Qualys puts its partner ecosystem at the forefront of its business engagement

Debashish Jyotiprakash  
Managing Director, India and ASEAN, Qualys

A good partner is motivated by not just the right incentive or money but also by rewards like recommendations and shared growth plans. Qualys’ rewards policy goes beyond just a partner margin or discounts but a number of other elements.

A good partner program should provide talent, scale and collaboration. Partners are there to help the company, not just with the field selling but also to validate that the partner program has scale, relevance and velocity.

“You can have smart people in your team but you can’t have them all. Partners provide customer advocacy, a sense of customer success and most importantly win-win for all parties involved,” says Debashish Jyotiprakash, Managing Director, India and ASEAN, Qualys.

“One can learn by making mistakes, but if that’s the only way to learn then you have to make too many mistakes yourself to learn it all. So it is best to also learn from the mistakes of others and who else is a better friend than a seasoned partner in your channel-led growth story,” observes Debashish.

Besides, as Debashish points out, increased brand awareness and an accelerated revenue growth are key outcomes of a good partner program.

KEY ELEMENTS OF A CHANNEL POLICY

Explaining in the words of Debashish, you can’t buy a tank and not know how to use it. Ensuring clear and transparent communication with partners is essential for building trust and achieving mutual goals. Qualys does this by setting clear expectations from the start, establishing regular communication channels, being open to feedback, providing high frequency training and roadmap updates, leveraging performance metrics, treating partners well as an extended team and maintaining a culture of honesty and accountability.

A good partner is motivated by not just the right incentive or money but also by rewards like recommendations and shared growth plans. “A tree is known by the fruit it bears and a strong partnership is felt by sharing success and growth,” explains Debashish. “Our rewards policy goes beyond just a partner margin or discounts but a number of other elements like -

Training and Certification Rewards
Exclusive Access and Early Adoption
Joint Marketing Initiatives
Customer Success Bonuses
Recognition and Prestige Programs
Access to Specialized Tools and Resources like Advanced Technical Support that the partner can monetize
Event Sponsorship and Speaking Opportunities

Measuring the success of a partner program involves aligning its objectives with measurable outcomes and using a combination of qualitative and quantitative metrics. Apart from the usual revenue, growth, pipeline, engagement, retention, customer success etc, Qualys has a far more sophisticated way to do that.

It does this by -

Partner Influence Score
Partner Lifetime value
Innovation and use-case workshops impact
Community engagement, advocacy and thought leadership abilities
Alignment with long term goals like entering a new market, adopting a new tech, resilience and adaptability etc
Speed to value on onboarding, ramp-up, delivering value
Shared success Indicators like joint GTM’s, motivated marketing co-investments