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Encover Partners with AFSMI to Deliver Seminar Series In Cities Across the U.S.

Seminar Titled "Do Your Channel Partners Really Hate You?" Addresses Key Issues for Manufacturers' Successfully Selling Services through the Channel

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., (February 25, 2004) - Encover (TM), Inc., a provider of technology-enabled services that help manufacturers collaborate with their channel partners to maximize revenue from service contracts, today announced a new seminar series in conjunction with regional chapters of the Association for Services Management International (AFSMI). The seminar series is titled "Do Your Channel Partners Really Hate You?: How To Leverage Service Revenue to Improve Channel Loyalty and Profitability." This seminar series shows the 'hidden life' of the channel, and highlights how manufacturers can empower channel partners to improve service contract sales, which typically account for 58% of channel partner profits, according to IDC Research. The seminar features Michael Minard, a former GE Access senior executive and an expert on IT equipment distributors and resellers. Starting March 11 in Southbury, Connecticut, the seminar moves on to Des Plaines, Illinois on March 16, Parsippany, New Jersey on April 22, and Santa Clara, California at the end of April.

Each session will include dinner, networking opportunities, and an interactive discussion led by Michael Minard with an agenda that includes:

The top 5 things your channel won't tell you, but that you must know
Improving service contract attach rate through the channel
Increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of the channel's handling of service contracts
Why your channel often has different goals than your company
The real price of using the channel
How to lower your costs of using the channel
Why the channel hates dealing with service contracts
Fixing the service contract mess
Beyond the selling machine - how to leverage channel partners as a competitive weapon

Registration
To register, contact andrew@encover.com or call 1.866.ENCOVER.

About the Speaker
Michael Minard is an industry veteran who spent eight years as a senior executive at GE Access, a $3 Billion subsidiary of General Electric and one of the largest value-add distributors (VADs) in the world. At GE Access, Minard was charged with helping GE Access diversify their business beyond SUN Microsystems, and he was responsible for all operations, marketing and sales for over 20 vendor relationships, which now account for over $600 million worth of revenue annually. Minard was given GE's Pinnacle award and chosen for GE's elite Executive Leadership Development Forum, and he is Six Sigma green belt. Today, Minard is a senior executive at Encover, Inc, a technology-enabled service provider that enables manufacturers and their channel partners to maximize service contract revenue.

About Encover, Inc.
Encover, Inc. provides technology-enabled services, including a combination of outsourced service contract sales professionals, best practices and robust software, that helps manufacturers collaborate with their channel partners to sell more service contracts into their installed base. Encover's founders designed and built Cisco's award-winning Service Contract Center, which enabled customers to renew service contracts over the Web and provided Cisco with 65 percent of incremental service revenue over the first two years of operation. The company has top tier clients "including Cisco, Diebold, Kodak and SonicWALL" For more information on Encover, visit www.encover.com, or call 650-903-8700.

Encover and Encover ServSmart are trademarks of Encover, Inc. of Mountain View, California. All other products or company names mentioned are used for identification purposes only, and may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Encover Media Contacts:
Andrew Hoerner
Encover, Inc.
andrew@encover.com
650. 903. 8736

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