Transcript

Ayesha Prakash (Introduction):           So I joined Flashpoint in early 2017. The year prior, which is 2016, less than 10% of our business was indirect. We ended 2017 with over 30% indirect and over 200% to our goal. The program then grew even more exponentially in 2018 with 45% of our business now indirect at a global scale. And I would say even for EMEA and regions like EMEA, LATAM, we continue to be 100% indirect.

Announcer: Welcome to the Software Channel Partner Podcast where you’ll hear leaders of partner programs talk about their greatest challenges and most successful solutions. And now your host, Louis Gudema, the President of revenue & associates.

Louis Gudema:            Welcome to the Software Channel Partner Podcast where we talk with leaders in software partner programs to learn about what’s working today. I’m Louis Gudema, the President of revenue & associates, where we help companies grow faster by helping their channel partners grow faster.

Today I’m talking with Ayesha Prakash, the Head of Global Channels and Partnerships at Flashpoint. Before joining Flashpoint, Ayesha was Director of Channel Sales in the eastern US, Canada, and EMEA for Invincea. And in sales and marketing roles at several other companies.

Ayesha, welcome to the podcast.

Ayesha:            Thanks for having me Louis.

Louis:   I guess you spent some time working in Indianapolis also. You went to IU and then lived there for a few years?

Ayesha:            Yeah, I did. Actually, that’s my home base. I’m a Hoosier all the way. Yeah.

Louis:   Oh, my wife is from Indianapolis, so I’ve been out there many, many times.

Ayesha:            That’s great, great to hear.

Louis:   Went to the Indianapolis 500 last year. So please tell me about your career path. What interests you about working in the channel?

Ayesha:            I’ve been in sales and marketing for the past 15 years. I really started out in advertising and made my way into technology, which finally landed me where I truly belong in I guess the cybersecurity information security industry. My experience really expands into driving global business development and marketing efforts within the technology sector. And quite recently, as the Head of Global Channels and Partnerships at Flashpoint, I’ve had the opportunity to recruit and appoint a channel sales manager team globally; and expand Flashpoint’s global footprint via our channel partners via our strategic partnerships; execute international go to market programs; and really drive over 150% year to year growth since our initial program launch. I was really, I guess, I would say what really attracted me to working for what the channel is really building relationships. That’s one of the key things that really attracts me to it and really helping partners and organizations find mutually successful business models to help drive success for both parties.

Louis:   So before we go too far, why don’t you tell people about Flashpoint and what you do?

Ayesha:            So Flashpoint provides meaningful intelligence to help organizations, empower organizations to reduce their business risk. So our Flashpoint Intelligence Platform really grants our clients access to our archive of finished intelligence reports, to data from illicit forums, marketplaces, chat services, blogs, pay sites, cart shops, all in a single finished intel experience. So whether you’re, let’s say, an intel expert or even new to assessing risk, our platform delivers relevant intelligence that empowers you to make informed decisions and really help you mitigate risks in any part of your organization. So combined, I guess I would say, with our sophisticated technology that we have and our advanced and exclusive data collections. And I guess finally our main bread and butter, which is our human-powered analysis uniquely really enable enterprises and even public sector agencies to bolster their cybersecurity and help them confirm fraud.

Louis:   That seems like a huge area. It seems like there’s more security risks all the time. So this is not an area that you’re going to have to worry about there not being a demand for it.

Ayesha:            We talk about it in our industry constantly, and it’s been really interesting to learn about the maturity in the market. It’s not just threat intelligence, it’s such a generic term that’s used across the board and really being able to be part of such a niche offering and a solution it’s been quite rewarding.

Louis:   How important is the channel to Flashpoint? You were talking about the huge growth that you’ve had just in the couple of years that you’ve been there. How much of your business is direct and how much of it is through the channel. And what’s your goal?

Ayesha:            The company’s channel-driven revenue has grown definitely substantially more than 200% since we signed our first partner in 2015. I would definitely say channel’s an essential part of our business. So I joined Flashpoint in early 2017. The year prior, which is 2016, less than 10% of our business was indirect. We ended 2017 with over 30% indirect and over 200% to our goal. The program then grew even more exponentially in 2018 with 45% of our business now indirect at a global scale. And I would say even for EMEA and regions like EMEA, LATAM, we continue to be 100% indirect. And all of this was really setting a strong foundation for us as well as our partners I would say moving into 2019 where we hope and we actually are continuing the momentum already to reach over 50% indirect business.

Louis:   I think I saw an interview with you where you said your goal was to someday be 100% indirect?

Ayesha:            Yes, and I hope our board listens to this podcast at some point because yes, my goal is always a 100% channel.

Louis:   Well the first interview I did for this podcast was with Rob Rae from Datto and they are 100% channel. They have over 16,000 channel partners now and have sold to every continent; they just got a sale in Antarctica a few weeks ago. Yeah, maybe you want to have them listen to that one too.

Ayesha:            There you go. Yeah, I will definitely do that.

Louis:   What about quality versus quantity? When you’re building a program like this, how do you go about growing it that rapidly? Taking it from a pretty small percentage of revenue to now almost half? And how do you go about recruiting the partners and what are all the components that you’ve had to build out over just the last couple of years to support your partners?

Ayesha:            If I think about what were the things that we did in terms of the last couple of years to really grow the channel, strategically. The success factors, I would have to say: leadership support, metrics and data integrity, and last but not least, product innovation adoption. From a tactical perspective, it was two-pronged: developing and nurturing the current partner base, and identifying recruiting the right targeted partners.

So really from developing a nurturing base, we went back to the basics. Really understanding our partner base, looking at the metrics to understand where our partners were seeing success and what they needed to be successful. Looking at that was critical. And that helped us launch, enable our resources to help our partners increase their knowledge base and what Flashpoint’s offerings are. We started doing co-branded marketing programs to help them drive opportunities. We even focused on providing them specialized enablement content, financial incentives, you know, a robust SPIF program, launch their first ever MDF program, etcetera, to really help them lead to success.

Now, many might say, well this just sounds all really standard, basic things you do in this channel. But it’s really amazing how far a company can go by just doing their due diligence and truly listening to what their partners need.

And the second pronged approach I would say was really building the partner network and focusing on that top tier one markets globally. Just like correctly identifying a targeted customer is critical to a direct salesperson. Identifying your chart, ideal channel partner is critical to the success of an indirect sales team.

So what is the ideal company size? What are the customer characteristics? What is the business model that’s going to align with Flashpoint’s business model? Do they have the right expertise? And that was really critical for the niche business that we’re in. Are they carrying some complimentary products in their portfolio stacks, are they capable of taking on a technology like us? This really helped us increase the number of partners worldwide, and actually by 150% in just the last 18 months alone. And going back to strategy, I would say leadership support is absolutely critical in growing your channel. So from our board to our senior leadership team and really all business units across Flashpoint, whether it was presales, it was marketing, it was customer success, business operations, finance — each played a critical role in this growth. And I’m really proud to say actually that this growth is due to collaboration of all of our business units, and our leadership’s continued commitment to our partner success.

Louis:   Yeah I’m not at all surprised to hear you say that a lot of what you’re doing is the basics, the blocking and tackling, but you’re executing on it well. Because I think that in many cases the success of companies is not about having extraordinary or radical or new strategies. It’s about getting the execution right. In marketing I know an area that we work in, a lot of times where you see companies fall down is they just don’t have that consistent day to day, week to week, month to month execution. They work out the strategy, but then they don’t really execute on it. So execution is really critical to anything in business and not surprised to hear you saying that.

Ayesha:            Yeah, absolutely. I can’t stress enough, and I mentioned this a few times, but it’s leadership support because you can have a strategy, you can present a strategy, but if you don’t have the backing and the resources which comes from your leaders, you really can’t execute. I’ve heard this over and over again where channel sales teams are constantly struggling to really get the buy-in, right? And you know, interviewing global candidates, a lot of them considered leaving their current role was exactly for that reason. They’ve lost the visibility or the buy-in from senior leaders or the investments significantly declined. So it really comes down to your board and your leadership really investing and giving your channel team the dynamic environment that they can help their partners grow and succeed in channel.

Louis:   Is overseeing a channel program like yours, which is now contributing almost close to 50% of your company’s, Flashpoint’s revenue, is this like running a business within a business? Do you have many of the same strategic and business challenges?

Ayesha:            Yeah. You know what I guess I would say in a way we do, you know. In a sense it’s running a business unit within the sales organization, right? You know we’re responsible for building and growing the indirect sales model for a company, engaging and incenting our partners, training and helping our direct sales team to engage with their partners. And at the same time from a business and company perspective we’re managing our own quota, we have her own business impact, and we measure our own budget in terms of MDF. So in a way, yes. You know, but we are still I guess I would say another part of the engine that drives the company as a whole.

In terms of some of the challenges, yeah there are certainly similarities. Just as the sales team competes for the client’s mindshare with competitive solutions, we’re also competing for mindshare from our partners. Another key summary I would say is part of being a hypergrowth channel organization the managing growth that is stable, and that’s consistent all the while meeting the needs of our customers, which is our channel partners.

Louis:   One of the things I mentioned Rob at Datto, they’re 100% channel, and he said so in essence their channel strategy is their business strategy. When you’re recruiting partners, and you have partners all over the world, and you also have direct sales, how do you go about avoiding channel conflict?

Ayesha:            Collaboration, communication and I would say transparency. I actually wrote about this recently trust isn’t built overnight, however it’s really an ongoing process. And our number one rule I would say on channels here at Flashpoint has been don’t think of your partner as an extension of your sales team, think of yourself as an extension of your partner’s sales team. Of course every channel organizations going to run into channel conflict, that’s going to happen. But what we’ve done is really taken proactive measures early on in our channel strategy and manage and mitigate feature channel conflicts. Just one example I would say that we’ve done here is develop a compensation plan for our sales team really to avoid direct sales, for example, bypassing channels for margin. But in general  my advice is train your indirect sales team on honoring deal protection, bringing channel partners into direct sales opportunities as early on as possible, and really working collaboratively and transparently with your indirect peers to really help drive mutual success.

Louis:   Between Flashpoint direct and your partners, do you have very set boundaries about this type of market or this size company, we sell direct and these others are where we expect our partners to be focused on? Or do you have a way of thinking about the market that way?

Ayesha:            Absolutely, absolutely. So when we think of our international markets outside of the Americas so to speak, or really just North America I would say, it’s really our focus is as much a hundred percent channel as possible. Especially in APAC, EMEA, and even in Latin America, most technology companies have to use the channel in order to really reach their targets, it’s critical. Channel drives business there. So absolutely. I mean, for example, our EMEA and APAC team, they’re focused on driving everything through the channel. And so it really doesn’t even come down to the size of the company or certain requirements.

For North America again that’s a different beast in itself. There’s definitely a substantial split between direct and indirect. And within that, one of the big things that I would say my team has done a really great job, is really educating and developing their direct sales team to engage with the channel in the right way. So where it’s tit for tat, we have a three-three-three strategy. Here are the three customers that I’d like to introduce you to. Here are the three customers that you can help me get into, they’re yours. And here are the three target accounts that we can go after together. And so far we’ve had a lot of success with it and it’s turning out to work out great.

Louis:   That sounds terrific. So what kind of company is a partner for Flashpoint?

Ayesha:            Well, an ideal partner profile I would say from a channel perspective or a distribution perspective would be someone that’s worked in the threat intelligence space. Has worked with, you know their portfolio stacks includes complimentary solutions like threat intelligence platforms, like whether it’s an anomaly or EclecticIQ, Threat Potion, ThreatConnect, or solutions like a Splunk or a ServiceNow, etcetera. Or even some more intelligence solutions like a Babel Street. We’re also looking for a channel partners that not only have the understanding when it comes to threat intel and have worked with similar complimentary solutions. But also have the right expertise, the subject matter expertise that comes with being in a niche intelligence space like ours.

Louis:   So I was mentioning that we work in marketing, revenue & associates. How do you see the marketing skills of partners? Do you see a marketing skills gap among partners or do you think that that’s an area that they’re pretty adept at?

Ayesha:            It’s no secret that some organizations have more resources and experience than others right. Oftentimes you’ll see, especially at smaller companies, marketing may be third or fourth on the list or if at all after they’ve appointed a sales team. So there’s definitely marketing gaps that we’re seeing, especially working with a lot of the boutique partners that we do. And I would say our overall strategy is really to help our partners find success, regardless of their marketing knowhow. The strategy should always be simple, right? And ideally its plan early, plan often. And so what we do in terms of really helping support our partners that may not have a robust marketing team is providing them a comprehensive toolbox that can be customized really based on their specific markets and their capabilities. Including I would say content development, event support, PR support, the 80/20 I guess in a rule is a rule of thumb, but you know, you can’t overlook partners. They could be a large value contributor in the future.

So you know one of the big things, our marketing team right now is focused on is really looking at systematically providing partner marketing support programs. So even like for companies that are more resource constrained, etcetera, so they would easily deploy these marketing programs in a minute. We’re also providing different like off the shelf marketing campaigns, so to speak, and marketing automation tools that can help them. So if you put the right strategic thinking in place, and even if you lack the resources, you really can take it to the next level and it can be quite powerful.

Louis:   So are you able to track which partners are using your resources that you provide them, and which are the most active partners and which ones are less so?

Ayesha:            Absolutely. Metrics — data integrity — is one of our key initiatives as a company overall and has been for the last couple of years. So metrics is all how we run and how we execute and invest and evaluate and strategically think about our next steps. So tracking that through robust partner portal and being able to kind of manage that in a way that it’s automated and trackable is critical to our success for these programs.

Louis:   What do you wish you knew when you started at Flashpoint that you’ve learned in the couple of years since then?

Ayesha:            You know I never imagined how quickly our channel program would expand, or how fast it would grow to support 45% of the business. You know I expected it to track a bit slower, I wouldn’t lie to you. Obviously a good challenge to have, right? If I had more foresight, however, I think I might, would’ve hired a team internationally and within the public sector a bit earlier so we could have signed more strategic partners early on and grown our future pipeline together even sooner. My team is doing a great job with that now. But starting earlier probably would have been something that would’ve been really good for the company and would have been good to know.

Louis:   Yeah. Well if 100% of your overseas is through the channel, you must have quite a lot of support issues and localization and so forth that you have to be involved with to support them.

Ayesha:            Absolutely. Absolutely. Our marketing team has been a huge driver and really supporting our partners and focusing on localization and understanding that what works in Japan is not always what’s going to work in Singapore or what’s going to work in the United Kingdom.

Louis:   Yeah, absolutely. So what should I have asked you about today? What’s keeping you up at night?

Ayesha:            The channel landscape. It’s growing, it’s just growing so fast. It’s hard to keep up with some times. I guess I would say what really keeps me up at night, it’s really ensuring that we’re keeping, we’re staying up to date and continue to stay innovative in this ever-changing environment.

Louis:   Okay. Well, that is a perfect segue to my next question. Since the business world and the channel world is changing so rapidly, how do you keep up? Any particular podcasts or blogs or sites or events or books that are important to you for keeping up?

Ayesha:            Well, I would do a bit of a self-promotion, and I’ll say if anyone’s interested in learning or and some more advice on channel sales, I do have a monthly blog on channelfutures.com, it’s an op-ed column. So I highly recommend if you want to check it out. And also from a book perspective, this is one of my favorite books and it has been for several years now, it’s The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson, if you’re familiar with it.

Louis:   Yeah.

Ayesha:            I think, you know, I think that book kind of resurfaced for me as I was appointing our global sales team and for any leader out there looking to appoint a sales team or a channel sales team, it’s a really interesting book because it kind of goes over the different sales profiles, sales rep profile.

Louis:   Absolutely. That’s a terrific book. A lot of great insights there that a leading tech company like Flashpoint could use. I can see how that’s a great fit. So how can people get in touch with you and with Flashpoint?

Ayesha:            They can certainly check us out on flashpoint-intel.com. You can click on Partners if you’re interested in becoming a partner and just fill out the form. Or you can find me on LinkedIn if you want to get in touch with me directly or follow me on Twitter. My handle is @yoursocialnerd and Flashpoint is also on Twitter @flashpointintel.

Louis:   And what’s your email address?

Ayesha:            It’s ayesha.prakash at gmail.com.

Louis:   I’ll include all of that in the show notes in the podcast section of our website at revenueassociates.biz. So thank you for joining us today, Ayesha.

Ayesha:            Thank you so much.

Louis:   If you’re listening to this on Apple Podcast, Google, Spotify, or another app, and you found this conversation as interesting and useful as I did, please leave a review. That will help other people learn about the podcast too. Thank you for listening to the Software Channel Partner Podcast, and please subscribe and listen to future episodes.