Siemens communicates optimism at partner forum

New channel initiatives to ease the pain of tough times while aiming for sales

Siemens resellers will get new tools to help them sell IP telephony solutions through 2009

Resellers heard about a boost to partner incentives and education to boost IP-based telecommunications sales at Siemens Enterprise Communications annual partner conference in Leicester recently.

Leon Mangan, indirect channel sales director at Siemens Enterprise Communications, said the talkfest rolled out some new partner promotions and tools to kick off what is widely expected to be a difficult year in many markets, as well as showcasing the vendor’s new HiPath products.

“We really want to help resellers move the migrations forward from traditional TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) with the IP products,” he said.

“We want to give our partners as much confidence to sell as possible and we want to do that without compromising margins.”

One initiative is a €1000 cashback offered to customers who trade in their old systems, plus another €20 for each old handset.

“We are re-packaging a range of end user cashback initiatives so resellers will be able to go to customers and say, ‘give us your old Nortel or whatever system’,” Mangan said.

A new set of online tools are also being made available, including Digital Channel, Virtual Marketplace and Global Partner Locator, he said.

Siemens also dished out various gongs.

Winners included: Datasharp for Reseller of the Year; Nimans for Distributor of the Year; Dan Clarke of Lloyds Business IP for Channel Salesperson of the Year; Utilizeand RDC for Best SME Open Communications Solutions; Daly Telecom for Best Enterprise Mobility Solution; Dolphin for Best Customer Interaction Solution; and Lloyds Business IP again for Best HD Videoconferencing and Collaboration Solution.