Tumbleweed
has created a new program, Leads-to-Deals Lifecycle, to spur further growth of
its Tumbleweed Alliance Program partner program and to help the company reach
its goal of selling 100 percent through the channel by the end of the year.
Tumbleweed
relaunched its
Alliance
partner program in July 2007, and it currently boasts about 110 partners
worldwide.
"Traditionally
we've been a direct-sales model company, but we saw clearly that we were not
going to have success without the channel," said David Harris, vice
president of worldwide channels at Tumbleweed. The first step, Harris said, was
to formalize and relaunch a reseller program based on feedback from partners.
"Administratively,
we were a mess. We had resellers, but they'd typically been brought in from
other companies we'd acquired," he said, which resulted in Tumbleweed
partners being spread out over as many as 12 different channel programs. The
decision was made to streamline the channel program to reduce the complexity
for partners, Harris said.
Tumbleweed's
TAP relaunch
also marked a shift in its business model toward attracting more SMB (small and
midsize business) customers, said Harris.
Tumbleweed's
Secure Messenger, MailGate and Secure Transfer managed e-mail security products
offer partners opportunities both for resale and for creating recurring revenue
by providing managed e-mail and e-mail security services, Harris said. The
Leads-to-Deals program rewards Tumbleweed partners at every stage of the sales
cycle, regardless of whether the partner actually closes a deal, he said.
Partners
are paid $50 for simply referring a customer lead to Tumbleweed. They receive a
10 percent total order discount for registering that lead as a deal and receive
$500 if that lead turns into a closed deal within 90 days of registering the
lead, Harris said. Even if a partner loses the deal, it is reimbursed 10
percent of the total purchase order amount if another Tumbleweed partner closes
that deal.
Partners
can also earn an additional $500 for persuading customers to provide Tumbleweed
with testimonials that can be used for marketing and advertising purposes, he
said.
Harris
said Tumbleweed is continuing to recruit new reseller partners and is
"driving hard" to reach its goal of selling 100 percent through the
channel by the end of the year. In the fourth quarter of 2008, he said
revenue through the channel made up 48 percent of Tumbleweed's total revenue,
and that percentage continues to grow.
Channel News and Analysis 
