New Dell Program Aids VARs

A new program has discreetly been launched by Dell for the use of a small number of solution providers in which channel partners are utilized by Dell's direct sales force for pre-sales planning and post-sales implementation and support.

In the past, it has been most common that vendors have asked solution providers to mark up and sell the vendor's professional services; however, executives stated that marking up and selling the VAR's services will now be Dell's responsibility through the new program.

Dell's direct sales reps will strengthen local partners by encouraging them to deploy services and carry the sale on Dell paper; this is enabled through the GeoPartner Program. Revenue and profits will also be recognized towards their own sales quotas.

The idea has been described as “reverse engineering,” by the vice president and general manager of Dell's global commercial channel, Greg Davis. He added that around 20 to 40 solution providers are involved in the program.

Davis said: “Partners participate in the medium business space talking to customers about server consolidation. You might migrate them into VMware, etc. There are customers that want to interact with Dell direct. The customer values that relationship, but they need to do the same migration. Rather than try to do it ourselves, there are lots of Dell partners in the local SMB market space. Let's subcontract those. We sell to the customer on our paper. It's a nice opportunity for some partners. It's a nice for Dell to utilize the resources of our resellers.”

According to the vice president of sales, Bob Hochmuth, the West Palm Beach, Florida-based SL Powers is a VAR that has assisted Dell's direct sales team to close many deals, and also offers service capabilities upon deployment to the company as well.

The partnership “is still really in its infancy,” according to the director of sales operations at SL Powers, Robbie Macdonald. He said: “I believe we are gaining momentum as our name and reputation is recognized by Dell team members in our regions.”

Macdonald added: “The majority of our engagements focus on storage and virtualization, but every environment is different. Most of these engagements call for software migrations/upgrades as they transition to a new hardware platform. We have also been engaged with other deployments; one notable project was a 1,000-user Websense deployment in Washington [state].”

Hochmuth of SL Powers credited Dell with bringing his company into direct deal. Additionally, he stated that the relationship is successful because boundaries are respected on all sides.

He said: “They're incented obviously to close business every month and move on to the next thing. We put in the pre-sales work and a quote to the Del rep. He sells and closes the business. We tell him how many hours we worked. Once it's closed, they send us the PO to do the work. The thing that made this possible is they incented the sales people to work with the channel and push [business] to partners like us.”

Ever since the establishment of the PartnerDirect channel program five years ago, Dell has proved to be a channel-friendly and consistent vendor. Hochmuth said: “All along, people say 'I'm impressed with what you're doing.' So we did more. Those guys see more value working together closer.”

Davis of Dell says the vendor is only looking for a select group of partners through examining particular skill sets which will assist in helping customers.

He stated: “As it sits right now, we want to provide a service where there's demand. The last thing we want to do is sign up partners to do work and then not have demand for them. We're not trying to expand it, but we're trying to grow that business as we need more partners. A customer that's buying Dell direct has services opportunities and services needs. We can package that together into one easy [package] that includes a service agreement with a partner in the area.” (CY) Link