Since arriving in Sydney in 2000, David Cockerham, Good Technology’s director partner program APAC, has spent his entire time in channel roles. While Good Technology has recently made changes to its channel, signing Whitegold as a distributor, it hasn’t undertaken a huge reseller drive here. Cockerham says it hasn’t needed to.
Partners
Lately, what we’ve seen is more resellers or systems integrators jumping into mobility, because it’s a very hot space to be in and there are good margins for the resellers. They do very well in Canberra. We have a partner called Delv, which saw the mobility movement coming. They have been our number one partner nearly every quarter over the last three years. We haven’t had a huge reseller recruitment drive: we have enough reach.
Distributors
Recently we made some distribution changes; that’s going to open up some more doors in regards to midmarket partners and also more of a regional reach. We have signed up Whitegold. I was distributing with Whitegold when I was with Exinda and had a great experience with them. We found that a broad-based distie wasn’t the best fit for us. We went and found someone who wanted to build a mobility practice with Good Technology as a foundation vendor. We wanted someone who had the ability to dive into our technology and become more of an expert in this space.
Programs
We’ve implemented a vendor pyramid in the US. We haven’t found the need to implement that here. I’ve kept the partner program very simple. Once you’re a member, you get the advantage of applying for added discounts. The other part I’ve tried to maintain is I’ve tried to make as few changes as possible. Feedback from resellers is typically vendors make too many changes. I’ve worked hard to make as few changes as possible, and hopefully only annually, small tweaks to the program.
Lessons learned
I think a lot of national players feel that mobility is covered by carriers and are reluctant to get into the space because they don’t have a lot of expertise. That endpoint needs security solutions that are not too dissimilar to what are required for your laptop. It’s easier for them to feel they can go into a customer and talk about a mobile solution. I think that’s one of the barriers they’ve had: that telcos have covered it.
Feedback
If you can understand what motivates a salesperson and a reseller, what their goals are – in essence try to walk a mile in their shoes and find out what’s important to then – and make sure your partner program takes that into account, you are going to have a much more successful relationship. I find some vendors don’t follow that advice. They set up programs in a vacuum.
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