Aqueduct’s SVP of Sales & Marketing, Jack Kaiser, was featured in an article by CRN on the dramatic shift of Dell EMC’s enterprise customer landscape from direct to indirect accounts through their Enterprise Preferred Program.
The Enterprise Preferred Program grants channel partners access to around 2,000 customer accounts where Dell feels it is under-penetrated. The Round Rock, Texas-based infrastructure giant provides partners with special front-end pricing, incremental discounts, new acquisition deal registration, and competitive prices. In a move to reduce Dell EMC sales rep and channel partner conflict, the company is protecting its own sales team commissions on these accounts, meaning that sales reps will be incented to work more closely with solution providers.
Jack Kaiser, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Waltham, Mass.-based Aqueduct Technologies, said solution providers “benefit greatly” by good margins on a first deal.
“That 20 percent is important because many times there’s a long sales campaign, lots of investments in our engineering and sales team – so it can be a long sales cycle. So guaranteeing that we’re going to make money at the end, and it doesn’t become a price battle, is important to us because we know that the first investment will pay off,” said Kaiser.
Gregg Ambulos, senior vice president of Dell EMC’s North American Channel Sales, said thanks to the successful enterprise partner program implemented earlier this year, 64 percent of Dell EMC’s enterprise business is now coming from channel partners, up recently from 34 percent.
“We’re seeing our business grow dramatically in this space. Our mix went from 34 percent to 64 percent in just one quarter working with and through our partner community. So 34 percent of our business was indirect, now it’s 64 percent. [We] want that to be in the high 80s [percent],” said Ambulos, during a Dell EMC session at The Channel Company’s 2018 Best of Breed (BoB) Conference on Monday. “This is a golden partner opportunity to work with us, get involved with the sales team, help us get into these accounts and have investment protection.”