Merisel plans to increase services and create a dedicated government sales staff this year. These programs arm resellers with the special pricing demand-ed by public agencies and credit options designed to help them cope with longer sales cycles. In addition, several provide sales leads and allow resellers to outsource some of the more onerous tasks involved in doing business with the government. The procurement process is a significant challenge for a lot of resellers that perhaps haven't developed the infrastructure required to be successful in that environment. Reseller support programs respond to growth in state and local IT buying.
Services let resellers outsource some hassles of dealing with government.
We believe tens of thousands of our resellers are doing business with the government. For smaller operations, the figure was a still-healthy 65 percent. And Curt Cornell, director of the government division at Santa Ana, Calif.-based Ingram Micro, said his company recently surveyed 800 resellers and found that 64 percent expected some of their business to come from the government market in 1997. To meet the needs of these resellers, distributors are stringing together services designed to ease the burden of doing business with Uncle Sam. He estimated that 70 percent of the Reston, Va.-based distributor's clients sell primarily to government agencies.