News September 18, 2019
Lazzari Lands Proforma’s Largest-Ever Single Contract
Mike Lazzari’s $24 million deal is with a multinational financial services firm.
It’s a good day to be Mike Lazzari.
The owner of Proforma (asi/300094) affiliate Proforma BrandCentric Solutions has just secured the single largest contract in the Ohio-based Top 40 distributor’s 41-year history.
On Wednesday, Proforma announced that Lazzari has earned a three-year $24 million contract with a multinational financial services company. Lazzari, whose business is based in Raleigh, N.C., was already part of Proforma’s multi-million dollar sales club.
The roots of the eight-figure deal reach down to a consultative approach from Lazzari that enabled him to discover that the client needed a new, robust solution for print and direct mail. From there, Lazzari worked closely with Proforma’s Support Center, Major Accounts Team and Strategic Advisors over the course of a year to develop a water-tight RFP, run financial models, and ultimately provide the resources essential to winning the lucrative contract.
Technology elements of the Proforma solution were vital to earning the big victory. According to Proforma, Lazzari’s technology offerings were able to improve the client’s time to market, streamline their management approval process, and improve their postal delivery performance.
“Securing a contract with one of the largest financial institutions in the world is a feat I could not have achieved without Proforma,” Lazzari said in a statement. “Nothing we do is old-fashioned -- we infuse technology in everything we do. We always use a consultative approach to develop a sophisticated technology-laden solution to improve our clients’ processes. In this case, our solution just added $8 million per year to our book of business.”
Proforma Founder Greg Muzzillo added: “Technology will continue to be at the forefront of all that Proforma and our owners accomplish together, and will continue to be our competitive edge in the industry.”
Within the last year, Proforma has announced a number of high-dollar-value contracts that have been the result of collaboration between owner-affiliates like Lazzari and the distributorship’s internal support teams. The deals include a $12 million contract with a Fortune 500 technology firm, a $6 million contract with Porsche North America, and a $1 million contract with a large regionalized healthcare provider.
With reported 2018 North American promotional product revenue of $378.8 million, Proforma ranked sixth on Counselor’s latest list of the largest distributors in the industry.