All For The Asking

That's certainly the case with Peter Illari, sales and marketing manager for Computer Systems Resource (CSR), a $5 million West Chester, Pa.-based solution provider that is teaming with Microsoft.

Illari has profited handsomely by forming tight ties with Microsoft's Pennsylvania regional office on a wide range of initiatives, including an effort to provide infrastructure assessment services with Microsoft's help. That offering is an outstanding example of a strong services practice that pulls product revenue. CSR's technical experts meet with the IT team at a customer and put together a comprehensive review of the infrastructure along with recommendations aimed at reducing costs and improving efficiency. The assessments, which require considerable effort, are provided at no charge, but the sales hit rate afterward is greater than 50 percent.

One assessment recently completed by CSR was with a private school brought to the table by Microsoft. The software licenses were sold by a large account reseller. Still, CSR, which did the assessment, walked away with more than $20,000 in services business (CSR's services personnel are billed out at a rate of up to $145 per hour). It also scored more than $18,000 in product revenue including a Hewlett-Packard server, 3Com switches and Veritas software. "Those vendors should put Microsoft on their Christmas card list," Illari says.

Illari is proactively engaging with a variety of executives at Microsoft's regional office, from experts working with him to fine-tune assessments to channel managers doing monthly regional partner planning meetings. Illari simply refuses to put resources into Linux because he gets so much support from Microsoft.

CSR's tight ties with Microsoft are no small matter given the sometimes difficult nature of reaching out to a $37 billion behemoth. But Illari has proactively built solid relationships at the regional level. He expects his Microsoft sales and services revenue to be up an estimated 50 percent to 70 percent this year--with strong sales of Exchange, Small Business Server and Windows Server 2003. Sometimes all you have to do is ask.

Are you asking, and is anyone listening? Let me know at (781) 839-1221 or via e-mail at [email protected].