by Simon Quicke
12 November 2008
In a move that has already produced positive results in the US, SonicWall
has introduced a programme to make it easier for resellers to get service
contract renewals.
The security vendor used its partner conference yesterday
and Monday as a venue for the announcement that it is introducing the scheme
after a successful pilot in the UK
and its experiences running it already in the US.
Keith Bird, vice president and managing director of EMEA at
SonicWall, said that the Partner Enabled Renewal of Customer Subscription
(PERCS) programme would retain customers and margin that resellers might
otherwise have lost out on.
“For some resellers getting a sales guy to go and [handle
the subscriptions] would have been prohibitive in terms of cost,” he said.
In response resellers have two options in PERCS to take
advantage of the quarterly renewal updates that the vendor is going to start
sending out or to give SonicWall responsibility for collecting the renewals on
their behalf.
“When they pass it to us the reseller gets the margin and
they know us and we are 100% pure channel and they trust us,” he added “In the
US we now have an 85% renewal rate.”
In addition the vendor is offering general sales and
marketing training for partners in a bid to help them improve their skills.
