What advice do our Rising Female Stars have for their solution providers? We asked some of them earlier this year (before the coronavirus became a global pandemic) what the keys to success would be for their partners in 2020. Here’s what a few of them had to say about defining value, selling with empathy and focusing on hot technologies like 5G, artificial intelligence and hybrid cloud.
Julia Chen
VP, Partner Transformation
Cisco Systems
In today’s changing customer and technology landscapes, we see a greater need for partners to defi ne their own unique customer value. When partners add their diff erentiation on top of Cisco’s technology innovation, they can deliver better business outcomes and grow their profi tability. We also see a need to increase the focus on ensuring customers see value from their investments through the entire life cycle. This includes off ering partner lifecycle services to drive technology activation, adoption, expansion and renewals. This focus not only leads to high-margin professional services, but greater customer loyalty and renewal rates.
Ladina Lane
Sr. Marketing Specialist
Panasonic System Solutions Company of North America
Adopting a solutions-focused mindset and a strong understanding of the customer’s perspective will be key to channel partners’ success in 2020. It is important for customers to become experts at positioning customizable solutions that combine software, accessories, services and hardware. This goal will help position them as trusted technology advisers capable of transforming the ways customers perform work instead of solely as device providers. Empathy will be key, as partners should put themselves in the shoes of their customers to connect with their working experience and business challenges.
Nicola Sheppard
Director, Global Partner, OEM Business Transformation
Dell Technologies
Ignite the relationship with Dell Technologies across our family of businesses, embrace the new decade of digital transformation and innovation with 5G and [artifi cial intelligence] while empowering our joint customers to leverage advanced data analytics to drive positive change for our environment and how our future generations consume data.
Cheryl Rang
Director, Advanced Solutions
Ingram Micro
Generally speaking, it’s embracing the fast pace of this industry and really taking the time to understand what the customer wants and needs. We’re seeing a lot of energy and eff orts around hybrid cloud, and partners need to be clear on what it takes to manage that infrastructure and introduce new workload effi ciencies that will, in turn, benefi t their customers greatly.
Kim Carlton
Director, Channel Marketing, Sales Development
Intel
Growth! Growth through partnerships and delivering innovative technology solutions to their customers that solve their customers’ business challenges.
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