Q&A with Greg Davis, Vice President & General Manager, Americas Channel Group

re: Q&A with Greg Davis, Vice President & General Manager, Americas Channel Group

Amie Paxton, Channel Community Manager — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:29:39 GMT

Alex,

We are looking at the rules regionally as we are looking at launching Deal Registration. While Europe and Mexico, for example, may be very similar to the US when launched some of the emerging countries may differ due to Dell’s delivery model in those countries. That said, when Deal Registration is launched the goal is to have as much continuity as possible.

re: Q&A with Greg Davis, Vice President & General Manager, Americas Channel Group

Alex Cooper — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:02:41 GMT

How much different is the deal registration internationally verus deals registered in the U.S. Are the same rules going to apply to lain America for example?

re: Q&A with Greg Davis, Vice President & General Manager, Americas Channel Group

DELL-Mike B — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 12:11:11 GMT

Chon Nguyen,

I wanted to follow up on your other questions as well.

Becoming a Registered Partner on Partner Direct you receive a number of benefits, which includes access to a Partner only store. Currently, this store runs a percent off of the Dell.com price and discount differs based upon the product line. If you find a product within the PartnerDirect store that isn’t better than Dell.com site please let us know. For most of your orders, online will best fit your needs and for larger deals you can contact your PartnerDirect account manager.

The Requirements for becoming a registered partner are fairly simple. You must be an established hardware, software, or services reseller; complete a partner application; and agree to the terms and conditions on the website. That’s it.

Once you become a registered partner you can read more details on becoming a certified partner. The requirements for each Certified Practice Area are different, but generally include completing a set of training courses, demonstrating Dell product knowledge in your area of practice, and meeting business practice and support requirements. We currently have Certified Practice Areas in Managed Services and Enterprise Architecture.

re: Q&A with Greg Davis, Vice President & General Manager, Americas Channel Group

DELL-Mike B — Wed, 28 May 2008 13:24:28 GMT

Chon Nguyen,

I wanted to let you know that we have this forum for our channel partners to interact and discuss these types of topics. Feel free to start a thread and see what other channel partners have to say.

Mike

re: Q&A with Greg Davis, Vice President & General Manager, Americas Channel Group

Chon Nguyen — Tue, 27 May 2008 23:45:40 GMT

I hope that there are some smaller VAR's that can join in on the conversation sooner rather than later.

I have been with the "VAR Gold Team" for awhile now, and it has been an extremely frustrating experience. The reps (5 of them) seem to be responsive but it feels as though I'm teetering on the fence of being in the PartnerDirect program and having an account team. I applied and thought I was accepted into the PartnerDirect program some time ago and was granted a user name and password to the portal.

When my account team quoted me same-as-web pricing (as they VERY often do) I went to the PartnerDirect site and placed the order for a 3% discount. I recieved an acknowledgement and waited patiently for shipping confirmation. Days went buy with nothing, so I contacted the PartnerDirect phone number at which time my Gold Team called me back and told me that I wasn't accepted into the PartnerDirect program and that I still needed to go through them.

I'm so frustrated by inconsistent pricing. Can someone please explain to me how I am supposed to make a profit on hardware when I'm paying the same price as my customer can get by picking the machine out and putting in their credit card number? Am I supposed to believe that a "regular account" that does the volume that I have done is not getting below web pricing? I'd like to hear other partners insight as to the pricing that they have gotten, if the discussion can't happen here we should find a forum to discuss it.

My questions for DELL is :

* What are the requirements for PartnerDirect (both registered and certified)?

* How are you going to address pricing concerns? If you are truly focused on the channel something has to be done about this. Imagine how frustrating it is to build a machine and get a quote back from my rep that is either at or $3 below web pricing.

Thanks so much for this blog, I think it will really be great!

re: Q&A with Greg Davis, Vice President & General Manager, Americas Channel Group

Greg Davis — Tue, 27 May 2008 22:50:22 GMT

Colin,

Partners have the ability to extend their value to SMB customers through a number of ways. These partners can leverage Deal Registration, additional discounting with the PartnerDirect portal, channel-specific finance vehicles, PartnerDirect logos, Certification paths toward specific solutions, additional tech support options and more. A big value add that Partners can provide is their local presence with SMB customers while still leveraging any products and/or services available for resell from Dell.

Overall Dell is working on adjusting the culture to be more channel-friendly. We are working on this through process (ex. Deal Registration, product development, etc) as well as communication (ex. Training, intranet, etc). In addition our communication teams are viewing all messaging with the need for channel context on the topic, whether on product, services or programs.

In the future, Dell may look to develop channel-centric programs only. For incentives that customers have to go thru partners instead of direct--in many verticals, the channel adds services/solutions that are beyond Dell's scope, and this is why the channel is so valuable for Dell to reach customers it may not normally have access to.

re: Q&A with Greg Davis, Vice President & General Manager, Americas Channel Group

Colin — Tue, 27 May 2008 17:43:50 GMT

Pretty much everything you said, Greg, is what partners want to hear, which is good. But I do have two questions: When you talk about selling to SMBs both directly and through the channel, how do you expect partners to compete with Dell's direct team? And what incentives do customers have to go through partners instead of Dell directly?

I also have a question on something you didn't mention here. You and Amie and everyone else in Dell's channel program do come across as being genuinely channel-friendly. But recently, for example, Dell put out a major announcement about virtualization that stressed direct sales and didn't mention partners at all. What are you doing to help everyone at Dell project a more unified channel-friendly approach?