HelpSystems Packs New Worldwide Channel Program With Robust Partner Marketing Support

HelpSystems, a cybersecurity and automation software company, has launched a new worldwide channel program, focusing on the strategic recruitment, development, and enablement of its partners in North America, Latin America, APAC, and EMEA.

Designed to allow partners to position complementary cybersecurity products as a solution to solve their customers’ growing security challenges, the program will deliver comprehensive support to partners in their role as trusted advisors, allowing them to work closely with customers who are adding critical cybersecurity software.

HelpSystems is offering partners significant marketing support. The channel program includes an onboarding session for each partner’s marketing team, a marketing certification course, and joint marketing planning. In addition, HelpSystems dedicated channel marketing team, supported by the company’s in-house corporate marketing organization, will be available to help optimize company-offered campaigns as well as partner-initiated projects.

Differentiating Channel Program

The expanded marketing support is being offered “to provide a competitive advantage for us and our partners,” said Renee Ritter, who was recently appointed Managing Director, Global Partner Program. The “outstanding skill sets” of HelpSystems’ in-house marketing organization, she said, provided an “awesome opportunity” to differentiate its channel program from those of its competitors.

“We have a really well-oiled in-house ad and marketing agency,” said Mike Devine, HelpSystems’ Chief Marketing Officer. “We have about 100 different marketers including experts in SEO and running webinars. We have copywriters, graphic designers, localization experts for Latin America. So we have a lot to offer our partners.”

WIth the launch of the new channel program, “It was time to formalize the support we have been providing to partners and make it scalable,” said Devine.

Marketing team onboarding is available to all partners. In the process, partners learn about the different components of HelpSystems’ channel marketing program and provide information on their capabilities and preferred processes.

Certifying Marketing Skills

The Marketing Certification program is designed to better align partner marketing efforts with HelpSystems’ practices as well as identify and recognize partners that have made a greater commitment to understanding and utilizing the elements its channel marketing support. “The marketing certification is not something that is extremely difficult for someone in a marketing organization to pass,” said Ritter.  “But we want them to understand the way that HelpSystems wants to help them from a marketing perspective.”

Joint marketing planning is available to select partners, “but we love when partners come to us and say ‘Let’s develop a joint marketing plan for the rest of the year,’” said Devine. “If a partner is serious and they’re growing their business because they’re seeing a lot of demand for HelpSystems solutions, we’re going to work on that joint marketing plan with them.”

Ritter agreed. “Typically those that put their hand up and go through the planning process with us and then have a quarterly or monthly cadence to review that from a business review perspective, it works very, very well,” she said. “To Mike’s point, we’ll gladly pour more gas on those partners that are really stepping up and getting the results that are benefiting both HelpSystems and the partner.”

The Marketing Certification process is a component of a four-prong approach to certifications that also includes sales, pre-sales, and technical engineering, explained Ritter, with the goal of getting more partners acclimated to the things that HelpSystems offers.

While HelpSystems is seeking to add new partners to its ecosystem, the new channel program was not created solely as a recruitment engine. “We built this new program in order to first of all, enable and grow our existing partners, and then to have an intelligent recruitment strategy to take forward.”

Combined, all of the components of the program, “will definitely help us make better recruiting decisions. And when we do want to bring new partners on to fill a gap that we might have in a certain region or partner type, we can make that selection much more intelligently now based on the constructs of the program.”

Ritter and Devine will be monitoring a number of metrics to measure how well the new program is working, but boosting revenue is key. “When we engage partners who subscribe to our vision of marketing, we’ll be watching metrics that matter. It’s leads, it’s sales qualified leads, wins. It’s the usual suspects really,” said Devine.