Mind Your Business

When you hear the phrase, “Mind Your Business”, it may mean something quite different, depending on where you are located. In the U.S., we’re often suggesting that you not be nosy or not gossip. In Canada or the UK, we may be talking about paying attention. Have you seen the phrase “Mind the Gap” when riding the Tube in London? In that scenario, we’re talking about paying attention or being aware of the gap between the platform and the train itself.

In this blog, we’ll come from a place of “pay attention” - to your business, that is.

At NetApp, I lead a global Partner Programs Management team. Our ambition is to execute a global Partner Program Management strategy that accelerates partner growth and profitability and delivers an exceptional partner experience.

We are passionate about what we do with a goal of providing the optimum partner experience. Below are a few examples of the tools we’ve recently championed to help our partners better “mind their business”.

Channel Incentive Portal: Tools like the Channel Incentive Portal provide quick and easy visibility for partners into their NetApp business.  The Portal shows historical quarterly rebate payment information for all partner incentives.

For our New Account Incentive, we’re also delivering upfront discounts for some configurations versus backend rebates. And we have claimless seller incentives that deliver (cash) rewards for sales performance, putting payments directly in the hands of individual sellers and solutions engineers. These enhancements to our incentives provide greater profitability to partner companies and motivation to sellers.

You might have read Kelly Brady’s recent blog post “Listening and Reacting Are the Stepping-Stones to Change and Success” where she describes the annual NetApp Partner Experience Survey, which is our structured way to get a pulse on our partnerships, to learn what is working, what is not and where improvement is warranted. Each year, we listen to our partners and make changes that make doing business together easier and more productive.

We continually poll our partners for input and work to align with how they think when they decide to invest in NetApp. We strive to provide them with the best possible tools and resources to enable success and sales cycle support and incentives that promote profitability.

Our partners are encouraged to update their Partner Hub Profiles and “opt in” to receive surveys and participate in the next NetApp Partner Experience Survey. The inputs we receive will help shape our partnership going forward.