Palo Alto Networks is upgrading its NextWave partner program for professional service firms.

Many enterprise technology vendors enable other companies to sell their products on their behalf. Palo Alto Networks, one of the world’s largest makers of cybersecurity software, works with IT consultancies and managed service provides to promote its offerings. Firms that sign up for its NextWave partner program receive sales resources such as employee training content.

When one of an IT vendor’s sales partners reels in a new prospect, it usually has to register the deal opportunity with the vendor. Until now, the process required Palo Alto Networks staff to manually sign off on opportunities. As part of the update to its NextWave partner program, the cybersecurity giant will swap that manual approach for an automated approval workflow. That should translate into faster sales cycles for consultancies.

In many cases, Palo Alto Networks partners can claim rebates after closing a deal. The company is removing certain caps that it placed on those rebates until now. It expects the change to boost partners’ profit margins. According to Palo Alto Networks, some rebates will be invested into a new fund intended to finance demand generation and technical training programs for partners.

Previously, the training courses provided by Palo Alto Networks were mainly designed for sales and pre-sales professionals. The company is expanding the scope of its talent development program to two more roles as part of the NextWave refresh. It will start providing training content to partner firms’ post-sales engineers, who are responsible for onboarding new clients, and SOC analysts. A SOC is a team that monitors its company’s IT infrastructure for breaches and mitigates them. At IT consultancies, SOC teams also help deliver managed cybersecurity services to clients.

Palo Alto Networks says that the partner program refresh will also bring other improvements. The company is rolling out an AI tool that partners’ salespeople can use to simulate customer negotiations and hone their pitching skills. Additionally, Palo Alto Networks plans to help partners deploy its software for customers.

Photo courtesy of Palo Alto Networks