My First Six Weeks

I am tasked with writing my first BLOG. With more than 25 years in this industry, I am quickly overwhelmed with the fact that I have never written a BLOG. Interestingly, I don’t remember if the blogging topic was covered in the interview process. Well here it goes….

A Little Bit About Me:

I am a regular guy that has a passion and a drive to help people stay secure and connected, a passion for cyber security. I am a husband, a father, and the three things that drive me are my faith, family, and legacy. It is important to me that when I look back on anything I’ve done, that I can be confident in the legacy I leave behind. I go into each new task, new position, new chapter in life, with this mentality. My new role as Head of The Americas Channel Sales and Operations is no different- I hope to leave a legacy, and that starts now.

Starting This New Journey:

Let me first thank the thousands of partners who make up the McAfee channel partner community. I am excited to represent your interest as we focus on bringing you what I believe are the key elements of our partnership; A.) Providing the solution to solve and automate our customer’s security challenges B.) Sales and Executive engagement that is focused on mutual goals, and C.) Engaging in financially rewarding opportunities that exceed corporate objectives.

I started the journey as the new channel chief on a Wednesday morning in an executive meeting with Security Resource Group (SRG) from Calgary, AB and ended the day with M&S Technologies at their National Sales Meeting. This first day was the perfect representation of what I’ve continued to see over the first six weeks in this role. Together, with McAfee, partners are solely focused on solving their customers security needs with the Threat Defense Lifecycle methodology. This has me very excited to lead our incredible channel team.

 If I could sum up the last six weeks into two words, they would be ‘fast’ and ‘productive’. Here’s a brief overview of what I’ve been up to in order to ensure that we continue to ascend together and become our Customers’ number one security partner.

Here are the Highlights:

• Met with key stakeholders and outlined short term and long term goals, 2016 Go-to-Market plan, and reviewed the McAfee organization
• Conducted more than 30 channel team 1:1s to ensure I know how to support every person that makes up this incredibly talented organization
• Promoted five key channel team members to optimize our partner coverage and partner experience
• Attended Bill McAlister’s Executive Sales Meeting with my new peers, we previewed the 2016 Sales Objectives prior to McAfee’s Sales Kick Off meeting in February
• Received some great coverage in CRN, Channelnomics, The VAR Guy, San Francisco Business Times, Channel 2e2, and Redman Channel Partner
• Attended the direct report business review, as we discussed developing an aggressive Greenfield account channel strategy.
• Held our first McAfee Channel All Hands Meeting internally and my first channel briefing, where Fernando Quintero officially handed me the keys to the channel organization
• Attended the 2016 McAfee Sales Kick Off in Las Vegas, NV. The theme for the year is “eXceptional” and becoming the “X” factor in our customers’ environments, as we solve their business needs.
• Attended an executive briefing with DynTek at their Las, Vegas, NV Executive Briefing Center
• Participated as the keynote speaker for McAfee’s Channel StarTrac at our Plano, TX regional office. We hosted more than 20 partner representatives, focusing on the Threat Defense Life Cycle.
• Attended our internal New Hire System Engineers training with the objective to educate them about our worldwide channel strategy and partner community

Conclusion and Call To Action:

As you can see I’ve hit the ground running! I am here, I am dedicated to our McAfee partners and to our channel organization. I am excited about this opportunity and have enjoyed every minute of the beginning of this journey.

Writing this blog gave me the opportunity to sit back and reflect. I challenge each of you to reflect on what you’ve done lately in order to take your business to the next level. Greater success, bigger accomplishments and endless opportunities are to come. Let’s continue to build on the momentum of the Threat Defense Lifecycle and ascend to new heights where we have the opportunity to solve and automate our customers’ security challenges.

Together, we can make a difference. Until next time…

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