Jabra hires channel staff for partner push into UC verticals

In an interview with CRN, Victor Guerrero, regional managing director A/NZ at GN Netcom Australia (owner of the Jabra brand), said Paul de Villiers and Marie Dave, have both been hired as channel account managers of A/NZ. Mike Powrie has also been brought on board to act as strategic account manager for A/NZ

“We are trying to make things easier for our resellers and give them more knowledge about Jabra’s products,” said Guerrero.

“Both de Villiers and Dave will help in actively recruiting more channel partners to come on board with Jabra, over the next couple of month.

According to Guerrero, the vendor has also launched its Australian Authorised Partner Program.

The program is directed at channel partners within vertical markets like, unified communications, VoIP, call centre and communications spaces.

“When I joined on board five months ago, I wanted to make sure we pulled our channel resources together, having worked on both sides of the channel.” he said.

“We currently have 30 active resellers on board but we want more, especially those that are interested in the UC market, which I think will be big in the coming year,” claimed Guerrero.

“It’s an exciting space and we are also closely working with vendors like Microsoft and Cisco, who both have a big push in this area.”

He said key features of the new program include: marketing; Web support; access to dedicated account managers; sales referrals; deal registration programs; discounts and rebates.

Guerrero claimed that resellers can make around 20 percent margins and that the vendor’s product was one of the few where a decent margin can be made.

“Right now we are establishing the base of our channel program,” he said.
“We are going to cast our net nice and wide, then get resellers educated on Jabra’s products.

“We will hopefully start to qualify resellers around March 2009.”

Guerrero joined GN from Chilli Internet Solutions where he was the CEO of the Internet Service Provider division.

Prior to this, he spent three years at Adobe Systems, heading up the channel sales team.