Tell me about how HP deal registrations work
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@Dashrender said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
So the take out from this thread is that you need to be pretty sure who you want to buy from before you get any quotes, right?
Yep.
The idea of shopping around is apparently just not a real thing at this level - which I agree with the @Carnival-Boy seems weird.
Not at any level where you are not dealing with a commodity. The idea of shopping around is a consumer one, not appropriate to the business partnership space.
Put yourself in the position of a skilled vendor. Imagine if your boss had you bid for every bit of IT work that you did and no matter how good of a job you do over and over again he'd also call on random MSPs and have them bid and if they were cheaper he'd pay them instead of you. How would you feel? How would you start to react when you realize that the lower bid always wins, not the quality of the work? How would everyone be impacted when everyone, you and the MSPs, realize that you are not trying to build a partnership, that the success of the customer doesn't matter and that all that matters is winning a bid?
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@Carnival-Boy said:
The VARs I normally buy PCs and stuff from are pretty big here in the UK (Insight, Softcat, Misco) and carry huge stocks of HP servers. If they keep stock, I'm guessing they won't register the deals, since they've already bought the stock off HP (ie the deal has already been done). Is that right, do you think?
In most cases, especially servers and up, the registration is likely required. Not for desktops or printers. But servers, almost certainly. HPE probably requires registration for them to complete the sale and get you your warranty.
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@Dashrender said:
Are you saying - That the only thing that registering does is put HP on notice.. and when you call Insite and ask for a quote, they contact HP to register the deal, and HP says.. oh hey, yeah.. someone else already registered that deal. Now Insite just doesn't bother competing on price and simply offers MSRP?
Exactly. Basically what happens is the one that registers the deal GETS the deal. Another VAR has to buy FROM the partner that registered. So the second VAR has no way to provide a discount without losing money, and why would they lose money to gain the business of someone who shops around? Loss leaders make no sense in the "shop around" world. You have to make your profit on every item.
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@Minion-Queen said:
@Dashrender said:
Well to @Carnival-Boy point, I have had CDW tell me they get better pricing from HP for my project if they register the deal with HP - are you saying that's not true?
Are you saying - That the only thing that registering does is put HP on notice.. and when you call Insite and ask for a quote, they contact HP to register the deal, and HP says.. oh hey, yeah.. someone else already registered that deal. Now Insite just doesn't bother competing on price and simply offers MSRP?
Pretty much. Unless there is an extreme case, Insite won't get any deals on it so yup more than likely they will just offer you the MSRP. Again bigger VAR's that deal in lots of volume probably get better deals for offering percentages off. But in my experience not that much from what say NTG can do a deal on.
Big ones know that if they provide deals that people will post it online, it will become common knowledge and everyone will demand it. And since their profits depend on those margins, they can't just go around slashing them willy nilly.
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@Dashrender said:
I've sense bailed on CDW. I use Softmart now. Shannon is pretty easy to work with.
They've been great for us. It's been a long relationship there.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
I understand the MSP push for SMB's, but do they really want to deal with you either, again assuming you're someone like me - doing my on research and I'm only calling the MSP so they can order stuff for me?
You are paying them to be a reseller liaison then. An MSP would not care as long as they are getting their consulting rates. But this seems a weird way to leverage your experts - as paperwork pushers exclusively.
Exactly - which is why I don't leverage them at all.
You do, actually, but it is specifically because of the NTG / Softmart relationship.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
I understand the MSP push for SMB's, but do they really want to deal with you either, again assuming you're someone like me - doing my on research and I'm only calling the MSP so they can order stuff for me?
You are paying them to be a reseller liaison then. An MSP would not care as long as they are getting their consulting rates. But this seems a weird way to leverage your experts - as paperwork pushers exclusively.
Exactly - which is why I don't leverage them at all.
You do, actually, but it is specifically because of the NTG / Softmart relationship.
Are you saying Softmart wouldn't talk to me if not for NTG?
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
I understand the MSP push for SMB's, but do they really want to deal with you either, again assuming you're someone like me - doing my on research and I'm only calling the MSP so they can order stuff for me?
You are paying them to be a reseller liaison then. An MSP would not care as long as they are getting their consulting rates. But this seems a weird way to leverage your experts - as paperwork pushers exclusively.
Exactly - which is why I don't leverage them at all.
You do, actually, but it is specifically because of the NTG / Softmart relationship.
Are you saying Softmart wouldn't talk to me if not for NTG?
They would talk to you, but you wouldn't get the same pricing or experience.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
If I want to obtain 3 quotes for some HP kit, is it true that the first reseller could register the deal to obtain bigger discounts, and this would prevent the other two resellers from getting the same price? Is that how it works?
Correct
Not correct according to one of my resellers. All resellers will be given the same price from HP, so it makes no difference which reseller registers the deal.
Also, to answer my other question, there is a minimum order amount before deal registration (or special bid pricing) occurs, and that's way below the $10k in my budget.
Maybe it's different in the US.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
If I want to obtain 3 quotes for some HP kit, is it true that the first reseller could register the deal to obtain bigger discounts, and this would prevent the other two resellers from getting the same price? Is that how it works?
Correct
Not correct according to one of my resellers. All resellers will be given the same price from HP, so it makes no difference which reseller registers the deal.
Also, to answer my other question, there is a minimum order amount before deal registration (or special bid pricing) occurs, and that's way below the $10k in my budget.
Maybe it's different in the US.
If that is the case... what would be the purpose of the deal registration? I don't believe that this is true, nor does it make sense.
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It makes sense to me.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
It makes sense to me.
Where is the benefit in the deal registration if they all get the same deal?
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Not sure what you mean? The benefit is that HP give them a lower cost price.
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Seems like registering would be bad because it would only flag you as having gotten first contact and then show that you were losing sales to someone else later. You'd not want to report that voluntarily.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Not sure what you mean? The benefit is that HP give them a lower cost price.
I thought that you just said that your reseller stated that all resellers would get the same price, specifically that the one registering the deal would not get a discount for doing so.
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Yes, they all get the same price. The discounted price.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Yes, they all get the same price. The discounted price.
Right, so it's not really discounted then, it is just the price. So where is the benefit in being the one registering the deal?
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When every price is discounted, no price is discounted
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OK, call it what you like. I still don't know what you're confused about. There is no benefit to being the first one to register the deal, which makes sense to me.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
OK, call it what you like. I still don't know what you're confused about. There is no benefit to being the first one to register the deal, which makes sense to me.
You said that they all get the same price... so no discount. How can there be a discount from a set price?
So why would any one register if there is no value to registering?
You keep telling me there is no benefit, but then say you think it makes sense that they do things without benefit. Why? There is something missing here.
