SonicWall

Steve Pataky

VP Worldwide Sales

I've been personally involved with a long-standing North American partner concerned about declining profitability. At this time, we reduced grey marketing on our products and named a strategy of doing more with our key partners, contributing to increased partner profitability. We figured that we needed to focus on what differentiated this partner from the rest of the channel, capitalize on markets where they have particular expertise and support them in go to market efforts.

We launched new initiatives, reinforcing them with our field organization. After one quarter, the profitability started to ramp back to levels that we all want to see.