10 Steps Dell Needs To Take To Avoid Channel Disaster

6. Hold partner summits. Dell has a lot of catching up in learning who solution providers are and how they operate. Dell's top executives need to meet on a regular basis with solution providers so they can dispel the myth that the channel is the devil. And, oh by the way, the channel needs to see that Dell executives in fact don't have horns.

7. Deal registration is a must. Building an effective deal registration program with a conflict resolution clause is a must. But really any such program is simply a rules of engagement plan showing solution providers where they play and where Dell direct takes the lead. And if the plan is for Dell to eat the cake and leave the crumbs for the channel, fold the tent and go back to your direct marketing babble.

8. Partners need to make money too. Dell needs to design an appropriate discount structure for their channel partners. Dell has a long history or undercutting partner pricing or cutting it so thin that VARs make no money selling the vendor's products. If Dell really wants incremental market share from solution providers, it has to give them a reason to switch customers to the Dell platform.

9. Do all of the above as quickly as possible. Rome may not have been built in a day, but it certainly didn't take as long as Dell is taking to put together its channel program. There is something to be said about going slowly and making sure you get it right. But this is ridiculous. VARs see the six months of rhetoric not backed up by concrete details as just another sign of Dell's channel waffling. Enough is enough.

10. Top management needs to take the lead role in building and enforcing channel strategy. Okay, we may be cheating a bit here because this is the first item on the list. But it's really the only thing that counts. If Michael Dell and his top lieutenants don't drive this channel strategy, nothing else matters.