Partnerships Unraveled
The weekly podcast where we unravel the mysteries of partnerships and channel to help you become more successful.
Partnerships Unraveled
Melissa K. Smith - Navigating Partnerships in Cybersecurity
In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Melissa Smith, Head of Technology Partnerships and Strategic Initiatives at SentinelOne, to explore the evolving world of partnerships, particularly in the fast-paced cybersecurity landscape. With nearly two decades of experience, Melissa shares her unique journey and insights into the value of building and scaling partnerships.
We dive deep into:
- How shifting from channel-focused work to broader partnerships is reshaping Melissa's approach to growth.
- The importance of focusing on quality over quantity in strategic partnerships and why it's essential to narrow your focus.
- The necessity of tactical execution in partnership strategies and how a methodical approach to building relationships fosters long-term success.
- Melissa’s commitment to mission-driven growth, and why she believes value always precedes revenue.
She also discusses the key role trust plays in relationships, both internally within teams and externally with partners, and how a strong network can lead to remarkable success.
Whether you're new to partnerships or a seasoned pro, Melissa's insights on overcoming challenges and driving growth through collaboration will resonate with all professionals.
Connect with Melissa: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissa-k-smith/
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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 Wigford, I'm the VP of Revenue here at Chanix and this week I'm very excited to welcome our special guest Melissa. How are you doing?
Speaker 2:I'm doing well. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I'm excited to have you on. We have just recorded an entire pre-podcast about our joint trauma that most of the sports season is over now with it summer, so we're going to have to talk business. Maybe, for the uninitiated, you can give us a little bit of an introduction about who you are and what you do.
Speaker 2:Sure, so my name is Melissa Smith. I run our technology partnerships and strategic initiatives here at Sentinel One. I think I told you in our pre-recording I am Jill of all trades master of not many right now, but cybersecurity is busier than ever. Right, the adversary going to adversary, and we are at the height of, you know, some unprecedented events. So looking forward to connecting with you today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really interesting. When I speak to, I often lovingly joke that none of this matters and we don't have real jobs. The one nuance is cybersecurity is an extremely real job. How is it dealing with that turmoil that happens when inevitably this thing happens and AI threat? It must be a lot to balance when you are at the bleeding edge of real world problems.
Speaker 2:I think it's very like tumbling right, like we all get caught up with oh, I've got to respond to this email, or there's this Slack message and this fire is burning down and right, we're all in the business of making money, but then, at the end of the day, like I always say, the money will follow the mission. If we are objectively focused on doing what's right and ensuring that we are protecting, you know, national security interests, as well as our customers from the adversary, everything else falls into place and becomes less important, right? So, you know, I try to remain, you know, very centric on let's focus on the mission.
Speaker 1:Which I think has a lot of my lessons have taught me. Yeah, if you can focus on value, everything else gets a lot easier. I think it's bad behavior breeds bad behavior. Right, if you start chasing comp and paychecks, that's where I could see things fall down yeah, you're right um. So focusing in on the channel um, you have a tremendous channel background, but now you've sort of focused more from this transition from channel into partner or into partnerships. Why is that transition so important for you?
Speaker 2:You know I gosh, I'll age myself here, I feel older each day, but in 2026, I will be going into two decades of cybersecurity. I started at a value added reseller, right which is what we think about when we say channel like totally the bar distribution circuit. I did the disty gauntlet too, which I don't recommend but also recommend. Right, a thankless industry. Had a baby on a Friday, went back to work on a Monday, but over that time in these two decades, right like taking what is channel and partnerships and trying to, I would say, genericize it more so it's more inclusive. Right Like technology partnerships, hyperscalers, cloud service providers they all are part of the channel. Right we are enabling growth and building with through the all types of partners, and so really that's kind of been my mission and charter is to bring additional value on all aspects of partnerships.
Speaker 1:And I completely agree. I think a mentor of mine. He told me that Alex stops on channel because you're pigeonholing yourself, which I sort of actually, this is my tendency brushed off, and then later I spoke to a partner and said, yeah, no chat. He was like, no, no, that's not me, I don't resell, I provide value. I was like, oh, that's interesting. If that's your perception, I can understand why that brush paints widely. One of the things I think is sort of critical when we talk about partnerships is understanding that some of those channel players are in that, is understanding that some of those channel players are in that, but actually strategically planning to include bars, oems, isps. The wider portfolio is really critical. How do you knit together that complicated recipe?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like to call it triangulation, or a term we use here at SentinelOne, is the power of many right If we're looking at how do we provide value to the customer, especially at the initial stage of selling, is we know the customer is going to have something else right? So if we look at their landscape versus what we can build with our technology partner, we're going to provide value there from an immediate perspective. And then I think that's where the triangulation comes in is we still need value-added resellers to help us with the transaction right, and that is not meant to minimize them, but that's what they're effectively so good at ensuring that right, like from a legal and a finance perspective, everything is seamless from a customer experience and I think if we focus on the customer experience, that's where we really can provide, I would say, additional value with a litany of partnerships to support the customer and ultimately expand total addressable market from just an overall business perspective.
Speaker 1:I think one of the pieces that is tempting but, I think, a dangerous road. When we talk about all these different types of partnerships, you can get very wide and not very deep and that is never going to change the performance. You never get the data, you never get the understanding, you never get the true customer grip that you need. I know you have a rule around focusing on a few key partnerships a year. How and why?
Speaker 2:well, I mean, and it's timely for that too like I was, I was just talking to you, know, our head of product, and I said, hey, we're going back to the assessment phase.
Speaker 2:Right, we've been through six months of the calendar year. I see some fluidity, but I also see we need to make even more consolidation. Right, because that going wide and deep is takes a lot of effort. Right, like it comes down to okay, how do we get to know that partner in order for us to provide value and ensure that our roadmaps align? And that's really hard to do if you don't have focus. Right, because you're going from one use case and one partnership to another and you're like going from A to K instead of A to Z. And so, foundationally, right, being very narrowly focused on how we can build something novel and unique. Parity is always good. When you're in a competitive landscape, you know specifically where we have our bread and butter with endpoint, but we really need to look at novel solutions, and so that's why, foundationally, we try to be as focused and consolidated to bring value as possible.
Speaker 1:And one of the things you touched on there. So you're six months in and you need to do a reassessment, re-evaluation. That's something that actually I think is extremely important in my world when we talk about end customers. That's what we do. We want to have a look at periodically. Why are our top customers our top customers? What makes them unique? What does that mean in terms of how we drive product roadmap success, all of it, um, but I think it's something that's often overlooked in the partnership space, where we sort of just cling on to the things that are working. Why is sort of resetting the clock, zooming out and understanding that part of the first principle so important?
Speaker 2:I think you know there's there's a lot of reasons, but you know, ultimately we have to be good stewards back internally from a business perspective and if we have partnerships that aren't driving mindshare and creating pipeline that ultimately creates revenue and you know from the top down we don't have that you know kind of friendship and thought leadership from an industry we can't turn that around and make it valuable externally right.
Speaker 2:There's no go to market that you can take with disparate connections, and so I think that's why it's really valuable to just be focused and have a strategy. And strategy is such a, I would say, kludgy kind of gray word because people throw it around and they're like, hey, I need a strategy. I'm like you can't have a strategy unless you do the tactical things first, like, hey, I need a strategy. I'm like you can't have a strategy unless you do the tactical things first, right, and that has to be very methodical. And then ultimately that strategy builds over time. But it has to be an investment, right. When you say you're building a strategy, you have to have the proper investment with the people, the time, the overall company resource no-transcript.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a running joke. On this podcast I often say I hate the word strategy. I don't think I hate the word strategy. I think I hate people who talk about strategy because I find sometimes it's not zoomed out to 10,000 feet, it's zoomed out to 100,000 feet and we've lost all of the actual practical application of this 78 page document. That really doesn't say much. How do you get people who have a tendency I'm extremely guilty of this, it's very interesting to talk about that strategy? How do you encourage your teams, your partners, to get back into the tactical and the execution mode?
Speaker 2:it's not very glamorous, right. Right, like it comes with just having a cadence. Right, don't have meetings just to have meetings, but there is a purpose to having a plan and reviewing that plan right, and making sure that everybody is aligned. And so I think it really goes down to just being organized right, tactical execution comes from being organized project management, which then, right, we can manage up and then we can dovetail into the strategic components.
Speaker 2:And I feel really passionate about not shifting strategy more than twice a year. Right, like you build one at the beginning of the year and then you get to a point where you can reevaluate it. But you shouldn't shift your strategy like 360, right, you should still stay in line with the work that you've already done. Then you get to the 12 month marker I prefer an 18 month mark and you can look back and I think then you can really course correct to address how do you make that change to your strategy.
Speaker 2:But what I found in working in startups and public companies is there's such a desire to shift strategy when one thing does not go as planned and that is just so. I would say think about like we were talking about sports. That's like a flagrant foul Right, like because all of a sudden, like everybody's like up in arms and so we have to shift, and then we lose months and time of execution going back to the beginning, like that value to the customer. And then what are we doing from a mission perspective if we are not staying focused on what we initially planned to do?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have a theory as to why that sort of consistent, sort of radical change happens. I do a lot of mentorship with sort of partner people and I really take them through the process. To get from zero to one is hit lots of buttons. The problem is to go from one to a hundred. It's hit the same button a lot, but we've programmed ourself to hit a barrier and change direction. The problem with operating a long-term partner is it's directionally the same. It's just sort of very, very minor course corrections and adjustments. But I just think it's so easy to go not working, let's go somewhere else, whereas I've seen the biggest unlocks and like huh we changed three words in our script and then this huge uptick happened or our calls of action changed or our pricing structure moved 1%.
Speaker 1:It's never this magical thing that, hey, we've got this new deck and suddenly everything just works.
Speaker 2:Well, I think people think that changing strategy makes you a visionary, right. Sure, but what are you as a visionary if you're not an execution artist? Right, and I think you can be both. But in cybersecurity, it's all about what's this shiny new object, right? What acronym can we throw at people and ultimately confuse them? And then, what value does that add to the sales cycle? Right, and it goes back to my partnership philosophy.
Speaker 2:I want to partner with partners that also are best of breed, right, and so finding niche ways to collaborate right, and focus on that and give it time to grow. We have partners that are on our list, that we just started net new at the beginning of the year, and do I necessarily feel like I need to completely remove them from our focus and structure? No, because we knew that, hey, we need the paperwork, like we need to figure out what the use case was, how did they operate, philosophy and program. So we're getting to that point to where, like, maybe somebody in leadership or cross-functionally in the organization would be like we should remove them, but I would, you know, respectfully, you know, kind of plead my case and die on my hill that, hey, we're just getting started.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was going to say timeline to ROI is something that I regularly have this fight around, which is I am both extremely impatient for when are we doing activity versus when do we expect impact to land, which is, you know, if we're waiting tomorrow to book a meeting, that's dumb. Never do that, do it right now. But if we're sat there trying to build a 10 million dollar book of business and we're going after six months, huh, huh, we're not there yet, I'm like, well guys, yeah, that's because it's exponential and it's not linear, which means it's going to be 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 10. That's the growth curve that we're looking for.
Speaker 2:I inherited some pieces of the business in the spring and, truth be told, I had to go in and completely lack of a better word decimate it right, remove all the fiction from the previous. I would say business plan and structure and rebuild and re-optimize. I like re-optimize better than rebuild, for the negative connotation and right now it's just not ideal, but also I feel it's built in truth to where now we have the opportunity to grow something really pivotal that can contribute back to the company. But change does not happen overnight and right in a very competitive hyper, I would say growth industry, that narrative that change happens overnight is, you know, often forced upon us. That narrative that change happens overnight is, you know, often forced upon us. But again, I say the term too often, the hill I'll die on is I will not sign up for something that I do not firmly believe in and then I can't timeline in milestone to something that will be successful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm always trying to encapsulate ideas into phrases, right, but Amazon talk about in decades, not days, and I just, I, just to me. That sums up everything, which is you know the amount of. I do a lot on this podcast where I meet amazing ceo ceos and founders of software businesses that are building partnership strategies, and that 10-year overnight success was like, oh my god, you know, they've 100x their revenue in two years. You go, yeah, yeah, but they were eating ramen for eight years, like they had no money. And then it's like, yeah, yeah, and then they did this pivot and then it all locked and it's like, yeah, because they did the eight years of like knowledge and customer understanding and product discovery and all. No one wants that bit, they just want the last bit. Yeah for sure.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I sort of find fascinating about people in partnerships is it's an extremely complicated job because you are effectively an entrepreneur, right, you need to balance everything from P&L to relationship, to product understanding, to ICP definition, to go to market engineering All of it, which is complicated to hire for. I'm always sort of fascinated by someone like yourself who's had repeated success. How do you build a team so consistently?
Speaker 2:I think it's that appreciation for where you've been before, right, and there's people that have been with you along the way. We talked about this in our pre-planning call. You know I have just a wonderful community that I'm indebted to, that I've either worked with or they've worked for me, and you know that's that is kind of my success. I wouldn't say let me rephrase that that has a lot to do with my success and my individual success is my team success, right, anything. I would not be here without them. And so, you know, when I got here, I had to really evaluate what role did I need right in the re-optimization of this part of the ecosystem at SentinelOne and who were those people that I could rely on that understood what really, what is the work that we need to do now versus in two years? Right in that person who can be agile and fluid with me as we grow.
Speaker 2:Long days, long hours, not glamorous, right, all those things that you listed out do incorporate the part of this job that makes it so, I would say, aspirational and also fun but also daunting.
Speaker 2:So it is that community of people I've been with, and it's not just the people that I bring onto the team and work with. It's those partners that I talked about. Right, like some of these partners I've had decades long relationship with, and so when I got here I had I told you know our entire executive team. Some of these partnerships I'm going to put on my back. They are personal relationships that I know may not seem like, hey, we need to go do that, but once you see like the connection and the ability for them to carry us into places we've never been before, that's the value and it's all built on trust. Right, like, the people that you close a deal with at the end of the quarter are the people you're going to go have coffee with or toast champagne with, and that's the criticality of, like, building that community, that network that will support you, whether you're working with them on a daily basis or you connect with them monthly or quarterly.
Speaker 1:It's actually one of the pieces of advice I give a lot of people who are building their sort of partnerships, career or potentially are landing within a new place. Because while I'm all about how do we build the biggest upside possible scores on the board matter and those relationships where you already have that trust already have those relationships. That's how you score early while you're building this long-term engine and flywheel. So navigating those two pieces is super useful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:So everyone, I feel, or everyone. I'm in my own echo chamber, I run a partnerships podcast, but everyone wants to get into partnerships, wants to get into cybersecurity, because it is the gift that can keep on giving. However, I know from speaking to you it's not always the most welcoming space. How do you think you can create an environment? We can create an environment that makes it more accessible for the right people, for the right outcomes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's such a great question and something I think about all the time. You know, we have a significant talent shortage. Right Like they talk. You see every LinkedIn post right there's, we have to hire, we need the right skill set. You see every LinkedIn post. Right there's, we have to hire, we need the right skill set. But we're not really open to considering somebody who might be mid-stage career and in health care cells that wants to transition into cybersecurity sales, and so I think I try to look at it more like open minded than others, and I referenced before that proud mom moment.
Speaker 2:My son is day two of his internship here and I thought about when he was thinking about applying for this like part of my language, oh shit, like is he going to feel the way that I feel like sometimes we treat others right? Is he not going to feel invited to become part of our community? And I talked to people about that and they, you know it's just kind of a conversation we have to have is how can we be more open and inclusive? Because I think we think we're inviting, but really, like when we go to RSA and Blackhead, why not? You hang out with the same people you've always been hanging out with, you take the same meetings that you've always taken, and so it's taking a little bit of risk right to open that like personal connection that will bring I'm always looking for shortcuts um and I usually find the best shortcuts mentorship because people just hey, alex, I've been where you this is what I would do to navigate, and you've often been the youngest executive in the room um, and a female, um.
Speaker 1:How has that shaped? How you mentor, build teams, encourage performance given that you have that unique perspective.
Speaker 2:Gosh, you know it's constantly finding that imposter syndrome, right, as I told you, this is the highlight of my day. The next meeting I absolutely do not want to go to, but it's that confidence that I can tap into, right, I kind of think when I go into complex calls is it's kind of like defending my thesis. If I can get that passion right, I know that I can speak to the value of the partnership or the value back to the business better than anybody else. Right, and that's just being, you know the couple of things we've said before organized, practical, tactical, building the strategy.
Speaker 2:And so when I talk to, you know, peers or colleagues, from a mentor, mentee standpoint, it is, you know, just owning that confidence and that value right, as an individual, and no person, and I and I said this to another senior leader actually, you know, no person is better than the other. We look at like the highest tier of executives and you know, oh, their time is better than ours or their time is more important than ours. No, right, their time is just as important as our time and our time is finite. So when we go into those meetings and you know we may feel like we're the minority in that audience. Just remember, like you're there for a reason, I haven't worked in this industry two decades and you know, like I said, had a baby on a Monday, baby on a Friday, went back to work on a Monday and not gotten here because I haven't put in the work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I fully agree. I think that I once got a bit of advice from a friend of the mentor around. I was extremely nervous that's going to a panel when I was a year, two years in my career, and he said something and it's and it's always landed with me which he said you know your data better than they do Totally, which is the whole point of hiring the team is that you have eyes on stuff that they don't right.
Speaker 1:Otherwise, you just have an executive team, you don't have anything else, and so, yeah, I often, whenever people sort of have to go into those complex meetings, I have to run them all the time Right and go hey, here's the hypothesis, here's the proof of value that we're putting together, here's how this is working, and sit there and just pause and wait for them, wait for the onslaught.
Speaker 2:I did that with me a couple of weeks ago, and right, because it's hard. Everything's up here and you've been living and breathing it so long, so of course you're a wealth of information, but trying to dial it down to an audience that has none, or maybe just a little bit information, is hard. So I did that a couple weeks ago. I said this would be a lot easier if we had some dialogue. So I'm going to pause and let you read the slide before I speak to it more, because I want to spark that conversation. You read the slide before I speak to it more Because I want to spark that conversation, because if I continue to come back and I'm just speaking at you, I don't think it really does any value for the outcome you want.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is very tactical, so maybe it's not useful for my audience, but what I've started doing is I'm a huge fan of AWS. I think AWS played the game the right way. They banned PowerPoint and so they write one-page or two-page briefs and I started running that with my whole revenue organization and it worked perfectly. And then I started running it with my customers where I went guys, I'm not going to talk, just read this Five minutes, I'm just going to sit here, it's fine, I'm going to make a coffee, go for it. And then I found that in 50 minutes we get three meetings worth of work done because they just come back and they go. I don't understand point seven. I do understand point two. I disagree with point three. And we go perfect, then let's just talk about that for 45 minutes and it's like then we're through it. Um, if you can build that mutual trust in that room to just be like, read this. I promise I've prepped for 10 hours for this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know I want to go back to a point that you know I hope our audience, you know will resonate with some of the listeners, especially young or female is, you know, when part of that is is like owning that right, like when you write something down and you present something, not be a feared right that it's going to be received the wrong way. Right's, you know, strategy is is 50 50. It either works or it doesn't work.
Speaker 2:So it's like winning the lottery you're either going to win or you're not it's weird I keep not winning, but yeah I always advocate for is you know, when you have those you know complex meetings and you may feel like you haven't been received, well, ask to come back right, like ask to say let me work on that for you and let me clarify that, sit on it right and then let's have additional conversations. If you're having those conversations once a month or quarterly, you're really just repeating the same information and so it's, like you know, everybody's favorite Bill Murray movie, groundhog Day. You got to get past that to enact change and enable that strategy.
Speaker 1:It's actually Caddyshack, but I'll give it to you.
Speaker 2:Or Watch Out Bob right.
Speaker 1:Melissa, thank you so much. It's been awesome. Well, partnerships is about building a black book, and so we always ask our current guests to recommend our next guest. Who did you have?
Speaker 2:in mind, I will recommend I'm so blessed to call him a friend and a colleague and a mentor, Dr Andre Alfred, over at Google. He runs the Mandiant Threat Detection business. I had the just pleasure to work with him in my former life and he's not partnerships on paper but when you look at his business it's effectively wholly built off partnerships and for my love and my litany of the Google family, I'd love to invite him on Awesome.
Speaker 1:We're excited to have him on and, melissa, thank you so much for sharing your experience. It's been awesome.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.