Eaton Goes The Extra Mile To Drive Partner Services And Independence

Power management superstar Eaton wants to take solution providers by the hand and quickly enable them to generate recurring revenue by offering free power assessments to their customers as well as 20 percent discounts on deal registrations.

"We have someone that can go in there and represent you for a power assessment. We will even walk in there wearing your shirt because we don't take that business -- that's your business," said Rick James, national account manager, distribution, for Eaton during a session at XChange 2018. "If you want Rick James to do a site visit, I'm coming."

Eaton's goal is to enable partners to become completely independent, allowing them to generate as much recurring revenue as possible, James said. Selling intelligent power management offerings is an opportunity many solution providers are missing out on.

"We want to teach you how to become independent so you're not dependent on Eaton to do this. Then it's a recurring revenue where you don’t even have to share the pie with Eaton. Yes, that is something we want to do -- make you independent," said James.

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Haggai Davis, director of sales for EMCO Technologies, a Baton Rouge, La.-based Eaton partner, said Eaton has been an ideal vendor that goes out of its way to form tight relationships and sales enablement with partners.

"They've formed a deep relationship with us to help increase our business," said Davis, whose company focuses on the SMB market. "[Eaton IT Chanel Manager] Jon Boggs actually comes to Baton Rouge and he's been to my office several times -- that's huge. Most manufacturers don't stop in Baton Rouge, so we never see them. [Eaton] always follows up with phone calls and emails. They're a true partner who wants to develop a great relationship with us and help us any way they can."

The data center powerhouse has been doubling down on software solutions and partner training in 2018 with the goal to drive net-new services sales for the channel. Eaton also is pushing partners to engage in Internet of Things and edge computing power management opportunities with customers through new tools and go-to-market strategies.

James said solution providers can quickly create a power management practice with Eaton as the vendor offers a slew of trainings and incentives to become a partner, including a 20 percent discount when a solution provider registers an Eaton deal tied to an alliance partner such as Dell EMC, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, NetApp and VMware.

"If you're already selling HPE, Citrix, Cisco, VMware, Nutanix -- you already are supplying these solutions. This is an opportunity to say, 'Let me look at a full solution for you. What kind of power are you drawing on these? What kind of power supplies are you looking for on these? If I put together this full solution, can I also talk to you about what you're plugging it into?’" said James. "These are the simple questions. We want to teach you how to do that yourself, not to just try to upsell."

Eaton's goal is to help partners gain a competitive advantage by managing power for customers more efficiently and effectively with validated solutions integrated with leading IT providers. James encouraged non-Eaton partners to schedule Eaton alliance message trainings for their account and program managers so they can start to include power management, especially software, in all their quotes.

"We want you to become the subject matter expert, not us," said James.