LogLogic Turning Heads With New Deal Registration Plan

After eight years of struggling to make inroads with the channel, LogLogic may have finally found a successful formula that will both help the security vendor win partners and make its competitors green with envy. LogLogic, which specializes in log management and security event management technology, recently introduced a new deal registration system for its reseller partners. While many solution providers have become jaded to announcements of "new" deal registration programs, LogLogic's approach has earned praise from many of the vendors partners.

"The thing I learned is that partners look for consistency and predictability," said Michael Ross, vice president of North American channel sales and development. "So we decided to make our deal registration program as simple as possible."

Ross, an experienced channel veteran who held indirect sales positions at Nokia and RSA, joined LogLogic last spring and began working on ideas to stimulate LogLogic's partner sales. At the top of his list was a plan to overhaul the vendor's deal registration system by removing a lot of the complexities and inconsistencies that plagued it and similar deal registration programs. LogLogic's management teams supported the new plan, and after just a few months the vendor rolled out the improved deal registration system in August. The idea was simple: instead of offering partners fluctuating discount rates for registering potential deals, LogLogic would start to offer three flat rates – one for each partner level (silver, gold, and platinum) – that provide a 25 percent discount. In addition, the program has no minimum deal size, and the process to register a deal has been simplified to a one-page online form with just a few basic questions that Ross estimates takes no more than 10 minutes to complete.

Next: LogLogic, Partners Seeing Results

Ross said many solution providers are still apprehensive about deal registration programs because they fear that vendors will eventually use the customer data to start taking those accounts direct. But Ross said LogLogic is 100 percent channel focused. "All of our business is now done through the channel," he said. "We have a few legacy accounts that are still direct, but one of those accounts was actually just transitioned to a partner."

LogLogic is already starting to see positive results. According to the vendor, the number of partners who've joined LogLogic's partner portal, which is required to register deals online, has tripled since the program was introduced in August.

"It's been very positive so far because it's encouraging partners to do more business with us," he said. "And from a sales pipeline perspective, it's been very positive because more deals are being registered and that gives us greater visibility."

Corporate Networking Inc. (CNI) of Worcester, Penn., has been a LogLogic partner almost from the beginning when the vendor launched in 2002. Roger Kirk, chief executive at CNI, said the LogLogic deal registration program is the most effective and partner-friendly system he's ever used.

"The program is simple and the process doesn't take long to complete," Kirk said. "The discounts are the best we've seen, and it's consistent. You go into the process knowing that no other platinum partner, for example, is going to get a greater discount than you."

Joe Luciano, CEO of AccessIT in King of Prussia, Penn., credits Ross for the improvement he's seen with LogLogic. "A few years back when log management started to get big, LogLogic really jumped out at us. They had a good product, but they didn't have a well-defined channel program and weren't very channel focused," Luciano said. "But then Mike Ross came aboard and we had gotten to know him well at Nokia. He’s really improved things there and we've been impressed with what they're doing, especially with deal registration."

Next: Redefining Deal Registration

Kirk said many vendors offer deal registration programs, but they're often too complex and too time consuming for solution providers. "The biggest fear resellers have is going through all the work to register a deal and promote a vendor's product, and then have a competitor come in at the last minute and steal the deal on price," Kirk said. "And the last thing a vendors wants is five partners all competing for the same deal and battling over price."

Luciano agreed and traces many of today's flaws with deal registration back to the early days of the program's popularity seven or eight years ago. ’When deal registration started to become big, the vendors would tell the VARs that the first ones to register a customer would get all the incentives" he said. "And as a result, you had VARs pulling out pages of the phone book and registering every business they could find.’

But then, Luciano said, vendors began to install all kinds of cumbersome requirements and paperwork to prevent that kind of mad rush, and it greatly discouraged VARs from registering potential customers. So deal registration fell out of favor in many vendor programs.

"The simpler deal registration is, the better it is for us," he said. "Sometimes you just don’t know if a deal is going to be worth the time and effort. Selling security compliance solutions and log management tools is a complex sale and it can take anywhere from six to 12 months."

LogLogic hopes its new deal registration will win over new prospective partners and also act as a springboard for upcoming improvements to the vendor's partner program. "You want a program that motivates partners to do more business with you and invest more time and effort into selling your product," Ross said, "and we think we've got that now."