Dive Brief:
- Channel partners now account for more sales than any other route to market for Exabeam, the behavior intelligence vendor said in an announcement Thursday.
- The Exabeam channel organization outperformed its goals in the first half of 2026, growing its new logo pipeline 138% more than expected. New product bookings in existing customer accounts were 125% over target, according to the announcement.
- The vendor expanded its Sherpa AI tool from a virtual channel account manager to an interface for deal registration, training, certifications and various pre-sales enablement. “Think of Sherpa as the ability to self-service on all those different aspects. You bring in the [human] CAM when you need an additional touch point, but everything is replicated in Sherpa, so you can pull answers out of that,” Exabeam Senior Director of Partner Programs Alison Haynes told Channel Dive.
Dive Insight:
Resources to train and co-market with partners have been a major part of Exabeam’s investments over the last year, Haynes said. The company paid for more than 90 partner-led marketing campaigns since it launched its market development funds program at the beginning of the year.
“The more we're educating, enabling our partners and helping them drive to outcomes, the more successful they're going to be,” Haynes said.
Exabeam launched the APEX Partner Program in July 2025, seven months after it hired Craig Patterson as global channel chief. The charter for Patterson at the time was to integrate Exabeam’s channel program with that of LogRhythm, which the vendor acquired in 2024. Exabeam’s private equity sponsor Thoma Bravo had set KPIs for channel partners to account for an increasing sales pipeline and for channel deals to convert at a higher rate, Patterson told Channel Dive last month.
Increasing partner competency felt like the best way to improve close rates, Patterson said.
“I think the thesis is proving out quite nicely; we're seeing a pretty material increase in our conversion rates,” said Patterson, who last week was appointed to SVP of global channels and marketing.
The company launched Sherpa in March to make channel manager services available 24/7. Haynes said the tool is offloading transactional activity from channel managers and freeing them to provide enablement reseller, advisor and service provider partners on complex topics.
“Exabeam's biggest market opportunity is around securing agentic AI,” Haynes said. “[CAMs] are able to go back and really work with our partners to ensure they understand that AI security opportunity and what that means from a technical innovation perspective, and also how they can apply that out into the enterprise.”
Sherpa became more than a virtual channel manager, Haynes said. Partners record their pitches in the chat to receive feedback, and Sherpa can tag along in their calls. The vendor most recently launched a feature to upload and edit requests for proposals in Sherpa.
“They can talk real time with Sherpa, ask questions, challenge things and make sure it's giving the appropriate feedback for that RFP,” she said. “That's a big need in the community right now.”
