As technology transforms society, sales managers become trusted advisers and companies weigh the social impact of their operations.

“We’ve gone beyond the, ‘Hey, what do you do and how do you do it?’ … Now it’s like, ‘What is your purpose?’” said John Byrne (pictured), president of North America Commercial Sales at ‎Dell Technologies Inc. “Our purpose is to impact human lives each and every single day.”

Byrne spoke with Stu Miniman (@stu), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, and guest host John Troyer (@jtroyer), chief reckoner at TechReckoning, at the Dell Technologies World event in Las Vegas. They discussed the Dell EMC sales vision and how the digital revolution is transforming the role of the sales department.

An army of trusted sales advisors who know their tech

Dell EMC has a direct sales force of 40,000, but that number is dwarfed by its channel ecosystem of 140,000 people. “That is a sales army,” Byrne said. Across this huge ecosystem, the sales force finds their customers have one thing in common: They want to transform.

“We have state and local, we have education, we have federal government, we have the media and business space. Each of them all realize this digital transformation is here. And the conversation they’re having with us is, ‘How do we get ahead of this?’” Byrne said.

Addressing this need means constant training to keep up with evolving trends in technology. “Gone are the days of just going in and selling a single unit of product. You have to become the trusted adviser,” Byrne said, describing how sales teams are expected to understand the technical requirements of transformation and guide clients on the journey.

Dell EMC clients already in the process of digital transformational have reported less downtime, increased customer satisfaction and lowered costs. “They’re driving incremental revenue. … They’re driving their incremental operating income. … It’s here. You can feel it, you can see it, there’s real proof points,” Byrne stated.

The huge Dell EMC ecosystem is the only one able to respond to every need along the transformation journey, making it the strongest choice, according to Byrne. “We have a desire to impact human life each and every day by being the essential infrastructure,” he concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Dell Technologies World 2018 event. (* Disclosure: Dell Technologies Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Dell nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE