Cloud Distribution takes partner marketing in-house
New telemarketing team to drum up leads for reseller partners around new vendor signings
Cloud Distribution has set up an in-house telemarketing bureau that will build qualified pipelines for resellers around its flurry of new vendor signings.
The distributor, which built a UK business for recent Cisco acquisition Meraki, has unveiled mobile malware specialist Lacoon Security as its latest vendor partner.
Lacoon completes a stack of enterprise mobility products Cloud has assembled that resellers can sell as an end-to-end managed service under their own brand.
The stack includes several other recent signings, including NAC player Enterasys Networks, cloud-based mobile device management outfit Maas360 and DLP specialist Watchful.
Cloud Distribution director Adam Davison said: "This business was absolutely built from Meraki up and that is what has given us the ability to [attract] these vendors. They have seen what we've done with Meraki and want us to emulate that."
Cloud is aiming to recruit eight to 10 key UK partners for Lacoon, an Israel-based zero-day malware and APT detection vendor that counts Check Point and Imperva founder Shlomo Kramer among its main investors.
Davison claimed the signature-based mobile offerings of the established anti-virus vendors were not sufficient to stave off the growing threat posed by zero-day attacks on smartphone and tablet users.
"In the UK, less than five per cent of mobile devices are infected with malware but it is coming - people need to protect themselves before it happens," he said.
Prospective partners will be lavished with qualified leads from Cloud's new in-house telemarketing team, a break from the outsourced telemarketing model favoured by many VADs.
Davison (pictured) said: "The telemarketing agencies do a great job. But the more we do in-house, the more skilled our staff will become on the products, so in theory this should bring more opportunities to the partners more quickly. This is something we are looking to build and invest in quite significantly."
The telemarketing bureau forms part of a packaged service offering Cloud has formalised since Davison came on board in December. Other services include pre-sales and sales support, weekly webinars, professional services, a quarterly networking event and quarterly shindig for top-performing partners, the last of which was held last weekend in Marrakesh.
"One of these services by itself adds a bit of value but it's not the whole story," said Davison. "If I'm a partner, I want a pipeline, I need to close that pipeline, I need to be kept up to speed on the value of the products, I want to support the products and then I want to enjoy myself. They all build on top of each other to build a continual value story."