Dell Channel Blog launches with Partner Advisory Council news

The much anticipated Dell Channel Blog made its debut today with two posts — one from Dell chief blogger Lionel Menchaca, who introduced the site, and another from channel chief Greg Davis, who wrote about the new Partner Advisory Council.

The council, judging by a picture on the blog, has about two dozen members. They met this week at Dell’s headquarters in Round Rock, Texas, and Davis said the big topics they discussed were: communication, partner profitability, building trust in the channel and reducing complexity for partners.

Menchaca’s introduction said the primary contributors to the Dell Channel Blog will be channel community manager Amie Paxton and channel community liaison Mike Bukowski. But more importantly, he gave me a shout out for earlier comments I made on the Direct2Dell blog.

Dell execs are clearly making a strong effort to reach out to partners with this blog. They know they have to if they want to erase the channel skepticism that Dell’s two-plus decades in direct sales has created. There will likely still be bumps in the road as Dell puts its channel program together, but this outreach should buy the company some patience and benefit of the doubt from partners.