Lenovo has revealed that its SMB partner recruitment drive has been a success and its next course of action for the biggest sectors is further segmentation.
“When you look at the numbers, you’ll see our share growing very significantly in the SMB space, at a fast rate. To achieve that, we’ve been embarking on very aggressive recruitment programme and we’ve been able to grow significantly the number of business partners that are trading with us,” says Marc Godin, VP & general manager, Lenovo UK & Ireland.
“I would dare to say we’ve only scratched the surface in the sense that there is still a very large number of partners operating in the UK that we’d like to trade with. Moving forward, trading with small partners remains an absolute focus because we still have a way to go, so it’s a combination of us having the right partners, partner programmes with distribution, having the right incentives.”
The next step, he says is growing in specific market segments, starting in the midmarket space of between 250 and 500 employees.
“We have a different set of programmes, different incentives, but again, that’s another area for us to grow with business partners,” he says.
Godin says Lenovo is being more selective about what it is doing with segmentation though: “It’s not good enough to say I’m going after public sector, but here are our plans to go after health or here are our plans to go in education,” he explains.
“We need to break it down between further education and police, the force and central government and local government.
“There’s no sense of mission accomplished; it’s a journey. It’s a tough one and we hope we’ll be doing the right things moving forward.”
