Cisco ARM Service Incentive Program Drives New Revenue for ... · and printers, to IT lifecycle concerns, to highly complicated engineering projects. SARCOM has customers from SMB

Customer Case Study

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Cisco ARM Service Incentive Program Drives New Revenue for SARCOM IT Solutions

SARCOM IT Solutions was founded in 1983 in Columbus, Ohio. Today its headquarters are in

nearby Lewis Center, Ohio, and there are 14 SARCOM offices across the country. While most

offices are in the Midwest, where the company has deep roots, it also has offices in Dallas, New

York City, and in southern California. It also has a wide network of service points across the

country. Its ‘virtual employees’ have sales and engineering capabilities that enable SARCOM to

deliver service to every zip code in the continental United States.

With its Cisco® Gold Partner status, SARCOM remains committed to its founders’ culture of

customer satisfaction.

“We survey every client on customer satisfaction, whether we’ve performed a call on a printer

problem or deployed a high-end wireless network,” says Bob Golden, business development

director for SARCOM. “That’s one reason our company matches up so well with Cisco – we’re

committed to the same high level of customer satisfaction.” SARCOM strives to be a one-stop IT

shop for its customers – it has the ability to manage technology needs from Intel-based products

and printers, to IT lifecycle concerns, to highly complicated engineering projects. SARCOM has

customers from SMB up through enterprise-size organizations, including companies on the Fortune

500 list, across several vertical markets including healthcare, public sector government, and higher

education.

Customer Case Study

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Sales Reps ARM Themselves with Cisco Program

As business development director for the company, Golden’s responsibilities include third-party

offerings, such as the Cisco SMARTnet® Service. SMARTnet is a technical support service that

provides direct, anytime access to Cisco engineers and an extensive range of technical resources.

“One of my challenges was how to train our inside sales reps to recognize the opportunities for

service sales and increase their comfort level with that product,” says Golden. “That’s why I wanted

to participate in the Cisco ARM Service Incentive Program. I felt the campaign was geared toward

inside sales reps, and they’re the people that touch every order that comes through. Increasing

their confidence drives our bottom line.” Golden likes how the ARM campaign breaks down training

into easy-to-manage modules, presenting an easy, unintimidating way for inside reps to hone their

knowledge of Cisco sales, support, and portfolio topics.

While Golden has always had the inside sales reps focus on attach rates and renewals, he wanted

to start leading with multiyear renewal options, and coordinate those renewals with Cisco Capital™,

Cisco’s own financing company.

Of the three focus points of the ARM program, the attach rate portion is critical for Golden. His

company is required to maintain a certain percentage of attach rates in order to receive its discount

structure.

“When we sell these services, we’re giving ourselves a pipeline of annuity business stream,” says

Golden. “It’s critical to keep these customers engaged. The ARM program is successfully teaching

our inside reps how to use the Cisco tools to manage renewals.” Before Cisco kicked off its ARM

Service Incentive Program, SARCOM had sold a small number of multiyear contracts. After

participating in the program, however, SARCOM’s sales of three-year SmartNet contracts have

gone up from a few percentage points to nearly one-third of the company’s service sales.

“I am a big proponent of the ARM campaign,” says Golden. “It has helped us further adapt our

business model and solidify it to match up with Cisco objectives. The JMF doesn’t hurt either.”

Program participants earn joint marketing funds (JMF) from Cisco upon meeting program

requirements that include a minimum of five employees successfully completing eight tests.

Participants are then eligible to apply their JMF for an integrated marketing campaign consisting of

direct mail and telemarketing plays. Golden used SARCOM’s JMF for a Services Lite Play, which

included a mailing done via the Cisco marketing portal and a telemarketing campaign.

“We had some staffing changes that caused a bit of a slow start with the ARM campaign, but now

that we have the right resources in place, we are really starting to see results,” says Golden. “Our

first success was a $20,000 project with a local state college, which more than paid for our initial

investment in the program. We just started our third campaign and we are extremely excited about

the potential.

Education Through Cisco ARM Program Drives Increased Revenue

Golden says that for SARCOM, the most valuable benefit to participating in the Cisco ARM Service

Incentive Program is the education received by employees, as that has led directly to increased

business.

Customer Case Study

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“Since our participation in this program, our sales of multiyear contracts has grown to 30 percent, a

huge jump,” he says. “The revenue we generated through SmartNet sales went way up – in fact,

our company is in the top 25 percent nationwide in SmartNet sales. It has become a big revenue

generator for us.” In fact, the program has been so successful that in hiring for a new position at

SARCOM, Golden added management of the ARM campaign internally as part of the job

description. Participation in the program has given SARCOM the benefit of a Cisco Intuition

Business Review, which helps ensure that the company is well positioned and focused on the

same growth areas as Cisco.

“At the end of the day, it’s all about revenue,” says Golden. “Participation in the ARM program has

increased our revenue from multiyear contracts, it is driving attach rates, and it delivers education

that has built confidence and helped develop our inside sales team. I’m telling other Cisco partners

that they really need to get involved in this program.”

And in keeping with the SARCOM philosophy of customer service, participation in the program is

benefitting its customers too. Golden says that the training has increased the knowledge of

SARCOM sales reps, who are now better equipped to find the right SmartNet solution for every

customer and every budget.

“It’s really beneficial for our customers to be given contract options, and many of them are finding

that the three-year commitment with a locked-in price is really the best choice for them,” says

Golden. “Any time we have more knowledge to share with our customers means we are doing a

better job for them.”

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