The VAR Guy

Seeking to drive Lenovo’s channel revenues north, Jay McBain (pictured) packed his bags and headed south. Indeed, McBain moved from Canada to Lenovo’s headquarters in North Carolina, in order to serve as the company’s new director for North American channel sales. The VAR Guy caught up with McBain last week to get a feel for his current priorities.

First, a little background. Lenovo has spent recent weeks launching new marketing tools to help channel partners target small and midsize customers. Moreover, Lenovo is developing a new partner portal and piecing together a managed services strategy for partners.

Point, Click, Partner

Also on tap: A redesigned partner portal that’s scheduled to launch shortly, as shown in this preview image:

“Our entire business, from the channel team right on up to our CEO, are on a mission,” says McBain. “We’re expanding our aperture and audience from enterprises to VARs serving the small and midsize business space.”

Lower Prices, Without Lower Quality

The trick for Lenovo is finding a way to introduce SMB computers that start at the $300 to $400 range without selling the company’s soul and sacrificing product quality, asserts McBain. He points to the G530 notebooks as devices that deliver on that promise. “The idea is to make sure we have good, better and best SKUs in each product category,” McBain adds.

Of course, this is more than an affordable hardware story. McBain and his Lenovo peers are on the road in multiple cities to “get the message out” to VARs about the company’s mobile, desktop and server portfolios.

For instance: During McBain’s chat with The VAR Guy, Lenovo was busy in Miami, describing products, pricing and promotional information to VARs. “This isn’t about messaging on a single Web site or through a single email,” McBain says. “So many parts of the partner ecosystem work in different ways. We have to be everywhere.”

The initiative includes viral videos on YouTube, a Facebook fan page and product deals promoted through Twitter. Hmm. Sounds a little like The VAR Guy’s own viral content efforts.

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