In this episode of the Full Throttle Leaders Podcast, host Michael Falato interviews Craig Patterson, Global Ecosystem Lead at Exabeam, a $300 million cybersecurity vendor focused on SIEM and UEBA. Patterson explains Exabeam’s channel‑first operating model, which relies on a diverse global partner ecosystem of over 3,000 partners across North America, Europe, APAC, the Middle East and Latin America. He describes the Apex partner program, which uses mandatory certifications, tiered discount incentives, collaborative business‑planning, and quarterly cadence to drive partner behavior and accountability. Patterson critiques traditional enablement programs as low‑impact, and details Exabeam’s AI‑powered structured learning platform that provides real‑time feedback, role‑based coaching, and a virtual always‑on channel account manager. He also mentions a virtual coach that offers live objection handling and a digital‑twin concept for internal efficiency. The conversation touches on Exabeam’s market positioning—90 % of sales flow through channel, with a focus on insider‑threat detection and AI guardrails for security. Patterson closes by inviting listeners to connect with him on LinkedIn.
Chapters
Hello everybody, Michael Falato here again from GTM Full Throttle. Um, we're doing Full Throttle Leaders Podcast today. We have Craig Patterson from ExtraBeam. Craig, how you doing, man?
I'm doing great, my man. Thank you so much for having me. Can't wait to have a full throttle conversation with you about all things channel.
Let's get one thing out of the way right now. Both of us are Muay Thai students. So, sawadee khrab.
Yes, sir.
Thank you. Just want to let everybody know, don't mess with either of us. No, I'm just kidding. So, Craig, tell us a little bit about what you do in your role and kind of your journey to get there.
Yeah, no, thanks so much. So I lead our global ecosystem here at Exabeam. Think of Exabeam as a cybersecurity vendor. We're approximately $300 million in revenue. We focus in the security incident and events management space, or SIEM, as well as the UEBA space, which is basically looking at insider threat. So because we're cybersecurity, we know that channel is the operating model for scale. And so Everything we do here is aligned in a channel-first approach, you know, helping partners scale as we, you know, we sell our products and services. In terms of how I got here, you know, I've spent the last 2 decades of my life, you know, getting up, being very disciplined and having my coffee, you know, and then thinking about how do I create good outcomes for the channel community. So, you know, basically the last 2 decades I've spent in the channel space. I've been here at Exabeam around 16 months and was brought in here to lead the integration of 2 companies, LogRhythm and Exabeam, as they came together through a strategic merger, uh, through one of our private equity, uh, ownership group.
And how many partners do you guys usually have on board?
Yeah, so that was one of the big problem statements that I, I walked into is like, how do we scale this diverse global ecosystem. And so to answer your specific question, I have over 3,000 partners around the globe. We're operating in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, the Middle East, and Latin America as well. So very diverse ecosystem. And so, you know, one of our key things to really focus in on was like, how do we create focus You know, how do we create value for the partners that truly matter? And so, you know, that's what we focused on as we rebuilt our channel ecosystem strategy called Apex.
And how do you make sure that they're doing what they're supposed to do or doing what you want them to do? Like, I find that a lot of people have partners, but They, you know, they're getting paid incentive fees, referral fees from everybody, right?
Yep.
And there's a lot of MDF funds, marketing development funds, that float around, and they're usually just built for branding where, you know, like I was telling you in the break, that there's some ways to amplify their connections that I do. How do you, how do you basically amplify their, their ecosystem? Right now.
Yeah, yeah. And this is, this is the challenge for every single ecosystem leader or partnership leader like myself, is like, how do you drive the right behavior and how do you hold partners accountable? So there's always this balancing act. You want to, you want to drive the right behavior, and you do that by focusing on, you know, creating value. How do I create value for partners? Well, I do that by really focusing in on enablement. You know, making sure that we have enablement systems in place to help partners actually raise their competency level. Because what I found over the years is most of these enablement programs really don't drive the outcome you're looking for. They don't really drive a higher competency level. They don't help you with, you know, increasing your conversion rate. They don't help you with your speed and velocity and closing deals faster. And so, you You know, we focus on creating value through providing enablement for our partner community, but we do this in a way that we create incentives. And so the way this all kind of ties together is, you know, we require our partners to go through some level of certifications. When they complete those certifications, that unlocks a bigger discount. So, you know, I incentivize them to do the right thing because they get a better path to profitability, They get additional discount. That discount gives them a path to profitability, higher gross margin, things along those lines. And so, we structure the incentives in a way to drive the behavior. And then, on the accountability piece, we hold partners accountable by our structured requirements in our program and also our business planning. So, if you're a top business partner of Exabeam, You know, there's an element of business planning that's collaborative. We sit down, we build a business plan together. We build a business plan together with collaborative goals and structure to really drive towards favorable outcomes. And so, and then we set a cadence where we're meeting with partners quarter after quarter to review our progress, to say, are we on track? Are we hitting our goals? Do we need to adjust? And so, you know, there's an element of the behaviors and accountability through the plans, through the incentives, the kind of the balancing act.
Yeah. And what's, what's a tip or tactic or strategy or tech that you've learned in the last 6 months where it failed miserably and you want to tell people, hey, don't, don't do what I did, or hey, I did something that I really liked, like a strategy? Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, I, I'd say I'm more of an observation. What I've seen over the last, you know, 10, 10 years or so is that people people, they build these enablement programs thinking it's actually going to drive a favorable outcome, you know, which means I'm going to build my training path for my partners, and I think that the partners are going to take these trainings, they're going to educate themselves, they're going to get smarter, they're going to get better. And the reality of what happens in the market today is, you know, partners, they log on because they have to. They, they move through the certification or LMS system as fast as they possibly can. Similar to probably how you do it, Michael, is you, you, you, if you have a training program, you, you fire it up, you turn the volume down, you multitask, and you try to fast forward to the end. When you get to the end, you have the quiz and you're like, oh, well, I don't remember these questions, so let me ask ChatGPT. And then ChatGPT answers them and I put them into the, uh, into the quiz and I hit submit and then I get my certification. Well, that doesn't drive an outcome, right? That's not going to make you smarter. It's not going to make you better. And so we've really focused on taking that problem on here at Exabeam. And so what we're doing there is we're creating positive outcomes. We've rebuilt our entire enablement program around this structured learning. So you as a partner, you log on to our system, it's all built on AI. There's a topic or, you know, piece of a product or service that you're interested in, you start your learning around that path. You can continue to follow the learning. You then can put it into practice. You can practice your pitch on our particular products and services, and then it'll give you feedback. It'll say, Michael, you did a really good job positioning it this way, but next time you might say this or this because it's going to make it land better.
Yeah.
And oh, by the way, if you're talking to a CFO, you might want to use this terminology because this is the speak he's looking for. This is This is what matters to him. And so this whole enablement program has really been a game changer for us.
Yeah.
It's really 3 use cases. One is a virtual always-on channel account manager for our partners. They can ask you questions about my program, about my target accounts, about my ICP. You can write campaigns for those target accounts, whatever you need to do, just general Support. Use case number 2 is my training and certification. This is where I have my structured learning paths. Partners raise their competency level through this structured learning. And then use case number 3 is a virtual coach. And this is where, Michael, like if you're on a call with an end user prospect, I've got a coach in the background giving you feedback. Hey, customer's giving you this objection. Give them this information and talk to them about this value proposition. All of these things are positioned in a way that tie back to my operating plan. They tie back to the outcomes that we're looking to drive as a company, and they're all focused on raising competency level, which ties to increasing my conversion rates, shortening my sales cycle, and, you know, driving more success in general.
Yeah, I actually built a digital twin to basically handle some of that stuff. Especially what I found was good was the whole, um, employee side of things. Like, I can't be bugged by somebody I just hired and always constantly asking me questions. And I would love to, but I asked my— ask my digital twin for, for now. Yeah.
It's all about creating efficiencies. Like, that is what everybody's looking for. How do I create efficiencies with my workforce, with my partner ecosystem? Like, that's the unlock that most people are looking to achieve with AI.
So tell me how people should get ahold of you and who should get ahold of you.
Yeah. So, I mean, again, we're in the cybersecurity domain. We sell through channel distribution. About 90% of all of our sales flow through channel distribution. So if you're a partner out there, you have, you specialize in cybersecurity, you have an interest around insider threat, protecting against AI, helping companies set up guardrails. As all these AI agents are starting to go rogue, they're creating, they're wreaking havoc in these organizations. If you wanna help companies set up the guardrails to protect against that, that's what we do. You certainly find me on LinkedIn, very active. Craig Patterson on LinkedIn, you'll find me.
