D&H Canada is offering double the points to resellers as part of its incentive program this month, in an effort to drive business and celebrate the success its had with the program. Dan Schwab, co-president of the distributor, described the updates to the program at D&H’s 2011 technology show held in Mississauga, Ont.
Launched in February, the distributor’s incentive rewards program offers resellers one incentive point for every $10 of qualifying products they purchase from participating vendors. Resellers have to opt into the program to participate and can gain prizes—from merchandise to travel vouchers—with their accumulated points. This month, partners can receive double the points, as a thank you for the program's success and as a build up to the holidays.
“When we launched in the marketplace, it was new to a lot of our vendors, so a lot of them signed up to participate,” Schwab said. At that time, D&H Canada’s general manager Greg Tobin told CDN that the distributor was aiming to have 1500 participating resellers.
Now, seven months later, there are more than 1000 participating resellers and more than 50 vendors in the program, according to Schwab. “What our data showed was that the vendors who participated were growing faster,” he said, by about 61 per cent, according to the company.
“It was a tie-breaker for our customers,” he said. When deciding between two lines of notebooks, for example, they would go with the products that had incentives placed on them.
Participating vendors now include Cisco Systems Inc., Sony and Lenovo. Pogoplug, part of Cloud Engines Inc. is one of the newer companies that has added itself to the incentives program. Pogoplug is targeted at consumers and small businesses, especially those with on-the-road workers. The device allows users to upload large content such as video files and access it remotely from smartphones, tablets or other Internet-connected devices.
“I think they have great customer service,” Peter Tuey, national training manager with the company said of D&H. “The relationship that they have with their customers; it’s different than other distributors I’ve worked with.”
In the summer of 2010, the distributor also launched its Business Assurance program. The program provided resellers with $5M per month in additional credit. Along with the introduction of its incentives program in February, the distributor extended the Business Assurance program to approximately 1000 qualified SMB partners, providing them with incremental credit of $10M per month.
Network and data security vendor SonicWall Inc., which also participates in the incentives program, is part of Business Assurance as well. “It was a good program and it was designed just for us really,” said Tom Henninger, national account manager for SonicWall. The company sells through VARs and solution providers in Canada.
“They take a targeted approach,” he said of D&H, which works for SonicWall. “We don’t like to do broad-type programs,” he said. “We only have to spend the amount of money that’s consistent with what we’ve made in incremental revenue.”
Its relationship with D&H has also been good for targeting new resellers to sell its products, he said. “They are targeting these customers that we haven’t really done business with yet. They’re able to reach the smaller customers that we haven’t reached yet.”
Schwab said D&H has been experiencing strong growth here since it entered the country. “We feel very well-received by the Canadian market.”
