we could grow into with Xerox,” said Charles. “Right now, we’re just playing in the PrimeLink area.”
Despite adding PrimeLink to its offerings a little more than eight months ago, sales have been strong. “Xerox has done a very good job of supporting us and staying in front of our reps,” said Charles. “It may not have five color stations, but to us that’s more niche market stuff. For the customers we mostly work with day in and day out, we’re comfortable leading with PrimeLink.”
Looking Forward
Expanding through acquisition is an option and something the dealership has done before, such as the acquisition in 2014, which is how it added the Kyocera brand. According to Charles, the focus is expanding in Colorado rather than beyond its borders. “We’re not looking to buy a business in Phoenix, San Diego, or another out-of-state market,” he said. “Geographically, we’re probably looking at Fort Collins and Colorado Springs.”
The rest of 2024 looks good, if not great. “We’re always making moves internally to serve our customers better and expand our business,” said Charles. “We’ve made many organizational changes throughout the year, and when I look at the prospect base and talk to my GM of sales on what he projects for the end of the year, there’s quite a bit of business out there. I’m optimistic we’ll finish strong and have some exciting things leading into 2025. The future is very bright.”
