Four Insights from Eaton’s 2023 Partner Conference

Eaton has been talking about adding an MSP track to its PowerAdvantage partner program since at least 2019, and discussed plans to revive that goal following an extended pandemic-related delay at last year’s partner conference. The company finally brought those long-held plans to life early this year, and has made joining the program through its portal intentionally simple.

“You self-identify as an MSP, and then it gives you access to the resources and tools and landing pages,” Loeb says.

Eaton’s new priority is devising compelling reasons for potential members to take advantage of the program. Deal registration, the most appreciated benefit for most PowerAdvantage members, doesn’t do much for MSPs, Tardy notes.

“Deal registration is meaningless to them because they’re never exposed to projects where there is more than $10,000 worth of power products, which is the threshold to be eligible for deal reg,” he says.

The company has higher hopes for the new growth incentive rebates it’s currently piloting, which reward MSPs for growing the aggregate value of power product sales over one or more quarters.

“It’s going to be based on the total volume of Eaton products sold, whatever those are, cables, docking stations, UPS, PDU, you name it,” Tardy says.