Jeff Gould, editor of Channel Advisor Expert Insights, looks at the business logic behind Ingram Micro's Reseller Services Portal.

Don't forget to ask your customer to buy.

That's a lesson my wife learned first hand in her small family-style restaurant. When she first started out she was a little shy about promoting her wines and desserts. We used to joke about how much she hated all those pushy upscale places where they ask you every five minutes if you need another bottle of imported mineral water. She stopped joking the day she realized she was losing money even though she had plenty of customers. It turned out diners really did want that dark chocolate cake and the extra glass of cabernet. Once she started asking, they started buying.

VARs aren't known for being shy, but they often act that way when it comes to service revenues. All too often when they sell hardware they forget to sell the associated service contracts, or they forget to renew them when they expire. If VARs want these revenues, they need to get into the habit of asking for them. That's what Ingram Micro's Reseller Services Portal is designed to help them do.

Under the hood the portal is just an online database, maintained by a company called MaintenanceNet. Ingram Micro and the participating vendors (Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Fujitsu and Lenovo) load it up at frequent intervals with data about equipment purchases made by VAR end customers. The system keeps track of all service contracts tied to these purchases, recording their start and end dates and even noting when customers fail to pick up maintenance on new hardware. Then it sends out automatic e-mails reminding VARs where the upcoming or missed opportunities are.

Many VARs know they have been leaving money on the table with missed or dropped services contracts, but few realize how much. In a recent 90 day period the Reseller Services Portal detected $26 million in expiring service contracts among the customers of the several hundred Ingram Micro VARs. Of course VARs also need to think about attach rates at the time of sale. According to industry sources, a vendor like Cisco has traditionally seen service attach rates on the order of 50%. But maintenance attach rates have jumped by a third for VARs using the portal.

Ingram Micro isn't charging VARs to use the Reseller Services Portal. Instead, it's betting they will see the value of consolidating their business with a single distributor, because that way they will be able to see all their customers' equipment and contract data in one place. And that will make it easier to act. As my wife will tell you, the more you know about your customers, the more chances you have to ask them to buy.

Are you a VAR with a suggestion about how the Reseller Services Portal can boost your services revenue? Then please tell us what you think in the comment field below.

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