Company Updates

A Strong Finish and Exciting Channel Program Updates

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This past year has been an award-winning one for Dell Channel. Almost weekly we were featured in the news, receiving coverage in places like CRN, Channelnomics, TechTarget and The VAR Guy. We were honored to receive numerous awards from CRN for our new products and Channel leadership, including when CRN recently named Frank Vitagliano, Jim Defoe and I Channel Chiefs – one of the industry’s highest honors.

Dell Channel holds strong at well over 40 percent of Dell’s global revenue and at about half of Dell Software’s global volume. Our team is very proud of all the hard work that was put into the PartnerDirect program which is evident when we see results of outgrowing the market at 3-4x the industry rate, continued strong deal registration rates and partner rebate payouts. We couldn’t do this without the incredible engagement of our channel partner community!

While others in the industry have been cutting critical channel resources, Dell has been adding sales reps and channel support members, rewarding partners for new customer acquisitions across the enterprise, and introducing new targeted ‘Future Ready Channel’ programs, incentives and investments to enable partners to best meet their customer’s needs. In support of this, we’ve kicked off the year with some new programs that will help them identify the right solutions for their customers, and enable their teams to sell and deliver those solutions and provide innovative business models to maximize their value to their customers. February 1, the beginning of Dell’s fiscal year 2017, marked the launch of these new and exciting developments for our channel partners.

We have continued to add fuel to the fire on incentives and rebates. New this year and for the first time, Preferred Partners now can earn a client and enterprise base rebate and Premier Partners get a client base rebate. As part of our ongoing Partner Portal updates, partners now have visibility into their rebate details to help them understand the progress that they’re making.

To help enable our partners to grow, we launched some new and expanded competencies:

  • New: Solutions Competencies in Cloud and Big Data & Analytics (Pilot Program):  Dell is now offering advanced competencies that provide flexible growth opportunities and offer partners a path to Premier status. Partners can complete advanced sales and technical training which enables them to deepen their knowledge and skills and gain a competitive advantage.
  • New: Services Competencies:  Partners can now obtain individual certifications at the rep level and become an authorized service deployment partner in the following areas: Storage PS Series, Storage SC Series and Networking.

Additionally, we have moved our go-to-market strategy forward. We restructured our U.S. sales teams to bring them even closer to the customers that they serve. This enables better alignment with Dell sales and Channel partners for increased collaboration and effectiveness and will help to optimize sales coverage and time spent with customers. For our partners it means better joint sales engagement, stronger long-term relationships and improved account planning.

We continue to evolve the PartnerDirect program to better enable solution selling for cross-sell, upsell opportunities and collaboration across our sales teams.  We’re aligning our PartnerDirect Competencies to partner’s sales, business and technical requirements with training and resources to ensure that they get the highest level of Dell support and take advantage of discounts, Dell registration and incentive programs. Some of our latest developments include introducing new and expanded financing opportunities for our partners and their customers and the launch of the ProDeploy Enterprise Suites, which offers our partners the flexibility to deliver, resell and co-deliver deployment services.

Partners, please be on the lookout for more information to come on these new and updated solutions, programs and incentives this year. We appreciate your business and would love to hear from you! Please send us your thoughts and suggestions through your Dell representative and engage with me on Twitter via @CookCherylS.  

Cheryl Cook

About the Author: Cheryl Cook

Senior Vice President at Dell Technologies, Cheryl Cook spearheads development and strategy for the Global Partner Marketing organization. Beyond her main global responsibilities for branding, partner program marketing, channel events, partner communications and MDF/BDF program investments and execution, Cheryl drives long-term partner marketing strategy, together with Global Alliances, OEM, and global and regional business teams. A vocal advocate for the partner community, Cheryl is a 20+ year partner veteran, known as an innovative, collaborative leader who creates compelling business solutions that accelerate partners’ success. Prior to her current role, Cheryl served as Vice President, Global Channels and Alliances, leading channel strategy for the company worldwide. Her responsibilities included setting Dell’s partner strategy company-wide, as well as developing and executing channel programs, training, certification, and global marketing programs that enabled partners to grow their business with Dell. Cheryl and her team contributed to the growth of Dell’s global channel business from 33% to over 40% of Dell’s total revenue. Prior to running Dell’s channel business, Cheryl served as Vice President of Enterprise Solutions, where she was responsible for the go-to-market strategy and execution for Dell storage, server, networking and related software businesses. Cheryl has more than 25 years of IT and high-tech experience. Before joining Dell in 2011, Cheryl was Senior Vice President at Nuance Communications managing sales across all lines of business. She also served as Senior Vice President at Sun Microsystems with global responsibility for $6B in enterprise solutions revenue. A contributor to Fortune Magazine’s 50 Most Powerful Women’s community, Cheryl is an active proponent of women in business and technology. Cheryl is the founder and executive sponsor of the Dell Technologies Women’s Partner Network, an initiative that supports and empowers our community of women partners. Cheryl also contributes to Dell’s Women in Action and Dell Women's Entrepreneur Network. Honored by CRN numerous times as one of the Power 100 Women of the Channel, 50 Most Influential Channel Chiefs and Top 100 Channel Sales Leaders, as well as Channel Partners Top Gun 51, Cheryl serves on the board of directors for ARC Document Solutions, is a member of Channel Focus Club 50 and holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Florida.