The company’s North American channel chief says Lenovo is sticking to its core principles with partners, and reminding them it’s not just in the notebook market.
By Elaine J. Hom
It’s been a big year for PC maker Lenovo. The company, based in Research Triangle Park, N.C., held its first channel partner summit for North America in May and also announced its first line of tablet computers. Yet even in a year of firsts, Lenovo is staying the course when it comes to its channel program strategy. Chris Frey, Lenovo’s North American channel chief, talks about that strategy and some goals for partners.
ChannelPro-SMB: What is Lenovo’s partner program strategy?
Frey: We’re sticking to our core principles of being simple, predictable, and consistent. There may be times when we have to tweak certain things in certain programs depending on market dynamics, but in general terms, we’re going to stick to the simple, predictable, consistent program that our partners have grown to expect from us.
We have to earn every single day with the partner community. [We do that] by talking to partners about their businesses and making Lenovo a manufacturer that cares about the channel partner and the partner’s objectives, and not just our own corporate objectives. It’s important that Lenovo fits into the business partner’s strategies vs. trying to wedge the partners in where we want them to go. We don’t believe that’s a channel-first strategy.
ChannelPro-SMB: What kind of enablement does Lenovo offer partners?
Frey: We’re making a lot of great strides in our enablement as it relates to our website and our go-to-market [strategy] as it relates to social media. We’re going to continue to make sure we have the offerings available to our partners to view on our partner portal. It will continue to refresh and get better over next year.
If we as a manufacturer can make it easy for the business partner to do business with us, then it’s a winning combination. This way, the partners don’t need to spend a large amount of time understanding how to stack the programs and make money. That’s our goal and that’s our enablement that will go across multiple fronts.
ChannelPro-SMB: Are there any recent updates to Lenovo’s partner program?
Frey: The Lenovo Financial Services program [announced in June] runs through distribution in the U.S. now and is expected [this month] for Canada. Lenovo believes that credit is still a problem for regional business partners. It’s not so much a problem to get a credit line, but the problem lies in the flexibility within the credit line, which dictates how quickly they can go after new business.
We’re trying to give some credit relief out in the marketplace. By offering Lenovo Financial Services, in which end-user financing is part of our strategy, we finally have a nice beginning and end in a financing program that helps multiple players in the market. We think about the manufacturer, the channel, the end user, and make sure there’s a value proposition for everybody.
ChannelPro-SMB: What are your partner program goals through 2011?
Frey: We have two goals. The first is to go out and talk to the partner community about line convergence, to make sure they know we’re not just in the notebook business. We need our business partners to understand that we sell other products that have the same innovation and reliability as ThinkPads. By doing that education and enablement, we give partners an opportunity to drive product on our behalf.
Our second goal is to let programs resonate in the marketplace so that we don’t overwhelm the channel or distract it to the point where we can’t measure results. We’re going to be focused on our [consistent] strategy, and once we believe that’s resonated through the channel, we’ll take the next step.
