Partners of Dell Technologies wondering what the year ahead holds in store should look no further than a well-worn expression: If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.
So said incoming global sales czar Bill Scannell during a virtual 2020 global partner kickoff meeting held today at the start of the company’s new fiscal year and three months before its Dell Technologies World conference in Las Vegas this May.†
Expanding on guidance provided to ChannelPro by partner marketing executive Cheryl Cook last month, Scannell told partners to expect deeper investments in previously introduced efforts designed to make working with Dell simple, predictable, and profitable, rather than wholesale shakeups.
“Our business is going extremely well, so the last thing I’m going to do is come in here and try to change the world,” Scannell said today in recorded comments. “We’ll keep making improvements on the program, on how we interact with you day in and day out. We will be simpler to deal with and eliminate the complexity.”
Scannell, who was previously president of enterprise sales and customer operations, has now officially added worldwide commercial and partner sales to his responsibilities as well, following the departure this month of Dell President and Chief Commercial Officer Marius Haas. In conjunction with that transition, Dell is similarly consolidating formerly separate enterprise and commercial sales organizations under one leader on a regional basis. John Byrne, for example, now holds that post in North America.
“This should really simplify how our partners work with us and offer a much greater degree of consistency on who they deal with and how they deal with us in the field,” Scannell said.
The streamlined organization comes in response to input from partner program members, according to Joyce Mullen, Dell’s president for global channel, embedded and edge solutions.†
“Our partners have been asking for this, for one combined sales organization, so we can all spend less time navigating the internal Dell Technologies team and more time delighting customers,” she said today. “We’re going to be able to make decisions in one place and cascade them down through the organization without negotiating that through different organizations.”
Other simplification-related changes discussed today include a revised product rebate structure that replaces the previous seven categories with three for client, server, and storage; an integrated quoting platform for storage, server, and networking systems; and a revamped partner education program aimed at aligning requirements across Dell’s multiple business units.
“We are making sure that if a partner takes training with VMware on their cloud module, for example, that that counts towards the Dell Technologies Cloud certification and competencies,” Mullen said. “That’s a big time savings.”
In a bid to grow market share, Dell will also now pay incentives for server deals involving the underpenetrated accounts targeted by Dell’s Partner Preferred program. Those added incentives join existing ones tied to incremental storage sales.
“When you receive a deal registration approval for server or storage opportunities with an applicable Partner Preferred account, you’ll receive an increased discount,” said Darren Sullivan, senior vice president of global partner strategy, programs, and operations in recorded remarks.
In a recorded presentation of his own, Gregg Ambulos, senior vice president of North American channel sales, added that closing server business with preferred accounts will also win you partner of record status.
“[That] means that the Dell sales teams must work with and through you for all the Dell server opportunities found in these accounts,” he said. “You’re eligible for base rebates, regardless of the sales price, which can be stackable with new businesses incentives where applicable, and with an approved deal registration for the server opportunities, you receive an increased discount allowing you to price with greater front end profitability.”
The New Business Incentive (NBI) program Ambulos alluded to will remain in place this year, as will the rebates that partners receive when displacing competitive storage products in an account not on the named NBI customer list. According to Cook last month, the NBI program helped Dell attract over 52,000 first-time customers through the third quarter of its last fiscal year.
All of the updates outlined today come at the start of a new decade that Mullen alternately labelled the “Roaring Twenties” and “the data decade.” The years ahead, she predicted, will see technologies like 5G networking, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence help businesses get more insights more easily from their vast and growing information stores.
“In this decade, our customers will learn how to put their data to work,” Mullen said.
