Raindance Adds Tiers to Program

Raindance Communications Inc. (Booth 608), a provider of conferencing services, announces it has restructured its channel partner program, to create three tiers of sales agents, which the company calls business partners. The three tiers Gold, Silver and Bronze each represent different levels of sales volume by the agent and sales support by Raindance.

Raindance also is expanding the kinds of partners in its program to include not just agents, but also sales partners and representatives that do not fall into the traditional agent category.

The Gold tier represents a sales volume commitment of $50,000, Silver is $25,000 and Bronze is $10,000, with partners given a year to ramp up to those levels.

Partners receive sales tools and the same resources as the direct sales reps, such as product literature and access to a reactive representative at the company who is responsible for that account.

The Gold tier has the highest level of support, with detailed marketing support and sales support and access to a subject matter expert to get a sale closed.

The higher the level, the more support they can get from Raindance, says Brad Dupee, vice president of channel sales, Raindance. Other benefits are they can buy product at a lesser rate, so there is more margin, and a higher commission. For a Gold partner we even generate leads for them.

Raindance is recruiting partners for the new programs at The Channel Partners Conference & Expo, rather than just migrating existing partners.

Dupee sees the new strategy as a sign of maturation in the companys sales strategies. It is very progressive in conferencing, he says. We are putting all of our resources to those who are giving us all of their mind share. If a partner decides to sell Raindance exclusively, we give them even more. That strategy seems to be paying off. The share of the companys revenue garnered by its channel program has grown from 16 percent in 2004 to 22 percent in the second quarter of 2005.