Samsung Channel Chief Touts Increased Focus On Selling Through Partners

Samsung Electronics is pushing harder into the business world with a sales strategy that's increasingly reliant on working with channel partners, Samsung executive Gregory Taylor said during a keynote at XChange 2016 Tuesday.

Taylor, vice president for channel sales at Samsung Business, said that television sales deals with the hospitality industry -- which often have been direct sales in the past -- are shifting toward the channel.

"Over the last three years that has rapidly declined from a direct sale into a channel sale," Taylor said during the keynote at XChange 2016, hosted by CRN parent The Channel Company and being held this week in San Antonio. "Today about 70 percent of our hospitality TV [business] now goes through a channel partner."

[Related: Partners Cheer New Samsung Channel Training Tools To Expand Sales Pipeline]

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Overall, Samsung Business is now "about 100 percent channel," he said.

During the keynote Taylor also demonstrated new security features on Samsung smartphones that aim to appeal to business users. One key feature that's part of Samsung's Knox security is the ability to create two "personas" for a smartphone -- one for business use and the other for personal use.

Taylor demonstrated swiping left and right between the two personas on his Galaxy Note7 phone; the business side requires authentication and is behind the corporate firewall, he said, while the personal side cannot be accessed by the user's company.

Brian Musci, director of AdRem Systems, a Reston, Va.-based solution provider, said his company has traditionally been focused on Apple iOS devices, but has recently done work for a customer that has adopted an all-Samsung smartphone strategy.

"I've already been familiar with Knox, but throughout the course of several days [at XChange] I've heard a little bit more about the personas," Musci said. "That's a little bit more intriguing to me -- to have a way of separating your data, personal from corporate. That's the biggest part of [enterprise mobility]. Everyone still talks about BYOD, but the worst part of BYOD is that when you need to wipe a device, you can't just wipe corporate data. Samsung's addressed that."

Ultimately, Samsung Electronics is aiming to impress -- and work with -- more channel partners going forward, Taylor said.

"We are very dedicated to the channel, and we look for what you bring to the table," he said during his keynote at XChange. "So it’s your empowerment that actually helps us reach the end user, your relationships with the end customers. Your people, staff, support, call center -- your leadership that you bring to us. Really it’s the combination of Samsung’s great products and your great services that deliver the right message to the end customer, that help us both mutually grow and create new markets and new opportunities."