Unlocking Security Sales Success in the IT Channel

Security On the Rise in the IT Channel

Security is imperative for enterprises of every size and in every sector across the globe in today’s hyper-connected, digital landscape. Without comprehensive security, threats like ransomware, malware, and social engineering attacks supercharged by GenAI cause heightened risk of data breaches and operational disruptions to organizations. This results in eroded trust and have the capacity to cause devastating financial losses.

Amid the headline-grabbing outages and breaches of the past few years, end-user security spending has unsurprisingly skyrocketed and is expected to grow 15% to reach $212 billion in 2025.

Opportunities and Obstacles:
Security Sales in the IT Channel

Security threat vectors are an ever-moving target and the pace of new security solutions coming to market is blistering. In response, IT leaders across business types and sizes are increasingly turning to managed service providers (MSPs) and managed security service providers (MSSPs) rather than handling security in-house. In the particularly vulnerable midmarket, cybersecurity and data privacy are top IT priorities for small and midsize organizations.

The Channel Company, MES, State of the Midmarket 2024

Partner Enablement:
The New Catalyst of Channel Security Sales

As organizations make strategic moves to protect themselves from threats, security technology vendors have unprecedented opportunities to accelerate through-partner sales in the IT channel. However, exceptional security solutions alone aren’t enough to stand out in this complex and crowded arena. To thrive, vendors have renewed their focus on innovative, high-touch, and empowering partner enablement.

Partner enablement requires significant time and careful attunement to changing partner needs.

It’s also among the most effective ways to navigate the challenging and complex cybersecurity market, and achieve your security technology sales targets in the channel.

Diversification and Differentiation:
Keys to Security Sales Success in the IT Channel

For the 2025 CRN Annual Report Card, Security IT vendor leaders shared strategic priorities and goals to drive growth in this complex and crowded market. Partner enablement and training top the list.

Polished and Proactive Partner Enablement for the Security Channel

Optimize partner enablement and capture the many opportunities arising from this watershed moment for security technologies and the IT channel.

Fine-Tune Enablement with Guidance from Top Performing Partners

Maximize enablement impact by understanding the partner program marketing assets, training initiatives, communication cadence, and go-to-market strategies yielding ROI right now.

Hone Your Conversation Skills with Stakeholders

Direct conversations with engaged, high-performing partners as well as your own partner managers can unlock a treasure trove of nuanced insights about your most successful enablement strategies. Every 1:1 conversation and group discussion is an opportunity to ask open-ended questions to encourage your partners to share their success and challenges. Practice the art of active listening to better understand:

• Preferred security training formats and solution knowledge gaps
• Successful sales plays and lead generation strategies
• Specific industries, company sizes, and pain points driving sales
• Friction areas in your incentive offerings and Marketing Development Funds (MDF) process
• Impactful co-branded content and value propositions

Use Win Wires to Gain and Share Actionable Insights

These detailed reports, drawn from deeper-dive interviews with partners and partner managers, uncover nuances to enhance engagement and enablement across your partner ecosystem. Taken together, multiple win wires can reveal common themes in partners’ security sales wins. What messaging resonates most? Which sales motions are proving most effective? What specific objections are partners hearing, and how are they overcoming the hesitation of their prospects?

Compare Partner Engagement KPIs

Not all enablement tools have the same impact. Monitor engagement metrics such as certification completions, content downloads, and the timing and frequency of 1:1 conversations with partners and correlate them with through-partner revenue growth. Pinpoint patterns to guide the evolution of your enablement. If you spot upticks in engagement following 1:1s, reduce the time between partner check-ins. Low engagement with specific self-paced training should prompt a review, followed by either updates or phase-outs depending on your findings.

Engage New Partners and Re-Engage Inactive and Lower-Performing Partners

Incorporate insights from top partners into recruitment and engagement strategies for new, inactive, or lower-performing partners.

Use your best practices for onboarding communication, automated engagement emails, and partner portal improvements.

Make it easy for these partners to access content clarifying the value of your solutions. You never know when partners will shift from dormant to active.

Align Security Solution Training with Partner Requirements and Requests

Partners — and the individuals within each partner organization — have diverse learning styles, professional backgrounds, schedules, and learning preferences. Some are visual learners. Some find self-paced learning they can complete after hours most helpful. Others absorb information more effectively with in-person teachers.

Cookie-cutter training that doesn’t consider these differences leads to partner disengagement, technical skill gaps, and low adoption rates for your solutions. Flexible, engaging, and role-specific security training empowers partners to effectively sell, implement, and support your security solutions for their customers. Offer as many of these varied training types as possible:

Multi-Modal Learning Pathways

Segmented Training By Role

Partners want support for their full teams and their customers, and the training for each will be significantly different. Provide tailored training for:

TRAINING SUCCESS STORY

Security Vendor – Emerging Security Category

This vendor bridged the familiarity gap and built trust among account representatives and presales engineers by prioritizing training and focusing on human interactions during onboarding.

Streamline and Simplify Onboarding for New Security Partners

Time is a scarce resource for security partners juggling multiple vendor relationships and fast-moving security threats. Drawn-out onboarding processes can be dealbreakers because they add unwelcome complexity and delay the benefits of partnerships. Stronger, more productive partnerships require simple and efficient onboarding.

Provide a Clear, Step-by-Step Onboarding Path

Create a structured, easy-to-follow onboarding journey that outlines exactly what partners need to do, from signing agreements to accessing key resources. Use a digital onboarding portal where partners can track progress, complete training, and find critical documents in one place.

Automate and Simplify Administrative Tasks

Reduce friction by automating paperwork, approvals, and compliance requirements. Use digital contracts, single sign-on (SSO) access to partner tools, and automated deal registration to eliminate manual bottlenecks.

Provide Campaigns in a Box and Content Assets for Quick Marketing Wins

Ensure your partners can activate demand generation efforts immediately. Equip new partners with ready-to-go co-branded ‘Campaigns in a Box’ that include email templates, social media posts, landing pages, and sales collateral. This enables them to promote your solutions quickly and consistently without needing to create materials from scratch.

Accelerate MSP and MSSP Innovation and Success with Ready-to-Go Service Templates

Help MSPs and MSSPs balance speed and customization using their own intellectual property (IP) with predefined service structures. These templates empower partners to deliver your solutions with their distinct value proposition and expertise. Pre-built service templates accelerate time to market while ensuring regulatory compliance.

Make Enablement Personal and Stay Consistent

Effective partner enablement isn’t a one-and-done process — it’s an ongoing journey that thrives on personal engagement and consistency. While onboarding sets the foundation, real enablement happens through continuous touchpoints, tailored interactions, and a steady cadence of communication that reinforces learning, drives engagement, and strengthens relationships.

Elevate Partner Enablement and Propel Security Sales

By evolving partner enablement and refining strategies in real-time, security vendors can unlock new levels of security sales success and partner engagement. We’ve found that the results are worth the effort through our conversations with vendor partner program leaders in the channel

• Higher average selling prices (ASPs) as partners gain confidence in the solutions’ values
• Increased partner-sourced opportunities through deeper product knowledge and trust
• Stronger partner adoption of certifications and training programs, especially with no-cost accreditations
• Faster partner time to market with simplified onboarding and ready-to-go resources

Ready to Elevate Your Partner Enablement?

Transforming enablement isn’t just about better tools — it’s about building lasting, high-impact relationships with security solution providers. Our team of channel partner specialists are here to help you optimize your enablement strategy, streamline partner engagement, and accelerate security solution sales.