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MarginArc Private beta · By invitation

Every deal has a right margin. right play. structural edge. defensible number. winning bid.
We find it.

A purpose-built ML model for IT VAR sales reps. Trained on 20+ years of channel data, every major OEM, and the structural edges your competitors don't know you have.

No spam. We only email when there's something worth reading.

JM
RK
DT
+
247 reps already on the waitlist2 in the last 24h
OEM matched · PAN NextWave
3 partners bidding · you stack 4.6pt edge
MH
Mercy Health · PAN refresh deal / 99b07a0e · scored 47s ago
PAN NextWave
Deal value
$310,400
Qty
12 × PA-440
Term
12 months
Incumbent
Cisco ASA
16.5% Floor 21.0% Ceiling 19.0% Recommended Margin
±0.5pt confidence band89% win probability
Top match
91%Fit
Hold the floor. You're stacked.
your cost $251K · their floor $263K · cushion 4.6pt

You got the quote. Now you need a number.

The deal you've nervously worked. The customers you've courted. A few competitor notes from a conference or a war story from a teammate. If you want more, you're digging through MS&D for hours. Partner tiers, fiscal calendars, program shifts. Educated guesses. You got a deal, but it's only as good as your experience.

A1The pricing dilemma

Without data, every pricing decision tips the wrong direction.

Price too low

You leave commission on the table.

You see the deal close, your manager nods, but the same OEM program would have given you four more points. Multiply across a quarter and it's real money you never knew was there.

$24,000commission left behind on this deal
Price too high

The disti-routed competitor wins.

You held a margin you thought was right. They came in 4pt under and you never had a chance because their cost structure was different than yours. You're left with nothing, the customer goes with someone else.

$0on a deal you should have won
$84,000
Personal commission · Per rep · Per year

What an average rep adds in personal commission per year on deals over $100K.

Computed across 412 PAN deals in our pilot cohort, comparing recommended margin to what reps actually quoted before they had MarginArc. Margin uplift × deal volume × commission rate. The number you see is yours, not the company's.

01Drop the deal in

Forward the RFQ. We read it like the rep would.

Customer, OEM, line items, term, incumbent, urgency. We pull every field that matters out of the email or the PDF in seconds. No re-keying into a spreadsheet.

Email forward, drag-and-drop PDF, or paste the body. Same result.

KW
Karen Whitaker
k.whitaker@mercy-health.org · IT Procurement
Tue 9:42 AM
Quote request: PA-440 NGFW refresh, three-bidder process

Hi team, following up on our call last week. Mercy Health needs to refresh the perimeter at three campuses by end of Q2. We are decommissioning the existing Cisco ASA pair and standardizing on Palo Alto Networks across the system.

Please quote 12 PA-440 chassis with Threat Prevention, URL Filtering, and WildFire on a 12-month subscription. Smartnet-equivalent support, 4-hour response. Target install before Aug 1.

Procurement requires three vendor quotes. We are also engaging a regional reseller and a national integrator.

Mercy_RFQ_Q2.pdf1.2 MB
line-items.xlsx38 KB
Customer
Mercy Health
OEM
Palo Alto Networks
Quantity
12 × PA-440
Bidders
3 partners
02Reads the OEM program

You stack edges. They can't follow you down.

Three partners are bidding on Mercy Health. You're PAN-direct, NGFW-specialized, and you registered the deal yesterday. The other two are disti-routed, not specialized, and locked out of registration. Your effective cost is 4.6pt below their break-even.

We pull these structural advantages from your portal state, not from the deal sheet. They're true before the rep starts pricing.

NextWave 2026 · Cost stack
Mercy Health · partner #B-447129 · FY26 Q3
3 partners bidding
Their break-even is 4.6pt above your sell price. They can't bid below their cost. Hold 19% margin. Capture $58.9K.
Dimension
You
Competitor A
Competitor B
Sourcing
PAN-direct
Ingram +1.6pt
Westcon +1.4pt
NGFW spec
held
none +3.0pt
none +3.0pt
Deal reg
locked 90d
out
out
Effective cost edge
$251K
$262K
$264K
Their floor (0% margin)
$262K
$264K
Your sell @ 19%
$310K
Stamford Schools won the same stack at 18.7% last quarter. portal synced 4m ago
03Cross-references your VAR-circle

Your team has already priced this.

Anonymized within your VAR. Your reps' last 47 PAN deals, what cost-stack edge they had against the competing partners, and what they held the floor at. Nothing leaves your account. Nothing crosses customers.

Opt-in, pooled inside one VAR. No data sharing across customers, ever.

Across brightwave-it's last 47 PAN-vs-Cisco deals
updated 6m ago
PAN Won
Mercy Health
closed by JM · 14d ago · 36mo
Deal
$172K
Margin
17.8%
Held floor at 17.8%. Two disti-routed partners walked.
PAN Won
Stamford Schools
closed by RK · 22d ago · 12mo
Deal
$98K
Margin
18.7%
PAN-direct + NGFW spec. Same stack as Mercy Health.
PAN Lost
Acme Manufacturing
priced by DT · 31d ago · 12mo
Deal
$245K
Quoted
12.4%
Reflexively discounted. Stack was there. Gave 6pt away.
PAN Won
Brightwave Health
closed by JM · 47d ago · 12mo
Deal
$214K
Margin
19.4%
Reg locked first. Two competitors couldn't price.
81% win rate
when stack edge is 3pt+ and rep holds floor · median 18.7%
39 / 47
04The right margin, with confidence

Not a guess. A defensible number.

One number you can take to your manager and your customer. Bounded by your VAR's win-rate floor and the OEM program ceiling, plus a confidence band that tightens as your team records outcomes.

No black box. Click any number to see what it's standing on.

Recommended margin · Mercy Health
19.0%
±0.5pt · High confidence · 89% win prob
FloorRecommendedCeiling
16.5%19.0%21.0%
Built on your 4.6pt structural cushion. Tightens with each outcome your team records.
Your gut
14.5%
Lift
+4.5 pt
05The play that closes it

A tactical move, not just a number.

A catalog of veteran-authored plays, surfaced when they fit your deal. Cost-stack arbitrage. Stacked-leverage holds. Multi-year prepay anchors. Each one tied to a real $-figure on this quote.

Top match
91%Fit
Hold the floor. You're stacked.
You're PAN-direct. NGFW specialization adds +3.0pt rebate stack. Deal reg locked yesterday adds +4.0pt protected pricing. Stack the three: your effective cost is $251K. Nearest competitor (Ingram-routed, no spec, no reg) carries $262K cost. They can't realistically bid below 14%. You bid at $310K, hold 19%, capture $58.9K GP.
Your cost
$251K
Their floor
$262K
Cushion
4.6pt
Played 218 of 487 PAN deals last quarter · held floor in 78% + 2 alternative matches

Play library6 plays match Mercy Health · PAN refresh

Browse all 247 plays
Stacked leverage
Hold the floor
When you're stacked across sourcing, spec, and deal reg, don't reflexively discount.
7 reps · 412 wins91% fit
Cost routing
Disti floor arbitrage
Quote disti and OEM-direct before committing. Your routing is usually the move.
5 reps · 284 wins84% fit
Deal reg
Deal-reg protection anchor
Reg locked, no discounting needed. The reg is the negotiation anchor.
9 reps · 318 wins79% fit
Specialization
Lead with NGFW spec rebate
Your NGFW specialization adds 3pt rebate stack the rep often forgets to flag.
4 reps · 196 wins76% fit
Multi-year
Multi-year prepay anchor
Customer wants price stability. Trade longer commit for locked margin.
6 reps · 247 wins71% fit
Quarter close
Quarter-close velocity push
Channel manager funds part of margin via back-end rebate in last 3 weeks.
3 reps · 132 wins68% fit
Platformization
Add the Cortex pillar
Two-pillar deals qualify for NextWave 2026 platform-tier rebate uplift.
5 reps · 211 wins62% fit
Displacement
Cisco-out competitive uplift
Cisco ASA refresh deals get priority treatment in NextWave 2026 SPIFs.
4 reps · 178 wins58% fit
Plays authored by veteran reps in your VAR-circle 34 contributors · 3 net-new authors this quarter
JM RT KL SP DG AC BN MV +26
OEM coverage

Scored across 23 OEMs. Authorized for 11 active partner programs.

Per-OEM program facts updated when programs change. No more reading three PDFs to find the threshold.

Common questions.

Short answers. Full documentation here.

Is my deal data private?
Yes. Your deals never leave your account. The VAR-circle benchmarks you see are pooled inside one VAR, opt-in, and anonymized. We don't share data across customers. The market intelligence we surface comes from public OEM program documentation, our own research, and aggregated patterns we license, never from another VAR's deal flow.
Which OEMs do you cover?
23 active OEMs as of today, including Palo Alto Networks, Cisco, HPE, Dell, Fortinet, Microsoft, CrowdStrike, Arista, Juniper, Check Point, F5, NetApp, Pure Storage, Nutanix, Veeam, CyberArk, Sophos, Rubrik, Red Hat, Cohesity, Broadcom, Lenovo, AWS. We add new OEMs in priority order based on what reps in the pilot are scoring most.
When does the beta open?
This quarter. We're reviewing waitlist signups within 48 hours and onboarding the first 250 reps in batches. You'll hear back even if you're not in the first round.
How is this different from CPQ?
CPQ tells you what you can quote. MarginArc tells you what you should quote, given your structural cost edge, the OEM program mechanics, and what your team has already won at. We sit in front of CPQ, not behind it.
Who is this for?
IT VAR sales reps. Single-rep tier today, with paid plans for reps doing $5M+ in annual quotes. Manager and team views are not on the roadmap right now: the product is built around the rep at the desk, not the manager above them.
What does it cost?
Free for the first 250 reps in the beta. After that, paid tiers based on deals scored per month. Pricing will be public when general availability opens.
Private beta opens this quarter

Be one of the first 250 reps to use it.

Six minutes to onboard. Three deals to get calibrated to your VAR's outcomes. No credit card, no contract.

Reviewed within 48 hours · You'll hear back even if you don't get in this round

JM RT KL SP 247 reps already on the waitlist2 in the last 24h