Channel Superstar Terry Richardson To Lead HPE’s Multi-Billion Dollar East Enterprise Business

‘The message to partners is we listened,’ says new North America East Enterprise Sales Chief Terry Richardson. ‘The feedback has been consistent that they want an enhanced engagement experience. We listened on that. We made the necessary organization change.’

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Vice President Terry Richardson, who has led the HPE North America channel organization for the last seven years, is taking a new role overseeing the multi-billion dollar Enterprise business for the East region.

Richardson, who has consistently been ranked as one of the top channel sales leaders by CRN, said he is “excited” about his ability to have an even “bigger impact” on HPE enterprise sales growth.

“I’m excited to take on the new challenge,” said Richardson, who was the top vote-getter in CRN’s Channel Madness channel chief competition two years ago. “This industry is in transformation. Our team has to transform. We want to be the best option for customers that are making on premise and hybrid decisions for their workloads.”

Richardson – who moves into the new role effective Nov. 1 - said he sees the North America sales restructuring sparking more “active” engagement between partners and the HPE enterprise sales team. “One of my key priorities will be driving that in-geo alignment between the channel partners sales and pre-sales resources along with their HPE counterparts,” he said. “That means refining our co-selling strategies to collaborate together to deliver better solutions to our customers that impact their most important workloads with an eye toward continuing to grow at well above market rates. We’ll do that by taking share from our competitors which is always fun.”

Richardson said, he and new North America Channel Chief Leslie Maher have already started working on “knowledge transfer” to ensure a smooth, well coordinated channel transition.

Partners, for their part, said they see Richardson’s appointment as an enterprise sales game changer.

Felise Katz, CEO of PKA Technologies, Inc, New York, one of HPE’s top enterprise partners, said Richardson’s appointment to run the demanding enterprise East business is going to pay big dividends for partners.

“Terry Richardson has been a tremendous friend to the channel and a big asset for HPE,” said Katz. “Putting Terry in charge of the East is going to accelerate the growth of the business with partners at the center of it.”

Katz praised Belanger for giving Richardson the big responsibility for what may well be the most demanding technology solutions market. “The East Coast is a very different market with a big TAM (Total Addressable Market),” she said. “It needs someone who really understands that East enterprise customer like Terry.”

Katz said she sees the Richardson appointment as a reward for a job well done in the channel. “We are so happy for Terry,” she said. “I have never seen a channel transformation the likes of which he accomplished as channel chief. It’s exciting to have someone in the job who understands the relevance of what we do day in and day out. This is huge change for us.”

Al Chien, president of Dasher Technologies, one of Silicon Valley's top system integrators, No. 144 on the 2019 CRN Solution Provider 500, said Richardson’s appointment is a sure sign of how serious HPE is about driving enterprise sales growth.

“Putting Terry in charge of the East is going to bring channel oversight and discipline,” said Chien. “Terry is one of the finest channel executives I have ever had the privilege of working with He embraces the philosophy of partnership and how much more we can all do together versus separately. Terry always leans in when we need help.”

The changes come with HPE stepping up its fast growing GreenLake pay per use channel charge for the new fiscal year. “As we design our Fiscal year 2020 go to market strategies, GreenLake will be at the center,” said Richardson.

GreenLake, in fact, is key to driving a “customer for life” model with HPE and partners collaborating on long term, multi-year contractual pay per use relationships with customers, said Richardson.

The stability and consistency of the partner account teams is going to be key to continuing to drive GreenLake sales growth, said Richardson.

“All the work we have done this year to get partners to be comfortable with GreenLake is going to be really powerful as we put together trusted relationships with a consumption offering that is well timed to the market needs, helping customers essentially fund their transformation journey.”

Richardson said the organizational changes show that HPE is listening to partners and directly responding to calls for tighter engagement with HPE sales teams.

“The message to partners is we listened,” said Richardson. “The feedback has been consistent that they want an enhanced engagement experience. We listened on that. We made the necessary organization change”

HPE continues to make partner profitability a cornerstone of its PartnerReady program and assist partners with the as a services transformation by investing in the GreenLake partner model and the as a services channel transformation, said Richardson. That includes driving tight alignment with HPE’s Pointnext services organization, he said.

The restructuring combined with the ongoing channel investment makes it “an absolute terrific time for partners to lean in and redouble their efforts to focus on HPE,” he said.

Richardson said he couldn’t be happier about the HPE momentum going into Fiscal Year 2020 and the enterprise sales game plan.

“I feel really confident in this transition with a very strong team working with me,” he said. “The leadership team that covers channel and alliance partners underneath me is not changing. Folks are in the same roles. The team is really good. The opportunity is good. We know what’s in front of us.”