CRN Recognized Our Blitz on Storage, Powered by Partners… and That’s Just the Start!

A blitz is all-encompassing. Decisive. Intense. Sustained. We’re in it to widen our lead in the storage market, and we’re creating lots of opportunity for partners to advance with us.

CRN took notice and placed Dell at the top of their Jan. 19 list of “5 Companies That Came to Win This Week.”  They covered our all-out attack on the data storage system market, and that was before we announced our FY19 program incentives. On our Feb. 7 Partner Broadcast, we laid out our new arsenal to empower partners to win big with this blitz. If you missed it, be sure to check out the replay here.

We’re investing billions in storage-specific R&D, adding more storage partner sales resources, and offering robust incentives and very attractive pricing. All are helping us deliver on our promise to be the most Simple. Predictable. Profitable.TM partner program out there.

Simple

We have significantly increased our channel resources, adding storage sales specialists and data center partner managers, all focused on helping with partner-led selling around storage, converged infrastructure and data protection. Partners are noticing increased enablement and clarity in their go-to-market engagements.

Partners are also finding the proposal templates and tools we’ve made available to them as part of the #GetModern program are making it easier for them to accelerate the volume of proposals. And the more proposals partners crank out, the higher the win rate.

When it comes to products, we’re giving partners a single SKU and all-inclusive software with the new all-flash versions of the midrange SC Series that were introduced in November. One SKU, all-inclusive—simple.

Predictable

With many competitors’ return policies limited to 30 days, our Future Proof Storage Loyalty Program includes a three-year satisfaction guarantee. Launched in November, Future Proof covered Unity and SC. Given the huge early success, we’re adding VMAX, X2, ECS, Isilon, Data Domain and IDPA. We’re also adding a new benefit—“clear price,” which provides customers with consistent and predictable support pricing upfront at time of purchase. How’s that for predictable? This gives customers—and partners—peace-of-mind.

Partners can rest assured that they’ll have a steady stream of the latest and greatest storage products to help their customers in the years to come. In fiscal year 2018, we invested heavily in storage research and development, and we plan to accelerate the storage innovation in fiscal year 2019 to keep them coming. Think along the lines of game-changing machine-learning and cloud-based analytics technology. More to come on the ramp to April’s Dell Technologies World.

Profitable

Nothing says “blitz” stronger in the sales world than robust incentives and aggressive pricing. This past year we offered partners a 1.25X revenue accelerator for tier attainment on their storage sales, among other incentives squarely targeting storage. On the Feb. 7th Partner Broadcast, we outlined the FY19 incentive plan, where the partner sales rep and SE can each earn up to $30K per deal. Check your regional incentive program for details.

As we start the new fiscal year here at Dell, we are all-in on storage and all-in on working closely to empower our partners to take the lead. We’ve got the right support resources, the right tools, aggressive pricing and robust incentives, combined with the holy grail—the industry’s most innovative storage products to address our customers’ toughest challenges!

Check out the Feb. 7th Partner Broadcast, as well as the following CRN articles, and dive into storage with both feet!

About the Author: Gregg Ambulos

Gregg Ambulos is Senior Vice President of North American Channel Sales for Dell EMC. In this role he is responsible for creating and delivering sales growth across the entire Dell EMC portfolio of products including PCs, Workstations, Servers, Storage, Networking and Services through Dell EMC’s North America ecosystem of more than 40,000 Solution Provider and Distribution partners. Ambulos was tapped to lead the Dell EMC NA channel sales organization integration immediately following the historic $67 billion merger of Dell and EMC in September 2016. In addition to his sales responsibilities, as a member of the Global Channels leadership team, Ambulos is actively engaged in developing and executing a highly-differentiated go-to-market strategy based upon the partner program’s core pillars of Simple, Predictable and ProfitableTM. Prior to assuming his current position, Ambulos was Senior Vice President for EMC’s Global Channel Sales. He has also served as Senior Vice President for Americas Channel Sales, Divisional Vice President of Sales for the Southwest Division, and Regional Vice President of Telecommunications Vertical. Ambulos joined EMC from Hitachi Data Systems. Ambulos was recognized as one of CRN’s 50 Most Influential Channel Chiefs for 2017. He’s been recognized as a CRN Channel Chief since 2008.