Imperva Snags Vectra’s Jessica Couto To Lead Partner Business

‘The challenge sounded right up my alley. I love developing partners and helping them grow. I know there’s room to grow and do more, and I love the challenge,’ says Jessica Couto, Imperva’s new vice president of North America channel sales.

Imperva has brought on longtime cybersecurity channel leader Jessica Couto to drive more services and enablement for the company’s North American solution provider partners.

The San Mateo, Calif.-based data security vendor tapped Couto to execute Imperva’s recently adopted strategy of transacting all net new opportunities through channel partners. Couto spent more than two years leading Americas channels for threat detection and response vendor Vectra and will at Imperva be reporting to global channel chief Micheal McCollough, who joined from Akamai in March of this year.

“The challenge sounded right up my alley. I love developing partners and helping them grow,” Couto told CRN exclusively. “I know there’s room to grow and do more, and I love the challenge.”

[Related: Imperva Snags Akamai’s Micheal McCollough To Lead Channels]

McCollough had been overseeing Imperva’s North America channel business in recent months, making Couto’s hire the first time in recent memory that Imperva will have a dedicated North American channel chief. Imperva’s pivot toward transacting new business exclusively through the channel has been driven by Scott Lovett, who joined as chief revenue officer in August. Couto’s first day at Imperva was Monday.

“They’ve added a lot of new leadership to the company,” Couto said. “The opportunity here is great.”

Couto wants to make on-demand training, enablement and support more accessible to Imperva’s North American channel to streamline recruitment and onboarding for new partners and make it easier for existing partners to articulate the company’s value. She plans to increase Imperva’s touch points with partners through on-demand content such as webinars, newsletters, videos and social media groups.

Battle cards will also be generated for Imperva’s channel partners to help them highlight competitive differentiators, answer common customer questions, and direct them to relevant points of contact, according to Couto.

“It’s something partners can carry right in their bag,” Couto said.

From a services perspective, Couto said she’d like to see Imperva grow its business with MSSPs and Sis as well as enable traditional partners to deliver more sales, configuration, installation, and post-support services. Imperva already has a pretty robust cadre of large and mid-sized MSSPs in the Americas focused on supporting, monitoring and configuring the company’s application security technology.

Couto isn’t overly focused on increasing the number of solution providers Imperva is working with but does want to ensure the company has sufficient channel coverage in all of the regions across North America. Underserved regions will be addressed either by driving more business through existing partners or by recruiting more solution providers in that specific geography, according to Couto.

Going forward, Couto said she’s most focused on helping Imperva’s partners onboard more net new customers next year, and the company will track how many net new customers each solution provider is bringing in.

“I’m so happy to maintain the relationships and work with the partners that we have,” Couto said. “I know that we can grow the business together. I’m really excited to have another opportunity to keep doing what I do best and have a good time doing it. It’s going to be a good ride.”