Avanton Puts New Spin On Deal Registration

Avanton's Alive At Five program, unveiled Monday, is a deal-registration program that requires partners to produce five solid leads each per quarter.

Armed with those leads, Avanton's channel managers and direct-sales team take steps to help close the sales, said Chuck Watkins, newly hired chief sales officer at Avanton, Manhattan Beach, Calif.

"What we set out to do was create a channel model that is low effort, high return for the partner," said Watkins. "We have eliminated all the heavy lifting that comes with the traditional partner/VAR relationship."

Avanton's flagship product is its ReadyArm appliance, which is targeted at the midmarket and performs network monitoring, intrusion-detection alerting and reporting, vulnerability scanning, and report correlation. The product's pricing starts at about $10,000.

The Alive at Five program includes online demonstrations of ReadyArm. Avanton will also provide sales collateral and make joint sales calls with partners, Watkins said. Partners who register leads with Avanton under the program own those accounts, Watkins said. "We are completely committed to the channel. Partners own the accounts," Watkins said.

Alive At Five is a three-tiered program that offers partners margins as high as 40 percent at the Platinum level. Gold-level partners get margins in the 35 percent range, and Silver partners enjoy margins in the 25 percent range. Silver-level partners are exempt from having to purchase a ReadyArm demo unit.

Avanton currently has about 25 partners and looks to double that number in the next six months, Watkins said. All partners must produce five solid leads per salesperson per quarter, regardless of their program level, Watkins said.

Greg Coggin, president and CEO of Triple C Technologies, a VAR and Avanton partner in Greer, S.C., said Alive At Five is about "going back to the basics."

"[Avanton has] realized that what's important in this industry is the relationship you have with your vendors. They will practically close a deal for me. They will do the legwork, they will go in and slam my client," said Coggin. "You can't beat that. It's taking the abilities of my salespeople and enhancing it with a direct relationship to the product."