Check Point has added some net new initiatives to its partner program, including a reseller-level engineering certification, and new lead generation campaigns which reflect lessons learned during the pandemic. They are also re-emphasizing their new customer and new product bonuses, particularly for newer partners.

Cybersecurity vendor Check Point Software Technologies has made four announcements around elements in its global Check Point Partner Growth Program to further increase value to partners, and to accelerate their access to benefits and rewards for sales-generating activities through closer collaboration with Check Point.

The Partner Growth Program is a comparatively new one, launching at the start of 2020.

“We are constantly tweaking our programs as our market grows,” said Paul Comessotti, Sales and Operations Executive at Check Point Canada.

One of the tweaks here is a new Professional Services Certification Program where the certification will be allocated to the reseller partner, rather than specific engineers

“We have always had certification processes,” Comesotti said. “What is different now is we are applying this new specialized certification not to an individual, but to recognizing a number of individuals at an organization, thus allowing the reseller organization to differentiate themselves to customers.”

The number of engineers required to be certified to get the partner certification depends on the partner’s tier level.

“When we launched this program in 2020, we had this certification, but it was by invite only, and we cherry picked partners who would be eligible,” Comesotti indicated. “Now we are throwing it open to resellers.”

Another change is to pre-packaged lead generation campaigns, which have been revamped to include best practices learned during the pandemic, to maximize the chances of successfully accelerating partners’ marketing campaigns to generate leads and drive customer engagement.

“We have all had to change how we have had to market because of the pandemic, and that has been very difficult for many organizations,” Comesotti noted. “Our marketing department has come up with a number of different initiatives and we are applying them across the board. They embody what we have learned about the best practices of the new ways to market as a result of the pandemic.”

For example, Comesotti indicated that Check Point is now seeing more funding initiatives through tools like LinkedIn.

“This was used before, but it was not as prevalent,” he said. “We’ve also seen a significant rampup in different mediums to contact people, which have led to  very successful CPX [Check Point Experiences]. We have moved to having multi- day, part-day seminars around the CPX with speakers and content. Previously we had done 3 CPXs around the world. Doing these things in a virtual setting is where we have made these investments and done things differently, because it’s more difficult to capture people’s attention and keep them engaged.”

Another new element is an enhanced ‘White Space’ program. This lets partners give Check Point the basic details of any customer account in their installed base, and the program will automatically identify the best sales opportunities within that account.

“One challenge we hear is from partners is ‘who do we target,’ Comessoti said. “They want to know when to target, rather than dialing for dollars as a sole strategy. We leverage different tools and mechanisms to improve hunting. One tool lets us see when customers look for certain technologies. That White Space takes all those data sources, correlates an intelligence base and does some targeting. It’s not throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks.”

Check Point is also drawing attention to its new customer bonus of 25% on registered deals, and 15% on sales of new Check Point technologies.

“We have had the new customer discount for quite some time, and it is quite valuable to get partners out of their comfort zone,” Comessoti said. “In emphasizing it now, we are reaffirming and clarifying it, particularly to new partners, as more partners come into the security game from infrastructure and other areas. We have onboarded a lot of new partners who have not traditionally been security partners.”

Likewise, the new technologies bonus is an established program, but Check Point is highlighting that Check Point CloudGuard and Check Point Harmony are now part of it.

“We have always had an incentive for emerging techs,” Comessoti said. “These two are now coming into that program, in the same way that ones in the program which have developed a large install base can be removed.”