VAR Profitability Series:

Increasing Your Margins with Pricing Analytics

Read time -2.5 minutes

Automating Quoting and Optimizing Margins for IT Resellers

In today’s competitive IT reseller market, increasing your margins isn’t just a goal—it’s a necessity.

One of the best ways to do this is through margin or pricing analytics. This approach can help you fine-tune your pricing strategies and ensure you’re not missing out on potential profits. Let’s explore how pricing analytics can unlock new levels of profitability for your value-added reseller (VAR) business.

The Big Deal About Pricing Analytics

Ever been on a sales floor and heard someone shout, “What should I price this at?”

It’s a common question, and it shows just how tricky pricing can be – and how much of a guess it often is. The difference in pricing strategies between new and experienced reps can really make or break your profit margins.

Here’s the deal:

Underpricing: Newer reps might price things too low, eager to close deals quickly, but that can eat into your profits.

Overpricing: On the flip side, some reps might price too high and scare off potential customers.
Understanding these dynamics is crucial for finding the sweet spot that maximizes your margins.

How a Quoting Tool Can Save the Day

If you’re not using a quoting tool yet, it might be time to start. Unlike the Excel spreadsheet you use to build quotes , a quoting tool stores all this pricing information in a centralized database, including both wins and losses.

Here’s how it can make a difference:

• All Data – In One Place: Keep track of cost, revenue, and other key pricing information for every product or asset in a central place.
• Better Insights: Easily measure discounts, costs, and pricing to make smarter decisions.
• Consistent Pricing: Ensure everyone on your team is on the same page, avoiding costly mistakes.
• Automation: Building quotes for IT assets is meticulous work, quoting tools can automate a lot of it, reduce errors, and give you more time to sell.

A quoting tool is like a centralized hub for all your pricing data. It’s especially handy for repricing deals or handling returning customers, because all of the legacy pricing of won and lost deals is in a central place vs. in Bob’s laptop, who happens to be on vacation. 

With everything in one place, your team can offer consistent and accurate pricing, maximize it where possible, and prevent any embarrassing slip-ups.

Meet Owlytica: Your Partner in Profit

To tackle the challenges of quoting, pricing and margin analytics, we created Owlytica. From my experience building and selling a successful reseller business, I know how crucial accurate pricing is. Owlytica is here to help with:

• Quoting: Centralize quoting for hardware, software and support
• Renewals: See all your renewals across all OEMs in one place
• IT Lifecycle: Connect quotes, renewals to IT assets, contracts and lifecycle planning.
• All Your Pricing Data: Now with everything is in one place, pricing gets easier.

Learn more about Owlytica or check out our Money Making Blueprint—a service to map and identify the key areas to grow your profit, margin, and cost-savings—visit here today.