Partnerships Unraveled
The weekly podcast where we unravel the mysteries of partnerships and channel to help you become more successful.
Partnerships Unraveled
Jessica Reece - Driving MSP Success with Check Point
This week on Partnerships Unraveled, we welcome Jessica Reece, Head of Strategic and Managed Service Provider Sales at Check Point, for an in-depth discussion on shaping successful MSP partnerships. With over 15 years in cybersecurity, Jessica shares her expertise on fostering collaboration, flexibility, and differentiation in a competitive channel ecosystem.
In this episode, we cover:
• How listening to MSPs can uncover new opportunities and enhance go-to-market strategies.
• The importance of horizontal and vertical partnerships in delivering unified solutions.
• Strategies for empowering MSPs to differentiate through tailored marketing and program design.
• Leadership insights on team building, retention, and creating a culture of continuous learning.
Jessica also shares actionable advice for aspiring channel professionals and the tools every MSP needs to thrive in today’s rapidly evolving market. Don’t miss this masterclass on channel innovation and partnership growth!
Tune in now to unlock key strategies for MSP success!
Connect with Jessica: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-reece-check-point/
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Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries about partnerships, and channel on a weekly basis. My name is Alex Whitford, I'm the VP of Revenue here at Chanix and this week I'm very excited to welcome our special guest Jessica. How are you doing?
Speaker 1:I'm good, Alex. How are you? Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm really excited to have you on. I think we always have a prep call before we actually record and we were really sort of not just talking about new parenthood for me, but also really our sort of philosophical understanding of what partnerships really mean and why it's such a fun environment to work in. So I'm really excited to get into today.
Speaker 1:Me too me too.
Speaker 2:Maybe for the uninitiated, you could give us a little bit of an introduction who you are and where you've come from.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. My name is Jessica Reese. I head up Checkpoint's strategic and managed service provider sales organization. I've been in cybersecurity for about a decade and a half, and almost half of that I've spent at Checkpoint. I love my job. I have a great team of people that I get to support. Every single day I come to work and outside of work in my free time. I'm a mommy. I spend all of my free time doing kid things and I'm raising nine hopefully good human beings when they become adults too that is a good aspiration, I think.
Speaker 2:Good human beings, I think you know you, everyone wants to set their science on you know their child becoming the next president or the next astronaut or the next athlete.
Speaker 1:But good, good, human, I think that's a win I need them to be able to hold a job be a good employee. Yeah, well, hopefully they can run their own company.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hopefully they can listen to this podcast and get a little bit of an understanding on how to be a good sort of channel person. I think that's nice that's right you launched a checkpoints msp strategy, um, which I think is a a really interesting place to be working. We do a lot of work with msps and I think msp is really the heartbeat of where the channel is headed. What are some of the key lessons you learned in building out that program?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I think Checkpoint and MSP and going together is one of the best kept industry secrets for so long. We've always had some component of services that we were doing, but we didn't actually take it to market until about 2022. I got the investment from the company to build out a team and for us to really focus on driving security first and security delivery with the MSP and MSSPs. First and foremost was we really had to focus on listening, because we hadn't played in this space at more of a I don't know fast pace. Right Kept up with the industry and what they were doing. We had to spend a lot of time listening to where they were at At the shows we went to the first year of shows.
Speaker 1:I think we didn't really have a great booth presence in the sense that people weren't stopping by to see us, to talk to us. We had the outreach. It's a great community that we needed to work our way into, if you will right, and a lot of that came from listening to what they were doing, what they were struggling with, where they were focused, what was driving revenue, what they were trying to bring to their customers and making sure that they understood. Well, we can help do that. We're here to help do that. We've got the products and we've got the focus on it now as well.
Speaker 1:The other thing is really the flexibility. So we couldn't go into it with here's CheckPoint's box sell our box right Hypothetical box and we needed to say what are you bringing to market? We can augment that, we can fit with what you're trying to do. We have the ability to come alongside of you in that partnership right Versus just being a vendor that wants you to sell their stuff. That flexibility and those listening the first year I mean we're still listening. I'll be honest, I had a great dinner last night and it wasn't me talking to them about Checkpoint, it was them telling me what they're seeing, even the non-security-specific things that they were seeing with their customers. That's so invaluable to us to help us understand the industry, how it's growing and where we need to position our products and our program as well.
Speaker 2:It makes complete sense. I've had a lot of sort of senior executives on this podcast and I'm forever amazed because I speak to these wonderfully smart and intelligent people and they all say exactly what you've just said, which is no, I spend most of my time shutting up and listening to what partners and customers tell me and then I sound really smart because I take their feedback and then I use it. I'm like, oh nice, so I I think it's such a good lesson and one maybe some of our more junior listens uh, junior listeners uh, don't activate and use as much as possible. I know, certainly only my early days. I was so desperate to sort of prove myself I was probably talking way too much. Instead, you just got to listen to customers and what they really care about. Right, because then we can take that feedback and really implement it as part of our core strategy.
Speaker 1:That's right, absolutely spot on.
Speaker 2:So one of the things at Chanix we spend a lot of time talking about is horizontal partnerships and vertical partnerships, and by horizontal we mean how tech brands sort of work and collaborate together, and then your vertical partnerships be your MSPs and all the way down to your end users. What I find interesting about where I think the technology and channel is headed is that is no longer just a tech integration. When we talk about horizontal partnerships, we're now seeing sort of go to market alignment. Talk to me about the importance of vendors collaborating to drive that unified alignment.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I think about what we try to do for our partners when we, as vendors, go into partnerships. What do I want to accomplish? I want to make going to market with my product easy for my partner. I want to help unload some of the burden that they may feel from marketing, technical enablement, onboarding, all of those things. Why would that same concept of helping giving that white glove service, taking some of that onus on ourselves, not extend to how they interact with other vendors? And so if me as a vendor, if I can stand back and go, there's this other vendor over here. We have complimentary products, we can on end work to build integrations, make sure our products play nice together, and then together the vendors are going to market. They're partnering together to go to these MSPs, to help the MSPs understand how to jointly sell out to the customer. It's a win-win for everybody, right? I've got a partner to help me in the progress that we're trying to make in the same MSPs anyways.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, ironically, this is actually how we got in touch. Antoine from JumpCloud actually introduced us and he spoke so highly of the sort of joint collaboration you've had in terms of going into MSPs together. What I find interesting from an end user or a root customer perspective, they're not interested in a single product, right. They're interested in a unified solution, and that's the job of the MSP is to take that and build that unified solution that's easy to consume, and I almost think it's the job of the vendor to therefore make it easy for that MSP to put that package together. So it's awesome to hear about brands like yourself and JumpCloud coming together, because that's a wonderful story to take to the MSPs at the same time.
Speaker 1:It really is. Yeah, the customers, they just want it to work right. They don't want to know you know, the sausage and potatoes behind the scene, how the stew is made, so we can come with you know, to keep the analogy going the pre-cut vegetables ready for the MSP to just plop in the pot. You know we're helping them out and you know the partnership that we have with JumpCloud is such a great example of this. I was introduced to JumpCloud by one of my MSPs that said, hey, we work really closely with them. Have you talked to them? And we actually did have integration with them already, but it's just enhanced what we're trying to do together. We are trying to even better align together so that we can bring more value to our MSPs.
Speaker 2:That's awesome, and when we talk about value, we often sort of land on revenue. Right, that's the outcome that we're all striving for. I think the thing that's complicated about managing partnerships is that's a lagging measure. Right, that's the last mile. What are the other things that you sort of evaluate and measure success again, maybe ahead of revenue actually landing?
Speaker 1:Success in a partnership, I think, is really based on finding those mutual goals together. Sometimes, maybe, the partnership is not a fit, right? We hate to say that sometimes working together just doesn't work, but I find that that's so small of a of a case, as long as we find that mutual goal, whatever it is. Sometimes it's the marketing, demand generation and the customers. Sometimes it's focused on hey, we want to integrate the best products into our stack and the MSP is just really focused on building their stack at that moment, right? Well, I can't go in there as a vendor and say, well, let's talk about what customers are going after when they're still trying to solution out what they're going to offer, right, so it's making sure that those goals we're going after are the same. That is the start for any solid partnership and from there the sky's the limit. As you move through kind of the process of building, building the solution, delivery, you know, building out the delivery capabilities and then bringing it to market with the customers, and then that's where you hit. Then the revenue comes in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's always that sort of channel funnel, right, and I think that's what is enjoyable about being a partnerships person or a channel person is you sit there and you have these milestones that you're working towards, but there's nothing quite beats that. Hey, look, here's the proof is in the pudding, right, we've actually, we've actually made bread together, we've made money together, and that's what we're working so hard to achieve. I think what I'm very fascinated about the MSP world is there's lots of great technology out there, right. Your competitors, I'm sure, also have great tooling, and I think long gone are the days that it's hey, we have a completely unique product and no one else is even close to us, which means that program design becomes more important. We spoke a lot about the importance of helping MSPs market effectively and really reinforcing your program. Talk to me about why that's so important to your strategy into your strategy.
Speaker 1:When we talk about the commoditization of cybersecurity and vendors, we have to understand that that is what our MSPs are selling to their customers. So if we just are a commodity, our vendors, our MSPs, are just selling commodities and that can't be what the customer sees no value in it. Right Again, customer wants it to work but at the same time, what's keeping them from going from one MSP to the other? Right, there's the. There's so many great MSPs in the market, there's so many options and so it's building.
Speaker 1:Go to market strategies where we help those MSPs and the MSPs differentiate themselves by service delivery. That's where that's where it really, where they have the ability to change change the, what they're offering, change how they deliver it, change the, the persona. Right, how they go to the customer, their engagement with the customer. We help enable them there. Sometimes that's in the form of marketing campaigns and marketing dollars. Right, building the program, helping them launch those services into the market from a marketing perspective.
Speaker 1:But at the end of the day, we have to meet those partners, those MSPs, where they're at, with the people that they have, what their aspirations are for their companies. Some MSPs right now their go-to-market is exactly how they want to keep it, which is there's not a problem. They want to slowly add customers and they just want to keep it the status quo. You've got other MSPs that want to grow their customer base, add to their portfolio of services that they can offer out to the customers. So, depending on what they're doing, we need to make sure that we're helping them and focus on that differentiation, even if it's just that one key thing, that one key feature that is going to set them apart from everybody else that's trying to do the no-transcript drive demand.
Speaker 1:So when I think about really what we want to offer out to our partners as a vendor in the partnership, I want to make sure that each of them feels like we're giving them 100%, because that's what we're doing. We want to be in line with them, lockstep. When we think about the different partners and what they want to do some of them it does take a little bit more time to meet them where they want to be. Where others, they're passively engaging us. They don't want a cadence, they want to be there, they want to be in partnership, but it doesn't take the resources that some of our other partners do, and it really is. We've built a matrix to try to break down these partnerships and it really comes from the engagement that they want and if they are actively going to market and growing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's meeting them where they want to be met, right, and I think that's true of customers and also true of partners, and the best brands understand that. You know, I was always taught as a salesperson you're like music you just adjust the volume depending right, and so the context drives the volume. And the same is true of how much, how close you want to be, how close you want to be, how on top of them you want to be. Some partners really benefit from that and some partners are going to tell you to leave them alone very, very quickly, maybe pivoting slightly. We have lots of leaders and executives who listen to this podcast and I think one of the things that I always is a really easy metric to understand how good leadership and good culture work is how good is your team retention? I know you've built a really, really strong team. I know it's something that you're incredibly proud of. Talk to me about the cultural values and the specific strategies you've used to build that team to be so successful and retain all that talent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think, for starters, I come to work excited every day. I was at breakfast this morning with one of my team members and they said, oh, how many coffees you're going to have? And I said, how many I as many as I can fit in a day. And they said, oh, that explains that excitement all the time. Sometimes it's caffeine, but sometimes it's really just motivated by the fact that I truly love what I get to do and the people that I get to work with, and so when I think about how I want to retain them, I focus on what they need. So training up, using training as an employee retention tool, is huge. I want them to my goal. Of course, I never want them to leave me ever, but my goal is for them to get to a point in their career where they are doing more. They've taken on ownership of things that they didn't do and they didn't have when they first started with me. So they're moving on and they're moving up. Right, that's my goal. I use training to do that. I focus a lot on the fact that, at the end of the day, they are people first, always, always, people first, people with families, people that have other things to do than just work. A lot of that comes in the flexibility of our working environment. A hybrid work model or a work from home model is, in and of itself, such a bonus to the employee right. They are all adults, they were all hired on because they know how to do their job and, if I can, let go and let them move forward and do that in whatever way works for them.
Speaker 1:It's the greatest Sometimes when we think about how we best work. Sometimes that's not from behind a desk, sometimes that is taking a walk. This year we've implemented what we've called walk and talks. So instead of sitting at the desk for our one-on-ones, I'm encouraging them to get up and move away from the desk. If it's something where we need to sit and talk and view something together, let's make a meeting that's specific for whatever that topic is. But during our one-on-ones, get up, move your legs, step outside of your office space, wherever you might be. It changes the way that our brain reacts to the stimuli around us and to, maybe, our thought process behind a lot of what we're doing and talking through.
Speaker 2:Love that. I have way too many one-to-ones and I'm trying to hit 10k steps every day for the entire year. So this is how I can. This is how I can blend this and hit both of those goals simultaneously. So that's, that's something I want to blend in. We always have a bit of a theme here on Partnerships Unraveled, which is either to get someone to give advice to their younger self or to give advice to people who are just starting their career. I know you had a meteoric rise, as lots of our guests do Talk to me about some of the advice, the mindset, the tactics that you would get a 22 year old, bright eyed and bushy tailed is like I want to win in this industry. What's the advice that you'd give them?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. First, always be learning, always, there's always. Never go into any sort of meeting, where or any sort of environment where you think you are the smartest person in the room. Always be learning from the people around you. Whether you have a senior position, it doesn't matter where you are. We all learn from the people around us. So never shut off the learning.
Speaker 1:When we look at the industry as a whole, the intersection of MSP and everything is where we're at right now. Right, services around, fill in the blank. But if I were to mention a couple things right now, ai, anything AI, anything tied to AI learn it. There's tons of great resources out there for free AI trainings. If you go to some of, like, the Ivy League schools, a lot of them have their courses available online for free. Go find their AI courses, take them, learn them. Ingest it from multiple places. Hear those different perspectives. Cloud is another one. In the MSP space, there's niche cloud partners that do cloud, that drive cloud, that are working on cloud adoption. But I don't think you're ever going to go wrong by learning cloud, because the other side of that is subscription services, cloud-based models right, it all ties together. So those are the areas. Never stop learning, find the industry trends I mentioned two of them and just keep continually learning what's going on and staying on top of things.
Speaker 2:I think that's wonderful advice. Maybe to layer on top of that, the thing that I always get my first new salespeople really their first sales job the skill that we sit down and I always start with a book called Atomic Habits is the skill of skill acquisition. That's right. I think learning to learn is the foundation, because so often people don't understand that if you want to be an executive at the top of your game in 30 years, well, that's fine. There's 30 years worth of skills that you have to acquire, but you can acquire them in 10 years. You don't need to wait 30 to acquire them very passively. So instead, build the building blocks, build the habits of daily learning and, like you say, treat every opportunity as a learning opportunity. Right, there's stuff you're going to get from customers, from mentors, from people around you, but you have to make time for it each and every day, to make it that real practice that you can grow from.
Speaker 1:That's right, and we are trained to learn in elementary and secondary school. Then we get to college or university and we realize the way I learned then is not the way I need to learn now, right. And so we develop this new pattern of learning. And then, when we move into the job and more industry focused, you have to change the way you're learning too. So maybe something worked in college for you, the way you were learning and consuming. Definitely take that into your career with you, but be willing to shift and change a little bit of the way and the mentality. And another thing is just have those good people around you too and ask them the question how do you learn? How are you staying on top of these things?
Speaker 1:Once a year, I ask my team at the end of every year. It's your top learning apps, podcasts, websites, blogs, rss feeds that you've followed this year. Share them with the rest of the team. Some of them work for everybody, some of them don't. They all have their own flavor, so let's share out. Everybody can go, look at what other people are using, take what you like and spit the rest out and move on.
Speaker 2:Awesome Well at Partnerships Unraveled. We're also always interested in learning. We always ask our current guests to introduce us into our next one. Jessica, who do you have in mind?
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of the best and brightest. I know my good friend Chris Federico, who is the VP of sales for MSSP and MDR over at Torque.
Speaker 2:Awesome, Jessica. Thank you so much for sharing all of your knowledge. It's been wonderful having you on.
Speaker 1:It's been great, alex, thanks so much for having me.