What Does Being A Partner Mean?

There are lots of different meanings of the word "partner": partners in a law firm, silent partners, partners in crime… But what sort of "partners" are EMC channel partners?

Partners on a team

Tennis partners, diving partners, sparring partners — there are lots of sports where to be a "partner" is to be on the same team, striving together to beat the competition. EMC is proud to partner with the channel community in this way because we know that our success is dependent on your success.

That's why we constantly innovate to make it easier to sell EMC solutions. EMC offers a sophisticated set of pre-sales tools that proactively report on the best product configurations for end user customers and help to set their expectations. This helps us to help our partners make sure they're proposing the right midrange solutions. Our simplified software packaging also helps to make life easier for our channel partner community. Rather than picking from an extensive a-la-carte menu of software options that make up a complete end-user solution, EMC now also offers software packages, pre-bundled to meet common business needs.

Dance partners

Sometimes the sales process can be a merry dance, which is why it can be valuable to have a dance "partner" to lead you and guide you through the process. Many of EMC's partners in the midrange sell a broad portfolio of solutions and need to spread their expertise across all of those products. But, at EMC, we spend all day everyday finding new ways to help people recognize the benefits of EMC solutions.

That puts us in a great position to pass that knowledge on to our channel partners. Our channel enablement teams are specialists in creating marketing campaigns that can be packaged up and easily rebranded and used by our channel partners. We provide our resellers with complete 'campaign in a box' packages as part of our 'Ready To Go' initiative.

Life partners

Of course, the most important 'partner' that many of us will have is the person we're in a relationship with. Now, we're not proposing marriage to our resellers but there are a lot of lessons that can be learnt from our personal relationships that apply to our channel relationships. Most significant, is the importance of communication.

Effective partnerships are built on communication — something we put at the heart of our channel program. No one wants to find out at the last minute that there's a new product coming out that could derail a sale, or that features are being retired because the vendor didn't realize how vital they were to closing a deal. EMC likes to keep its partners close communicating constantly through a product's lifecycle to ensure that it's designed with the needs of the channel in mind; that our channel partners can hit the ground running when we launch new products; and that everyone knows the latest information whilst our products are in the field.

These are just some of the things that being a "partner" mean to EMC. What does being a partner mean to you? Why not tell us in the comments below?