Headset manufacturer GN Netcom has recruited UK resellers at a quicker rate than expected because of a high demand from IT VARs.
Earlier in the year, the vendor unveiled plans to attract hundreds of UK VARs following the launch of its official partner programme (CRN, 9 June).
Jan McNair, managing director of GN Netcom, told CRN: “In the first two months of the partner programme we recruited more than 500 new UK resellers. We are now up to 600. There was a fantastic response from various parts of the VAR community.
“Half of these new VARs were IT resellers. We expect interest from voice resellers, but we have also seen strong IT VAR demand.”
McNair claimed GN Netcom’s IP telephony-enabled portfolio has attracted IT VARs because the offering can easily connect with a PC and phone system.
“We are not actively seeking more partners because we need to speak to the VARs we have recruited,” he said.
“We have a lot of good and interesting partners, a certain percentage of which will move to higher partner accreditation levels.”
McNair added that by the end of 2007 he hoped 25 per cent of GN Netcom’s partner base would have moved to a higher accreditation level.
“We have three tiers in our partner programme: Value, Authorised and Associate partners,” he said. “The level depends on partners’ revenue performance, how many sales people they have trained for the GN portfolio and how well it can execute marketing campaigns.”
However, Jess Thompson-Hughes, managing director of distributor React Technologies, said: “How will GN Netcom support that number of VARs? This is going to affect the quality of support it can provide its partners.”
Thompson-Hughes added that most leading telephony vendor provide their own brand of headsets.
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