Here's hoping! (trying to get boss to sell NOD32)

Gave a rather elaborate power point presentation to my boss today in hopes of selling NOD32 at our store. Currently, we only sell Norton and I'm completely fed up with it. I've pushed NOD32 for years here, but they never really gave any ground. I'll be incredibly happy to start rolling it out!

 

Perhaps we could provide you with some marketing materials that could support your suggestion for selling NOD32 and help you convince your boss. Drop me a PM with your email address and a little info about the company you work for (name, location, etc.)

 

I tried at my store as well. Unfortunately, we continue to carry garbage because:

1. McAfee/Norton/Panda are cheap for stores to buy. We can get McAfee discs at around $3/ea. Panda is around $5/ea. Not sure how much Norton is, because we at least all agree that the software is worst thing...ever.

What this means is the profitability for us is quite huge. We can sell copies of McAfee at $15.

Norton/McAfee/Panda make their money from renewals, and after the trials expire.

2. McAfee and Norton have special programs for system builders and OEMs. Ever wonder why Norton is on just about every Dell and HP? That's because Norton and McAfee will actually kick money back the System Builders.

We can "pre-load" a 30-90 trial that costs us absolutely nothing (read: free). When the end-user registers it and purchases it McAfee and Norton will give a kick-back to the OEMs. For example, McAfee is currently paying us $5 per registration. What good is this for System Builders and OEMs? Free Money. You didn't think Norton was so popular because it was good software did you?

When we contacted Eset, Kaspersky and some other anti-virus vendors we were quite shocked at what OEM costs were. I can't remember exactly what the costs for us were, but it was pretty damn close to what Eset is selling it for directly. Kaspersky had slightly better prices, but only if you purchased like 10,000 licenses at once. Better yet, they only had a license shelf-life of 6 months. That means you'd have to move 20,000 copies of Kaspersky a year.

3. ** CAUTION: Questionable ethics ahead. **
While most of us are concerned about having our customers as protected as possible, the labor that we bring in for cleaning viruses and spyware off of systems is HUGE. The average margin for a new system that is purchased is around 15-20%. The average margin for repairs and service is more than 80%. This means that fixing stuff is WAY more profitable than selling stuff.

 

@Pants!

It all depends on the technician really. My company is in bed with CA, and we get some pretty good kick backs from them at the technician level for every copy we sell, but you know what, I've never sold a copy of that crap. Why? Because I don't believe in it, and I won't sacrifice my personal reputation on something that is going to come back and bite me down the road.

Hence why I sell NOD32 to people if they need AV solutions (or replace their McAfee/Norton install that has failed them miserably more than once) even though I don't see a single red cent of that sale.

-Cov

 

Well, Symantec has stopped supporting versions of Windows older than XP, which is a good majority of the work I get, so I am pushing extra hard to get a nice license now and will probably just become a reseller, wish me luck!