Dell Channel Blog

Greg Davis recently spoke with CRN’s, Sara Yirrell, about growing Dell’s partner base with enhanced portal features and opening its deal registration. Read More-

It is natural for a channel partner to question the value they get out of a vendor program like Dell’s PartnerDirect.  And it is natural to compare programs.  So when we contacted Don Basler, director of marketing at  Mosaic Technology, USA, the results he saw were pretty astonishing:  20%-50% reduction in sales cycle time, 17% more prospects due to Dell telemarketing efforts, and a 20% success rate selling Dell EqualLogic storage arrays to previous users of Fibre Channel SANs.  The results speak for themselves:  Read about it here.

A few weeks ago we blogged about a podcast interview with Erik Dithmer, GM for Small & Medium Business Americas, about how potential channel sales conflict is managed at Dell.  So we thought it would be interesting to have the same conversation with his counterpart in Europe -- Aongus Hegarty, GM  for Small & medium business in Europe.  Rather than cover same ground, we took the conversation to another aspect of conflict management:   compensation.  The idea seems pretty simple…Dell sales people get compensated for deals made by channel partners.  But exactly how does it work, and more importantly, what is the benefit to channel partners?  Listen to a great interview with Aongus.

As you might guess, managing sales conflict is something that is very important with Dell channel partners.  It also is a top priority with us too. Jim Defoe is from Dell’s channel group, with primary responsibility for partners in the US and Canada.  But what he has to say applies worldwide – Dell is serious about managing conflict.  This 8 minute podcast provides some great insight into what Dell is doing.  Listen to the podcast here.

[Posted by Heather K. Margolis from Channel Maven Consulting] In the past I’ve written posts for vendors about the benefits of social media. Recently I have been putting more thought into the Partner – Customer relationship and how social media should be applied here.

Resellers may feel it is a waste of time. Think again. When is the last time you made a purchase solely based upon and email you received from the vendor? Or said, “That’s exactly what I want!” when a telemarketer called you? People use search, recommendations, and conversations to help decide when and where to buy a product or service and it is important to make sure you have exposure so that you are one of the options they look at.

Search: The first thing most people do when they are looking to solve a problem is Google it. When they do they’ll find blogs, tweets, and comments on social media platforms around that topic. If you’re not engaging in social media, your information is not on any of those sites.

Recommendations: Third party recommendations speak more highly of your brand or service then your own messaging. Who are you going to believe? A vendor’s marketing department claiming they have what you’re looking for or another customer who gives an honest assessment of the product and tells you why they like/dislike it?

Conversations: Building relationships is harder than ever with the increased number of customers’ and regions you serve, as well as level of support customers have grown to require. If you can engage with a customer and build that loyalty over a 140 character message instead of face-to-face meeting you’re able to reach a larger pool of customers.

Stay tuned for my next post on how to get started with social media and which tools should come first.

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