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Lisa Campbell - Securing SMBs Through Strategic Partnerships · Partnerships Unraveled

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries about partnerships, and channel on a weekly basis.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: My name is Alex Whitford and I'm the VP of Revenue here at Chanix, and this week I'm very excited to welcome our special guest, Lisa.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: How are you doing?
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: I'm great, alex, thanks for having me.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I've got to say you are the first ever guest to join the podcast when they're actually meant to be on holiday, which, I've got to say, is an extra special thank you from me and our listeners.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: So I appreciate you taking the time.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: That's very kind of you.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: Thanks, Alex.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no worries, no worries.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Maybe for the uninitiated, it'd be great if you could give us a little bit of a background of who you are, where you work, and then we can dive into the questions.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely so.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: My name is Lisa Campbell and I am the VP of SMB at CrowdStrike, and so my role here is to work with partners to give small businesses everywhere the very best cybersecurity protection.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Awesome.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Now, from my sort of channel knowledge and experience although limited CrowdStrike, typically known for a very sort of enterprise grade proposition, I know them for their enterprise partners and their enterprise channel.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Talk to me about the sort of complexities and opportunities in terms of taking that enterprise grade go to market and sort of heading down market.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great question and actually I was listening to one of your other episodes where you were saying, alex, that you think the small business market is one of the most interesting because it's changing really rapidly, and I definitely agree with that.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: So one of the things we think about a lot at CrowdStrike is what's the customer need?
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Where is the market going?
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: And with small and medium businesses, they've seen a lot of changes as attackers go down market and our mission at CrowdStrike is to stop breaches and therefore we're looking at how we can help smaller businesses achieve that need.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: So, in fact, I think we surveyed our small business customers earlier this year and about a third of them said that they were likely or very likely to go out of business in the event of a cyber attack, and so you don't have to look very hard actually to find these statistics.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: They kind of come out of the woodwork.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: You know Accenture has done some recent studies on this topic.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: The US Chamber of Commerce, you know it's everywhere.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Small businesses are worried about how they stay protected for cybersecurity issues and we feel at CrowdStrike we're well-placed to help them.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: So one of the things we have done in the past year or so is launch a product called Falcon Go which is really designed for the needs of small businesses.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: So, as you mentioned, crowdstrike, very well known for our enterprise grade protection, and we're bringing the power of that protection in a much simpler package, a simpler UI, making it easier to deploy for small businesses, easier to deploy for small businesses.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: So that's really kind of how we're thinking about serving the market is providing that same robust protection but making it much, much simpler to use and to grow with small businesses as they grow and their needs evolve and change.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's excellent to hear brands like yourself talking about providing that same quality of product, maybe in a more turnkey deployment strategy.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: But I think when I hear around how AI is driving breaches and people are heading down market and actually the opportunities for those nefarious characters, there's actually lots of opportunity in that sort of SMB space right.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: So that change in demand also has a change in requirements from a product perspective.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: I think one of the nuances around providing or going after a different segment is you have to build a whole sort of business within a business.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: That requires a bit of air cover, a bit of support.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: How important is executive backing when launching a new market strategy?
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: It's incredibly important when launching a new market strategy.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: It's incredibly important and, as you can imagine, you know one of I'll get up on my soapbox for a minute.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: I think, as partnerships and channel folks, sometimes we are very good at and spend a lot of time thinking about execution and executing partnerships and sort of marketing through partners and less time than maybe we should thinking about strategy and thinking of ourselves as strategy first folks.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: And really you know where in businesses does strategy come from?
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: Well, it should come from everywhere, but the people who spend the most time thinking about it are often the executive team.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: Right, and at CrowdStrike, you know wonderfully like our executive team is really focused on our mission, which is stopping breaches.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: They see the same data you know that we've on our mission, which is stopping breaches.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: They see the same data that we've been speaking about, which is attackers focusing more and more on smaller and smaller businesses, partially fueled by, as you mentioned, the rise of AI tools and technologies, and so they've been incredibly supportive.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I can imagine, when you're you know they're threading a whole go-to-market together in terms of product iteration and direct versus indirect channels how that plays into your alliances.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: You're going to need executive support to sort of get that cross-functional buy-in.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: I'd love to hear a little bit around how executives have helped you deliver through complexities, because I can imagine there's some very nuanced changes that you need to make.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think part of it is, you know, thinking through.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: Hey, you know we have an incredible partner set at CrowdStrike.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: You know how do we think about which of those partners are really applicable to what we're trying to do together to serve small businesses, which of our partners have sort of that spiritual and philosophical alignment in that regard and the customer base to be able to, you know, talk about this in the market together in a credible way.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: And then there's, I think, the courage to look at kind of a new set of partners as well and thinking creatively about, you know, hey, what's out there and I don't want to say anything I shouldn't say on this podcast, but I'm really excited about what the you know what the next year or so is going to bring for us in terms of those new partnerships that maybe you know aren't necessarily in our traditional partner set, and our executive team is really important in helping us drive all of that.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: I think, maybe to give a I think it's public knowledge you recently announced a partnership with 1PassMod to simplify security, I think, for 150,000 customers with a focus around SMB.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: I'd love to hear how that partnership came about, how you've worked through that, because that's obviously an awesome opportunity and value provided to the market.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: 1password is an amazing company and I think if you read any of that, it was just Cybersecurity Awareness Month here the past month and if you read any of the guidance that's provided to small businesses, sort of generically like hey, what can I do to protect my small business?
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: Passwords come up, using a password manager comes up, and so 1Password is obviously a leader in that space.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: I think one of the things that has been really interesting for us and what our partnership centered around is providing 1 passwords, extended access management and powering that with providing that with Falcon Go, which is our product that is designed across Drake to protect S&Ps, with that simpler user interface.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: So, you know, kind of taking it out of acronyms and taking it back to what's the customer need and what do customers expect.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: They just want us to make it easier for them.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: Really, at the end of the day, it's about simplicity.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: You know the products are important, but if nobody uses them, you know we're not achieving our mission, and so for us it's hey, how do we actually bring these products together in a simplified security suite that small businesses can actually get their hands on?
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: And that's really the spirit and the power of that partnership.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: And you know, I know we've talked about this a little bit in the past For me I'm always looking for these folks who are really powerfully strategically aligned with what we're trying to do in the market, and so 1Password is one of those companies for me.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: What I love about the sort of answers to the first and the second question is you've talked about executive air cover and how they help sort of drive success, and then you've also said working backwards from sort of customer feedback in terms of here are the types of tools that we use.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: Those two things can and often are very, very far apart.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: Can and often are very, very far apart.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: I'd love to hear how you pull in customer feedback and executive air cover, because I imagine that's sort of very instructive to how you're going to optimize your routes to market.
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a really interesting question.
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: I know that folks use that term, air cover.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: I think of it slightly differently, I guess, which is that you know when I'm thinking about, hey, what's a company that I'd be proud to represent and a product I'd be proud to represent?
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: One of the things I look for as a partnerships person and someone who spent time in the market doing partnerships and building products and businesses is is an executive team really focused on the customer need.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: Are they still, even if it's a larger and more established company?
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: And I think that gets to the spirit of what you're saying, right, because it's very easy in a complex world, and especially as companies grow, to get a bit understandably distracted?
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: There's a lot going on that you're trying to serve multiple products or multiple constituencies, and one of the most impressive things for me about CrowdStrike, as someone who was looking at the company before joining, just seeing how focused our team was on that customer need and that's really, I think, what you see here, with our focus on serving small businesses and how we think about it.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I often joke with the guests on here that the best bit about this podcast is I just get a channel NBA right, I get to understand how to build partnerships and build routes to market and I think one I've got better as a leader within my own business, which is excellent.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: But I've really picked up one thing, and the greatest leaders and businesses seem to have this just ruthless focus on what does the customer need next, how can we iterate and improve what we offer today, and I hear so many and see so often people get distracted by the noise.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: You know we've got meetings and reports to do, but actually that ruthless focus on how do we deliver what's valuable to the customer and it sounds like that's had a huge amount of influence in terms of one, you joining CrowdStrike, but also how you're building partnerships and routes to market today.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: I mean, what do businesses do at the most fundamental level?
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: We deliver value for customers and shareholders.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: That's the whole idea, right?
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: Like not to get too sort of intellectual on you on a Monday, but I think that you know nothing else matters at the end of the day, and so that's the way I think about our vision and mission generally.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: And then certainly it applies to how we're aiming to protect and serve small businesses.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: Now, you know, that's not to say that we'll always get it right, you know, but I think that that's the fundamental organizing principle, and it has to be that way, in my opinion.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: Well, you've spoken about not getting too intellectual, but off the podcast we spoke about philosophical partners, which I'm an enormous philosophy nerd, so that sort of was the Venn diagram of philosophy and go-to-market channels, which basically meant that I didn't get any sleep that night thinking about it.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: I'd love for you to expand on what represents a philosophical partner.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: Who are those partners and how do you sort of come to that decision-making process that you want to work with them?
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so interesting, like language is so important, right?
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: Philosophical alignment you know, on my team, internally, we talk about spiritual alignment.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: And then, you know, at another company, johnson Johnson, where I was previously in my career, we used to talk a lot about reasons to believe, you know, in a partnership or a thesis, a business case.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: You know, maybe it's the more time I spend on partnerships and in the channel, which itself is sort of an interesting term that we could probably unpack on a whole other podcast episode.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: But I think finding those philosophical partners is so important.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: Why, you know?
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: Number one it kind of comes back to what we were speaking about earlier, which is strategy.
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: You know, do you see the market in the same way or a similar way, strategically?
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: And then two, do you have faith in the individual or individuals that are in front of you that they can really work with you to get things done, because it's aligned to that strategy?
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: And so for me, those are.
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: Those are things that beyond kind of the nuts and bolts of a data driven business case that have always yielded results.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: And also, you know, it tends to be the most fun.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: Partnerships are hard to put together and also, you know it tends to be the most fun.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: Partnerships are hard to put together.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: A lot of things have to go right, and so it's partially about kind of the soft stuff as well as the business case, and sometimes it's easy to lose sight of that in a data driven world.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: So those are things we spend a lot of time thinking about.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: No, I couldn't be more aligned.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: I think it's really, um, it's really the difference between, uh, an abundancy mindset or a scarcity mindset.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: I think, if you really view the world in, there's a finite amount of opportunities or there's a finite amount of partnerships, which I know in real terms there are.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: But what I see so often is then we start making ones and zeros decision-making, so it becomes quite reductive and I've seen in my own career and I and I hear stories very consistently quite reductive.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: And I've seen in my own career and I and I hear stories very consistently I really enjoy working with that person.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: I'm going to give without a requirement that I get something back right.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: I'm going to take that call, I'm going to offer that advice, I'm going to have that meeting when it starts from a position of kindness and yet every single time I've seen them enacted, they come back in one form or another.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: I think this sort of podcast is built on that principle where we always ask people to open us up into the next guest, because we're trying to build this community and help sort of share the knowledge around the opportunities that that's brought me and the opportunities I see fostering in the community.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: It makes me extremely pleased because I think some people think, oh, it's a bit intellectual or it's a bit fluffy, but I can imagine it's really helped drive your career, drive your revenue, drive the very, very hard sort of data that is, the deliverables.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: But sometimes leading with that hey, I enjoy working with this person is actually just as important as maybe what that predictive number looks like.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a really good point and actually the number one question I get from folks who are either starting their career in the tech industry on the business side and looking for some advice or looking for opportunities or even trying to pivot into partnerships.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: You know, there's, I think there's this idea of, hey, it's kind of a small community folks who do partnerships or work in the channel, and that leads to some of that give and get that you're talking about.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: That's also what makes it really fun, and so for folks looking to break in, one of the things we end up talking a lot about is hey, who do you like working with?
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: What are the conversations you like to have?
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: How does that lead you to the community of folks that you'd want to partner with out there in the ecosystem?
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: And it really is part of that being willing to give before you get.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: That, I think, underpins a lot of the strongest partnerships.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: It also to your point about an abundance mindset some of the most interesting partnerships and even deals, single deals and transactions I've worked on.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: That wasn't the first idea.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: Deals, single deals and transactions I've worked on.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: That wasn't the first idea, and so if you were watching kind of the movie of that deal or that transaction and how it got done.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: Maybe it started with something else entirely and you had folks who you know had the right strategy together and, you know, worked on an opportunity and it didn't quite make sense.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: But then something else sort of presented itself and you want to be open to those sorts of opportunities as you grow your career.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the last bit on this element I can imagine this has a really positive impact on the people you hire and the people you continue to work with through different jobs, because I imagine, if you embed this culture of like we want to win, but we want to win the right way and we want to win with people that we like that you're going to build an extremely sort of forward thinking, collaborative group of people.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: How has that influenced the people you hire and the people that you promote and and who you continue to work with?
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a really interesting question.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: I don't know that I've thought about that before and you know I'll have to go back and ask my team about that because I'm sure they'd have more interesting answers than I would.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I do think it leads to the prior thread around.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, you know, advice for folks who are starting their career, maybe listening to this podcast and looking to pivot into partnerships as well, it is something you know you want to select for someone who could kind of go in there, you know, with a bunch of partners at a conference, or, you know, at a dinner and leave having made friends as well as business partners, and that is part of it.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: At the end of the day it's the most fun part.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: But if that sounds like you, then you know, keep exploring.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: And if it doesn't, maybe think about you know how you get there and what are the kinds of environments where you feel comfortable, kind of having that mindset.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: Those friendships and business relationships are really what kind of propel folks forward in this line of business.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I, I, I actually think, even in the sort of most ruthless, cutthroat AE like we're closing deals, I think the what I see so often is, as people mature is a big word, but as people sort of change their philosophical stance right and start having that abundance mindset, start working and collaborating more and maybe not negotiating as hard about this because they're thinking about the long-term, I just see people thrive so consistently and I've personally experienced that as you almost stop caring so much about what we're doing right now, right today.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: And how do I build these long-term sustainable partnerships?
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: That reciprocity comes back times 10, which is always I don't know.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: It makes me feel some sort of karmic.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: Justice is knocking about or something 100%.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think that there's a number of different dimensions to that One.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: I think about a lot and we're talking about kind of building a team and, you know, helping folks along in their careers.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: As things increasingly get more and more virtual, how do you continue to have those trust building moments with partners?
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: It becomes almost more and more of a luxury to be in person, right, and that's the easiest way to kind of build that trust mindset and mentality.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: So how do we help folks do that in a completely different medium is a really interesting topic.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: But you're right, it kind of takes you out of the kind of transaction transaction mindset and into something deeper, and I think that's what folks want from their partners, because it's not just about today and tomorrow, it's what's our strategy, three to five years and long term, and so those, those really are the partnerships that I get the most excited about.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: Awesome, maybe pivoting then into the longer term.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: I'd love to hear a little bit more about other specific strategics or initiatives that you're really excited to be working on at CrowdStrike.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll say this you know, when you're doing something like we are with serving small businesses at CrowdStrike, it is newer for us than our enterprise business and so it is like building a new business and so those milestones, I almost think of us as hitting those milestones, like we're growing a business line and a product line and we're really excited about what's coming next year.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: So watch this space.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: There's more to come, but I think some of the recent partnerships we've announced we mentioned 1Password also out there publicly our partnerships with, for example, National Australia Bank, who's one of those partnerships.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: I mean, if you look at what they kind of put out into the ether, the strategic alignment there with that team is just incredible, the things that they do for small business, and so I think we'll continue to build on those successes as we build our business together with those partners, and I can't wait to come back on the podcast, maybe in a couple of quarters, and share more with you about what we've done Awesome, lisa.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: Well, we're looking forward already to having you on, where we can debate philosophy and somehow the channel all at the same time.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: As we are all about reciprocity and building partnerships, we always like to ask our current guest who they think we should have on next.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Lisa, who do you have in mind?
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: Oh, amazing.
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: You should absolutely talk to Matt O'Leary, who's the VP of Partnerships and Corpor at one password, and he actually has a specific word I won't spoil it for you about how he views his philosophical partners in partnerships in the channel.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: So I'll let him talk to you about that, and he's also my best source recently of book recommendations, so I'll leave it there Well.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: I can't believe I'm diversifying into a philosophy podcast, but this is a.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this has been wonderfully interesting, lisa, thank you so much, and Matt, we are coming for you.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: Wonderful Thanks, Alex, for having me.
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: Thanks, Lisa.