Webroot: Growth in security

Nermin Bajric (NB): What are your goals for Webroot in your new role?

Kerri Mosley (KM): From a company perspective, we are looking at 100 per cent quarter-over-quarter growth. The way we plan on attacking the market is simple: with high activity, and to drive demand through our partner channel.

Some of the activities that I have created surrounding marketing to achieve this goal and assist partners with business opportunities are ‘lunch-and-learns’, as well as telemarketing events and other types of customer events. These will be joint events with partners.

Recently appointed Webroot A/NZ and South-East Asia channel account manager, Kerri Mosley, chats about the security vendor’s channel prospects and development strategies.

My main job within my new position is partner recruitment and enablement, and I am really focusing on creating partners and giving them a different approach to most vendors. I have signed about 10 to 15 new partners within the past few weeks, and I’m looking at growing that further.

I also have a schedule to attend AusCert and ConnectWise where I will be recruiting new partners to assist us with this.

NB: What strategies are taking on to develop Webroot’s partner program?

KM: Right now, with the brand new SecureAnywhere product which was launched seven weeks ago, it’s all about new partner recruitment, which is why I will be at AusCert and ConnectWise next month, with more trade shows and events to come. We’re looking to bring on all new resellers and put all new partner agreements in place for the product.

Our key call-to-action is trial activations. We are currently receiving demand from the approach we are taking. We are focusing on an endpoint security solution that offers a fundamentally different avenue to security. It is based in the Cloud, and unlike traditional anti-virus, we are actually able to stop viruses penetrating the network.

We are targeting the small and medium enterprise (SME) market, which makes up 70 per cent of businesses on Australia, and then we are going after system integrators and value-added resellers (VARs) alike, and all those who have an open mind and are Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) friendly.

Right now our main focus is not necessarily finding distributors, and we currently have none in Australia. We are kind of after a direct engagement with partners. In saying that, we do have distributors in place in Asia, and I assume we will be doing the same in Australia soon.

NB: What sort of benefits can channel partners expect from Webroot?

KM: We are not favouring one partner over another which is a different strategy to most vendors. Every partner will have fair and equal margins to compete in the market. We might advantage a partner on an opportunity but not as a blanket agreement.

We will support partners by providing them with marketing campaigns that create new business opportunities. We will also be offering deal registration to protest those partners so competitors cannot steal their business away. We want to give them peace of mind for bringing us the opportunity.

As we are looking for SaaS-friendly partners, we will work with all resellers who are interested in having a different type of conversation with customers to address pains they are having with traditional endpoint solutions. This is our criteria.

NB: What training, support, and direct customer education initiatives are you planning to put in place?

KM: As it stands, we have just completed two partner training events in Melbourne and Sydney, with plans to do the same in Perth and New Zealand.

My goal at these events was to cultivate and develop partners from a novice to a competent partner level to assist us with all the demand and interest in SecureAnywhere.

We are pushing for education on the product with sales enablement tools, as well as partner certification for system engineers.

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