Dell to pay direct sales staff for working with partners

Named accounts and new 20 per cent reward for collaborating with partners part of sweeping changes Dell is making to channel strategy

Dell is to begin paying its sales staff more if they work with resellers to close sales of its enterprise solutions.

As part of a raft of sweeping changes designed to expand its commitment to partners, Dell announced yesterday that it will ply its sales reps with a net new 20 per cent compensation accelerator for sales of its enterprise products to new customers when delivered through a partner.

This applies to its PowerEdge VRTX, storage, networking, software, thin client, workstations and SecureWorks solutions.

The changes – which come six years after Dell formally entered the channel with the launch of PartnerDirect – will come into effect in North America on 1 February 2014, with other regions added through 2014. Dell could not be more specific on the timetable for EMEA.

The newly private vendor said it is also increasing its investment in demonstration units available to partners by more than 500 per cent.

In addition, it is introducing named customer accounts which partners can target "with the assurance of no conflict from Dell", although it gave no further details.

"Actions speak louder than words, so we are making a significant monetary investment to make it easier for partners to work with us and to encourage Dell sales representatives to partner with the channel like never before," said Cheryl Cook, vice president Global Channels and Alliances at Dell.

The move shows Dell is living up to its promise that going private would hand it more control over its channel strategy, said Lee Ganly, chief technology officer at Dell Premier partner Acora, which specialises in Dell's server, storage and networking kit.

"They said it would allow them to move more quickly because they wouldn't have to worry about what the market thinks," he said. "This is the first evidence that what they said then is starting to bear fruit."

Ganly added that the move to compensate sales staff to work with the channel would "drive positive behaviour from partners".

Rupert Mills, managing director of Dell partner Krome, said: "Dell's latest announcement to work more closely with the channel by accelerating bonuses for those staff that do is great news for us.

"We see good collaboration with the direct sales force right now; we help them reach different lines of business where they may have a traditional "client"-based account and we can assist with moving forward on the enterprise business. In addition to this Dell help us re-enforce the view that we can deliver better results by working together when we bring clients to talk to them on large projects. This latest announcement can only help to re-enforce the message internally that working together is the best approach."