'We've brought the plane closer to the ground' - HPE's channel boss as vendor launches partner sales community

Channel will now have access to the same sales resources as the vendor's own salespeople

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has launched a new sales community which it says will bring partners closer to its own salesforce.

The launch of Sales Pro comes a year after HPE launched Marketing Pro and three months after it launched Tech Pro.

Each community pulls together relevant resources for partners and internal HPE staff which were previously dispersed across different platforms.

Paul Hunter (pictured), HPE's global channel boss, said the move is part of a wider strategy to make the vendor easier to work with for partners.

"We made some significant changes to our programme, which we announced at this event a year ago," he said. "The programme changes were to essentially extend, and build with our partners, our solutions business.

"Our programme used to fly at 20,000 feet; it was pretty generic and it used to recognise size. If you were a big partner you were top tier. Then in 2018 we started to bring the plane closer to the ground and started to reward investments in expertise and selling solutions, and accelerate partners through our tiers where they were growing expertise with us.

"Prior to that we hadn't updated our programme for four years and what we essentially did was incentivise our partners and give them the opportunity to invest in the future with us. Our rebates are designed to do that."

HPE says that the channel will now have access to the same sales resources as its own salespeople, with the objective of bringing partners close to the vendor.

The community will give partners access to news, tools, training, resources and support mechanisms.

HPE is encouraging all partners to join, claiming that suppliers already engaged with the Tech Pro community, which launched earlier this year, are seeing sales of 4.5 times the revenue of partners not part of the community.

HPE's VP of worldwide partner enablement Steven Hagler said that it has historically been tricky for partners to locate the information they need.

"We have had a lot of great material out there but it has not always been the easiest for people to understand and for people to get behind a single approach," he said.

"We want the salesforce to get exactly the same material, whether you are an HPE agent or you're a partner."

Speaking to partners in his keynote, channel boss Hunter said that HPE has also been revamping its systems and processes to make interactions easier for partners.

He said that HPE has introduced new configuration and quoting tools, while last week it announced HPE Technomics, which allows partners to engage with HPE's financial services arm.

He also said that a new system will see the length of time taken to generate quotes for HPE's GreenLake consumption models shrink from up to 20 hours to 15 minutes.

"You've said that working with us was too hard, slow and cumbersome," he said.

"Over the last four years, our Net Promoter Score has consistently improved and this year it reached 68.

"We have been implementing improvements in systems and making investments."