Microsoft funds first day deployment costs of new SBS Premium + SBDA purchases!
That’s right! Imagine receiving a check from Microsoft that covered the full cost of your first day’s worth of deployment services for a new SBS Premium + Small Business Desktop Advantage roll-out. Would that help you close more deals or make your clients happy? Well, now you can offer this type of promotion.
If you attended my breakout session at the Small Business Symposium last week or if you have attended any of my Live Meeting sessions where I talked about promotions and offers available to Partners, one of the topics I call out is to be sure to combine offers when possible to provide the most benefits and cost savings to your clients. Currently, with the SBS Partner Subsidy offer (including the SBSC Exclusive benefit as well) and the Office Partner Subsidy offer, we have such an opportunity.
As you saw from my Blog post regarding the SBS Partner Subsidy offer, when your clients purchase a new SBS Premium L+SA through Open Value, they are eligible to receive a $325 Partner subsidy check. This means Microsoft will send a check, made out to you, to the customer to use for your services. If you are an SBSC Partner, not only will they receive the $325 Partner subsidy check, you will also receive an additional $162.50 rebate check from Microsoft (1/2 of the Partner subsidy check) as part of the SBSC Exclusive component of the promotion. So in total, you will be receiving $487.50 from Microsoft when your client purchases a new SBS Premium L+SA through Open Value.
In addition, if your client also purchases the Small Business Desktop Advantage for their desktops (a perfect combination with the SBS server), they would also be eligible to receive a Partner subsidy check of $100 per Small Business Desktop Advantage (SBDA) license they acquired (as noted in my Office Partner Subsidy offer Blog post). Because the SBDA is a company-wide offer, they must purchase one SBDA license for every computer in the company. Since the minimum is 5, even the smallest company taking advantage of this offer would be purchasing 5 SBDA licenses, which means they would be receiving a $500 Partner Subsidy check, made out to you, from Microsoft through the Office Partner Subsidy offer.
In total, for their SBS Premium + 5 SBDA order through Open Value, Microsoft would send checks worth $987.50 ($825 for non-SBSC Partners) of your implementation services. Plus, if the client has more than 5 computers, they would be purchasing more SBDA licenses, so they would be receiving an additional $100 per SBDA ordered. So, would $987.50 cover eight hours of your billable time? If so, then by combining the SBS Partner Subsidy offer and the Office Partner Subsidy offer, Microsoft will actually provide the funding through these offers to cover at least the first full day of deployment costs when your clients purchase SBS Premium and the Small Business Desktop Advantage for their companies! As a reminder, if your clients want new hardware with their implementation, don’t forget about taking advantage of Microsoft Financing to help your clients spread out the payments of all of the software, hardware, and your services.
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UPDATE: As of October, 2008, platform options (such as the Small Business Desktop Advantage) are now handled through the “Build Your Own Platform” model. Here is the post that explains this new option for you.
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Thank you and have a wonderful day,
Eric Ligman
Microsoft US Senior Manager
Small Business Community Engagement
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights