Partnerships Unraveled
The weekly podcast where we unravel the mysteries of partnerships and channel to help you become more successful.
Partnerships Unraveled
Arsalan Eizadirad & Cassie Jeppson - Inside Lenovo 360 for MSPs
In this episode, we dive into Lenovo’s channel transformation through the lens of its evolving MSP strategy—with two of the key leaders behind the shift.
Cassie Jeppson, who oversees channel programs, tools, and partner enablement for North America, and Arsalan Eizadirad, Lenovo’s global MSP strategy lead, join us to unpack how Lenovo is designing programs that meet partners where they are—geographically, strategically, and structurally.
From simplifying a tangled web of 2,300+ incentives into a scalable, flexible program, to launching Lenovo 360 pathways across North America, EMEA, LATAM, and APAC, Cassie and Arsalan share how they’re localizing a global vision. They dig into how Lenovo is supporting MSPs through dedicated partner success managers, outcome-based enablement tools, and true feedback loops that shape the roadmap.
We also explore:
- How Lenovo’s partnership with Pax8 is redefining its presence in the MSP ecosystem
- Why a single global program won’t work—and how to strike the right balance between consistency and localization
- What MSPs actually want from vendors (hint: it’s not more PowerPoints)
- The role of omnichannel engagement in partner freedom and flexibility
Whether you’re building an MSP program from scratch or trying to scale across regions, this episode is packed with practical insights and strategic lessons from a global vendor that’s getting it right.
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Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries about partnerships, and channel on a weekly basis. My name is Alex Whitford, I'm the VP of Revenue here at Chanix and this week I'm very excited to welcome two special guests. Cassie Arsalan how are you doing?
Speaker 3:Doing well. Thanks for having us.
Speaker 1:Doing great I for having us.
Speaker 2:I'm very excited to have you on. I think you guys work in a really interesting part of the channel because you're responsible for something that we'll get into in a second. Maybe, cassie coming to you first, you can give us a bit of an introduction about who you are and what you're responsible for.
Speaker 3:Sure, my name is Cassie Jepson and I'm responsible for several different functions within the North America channel at Lenovo, and so I cover everything from the incentives and programs, operational structure and navigation, our tools that we leverage in North America, as well as the enablement and overarching channel strategy.
Speaker 1:So, basically, if it's not sales and some of the marketing functions, then I'm guilty as charged from a partner experience perspective for MSP pathway, which is specifically something we curated for managed service providers to better leverage their relationship with Lenovo as a solution provider.
Speaker 2:And what's very funny is we actually had the pleasure of meeting face-to-face at Pax8, which is maybe, for those paying attention to what Pax8 is, quite strange, because Pax8 do not deal in hardware whatsoever but they do service MSPs. So maybe, cassie, coming to you, how did that partnership of sorts form between the Novo and Pax8 and what have you sort of seen come from that strategic alignment?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it's a great friendship story, right? We had both been showing up at several different industry events and just started sparking a lot of conversation between the two companies. We talked about best practices and different ways that we were mutually servicing the MSP community. So there's been a lot of best practice share, a lot of learnings between us, and we want to be where our partners are, and there were so many Lenovo partners that were participating in the PacSaid event that it was the perfect place for us to be.
Speaker 2:And what's the sort of feedback Arsalan maybe coming to you that you've heard from partners where they see that sort of alignment at that strategic level? How's the sort of resonance been and feedback in the channel been?
Speaker 1:Very positive, uh, very positive, like I know you and I were chatting prior to to us starting like this recording. But you know, lenovo is still very much perceived as a hardware only company or or a pc only company, where, in fact, about half of our business probably comes from our non-pc business. And so throughout the launch of lenovo 360 for MSV, we've been able to actually help educate partners on our depth and breadth of our portfolio and what we like to call from what we like to call our pocket to cloud portfolio, and what we're finding is, once partners are getting a better understanding of our capabilities and why it's so advantageous for them to partner with Lenovo, the feedback is just tremendously positive and impactful and then Cassie, one other thing that I think is so important.
Speaker 2:I know when we did a preparation call, we spoke a lot about the importance of feedback. When you're building a global program, you can't know everything right and I imagine you sometimes come in with an idea and you think this is going to be brilliant and then it hits the market and maybe it was not so brilliant. Talk to me about one, why feedback is so important. And two, how do you build that into your process, into your culture, to ensure not only yourself but your team?
Speaker 3:yeah.
Speaker 3:So that's actually one of the most important parts of my day is interacting with partners and gleaning that feedback.
Speaker 3:So I want to hear it all the good, the bad, the ugly, the sparkling rainbows and butterflies. Whatever the partner's experiences, needs and wants are, then it helps me and my team to be more relevant to them. So when we were crafting our MSP initiative in North America, then we actually established a pseudo advisory council with several MSPs that we had met at industry events and some that were in our membership as well. But we wanted to understand what was important to them, what did they need from a vendor to help them to be successful, and what was missing in the market. And so we took all of that feedback to be able to craft what our MSP experience is in North America, and we continue to iterate on those practices. So again, we want to be the most relevant vendor out there, supporting our partners in the ways that matter. I mean, during those kind of moments of truth, all of those inflection points that really separate a true partner from just a vendor in the marketplace.
Speaker 2:And, and also maybe coming to you, one of the things that I find really interesting about feedback is that varies from region to region. Right, and as much as it would be so much simpler for everyone on this call if every region operated exactly the same way and there were no tax differences and no language differences and no cultural differences. Unfortunately, that's not the way it works.
Speaker 1:Talk to me how you balance a sort of globalization versus localization strategy and why that partner feedback is so important when you're trying to roll that out nice and wide that's a great question and and it took me a while to to really understand how you can't just have a program that is exactly 100, the same across all regions, all geos.
Speaker 1:So no matter how much you try to standardize, there's always going to be some minor tweaks required because of just the way businesses are run and the local business requirements.
Speaker 1:And this goes back again to leveraging partner feedback, but also leveraging internal feedback from our different teams that supported this initiative of going after the managed service provider market, and so throughout those feedback gatherings, we were able to really make sure that we launched something that is more relevant to those specific markets, and what we've also tried to do is to do it in stages instead of just doing one mass rollout.
Speaker 1:So, you know, as we talked about, north America is where we saw the biggest opportunity, and we've been doing this for the last few years, and then, gradually, over the last year or so, we've now started to launch the pathway in certain markets in EMEA. So we're now live in UKI, benelux and the Nordics and then planning to go live in Italy, france, germany and Austria by later this year. We recently did a launch in Australia, which was tremendously successful, and I was amazed to see the level of response we got from the managed service providers in that market, from the managed service providers in that market and then looking to launch later this year in Japan, which is another market we see a lot of opportunity with, and then also in the Latin America market. We're now live in Brazil and Mexico.
Speaker 2:We're seeing some good success as well and maybe sticking with you when you think about the nuances. There'll be lots of people who listen to this podcast who maybe are somewhat familiar with the MSP model, but building an MSP program wildly differs from building a reseller go-to-market motion in terms of the required support. Talk us through what are some of the key differences and considerations that you have to take when you're trying to build that program specifically for MSPs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the basics of the program are very simple. So and this goes back to if I can explain something about Lenovo 360, just in general is about three years ago we started this initiative called Lenovo 360. And the idea was to really simplify the way our partners do business with us, and one of the key findings we had at the time is we were running over 23 different hundred programs and incentives around the world. So think about you know, being in the partner's shoes, how confusing and complex that could get. So part of our goal was we kind of established these three pillars of enable, connect and grow, and those are kind of the three key areas we focus as we look at anything from a Lenovo 360 lens, and we started really simplifying our programs and incentive stacks for partners while looking at creating new ones that are relevant to what we're seeing in the market. Since then, we've been able to reduce those down to about 700. The goal is to probably even reduce it down to about 200 in the next year, year and a half, so making some good progress there.
Speaker 1:And then, as we started to think about, okay, like one size doesn't fit all, so a large national reseller or retail partner has very different requirements versus, like a managed service provider.
Speaker 1:So as we gather feedback from partners, attended a lot of these industry events and talk to managed service providers, we started to create something called Lenovo 360, which is very unique for them.
Speaker 1:So a couple of things that really stand out is you know, incentives are always important. Partners really want to know how they can earn with any technology vendor they partner with, so we created something that's more in line with how managed service providers do business and the number of devices and users that they have under management, so very much in line with their business model. Also, from a support structure, we understood that managed service providers their sales cycles typically are much longer versus a traditional reseller, so instead of assigning them to a traditional channel account manager, we created this new support structure and these partners have supported what we call partner success managers that really take the time to understand each of those MSPs on a more personal level, what their business model is like and then ultimately all about enabling them to leverage all the different tools that are available to them to make the ease of doing business with us much easier for them.
Speaker 2:And then Cassie coming to you. I think one of the things that I'm fascinated with when it comes to this market is the nuances. I have a very European bias, obviously, but the nuances between what are some of the hard program differences that you notice that, oh actually, hang on, we built this first in the US and then, as we took it out wider, I imagine there were some really critical changes that if you hadn't made those changes would have been real sort of prevention of scale. What are some of the things that sort of come to mind?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I mean, I think the foundation of the program was really applicable to the 80%. And then there were some of those individual market differences. Some of it is based on what are the products that are most widely sold and consumed in a particular market by the MSPs. In North America we have kind of a wide range of different focus areas that the MSPs are engaging in. You know, I think traditionally when you think of an MSP, then a lot of people think of the SMB world, but what we're seeing is a lot of MSPs more selling upstream into some of the commercial and enterprise businesses as well, and we don't see that as much in some of the other markets. And so, you know, making sure that we were adjusting the right things at the right time to be able to meet the partners wherever they are in their journey. And so, although we have a static framework for our program, then there's a lot of agility in it to be able to, you know again, meet those partners where they are.
Speaker 3:And that's not just from an incentive structure perspective. It really plays into the other pillars that Arsalan mentioned as well, the connect and the enable components too. You're being able to really understand the dynamics of an individual partner. What makes them tick, what is their go-to-market strategy and what are their goals. All are kind of comprised within that connect area.
Speaker 3:The most important thing for our partner success managers is to build that relationship and establish that trust. I think all things stem from the relationship element, especially in the small, very tight-knit MSP community. And then when we think about enablement, no two people really consume things the same way, and so making sure that we have that breadth of different media that people can consume the information, be able to modify it in the leave-behinds and assets and things like that in the way that works best for their business is really important. And then making sure that we're rewarding them for behaviors that are not just selling and closing deals. There's so much value that the partners are bringing to the table, then we should celebrate that every step of the way, and the different components and elements of earning within the program definitely reflect all of those things.
Speaker 2:And Arsalan coming to you. I think that's one of the real nuances, right? I sort of think it's quite funny that there's all these multi, multi, multi-billion dollar businesses who are riding their success on small little engineering companies. There just happens to be thousands of them and they're doing an amazing job. But resellers are very often sort of sales and marketing led machines right, that's how they're built. But managed service providers absolutely aren't right. They are typically engineering and services led businesses. How does that mean that you have to sort of pivot your sales and support model to make sure to Cassie's point that you're actually bringing the right type of information to the right format to the right person?
Speaker 1:Question and this again kind of falls within that enable pillar that we talked about is that we don't want to just be a vendor that's providing the channel partner with a stack of solutions to sell, but really also be there to help them with how they can have those type of engagements with their end customers.
Speaker 1:So if I can kind of maybe pinpoint a couple of things and highlight them is, for example, we've launched something called the Lenovo 360 Solutions Hub and basically it's an enablement tool for our partners, especially the MSPs, to have outcome-based conversations with their end customers around the different solutions they can offer through Lenovo.
Speaker 1:So don't go and have a speeds and feeds conversation like, hey, what product are you using today and let me upgrade you to the latest and greatest model. Let me upgrade you to the latest and greatest model, but to have those like strategy conversations or business level conversations with the non-technical business executives to really understand their pain points and then, based on you know how they gather that information, come back and be able to recommend solutions that address those particular pain points for the customers. Or, as I'd like to call it, think about your customer's customer and how you can help them with their day-to-day needs. The other one, too, is, you know, from a marketing perspective as well. We provide these MSPs with lots of different marketing tools and collateral that really allows them to take a different approach in terms of how they reach out to their customer base and how they're able to win new customers and new logos.
Speaker 2:And then, Cassie, one final one for you. I think the sort of I think theme of this entire conversation is around providing flexibility to the partner right, Really letting them almost choose their own story in terms of how to work with you, how to be successful with you.
Speaker 3:Explain to me how Omnichannel connects into that? Oh, great question. So Omnichannel is just another path, right? So we talked about Lenovo 360, and it's about meeting the partners wherever they are and enabling them to engage with Lenovo in the way that's best fit for their business. And so there are some partners that they really love engaging with distribution and leveraging the best practices and the acumen and benefits that distributors bring to the table.
Speaker 3:But there's another group of partners that really prefers more of a direct engagement. Maybe they're a little more savvy around the technology and the hardware technology that we're providing and they're looking for a more autonomous means of engagement, and so we have opened up some of the aperture. We're still a little bit in pilot phase here, but we're opening up the aperture to be able to engage partners however they want to procure from Lenovo, to be able to engage partners however they want to procure from Lenovo, whether that is through our com engine called Lenovo Pro or through more traditional means via distribution. So that omni-channel theory or philosophy is just all about being flexible on our side and supporting the partners in the way that is best fit for them.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. I thought it was extremely strategic to see you both at PaxA. I think the channel would do a lot better for people to understand some of the indirect ways to be successful in an indirect go-to-market. But, Cassie Arsalan, thank you both so much for coming on the podcast. It's been awesome.
Speaker 3:I really appreciate the time. Thanks so much for having us.
Speaker 1:Thank you for having us.