HPE Global Sales Chief Davis Calls For An 'Outside-In' Mind-Set, Names 30-Year HPE Veteran To Lead North American Business

New Hewlett Packard Enterprise Global Sales Chief Phil Davis has named his 11 geography sales chiefs, including the appointment of 30-year highly respected HPE sales veteran Dan Belanger, to lead the North American business.

In an internal memo, Davis, who is overseeing a massive global sales force transformation, urged his sales team and HPE employees to take an "outside-in" approach to the business.

"No matter the role, everyone at HPE is in sales. Whether you are selling to a customer or partner, or supporting a sales rep, we all have a responsibility to sell," Davis wrote in an internal memo announcing the next level of sales leaders for the new organization. "Therefore, everyone must adopt an 'outside-in' mind-set focused on delivering value to our customers."

The HPE Next initiative is aimed at re-architecting and simplifying the structure of the company with as much as $200 million to $300 million in cost savings.

Davis, who officially takes the global sales job Nov. 1, says that the new structure strikes at the heart of what HPE needs to do to win in the marketplace: "concentrate the majority of our resources into geographies with the most growth opportunities, and simplify our layers so we can get closer to our customers and become easier to do business with."

As for the appointment of Belanger, Davis said there simply was no better choice internal or external to lead the U.S. sales charge. "Dan is passionate about winning, partners and customers," said Davis. "He is a great competitor. He has come up through the ranks in sales. I don't think you can progress in sales if you are not custome-centric. Dan demonstrates all of those things. As we looked both internal and external, Dan was a complete no-brainer."

Belanger, who was previously overseeing the East Region Americas, is already focused on driving changes aimed at making it easier for partners and customers to do business with HPE, said Davis. "He is very open and receptive to change," said Davis.

Partners, for their part, said they couldn't be more pleased with the appointment of Belanger given the HPE veteran's channel track record.

Ken Lamneck, CEO of Insight Enterprises, the national $5.5 billion solution provider behemoth that has been driving double-digit HPE sales growth, said Belanger was a great choice to lead the North American business.

"Dan is a known quantity for everyone in the channel," said Lamneck. "He has had many different jobs within HPE and knows the organization inside out. He know how HPE operates and how to get things done very quickly."

The other top sales chiefs for the new HPE regions are Gilles Thiebaut, France; Heiko Meyer, Germany, Austria and Switzerland (also known as DACH); Marc Waters, United Kingdom and Ireland; Jose Maria de la Torre, Southern Europe; Luc Opdebeeck, Northern Europe; Johannes Koch, Middle East, Africa & Eastern Europe; Alfredo Yepez, Latin America; Narinder Kapoor, Asia-Pacific; Hitoshi Yoshida, Japan; and Som Satsangi, India.

As part of what Davis called HPE's drive to better serve partners, he also named HPE Global Channel Chief Denzil Samuels to oversee a new combined channel and alliances organization. "Partnership is in our DNA and is one of our company’s three core values," said Davis in an internal memo. "The partner landscape continues to evolve and change and, as a result, some of the traditional lines between our partner types continue to blur."

Davis has implemented a wide-ranging set of initiatives in Asia-Pacific that are being rolled out worldwide, including a breakthrough Partner of the Future workshop program. "Customers are transforming and that is causing partners to change their business models," said Davis. "With our Partner of the Future workshops we are getting out in front of that with our partners to help them be successful in that new world."

HPE has been proactive, even adding a new Partner Ready for Service Provider program. "Many of the partners want to change their business model to add richer services, or add as-a-service capabilities or to be able to provision infrastructure on an as-needed basis," said Davis. "From our standpoint, we have to look at how do we change our offerings, programs and capabilities to enable that."

Davis has pledged to drive a DevOps-like business model transformation for HPE and its partners. "Complexity is a burden and drags us down," he wrote in an internal memo. "Be brave in removing old constructs – ’this is the way we always do it’ simply will not work anymore in a world that is moving so quickly."