HPE’s Jeremiah Jenson On ‘Net-New’ North America Sales Investment, Pricing ‘To Win’ And The Drive To Take Share

‘What this means is we recognize there is an opportunity in North America specifically, and we're making investments with real dollars with people to capture that opportunity,’ said Jenson.

HPE Vice President of North America Channel and Ecosystem Jeremiah Jenson said the company is making “a net-new investment” to put partners in a “sweet spot” to capture the “massive upside” in the North America market.

“The goal is more opportunity, stronger alignment, more partner-led opportunity, more partner-led pipeline in specific markets and those markets, to be clear, are what we call enterprise and SLED [state, local and education],” said Jenson in an interview with CRN.

Jenson’s comments came after HPE Executive Vice President and Chief Sales Officer Phil Mottram pledged at HPE Discover to invest significantly more in sales talent, leadership and resources in North America to help partners capture the $100 billion total addressable market (TAM).

Mottram said the new investment is aimed at helping partners drive sales growth in 5,000 underpenetrated enterprise midmarket accounts.

“What this means is we recognize there is an opportunity in North America specifically, and we're making investments with real dollars with people to capture that opportunity,” said Jenson.

HPE has, in fact, already hired a “broad number” of new sales reps with some of those new reps in training just last week. Furthermore, he said, there is a “road map” of training sessions for additional sales reps.

“We’ve already hired dozens of salespeople across several teams in North America, and that also includes a channel-specific SLED team,” he said. “We have a road map to continue to invest in specific large TAM segments. So the timing is now. It is not the future or something we’re thinking about or something we’re planning on. The timing is right now.”

Jenson credited Mottram as a “great sales leader” who is “pragmatic” and “very down to earth in terms of what do we need to do to advance our sales agenda.”

What’s more, he said, there is a “level of excitement, fervor and just forward thinking” on what HPE needs to do to get to the “next step from a sales perspective.”

The additional investment comes following a number of blockbuster partner announcements at HPE Discover last month, including extending price quote validity from 14 days to 30 days for servers, storage and GreenLake Flex.

That 30-day price validity was cheered wildly by partners that are still grappling with 14-day price validity from HPE competitors.

“We continue to lead around what we’re doing with pricing,” said Jenson. “We changed our pricing terms to 30-day quote validity. That’s massive. There’s just a very explicit energy around what we’re doing to make sure that we price to win and to take new share. You see that in a number of places. There is just a continued pace and rhythm around how we’re advancing the business to go win new customers, to work with partners to advance our market share, and to make sure that customers can adopt our solutions, which produce a business outcome that is second to none. Nobody else has the portfolio to produce those outcomes. So we’re supporting that across the board with sales, promotions and people.”

What is the economic impact on partners and their go-to- market in North America with Mottram 9pictured) committing to investing more in North America sales reps and leaders?

What this means is we recognize there is an opportunity in North America specifically, and we’re making investments with real dollars with people to capture that opportunity.

This is a net-new investment to put partners in the sweet spot to win in markets that have massive upside. And so the goal is more opportunity, stronger alignment, more partner-led opportunity, more partner-led pipeline in specific markets, and those markets, to be clear, are what we call enterprise and SLED.

What partners should take away from this is: Now is the time to invest with HPE because we are making those investments. We already have made [some of] those investments.

What can you say about the number of additional positions and the timing of the investments?

The timing is now. We’ve already hired a broad number of these salespeople. They’re actually in new-hire training as we speak right now this week. So that’s the first class, and there is a clear road map of future classes.

We’ve already hired dozens of salespeople across several teams in North America, and that also includes a channel-specific SLED team.

We have a road map to continue to invest in specific large TAM segments. So the timing is now. It is not the future or something we’re thinking about or something we’re planning on. The timing is right now.

Partners referred to the $100 billion North America TAM referenced by Mottram. How do you size the HPE partner market opportunity?

There is a total addressable market that is massive for HPE. When you boil that down to the opportunity in North America specifically, that’s where we are making investments. It’s not that we’re de-investing or not making investments elsewhere, it’s that there is such a massive opportunity. He did reference the $100 billion dollar number during the meeting that we had in Las Vegas. I don’t know where he got that number, so I couldn't comment there. But he did use that number, and I think that that number is very real.

So in my role, and for partners that sell predominantly to North America who were in that room, that’s the opportunity that we are aligned on. So while there are other opportunities outside North America, the North America opportunity is so large that it’s an opportunity we want to move quickly to capture so we are doing that.

We are doing that now and partners have an opportunity to partner with us in North America. That is where I am focused because of my role. We want partners to come alongside us and invest with us.

How is the North America market different than the rest of the world, and what do you see there?

When you look at the North America market, customers are looking for outcomes, and HPE affords our partners the opportunity to produce those outcomes because of the size and the strength of our portfolio.

Think about the fact that HPE can address any customer business problem, whether that’s from the edge with our networking solutions all the way through to the most complex workloads in the data center, enabling customers to run those workloads where it makes the most sense. I think that the power of the portfolio really comes through in North America.

The growth we are experiencing in North America with AI shows that AI is here and it is real. You can see that coming through in our results. Customers are voting with their wallets.

The data is very clear. The acceleration we are seeing in North America is one that not only are we capturing but we see an opportunity if we invest more we can accelerate that opportunity.

The TAM is so much larger [in North America than other markets] and the opportunity with those specific [5,000] accounts is accelerating.

We’re going to capture that opportunity. We’re very clearly aggressively working to capture that opportunity, and we want to do it with partners.

We are doing this in partnership with our channel ecosystem. That is key for us. Our go-to-market is channel-centric.

We want channel partners to work with us to help us capture this opportunity.

How does it feel to have Mottram commit to additional sales talent, management and resources in North America?

We’ve got a sales executive that is focused on winning and winning with partners.

It is excitement, positivity, goodness.

You have the chief sales officer sitting down with our [North America enterprise] partners taking specific and focused time out of his calendar to sit with partners.

I saw him later that evening and he is very explicit about leading that opportunity with and through partners. You can’t help but feel good about that.

I think the thing that is interesting about HPE is partnership is part of our DNA. So the leading with partners isn’t new. It’s just a continued opportunity and continued investment in how we work with partners. That is important: We are tried and trusted in the channel. We are channel-centric, and this is yet another proof point about how we’re doing that.

Is this a real commitment from Mottram to drive a cultural transformation to make HPE more sales-driven—not just engineering-driven?

We have a strong engineering background that’s core to who the company is. But there’s an energized sales force at HPE. There’s an energized sales force not only in or sales force that calls on customers, but there’s an energized channel sales force. There’s just a pace at which we are expected to execute, and that is really very cool to see. It’s exciting to be a part of. It’s awesome to wake up every day and to be able to operate at a pace and with a level of energy and excitement that the entire company and sales force has rallied around.

How do you feel about Mottram and his sales leadership?

Phil is a great sales leader. He’s very pragmatic. He’s very real world. He’s very down to earth in terms of what do we need to do to advance our sales agenda. That level of excitement, fervor and just forward thinking in terms of how do we get to the next step from a sales perspective is really fantastic to see.

It’s not that we haven’t had that before, but it’s a new level of energy. Given how the technology vision has come together and that it’s very real now it’s about sales execution.

So it’s about what are those key segments that we need to invest in and then actually doing it. This is not a future plan or something we’re thinking about. This is something that we have done and are executing on now. It’s really about execution at this point. It’s just down to execution.

What does it mean to you to have that commitment from Mottram?

You can’t feel anything but excited about being at HPE with our partner base and with what we’re doing. We had a great event with Discover. The momentum that existed before, during and certainly after Discover is palpable. You can’t feel anything but good, great and excited not only about what we have done and what we have accomplished together, but where we’re going.

There’s just a real sense of goodness. There’s just a tremendous amount of excitement around the HPE ecosystem. To be on the front foot is always a good place to be. That’s exactly where we are.

What are some of the other investments HPE is making with partners to drive sales growth?

Look at what we’ve done to support partners. We’ve got new salespeople very focused on specific segments.

We’re on our front foot. At Discover we made a couple of really big announcements, including the competitive takeout incentive for storage [an incentive of 15 percent up-front margin effective July 1 aimed at displacing storage competitors in accounts].

Our storage business in North America is performing very, very well. There’s lots of work to be done but also lots of opportunity. That’s why we put that incentive in place for partners. It’s a massive earnings opportunity for partners in terms of what they can earn for selling HPE storage.

We continue to lead around what we’re doing with pricing. We changed our pricing terms to 30-day quote validity. That’s massive. There’s just a very explicit energy around what we’re doing to make sure that we price to win and to take new share. You see that in a number of places. There is just a continued pace and rhythm around how we’re advancing the business to go win new customers, to work with partners to advance our market share, and to make sure that customers can adopt our solutions, which produce a business outcome that is second to none.

Nobody else has the portfolio to produce those outcomes. So we’re supporting that across the board with sales, promotions and people.

Is HPE getting more price aggressive to go along with that 30-day quote validity?

Every single day I get a phone call or text message from a partner saying, ‘What can we do to win this customer?’

And the answer back from HPE is: ‘Yes.’ How do we go do something different? How do we think about this opportunity differently? We are on our front foot and aggressively going to market with our partners to go capitalize on the opportunity we have together every single day.

Now that North America is getting net-new sales investment, what is your advice to partners on how to take advantage of that?

The message to partners is now is the time to partner with HPE. Right now. Now is your opportunity. We have made the move. We have hired the people. This is a net incremental investment. Now is the time to get on the front foot with HPE. We’re already there. Come join us. The opportunity is there. It’s real. We have the data. Let’s go to market together.

This is in the sweet spot for partners. They have a level of intimacy with these customers that we value. They have local knowledge. They have history with these customers. We want to use that in partnership with them to advance our collective cause.

When you talk about the North America $100 billion opportunity, what do you say to partners to make sure they understand the magnitude of the market opportunity?

North America is the largest market on the planet. Full stop. The United States is the largest country and Canada a massive market in and of itself.

We are making very clear moves to capture that opportunity. I don’t know of a larger opportunity. I don’t know of a market at this scale that is growing at this pace. Come join us in your investments [in the market]. We’re willing to partner with you on those investments. It is far and away the largest market to invest in. It’s not even close.

What is different about HPE in terms of the pace at which the company is moving?

I don’t want to say that it's a different HPE, but there’s a level of acceleration, and in terms of a World Cup reference the pace of play is just different. That plays right to our hand. We’ve got the portfolio. We have the capability. We’ve got the commitment to partners. It’s just down to execution. I can’t say it enough. It’s just down to execution. The dollars are there. The opportunities are there. Customers want to work with us. We’re seeing just massive deals come down. We’re seeing massive deals happen with us.

It couldn’t be a better time to be an HPE partner. We are open for business, and business is accelerating.

What do you think of the competitive landscape and the opportunity to grab partners from other competitors?

What I would continue to emphasize is the channel is part of our DNA. It’s part of who our company is. We have continued to prove that time and time again.

As we’ve made the moves that we have made, we have kept the channel front and center. Time and time again we have thought about: Is this good for partners? How do we continue to work with partners?

So from a competitive landscape I’m less concerned about what moves someone might make. I would just point to how we continue to execute with partners.

So a couple of things to look at there: Look at our compute business, which is very, very partner-centric; look at our storage business where our route to market and our growth has been through parters.

Of course we acquired Juniper last year and now we have one combined entity in HPE Networking, which continues to be very partner-centric. We brought those Juniper partners along with us, and 100 percent of the partners across their tiers are now in our top tier of the business and we continue to execute with them. That’s because of our program changes and how we’ve brought that [networking] portfolio together.

We’ve seen it on both sides. We’ve seen massive networking partners become massive hybrid IT partners. We’ve seen hybrid IT partners become massive networking partners. That’s a proof point about how we continue to execute with partners.

Nobody else really has that opportunity. It’s the breadth of the portfolio that we execute on, and that consistency and tried-and- true trusted relationship that we have with our partners that continues to come through.

How much more is HPE investing in incentives and go-to- market with partners in 2026 versus 2025?

It’s investment across the board. It’s not just dollars. The investment we have made is very clear.

It’s not just that we are investing more, which we are certainly doing. You can see that. There was a 50 percent increase in the rebate for hybrid cloud solutions. We went from 6 percent to 9 percent. That’s demonstrable and partners have taken advantage of that. The acceleration we’ve seen in our hybrid cloud business, inclusive of storage, Morpheus Enterprise, VME, is very real.

So we made that investment. Then we get to HPE Discover, and there’s the competitive takeout investment and the dollars there. That’s 15 percent up-front dollars for competitive displacement, and then there are incremental investments.

There’s investment in salespeople for our channel sellers to go partner with and co-sell with. So there’s investment in a number of places.

You also saw the announcements we made at Discover around partners saying they want ease of doing business. With the Juniper acquisition, we’re consolidating [partner] programs. We went from 11 programs down to one.

You are going to see a more consistent deal registration platform and other things along those lines. So the dollars are part of it and are quantifiable. But then there are the other investments that are qualitative in terms of what we’ve done around ease of doing business, channel co-selling, and how we're getting more salespeople to sell with. So it’s investment across the board. That’s a key piece of this. It’s not just about how many dollars that we put in the channel, which is significant. It’s all the other stuff too that’s also just as significant if not more so.

Partners are saying they are going to invest more because of the increased HPE investment. How do you feel about that?

That’s huge. Partners get it. If they’re not investing in their HPE business, they are missing an opportunity. That’s a key point because we are growing with and through partners.