Jeff Gould, editor of Channel Advisor Expert Insights, asks how getting a faster quote from Cisco is like getting a piece of cake at your favorite restaurant.

Know your customer.

My wife is a never-ending source of business wisdom. In the small neighborhood restaurant she owns, she's learned that remembering customers and their preferences isn't enough to maximize sales. She also needs to adjust her prices based on customers' buying patterns. The faithful repeat diner earns an extra glass of wine or a slice of cake on the house. The large group that orders its menu items ahead of time obtains a discount. The penny-pinching couple that splits a salad gets a surcharge.

Handling relations between hardware vendors and the VARs who resell their service contracts is of course more complicated than pleasing diners in a restaurant. But many of the issues are the same. For example, customized pricing. Figuring out what price a given VAR is entitled to on a given service contract is no simple task. For VARs in a hurry to close sales, the "hurry up and wait" part of getting a quote back from the vendor has long been a source of frustration.

This is where the Cisco Online Quoting Tool -- a new feature of Ingram Micro's Reseller Services Portal -- comes in. Each VAR that has a business relationship with Cisco Systems and Ingram Micro is entitled to certain pricing conditions on service contracts, depending on its program membership status and sales volume. Getting a correctly priced quote to a customer on a contract renewal used to be a lengthy back-and-forth process that could take several days. Now it can be done in 60 seconds. On the EZ Quote page of the portal, the VAR selects the contract, chooses a one-or three-year renewal, clicks the button, and gets an accurate customized quote back from Cisco SMARTnet in less time than it takes to quaff a café espresso.

With the right pricing at their fingertips, VARs will discover that selling hardware service contracts and renewals is a lot simpler than it used to be. Ingram Micro execs tell me they plan to extend the online quoting tool to all the distributor's top manufacturers in the near future. By speeding up the flow of information, Ingram Micro is bringing manufacturers and VARs closer together and helping everyone to make more money. Some VARs I know may want to celebrate by taking their sales teams out for a good meal. I think I can recommend just the place for them.

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