Citrix Updates Channel Incentive Program

The Customer XPansion Reward Program, launched in August, now rewards qualified partners for sales growth and adds extra incentives for sales of the Nfuse Elite portal server.

Citrix Solutions Network partners who join the program can now receive cash back for growing their sales volumes compared to previous quarters, said Ross Brown, vice president of business planning at Citrix, Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

"For the volume component, we're really looking at a subset of partners who are capable of driving consistent volume in a value-oriented model," Brown said. About 100 Citrix Solutions Network partners would likely meet the baseline sales volume requirement of $75,000 per quarter, he added.

Solution providers applauded the addition of a volume-based reward.

"That was the piece that was missing. Our biggest issue was that we were being penalized for [large deals," said Chris Richner, executive vice president of Integration Technologies, a solution provider in Newport Beach, Calif.

The XPansion program offers partners up to 5 percent cash back for increasing the number of sales transactions by up to 40 percent quarter over quarter. It replaces a previous incentive program that provided partners with about $4,000 worth of free products for every $65,000 worth of product sold, a predictable program some partners used to create price wars, Brown said.

By eliminating the volume reward completely, however, Citrix penalized top-level partners that had already saturated clients with Citrix products, Brown said. To expect those partners to grow their transaction rates by as much as 40 percent per quarter is unrealistic, he said.

"The Platinum partners are constrained, and some of the top-level Gold partners are constrained because they've done such a good job for us," Brown said.

Partners can earn incentives simultaneously for growing transactions and sales volumes, Brown said.

In addition to the volume component, Citrix also said it would count any sales transaction that includes NFuse Elite twice.

"I want to encourage the behavior to go drive the new [products as well as continuing to drive MetaFrame," Brown said.

Sales of NFuse Elite, launched in June, did not meet expectations last quarter because the vendor had underestimated the length of the sales cycle and the impact of the struggling economy on sales of a new product, said Mark Templeton, president and CEO of Citrix.

The company signed up 50 NFuse Elite customers in the third quarter and has a strong pipeline of potential customers running pilots, Templeton said.

"We like the product, but right now it's not a must-have for customers," said Bill Fistori, president of DeVA Systems Group, a solution provider in Maynard, Mass.