Today, we're talking with Dell's Paul Shaffer, Director of Global Channel Marketing, on his perspectives of the channel program, opportunities and what the future holds.
Q: You’ve been with Dell for over 9 ½ years and focused on the channel for over 1 year. What are your specific responsibilities and how does your team add value to the PartnerDirect program?
Last year I was asked to start up a new global team focused on a strategic growth area for Dell as Director of Global Channel Marketing. I had worked with the channel for 3 years while at 3M prior to Dell so I was excited about this new opportunity to work in this area once again.
We created and staffed a new team focused on marketing with, through and to the channel. This new team worked with regional marketing organizations to drive global programs, tools and content focused on the channel and included team members based in Singapore, India, Switzerland, United Kingdom, France and Round Rock, Texas. For example, prior to this team being formed, we did not have any collateral to co-brand for our channel partners nor did we create advertising on a global scale talking to the channel and the benefits of Dell to help them grow their business.
In my new role, we will continue with our efforts around globalizing channel programs, tools and campaigns and will also pick up North America Marketing, Programs and Operations. The North America team is focused on all local activities related to the PartnerDirect program. This includes driving program awareness, partner acquisition and partner enablement for the Americas in addition to all aspects of online partner experience, web site sustainment and e-commerce.
From an operations perspective, my team is responsible for implementation, execution, and maintenance of PartnerDirect programs. This includes Deal Registration, on-boarding, maintenance and requirements and partner communications.
Q: Upon launch of our PartnerDirect program last December, an industry writer stated that Dell’s entry and build out of PartnerDirect is a marathon and that our company culture doesn’t think the way it needs to for channel execution, how has our progress in the past 14 months proved this statement wrong?
In the short amount of time since PartnerDirect has been in existence I think we have done a pretty decent job of building out a partner program that is easy for our channel partners to understand and participate in. We have built a portal in 19 different languages that is available to 140 countries worldwide, enabled deal registration to minimize conflict both within the channel and with Dell’s direct sales force and we are creating tools to help our channel partners sell Dell products and solutions. If you talk to the executives of the different business units running SMB, Public and Large Enterprise, the channel plays a key role in their growth plans. We actually had a separate module at our national sales training event to kick off the year that was focused on how to partner with the channel that was well attended and received.
Q: We keep mentioning that our program will take time to build and I do believe the industry as well as partners knows this is true, what does the future state of the marketing program look like and how will these next steps benefit our partners?
Like I mentioned above, we are trying to build out the “partner enablement” portion of our program. This includes co-brandable collateral, online syndication capabilities and such tools as a campaign builder are things that we have just added or planning to add in the next three months. We are also looking at adding an external “Partner Finder” capability in the next few quarters. We will also continue to look at building out our current Certification practices such as Enterprise Architecture in addition to looking at new practices for our partners to gain certification.
Q: Building a program from the ground up is no easy task, how do you incorporate partner feedback into your marketing strategy and planning? If partners have feedback, can they talk to you directly?
Absolutely. Between Partner Advisory councils, trade shows, sales feedback and Executive briefings with our channel partners, we are able to leverage our direct relationships with our channel partners to implement and drive programs and marketing activity. I will gladly ask for input from our channel partners and they can email me at Paul_Shaffer@Dell.com.
We know we have a long way to go but we hope that the channel sees our commitment to this area of our business. I would like to personally thank our over 40,000 Registered Partners who are now a part of PartnerDirect.