Global Channel Leaders Forum 2023
Unlocking the Competitive Advantage within your Partner Ecosystem
Are you competitive in the current economic climate? As partner choice increases, creating a competitive advantage is no longer just about price. But rather centralized around how easy you are to do business with. Vendors who automate the delivery of their partner programs and invest in a partner first experience are winning mindshare at record rates.
On Thursday, March 16th Channel Mechanics host their Global Channel Leaders Forum 2023. Held at the beautiful Testarossa Winery in Los Gatos, join us as we taste some of the most sought-after Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in California. All whilst listening to our panel discuss how channel program automation is transforming the partner experience and creating competitive advantage. As always, the best part about this event is the people – so we hope to see you there!
Topics
- Channel Self Service: Vendors who provide partners, distributors and internal channel teams with the tools, data and insights they need to do their job in a sales focused way are ensuring competitive advantage in a busy marketplace.
- Ease of Doing Business: Partners and Distributors have choices. The easier it is to interact with your brand, the stickier partners become.
- Partner Incentive Management: Partner incentives form a central pillar in driving partner loyalty. As the partner ecosystem continuously evolves in both complexity and scale, delivering and managing incentive programs play a key role in competitiveness.
- Partner Performance Dashboards: Automation enables detailed levels of insights into how partners are performing, thereby enabling account managers to become more sales focused.
- Distribution: The two-tier model adds an additional layer of complexity to the channel. However, having the right level of automation in place simplifies transactions for vendors, partners and distributors.
On the Day
- 2:00 – 2:15 Registration
- 2:15 – 2:40 Wine Tasting and Networking
- 2:40 – 2:45 Panel Introduction
- 2:45 – 3:30 Panel Discussion moderated by Penny Byron
- 3:30 – 3:50 Q&A Session
- 3:50 – 5:00 Networking and Wine Tasting
Speakers
Moderated by Penny Byron, Principal Consultant and Subject Matter Expert for the Partner GTM practice at Bridge Partners, our panel represents a wide swath of global tech vendors dominating their space.
- Gordon Mackintosh, VP Global Channels & Virtual Sales at Juniper
- Scott Goree, VP Global Partners & Alliances at Skyhigh Security
- Brenda Richardson, VP, Global Strategic Channel Operations at Extreme Networks
- Carolyn Crandall, CMO at Cymulate
Global Channel Leaders Forum 2023 Panel
Gordon Mackintosh
Gordon Mackintosh has many years’ experience leading high-performance teams in executive sales and channel management roles. At Juniper, he is responsible for driving partner go-to-market strategy and sales, along with the company’s virtual sales organization. Gordon’s team is chartered with delivering greater business outcomes through Juniper’s broad portfolio, as well as simplifying the process of doing business with Juniper.
Prior to joining Juniper, he was Global Head of Channels and Distribution at Extreme Networks. Here he deployed new partner programs and initiatives, driving partner growth and profitability, as well as managing investments in growing virtual sales teams. Before Extreme Networks, Mackintosh held a number of positions at Cisco Systems developing industry-leading partner GTM programs and leading direct and indirect sales teams for cloud and software solutions in small and medium enterprise markets.
Scott Goree
Scott joined Skyhigh in August 2022 as their first ever global channel chief. Here, his responsibility is for evolving the channel from the legacy McAfee Enterprise channel. Previously Sr. Director of Worldwide Distribution at Nutanix, Goree was responsible for the Worldwide Channel renewal business. He drove transformation in the channel by launching the “Elevate” Distribution program.
While driving continuous growth, he continues to push partners and distributors to develop more autonomy in sales, customer success and renewal motions. Scott has also worked in well-known companies such as Pure Storage and Cisco.
Brenda Richardson
At Extreme, Brenda led the Americas Channel team for two years before accepting her current Global Strategic Channel Operations position. She leads a dynamic team of talented Channel Sales Operations professionals focused on improving the end to end process externally for Partners and internally for Extreme Channel resources.
Brenda Richardson’s 20+ years of experience in the IT industry spans multiple disciplines. These include channel leadership, channel sales, direct sales, strategy, business development, acquisition, integration, and alignment. She spent most of her career before Extreme at Cisco and Cisco/Meraki. And has held strategic positions with both manufacturers and resellers. In each capacity, she leads with her passion for the channel and sees it as the leading indicator of an organization’s success.
Carolyn Crandall
Carolyn has over 30 years’ experience in high tech focused marketing and sales management. This includes an in-depth background of channel development and collaboration. As CMO, Carolyn is responsible for the overall marketing strategy of Cymulate. Her focus being to build new market and company awareness, and creating customer demand through education programs, channel, and technology partnerships.
As the chief security advocate, Carolyn educates enterprises and channel partners about the need for new cybersecurity measures and what innovations they can deploy to address them. Carolyn is an active evangelist, blogger, byline contributor, and speaker on industry trends and security innovation.
Penny Byron
Penny Byron is an industry recognized channel expert and thought leader. Her expertise is in building successful Partner GTM, Demand Gen and Revenue Growth Strategies. As the Principal Consultant and Subject Matter Expert for the Partner GTM practice at Bridge Partners, Penny has deep awareness of current partner and industry dynamics, business drivers, and functional best practices. She works with industry leaders and the cloud and SaaS innovators who are defining tomorrow’s marketplace, to grow revenue, activate channels, accelerate pipeline and create value.