Most agents will accept credit cards by e-mail, or over the phone, and expedite the information by overnight mail at no extra charge. If you're entitled to a price break on digital phones, it's because you have actually taken on work that would otherwise be done by a sales agent. It's clear that you will benefit the most from the discounts offered by sales agents, if you do some of the research yourself. But in practice, this can cause problems. A popular product line, that offers 1,000's of products such as digital phones, might mean that you could end up spending weeks searching for something suitable for your application.
Sales agents understand their product lines implicitly.
And a much smaller firm, with a smaller sales staff, can be more 'user-friendly'. As for sales agents themselves, Phaedra and her partner found that very few agents on the World Wide Web let them compare rates and availability-usually only after they had agreed to some interest in very specific programs. On-line sales agents, however, can offer a larger measure of control. While videos about Digital Phones allow the customer to get a look at the product they are interested in, sales agents fill in the details. Weekly bulletins are also sometimes available, alerting the customer to last-minute bargains on products and inventory through suppliers that aren't usually available through any other source.