Cisco will reward resellers for investment they make in pre-sales especially to small and medium businesses. The Opportunity Incentive Program gives financial incentives to dealers securing sales in the commercial market - including medium enterprises, mid-market and small & medium businesses.

A pilot programme run in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and the UK included 458 Cisco dealers. They registered 439 new business opportunities of which Cisco approved 267. Most approvals were made within 24 hours, thanks to online deal registration. Hot areas included IP communications, network security and wireless technologies.

To register a new opportunity, dealers must be Cisco-registered or certified. They must provide details on the decision maker, size of budget and project specifications. Once registration is approved, resellers will have 90 days to close the deal.

Keith Humphreys, managing consultant at EuroLAN, a networking channel consultancy, said: "The success of the OIP pilot in the commercial space indicates that, with the correct systems in place, there is no reason why the program can't be extended to new business opportunities where companies have more than a thousand staff." ®

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