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Polycom (News - Alert) has updated its Choice program by making it more simple, predictable and profitable for the company’s channel partners.

The company, whose sales are almost entirely through the channel, introduced the Choice program one year ago.

Polycom wants its partners to understand how they can capitalize on the company’s channel program, so it created a very straightforward rewards structure and identified opportunities to accelerate those rewards. As part of this effort, channel account managers do quarterly reviews to help partners understand where they are with their rewards.

There will be an automated system for partners to register new opportunities with Polycom. And starting this year Polycom will introduce a lead routing system to get opportunities to partners that are specialized in the areas that match customer needs. Also new this year is a customer locator tool.

Deandra Cassidy, director of global channel marketing at Polycom, explains that the company has spent a lot of time aligning its sales, marketing and technical coverage model.

Polycom’s gold and platinum channel partners get dedicated channel account management and a systems engineer.

And a new Global Partner Response Team, Cassidy continues, will help Polycom partners negotiate interactions with the company and get quick responses on any questions they might have.

This year the company launched an inside sales/telesales effort, through which it will support a large number of channel partners, she adds. Part of that effort involves end user demand creation, meaning this new team will qualify leads and, starting in the next quarter, do enhanced lead routing.

Maurizio Capuzzo, vice president of global channel marketing, adds that the Choice program was designed to meet the individual needs of Polycom’s channel partners, which range from VARs and integrators, to distributors, to service providers.

“So our approach is not one program that fits the partners in one big framework…but very customized,” he says.