IBM Offers Software Partners Incentives For Midmarket Expansion
The effort, called the IBM Business Partner Software Mid-Market Value Initiative, is an expansion of IBM's Value Advantage Plus program. VAP provides financial rewards to business partners that build solutions around IBM software, including such middleware products as WebSphere and Tivoli.
Unlike other partner programs designed to recruit new partners, the IBM Business Partner Software Mid-Market Value Initiative is geared toward providing existing partners with incentives to sell more IBM software in geographical areas IBM considers ripe with midmarket customer prospects. IBM defines midmarket businesses as those with 1,000 or fewer employees.
"The genesis of this program is to generate more profitability for our partners to get them to go where we need them to be," said Denyse Cromwell-Mackey, director of software channels for North America. "In the midmarket, solution providers are what the market is really in need of."
IBM initially will roll out the program in 12 U.S. cities the company said represent a significant amount of midmarket revenue potential: Atlanta; Baltimore; Charlotte, N.C.; Chicago; Cleveland; Dallas; Denver; Hartford, Ct.; Indianapolis, Pittsburgh and St. Louis.
IBM said it will provide software reseller partners with exclusive sales leads and leads for demand generation marketing campaigns, Cromwell-Mackey said. The company will also offer "earned benefits" of $10,000 to $20,000 for each year of enrollment that partners can spend on funding for marketing campaigns, customer success videos and other collateral. IBM has also developed a benchmarking study on the business benefits of IBM software that partners can use as a selling tool.
IBM piloted the program between August and December of last year.
"The pilot guidelines were very clear," said Toby Banks, software sales director at Softchoice Optimus Solutions, a Toronto-based IBM partner that resells IBM Tivoli storage management software, WebSphere software and Lotus applications. Softchoice Optimus Solutions participated in the pilot by expanding its sales efforts in the Florida cities of Tampa and Orlando, and IBM provided his company with sales leads and funding for a marketing event at Disney World's Epcot theme park.
To be eligible for the program, channel partners have to meet certain sales and marketing capability requirements. They must have staffers based in the target cities and commit to executing three demand-generation events, Cromwell-Mackey said. They also have to commit to a 30 percent win-rate for leads provided by IBM.
Channel partners must be participants in IBM's Value Advantage Plus and PartnerWorld programs. They also must be enrolled in at least one of the vendor's Express Advantage social networking communities on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or YouTube or through IBM Express Advantage Slideshare.