Netgear offers bigger rewards in revamped partner scheme

Vendor installs new Platinum tier

Netgear has been "beefing out" its partner programme, gearing it towards and rewarding partners who are selling more of what it calls its "advanced products".

These products include managed and stacking switches, high-performance storage, and managed wireless products such as access points and controllers. The programme has had a new Platinum Plus tier added to it, which sits above the incumbent Platinum level.

Resellers are picked by Netgear to join these two higher tiers based on their levels of quarterly revenue. Both tiers include a dedicated account manager, business plan agreement to develop sales, around-the-clock technical support, lead sharing, marketing development funds (MDF), and discounts.

Partners on the entry-level Basic tier benefit from sales call support, training programmes, government and education discounts, a deal-registration programme, and product evaluation requests.

Peter Hannah, regional director for the UK, Ireland, and the Nordics, claimed that the vendor's old programme did not always reward partners who generated the most revenue.

Talking about the previous programme, Hannah said: "I guess you could call it a partner programme, but it just didn't really invest in those partners that wanted to invest in Netgear as well. So we have kind of taken the basics of the old partner programme and built on it.

"None of the benefits we offered in the last one have gone away – they still have the ability to register opportunities and go on free training – but we are now adding levels of tiers for partners."

The vendor has also been working on building out the training offered within the programme, with a new intensive "deep dive" comprehensive course covering the majority of the technology on its portfolio.

He suggested that Netgear may not be as well known as other larger names, but the training sessions are popular, and feedback from participants is proving to be positive.

"I know that Netgear is not as attractive a name as Cisco, for example, but the quality of information that we get out of those partners and the feedback you get from those courses is fantastic. Plus they are constantly full.

"The deep-dive courses that are generally only eight to 10 people are full for quarters in advance, and the more technical but less deep-dive that run with 18 to 20 people on a monthly basis are always booked up."