For cybersecurity, AI, and IT vendors selling through MSPs
Build trust. Scale fast.
Delivering vendor success from a partner perspective.
Sound familiar?
Strong products stall in the MSP channel for the same handful of reasons. None of them are about the technology.
Partners sign up, then go quiet
Your partner count keeps growing. Deal registrations and revenue don’t. Signed partners are not selling partners.
MSPs can’t repeat your value story
If an MSP can’t explain in one sentence how you help them grow, they won’t put their client relationships on the line for you.
Onboarding never gets to a first win
Portal logins, generic training, and no early deal. Partners lose momentum before they ever close.
Your offer doesn’t fit how MSPs make money
Packaging, pricing, and terms that ignore MSP margin and service delivery costs keep you out of the stack.
Incentives reward the wrong behavior
MDF that is too hard to claim and tiers built on points instead of selling activity leave budget on the table.
No one owns the channel yet
You need senior channel leadership now, before you are ready to hire a full-time channel chief.
MSPs back the vendors who make them money
An MSP puts its own client relationships behind every product it sells. It backs the vendors that are easy to explain, easy to package, and profitable to deliver. Everything else sits unused in the portal.
Fixing that is not about more tiers or a bigger partner portal. It is about seeing your program the way an MSP owner sees it, then rebuilding the story, the offer, and the motion around what makes them say yes.
What you walk away with
- A partner value story MSPs understand, believe, and repeat to their clients
- Packaging and pricing MSPs can sell with margin
- Onboarding designed to get every new partner to a first win
- Co-sell plays and talk tracks your team and your partners run the same way
- Incentives and MDF that reward the selling behavior you want
- A channel motion that scales into new markets, including Latin America
Built for
- Cybersecurity vendors launching or fixing an MSP program
- AI companies bringing a product to MSPs and ITSPs for the first time
- Cyber insurance providers using MSPs as a distribution channel
- Emerging vendors that need channel leadership before a full-time hire
- Vendors whose partner count is growing faster than partner revenue
- Distributors and marketplaces designing vendor and partner programs
How we get there: the Channel Clarity Process
Three steps, in order. Most programs skip straight to activation and wonder why it doesn’t stick.
Insight
Find exactly where your partners lose trust or stall.
- Pressure-test your partner value story from the MSP side
- Assess your messaging, onboarding, and enablement
- Review incentives, co-sell assets, and deal registration flow
- Pinpoint where partners stall between signing and selling
Trust
Give MSPs a story and a motion they believe in.
- Build a partner narrative that answers the MSP’s real question: how do you help me grow?
- Write trust-first messaging for MSPs and ITSPs
- Design a go-to-market motion simple enough to sell
- Document repeatable co-sell plays
Activation
Turn signed partners into selling partners.
- Build co-selling and enablement frameworks your partners actually use
- Create joint value plays you and your MSPs run together
- Launch incentives that reinforce the behavior you want
- Simplify program tiers and partner journeys
Ways to work together
- MSP go-to-market strategy
- Clarify your value to MSPs and design the go-to-market plays that drive adoption and revenue, not just sign-ups.
- Partner program design
- Incentives, onboarding, and enablement frameworks that scale, and that partners can actually follow.
- Fractional channel leadership
- A senior channel leader working inside your team before you are ready to hire a full-time channel chief.
- Partner advisory councils and community
- Advisory councils and community programs that put real MSP feedback into your roadmap and build long-term partner trust.
- LATAM expansion
- Distributors, partners, and go-to-market for vendors entering Colombia and the rest of Latin America.
- Partner events and speaking
- Keynotes, panels, and partner focus groups that bring an MSP operator’s view to your partner audience.
Why it works: I’ve sat in your partner’s chair
For 16 years I ran Fort Point IT, a managed IT and cybersecurity provider. I chose vendors, worked their MDF and onboarding, and decided which ones earned a place in my stack. The motions I build for vendors are the ones that won my business.
- 16 years running an MSP and managed cybersecurity practice
- 43% recurring revenue growth at Fort Point IT, 2019 to 2022
- 80% improvement in sales close rates with a vendor co-sell motion
- Multimillion-dollar government and enterprise wins in LATAM
Advisory boards: The Channel Company, GTIA, HENNGE North America, Theo AI. Spoken at Canalys Forum, XChange Security, XChange NexGen, GTIA ChannelCon.
Want MSPs to actually sell your product?
Start with a 30-minute conversation about where your partners stall and what it would take to get them moving.