IBM Connects Midmarket Partners To Help Close Sales

The IBM Sales Connections program, unveiled Tuesday, enables partners to query IBM about a sales lead and then have the appropriate IBM regional territory sales manager respond within 72 hours, said Scott Hebner, vice president of strategy and marketing for ISV and developer relations at IBM, Armonk, N.Y.

Targeted at midmarket solution providers, the program is designed to help partners close sales faster by ensuring that they are talking to the right people at IBM as well as to the right people at a potential customer, according to Hebner. For example, if a solution provider with an application middleware opportunity is having trouble closing the sale, that partner can go to the Sales Connections Web portal and type in the customer&'s name and a plain-language request such as "this customer may need help with financing" or "the person in procurement is dragging his feet." IBM will respond within three days and work side by side with the partner to improve the situation and close the deal, he said.

Working with a vendor the size of IBM can be complex, Hebner acknowledged. "Some partners think they are working with the right salesperson, but they are not," he said. With Sales Connections, complexity is reduced, IBM resources like financing are marshalled faster and, if IBM has worked with a particular customer before and knows the go-to person in procurement, IBM will direct the partner to that person to speed things along, he added.

The Sales Connections program costs partners nothing, and IBM takes no markup on the service, Hebner said. What's in it for IBM is the opportunity to expand business, he said.

"All we are looking for is the opportunity. This is purely mutual interest. If an ISV sells an application, we know that if the customer buys that application, they will have to buy someone's database and someone's server to run it on. We want to have access to that opportunity," Hebner said.

Bill Bush, global alliance manager at Actuate Corp., a South San Francisco, Calif.-based solution provider and Sales Connections beta tester, said he has watched the program in action since the beginning of the year and seen it shave weeks off several large sales. In one instance, IBM was already working with a customer on server and storage capacity issues when Actuate engaged with the customer to sell enterprise application reporting tools. Bush said he used the Sales Connections Web site to express concerns about the customer dragging its feet on the application deal and saw results fast.

"We told the IBM team we were in the process of working with so-and-so in procurement, and [IBM] came back and said, 'That's great, but that person doesn't have the juice,' " Bush said. IBM knew who in the customer's procurement division "had the juice," connected Bush with that person, and the deal was closed, he added.

Under Sales Connections, partners maintain ownership of the customer, reconnect for renewals and don't have to worry about IBM closing a deal without partner participation, according to Hebner. The program is open to partners at the advanced level of the IBM PartnerWorld program, he said, adding that about 1,500 partners are already in that category and nearly 5,000 more are eligible and can sign up at no cost.