Symantec CEO Steve Bennett said the company will rely heavily on its partners as it makes a major reduction in its sales force in the wake of the massive restructuring of the company.
In an interview with CRN Friday, Bennett said the company’s sales team will focus exclusively on global and high-end enterprise accounts, leaving other opportunities to strategic partners that have been successful.
“We are going to call on fewer people direct and let the channel take the lead on more customers,” Bennett said. “In my view, over time we will call on less accounts direct and free up more accounts to be handled entirely by partners for both creating and fulfilling demand.”
Bennett said the plan calls for major cuts to marketing and sales investments. As a percentage of revenue, marketing and sales will go from 41 percent of revenue to 27 percent, which falls more in line with the industry average. “You are going to see more use of e-commerce and telesales and in-product marketing,” Bennett said. “It will be a more effective and more focused, direct sales-force coverage with more reliance on partners.”
Bennett replaced former CEO Enrique Salem in July following quarterly earnings that fell nearly 10 percent. He joined Symantec’s board in 2010 and was previously CEO of Intuit from 2000 to 2007. Shortly after taking the helm, Bennett pledged to refocus the company’s approach.
The Mountain View Calif.-based security giant unveiled Symantec 4.0 strategy this week, starting with organizational changes, including layoffs of reportedly 1,000 employees. The company also has plans for a complete reshuffling of its entire product set, integrating point solutions into a more cohesive portfolio. Partner program changes will be rolled out incrementally through 2013, and few details have been revealed about the impact the changes could have on partners.
The company has more than 50,000 partners, Bennett said, and still needs to iron out a more cohesive channel strategy that creates value for customers, the channel and Symantec shareholders. The plan could result in a “material reduction in the number of customers or named accounts that we actually send Symantec dedicated resources to focus on,” Bennett said.
“Over time we will call on less accounts direct and free up more accounts to be handled entirely by partners for both creating and fulfilling demand,” Bennett told CRN. “I see us going deeper with fewer accounts.”
