Quantum’s new Quantum NOW program is looking to incent reps to bring in new business, particularly in unstructured data and archiving, with higher than usual SPIFs.
Andy Brinck, Vice President, Channel Sales – Americas, at Quantum
Storage vendor Quantum has launched its new Quantum NOW program in North America. While Quantum already has a channel program, and a SPIF program, Quantum NOW differs from both. It offers much higher margins than their established SPIF program. It is also an invite-only program, where selected partner reps are nominated by their Quantum reps.
“This isn’t really a change in our existing channel program, but an augmentation of it,” said Andy Brinck, Vice President, Channel Sales – Americas, at Quantum. “Quantum NOW is designed around motivating and engaging reps at companies we are engaged with and would want to be engaged with, and is designed more at a rep level than at a company level.”
The new program is structured to incent reps to hunt down new business, particularly around unstructured data and archiving.
“We are placing more emphasis on unstructured data and archiving as our business transitions,” Brinck said. “Our core partners tend to be more opportunistic about these. Their sales reps make their money in the data centre around more structured data solutions. With this new program, we are trying to drive behavior. We are also targeting only a small percentage of reps who tend to hunt these opportunities hard. Most reps are farmers. We are trying to find those hungry motivated reps who will fight with Quantum.”
The Quantum NOW program offers SPIF incentives that are significantly higher than industry norms.
“They will effectively double gross profits based on industry standards,” Brinck said. “There is a 5 per cent SPIF on new business, when you bring a deal to Quantum. This applies to new customers, or selling a new product category to an existing customer. There is a 2 per cent SPIF on everything else, on all products and services except LTO media, which is still covered by the old SPIF program.”
That earlier SPIF program, which changes quarter over quarter, remains because most reps aren’t going to be in the Quantum NOW program. A rep needs to be nominated to join the program.
“The old program has much less of an impact dollar-wise than Quantum NOW,” Brinck said. “Quantum NOW provides about 3x what our standard SPIFS are today.”
Brinck noted that a rep in the Quantum NOW program won’t get the benefits from the other program stacked with the new ones.
“The standard SPIF program – except the media SPIFs – goes away if you are involved in this program,” he said. The SPIFs are also based on distributor invoice price, not end user price.
The new program also allows partners to provide installation services across a broader portfolio of Quantum products.
“Some of our solutions in specific verticals like media and entertainment and video surveillance, are eligible to be sold by data centre partners, but they haven’t been as exposed to that,” Brinck said. He noted that while Quantum has about 45 very active partners in the US, Canada and LatAm in media and entertainment, and about 85 in data centres in the same geos, there is almost no overlap – with only three partners overlapping between the two groups.
“They will be able to install those in addition to the standard data centre products,” Brinck said. “In addition, we will also be expanding services in our higher level DXi [disk to disk backup with deduplication] and Scalar i6 tape libraries, which were previously delivered by Quantum. We are looking to expand that delivery capability to certified and trained partners.”
Quantum is also offering more lead generation support to partners through their MDF program.
“Quantum has made a huge investment in the last 18 months in our sales development rep team, almost quadrupling it, so we have started to offer our SDR [Sales Development Rep] services as an augmentation to lead development.”
Specific integrated and co-brandable campaigns will provide all the leads from each campaign to the partner, with Platinum partners getting Priority and Gold partners second priority. People in the Quantum NOW program will also be part of that.
Brinck said initial partner response to the new program has been strong.
“It’s already having a significant impact, and the conversations have been well received,” he said. “We kicked off this week in Dallas on a six city tour where we are promoting it.” The remaining stops are: October 25, in National Harbor, MD; October 26, in Rosemont, IL; November 9, in San Jose, CA; November 14, in Costa Mesa, CA; and November 16, in New York, NY.
