Belkin Rolls Out New Partner Program

The peripherals vendor is rolling out a new Solution Provider Alliance (SPA) program that adds incentives for resellers and integrators to peddle the company's catalog of USB and FireWire products, KVM switches, networking routers and NIC cards, surge suppressors, UPS devices, wireless accessories, audio/video/phone cables, LAN cables and other IT/networking accessories.

The new SPA program has three partnership levels: Associate, Partner and Premier. Each designation is based on an annual sales load figure as well as the level of marketing interaction with Belkin, said Gavin Downey, business unit manager at the Compton, Calif.-based vendor. Rebates are rewarded to SPA members according to their partnership level's sales target, and all levels reward resellers with priority access to Belkin technical support and secure access to the company's Partner Portal.

For example, a reseller qualifying for the Partner level with $100,000 in annual sales of Belkin products would receive a 1 percent growth rebate as soon as it attains the first $62,500 of its sales target, Downey said.

System integrators are the core focus of the SPA program, according to Downey. "VARs are being tasked with structural support, enterprise power and KVM needs," he said. Via SPA, Belkin aims to sweeten the incentive to move its products while also boosting technical and promotional support for its resellers, he added.

That comes as welcome news to Van Jones, distribution buyer at Pomeroy IT Solutions, a Belkin partner in Hebron, Ky. Pomeroy routinely tackles all scale of network infrastructure deployment, and the company welcomes anything that would tighten its relationship with Belkin in terms of technical and sales support, Jones said. "We are very interested in anything that would benefit us," he said.

Adding a program like SPA will help Belkin strengthen its ties with channel partners, said Joel Moore, senior product marketing manager at GTSI, Chantilly, Va. "[SPA] is obviously a terrific thing for us in terms of our partnership with Belkin," Moore said. "It allows us greater access to resources and additional sales tools."