Dropbox Merges Direct, Channel Sales to Provide Customer Focus

Dropbox has combined its direct and indirect go-to-market together to run as one internal commercial organization, its global channel chief Simon Aldous revealed.

The effort is to send a consistent message to Dropbox customers, whether they want to engage with the company directly or indirectly, they have access to the same products, the same payment plans, the same support mechanisms and all of the other support services the company provides.

In the meantime, former corporate vice president of Microsoft Debbie Dunnam has joined the vendor in the newly created role of the chief commercial officer, which Aldous says has allowed Dropbox to become more aligned in how it’s engaging with end customers directly and indirectly through partners.

The channel business is the fastest-growing go-to-market from a Dropbox sales organization standpoint, which is driven by the company’s success with small businesses. But the pandemic has caused SMBs to take a hit, which has caused some to seek out managed service providers.

According to Aldous, this impact caused organizations to try and do more with less. For Dopbox, that means working closely with its existing end customers that use Dropbox, to maximize the use it gives them to make sure it’s deployed in the most effective manner.

The vendor executive said its acquisitions of e-signature solution HelloSign and document sharing platform DocSend represent an opportunity, citing the market size for e-signature to be “three to four times the size of the market for collaboration software.”

He added that file sync and share have become a mature technology with many organizations offering the solution. However, e-signature “is still relatively immature, and the biggest competitor is still pen and paper.”

On DocSend, Aldous described the organization as “predominantly direct”, which allowed the vendor to integrate the technology within its offering, giving Dropbox three core product lines to present to partners.