363 Meetings Across 20+ Countries — How Sellerate Built Akamai's GSI Alliance Pipeline From the Ground Up

Akamai is a publicly traded cybersecurity and cloud infrastructure company. Their security business — now Akamai's largest revenue driver — relies heavily on Global System Integrators (GSIs) to bring solutions like Akamai Guardicore Segmentation and API Security to enterprise clients. The GSI division needed to build and expand relationships with firms like Kyndryl, Accenture, Deloitte, EY, Capgemini, KPMG, and IBM — across every major region. But GSI relationship-building is fundamentally different from standard outbound: these are complex, multi-stakeholder organizations where each firm operates differently, has different role structures, and requires sustained, personalized engagement over months and years.

Akamai's GSI team needed a dedicated, persistent outreach engine to identify and engage the right cybersecurity, alliances, and consulting leaders within 15+ global system integrators — across North America, EMEA, APAC, and LATAM. This isn't transactional outbound. Building a GSI partnership means engaging multiple stakeholders, navigating different organizational structures at each firm, communicating the value of integrating Akamai's solutions into their managed services portfolio, and doing it consistently across 20+ countries. The internal team didn't have the capacity to run this at the scale and precision required.

Sellerate embedded two SDRs — Agustina Retta and Jan Richter — into Akamai's GSI security business development team, working directly alongside senior directors responsible for partner relationships. The team runs a fully account-based approach: each GSI is treated as its own market, with tailored outreach reflecting that firm's structure, titles, and decision-making culture.

Over nearly three years, the team has executed 16,000+ outbound activities across LinkedIn, email, and phone, generating 2,000+ engagements and scheduling 363 meetings with senior leaders at Kyndryl, Accenture, Deloitte, EY, Capgemini, KPMG, IBM, DXC, and others — spanning the US, Germany, Canada, UK, India, Australia, France, Brazil, Denmark, Singapore, and beyond. LinkedIn has been the dominant channel, driving an 18% reply rate.

But the real story is what those meetings produced. Sellerate's introductions have directly contributed to concrete business outcomes: a $252K Guardicore deal at Chedraui through Kyndryl Mexico, a $1.5M API security advisory project through KPMG Canada, an upsell at Alpha Bank through EY Greece, and an intro in EY Netherlands that led to CISO roundtables and ongoing opportunity development. Meetings with EY's Global Innovation Director led to introductions to the Global Head of Cyber, which trickled down to regional executives across EMEA. And the sustained relationship-building with Kyndryl and Deloitte contributed to formal, public alliance announcements — Akamai × Deloitte for Zero Trust Segmentation (November 2023) and Akamai × Kyndryl for Micro-Segmentation Implementation Services (October 2024).

GSI partnerships aren't built through one meeting — they're built through hundreds.

‍363 meetings across 20+ countries over three years created the density of relationships needed for GSIs to invest in certifications, joint solutions, and go-to-market motions with Akamai.

Outbound directly contributed to public alliance announcements.

‍Sellerate's sustained engagement with Kyndryl and Deloitte stakeholders contributed to the relationship-building that led to formal partnership announcements — the kind of outcomes that show up in press releases.

Each GSI is its own market.

‍Kyndryl, Accenture, EY, and Deloitte all have different structures, titles, and decision-making cultures. The account-based approach — treating each GSI as a distinct engagement with tailored outreach — is why the program works at this scale.