Guest Speak of this month : Jitendra Gupta

Jitendra Gupta,
Director, Partner Sales (India & South Asia),
Juniper Networks 

How did you choose to overcome the challenges you have faced during your career?

When I started my career in 1994, it was an era of electronics industry and IT & Internet industry was just shaping up in India. Those were the days when even for selling IT products like scanner, printer and modem, customer would first want to see a live demo. 

In my career of past 20 years, I have personally seen the industry passing through the dotcom boom burst and global recession. Being in the sales function, these challenges are part of our daily life and I firmly believe that you need to change yourself well ahead of time. 

What kind of a relationship do you have with the Channel today?

Juniper Networks operates completely with partners in India. Our focus is on driving and supporting a deeper and profitable relationship with its partners. All our initiatives are designed to help our partners cultivate deep customer relationships and, at the same time, effectively respond to the macro trends that are driving change across the entire industry. 

We believe it is all about scaling with precision, investing with impact, and recognizing achievement. Juniper New Partner Advantage Programme is a tool for growing network architecture expertise, and differentiating partners based on the value they add. It is about evolving to help our customers adapt and represents an unparalleled refocussing on mutual opportunity.

We recently announced a Juniper Partner Advantage Services, an expansion of our Partner Advantage Programme launched in 2012. For Juniper Networks' Elite partners, Juniper Partner Advantage Services are designed to differentiate partner brand, deliver on partner enablement and offer strong rewards for value and performance.

We also held our India Partner Conference in June to offer our partners the opportunity to engage face-to-face with their peers and Juniper Networks' executives.

What makes you successful among the channel community? Any message you would like to give to them?

It is very important to build trusted and mutually beneficial partnerships with channel partners as in many cases they are the face of the company to actual customers. The companies should be accommodating of the business objectives of the channel partners, whenever possible. Also, Partners should be alert to any changes in the market dynamics, and as soon as they spot a new trend, be prepared to react accordingly.