McAfee Channel: Turning Program to Profit

They say with each New Year there is a new beginning. That is certainly true for me. This is my inaugural blog as the new Senior Vice President of Worldwide Channels here at McAfee. I am most humbled but also extremely excited about my new role because our channel strategy is paramount to our future success. Jointly we have a tremendous opportunity in the security market, which is why I am looking forward to working together to drive mutual growth and success.

A little bit about myself and what you can expect from me. I am a 10 year McAfee veteran, so I am no stranger to the rapidly changing security market. I started my career as a sales representative for a value added reseller, giving me first-hand experience to the challenges you encounter on a day-to-day basis. As for my tenure at McAfee, it began as an enterprise sales director, followed by regional country manager, which gives me insight and knowledge into how to sell the value of the channel to make quota. My career has taken me to four continents, so not only do I bring a balanced vendor and partner sales perspective to this new role, but I also bring a strong global business perspective.

Unashamedly, like many of you I am a salesman, which means I am passionate, energetic and focused on results. One thing I am particularly passionate about is the value of partnerships, because candidly speaking we cannot achieve our growth goals without you, our channel partners.

So what do I think makes an effective partnership? It is a combination of three things: people, profitability and relevance. Let me spend a few moments expanding on each of these as I think it is critical you understand my philosophy from day one.

1. People: An effective partnership begins with working with people you can trust and that care about your business. We have spent the last few years here at McAfee building out a world-class channels team and I am extremely proud to lead our company-wide effort of taking our partnerships to the next level.
2. Profitability: Our 2012 channel strategy is to transform our partner engagements to drive mutual profitability by investing in you, growing with you and optimizing for you. I am committed to making the strategic investments that drive partner innovation, differentiation and profitability. I will also tell you that with more than three-quarters of our annual revenue flowing through the channel, you are our growth engine. And, we will continue to optimize the resources that enable you to become that coveted trusted security advisor for our mutual customers.
3. Relevance: It begins with McAfee being significant to your business results. A good yardstick for me is that McAfee is a healthy percentage of your security revenue. Then, in order for a partnership to grow and propser there must be a strong value proposition. As the leader in the security market I believe McAfee has one of the best value propositions in the industry with the broadest and most integrated security portfolio. In fact, Gartner recognizes McAfee as being a technology leader in seven different Magic Quadrants. Combine that with our award winning channel partner program, our solid partner enablement strategy and some of the richest profitability programs in the industry and I think you’ll understand why I am so excited about working together.

The opportunity in front of us is massive. The volume and sophistication of today’s security threats has companies of all sizes struggling to keep up and in need of a trusted security advisor. Our channels foundation has been built and we have tremendous momentum. It’s now my job to lead McAfee’s channel transition from focusing on building to focusing on driving mutual growth and profitability through improved execution. I couldn’t be more excited about getting started, which is why I want to invite you to our Quarterly Channel Partner Town Hall meeting on Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 8AM (PST). Simply click the hyper link to register. I look forward to your questions during this call. In the mean time please feel free to ask a question by providing a comment to this blog.

Happy New Year and good selling!

Gavin

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