ESG's Kevin Rhone and Cheryl Cook of Dell Technologies discuss how Dell has worked with its channel partners to ensure their success during the current market situation.
Kevin: Hi, I'd like to welcome Cheryl Cook from Dell Technologies onto our call today. Cheryl, how are you?
Cheryl: I'm great, Kevin. Thanks for having me.
Kevin: Great. Thanks so much for joining us. I want to start off by mentioning how impressed I was with Dell's response to the initial COVID-19 lockdown. The partner stimulus package was creative. It addressed many partner concerns about their organizations, their cash flow, their customers. And I really liked the way that it rewarded partners for doing the smart thing in the long-term investing in training and education for their teams.
Can you shed some light into how, you know, Dell partners are investing and leveraging your programs?
Cheryl: Well, thank you, Kevin. And I appreciate the kind words. And, you know, we ust listen to our partners. So beyond the stimulus package you referenced, you know, we did get a request for assistance on digital marketing. So we put a host of training and how-to guides and social media guidelines, playbooks, a lot of digital campaigns tools.
And we've hosted and launched a digital marketing forum, a series of just speaking to luminaries in our executives on best practices, lessons learned on how to really drive your business in this virtual environment when we're no longer having in-person events.
Kevin: Is there anything in particular that you see as a best practice for partners that are putting into place to keep the top of their funnels really strong?
Cheryl: Yeah, well, I would say we're all doing these Zoom meetings as we are here. And we're finding that you can really reach a lot of your customers and you can put a lot of your subject matter experts or your executives in these sessions and reach a broader audience than you might have otherwise. So we're finding the engagement is high, the ability to attract and reach more people is actually broader.
Our NPS scores from our customers and partners are actually equal to or better than our in-person events. So, I would say those partners that pivoted quickly to these virtual alternatives instead of in-person events, they're finding that they can navigate business continuity and really meet their customers where they are, and are doing quite well.
Kevin: We see partners making these adaptations and having a real opportunity right now to both support their customers in the short-term, but equally as importantly, transition to helping them reimagine IT delivery in whatever this new environment ends up being in the long term.
Can you kind of summarize some of the learnings that you have that kind of shaped the way that you hope to interact with your partners, and the programs, and strategies they have going forward?
Cheryl: We absolutely are seeing those partners that are leading with services, investing in their capabilities beyond just, you know, the immediate need that we all saw around work from home solutions and how to drive business continuity. We're finding that they're going back to harden those environments. For example, security is a big threat as everybody's working from home.
And I've had partners share with me that when they work on cybersecurity assessments, security evaluations, which is a services-led motion, it pulls through a lot of infrastructure sales and infrastructure solutions to really harden the environments correctly. So really meeting those customers, even if it's through a virtual forum like this, but addressing the solution need, those partners are navigating quite successfully.
Kevin: What are you seeing as the things the best partners are doing to not only serve their customers but get even closer with Dell, in terms of being able to make that connection and deliver technology for the next generation?
Cheryl: You know, we've been coining the term a little bit that while we're apart, in many ways, we've never been closer. So it's actually created a great unique opportunity to engage tighter on solutions. We're finding that many of our partners are leveraging and adopting a lot of our remote monitoring, remote diagnostics, remote management toolsets, and capabilities when they can no longer go on site.
Even in this climate of where the macroeconomic environment is a little unsure, security is real. So that coupled with really hardening the environments, you know, partners that are leaning in on their training, their certifications, we've been busy innovating, launching a bunch of products, even in this timeframe.
So staying current, they're able to really be agile and navigate to meet the needs of their customers in this environment.
Kevin: Hey Cheryl, I want to thank you very much for spending the time today. Interesting topics and certainly valuable information for our joint partners.
Cheryl: Yeah, thank you so much, Kevin.
Kevin: Hope all as well.
Cheryl: Thank you. You too.
