6 Key Details Of The New Dell EMC Partner Program

Down To The Wire

Dell EMC Channel Chief John Byrne and his team have begun informing solution providers about how the company's new, unified channel program will work, previewing boosted MDF, a significant investment in incentives and other measures intended to encourage partners to sell across the vendor's broad portfolio and work exclusively with Dell EMC.

Solution providers will begin working with the new Dell EMC program when it is officially rolled out the first week of February. Byrne has arranged the program into Gold, Platinum and Titanium tiers with a super-exclusive, invitation-only Titanium Black designation that already has been awarded to a handful of solution providers.

Byrne has promised ironclad deal registration, as well as a seamless blending of the legacy Dell and EMC programs to provide profitability, simplicity and predictability. In a webcast this week, Byrne and his team gave about 3,000 solution providers further details about the program. Here are six critical points.

Sell The Portfolio

Byrne was blunt about how important it is for solution providers to add lines of business to their rosters. Partners that sell storage should begin selling server, for example. Byrne said Dell EMC will provide the training and resources solution providers need to successfully branch out. Partners that win new business "will be rewarded handsomely," he said.

Sell Services

Last October at the Dell EMC World conference, Byrne called services a "pot of gold" for solution providers, and he repeated that assertion this week. Kimberly DeLeon, vice president of global channel programs, said partners have the option to either resell Dell EMC services or get trained and begin selling Dell EMC services as their own. Dell sold its services business in the run-up to its $58 billion acquisition of EMC, and that sale has opened the door for solution providers eager to fill the void.

Line-Of-Business Incumbency

Customers identified by Dell EMC as having bought through channel partners will become partner-led accounts. The practice is what Dell EMC calls "line-of-business incumbency," and it's similar to the legacy EMC program's hard deck, a popular characteristic of that company's strategy. But with a hard deck deals below a certain size automatically went through channel partners, Dell EMC is trying to determine where partners are actually gaining traction before committing to the partner-led model. Dell EMC rolled out the strategy for storage products and this week expanded it to server and networking.

Status Conscious

Dell EMC partners have been status matched into the new program. Top-tier partners from both the legacy Dell and EMC programs were brought into the Dell EMC program's top Titanium level, and so on. However, that status isn't indefinite. For now, partners will have to meet the legacy requirements of the respective programs. They'll hold their new tier status for a year, until the beginning of Dell EMC's 2018 fiscal year. At that point, eligibility for the tiers will be based on revenue and completing training.

Rebate Rundown

Dell EMC said it will invest $150 million in incentives in the coming year, with an emphasis on bringing legacy EMC partners' rebate levels up to par. Those partners had seen back-end rebates cut steadily in recent years. In general, Dell EMC program rebates will be paid out from the first dollar, won't require minimum deal revenue and will be stackable. Partners also will be able to earn additional rebates by reselling Dell services.

Exclusivity Counts

Dell EMC is stressing exclusivity among its partners, and solution providers that sell only Dell EMC server, storage and networking gear can earn a 1.25X revenue multiplier. Dell EMC channel executives said the revenue multiplier will help partners accelerate through the program's tiers more quickly.