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Stephan Mesguich joined Netskope as SVP of Sales, EMEA & LATAM in June 2024, after previously holding roles at Palo Alto Networks, Tufin, and Verdasys. Read on to learn more about what drew Stephan to Netskope, his vision for his role, and what has impressed him the most about Netskope so far.
What drew you to this role at Netskope?
I started working in the cybersecurity industry alongside the birth of the internet. Having worked in this industry for more than 30 years, I’ve created a standard criteria for what I am looking for from a company I want to join. You need to have a strong target addressable market; you need a disruptive technology; you need a company backed by strong VCs, who ideally have a strong track record; and you need to have people you want to work with. The people element is essential for me. If I work with the right people then I will enjoy the adventure. Ultimately, you’re looking for a company, where there’s very little politics and a “can do” attitude, and an opportunity to do something truly exciting. The magic of this kind of culture and the people is really what drove me to Netskope.
What are some of your goals coming into this role?
In my career, I have always liked the challenge of building out the processes and infrastructure to enable a sales team to get products out in fresh ways. Here at Netskope, my first task is to make it easier for my team to unlock the value proposition of the technology. This includes helping them build a deep understanding of our technology, but also making sure they share insights we collect from customers around different use cases. And of course I will be helping keep one eye on the competition so that they can keep both eyes on their customers.
I will also be identifying gaps in our existing sales strategy to determine how I can help to clear up these gaps. For example, this could mean re-evaluating deal structures to better appeal to customers
Finally I am always making sure we have the correct routes to market, from the service providers, to the security boutiques, to the GSIs. Netskope has some excellent relationships with its channel partners, but these need constant maintenance. The right mix of partners means we can serve major accounts down to enterprise and mid-market.
How do you plan to accomplish these goals?
When it comes to accomplishing these objectives, I think there are some major best practices we need to keep in mind. First, you need to make sure you have the right pipeline creation and qualification to identify the companies we can genuinely support. Next, having the right mix of short, medium, and long term deals helps us internally to ensure we are meeting our quarterly commitments.We also need to make sure our sales engineers have the right setup to be able to meet all of these opportunities with the appropriate focus and support. Lastly, we want to take stock of our service providers, GSIs, resellers, and distributors and give them time and effort to collaborate on supporting our shared customers and prospects. These best practices will help us to accomplish key hypergrowth objectives.
What has impressed you most about Netskope?
The thing that has impressed me most about Netskope is the people. I’ve talked a lot about the importance of digesting all of these technologies and making sure that we’re messaging it in a simple way, but having the right people is why I joined. I’ve witnessed so much humility among the people working on my team and beyond, and there’s a wide range of folks working here, both youngsters and more senior folks, who are all looking to conquer the world. That’s the number one ingredient that any company needs to have in order to succeed. At some companies where I’ve worked in the past, the focus was only having the best technology. But technology is only half the battle. Of course you want to be able to give your customers the very best, but you also want to create a culture in which customers, partners and colleagues all want to be involved–day after day. For me, people are an essential and fundamental component of a successful organization, and the people at Netskope have impressed me greatly.
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