HP Names New SMB Channel Sales Chief

"Certainly the economy is not optimal right now, but having said that, we still view this as a $60-billion opportunity for us in the SMB market," she told Channelweb.com.

Kelly will replace the recently retired Ramona Thibeault, former vice president of SMB sales in HP's channel organization for the Americas, HP announced Thursday. Kelly, who has more than 16 years of experience in developing business and account strategy at such high-tech companies as Motorola, Quantum and Veritas, and most recently on the SPO Americas team, starts as vice president of SMB channel sales and strategy effective Feb. 1.

Kelly said HP's rebooted SMB strategy assumes a three-tiered approach -- quantifying and directly targeting what small businesses need from IT providers, investing primarily in high-growth channel partners to drive gains in SMB market share and recruiting SMBs into HP's Partner One program.

"There are going to be some exciting announcements from HP on this front. We are targeting certain verticals as growing faster than others. If you look at the SMB market as a whole, it's vague, but if you start segmenting the market by size of a company you start to find real opportunities if you can identify the different strategies and buying behaviors in each of those segments," Kelly said.

What sort of SMB-targeted marketing goodies can HP partners expect in the coming days? One promotion from the computing giant that began this week offers SMBs up to $1,000 cash back on LaserJet printer trade-ins, and $350 off on three ProLiant servers.

Kelly said pushing HP product is important but that her goal is also to help partners build sustainable, recurring business with customers.

"We do want to make sure our partners are selling the entire portfolio of HP products. We have a huge edge -- nine out of 10 SMBs already own some HP product," she said.

"But we have to make sure we put the right products and solutions in place that not only serve [SMBs] best today but also for the future. It's not only about putting new boxes and hardware in there, but building the trusted adviser role again and again."