Plantronics Launches New Partner Program Post Polycom Announcement

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Plantronics, which is acquiring Polycom, has launched a new partner program that replaces the Connect Program it rolled out in 2007.

The update features access to product training and certification, sales and marketing tools, deal registration, marketing development funds and rewards depending on a partner’s level of engagement with Plantronics. There are three levels with increasing features and benefits: registered, gold and platinum.

Virginia Anderson, Plantronics’ director of global channel programs, tells Channel Partners the new program will provide “all of our core benefit programs in every theater globally.”

Plantronics’ Virginia Anderson

“While Plantronics has been the leader in audio devices for more than 50 years, our strong growth in unified communications and collaboration (UCC), the strong alliances we have with UCC vendors and the growth of Plantronics Manager Pro SaaS offering [have] required that we look at how our partners can support the needs of our customers with their complex communications needs,” she said. “There is a certain expertise that is required to sell Plantronics Manager Pro, so this was the perfect time to reevaluate our program and to invest more with our system integrators, solution providers, managed service providers and our born-in-the-cloud partners.”

New additions to the program include designations within two tracks: reseller and integrator.

“This allows us to target our programs and communications to partners based on their business models and the value they bring to our mutual customers,” Anderson said. “In our Plantronics University program, we also now have Plantronics Manager Pro certification. This will allow the customer to know, without a doubt, that the partner with this designation can partner with them with their deployment, adoption, analysis and management of their UCC ecosystem. But we have a lot more coming in the first year and beyond.”

Plantronics distributors and resellers are seeing a shift away from headsets as peripherals and instead as a core component of the communications and collaboration technologies being deployed on premises and in the cloud, the company said. The new program recognizes and rewards partners who are investing for the future together with Plantronics.

“The Plantronics Partner Program supports our longer-term objectives,” Anderson said. “As a channel-first company, we are dedicated to growing a channel community that supports those objectives. We believe that continually improving our partner programs, investing more in partners with higher value to our customers with the capabilities to incorporate our groundbreaking solutions now and in the future will support and accelerate our partners’ and our growth. We must continue to invest, enable and reward the partners of the future for the success of our products of the future.”