RE: Benefits of choosing a Cisco gold partner company.

It depends on how you go about it. When I worked at a Premier partner we
had worked at using a blended margin between the hardware and professional
services, which worked well for the deals we were able to close. Our
challenge had more to do with executing on a good strategy than anything
else.

The down side for the volume dealers is commoditization, you may "make it up
in volume" to some extent, but customers who buy on that basis alone are
fickle friends. All it takes to pull that business away is a lower price
and not a great deal else. In my personal experience, whether Silver,
Preview, or Gold, you have to have a unique spot in the market. Since the
product set is the same, it comes down to what value you are giving to the
customer. I believe that it has more to do with HOW you do business and
less than the WHAT part of business (i.e., product). Methodology, project
execution, expertise, and customer service are worth a lot more than a few
pennies on product.

Let me give a real-world example from my Service Provider days. I had one
customer with over 850 sites that had WAN services through us and maintained
contracts for several years. Their network performed well, got the job
done, and helped them do business, until a CIO (who had been a CFO) started
complaining that the circuits cost too much, and commenting that DSL was
less than $35 a month. Bandwidth is a commodity sale these days, and
admittedly you can get very cheap connectivity on price alone. Here is the
kicker though: spread that out over several hundred sites, with disparate
providers and flaky performance and suddenly the "big savings" gets eaten up
with coordinating a mess of support calls and down time. Head to head the
cost was cheaper, but the hidden costs to operate it was a lot more.

The point? Good business gets done by competent, smart, hardworking people,
even in the Cisco space, and while price is a factor, value is a bigger
one...

Joe

-----Original Message-----
From: nobody_at_groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody_at_groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of
Joseph L. Brunner
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2010 10:31 PM
To: Wildmomo; Joe Rinehart
Cc: 'Anthony Faria'; 'darth router'; 'Mahmoud Nossair';
ccielab_at_groupstudy.com
Subject: RE: Benefits of choosing a Cisco gold partner company.

>It is difficult to compete 1:1 with the Worldwide's and CDW's of the world
on HW alone

Not true;

A premier partner last year got 50 to 60% percent off list for a call
manager system because they REGISTERED THE DEAL WITH CISCO.
I bid against them using CDW, the most CDW could offer was 38% off. CDW
contacted Cisco and was pretty much told- FAT CHANCE.

So, my advice, have a great sales strategy and pipeline and you'll get deals
DIRECT with CISCO regardless of your partnership level...
As a technology consumer- I would pay full price for the hardware if I knew
reliable, experienced techs could install it vs. clueless "home theater"
guys from a
Partner that could get me 50% off... I have heard of 1 YEAR call manager
installs that still needed a clean up before they worked....

Buyer beware- if its cheap, if often will be.

-Joe

-----Original Message-----
From: nobody_at_groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody_at_groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of
Wildmomo
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2010 1:18 PM
To: Joe Rinehart
Cc: 'Anthony Faria'; 'darth router'; 'Mahmoud Nossair';
ccielab_at_groupstudy.com
Subject: Re: Benefits of choosing a Cisco gold partner company.

Joe,

I would say this is a pretty fair round-up. I too am with a Gold in the
Dallas area with an International presence, and we sure will not pass up HW
when it comes our way. It is difficult to compete 1:1 with the Worldwide's
and CDW's of the world on HW alone, mostly because of what they do in volume
allows them to take almost nothing on their margins. But we are a service
company and really would consider ourselves in sorts as a boutique
engineering firm, and we continue to out do many others because of our
services offerings. I think the services business thrives with customers
that truly understand the value of IT investment, and have their own
internal team that know and understand the business. We often enable
clients to be self-sufficient, but we also have valued partnerships with
many of our customers, we are their go to guys when it comes to complex
solutions.

It is unfortunate for some regions and customers though, they get channel
partners that just milk them for what they can and move on - scorched earth
style. In time though, Cisco gets the feedback and they either lose their
good standing with Cisco AM's and channel managers.

r/w

On Apr 15, 2010, at 11:25 AM, Joe Rinehart wrote:

I have worked for several Gold partners and one Premier. The biggest thing
I had to deal with at a non-Gold partner was the disparity in discount
levels, as it made it hard to be competitive.

That being said, not all Gold partners are created equal. An example that I
often use in the Seattle area is when you do a search on Gold partners in
the area, that 26 separate entries come up. Without naming names, here is a
breakdown of the differences:

1. Service Providers. These fine folks sell carrier services with a
recurring revenue model that includes circuits and managed services. Many
of them supply hardware and installation services as an augment to what they
already offer and usually have massive volumes which allow for aggressive
discounting.
2. Fulfillment Partners. This business model usually has a sophisticated
back office system that may include web-based/Internet ordering portals.
Also offering large volumes, they tend to also offer large discounts and
have a well-developed delivery system. Most are weaker on offering managed
services or installation/project work.
3. Consulting Services Partners. Many of the companies in this category are
well-recognized names that offer consulting and/or professional services,
with hardware being secondary.
4. Distributors. There are a handful of these that offer fulfillment for
the smaller Cisco resellers, they do business on handling large volumes for
them as well as some business on their own.
5. Value Added Resellers/Systems Integrators. The size of these companies
are much smaller than any of the above, some are regional, many are
national/International. These resellers have a roughly equal linkage
between hardware and services and do a good job integrating technologies.

I am basing this on observation and also years of experience, in which I
have worked for service providers and VAR's...

Reactions? Thoughts?

Joe

-----Original Message-----
From: nobody_at_groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody_at_groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of
Anthony Faria
Sent: Wednesday, April 14, 2010 1:45 PM
To: darth router
Cc: Mahmoud Nossair; ccielab_at_groupstudy.com
Subject: Re: Benefits of choosing a Cisco gold partner company.

I have to disagree with your statements. Normally i see the real CCIE at
Gold partners because they do the work lol an dyou see the paper CCIE at a
large company because they do not know any better. Maybe it is different
where you live but that is what I see. I am not trying to argue just my
experiences. Maybe they got there gold because the rented a cert but they
don't send those guys out. They would lose business quick.

Tony

On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 11:34 AM, darth router
<darklordrouter_at_gmail.com>wrote:

> I'd really go for pricing only. Worked for a big one. Most of the gold
> partner folks doing the work are kids off the street who have no freaking
> idea what they are doing. The CCIEs are more often than not excell
> spreadsheet engineers and only god knows how they passed their IEs. :D
> Personally, I'd go with a smaller company, or target a partner with an
> employee you know is great, and ensure he works on your project. CDW is a
> gold parnter, you can buy equip from them, and skip the prof services. Buy
> CDW and hire Scott Morris instead. :D
>
> On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 4:05 AM, Mahmoud Nossair <nossair_at_mcs.gov.sa>
> wrote:
>
>> Dear Experts
>>
>>
>>
>> I am a consultant at a government site ( I am a CCNP engineer), while
>> evaluating a network proposals, one of the government employee asked me
>> why should we choose a company with Cisco Gold partner????
>>
>> I explained him about the support and other benefits, but I think my
>> answer in not enough to him.
>>
>>
>>
>> So anybody have a document about the benefits of Cisco Gold Partner to
>> the customers???
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks in advance
>>
>>
>>
>> Mahmoud Nossair, CCNP, CCDP
>>
>>
>> Blogs and organic groups at http://www.ccie.net
>>
>> _______________________________________________________________________
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>
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Received on Fri Apr 16 2010 - 13:37:36 ART