Veritas backing platinum partners and distributors

The recently installed UK channel boss at Veritas is determined to increase sales opportunities for its partners and ensure that they are supported by the vendor’s sales teams.

Geoff Greenlaw officially stepped into the new role earlier this month, becoming vice-president of channel and alliances for Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India (EMEAI). He has spent the past 17 years at the firm working in various positions, including helping to launch the appliance business in 2010 and recently running the South African operation on an interim basis.

Greenlaw is making sure that its sales teams, both internally and externally, are all on the same page and those partners that invest in Veritas get rewards. The vendor’s focus on platinum partners will continue, along with support for distributors tasked with recruiting and working with the larger volume of partners.

“Our job is to be sales individuals – everybody in the organisation is in sales. The interesting paradigm shift for me was taking people from the enterprise sales organisation and moving them into channel roles, so effectively they became fully fledged salespeople within the channel organisation,” he said.

Greenlaw added that he wanted to “accelerate the market that we are selling into in the commercial and mid-market segments”. The approach the vendor is taking is based around the “triple A model” – making sure it can assess, activate and accelerate opportunities for partners.

“How are we going to make a difference? What are we going to do? There’s this whole mantra of our channel becoming our force multiplier,” he said. “The primary goal of the channel team is to be focused on growth – focusing on growth in new business while proactively protecting our installed base under annuity business.”

Some of the immediate opportunities are around renewals, an area where Greenlaw feels the channel could improve because there is potential not just to renew a licence, but also to have a conversation about future strategy.

“There is a big focus on our annuity business, because clearly annuity is far more predictable than new business,” he added. “Our channel plays an absolutely pivotal role in helping us maintain that annuity stream, engaging with customers, having those executive relationships. But the compelling event of an annual renewal is a great opportunity for us to be actively engaging and talking to our customers about cross-sell and upsell opportunities as well.”

This month also saw the vendor launch its 2022 Veritas Partner Force Program, which should give more predictable earnings, with a focus on dealing with some of the big issues, including ransomware and multicloud management.

“It’s a vehicle to drive and demonstrate profitability for any given partner. This year [we’re putting a lot of] focus on platinum partners, and I make no bones about doing that [as] over 60% of our revenue comes from platinum partners,” said Greenlaw.

Generous rebates, increased efforts by the vendor to drive customer demand, and more rewards for distributors that drive new business are all part of the programme for the next year.

“It’s our job to sell the value of the channel and that’s been a big goal of mine over the past six months – to highlight what value the channel is bringing. When you look at some simple data points, like opportunity registration, more than 50% of our opportunities are generated through the channel, so that tells you everything about the value the channel is bringing to this organisation,” he concluded.