McAfee boosts spiffs for demos and POCs

Intel-owned security vendor claims it more than doubled rewards paid out to partner sales reps and SEs last year

McAfee is bolstering the rewards available to sales engineers (SEs) at partners for carrying out demonstrations and proof of concepts (POCs).

The Intel-owned security vendor claims the rewards it dished out to sales reps and SE staff at partners through its McAfee Rewards programme more than doubled in 2013.

Six months ago, it began rewarding McAfee accredited channel engineers (ACEs) for carrying out POCs and demos to ensure partner staff were being rewarded through the sales cycle.

McAfee channel programme director Daniel Rimmer revealed this element of the programme is in the process of being further extended

"We haven't typically spiffed for demos and POCs," he said.

"What we're starting to look at now is being even more generous on POC spiffs on some of some of our more advanced technologies. When our technology is up against a competitor, our win ratio is massively high so we need to incentivise them to be at the customer site and close those POCs."

The programme rewards staff not only for driving POCs and demos but also tracking them, Rimmer said, so McAfee can measure the extra reach and capacity it is enjoying as a result of the investment it is making in training up more ACEs.

A "wheel of fortune"-style promotion McAfee launched in December is also paying off, Rimmer claimed. Some 90 per cent of the codes sent out to partners under the scheme, which offers an array of prizes including a trip to Brazil, had been redeemed, raising interest in the programme, he said.

Meanwhile, McAfee has revamped its internal systems so that claiming rewards is now instant, with claims submitted now automatically validated against sales data and points immediately loaded into the sales rep or SE's account.

The number of partners participating in McAfee's rewards programme rose by 40 per cent last year, Rimmer said.