IT'S IMPORTANT TO STAY AGILE AND FLEXIBLE TO THE CHANGING CUSTOMER NEEDS

JITHESH CHEMBIL
Head of Channels-India,
Pure Storage India Pvt. Ltd.

NEED OF A PARTNER PROGRAMME

Channel partners are critical for any organisation as they not only extend your reach into the market but also provide the local knowledge, expertise and close relationships with end-users. Pure has a 100% channel business model so our partners have the trust that we will never sell direct to customers. Our partners also provide additional value by adding their own services or complementary solutions to enhance the end user experience.

IMPORTANCE OF A PARTNER PROGRAMME

We think it's important to stay agile and flexible to changing customer requirements with innovative partner programmes but we believe the most important thing is to establish and maintain trust with our partners. For example in the past few months, we created a formalised lead passing program so that no leads get left behind. We want to make sure all leads have a dedicated resource reaching out to understand their business needs. Our experience shows, many times a new customer lead is looking for more than storage and this allows our partners to sell into their entire data center, creating even more business for our partners.

MAIN CONCERNS TO ADDRESS

Some of the things we take into consideration are making sure that we have the right incentives for our partners to train their employees and also sell our solutions. We also encourage our partners to create their own solution bundles depending on customer needs and we often help them with our internal technical and marketing resources.