Symantec wheels out specialist SMB partner team

New team designed to help smaller resellers with sales enquiries

Security and storage vendor Symantec has created a specialist sales team to support its 2,000 UK SMB partners.

Launched last month, the eight-strong Partner Sales Team is designed to act as a touch point for Symantec's smaller partners.

In the past 10 months, Symantec has increased its number of SMB-dedicated staff across EMEA by 20 to 25 per cent.

Glenn Woolaghan, vice president EMEA SMB sales at Symantec, said: "Even though we have had an SMB team for years, we are increasing the focus and investment in that."

The Partner Sales team, which was formed in response to partner feedback, will punt Symantec's end-point security and backup wares but is also there to answer sales queries from partners.

Jay Epton, UK small business director at Symantec, said: "A lot of vendors prioritise their resellers by revenue contribution. Smaller partners do not always feel they can get access to resources and the support they need if they have a sales query.

"We have had [the team] running for four weeks and have had more than 1,000 calls."

From this quarter, Symantec has also changed the way it provides incentives to its volume distributors Ingram Micro, Tech Data and Westcoast. Their rebates are no longer based on a revenue number, but instead targets around partner enablement.

The new team is designed to complement distribution, rather than duplicate its functions.