Avnet Offers Partners A Hand With Service Renewals

Avnet is rolling out a program that leverages the distributor's telemarketing capabilities to help its channel partners land maintenance service renewals.

The Phoenix-based company said a lack of manpower, knowledge or a fixation on generating new business often leads to renewal opportunities falling through the cracks.

For this reason, Avnet has trained 28 people in its supplier services team to, on behalf of solution providers, handle everything from making the initial renewal call to completing the purchase order, according to Larry Fulop, Avnet's vice president and general manager of supplier services.

[RELATED: Avnet Reports Q2 Revenue Increase, But Technology Solutions Division Sales Decline]

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Fulop said the distributor already has brought 15 to 20 channel partners on board for its Maintenance ServicesNow program. The company is targeting the program at larger solution providers that buy multiple products from Avnet but struggle with lower renewal closure rates, he said.

For this program, Avnet intends to work with a small number of partners in situations where it can bring in a lot of additional business, Fulop said.

The program has demonstrated impressive results since its informal launch in the fall. Fulop said Avnet made 5,400 renewal calls for one solution provider in December, and secured several million dollars of new business for another.

The program has been available to U.S. solution providers since Jan. 1, Fulop said.

The calls can cover anything from contract consolidations to maintenance services prior to warranty expiration to renewals on hardware and software such as HP Care Pack Services.

Maintenance ServicesNow also has the benefit of driving additional business to Avnet's supplier partners, Fulop said.

Avnet collects a percentage of the new or repeat business generated as a service fee, Fulop said. The distributor keeps a larger percentage of the contract when it's asked to handle the entire renewal process, he said, and a smaller percentage when it's only making the initial phone call.

"Channel partners only pay if we close the business, or if they close the business," Fulop said.

Delegating maintenance service responsibilities to Avnet will free up time for the sales and technical teams at Computer Guidance to provide support and services to clients, according to company President Michael Bihlmeier.

"It's pretty easy to get services from them [Avnet] whenever you need it," Bihlmeier told CRN.

The Scottsdale, Ariz.-based solution provider has relied on Avnet for the past five years to manage its cloud services, Bilhmeier said, and leases space in Avnet's hosted cloud facilities in Phoenix and Atlanta.

That experience prompted Computer Guidance Corporate to recently expand its relationship with Avnet to include Maintenance ServicesNow.

PUBLISHED JAN. 27, 2015