10 March 2008
by Paul Kunert
Lenovo has kicked off an aggressive margin promotion on ThinkPad notebooks to drive sales in the SME market and aims to recruit up to 150 additional partners.
The £50 rebate on the 15 SKUs in the X61 and T61 series and £25 on five R61 models must be claimed by resellers retrospectively so the pricing is not used upfront to secure deals but added to the bottom line.
Tim Wilkinson, transactional business unit director at Lenovo, said it was trying to use the extra margin to attract between 100 and 150 resellers to drive business among user companies employing less than 500 staff.
"This is about renting the mind space of resellers, you can do that for a short period with price but we want to give them an opportunity to experience engaging with Lenovo and its products," he said.
The way resellers use the rebate is entirely up to them, said Wilkinson: "We would like to see them use it on marketing to drive new business or add it to the bottom line." There is no limit to the number of rebate claims a partner can make this month.
The campaign is intended to drive sales at the vendor’s year-end this month said Rob Tomlin, sales director at Lenovo distributor Interface Solutions, who said Lenovo had strong mid-market share.
"This will allow Lenovo to rent some [mindshare] from resellers for a month and might drive some to them for the long term. Going forward the channel will see Lenovo being very aggressive in the mid-market," he said.
Sources said by giving the rebate to resellers at the back end, Lenovo would steer clear of instigating a price war at distribution level.
Loay Lawrence, commercial and marketing director at Vohkus, said it was good to see Lenovo proactively attacking entrants to the indirect channel.
