HP Global Partner Conference: 10 New Ways For Partners To Drive Sales Growth

Driving Partner Sales Transformation

HP Monday kicked off its annual Global Partner Conference with major changes aimed at helping partners drive sales growth as the company splits in two. Here are the top 10 game-changers for HP partners.

1. HP Partner Navigator

HP is launching a program called Partner Navigator to help solution providers manage the computer giant's split into two new Fortune 50 companies. The program includes HP-funded headcount for top partners to ensure a smooth transition. It also includes expanded HP call center support for partners buying HP products through distributors.

"I was speechless when I learned about this program," said Kris Rogers, senior vice president of partner and product management at PCM, which counts HP as its largest vendor partner. "It is just the right thing to do.

"Everything happening with the Navigator and the split is very cool," said Rogers. "HP is massively organized and very proactive. I am not losing a minute's sleep over the separation."

2. HP Partner One Alliance

HP's new Partner One Alliance, a "frequent flyer" like program, is aimed at providing a rich sent of incentives for partners who do business with both new HP publicly held companies.

HP is promising that the alliance will ensure more leads and deal opportunities and increased MDF for solution providers that do business with both new companies.

"As a partner, your business opportunities and business life becomes better when you deal with HP Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise," said Vincent Brissot, vice president of worldwide channel marketing for HP's Printing and Personal Systems business, in an interview with CRN.

3. HP Mobility Certification

HP is upping the ante in its mobility market offensive with a mobility certification for partners. The new certification, which will launch in the U.S. and certain European countries May 1, provides partners with a new set of mobility sales tools designed for vertical markets including health care, retail and education.

The new tools are aimed at helping partners drive "business-outcome-focused’ sales discussions such as how companies can increase workforce productivity. The new certification comes just two months after a product blitz that increased HP's business mobility product lineup from two to 11 offerings.

4. HP Proactive Connected Care

Call it managed services on steroids. HP is making available Proactive Connected Care support services tools that partners cannot only sell, but deliver as well. The new tools provide partners with critical managed services tools that will allow them to proactively monitor their customer's IT environments.

"We are actually supplying partners with information that allows them to proactively go into accounts and address it before anything happens," said Patrick Eitenbichler, director of marketing for PartnerOne Strategy at HP.

5. HP Financial Services Options

One of the crown jewels of HP's partner program is HP Financial Services, and the company has upped the maximum additional margin partners can make on deals that run through HP Financial Services to 5 percent. HP Financial Services also has a subscription offering that provides the device, service and a technology refresh under a single technology contract. That new subscription offering goes into effect on May 1.

"This is a huge impact to the partner bottom line and from a customer loyalty and retention perspective has a big impact as well," said Eitenbichler. "It's the best-kept secret. We have never effectively communicated to our partners that the margin opportunity is this great."

6. Value Track For HP Inc.

HP Inc. is setting the stage to drive more services growth with a new commercial partner program that includes a Value Track that will take effect Nov. 1. The program is aimed at driving more business around managed print, mobility services, and even everything-as-a-service while at the same time maintaining momentum on transactional PC and print products.

"This is all about helping partners move from a transactional model into everything-as-a-service," said Brissot.

7. Sales Transformation Plays For Partners

HP is aligning all of its sales tools and enablement for partners and internal sales and marketing teams around four specific market opportunities: transforming to an on-demand infrastructure; securing digital assets; empowering a big-data-driven enterprise; and enabling the digital workplace.

"We are expanding the discussion that a partner can have with the customer, extending their capabilities and helping them change the dialogue with clients from a reactive discussion to a proactive discussion," said HP Vice President Global Channel Services Dave Twohy. "This goes beyond support and implementation services. This is transformational services designed to help customers understand their current environment, their desired environment and then put together a specific bridge to get there."

8. HP Helion Partner Marketplace

HP is debuting a partner marketplace aimed at a helping partners sell and provision a wide range of cloud services based on HP's Helion cloud platform. HP plans to go live with the new marketplace by the end of June.

"The big bang is we are creating an efficient way for partners to deliver complete hybrid solutions to their customers," said Steven Dietch, vice president of cloud go to market for the HP Cloud Business unit. "This is a platform for partners to discover, sell, provision, manage and build new cloud services from third-party service providers that will include HP."

Partners will receive up to 20 percent margin on the cloud services they sell from the HP Helion Partner Marketplace, said Dietch. "Partners will also have the opportunity to sell their own professional services to manage this on behalf of their customers," he said.

9. Transformational Consulting Business Model

HP is also for the first time allowing partners to sell and deliver transformational consulting engagements based on proven HP services methodology. HP is rolling out a pilot program around the transformational consulting sales model effective May 1 with a formal rollout slated for Nov. 1.

"This is HP recognizing that the customer and the marketplace wants to be engaged differently," said Mark Dallmeier, vice president and CSO/CMO at Tempe, Ariz.-based HP Platinum partner IT Partners. "Customers want a value-added, higher-level, more holistic conversation. They don't want manufacturers pushing products on them. What they want is the right solution at the right cost to drive the right business outcome."

10. Services-Led Sales Model

Hewlett-Packard Enterprise is aiming to accelerate the highly profitable path to new style IT cloud era sales growth with a simplified sales certification for its enterprise partners.

The new Hewlett-Packard Enterprise sales certification, which goes into effect Nov. 1, eliminates the existing industry-standard model focused on particular product segments and replaces it with a single services certification. The single sales certification replaces nine existing product-sales-focused certifications.

"All of our competitors are focused on particular product areas whether it is server, storage or networking certifications," said Eitenbichler. "This is revolutionary in the industry. We are truly helping partners get the skills to help them grow their business."