Tian Beng Ng (Dell Technologies)
Partners looking for more successful outcomes should focus on specialising on the markets they are targeting, as Dell Technologies research shows going all in on that specialisation could see a partner make up to 29 times more revenue.
In order to drive demand generation, Dell Technologies distribution lead for A/NZ Lynn Nicol is seeing a lot of partners turning to distribution channels and vendors for help with their marketing when faced with the task of generating demand with limited funds and resources.
“It's a challenge a lot of our partners have, and so it's something we're collaborating on quite a lot,” she said.
Nicol said the more successful partners are those that target specific market niches and avoid going for broader market bases.
“One of the things that we talk about often is investing in partners who have campaigns that are very targeted, less broad based. We're looking for investing and co-investing with partners who really know their target market and they might be quite specialised,” Nicol said.
She also said the first touch point a business has with a customer is typically the one that leaves a lasting impression, and attempting to come in at this point with a broad marketing message can backfire.
“Customers are so educated today. You can't give them as a broad based message; customers are looking for partners and vendors to tell them something they don't already know and they can't already find on Google search,” she said.
Another question partners are asking Dell is the age-old question of ‘How do we make more money?’, according to Dell Technologies’ Tian Beng Ng, senior vice president and general manager of channel for Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ).
The answer to that question builds upon Nicol’s discussions of trying to be as specialised in a particular niche as possible and lies within global Dell research for 1H FY20.
“We really have a broad portfolio. So our response to partners is: take advantage of our portfolio and sell sort of more lines of business,” Ng said.
“We found that based on data from our partners, partners who sell at least sort of three line of business actually make up to more than 29 times more [revenue] than partners who just sell one line of business.”
When comparing those who sell two lines of business versus three, the businesses selling three lines were making 8.9 times more.
Therefore, Ng said the question then becomes how partners sell more lines of business.
Using a hypothetical example of a partner dealing in reselling servers, Ng said Dell would try to get them to take advantage of related lines of business; in this hypothetical case, this would mean Dell’s storage solutions, as well as networking, software, VMware, desktops and notebooks.
