It may be an easy moneymaker, but bringing in revenue from renewals still requires a great deal of effort. You have to keep track of expiry dates for different customers with different product lines from different manufacturers. If you’re not doing this, you may be missing out on ongoing revenues from existing customers.
It makes more financial sense to keep existing customers than look for new ones. And services and warranties are a great way to enhance margins – but not following up on those means missed moneymaking opportunities.
A lot of these opportunities fall by the wayside, and VARs are literally missing out on hundreds of millions of dollars from unrenewed service agreements and warranties. Resellers have been looking for a tool to help them with this problem, and at least one distributor has been listening.
Tech Data Corp.’s answer to this is MyOpportunityTracker, a free online tool for resellers that keeps track of renewal opportunities for service agreements and warranties.The distie says it’s offering this tool in response to the difficulties resellers face tracking expiry dates for every service and warranty, which products are covered, and which customers they were sold to.
The tool sends out a notice of renewal up to 120 days prior to expiration. It can also provide weekly e-mail alerts and allow VARs to sort and prioritize these opportunities by manufacturer, expiration date and customer. Pricing information is included for new service agreements and warranties (it has a quote-building tool built-in), as well as information on potential upgrades, pulling information directly from Tech Data’s product catalogue.
Tech Data also offers MyOrderTracker that allows VARs to view shipment-tracking information.
VARs are always looking for additional sources of revenue, and they’re harder to come by these days from resale alone. Services agreements and warranties are a great way to capitalize on opportunities that already exist.
This is how resellers – and their distributors – should be thinking. A lot of opportunities are floating around, but resellers don’t always have the time and resources to go after them. An online tool such as this can help resellers get in there, before the opportunity fades away or is lost to a competitor.
It could also be a way to improve customer relations. Every year I get a birthday card from my dentist, and even though I know they send one out to everyone else in their database, it still makes me feel like I’m not a number. Keeping in regular contact with your customer base shows that you remember them and are interested in maintaining that relationship.
And, for resellers, this could lead to other opportunities above and beyond service agreements and warranties, such as upgrades or new business. And it can’t hurt Tech Data’s business either.
