Average deal size doubled, 40 partners drove 90% of partner-sourced pipeline, and MQL-to-SQL conversion jumped from 39% to 63%.
Hornetsecurity had a serious product in a market where competitors spent nine figures on marketing and carried twenty years of brand equity. Every vendor told the same stories: threat protection, compliance, zero-day attacks. On those terms, the giants had already won. Deals averaged €5K ARR. More than 100 partners came with Hornetsecurity's acquisition of ZeroSpam. Many of them brought in €1K–2K a month despite a 50% partner margin.
My field marketing team had its own constraint. Eight people across two continents owned the lead targets. Email, digital, content and events sat in other departments. We wrote the copy, then waited for someone else to send it.
We narrowed the claim to a category we could own: the complete security suite for Microsoft 365. One vendor for everything an organisation running M365 needs to stay secure, compliant and in control. Buyers began asking a different question: do we want a specialist built for the way we already work?
The new category made partner selection easier. Resellers whose clients already lived in M365 recognised themselves in it. We put our effort behind them.
Restructuring the organisation was off the table, so I added rhythm. Every campaign was shared before launch, with its ICP, channel, expected result and the support needed from digital. Every campaign was reviewed afterwards. A campaign that worked in Germany could go live in France within days. A success story written in the UK helped an account team in the Netherlands close a deal already in motion.
Each field marketer also took on a mission beyond their own geography: the company newsletter, visual standards for social, email voice, webinars, or the weekly liaison with sales.
Relevant if your SaaS sells through partners against competitors with bigger budgets, or you've inherited a partner channel through an acquisition: choose the category you can own, then concentrate on the partners whose clients already live there.
No pitch. No deck. A direct conversation about where your marketing is today — and what it would take to make it predictable.
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