McAfee tempts EMEA VARs with incentives
Vendor offers channel two new rebates
McAfee is looking to steal a march on its rivals by expanding its Partner Incentive Programme.
The vendor is offering its EMEA partners two new rebates: one aimed at anti-virus displacement sales and anti-spyware new business revenue; and the other a bonus of up to 300 euros per unit on sales of secure content management and intrusion prevention system appliances.
Wayne Carter, EMEA director for channels and alliances at McAfee, said: “We are trying to provide incentives to VARs to push McAfee products through the channel.”
Carter added that McAfee’s distribution partners will also be awarded 20 euros for every new partner that they recruit, together with a ‘bonus accelerator’ for high achievers.
However, he denied that 20 euros was not much of an incentive: “Whether it’s an incentive will be up to the individual distributor.”
McAfee also claimed more than 9,000 partner deals were submitted to its partner incentive web site last year.
Participation in the Partner Incentive Programme is open to all levels of McAfee partners including associate partners and entry-level resellers, which the vendor claimed represent the largest number of partners in its global partner programme.
Alan Reid, managing director of security distributor Sentryst, told CRN: “Incentives work well provided they are managed well because some partners will use it as an additional revenue source rather than to provide incentives for the sales-people themselves.”
Ash Hussain, sales and marketing director at Axial Systems, agreed: “This is a good thing. However, we totally understand why there could be the potential for abuse with multi-vendor VARs.”