HP NAMES NEW SMB CHANNEL SALES CHIEF

[Anonymous]

http://www.crn.com/small-business/212902045
HP Names New SMB Channel Sales Chief
Hewlett-Packard 
is putting a new emphasis on reaching small businesses through its
partner channel, appointing Meaghan Kelly as HP Americas Solution
Partners Organization (SPO) sales development strategist to lead an
SMB-focused team within the SPO.”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.” 

[Author]

January 26, 2009 at 10:52 AM