We’re delighted that Meg Brennan, Senior Director, Global Channel Programs and Operations, has been recognized for her significant achievements and named a CRN 2021 Channel Chief.
Bringing more than 25 years of experience to the table, she has contributed to a 19% increase in bookings per partner last year and efforts aimed at helping partners adjust to the business impacts of COVID-19.
Meg shares about her involvement during 2020 and gives a preview of changes we’re making for partners in 2021:
2020 was quite the year for the Riverbed channel. Our mission was to increase engagement with partners, and even with COVID-19, we succeeded. Our partner sales trainings increased 400%, we hosted 50+ partner executive-briefings and partners were key presenters and attendees at Riverbed’s Sales Kick Off in Las Vegas and Global User Conference.
COVID-19 offered Riverbed and our partners both challenges and opportunities. We had to evolve quickly to respond to the immediate crisis and first offer partners support financially. We were able to extend terms when needed and provide flexibility with delivery of orders. We also were able to present our partners with opportunities to grow in offering work from home solutions to their customers that would accelerate end user applications and provide better visibility to what is happening on customer networks, both on premise and in the cloud.
COVID-19 required partners to support customers who have turned to cloud-based collaboration tools – such as Office 365 – to facilitate remote working. These applications require partners to offer a customer success motion. Partners will need to adapt to this technology trend to not just land, but adopt, expand and renew.
We are looking to do more to market-with, -through and -to partners in 2021. Our expectation is to offer more targeted campaigns and messaging that partners can leverage to market to customers and internally to partner audiences and stakeholders.