ESET Hires Ex-Ingram Micro Exec To Drive Channel Business

‘ESET has a tremendous opportunity to further engage the channel and drive their mission. We can really see the partnership between ESET and the channel go to the next level,’ incoming Vice President of Sales Ryan Grant tells CRN exclusively.

ESET has brought on longtime Ingram Micro executive Ryan Grant to push upmarket and enhance the company’s strategy for different solution provider segments.

The Bratislava, Slovakia-based cybersecurity vendor has tasked Grant with expanding ESET’s customer base beyond SMB and mid-tier customers with fewer than 2,500 seats to include enterprise businesses with greater than 2,500 users. Grant also plans to focus on developing coverage and marketing models that provide a differentiated experience for solution providers based on if they’re a VAR, MSP or systems integrator.

“ESET has a tremendous opportunity to further engage the channel and drive their mission,” Grant told CRN exclusively. “We can really see the partnership between ESET and the channel go to the next level.”

[Related: ESET Lands Ex-Ingram Micro Exec As North American President]

Grant started Monday as ESET’s vice president of sales for the U.S., where he will spend “a disproportionate amount of time” getting the company’s channel to the next level. He will report to ESET North America President and fellow former Ingram Micro executive Brent McCarty. Grant spent the past nine years leading Ingram Micro’s 100-person, $2 billion VMware, Dell and integrated solutions business.

Much of Grant’s initial efforts will focus on creating more valid segmentation of ESET’s channel community based on partner type, customer mix and go-to-market approach to ensure that solution providers that do annual licensing as well as those who bill monthly are well-supported. ESET works with approximately 1,400 partners and derives roughly 70 percent of its top-line revenue from the channel.

“I’ve grown up in the channel and been part of the channel for a long time,” Grant said. “ESET has clearly made a commitment to the channel.”

Grant said he wants to drive a better experience for ESET partners through distribution, automation and focused marketing and sales efforts that align better with the channel organization. He plans to capitalize on his more than two decades at Ingram Micro to double down on distribution and enhance ESET’s ability to recruit and on-board new partners as well as support for existing partners.

ESET’s partner program is intended to be easy, flexible and profitable for solution providers regardless of their tier or expertise, with a short sales cycle and free marketing support for all registered partners, Grant said. The company offers a stackable margin program as well as additional tiered discounts to ensure that partners that invest the most in ESET and generate net-new business get the best pricing.

Grant is responsible for driving ESET’s messaging and sales performance in the U.S. and plans to work with his channel colleagues in other parts of the world to share best practices, understand the global messaging, and see how other regions are addressing challenges or pursuing business opportunities.

From a metrics standpoint, Grant said he plans to focus on revenue and customer breadth, which will be tracked by measuring the number of end customers partners are touching and looking for growth areas. Transactional data will also be monitored to identify opportunities for larger-scale rollouts among customers by identifying patterns in sales data over a period of time to better understand customer behavior.

“We’re going to continue to deliver great solutions. We’re going to continue to educate the market out there,” Grant said. “And we’re 100 percent committed to the channel.”