As seen in: SMB Nation Blog – Small business IT and technology news for the SMB channel VAR, MSP, and IT professional.
Today at Dell World 2013, Dell released a series of enhancements to its PartnerDirect Program designed to strengthen Channel focus. These enhancements include three new initiatives, as well as updated partner opportunities.
The Dell PartnerDirect Program is now in its 6th year and accounts for roughly 1/3 of the company’s revenue. As of today’s announcement, the PartnerDirect Program has 143,000 global partners. As some of you recall, the company made an announcement in November that it was combining the channel and direct sales teams into one organization to foster collaboration and customer care, as well as improving the go-to-market model, which allows partners to increase predictable profits and decision-making speed.
Dell’s new PartnerDirect Program Incentives include Financial, Equipment and Coverage offerings. On the financial side, Dell announced that it will be providing sales reps with a net new 20% compensation accelerator on any sale of new partner opportunity products (listed below). In addition, Dell will offer expanded rebates for selling multiple products on one deal. The second incentive is for access to Dell Equipment, through which partners will be able to use select units and lab gear to train internally, and offer external demonstrations to potential clients. The company is expecting a 500% increase in the available gear for partners. The final incentive announced today touches on coverage models. Dell explained that the new Deal Registration program will still allow partners to identify all opportunities in any account, and will include the creation of named customer accounts with no conflict from Dell.
Dell also introduced the following new channel opportunities for the PartnerDirect Program today: SecureWorks solutions, and PowerEdge VRTX, storage, networking, thin client, software and workstations. Each of these opportunities are designed to allow partners to ensure that their clients’ business is competitive.
Our very own Harrybbb is at Dell World currently, where he met up with Mark Moreno, President of C&M Support Services & Consulting, Inc. and Joshua Liberman, President/CSSA, Net Sciences, Inc.
“After attending the Dell software forum for partners, we were pleasantly surprised to see that dell has awoken to the importance of the Channel, and that they have made a commitment not only to incentivizing the sales team to push business directly to partners, they are also planning to shift from a mix of 30% partner 60%+ direct to 30% direct to 60% + partner,” said Mark Moreno. “This is not only exciting, but long overdue.”
Joshua Liberman was a bit more guarded about the debut announcement: “Ask me again in a year,” he told us this morning. “I would like to see where this goes, as in years past, we were still underrepresented.”
More at www.smbnation.com