Video: Making The Stimulus Package Less Scary

Marc Rachiele, the director of vendor management and marketing for Ingram Micro's Data Collection/Point Of Sale Division, talks about federal stimulus package VAR opportunities with Business Solutions magazine President Jim Roddy.

Length: 10 min, 53 sec

BSM: One of the first resellers I ever talked to about selling to the government said, "It almost put me out of business!" because of the long sales cycles and all the difficulties they have to go through. Can you talk about, from your perspective, what you've seen Marc, what are VARs so scared of?

Rachiele: There's a lot of red tape; there's a lot of administrative work that goes along with working with the government. A lot of VARs, I think, are under the impression that they only work with certain VARs; they've got their partnerships, and that's it. That couldn't be further from the truth.

We've introduced many VARs into the government sector and had a lot of success doing so. But, again, you need to know how to do it. Even when a VAR identifies an opportunity, they have to fill out an application. Many times that application, they'll take a look at it and it's 27,000 pages long. How do I even begin with that? So that's where the scary part of it comes in.

Many VARs will take a look at that and say, "You know what — that's way too much work for me to even try to get into for a 1-in-25,000 chance that I'm actually going to win the opportunity."

BSM: Let's say everything goes well, and a VAR is able to overcome the fear of the stimulus package and is able to make one of these sales. Now what? Can you talk a little bit about financing?

Rachiele: A big thing with credit, it's often thought of as an afterthought. "Holy cow – I just won this deal! Now how am I going to finance it?"

We need to have some creative financing options to help them fund that. The goal for us is to be an enabler, not an obstacle. So, we want to find a way to get that business out the door for the VAR.

This is only a portion of this exclusive interview. For the complete podcast, go to the media player at the top of this page.