HP Unveils Attach Rate Outline
“What we have announced today are promotions and opportunities around the attach area,” said John Thompson, HP’s vice president and general manager of Solution Partners Organization Americas at last week’s CMP XChange Solution Provider conference in Atlanta. “We want to allow you to get aggressive this quarter.”
Thompson said that partners should see Palo Alto, Calif.-based HP roll out a more formalized attach-rate program in 2006. “We’re looking at how we can best move PartnerOne forward,” he said. “We are looking for the upside opportunity for partners and what will enable them to grow.”
HP is offering solution providers who increase their attach ratio of HP products by 20 percent in the second quarter compared to second-quarter 2005 rebates on all options, storage or service sales. Rebate percentages vary by product and promotion, and no registration or claiming is required.
Larry Riley, sales manager for CPUSA, a New York solution provider, praised HP’s decision to introduce partner program changes that recognize the broad offerings sold by its partners. “What this does is requires you, as a partner, to look at your full line of sales with HP rather than just a single product line,” he said. “It recognizes the whole sale. It makes a lot of sense.”
In addition to attach-rate incentives, HP is offering rebates of up to $1,500 on select DL580 ProLiant servers, Thompson said. He also said that partners who register ProCurve Networking deals for new customers greater than $25,000 can earn a 15 percent rebate per deal.
Thompson said that the rebates are part of HP’s overall strategy to keep solution provider momentum strong in the SMB market. Thompson noted that HP has seen nine straight quarters of channel partner revenue growth. Partner sales for imaging and printing are up 6 percent year over year, notebooks are up 17 percent, workstations 18 percent and storage 13 percent.
“HP is on a roll, and you are the ones that helped deliver those strong earnings,” he said, noting that partner sales were one of the main drivers behind HP’s recent earnings turnaround.