Pleasing partners
Dell announced yesterday that it was lowering the threshold for PartnerDirect Deal Registration from £30,000 to £20,000, and introduced a new threshold for storage deals of £10,000.
While, at first, this looked like an attempt to recruit more partners, it turns out the move was driven by feedback from partners. So we spoke to Dell UK channel country manager Paul Harrison (pictured) to find out what prompted the change.
"We're listening to our partners and it was felt that we should the mid-size portfolio by lowering the threshold," said Harrison. "We wanted to give the full Dell commercial and marketing support to partners playing in that space and it shows the programme's working, because partners want us to expand it."
The PartnerDirect scheme works by encouraging Dell partners to register a piece of business on the partner portal. After being assessed and approved by Dell (on average, 70 percent of registrations are approved), the partner then gets assistance, advice and even financial support from Dell to help them close the deal and deliver the service.
What this move seems to indicate is a desire for Dell to expand the amount of business it does with its existing partners rather than recruit new ones.
