ADT Cybersecurity Debuts Partner Program To Incent Channel

‘I’m focused on one thing and one thing only – enabling our partners to grow. We need to be incredibly easy to work with,’ ADT Cybersecurity channel chief Jon Kabrud tells CRN exclusively.

ADT Cybersecurity has rolled out its inaugural partner program to bring enterprise-level services to SMB and mid-market solution providers in a profitable and predictable manner.

The Boca Raton, Fl.-based entity said it’s looking to reward partners that grow with ADT Cybersecurity by providing them with more resources and an elevated commitment level, according to Jon Kabrud, director and MSP channel leader. Kabrud joined ADT Cybersecurity six months ago and has been focused on rectifying the “growing pains” and “missteps” the company has experienced in its channel evolution.

“I’m focused on one thing and one thing only – enabling our partners to grow,” Kabrud told CRN exclusively. “We need to be incredibly easy to work with.”

[Related: ADT Cybersecurity Looks To Expand Its Channel Push Around Managed Detection And Response]

The ADT Cybersecurity Partner Program will have three tiers: Authorized, for partners with less than $999 in recurring monthly revenue (RMR); Gold, for partners with between $1,000 and $2,499 in RMR; and Platinum, for partners with at least $2,500 in RMR. The program is expected to have roughly 60 authorized partners, 30 gold partners and 10 platinum partners at the time of launch, Kabrud said.

Platinum partners will receive a 20 percent discount on all sales, Kabrud said, while Gold and Authorized partners will receive discounts of 15 percent and 10 percent, respectively. The program doesn’t have any deal registration process since ADT Cybersecurity revenue is all recurring rather than project-based, according to Kabrud.

Authorized partners will have access to training collateral in the portal, and will be expected to approach the company with any technical questions they might have, Kabrud said. Gold partners will have quarterly business reviews as well as both a dedicated channel account manager (CAM) and a dedicated sales engineer (SE) who will be available to conduct joint sales calls.

And Platinum partners will have a strategic CAM who’s been in the industry longer and has more channel-relevant experience, according to Kabrud. Gold and Platinum partners will also receive leads from ADT that are relevant to their geographic and vertical focus, Kabrud said.

Solution providers currently generate 70 percent of new business opportunities, and Kabrud said the power of the ADT brand and the company’s ability to collapse sales cycles means this isn’t a tremendous lift for the channel. At the same time, Kabrud said ADT would like to become more proactive in hunting leads for its channel community and have more of a 50/50 split from a lead generation perspective.

ADT Cybersecurity hopes to grow its partner community tenfold to 1,000 solution providers within the next 12 months, and have 1,000 channel partners transacting at least $1,000 per month each within the next three years, Kabrud said. The company is committed to selling its products exclusively through the channel, according to Kabrud.

Kabrud hopes that new program will help ADT Cybersecurity recruit new partners and operationalize them quickly by jointly pursing new opportunities all the way through to closing. ADT Cybersecurity is additionally committed to increasing its recurring monthly revenue with existing partners as well as maximizing its retention of existing partners, according to Kabrud.

Stratus Concept LLC has been using ADT Cybersecurity’s managed firewall as a service and ADT-IQ products at customer sites for the past two years, according to Pete Salerno, CEO of the Lake Zurich, Ill.-based consultancy. The managed firewall offering has reduced the amount of time Salerno has to spend on deployments from upwards of three hours to less than an hour at a lower cost than competing tools.

ADT-IQ, meanwhile, allows Stratus Concept customers to higher quality reporting and alerts at a greater frequency than Salerno would be able to provide on his own. Salerno also praised ADT Cybersecurity from a partnership perspective, saying that company provides good prices, responsive reps, a robust portal and clarity around who he should contact if he’s experiencing an issue.

Going forward, Salerno said he’d like to see ADT Cybersecurity generate more client-facing content that’s geared toward non-technical buyers in verticals like legal and construction. The content should shy away from technical jargon and industry-specific terms like APTs and instead highlight the business problems that can be solved through managed security, according to Salerno.

“ADT Cybersecurity is definitely worth looking at,” Salerno said. “I’ve been able to provide my clients with better value while lowering my own costs.”