Bull's Eye Awards: Partner Program of the Year (Class A) - CHALLENGER

Eaton
In less than a year, Eaton has managed to attract 900 enthusiastic partners into its PowerAdvantage Partner Program with the promise of growing their businesses. PowerAdvantage lives up to its name by delivering all of the tools and support needed to develop successful, profitable power practices backed by quality products, services and dedicated support.

In fact, the level of support is one of the things that set Eaton’s PowerAdvantage Partner Program apart from competitors. All resellers get a dedicated Eaton account manager who serves as a single point of contact for pre- and post-sale support and site assessment assistance.

Eaton doesn’t simply measure partner capabilities and slot resellers into program categories. The vendor invests heavily in partner training to make sure newcomers to power infrastructure sales are quickly prepared to have knowledgeable, productive conversations with customers. They reward partners in their two-tiered program (authorized and certified) for honing their skills and proving their mettle in doing site assessments, calculating cost savings and proposing the right power infrastructure for end users.

Those resellers who do develop thriving power practices typically find that backup and power quality solutions deliver better margins than most other IT equipment. And because Eaton offers up-front discounts rather than back-end rebates, PowerAdvantage partners can combine incentives to leverage discounts up to 19 percent off of Eaton’s already competitively priced gear.

“We see this program as an opportunity to stand out from the clutter in the channel," says Kristy Cornell, IT channel marketing manager at Eaton in Cleveland. "Some of our large competitors are pulling back in this economy. This is an opportunity for us to get noticed."

It’s not all about transactional sales for Eaton partners; the PowerAdvantage Partner Program helps solution providers sell highly profitable services, from joint customer power reviews to remote management and monitoring of customers’ deployed power-quality solutions. Add to that Eaton’s marketing support, lead generation services, and generous trade-in program, and it’s easy to see why the company is so highly regarded in channel circles.

For all of these reasons, Eaton has earned the Channel Insider Challenger Bull’s Eye Award for Partner Program of the Year for programs of $1 billion or more.