Four Insights from Eaton’s 2023 Partner Conference

At last year’s conference, Eaton executives were excited by the “massive opportunity” awaiting partners who could now cross sell Eaton’s power equipment with Tripp Lite’s racks, enclosures, and accessories. They still are, but they’re also thinking a little more realistically about how easily or intuitively legacy Eaton and Tripp Lite partners can take advantage of that opportunity.

“I think we were maybe just a little bit naïve,” Loeb says. “We thought that because we had all these products and people selling IT gear that they would get it.”

In fact, however, high-velocity Tripp Lite resellers have struggled to adopt the slower Eaton sales motion, and Eaton partners have struggled to appreciate the value of adding relatively inexpensive peripherals to deals built around high-margin power infrastructure products. “These are all widgets to me,” says Loeb, speaking on their behalf. “It was confusing.”
    
Drawing on a newfound appreciation of the different ways its various partners do business, Eaton is working to help channel pros who wish to cross sell do so without disrupting familiar go-to-market processes.

“We have to continue to try to align to what our customers identify as,” Loeb says.