It's All About Balance - Back To Product Sales

By Gennifer Biggs, security, storage, and managed services editor

One of the more innovative MSPs I've met this year, Travis Austin, CEO, Rezitech, spent some time at the Ingram Micro Seismic Conference in Dallas talking to his peers about finding balance between selling services and hardware. Partnering with Gary Martini, executive director of sales, Autotask, Austin shared his experience tackling that oft-maligned product market.

One option geared toward helping MSPs re-enter the product sales arena is offered by Autotask, its recently acquired VARstreet product, which is a hosted e-commerce platform. The PSA vendor tackled that acquisition after realizating that MSPs had, in many cases, completely abandoned product sales, leaving the door ajar for other IT businesses – those selling product – to steal away money and customers.

Now, those same MSPs can leverage a hosted solution, integrated into its PSA tool (it also stands alone if you partner with another PSA vendor), that aggregates pricing, available, and deliverability. The online solutions help with quick, accurate competitive quoting, effective sourcing, and streamlined procurement.

Austin shared that his company has had two realizations about offering product to its managed services customers. "We do get more managed services revenue, but it also allows us to get really sticky with those customers," says Austin. Otherwise, those customers have to be referred to vendors, such as Dell, for direct sales. "Offering product allows us to provide the best experience we can for our customers; they want to deal with us, so we don't want to tell them no."