Q & A: IBM Execs Sound Off On SMB Sales Overhaul

CRN: Talk about why you made these changes.

Samson: Bringing this organization together and having a common framework, a common set of programs that we can deliver to the channel to help them drive more growth and prosperity for both of us in the SMB market is a big reason we are doing this.

CRN: Talk about the new sales coverage model and the new SMB Systems sales managers in the territories?

Samson: This is probably the largest, most significant realignment of our sales coverage in the last 15 years inside STG. Today as you know we define the SMB market around 220 SMB territories in the world. Inside those territories is a territory manager who has responsibilities for all those clients both enterprise and larger SMB clients and the very small clients. And in that model we now deploy an iSeries (sales) rep, a pSeries rep, an xSeries rep, a storage rep. In our new coverage model we are creating a new role called the system sales manager (SSM) and that manager has all of those brand specialists working for him or her. Now this is just for SMB. We will roll this out into the sector for larger enterprises later this year and into 2008. We have been working on this for over a year. We have now aligned all of our regions and territories around the world. So they have SSM coverage. We moved the sales specialists as part of that. And the SSM in the territory will have responsibility for the whole STG portfolio.

We are also creating a new role called a systems sales rep who will sell more than one brand. What you very quickly realize is that you cannot cover these territories without a very robust channel team to help do it. So the SSM will be responsible for working with those partners in that territory. In a way the partner now has one sort of throat to choke.

They can go to a territory and say I am a partner that wants to work in this territory and I have a number of clients that I need to work with rather than going to an iSeries, pSeries, xSeries, zSeries and storage (sales reps).

CRN: That SSM individual then will be spearheading the sales efforts in each territory?

Samson: In a way they are the orchestra leader of the coverage. So the SSM would say I have four people that work for me and I have to cover 80,000 accounts. Here is what I am going to do: I will take my four and they will go work on some of these accounts maybe with a partner. The SSM will also coordinate the business partner coverage in the territory to work with the channel to say: Can you help us provide capabilities for this set of clients here?

CRN: How do you decide which accounts your direct sales force can go after and which ones will be business-partner-led accounts?

Samson: Remember in SMB there are no house accounts per say. It is a very joint sort of effort. The SSM is responsible for all of the STG revenue whether it is delivered by the direct rep or the partner. In most cases what will happen inside a territory.The SSM will say I have got four people and I can probably make 25 percent of my quota with the four people I have. Now I need to make the other 75 percent up with engaging the right channel partners to help me do this. In a way we do this today inside the territory model. That isn't terribly different. The difference though is in today's world we do it with different brands doing it. Now you are going to have one sort of orchestra leader. It is going to make it much easier for the partner who will interface with one person instead of five.

One of our principal design points in creating the system sales manager was this very important point: that is you have one person instead of five and you have one person who is very closely aligned to the territory.

CRN: How many channel employees working in the U.S. will be laid off as a result of the consolidation?

Gogh: Zero.

CRN: Will there be an increase in the number of channel facing people out there now calling on channel partners?

Gogh: It is 2,000 (IBM) people (affected by the restructuring) and the strategy behind this in terms of integrating in front of the IBM partner is to simplify the experience.

Number two, it is about getting the economies so that we can increase the number of partners that we are covering through the simplification. So this is not an attrition program. This is not, we are going to add more resources. Instead what we are doing is simplifying the experience through the integration of STG, GTS and our business partner organization in order to have greater coverage on the business partner community. That is number one. We could have stopped there.

NEXT: More channel facing coverage for partners