Module 9: The Value Selling Approach

Quantify Service Benefits into Financial Terms

Once you have helped the customer to see how either Cisco or your own service offerings can help to make their vision a reality, your next step is to help your customer see the overall impact of the solution on their “bottom line.”

Many customers will want to see this bottom line impact in terms of return on investment (ROI.) As a Cisco partner or 2-tier reseller, you should work directly with your customers in demonstrating the ROI of both Cisco and your own partner technical support service offerings. By using business, product, and network data supplied by your customers, you can provide your customers with the financial data they will request to obtain sign-off from both senior executives and Purchasing/Finance agents when making financial decisions about new purchases.

The Cisco (ROI) tool provides a quick and easy way to estimate the first year ROI of Cisco technical support service contracts.

While you may not be able to use this tool to demonstrate the ROI on individual partner-branded offerings that you may have within your organization, it will be a very powerful asset that you can use when discussing the service offerings available within the Cisco Brand Resale program such as SMARTnet, SMARTnet Onsite, SP Base, and SAS/SASU.

The Cisco ROI tool calculates the monetary value of each support contract deliverable, including software updates, technical assistance via the Cisco TAC, Web resources, hardware replacement, and onsite engineering assistance. The total value is then compared against the contract price to calculate the anticipated ROI. Using the customer’s actual data to calculate the ROI makes this tool even more powerful as well, in that the results calculated are based on metrics and information that have been validated by the customer.

As a Cisco qualified partner or reseller, the ROI tool is an important aid that you can use to:

		Explain the value of individual service elements within any Cisco service program.
		Provide your customers with an understanding of the money that can be saved by having a technical support service contract in place.

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