SonicWALL has updated its Medallion Partner program designed to deliver enhanced opportunities for growth and profit to a broad set of channel partner business models. The new program aims to meet the changing needs of the reseller community by enabling them to compete more effectively while differentiating their offerings, and provides added potential to build profitable recurring revenue streams.
“Our goal is to make it easier and more profitable for our channel partners to do business with us,” said Michael Valentine, vice president of Americas Sales at SonicWALL. “Our expanded Medallion program is the culmination of hundreds of conversations with our partners to understand how their needs have changed. Each tier of the new program has been designed to provide the opportunity for improved ROI and more predictable revenues for different channel partner categories.”
With the new program, SonicWALL now recognizes the specialized needs of two evolving channel business models: Direct Market Resellers (DMR), who sell high volumes of a broad set of security solutions; and Value-Added Merchants (VAM), resellers of solutions and services with industry or regional specializations, whose primary sales and support mechanism is via phone or Web. SonicWALL is the first vendor to create focused programs for the VAM category.
“A one-size-fits-all program cannot reflect the realities of today's channel environment,” added Valentine. “DMRs require marketing resources to help them be effective in a high volume, transaction-based business, while VAMs tend to sell to second- or multiple-time purchasers, requiring a little more attention for each sale. In contrast, our Medallion partners frequently act as a virtual IT department for their end customer. This new program not only accounts for, but is equipped to reward widely differing business models.”
For its Gold, Silver and Approved Medallion partner categories, SonicWALL has created a new incentive structure to encourage the growth of a balanced hardware and software services-based business and support the growing popularity of the managed services model. The program also places emphasis on business planning, partner certification and staffing levels.
“SonicWALL's new program recognizes the changing realities in the channel partner community,” said Deepak Thadani, president of SysIntegrators, LLC, a SonicWALL Gold Medallion partner. “We are moving away rapidly from the old model of hardware sales – today, my business is predicated on security expertise, service delivery and added value. The Medallion program supports our evolved market focus and gives us new potential for strong margins, recurring revenues, and the ability to create business continuity for our customers.”
To assist Medallion partners in growing their customer bases, SonicWALL has redesigned its marketing and sales support programs, offering a comprehensive set of pre-designed marketing tools, creating a new field sales organization to develop and execute programs on behalf of partners, and allocating dedicated inside sales resources. The Market Development Fund (MDF) has been redesigned to allow partners more easily to plan marketing activities based on identifiable, accrued amounts of co-funding.
For DRM and VAM partners, SonicWALL offers resources including co-operative marketing funds, offering partners monthly access to funding based on program guidelines and identified ROI, and targeted program rebates available on a quarterly basis.
“It's gratifying to see SonicWALL's partner program evolve to include newer categories of reseller partners,” said Brian Reed, Chairman of Dreaming Tree, a SonicWALL Value-Added Merchant partner in Indianapolis (www.firewalls.com). “We're excited about the new incentives and partner support SonicWALL has put in to place to support our business and look forward to continuing to work together in providing affordable, superior security solutions for our customers.” |
