Partners Applaud Dell 'Rock Star' Wilson's Appointment To Global Channel Marketing Position

The changes roiling Dell Technologies after its $58 billion acquisition of EMC have propelled a company veteran and channel executive with a first-rate reputation among partners into a global channel marketing role.

Mary Catherine Wilson has been director of channel marketing North America for nearly nine years, and has been with Dell for twice that long. Now, she'll take on the task of managing Dell EMC's global channel marketing enablement, a newly created and yet untitled position she accepted only recently.

Partners who have worked with Wilson say she's absolutely the right executive for the job.

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"She's a rock star," said Mark McKeever, principal at MicroAge, a large, Tempe, Ariz.-based solution provider that works with Dell EMC and has worked with Wilson for the last four years. "I can't think of a channel marketing leader that was more engaged with partners than Mary Catherine," he said.

McKeever said Wilson is almost always available to discuss marketing programs with partners, and takes the feedback she gets from partners to heart. "The programs evolve based on feedback, and the Dell program became my favorite by far. It still is, and I hope they keep that magic in the Dell EMC partner program."

Michael Pearson, president of DSA Technologies, an Elk Grove, Calif.-based solution provider that works with Dell EMC said Wilson is "organized and in touch with current trends in marketing," and added that "she seemed to have the ability to put the right people in place to execute and extend their marketing efforts in social media and elsewhere."

Wilson's North America channel marketing enablement position has been taken by Maureen Gaumer, who has held similar roles at EMC since joining that company in 2013. Wilson reports to Global Channel Marketing Chief Cheryl Cook.

In an interview with CRN, Wilson explained that her new job focuses primarily on marketing enablement for partners, keeping tabs on what campaigns partners are using in the market, and which tools partners are being offered to help them grow their business.

Dell's acquisition of EMC, and the changes that come with it, has given channel executives like Wilson increased visibility and new opportunities. Global Channel Chief John Byrne is expected to roll out the combined Dell EMC partner program in December and put it into action in time for the beginning of the company's fiscal year, which begins Feb. 1.

"Having run North America for the last many years, many things that we are going to deliver in this channel marketing organization were things that were on my wish list," Wilson said.

In line with that, Wilson said she'll begin putting partner marketing initiatives in place that are designed to be simple, consistent and efficient, she said. "As the merger is taking place you have more partners. You have more marketing development funds. To me the success is that you don't repeat and spend in four different regions. Do it once. Do it really well and then allow the regions to execute."

"I envision our digital marketing platform not only having some of the campaigns but also the how to's," Wilson said. "My partner marketing managers were spending an immense amount of time just educating partners on how to use and leverage their marketing development funds, so could I package those in a way that helps the partner and makes it very clear early on what Dell EMC's messages are that we're putting in the market so that they can leverage them ahead of time rather than Dell EMC putting out the campaign and then partners learning about it after the fact and then figuring out how to build it into their marketing plans."

Partners face particular challenges when it comes to digital marketing, Wilson said. She said she's working to establish a program for helping partners defray the costs of those efforts.

"Content's expensive," Wilson said. "[Partners] are going to bring their own value proposition always, to the table, but if they can do it in a way where we are offsetting their costs with content, all the better. I think with the immense amount of digital marketing that is available to them where a partner can appear larger than maybe they are in social media, I think that is something that we as vendors can bring to them, sharing what is working in other markets, too."

And even though she's only been in her new, global role for a couple of weeks, Wilson said partners worldwide seem to share many of the same characteristics.

"They have a lot of the same opportunities, they have a lot of the same challenges, they have a lot of the same questions that I've seen in North America," Wilson said. "There's a lot of similarities. We have strong leaders in those other markets that understand. One of the things I've definitely learned from leading a region is a global entity cannot replace the regional execution."

With that in mind, Wilson said she'll maintain her close, personal ties to partners even as she works to accelerate marketing enablement programs worldwide.

"I want to stay close to partners, I want to understand," she said. "I had a number of marketing conversations last week with partners and I want to keep doing that. I told my team, to me success is when we aren't delivering to the partners and to the regions fast enough, because if they are asking us to deliver more, faster, then we are doing a good job. I do want to stay in front of partners."