Scaling With VARs And OEMs: Nexenta CEO Evan Powell (Part 5)

Sramana: Let’s explore the OEM relationship a bit more. What is the end product of your OEM partner?

Evan Powell: Compellent has a product called zNAS. They sell blocked storage, and we run on top of that to give you network attached storage. They ended up announcing to the world that they are partnering with us. I would say 95% of the sales and support is handled as a true OEM. They find and support the customers. We rebranded and configured out product lightly for them. That being said we did maintain our overlay sales structure there as well.

Establishing an OEM or other VAR deal is actually a lot of work, more so than selling directly. Their sales force does not understand your product as well as you do, and you need to compensate for that. Once the value proposition is clear then it becomes easier for their sales teams. We have structured our incentive packages to our sales teams to where the focus is on our partner’s success.

Sramana: Do you do the sales, or does your OEM partner handle the sales?

Evan Powell: Both. We have overlaid a sales channel on top of our OEM and VAR partners to support and augment them. The sales do eventually go through them because they are the ones who implement our software on their hardware.

Sramana: How do you structure an overlay sales channel? If you are working with 240 VARs and an OEM partner, how is the sales force compensated?

Evan Powell: First, you need leads. The open core model gets us those in every metropolitan area in the world. These are people who have already installed Nexenta and are asking for a trial or community license. We have a couple hundred of those a day. When we find a partner that looks interesting we can show them the interested users in their area. That piece is critical, but it begs the question, whose lead is it? because it only takes giving one partner’s leads to someone else once to lose that reputation. For that reason, we qualify each lead.

We communicate with every one of them via email or phone to make sure that they are not an existing partners customer. If it is a net new lead and they are interested in a total solution, we can provide that lead to a partner. Our inside sales team does that qualification. We also have regional managers who own a region of the globe and they are compensated based on all sales in that region. If they get enough partners going then they can do well. They have a P&L for our region. That structure incentivizes them to get partners going in their region.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Scaling With VARs And OEMs: Nexenta CEO Evan Powell
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