HP To Storage Channel: New-Deal Registration More Flexible

During his Wednesday keynote presentation, Dan Vertrees, HP vice president of enterprise partners, Americas region, said solution providers that register a deal with a new customer can continue to register sales for the six months following the date of registration to qualify for new business bonuses over that time period.

"We're giving you elasticity," Vertrees said. "We're giving you more wiggle room."

In a meeting with CRN, Vertrees said that in the past, a typical first deal with a new customers was limited in scope, such as a trial order. "Now partners can get the benefits for an entire customer project," he said.

The expanded business bonus program is not new, said Ed Burke, HP's director of partner storage sales.

It was actually unveiled to solution providers last November as part of a flurry of announcements related to the new Partner One program, Burke said. However, most partners did not notice the program and, as a result, did not take advantage of it. "Dan is reminding partners," he said.

Several solution providers were surprised that they had missed the deals but were enthusiastic about the flexibility the program offered.

Solution providers told CRN that under the previous new-business-deal registration program, they had up to six months from the time a customer placed its first order to apply for the sign-up bonus. During that six-month period, they could add follow-on sales to the registration to increase the bonus.

However, the problem came in deciding when to actually apply for the bonus. Solution providers wanted to wait as long as possible to increase the bonus, but if they waited too long for a follow-up order and then missed the deadline to apply for the bonus, they lost the entire bonus.

Rich Baldwin, president and CEO of Nth Generation Computing, a San Diego-based HP solution provider, said his company was unaware of the change. "That's a huge difference for us," he said.

The enhanced deal registration program makes a lot of sense, said Carl Wolfston, director of Headlands Associates, a Pleasanton, Calif.-based solution provider. "To do the deal registration now, the VAR has to decide if he wants to take a smaller cut now, or hold deals for five months and then register them," he said.

Gary Hazard, vice president of Atrion, a Hillsborough, N.J.-based solution provider, called the enhanced new business registration program "awesome."

A lot of new business comes from the midmarket space, which is where programs such as this are intended to help out the most, said Hazard.

"If we can register deals for six months, we get the chance to open the customer's whole business," Hazard said. "So instead of registering a $20,000 to $25,000 cluster, we can go in deep and wide for six months."