SecurityScorecard is excited to announce that our Vice President of Worldwide Channels, Nicole Stavroff, has been named for the second consecutive year to CRN’s 2021 Channel Chiefs list. Every year, CRN presents this award to executives whose partner programs achieved superior results.
As Vice President of Worldwide Channels, Nicole has had a huge impact on the channel growth at SecurityScorecard. Nicole joined SecurityScorecard in August 2018. With her 20+ years of sales experience, she has successfully revamped our Partner Program by recruiting new multinational partners, developed programs to help drive consistency worldwide, as well as rolling out new partner messaging, enablement, and incentives. During 2020, she focused on key verticals, market segments, and sales plays that were delivered to customers via a high-touch engagement model with some of our top partners.
Creating partner relationships: treat them as a customer
Nicole’s approach to partner relationships sounds simple: treat your partners the way you would a customer. In reality, this means using creativity and personal touches. As Nicole explains,
“I constantly strive to be creative and put my fingerprints on everything. There are certain elements that you have to follow, as an industry, for the channel that are just the way the channel operates. But outside of that, most definitely we’re unique and stand out intentionally.”
As part of her strategy, Nicole assessed SecurityScorecard’s channel partners, who were mostly security-focused, and identified new strategic partners who sit at the table with customers as their trusted advisors.
Recognizing the need to build awareness within the partner community, Nicole developed a messaging strategy that aligned SecurityScorecard’s ten risk factor categories to additional products and services that partners sell in their portfolios.
“We aligned each risk category to corresponding partner products. This equipped our partners with the knowledge they needed to sell not only SecurityScorecard but additional products and services as part of the remediation. We needed to show that it was a symbiotic relationship.”
By enabling our partners with the right messaging, training and, working side by side, we have strengthened our relationships and realized mutual success together. Nicole and her team have built a stronger “better together” story. Even amidst an economic downturn and global health crisis, SecurityScorecard saw tremendous growth YoY in 2020.
- 10% YoY and 100% (Q3 – Q3) QoQ growth in deal registration as a % of new ARR.
- 28% increase in deal registration submissions and 46% growth in closed/won – deal reg submissions.
- 10% increase in joint partner events which generated an 80% increase in leads YoY
- 222% growth in worldwide partner enablement for both sales and technical partner reps
Building partner relationships: extend your corporate cultural values
One of SecurityScorecard’s core values is believing that we are one team that embraces diversity, fun, and collaboration. When Nicole joined SecurityScorecard, she recognized that our core values and corporate culture set us apart as both a company and as a partner. She explains,
“I want partners to feel like they’re part of our family. I want them to know that we’re in it with them, side-by-side in the trenches and to build trusting, long-lasting relationships. I want them to know that we value them as trusted business partners.”
Channel programs are symbiotic from a business perspective, but the term “partner” needs to go beyond just the financial relationship. Partner relationships work best when everyone works together. To promote this trust, Nicole works closely with partner sales and technical teams to understand what their customers are asking them for help in solving as well as what our partners need from us. When talking about listening and partnering, Nicole provides insight into the value it brings:
“One of our customers said, ‘security isn’t just the CISO’s responsibility. It’s the responsibility of every c-level executive.’ This really resonated with me. I wanted to enable our partners to successfully position SecurityScorecard to a different line of businesses and personas within their customer install base. They understood the value of our solutions and security ratings but they were not clear on how to present them to their customers. So we built use cases and aligned them to personas for the entire c-suite. For instance, 1 of the use cases we developed is a value proposition around the Chief Marketing Officer’s need to protect company brand reputation. The response from our partners at our recent WW partner summit was resoundingly, ‘thank you!’”
By listening and responding to partner needs, Nicole and her team exemplified one of our five core values that we hold near and dear; “Customer Centric.” Treating our partners as part of the SecurityScorecard family reinforces not only why we’re a unique organization but how we believe a company should act.
It’s easy to look at metrics and dollars, but often, that quantitative data only tells half the story. Nicole’s dedication to creating and building relationships across our partner ecosystem channel has contributed to SecurityScorecard’s continued growth.
Congratulations again, Nicole! Your leadership and vision, plus the work your team has done, are the very essence of what it means to be a Scorecarder!