“A really good opportunity”

Who Nick is

Nick Walmsley, Strategic Partnership Manager, Citation Cyber

Nick runs partnerships at Citation Cyber, a UK cyber security provider. Its partner model is structured: onboarding, product training and demonstrations for each partner.

The problem

Citation's partner channel needed buyers it could serve well. That meant two things: getting in front of enterprise accounts with a need its services fitted, and writing proposals that spoke to a sector it did not know well. Nick's working emails show the second clearly. Before each proposal went to the buyer, he asked Luke to check it.

What Luke did

Luke joined as a partner in May 2025 and learned the model properly: the sessions on how partners introduce clients and how the buyer journey runs, then the product training, a demonstration and a certification course, so he could position Citation's services accurately. In June he showed Nick and Citation's head of partners how he works.

He brought the Thyssenkrupp opportunity to Nick early, in August 2025. In October he wrote Citation a brief on the buyer before the first call: the situation, what was already in place, the pain points and where the buyer was in his thinking. Nick's reply:

“This is really helpful. There is potentially a lot to go at, and a number of the solutions we provide fit really well with what Clyde will be looking for... It looks to be a really good opportunity.”

Luke chaired the first three-way meeting around the buyer's problems, not a pitch, and set up the scoping session with Citation's lead security consultant. He then researched the buyer's sector and wrote Nick a proposal brief: which standards apply to an aerospace supply chain, how to phase the work for budget, how to speak to each stakeholder, and which questions to ask. Nick reworked the proposal along those lines, Luke reviewed it before the buyer saw it, and the two presented it together.

With the proposal, Luke sent the buyer a two-page board summary in business language, and the same day relayed Nick's answers to the buyer's three questions. Nick, the next morning:

“Very impressed with the executive [summary], really compelling... Really appreciate your help with everything.”

Through the weeks that followed, Luke kept the deal moving, passed on the buyer's decisions as he made them and quality-checked each proposal send-out. In January 2026 he reframed Nick's next-step email to the buyer so it read as a partner writing. Nick:

“Perfect, thanks for doing that. I agree, framing is so important, and that is spot on.”

What changed for Citation

In December 2025 the buyer signed for Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus. He moved that certification away from the provider that had held it before. Nick wrote to his CTO:

“Luke has been working very closely with ThyssenKrupp, who he introduced us to, and [we] have just won our first piece of work for their CE & CE Plus certifications.”

A NIST and ISO 27001 gap analysis followed in early 2026. Further services were scoped, including a health check and managed security monitoring.

In February 2026 Luke convened a strategy session with the buyer and Citation, and in March he helped the buyer turn Citation's gap-analysis reports into a presentation for his board. Earlier, in November 2025, before he signed, Clyde described the fit with Citation:

“They're pretty good. Nick knows the stuff. He understands what we need... It's a good fit with us.”