One of the main obstacles for the channel in dealing with Dell was its deal registration program. Many solution providers found themselves on the outside looking in when it came to registering new opportunities with the vendor.
But, Dell’s channel team led by channel chief Cheryl Cook, channel sales vice president Frank Vitagliano and Canadian channel chief Tara Fine have put in some fixes to deal registration so that solution providers can win more deals.
Bobbi Dangerfield, Dell’s VP of global sales operations, initiated Project Collaboration to improve the channel experience with the company.
“The feedback was that it was difficult for the channel to registered deals and that we were rejecting too many deals. We looked at the rules and found that the solution providers had to meet all the requirements to be approved,” she said.
“If we found that a Dell rep was working with a customer and the partner registered it; it got rejected. With Project Collaboration we now ask the rep and the partner to get together and collaborate,” Dangerfield added.
Early results from Project Collaboration show that 73 per cent of those previous rejections are not working together and it has led to an 84 per cent improvement in the number of deals won, according to Dangerfield.
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Cook told CDN that deal registration volume is up eight per cent and that 82,000 or so deals have been approved just in the second quarter alone. Approximately 32 per cent of that is in software.
According to Cook, Dell currently has just over 167,000 worldwide partners in the channel. About 2,000 of those came from Dell’s first quarter in both registered and certified.
The certified area is 4,255 globally up 700 from second quarter of 2013. That is a seven per cent increase year-over-year, she said.
“Activating Ingram Micro and Tech Data in North America has increased our channel reach by 67 per cent year-over-year with the number of partners and if I look at the number of customers we are servicing with distribution its up in the triple digits,” Cook added.
Cheryl Cook
Cook said that Dell is close to inking another distribution deal in the U.S.
Another fix is that for those channel partners who help expand into the line of business are given extra deal registration margin and Dell will protect the partner’s revenue for an entire year.
Cook also said that rebates are up and the Dell’s channel team is paying out 23 per cent more year-over-year. Dell Financial Services have also been expanded for the partner community by $1 billion for easing the cash flow situations partners have today and to keep pace with the growth in the marketplace.
Dell channel partners in North America will also have a new target to shoot for. Bill Rodrigues, Dell president for North America told approximately 200 channel partners at the Dell Canada Partner Summit that for the second half of this year the target will be $550 million.
Rodrigues told CDN that the new target was because of a growth trajectory for Dell’s end-to-end product portfolio that wasn’t initially seen in the first half.
“We are not going to hiring any more people to meet this demand in the marketplace. We think we are better together with the channel. So it will all be up to you. We can’t do it without you,” he said.
There will be some form of new partner recruitment, Rodrigues said but he expects that the majority of the new business will be handled by going deep with existing channel partners in Canada and the U.S.