Continuing with our series on leaders of our channel business in Asia (see part 1 and part 2, I would like to share some insights from Richard Lee, our new Channel Sales VP for Asia Pacific & Japan.
Richard is a veteran in the IT field in Asia, and in his 21+ years of experience running sales he has worked with channel partners from across the region. He is a qualified engineer but his passion is for sales! He spent a large part of his career at HP, but for the last five years he’s been with Dell in various sales capacities at the regional level. Richard’s expertise is in growing business and he has plenty of stories to tell. For this blog, Richard shared some of his views on driving success and growth with partners.
Growing the Business with Partners
- Engage in win-win situations – Companies need to understand each other and identify where they complement, recognize the areas where both parties can be profitable, and leverage each other’s resources. Spend time to understand the critical success factors that drive the companies forward, and find synergies to win in the market.
- Understand the market and jointly develop a solid business plan. Drive tactical short term wins against the longer term plan.
- Work as one team. Have mutual trust to execute well. Without trust there will be more bureaucracy which will cause delays. Trust drives execution.
- Do not make decisions without having sufficient information. Make sure you really understand the bigger picture of what customers need and the problems they’re trying to solve. Don’t come to conclusions too soon and offer something that won’t meet customers’ expectations.
- Do not limit the engagement to a person-to-person level. This will only achieve short-term results. A good partnership should have strong company management commitment and successful sales people are those who can elevate relationships to the highest levels.
Best Time to be in Asia
Richard is a native of Singapore, but he spent the last 11 years in China, which is the second largest market for Dell after the US and is a country with immense opportunities. Asia Pacific is home to many other emerging markets such as India, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.
“There are huge opportunities with the rise of IT ’consumerization‘ – bringing the home environment to the work environment – with information being accessed at any time and any place,” says Richard.
In Asia, most countries quickly adopted new technologies leapfrogging many of the western countries. Computing powers are shared and companies are starting to understand and adopt cloud technologies. The evolving needs of the mobile environment are challenging the IT management. The opportunity to build data center infrastructure and services are huge.
As Dell continues to increase its commitment to channel partners, Richard is driving his team to work much closer with partners in Asia to jointly capture these opportunities and deliver the best enterprise solutions to customers. He believes Dell has a very strong ability to execute, it is agile, and can quickly cater to the needs of the market. Channel partners are the field experts, help with the implementation and provide additional services. The partnership with our channel brings the best of both parties to the market.
It was great to hear from Richard and to learn what he is most passionate about. He’s very excited about the growth opportunities in our region and he’s eager to do all that he can to take Dell’s channel relationships in Asia to the next level.