Perform Plus Program, SMB Selling Incentives Available Now To Cisco Partners

‘It's making it more profitable for the partner because it’s putting the incentives around solutions that solve problems for small and midsized companies,’ according to one Cisco partner.

Cisco's Perform Plus Program for partners, first announced in November, is now live.

Cisco Perform Plus, a program focused on incentives for bringing in SMB customers, is officially available to Cisco channel partners. Cisco said that about 4,000 partners worldwide are eligible to participate in the program today, making it the quickest ramping channel program of the tech giant's history.

San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco additionally revealed a handful of updates to its partner program this week, including faster deal registration and additional help closing deals for small and medium-sized customers.

[Related: Cisco IoT Security Architecture Launched To Simplify, Defend Industrial IoT]

Cisco's partner programs have historically been associated with growth instead of technology, but now, Cisco is combining both targets around the SMB space, said Jason Doherty, director of sales for R2 Unified Technologies, a Boca Raton, Fla.-based MSP and Cisco partner.

"For R2, they are bringing together the best of both programs," he said. "It's making it more profitable for the partner because its putting the incentives around solutions that solve problems for small and midsized companies."

R2 takes advantage of Cisco's partner programs as a way to invest in its own business and drive growth specifically around Cisco technologies. Th firm plans on taking part in the Cisco Perform Plus program, Doherty said.

Cisco Perform Plus will reward partners for growing their total business across hardware and perpetual software, regardless of whether partners sell to public, private or service provider customers.

"The more you grow, the more you earn. It’s that simple," said Marc Monday, global head of small business at Cisco, in his blog post about the program updates.

Alongside rewarding partners for all growth, Cisco is also offering two new bonuses for growth in SMB business and for selling and growing Enterprise Networking and Cisco Security solutions together, Surplus said.

To help partners close deals and start earning revenue faster, Cisco pledged that it will approve submissions in Deal Registration’s Opportunity Incentive Program within 24 hours for U.S.-based partners.

Turning proposals around and gaining approval from Cisco could historically be a lengthy process, but speed is critical -- especially for SMBs looking for the right solutions now, R2's Doherty said.

"For us, faster deal registration means we can build designs and deliver proposals much faster to the marketplace," he said. "If we're slow to deliver proposals, people feel like they are less important to us."

Cisco also announced that partners with Opportunity Incentive Program-approved deals for mid-size and small accounts will soon have access to Partner Help Pro, which offers additional pre-sales engineering support from Cisco over the lifecycle of the opportunity. Partner Help Pro is subject to certain thresholds, Cisco said.