Realigning Dell's Sales Force Will Affect Channel

With 40 percent of Dell's revenue now coming via the channel, the company's relationship with its partners has been one of its key focuses in the past year. In fact, Dell reports that deal registrations involving partners were just shy of 200,000 in the first half of 2015. Dell also reports that it has generated 40,000 leads for partners via roughly 800 demand-generation campaigns. Aiming to gain market share across its product categories, the company is adding 1,000 direct sales representatives in North America along with providing new rebates and incentives in key product categories, the company revealed at Dell World 2015 conference from Oct. 20 to 22. Beginning Feb. 1, Dell will realign its sales force geographically, with regions in the east, central and west of North America. Once that alignment occurs, Dell will focus on aligning its channel with those sales teams. That's no small undertaking, but Dell executives hope the result will be to generate much higher sales to help reduce the debt load the company is carrying in the wake of going private two years ago. Dell's realignment of its direct sales force has major implications for the company's channel partners in 2016.