Dropbox merges direct and channel sales teams together
The move will better align the vendor with its customers, says global channel boss
Dropbox has combined its direct and indirect sales teams together to run as one internal commercial organisation, its global channel chief Simon Aldous revealed.
"We now have very clearly brought all of our direct and indirect go to markets together, in order to leverage the efficiencies of running that as one commercial organisation, internally," Aldous told CRN's sister publication CPI.
"In doing that we're also delivering a very consistent message to our customers. Our customers now, whether they want to engage with us directly or engage with us indirectly, can be sure they have access to the same products, the same payment plans, the same support mechanisms, and all of the other support services you would expect to see."
The vendor boss opened up about a recent company shake up following the departure of COO Olivia Nottebohm in January as well as 315 staff redundancies.
Former corporate vice president of Microsoft Debbie Dunnam has now joined the vendor in the newly created role of chief commercial officer, which Aldous says has allowed Dropbox to become more aligned in how it's engaging with end customers both directly and indirectly through partners.
"Debbie is now driving a far more, consolidated and focused commercial organisation here at Dropbox," he said.
SMB business
Aldous explained how the SMB business remains a "primary focus" for the file hosting provider.
"That's why Dropbox set the channel business up and that's where we've been focused for the last three years.
"The channel business is still the fastest growing go to market within a Dropbox sales organisation standpoint, and that's predominantly driven by our success in SMB," he said.
In an interview with CRN UK last May, Aldous highlighted a "concerning" trend of SMBs taking a financial hit due to the pandemic, causing them to seek out MSPs.
Almost a year later, Aldous says this impact caused organisations to "try and do more with less".
"For us that means we've been working very closely with our existing end customers that are using Dropbox, to make sure they can maximise the use it will give them to make sure it's deployed in the most effective manner, that it's allowing them to run their business in a remote distributed environment, delivering the business benefits they need."
Market opportunity
The vendor exec said its acquisitions of e-signature solution HelloSign and document sharing platform DocSend represent a "massive opportunity", citing the market size for e-signature to be "three to four times the size of the market for collaboration software."
"We focused very heavily in the last few years bringing HelloSign to market and making it a key part of our product portfolio," he explained.
He added that file sync and share has become a mature technology today with many organisations offering the solution. However, e-signature "is still relatively immature, and the biggest competitor is still pen and paper."
On DocSend, Aldous described the organisation as "predominantly direct", which allowed the vendor to integrate the technology within its offering, giving Dropbox three core product lines to present to partners.
"Weave that into our partner programme, weave that into the narrative of how this can help businesses, and the questions that our partners should be asking customers to understand whether there is a need and a requirement for Dropbox and HelloSign and DocSend, or combinations of all three within the business strategies."