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Lenovo realizes that the rain is falling. The economic picture continues to look gloomy, but some vendors still don't seem to realize that the channel is holding the umbrella. And these days, friends with umbrellas are good to have.
But even the world's No. 4 computer maker can't expect immediate shelter from the storm. Instead, Lenovo is renewing and rejuvenating its SMB channel program, looking to partners to secure itself a dry spot in the wet weather.
In January, the computer manufacturer made its intentions clear that its channel strategy would focus, at least in part, on capturing the SMB market. That strategy has come to fruition with the company launching an SMB strategy that highlights products and a real desire to grow its channel.
Jay McBain, SMB director for Lenovo's North American channel sales, was brought in by Lenovo to shepherd the growth of the company in the SMB space by managing product teams, products and an aggressive solution provider recruitment campaign.
McBain began his work in the newly created role on April 1 and already sees the emphasis that the computer manufacturer is putting on the SMB space.
"From the top down here at Lenovo, the SMB space has been declared as an absolutely critical market," McBain said. "We've reorganized our strategy to make a hard run at it."
In order to win over solution providers, McBain knows that the first step Lenovo has to take is to make its focused channel program visible to current and potential partners. Calling SMB visibility his "biggest personal challenge," McBain and Lenovo feel the first step to winning the market comes by providing products solution providers can sell to SMB customers.
While that may seem like a no-brainer, Lenovo has traditionally performed strongly in enterprise situations with legacy products such as the ThinkPad. But the price tag associated with a Think product may not necessarily work with smaller customers, which is why the company has developed products that work at a larger range of more inexpensive prices.
"The Lenovo G530 product line starts at the $400 price and moves up through the $500 and $600 range," McBain said. "The G530 marks the product portfolio we've developed that can be successful at every price point."
In order to compete at these price points in the past, McBain admits that Lenovo would often strip down a ThinkPad, removing some of the features and specifications, in order to give solution providers and customers a product that would sell at the price point a customer would specify.
Now, as part of its push to the SMB market, Lenovo has products such as the G530, which is designed for solution providers to sell at price points that make the notebook more competitive.
Rather than dredging up a ThinkPad for these customers, Lenovo has built products with Intel Pentium Core 2 Duo processors, 3 GB of memory and 250 GB of storage for about $599. If the keyboard on the notebooks looks familiar, it should come as no surprise -- the G530 cribbed it from the ThinkPad.
"In the past, we haven't given the channel the ammo it needs to win with customers in the SMB markets," McBain said. "Now that's changing. We're building products with configurations that can be laddered up, depending on the solution that's required."
With an SMB product in place, the next step of the SMB blitz involves a more active courtship of channel partners working in the space, improved communication and easier interaction with the company.
