Password managers In The Channel: Driving A Cooperative Reselling Partnership

By Jessica Couto, Vice President Global Channel & Alliances, LastPass

In my 20-plus years in channel sales, I’ve never seen a cybersecurity market as crowded as it is today. With the market having been saturated for so long consumers are now consolidating vendors and streamlining procurement processes. This shift means that partnering with vendors who prioritize collaboration is essential for effectively reaching customers and delivering trusted, easy-to-use solutions. So how are security brands—in particular, password managers—cutting through? For one, channel reseller relationships are becoming more important than ever.

Top channel trends for password managers

Password manager vendors are leaning into channel relationships, with an increasing need to support both existing and new managed service providers (MSPs) and managed security service providers (MSSPs). The MSP market is expanding as small businesses increasingly rely on outsourced security and IT management. Vendors are enhancing their partner programs to capture this growth – revamping their portals, adding new billing features, improving distribution strategies for global reach, and more.

Organizations are also pursuing listings in marketplaces like AWS, offering free trials and other private offers with our partners for their customers to make procurement even easier and more partner friendly.

Key conversations between password managers and channel partners

Channel partners prefer to work with reliable products and programs that offer clear benefits to support the growth of their businesses. And they are interested in three primary factors: profitability, renewal retention and margin considerations.

Partners want assurance that they will retain renewals. Even with the best product, partners won’t sell the solution if they expect future competition from you. They also need to know the products can compete, as success impacts margins and profits.

Sales teams should reassure partners by highlighting adoption rates, ease of administration and key differentiators. In password management, these might include customizable policies, incident response plans and compliance support for frameworks like GDPR, NIST and HIPAA.

Educational materials must be equally simple and clear. Channel partners increasingly prefer digestible content for themselves and their customers. My team has found success with two-minute videos on topics like “How to create a policy” and “How to change a password.”

Password managers deliver value to channel partners

Amid the noise, password managers remain a top recommended security solution and continue to drive significant value for channel partners.

While MSPs and MSSPs manage various services, many still lack a password manager in their lineup, presenting a key opportunity for vendors, partners and customers alike. Beyond enhancing security, password managers are quick to deploy and easy to administer—music to channel partners’ ears. Highlighting your product’s ease of use, additional value and customer centricity—e.g., free licenses for family members—can differentiate your product from the competition even further.