Dell rolls out increased rewards for cross-selling

Dell has unveiled some enhancements to its partner programme with the aim of increasing the rewards for those that cross and upsell more of its portfolio.

The vendor revealed to partners last night that changes were coming, most have been informed by feedback from the channel community, and the firm’s theme of the year is “Together, we stop at nothing”.

The annual update to partners also gave Dell Technologies’ global channel chief Rola Dagher, who took up the role six months ago, a chance to thank partners for their efforts during the last 12 months in a year dominated by the coronavirus pandemic.

“I’ve been watching the amazing work that has been developed and executed on during the pandemic and the pace of digital transformation, and how it’s accelerating beyond anything we could imagine,” said Dagher. “I look at the partners in how we’ve empowered them so they can go out and empower our customers to make the pace of that change when it comes to that whole digital transformation journey of the Dell technology platform.

“I believe very strongly that our partners are the foundations of everything we do. Technology is an enabler, but our partners are the true transformers.”

There are three main changes that partners need to look out for from Dell on the partner programme front this year.

The first is the simplification of the new business incentives to reward those that sell across the portfolio. Secondly, solution provider partners will be given access to sell VMware licensing directly through the Dell partner programme, and thirdly, an incentives centre will give visibility of all the possible offers that a partner could tap into.

“Our new promise statement to the world and to our partners is that together, we stop at nothing because it’s about the core values of together as Dell Technologies and our partners,” said Dagher. “Dell technology will always be there for them by their side through the ups and downs.”

She penned a blog post that covered the announcement and added that the firm was sensitive to introducing changes at a time that was already strained by the pandemic.

“While we’ve made enhancements to our 2021 partner programme, I want to emphasise that in a time of continued uncertainty for many businesses, our programme structure and our partners’ engagement with us will remain consistent,” she wrote. “We are staying the course to support our partners, as we always have, while investing in key focus areas to drive our joint success.”

Cheryl Cook, senior vice-president of global channel for Dell Technologies, said the changes were an evolution of the existing programme and the company had listened to feedback from partners to make sure it met their demands.

As well as increasing rewards and more of a portfolio sell, Cook said the programme wanted to build on the launch of the vendor’s as-a-service Apex offering last autumn.

“You’re still going to have traditional capex purchases, but clearly there’s a trend of just wanting overarching simplification, and project Apex will do that,” she said.

At Dell Partner World in October, the firm increased rebates for those partners selling on-demand solutions and those will continue to be built on to encourage more to take that approach.

Apex has kicked off with storage as a service, being made available in North America first. There are plans to roll it out to Europe soon.