In this episode of the Channel Zone Podcast, Mark Edwards speaks with Tess Garner, Senior Director of Global Channel and Alliances Marketing at Tenable, about how cybersecurity marketing, partner engagement, and demand generation have fundamentally changed in the post-COVID world.

Tess shares how Tenable, as an exposure management company, works through a global partner ecosystem of alliances, distributors, MSPs, and resellers, and explains why partner marketing is ultimately about winning hearts and minds. For her, successful channel marketing is not just about content and campaigns, but about human connection, memorable experiences, and helping partners feel engaged, enabled, and excited to work with your brand.

A major thread in the conversation is Tess’s doctoral research into how B2B cybersecurity demand generation has evolved since COVID. She argues that the traditional linear funnel no longer reflects how buyers actually behave. Instead, today’s buying journey is more complex, more self-directed, and increasingly influenced by peer networks, invisible social communities, AI-driven research, and partner ecosystems. Buyers now expect faster access to information, more personalization, and far less friction.

Mark and Tess also explore the shift from long-form gated content toward shorter, more human-centric formats, particularly on LinkedIn. Tess makes a compelling case that professional audiences still want credible business content, but they increasingly prefer it in more engaging, visual, and bite-sized formats. The discussion also challenges the continued overuse of dense PowerPoint decks, contrasting them with more direct, interactive, and memorable communication styles.

Alongside her corporate role and academic work, Tess also talks about writing her children’s book Charlie and Augie, inspired by the simple but powerful idea of doing one thing at a time. It adds a personal dimension to the episode and reinforces one of the central themes of the conversation: in both work and life, clarity and focus matter more than ever.

The episode closes with a look at Tenable’s playful and highly successful jumper campaign, which used user-generated content to create joy, strengthen brand awareness, and show the human side of a cybersecurity company. It is a fitting example of the broader message running through the whole conversation: in a noisy world, the brands that connect emotionally, communicate simply, and create memorable moments are the ones that stand out.

In this episode of The Channel Zone Podcast, host Mark Edwards sits down with Steve Dawes, Chief Growth Officer at syclonX, for a conversation that spans nearly five decades of enterprise sales evolution.

Steve shares insights from his early career at Mars, where discipline, structure, and relentless activity defined success—22 calls a day, strict processes, and constant accountability. From there, the discussion moves into the legendary Rank Xerox era, widely regarded as the birthplace of modern solution selling. Steve reveals the intensity of Xerox’s training programs, the power of role play, and how sales excellence was built through immersion, coaching, and real-world experience—not dashboards or digital tools.

The conversation highlights a stark contrast between past and present selling environments. Steve and Mark explore how face-to-face selling, team camaraderie, and “learning by doing” created stronger salespeople—and question whether today’s reliance on Zoom and remote selling has weakened those fundamentals.

Steve also reflects on his time at Wang, one of the pioneers of word processing, and how simplifying technology for users became a powerful sales advantage. Along the way, he shares memorable stories—from managing a misfit team into top performers through energy, culture, and belief, to selling high-value systems through live demonstration and customer engagement.

The episode closes with hard-earned lessons from a 50-year career in sales, including the importance of showing up, building real relationships, and maintaining emotional connection within teams. It’s a rich, nostalgic, and highly practical discussion for anyone interested in how great salespeople are truly developed.

In this episode of The Channel Zone Podcast, Mark Edwards sits down with Donna Joyce, Public Sector Account Director at Okta (specialising in Auth0), to explore a career shaped by an unexpected beginning: elite three-day eventing.

Donna shares what it was really like working as a groom for an Olympic rider—6am starts, half a day off per week, and two years with no pay—and how that environment hard-wired principles she still relies on today: discipline, routine, resourcefulness, teamwork, and accountability. The stakes in that world were real, and “doing what you said you’d do” wasn’t a motivational quote… it was safety.

From there, the conversation moves into Donna’s work in identity and cybersecurity, including a simple, human explanation of what Okta does: helping people safely use any technology, anywhere—often invisibly behind the apps we use every day.

Donna also breaks down what’s different about selling into the UK public sector: longer buying cycles, heavy procurement constraints, shifting priorities, and a complex web of stakeholders. Finally, Mark and Donna discuss AI adoption in government—the tension between innovation and guardrails—and why identity becomes even more critical as AI tools and agentic systems spread.

They finish with a brilliant (and chaotic) corporate hospitality story: a Dell Euro Disney trip to Paris where the Eurostar allegedly had to stop to restock the bar before even leaving the UK.