CrowdStrike Fal.Con 2023: Company Overhauls Partner Program, Intros New Marketplace
CrowdStrike has more for partners to sell than ever.
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CrowdStrike is an endpoint security leader and it’s also a leader in the cloud, said chief business officer Daniel Bernard.
“We have a north of $300 million cloud security business that we talked about on our last earnings call,” he said. “Partners are contributing over half of that in terms of leading and taking us to market with it. And we activate the entire ecosystem on our cloud solutions and they’re all selling cloud. We’re going to grow our cloud business a lot more and they’re going to grow their cloud business a lot, helping companies consolidate on Falcon Cloud Security.”
A key part of “more” is CrowdClass, a master-class series in which CrowdStrike experts share insights on the company’s different solution areas, how to pitch them and sell them for a sales track, and how to demonstrate them and solution them for a technical track, Bernard said.
“So offering that kind of content, I think all of us have been through automated training before and we have thousands and thousands of partners around the world,” he said. “That is the kind of quality and the oomph that we’re putting in what we’re doing, helping our partners sell more, faster. How are we making it faster? We’re making it faster by providing the systematic tooling so that they get constant communication with CrowdStrike as quicker SLAs on every interaction we have with our partners, but also rewards.”
As part of Accelerate, CrowdStrike is unveiling its new CrowdCard, a debit card available globally that rewards partners for bringing the company into new opportunities and upselling its cloud solutions, identity solutions and LogSkill next-gen security information and event management (SIEM) solutions.
“It puts money directly into the pockets of the folks that sell us, sales and sales engineers,” Bernard said. “Of course, we have incentive programs for the partners at the partner level as well, that are lucrative, exciting and industry best-in-class. But this is something additional that we’re doing to incentivize sellers to consolidate, to focus their time, their energy and the outcomes that they can provide their customers on the Falcon platform. That’s been something that we’ve talked and gotten a lot of great feedback from our partners on and something that partners frankly struggle with, which is how do we reward individual contributors? As an industry, vendors are pretty good at rewarding the house, but how do we also put money and incentives in the pockets of the people? And that’s how you build a movement and that’s what Falcon is in cybersecurity.”
If you close a deal, you get paid on your debit card in days, not months, quarters, weeks or even sometimes years, he said.
The “easier” part of Accelerate is making sure CrowdStrike is delivering the right in-person resources, whether that be funding resources at partner sites, providing the right kind of in-person enablement and training for the higher tiers of partners, or supporting them with the right kind of marketing resources, Bernard said.
“We have an agency-based marketing program globally that’s already started in beta that becomes part of that, where we put dollars and programs behind developing pipeline for our partners, because we know that when we teach them how to fish, they’re going to go catch a lot of fish,” he said. “So easier is all about helping our partners operationalize what we’re doing, giving them the right kind of in-person resourcing. And one example of that is our Crowd Connect series, where we have live activations all around the world happening, where we’re doing in-person events with partners, not end customers, just with partners to get them amped up, excited, educated, trained and review their business plans together. So an all-immersive movement is what we’re creating and … it’s bringing everyone together to win, to make money and to provide best-in-class outcomes that only CrowdStrike can provide in the industry.”
CrowdStrike Marketplace lets the entire technology ISV ecosystem list and transact in a new marketplace, Bernard said.
“We did have something called the CrowdStrike Store before, which was more of a referral-based model,” he said. “CrowdStrike Marketplace takes us to transactions so vendors like Okta can list in our store and gain access to more than 30,000 CrowdStrike customers. The marketplace is not only on our website, it’s also in the product as well so customers can discover, try, buy and integrate directly with a click through CrowdStrike back to us.”
There are customers that want to consume other technologies through CrowdStrike, Bernard said.
“They’ve already gone through the legwork of negotiating all their terms with us,” he said. “They want those terms to override. We’re already a registered vendor, so we can really help companies of all sizes, but a lot of startups expedite their sales process with those existing procurement relationships.”
To incentivize customers to participate in the marketplace and integrate more products, CrowdStrike is introducing CrowdCredits.
“CrowdCredits are dollars to be used in our marketplace, and it kind of creates a virtuous cycle,” Bernard said. “It attracts more of the ecosystem to list in the marketplace because they want in, and incentivizes customers to purchase more products through the CrowdStrike Marketplace, and what we get out of it from a CrowdStrike perspective, besides being cybersecurity’s ecosystem, is we get really measurable and exciting stickiness with customers because we want them to integrate more products with Falcon. That’s a good thing for everybody.”
With CrowdCredits, CrowdStrike is incentivizing its customers to take their cybersecurity experience to the next level and do so with its ecosystem and partners, he said.
To incentivize customers to participate in the marketplace and integrate more products, CrowdStrike is introducing CrowdCredits.
“CrowdCredits are dollars to be used in our marketplace, and it kind of creates a virtuous cycle,” Bernard said. “It attracts more of the ecosystem to list in the marketplace because they want in, and incentivizes customers to purchase more products through the CrowdStrike Marketplace, and what we get out of it from a CrowdStrike perspective, besides being cybersecurity’s ecosystem, is we get really measurable and exciting stickiness with customers because we want them to integrate more products with Falcon. That’s a good thing for everybody.”
With CrowdCredits, CrowdStrike is incentivizing its customers to take their cybersecurity experience to the next level and do so with its ecosystem and partners, he said.
CROWDSTRIKE FAL.CON 2023 — CrowdStrike unveiled a significant overhaul of its partner program, its new CrowdStrike Marketplace, CrowdCredits and more.
The company is hosting thousands of partners this week at CrowdStrike Fal.Con 2023 in Las Vegas. During Monday’s Partner Summit, CrowdStrike partners learned more about the company’s partnership investment road map, new programs and more.
‘Exciting Time’ for Partners at CrowdStrike Fal.Con
Daniel Bernard, CrowdStrike’s chief business officer, said this is an exciting time for his company.
CrowdStrike’s Daniel Bernard
“The evolution from product to platform that we’ve been on over the last couple of years, the company is at $3 billion annual recurring revenue (ARR) right now and we have exciting sights on the future to $5 billion and $10 billion,” he said. “So we’re building into the program all the various different partner types, as well as focusing our partners really around a couple of key themes … that the program centers on: more, faster, easier. That’s really the core tenants of the Accelerate program.”
More means CrowdStrike has more products to sell, more solutions and more business outcomes to deliver to customers than ever before, Bernard said.
“So everything we’re doing is geared on helping partners build practices around CrowdStrike, whether it’s a cloud security practice, an endpoint detection and response (EDR) practice, an identity protection practice, a next-gen security information and event management (SIEM) practice and more,” he said. “Stay tuned for the more. The program centers around providing the right kind of education and enablement – and I’m going to call it entertainment, which is what education should be from my perspective – around how we get partners to understand more, operationalize more and build practices around more.”
Scroll through our slideshow above for more from CrowdStrike Fal.Con.
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