Zebra Shares New Channel Program Overview At Partner Summit

By The Business Solutions Network

The opening day of the 2015 Zebra Global Partner Summit at the ARIA Resort in Las Vegas focused on an important trend Zebra wanted to educate its partners about, Enterprise Asset Intelligence. Day 2 of the conference (May 4) was focused on the big questions that have been top of mind for every partner in attendance, such as: When is the new channel program going to be rolled out? How will it work? And, what will be different?

Since the Motorola Solutions’ Enterprise business acquisition was completed seven months ago, partners have had to deal with two separate programs and two separate portals for registering deals, applying for marketing coop funds, and applying for credit.

The challenge is that Zebra needed to conduct its due diligence to merge the two in a way that kept the best of each program and considered the impact on its partners. For example, Motorola offered deal registration, which protected partners from investing months of time into a sales process only to be undercut in the end by a competitor selling the same products at a cheaper price. Zebra was heading in this direction with its program, but had to temporarily put that on hold during the acquisition.

Shortly afterwards, the company formed a 90+ member partner advisory council made up of Zebra partners, Motorola partners — or partners of both — and asked what their views were on the perceived benefits and risks of the acquisition, how they executed programs in the field, and what they were looking for in a channel program — or programs.

Additionally, with the help of its distributor partners, Zebra surveyed 300+ other partners to solicit their feedback. “We even solicited feedback from channel companies in our space who weren’t currently working with us to get their perspectives,” says Tom Esposito, senior director, North America channel marketing, Zebra Technologies.

Although complete specifics of the new program won’t be announced until August, and it won’t go live until January 2016, there are a few high-level components the company shared with its partners this week.

“Our channel partners fall into three separate categories — broad line resellers, business partners, and solution providers — and we realized it wouldn’t be fair to apply the same generic incentives across the board,” says Denise Hampton, director of channel strategy, programs, and marketing for Zebra Technologies. “While resellers respond well to rebate programs, business partners are motivated by deal registration, and solution providers will be incentivized based on the types of solutions they bundle and sell.”

Eileen Eck, Zebra’s VP of global channel strategy, marketing, and operations, shared another aspect that will be built into the new program: accountability. “The consistent message from channel companies we solicited feedback from was that they want specific rules of engagement,” she says. “And, they want us to hold them and ourselves accountable to following the rules we establish.”

An example of where accountability will manifest itself is with certification requirements — especially in key areas such as RFID, wireless LAN, and voice technologies. For example, if a partner wants to register a wireless LAN deal with Zebra it must be certified to sell and install the gear and software required to complete the project. “This is important when we’re sharing leads with partners, too,” says Tom Sheahen, VP North American channel sales at Zebra. “We only want to share RFID leads with qualified RFID solution providers to ensure the project is a success. Our company’s reputation is on the line, too.”

Sheahen went on to say in the morning’s opening session that 82 percent of Zebra’s North American sales go through the channel. “We’ve talked a lot this week about our commitment to the channel,” he said. “The channel has been our primary go-to-market strategy before the acquisition and that’s not going to change.”

Zebra Technologies 2015 Global Partner Summit is being held May 3-5 at the ARIA Resort in Las Vegas. For more information on Zebra, go to www.Zebra.com