Dell, the Direct-Sales King, Tries To Make Good?

To many, Dell is a dirty word in the channel. After all, here's a company that's achieved market dominance via a direct-sales model. While many vendors consistently up the ante in terms of partner incentives in an attempt to improve satisfaction in the channel, Dell remains mum about the existence of a program at all, despite partners like Terry Castro of American Data saying otherwise.

But whether or not the manufacturer chooses to speak about it, the fact remains: Not even Dell can succeed in the public sector without the help of partners. Whether it be to fill a small-business requirement incorporated into a federal program, win a piece of a services contract with the Department of Defense or persuade a school district to standardize on Dell PCs rather than Macs, Dell presumably has as hard a time as any going it alone.

"My company holds a contract with the Los Angeles airports, so consequently Dell plays with us," says En Pointe's Dianna De Stefano. And not long ago, she contacted Dell about another deal with a college campus that was considering a switching from IBM to improve customer service. "The Dell rep basically refused to work with me," De Stefano says. "When the customer said he wouldn't look at the product in that case, the rep finally agreed. This guy could eat, breathe and sleep the technology he was selling--I'll give him that. But there's no incentive by Dell to work with anyone else."

There are hints that Dell might be changing its tune, however. About 25 percent of respondents to the Satisfaction Survey said they resell Dell to their public-sector customers. Of those, 50 percent resell Dell products to the federal government, 52 percent to state government, 62 percent to local government and 50 percent to education. As far as overall partner satisfaction is concerned, 23 percent gave Dell top marks, 12 percent gave them low marks and the rest hovered somewhere in the middle. While those marks don't match what other vendors earned from partners in the survey, Dell fared better than some might have predicted a year ago.

"I will say that the Dell representative that handles our account with Lockheed came to Tampa recently, took [a couple of us] out to lunch and said that Dell appreciates our working with them," Castro says. "That's the first instance where they've come to us. On the other hand, despite the fact that I sell $12 million in Dell products a year, when I pick up the phone and say, 'This is Terry Castro from American Data,' the person on the line will say 'Who?' It isn't easy on any given day to deal with them. But I will say they're starting to understand that we're here to stay. There have been hiccups, and I don't have good things to say about everyone at Dell, but I do have good things to say about some."