Partnerships Unraveled
The weekly podcast where we unravel the mysteries of partnerships and channel to help you become more successful.
Partnerships Unraveled
Joe Sykora - From MSP Founder to Channel Leader
How do you build a channel strategy that actually works for partners? Joe Sykora, SVP of Channel Sales, Distribution, and Alliances at Proofpoint, started his career running an MSP. Now, he’s leading global channel growth at one of the biggest cybersecurity companies in the world.
In this episode, Joe breaks down why most partner programs are overly complicated and how simplifying them can drive real results. He shares his framework for creating predictable revenue, explains why resell margins are fading in favor of service-led profitability, and talks about the growing role of AI in cybersecurity and MSP operations.
Joe also reveals his approach to building a high-performance team, the lessons he’s learned from years in the field, and how he sees the future of the channel evolving. Whether you’re a vendor or a partner, this conversation is packed with insights you can apply today.
Connect with Joe: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joesykora/
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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 at Chanext and this week I'm very excited to welcome our special guest, Joe. How are you doing Good, Alex? How are you? I'm doing extremely well, looking slightly haggard with a seven-week-old baby, but I'm excited to be discussing all things MSP and growing business today.
Speaker 1:Well, congratulations first of all. So I know we were talking about that a little earlier, so that's fantastic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's really exciting, but maybe, joe, for the uninitiated, you could give everyone a little bit of a rundown of who you are and where you've come from.
Speaker 1:Sure, joe Sikora, I'm Senior Vice President of Channel Stales, distribution and Alliances at Proofpoint, I think. More importantly, I am a father of four, so I'm in that league with you. Not quite, I have four, you have one but you'll catch up. Before that I was at a company called Bitdefender running global sales, and before that I was a company called Fortinet and I guess before all of that I was in MSP and I was a partner. So I was right there with most of the people out there reselling the stuff and integrating it in.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So that's the bit I really want to get into, Because you started at MSP land, which means you well, you quite literally started and founded an MSP, but I think that always gives you a really sort of specific insight in terms of what partners have needed. And then you transitioned to sort of running global channels. Talk to me about how the understanding of your sort of nascent MSP business helped influence your strategy as you became a sort of leader and executive.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. Being a partner, you pretty much know what a partner wants, right? So I was actually on the MSP and partner side for almost 13 years. So that was where I spent a big chunk of my career. People when I talk to them don't realize I haven't been in the manufacturer side that long, right, I've been there, oh gosh, 15, 16 years now, but people think I've been here forever. So I actually started. It helped a lot because I knew it was important to me. I know it was important to our partners and, more importantly, I have those relationships right. So, being in those groups, I was part of advisory councils, I was part of a lot of industry things. So those relationships are still very, very relevant to me today across the world. So I can call them and get sometimes the real deal if you will. And for me, I don't like things sugarcoated and I want to know what do we need to fix and what's working, what's not?
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of the things that I consistently hear from sort of the most successful executives on this podcast is just how much partner feedback they get, how that helps drive their strategy. Could you sort of just wax lyrical around how partner feedback helps influence your strategy, how much time you spend garnering that feedback, what are the sort of practices you implement to generate that feedback? I'd love to understand a little bit more about that.
Speaker 1:Sure, Well, anywhere I've been, including Proofpoint, I form partner advisor councils, right. So these are councils of not only our top partners, but I try to represent all partners, right. So it could be some top resellers, some top MSPs, could be some up-and-comers, could be some small. So that way you get an unbiased reaction to some of the things you're trying to change. And then I literally talk to partners every day. I know that sounds maybe strange for some people. Well, it shouldn't sound strange, but for people in my position it's. Sometimes they don't talk to partners, right.
Speaker 1:The other thing I do is I actually I'm very active in the field, so I will go visit partners across the world. I've been, gosh, I don't even know how many countries so far when I've joined Proofpoint, but I'm not afraid to jump on a plane, travel there, meet with them, do partner roadshows, shake their hand and get to another business. So it's really what shapes my entire program and my go-to-market. I have, as we all do, I have my framework, right, I have my framework. I tell everyone I'll let anyone have my framework because they pay me and the team to execute that framework. It's not exactly, it's not rocket science, but it's a pretty basic framework that I've used for the last three companies and it seems to be going pretty well.
Speaker 2:Could you just give us a high level sort of insight into how that framework works? Oh, sure.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, the top priority is is do what you say, right. Do what you say, if you know. If you're not able to do something, then don't say it. So the transparency, the honesty and everything else with partners it's okay to be transparent, even if you have to deliver some news that maybe isn't favorable or something they're not going to like. We're open about it, we talk about it and it's that constant two-way feedback right. So I have that. Other than that, it's basic building blocks.
Speaker 1:If you look at the programs that I've built over the years, I try to simplify them because complexity like in cybersecurity, complexity is, is is the enemy. Same thing with champions, right? You, you build very simple programs, easy to understand. You know, I've come into places, I've talked to others in the industry and and they show me their program and it's like it's this choose your own adventure, where there's like a thousand different options in this it's too. The first thing I'll say is okay, way too complicated, maybe that, maybe, maybe a good program. I'm not saying it's not good, but if it's complicated, partners don't have the time right. So so what you'll see is is like here at proof point, we're going through our ecosystem transformation. That's what I've been here a little over four years. I was brought in to do the transformation. You know, we simplified the program into two different levels. Now we have specializations, so people who want to get, like Uber, into our tech. But it's level one, level two, that's it.
Speaker 1:I don't use precious metals. I like to always say tinfoil, aluminum and I always make fun of precious metal programs, but you know that is a thing of the past, right? What partners want is they want to have predictable margins in revenue. Right, that's one and two. Right. Very, predictability is important. And they also want to make sure that they are compensated along the entire sales journey rather than just at the point of reset. They are compensated along the entire sales journey rather than just at the point of reset.
Speaker 1:Because myself and many, many people out there in the channel world, especially with the world of SaaS, right, saas cloud everything. It's not your traditional. Here's a widget, I'm selling a widget and you get paid X amount of margin for selling this guy. That's a thing in the past. I see a lot of programs that are still geared towards that and really what you want to do is you want to reward partners based on actions during a sales cycle. So it could be.
Speaker 1:If they're doing a proof of concept for you, that's a heavy lift. If I'm a partner, there's a lot of cost in the pre-sales efforts for me to do that. And if I don't know that I'm going to resell or win the business on the resell side, it's hard for me to say, hey, let me make a big investment in all these engineers to go do POCs and everything else. So Just a real basic example. But make it simple, make it very easy to understand and incentivize and reward partners for the behaviors that you want. It's that easy. I know it maybe sounds a little bit complicated, but it's that easy. It's really that easy.
Speaker 2:You obviously joined Proofpoint to help drive a growing channel business. It sounds like one of the key things that you've changed is some of the programs to help generate that growing channel business. It sounds like one of the key things that you've changed is some of the programs to help generate that change in performance. Could you talk through some of the other strategies that you've really focused on in those four years to drive that incremental growth?
Speaker 1:Sure, Well, one of the big ones was we weren't really allowing partners to allow services, right. So if you're building programs out there on the channel side and you don't allow partners to do service managed services something around stickiness you've got to change that right away, Right? So that was one of the things that when I came here, I was very surprised to see. It was we're allowing partners to do like that much right, Like very, very little. Some of them were building practices, Some of them were doing managed services, but it wasn't fully supported on the backend by Proofpoint.
Speaker 1:So we've gone through this journey where now we have our certified delivery program, right, Our CDP program where we're authorizing and training partners to even deliver all services installation services and everything else. So that was a big shift, all right. And opening that up for partners, the power of services, because if you talk to any of your partners throughout the globe, all of them want attached services or managed services, because what it does to their margin is it explodes, right, and it becomes very, very back to the predictable margin. It is something that is very predictable to them and they're doing all kinds of kickers, incentives and everything else to their sales folks to get started. So opening up services is huge and I'm very happy to say that was one of the big things we did get accomplished over the last couple of years here.
Speaker 2:So that was a big one. Yeah, it's so often missed right? Because I think a lot of executives think about their brand as the brand and that's how how partners are making money. But I know so many partners who go. Well, you know, the brand is the brand, but we exclusively care about the service wraparound and so you can be more expensive, but they have a great service wraparound as opposed to a less expensive brand where there's no service wrap, and msps will continue to choose the area of the business where they can put that wraparound 100, because it let's talk about reason.
Speaker 1:I mean resale is. Listen, I've gone publicly and said resale's dead. I'm not going to say that today, but I will say it's dying right, because you've got all kind of different. You know the marketplace motion. You have all the know. You have the hyperscaler marketplaces that are just continue to drive margin lower and lower and lower on resale.
Speaker 1:Hey, you know what, if I'm an MSP partner, great, if you want to do a BYOL and or buy it yourself, go buy it there. And then all I care about is the managed services. Right, go buy it there. And then all I care about is the managed services right. Of course, on my side, and I think on the MSP side, the ultimate is how do we and it's almost like an OEM relationship Sometimes sometimes they use my brand, sometimes they hide my brand. It's okay, because if we're part of a bigger solution, that's fine. I mean, we have many, many relationships like that. And you know, when I was an MSP, that's exactly what I did. I was selling my brand, I was selling to my customers. It was just. You know, what I used in my tech stacks was just that it was a, it was a it's part of, but it wasn't the solution. I was on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's the irony right. The precious metal status at the vendor is dead and it's swapped into the precious metal status at the msp, who's selling their gold package right, which includes 10 brands that never see the light of day, because the end user doesn't care no, they don't.
Speaker 1:They don't you know. What end users want is they want to know a they're protected and they have someone to call if they have a question and or if something goes wrong. That's, that's what you're, and I'm not saying it's an insurance policy, but part of it is that, knowing I talked to a lot of end users, I'm very unique. I work with end users, I work with partners, I work with MSPs and I talked to a lot of end users and I tell you what they want is they're like hey, at the end of the day, I want them to tell me I'm buying a service, right To know I'm protected, and that's all I need to know. What they're using on the back end is their choice.
Speaker 2:So one of the things that I think is nuanced and complicated about being in your position is you serve a broad channel but you also serve a broad segment. Right Proofpoint traditionally has lots of enterprise business and they're also heading down market and servicing the smb. Talk to me about the complexities of taking an enterprise grade solution into the smb space while also building that for the channel yeah, well, listen, it's always a challenge.
Speaker 1:It is because I'll add one more complexity and and it's a little controversial, I think talk with. But we also have a direct motion, which is fine, right, when you look at companies who are our size and service, all segments of the business on the high end of the market, if you talk to the Fortune 100, most of them are going to want to deal with me direct. It's just the way it is right. And again, if you look at a routes to market methodology, you have several different routes to market. Indirect is one of them. Right, I've, I've I've also been on stage and I've talked to that too, and I've argued the fact that that is OK. It does exist and can coexist with everything grade product because proof point. Listen, we're upper right on all the quadrants, right? I think Gardner just released a couple of new magic quadrants. Guess who's in the leader quadrant? Right, we are, which is fantastic. It all comes back to our threat research and our data. Right, our data separates us from everyone else. Now, the reason that we have the data is because we're in 86 of the Fortune 100, right, we're in all of these other businesses because we're over 20 years old. We're an older company in the business. Most people think, hey, we're just doing email security. No, we're complete. We're a human-centric people protection, protect the people. We have everything right. It's a complete platform of suites.
Speaker 1:Now, do MSPs need all of it? I'll argue and talk to them and say, yes, you do. But sometimes your customers aren't ready to spend the extra. But they will. It's getting there. So having the ability to go into, let's say, I go to an MSP conference which is mostly focused on SMB people know the proof point. Most people have heard of proof point right, which is good. Brand recognition is really well. Yes, we may be recognized for more of an enterprise grade security, but again, it's the age old enterprise security at a SMB or commercial price.
Speaker 1:You can't argue with that right, and there's a lot of. You have a lot of choices when you're looking for providers. Not all providers scale to enterprise right, that's the thing. It's very difficult to go from SMB to enterprise. I think I've done both. I've done both and I will say scaling down is easier just because the simple fact is you can offer this plethora of technologies and services. And if I can give some five nines of protection, that's pretty cool Because, whether you're SMB or anything else, if you're an MSP out there, what do you want?
Speaker 1:You want as little false positives and incidents as you can, because that's my right. If you have to do things and you can't operationalize them, you want you want as little false positives and incidents as you can, because that's my right. If you have to do things and you can't operationalize them, you want a very effective solution. So that's, it's been, it's it's. I think the biggest challenge I've had is not changing but but shifting some of the behaviors internally to make sure that we have what's needed. When we look at, okay, how do we take care and service MSPs, how do we look at SMB solutions and commercial solutions. So that's been the, I guess adventure, right Is that and the services that we talked about goes hand in hand Because, if you think about it, if I'm a Fortune 100 company, who do you want doing the services? Probably the manufacturer, right? So it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2:So that's part of opening up everything that we did is that requires radical change within the organization. I know you're very proud of the high-performance team that you've built. Can you talk us through? What are the cultural markers that you look for? How have you built such a team that's generating such significant change in the market?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've got one mantra must be present to win right. And I've used this throughout my career and it's very simple right, people are like, oh, yeah must be present. No, you must be present to win. It's showing up. It's showing up every single day, even the days that maybe you don't feel like giving it 100%, you still have to show up. Right, you have to show up. You have to show up for your partners, you have to show up for your end users, you have to show up for your fellow employees, right. So that is something that for me.
Speaker 1:I've always built teams that have this desire to win, right, so I do. I hire a lot of ex-athletes, right, athletes are a good pool, a lot of competitors. So wherever you see competition and places that stimulate competition, that's kind of what I do. And funny story and this is way off the wall but when I had my own MSP right, how did I build those teams? And I don't know if anyone remembers Circuit City, right, I was in IT and this is back in the 90s, right, a long time ago, I would have them try to sell me a computer, and that's how I would be like, hey, wait a second, you're a pretty good salesperson. Why are you here, right? So it was interesting, it's having that.
Speaker 1:I'm a true believer. You're born with certain traits. You can't change those traits, but what I can do is I can partner you with someone that's strong where you're weak and they're weak where you're strong. It's all about this partnership. So think of this as a puzzle and I put this together. The important thing, too, is, most places I go, I do have people that follow, which is important because they understand my framework. They understand kind of how I manage and you know it's worked out pretty well so far where we've been able to put up some big numbers and always exceed expectations.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, finding those people who are competitive to the core of who they are. I always say, whenever I'm hiring young salespeople, like it's their first job and we wouldn't need to see if they make it. The question I always ask in the interview is what's more important winning or trying your best and nine times out of 10, the best performing sales people I've ever met. They have this hunger and they just tell me winning's the most important thing. And I'm like this, this we can work with, because if you've got that level of desire it's so easy to mold them from that point onwards.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely so. Sometimes it's funny because I work with a lot of younger people too. Now there is the edge of winning at all costs because you don't want to. You know. That's where I come in and I teach them kind of these frameworks that they have to work with on. But yeah, it's having that competitive spirit is so important in people that you hire and, like I said, you have to be present to win. You have to get out there every day and do the reps, you have to do practice. You have to get out there and be there.
Speaker 2:It's far easier to put guardrails around people than it is to make them more motivated right, absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. So I know you are mentoring the next generation of channel leaders, which is something that is very close to your heart. Could you share some of the most valuable advice you've?
Speaker 1:given to your mentees. I was running incubator programs, so I was still mentoring and I was doing things with colleges and everything else. So for me there is this desire to help the next generation. As I get closer and closer I actually turned 51 this year, so most people are like holy cow, you must be ready to quit. I was like no, I said I'm having too much fun.
Speaker 1:But you know, some of the advice I give is listen it is it's fact to the present be when it's having that desire, working hard, showing up every single day, even the days that maybe you don't want to, that's important, right, the, the having the tenacity to do that is something sometimes you can see. It's not you can't teach it. That's the problem right back to you're born with it or not. Um, I can teach you technology, right, I can teach you sales strategies, I can teach you all of that. But what I can't teach you is to be tenacious and want to win and getting up every day and giving it a. You know, know, a hundred percent. So, um, that's that's the biggest advice I give.
Speaker 1:Now I have nieces and nephews, that, um, and even my own children. You know, we always talk about what they want to be when they grow up. Right, and it's. It's funny too, because I always encourage whatever they want, whatever they're passionate about. You have to have it. Now, of course, I try to swim towards tech and channels and sales, but sometimes it doesn't. It's as long as they're happy, because you have to be very happy with what you do and you have to enjoy it, Because if you don't enjoy it, as you know, if you enjoy doing this, I love doing my job and if you don't have that it's's, it's very difficult. So you know, that's.
Speaker 2:That's some of that, my best advice yeah, 40-year career is really bloody long if you don't enjoy it right like you've got we've got to enjoy it. Um, one of the things that I know keeps uh the best leaders ahead is the ability to look ahead. Um, what do you see coming down the line in terms of emerging tech?
Speaker 1:yeah, it's interesting, right, because I do pay. You know my believe it or not, my I, what I studied, was electrical engineering, so that's my background is tech, so I'm very, very passionate about the technology. You'll notice, too, I also go to. The only place I work are very technical companies platforms, and I know that's been overused. But I do see convergence of of platforms because end users want to consolidate, msps want to consolidate right. We all want to make things more integrated, more simpler and operationalize things right. If you're an MSP out there, that's what you want to do, right? How do you lower your overall cost to operate your platform? So the platform listen, there's no one platform that's a silver bullet in cyber. I've been in cyber for a while, but what is emerging is there are definitely technical alliances with platforms integrating with platforms to form a complete solution. So that's what I see. You're going to see additional consolidation. I think we've been seeing it in the market. You know there was a lot of consolidation this year. There'll continue to be more consolidation in years.
Speaker 1:I don't want to drop the AI, ai, ai, but as you know and everyone out there listening, ai is at the forefront of a lot of different things. You need to know when to use it and when it makes sense and when it doesn't. There are certain tasks and there are certain things and certain tech that's coming out that I'm like, wow, that's pretty cool. Right, it's AI-based. I quickly go back to my days of having my own soft right. So I had a security operations center man, all of the mundane tasks of, okay, is this really a threat or not, do I need to act or not? All of that with AI man, it's pretty cool. And the other thing, too what I used to always struggle with, and some of the manufacturers struggle with, is multiple admins and user interfaces, either through an acquisition or different products. Now we can use AI to combine all those and simplify it, so it's pretty slick. So those are some of the things I'm looking at.
Speaker 1:Again, it all comes back to the data, and I can't stress that enough. If you're going to partner with a manufacturer that has you know if their data is not massive, if they're not a big data company, that's where the difference is right. If you can't view everything across the world, whether it's a small business, an enterprise business, some of business in between you know how. It's only as good, your protection is only good as the data Right, and that's. That's something that that I see. There's a couple of players on the market and it's emerging as OK.
Speaker 2:Here's who the winners are going to be and here's who's going to have to partner with the winners for their data, right, that is something that's happening for sure. Awesome, joe, it's great to hear you looking ahead and I certainly think certainly from a cybersecurity perspective AI is going to be the gift in terms of operational efficiency. Data analysis it's also the challenge, right, because we see a lot threats coming from from that area of the market and on the podcast, we also like to look ahead, so we always get our current guest to recommend our next guest. I know you have someone in mind oh gosh, someone in mind.
Speaker 1:I've got all kind of people in mind, but I think I think you're already probably, uh, larissa crandall, I think you've. You've been introduced to her, yeah.
Speaker 2:Clayton and, I think, ninja Sal. You thought he would be a particularly great next guest.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Sal would be a fantastic guest as well. Hey, listen, we can go a long, long list. We can go a long, long list. A lot of people doing a lot of cool stuff.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Well, sal, we're definitely coming for you. Joe, thank you so much for sharing all your knowledge. All right, thanks, take care.