5 Tips From An HPE Channel Champion

Secrets To Succeeding In The Digital Transformation Era

HPE Vice President, U.S. Channel Sales Terry Richardson, who was voted the top channel chief in CRN's 2017 Channel Madness competition, says partners must make changes to be successful in the digital transformation era.

Richardson, a 30-year channel veteran who oversees all of the HPE's enterprise business partners across the country, has worked for a number of companies over the course of his career but says none has the breadth, depth and unmatched channel commitment of HPE.

"HPE has a history of 30-plus years of being fully committed to partners and growing together with those partners," he said. "We have been through a lot of transitions in this industry, but we have always stayed true to the channel. And the company has never been more committed than we are today to channel partners. They know and appreciate that."

Here's his advice.

Go Vertical

Business-outcome-based sales strategies require in-depth vertical knowledge.

"You are more effective if you can add value to the business in business terms, not just technology terms," said Richardson. "To be successful going forward, you have to drive business transformation"

Sell Outside Traditional IT

There is big growth in selling business-outcome-based solutions to lines of business rather than traditional IT.

"Because of the threat of disruption and the requirement to transform, line-of-business customers are increasingly spinning up new projects to generate revenue and reduce costs," he said.

DevOps Is Key

With workload portability and the need for rapid application updates, DevOps has become a key center of gravity for customers.

"By focusing on DevOps and solving their needs, partners are gaining insight into the future application needs of companies," said Richardson.

Become A Trusted Advisor Around Application Environments

The most successful partners are experienced in application requirements for private cloud, SaaS and public cloud.

"Every customer is different," he said. "The best partners are those that are able to have advanced discussions on all three options and are then able to present a well-architected environment that can be managed through a single pane of glass."

Take Advantage Of HPE's Top Sales Plays

It's critical, Richardson says, for partners to take advantage of HPE's top sales plays:

* Synergy composable infrastructure, which is being sold as a blade replacement

* Aruba, which is grabbing share at the intelligent edge and the fast growing internet of things market

* SimpliVity - HPE's recently acquired hyper-converged product line;

* 3Par All Flash - a storage stalwart which was recently updated with an inclusive all flash licensing model

* Nimble Storage - which provides a robust new all flash portfolio combined with InfoSight predictive analytics technology that is set to provide customers with dynamic insights and intelligence across the complete HPE storage portfolio.