'Tis the season to close a deal

Just in case you forgot, it's the end of the year and, although Christmas is over, now is the best time to make some great sales.

Now is the time to pick up the phone and call customers, get out and visit clients, take time to send emails. That's because December is a time when many customers are exceptionally eager to buy — and I'm talking about business customers, not consumers. There are sales you can only land right now.

If your customers are large corporations, government agencies, educational institutions or non-profit organizations, many have budgets they need to use before the end of the year. Moreover, if they don't spend all their allocated dollars this year, their budget next year may actually be cut.

Here are some ways to get those year-end budget dollars spent with you:

Make a list. Identify which of your past customers are most likely to have budgets or co-op dollars they must use by the end of the year. Focus your efforts on those customers.
Visit customers in person. Personal relationships build business relationships, and the holidays give you a perfect excuse to see important customers face-to-face. You want to stop by to bring them a present. It doesn't have to be an expensive gift — a box of candy or basket of fruit will do — but this gives you the opportunity to make or reinforce a personal connection. Oh, and while you're there, ask whether they have any budget dollars they need to spend before year's end; you can help them out

Telephone. You've also got a reason to pick up the phone and call clients: to wish them a happy New Year. After chatting with them about what they did or what they will be doing next week, bring the conversation around to what they need to buy before December 31.

Send emails. The easiest way to reach a large number of customers is to send emails. As an added incentive, offer special end-of-year discounts. In my company, we have institutional customers who have told us they look forward to our end-of-year discount so they can use up their budget.

Offer to get an invoice to them before the end of the year. You may not be able to actually deliver the product or service to your customer before the end of the year. That usually doesn't matter, just as long as they receive a bill in December.

Picking the right MS Office

It has always been a challenge to figure out exactly which version of Microsoft Office works best for your customer. To make it even more confusing Microsoft has just launched to additional versions of the most successful office suite.

To make it a little bit easier for you we have created a "cheat sheet" for you which has all the versions of Microsoft office and all the different components they contain. We have also included a table that has the most important NextDayPC part numbers listed for easy reference.

Licensing
If you're not familiar with licensing, as a rule of thumb you should start thinking about licensing if you or your customer need more than five copies of a product. That goes for all Microsoft products by the way. It's easy to get confused with all these licensing options so the best thing to do is to give us a call, describe your customer's needs, and we'll contact Microsoft to get the best solution possible.

Cheat Sheet
Click here to download a PDF version of the Microsoft office suites and the corresponding NextDayPC part numbers.

Full Retail	N/A	2923521	2923534	2923532	2923526	2923537	N/A	N/A
Upgrade Retail	N/A	N/A	2923535	2923533	2923528	2923538	N/A	N/A
OEM	N/A	3704544	N/A	N/A	3066104	N/A	N/A	N/A
License	3066108	3086623	N/A	3244408	N/A	N/A	3024284	3024270
Media Kit for Licenses	N/A	N/A	3201003	3024233	N/A	N/A	3305587	3024242

Back by popular demand

As of this afternoon you can once again add customers to your customer list without having to go into your storefront. We have added a "add Customer" button to your customer list which takes you to a page where, with just a few pieces of information, you can create a new account. When your customer decides to place that order he'll be asked for the additional details needed to process the order.

Proposal Tool
For those of you who were displeased with the new proposal tool, we have good news! The option to pick a customer from your exciting list is back and, if you have this enabled, your logo appears on the email once again. If you have never used the proposal too, give it a try. Simply go to proposals page and click on the "New Proposal" button. This will take you to the storefront where you can add items to the cart. In the cart you will see a "add to proposal" button which takes you back to ResellersOnly.com and allows you to change and email the proposal information to yourself, your customers or anybody for that matter.

Resources
We're currently working on a learning center with instructional videos and more information to help you generate more sales. Besides our learning center we have three more resources for useful information: Ask Art, this Reseller Blog and the Reseller Discussion Group.
Take a look at the new Resources Page to link to these three resources.