Tumbleweed Unveils New Partner Program Incentives

Posted by channelpeak on March 22, 2008 under Monday Missive | Comments are off for this article

It’s always interesting to read about new vendor incentive programs. Tumbleweed have just announced one that seems to be quite rich for it’s partners. It reads as a growth incentive for Tumbleweed as it looks like partners get paid all the way along the pipeline, including if they don’t win the deal at the end!

It’s a very interesting concept to pay a partner even when they don’t win the deal. Now, I do believe in rewarding a partner for their time and resource, but if someone else wins the deal, doesn’t that imply that the winning partner was better? This of course assumes that everything else was equal, ie pricing discounts. A better way to protect the initial and identifying partner would be to give them a special price discount that subsequent partners are not able to have, subject to local price competition laws.

One of the things that Tumbleweed may not have contemplated is partner collusion. Of course I haven’t seen the full terms and conditions of the program but I have seen other programs come unstuck with a similar growth program. Partner A registers the deal, pockets the deal registration fee, hands it to reseller B who wins the deal and reseller A goes back and picks up the “found it but lost fee”! Think it doesn’t happen? You’d be suprised! Always assume that your partners talk to each other, and always assume that if there is an extra dollar to be made, your partners will find it.

Other Links:
Tumbleweed Partners – Overview
Read the full story here on CRN