Setting Parameters
Ultimately, what the storage giant is doing with its channel partners is teaching them how to practice and close business the EMC way. And, over time, as the company dilutes its direct sales force, the more experienced partners will be brought into enterprise accounts. If VARs demonstrate they can hack it, EMC will promote them into the enterprise space.
"And, guess what? That enterprise rep is now channel-friendly because he gets it," Taylor says. "He was brought up that way."
During the April earnings call, CEO Joseph Tucci highlighted five major points that are the basis of EMC's new go-to-market model: focus the direct sales force; build a lower-cost sales organization; expand cooperation with service partners; and step up training within EMC and with its partners.
"I don't think it was very hard to get the new go-to-market strategy accepted out there," Tucci says. "We move our direct sales force into the Global 2500, and we try to focus the channel into specialty accounts with large storage opportunities."
"There are two sides to it," Tucci adds. "One is pushing the sales reps out of a territory and into a named account and then filling the rest of the territory with partners and an organization that is going to help generate leads,our small-and-medium enterprise (SME) sales force."