LogMeIn’s New Channel Chief: LastPass Program ‘Big Key To Growth’

“We’re investing heavily here as a company in globalizing our true go-to market with partners, so it’s an extremely exciting time for a company of this size to be making this top priority,” says Patrick McCue, LogMeIn’s new global vice president of channel sales.

Patrick McCue, LogMeIn‘s new global vice president of channel sales, plans to grow the LastPass partner program in 2022 to reach more MSPs and help them sell more security solutions.

McCue brings with him more than 15 years of channel experience to his new position at the Boston-based company. In his new role, McCue plans to grow the cloud-based SaaS solution to new heights with new partner programs and customer relationships to reach a broader market.

“We’re investing heavily here as a company in globalizing our true go-to-market with partners, so it’s an extremely exciting time for a company of this size to be making this top priority,” McCue told CRN.

Prior to coming to LogMeIn in September, McCue spent five years at software company Okta as senior vice president of worldwide partnerships. In his new role, he will be responsible for leading the company’s high-growth strategy for channel sales and fostering relationships with key partners.

A LogMeIn spokesperson declined to detail how much of the company’s business is in the channel but said that the program is “growing at a healthy rate.”

CRN spoke with McCue to discuss forward-looking strategies and how he plans to capture more of the market their LogMeIn’s partner program.

What about LogMeIn attracted you to the position?

Historically, if you look at my background I’ve done startup to IPO or startup to sale to a big company and I’ve been doing that for years. When I took the job at Okta they hadn’t really focused on channel, they’ve done a little bit. When I saw LogMeIn, the opportunity was very similar but probably four times the size. So for me to come into a company that’s over a billion, growing at a good rate and hasn’t really had channel and partners as a key part of their strategy, the opportunity to come in and build that out from a global perspective was super exciting.

You have more than 15 years of channel leadership experience, how will that experience help you in your new role?

The nice thing is over the course of that time I’ve worked with all different types of partners– technology partners, OEM partners, referral partners, resell partners, distribution…all of those things. Coming into this role here has given me the opportunity to take a look at which types of those partnerships do I feel will fit the different products that we have in order to be successful in building out a true partner go-to-market team.

What are the biggest challenges in the channel right now and how do you see LogMeIn addressing them?

I think it’s twofold. In the current channel that we have here, which is master agents sub agent, it’s a very crowded market. You have competitors like Teams, like Zoom, so it’s how do we differentiate ourselves within the program to make those partners want to work with us. We recently launched a new partner program which announced different tiering that we have there so the more that we work with them, the more benefits they get. We’ve created a much easier way to onboard as a partner, both through the contracting as well as the enablement.

We’ve also created a good way to be able to sell multiple products without having to sign another contract. Those are things we’re trying to do with that traditional channel.

That’s the GoToConnect piece of the business that we have today. The other side is establishing new partnerships with new types of partners with the products that we haven’t done a lot of traditional channel. We have the opportunity to pretty much build from scratch but we’ve got to figure out who are the partners we should be targeting, how should we be incenting them to work with us and putting the program in place. That’ll be a big challenge for us, is to get that channel going.

What other market trends are you currently seeing right now?

I’m definitely seeing a huge, huge focus on joint marketing. As we’re coming out of the pandemic people want to look at different ways to do things that we haven’t been doing for the last 18 months. So that’s making sure that we have MDF, making sure that we actually have our counterparts in marketing aligned and focused working with partners. One of the most exciting things about here at LogMeIn is that the partner marketing team is super strong. We’re coming up with a lot of innovative ways to start doing those events, pretty much as we go into next year right and things start to free up. People don’t want to just go back to the way it used to be, they want to do different inventive type of things. I think that’s a big trend right now for all of the partners, trying to figure out how do we go-to-market next year around the marketing component of the business.

Where are you placing your bets in 2022 in terms of revenue growth for LogMeIn?

It’s twofold, but I do think it’s going to be from a new channel, new opportunity with LastPass. That’s going to be a big part of our strategy going forward is how do we get that up and running. We’ve started that, we’ve launched an MSP program this year specifically for the LastPass product and we’ve signed on hundreds of MSPs. When we look at next year it’s going to be getting those MSPs up and running and signing customers but then also filling out that, ‘Let’s go to partners that we know are selling security solutions that we complement what they’re already selling and building up that channel as well.“ That’ll be a big key to growth.

The other side of it is to really take the foundation of the new program that we built and start to put in true give get in the program where the more partners are investing, the more they get out of the program. The more they do in the sales cycle, the more margin that they earn in the actual deal. That’s going to be a huge growth opportunity for us with our program.

Customer relationships are more important than ever right now, what is your plan to expand on those?

From a customer relationship perspective one of the big things for me is to really get to know our partners and their customers directly. We can learn a lot about our customer base by talking to our partners about what are they hearing not only about the products that we have but the buying environment. For me it’s really talking to our partners to get a better understanding of what their customers are thinking as we go into next year from that perspective. We’re also looking at the best way to do renewals with our customers through our partners. So how do we better collaborate with our partners to ensure that the customer has a seamless renewal as that opportunity comes up for our products with them.