There are two ways of thinking about being a reseller as consulting firms.

What Is a Pure Consulting Firm?

Some consulting firms choose to be pure consulting companies.  They think they will never make any money off products and that there are some major conflicts when you get into becoming a reseller.  As consultants, these companies help clients decide what to buy, what the specs should be and they show them where they can buy recommended products.

What is a Purchasing Agent?

Another type of pure consulting firm is a purchasing agent.  When you do this, your firm does the purchasing for clients and bills them a couple hours for it.  Your firm gets reviews and quotes, places and tracks orders and handles the whole purchase.  These are more pure consulting functions than reselling functions.

What Are Hybrid Consulting Firms?

When you follow a hybrid consulting model, you do white box PC reselling (reselling PC clones).  A computer reseller that does this is selling generic desktops, servers and sometimes notebooks (called white books).   

Do You Resell or Not?

When consulting firms are deciding whether or not to resell, they need to think about how they want to spend the majority of their time.  If you are facing this decision, ask yourself if you want to pick up some additional profit from product sales or if you want most of your income to come from pure consulting money.  No matter what, you don’t want to lead off with product sales when selling yourself to prospects.

Can Product Sales Get Consulting Firms in the Door?

Many new computer consulting owners ask themselves, “Should I resell inexpensive PCs, cheap software and cheap peripherals to try to get into consulting?”  The answer is typically “No.”  

All of a sudden you will have shown customers that you want to be a commodity broker.  And most will not hire this type of person for consulting.   

If you want to be a reseller, relationships have to come first.  Consulting firms looking for great longevity should focus on relationships.  

Added By:  Joshua Feinberg