The new partner-led storage go-to-market strategy announced by Dell Technologies comes with job cuts that have been roiling the company since Monday, rippling through sales professionals in data center, Apex and among enterprise accounts as the company prepares to shift more of that revenue toward the channel.
One laid-off worker who focused on Dell Apex enterprise accounts described the cuts as “large.”
“After 18 years at Dell I have been notified that I am part of this latest round of workforce reductions,” one employee wrote. “I have enjoyed my time at Dell and appreciate the many people I have had a chance to work with.”
The 25 #opentowork posts from Dell employees in the last 24 hours have come from U.S.-based employees.
[RELATED: Dell Confirms Sales Layoffs As Part Of New Partner-Led Storage Strategy]ADVERTISEMENT
Dell confirmed to CRN that “some” layoffs would come as a result of its new strategy. Dell did not say whether these were a part of the 6,650 cuts that were announced in February.
“Some members of our sales team will leave the company. We don’t make these decisions lightly, and we’ll support those impacted as they transition to their next opportunity,” a Dell spokesperson said. “We’re always assessing our business to remain competitive and ensure we’re set up to deliver the best innovation, value and service to our customers and partners.”
Of the dozens who announced their job loss on LinkedIn, most appeared to work in sales: an Apex account executive, data center and technical sales reps, and account managers appeared frequently among the titles.
“My time with this incredible company has come to an end,” one technical sales rep wrote Monday.
Some of those employees impacted by the layoffs include:
* A sales manager with seven years of experience
* A technical sales representative with five years of experience
* A sales manager with five years of experience
* A data center sales executive with five years of experience
* A services sales representative with five years of experience
* An advisory solutions architect with five years of experience
* A cloud solutions architect with five years of experience
* A financial account manager with four years of experience
* A data center platform specialist with one year of experience
* A solutions architect with less than a year of experience
Since the go-to-market motion was announced Monday, Wall Street has sent Dell stock prices to their highest point since February 2022, with shares trading 10 percent higher than Friday’s close at $58.51.
Dell President of Sales and Customer Operations Bill Scannell called the sales strategy the biggest change ever to the company’s go-to-market.
“This is massive. This is exciting. We’ve been working on this for a while because we want to make sure we get it right. But we got it right and it’s supported by Michael Dell, [Vice Chairman and COO] Jeff Clarke, all the way through the organization.”
In a statement, Michael Dell hailed the move as proof that the company’s investment in partnerships runs deep.
“We have decades of experience working with our partner community to accelerate transformation for our customers,” he said. “The ‘partner-first strategy for storage’ extends our partner commitment and unites the strengths of our partners with the advantages of our world-class team and solutions.”
The plan increases compensation for Dell’s direct sales force if they move storage deals through the channel. In addition, Dell has opened up what it considers a “partner of record” to include four times more partners than it currently has to expand the field of opportunity for its sales reps.
Dell has a market-leading 31.5 percent of the enterprise storage market, according to the latest figures from IDC. The new sales motion applies to PowerMax, PowerFlex, PowerStore, PowerScale as well as hyperconverged and converged products, and security storage products.
Dell holds the No. 1 spot with software storage with 11.5 percent, according to June numbers from IDC.LEARN MORE: Channel Programs | Servers
O’Ryan Johnson is a veteran news reporter. He covers the data center beat for CRN and hopes to hear from channel partners about how he can improve his coverage and write the stories they want to read. He can be reached at [email protected]..
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