Never Leave a Partner Stranded

Wendell Black, Vice President of Channels for Five9, joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss creating the optimal team to compete and win with the partner, prioritizing your partner needs, and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast.

Five9 is a leading global provider of cloud-based contact center software for sales, marketing, and support, and they facilitate over three billion customer interactions annually.

 

Welcome, Wendell.

 

Wendell: Well, thanks, Jen. Glad to be here.

 

Jen: We're really happy to have you here today, particularly because Five9 has a really robust partner ecosystem, and I want to dig right into that. I mean, you guys have referral partners, system integrators, consultants, resellers, master agents. Is there a primary area of focus for growing that partner ecosystem this year or are you just going after everything all at once?

 

Wendell: Well, as much as I'd like to say we're just gonna go do it all, Jen, I've been told that you can't have more than three priorities or you don't have really any. So that said, Five9 is very focused in growing the book of business that we have in the master agent, sub-agent community, and growing our reseller partnerships is our two big focus areas. These two areas generated a lot of growth capacity last year, and we're looking to substantially grow our reach this year by continuing to focus on both of these channels to market. We've been very encouraged by the relationships that we've developed, and we look to further invest both time and finances in these communities in 2017.

 

Jen: Do all of these elements of your partner ecosystem fall under your purview? I know you're focused on growing a couple of these areas, but are you specifically focused on any of these areas individually? I guess what I'm getting to is what is the team makeup really look like over there?

 

Wendell: Sure. So my team is divided up really into the communities. So the systems integrators is one group, master agents and sub-agents, that line of business is another group, and then resellers is a third team, and all of those roll up to me. And our focus for that is on a global basis. So I have staff not only domestically here in the U.S., but also in Latin America, in Europe, and Asia as we grow in that direction as well.

 

Jen: Awesome. Now, a lot of times when I'm speaking with channel leaders, they’re very focused on, of course, growing revenue through that partner base. But the more that we've become a very recurring revenue-focused type of world, right, this marketplace, the way the markets change, now the conversation is really starting to transition into what value do all experiences, whether they're from direct sales teams or partner teams, play in that full life cycle customer experience? So, if I'm one of your Five9 customers, can you tell me how would one of your partners actually add value to my experience with your product beyond simply that, "I bought it from that partner"?

 

Wendell: Sure. So I think, as you know, Five9 has been delivering contact center solutions for 15 years now. But our partnerships, many of these resellers in particular that we're working with have been working in the contact center for twice that long. It's that breadth and depth of experience that the partners bring that is where the real value add is to what the Five9 product does and delivers to its customers. They provide that added value and insight to be able to help a customer really maximize that value. So a customer of a Five9 partner is not only getting the innovative omni channel solution that Five9 offers, but it's getting the years of been there, done that experience that the partner has to offer in this space. That's where the customer really wins.

 

Jen: Right. And, you talked about your resellers and you mentioned you have master agents, can you sort of talk us through how a master agent program differs from your reseller program? And keep in mind that some of our listeners, are just very new to the concept of Channel, they're just really starting to build out their partner programs, and this might be good for them to think about as they're kind of crafting that blueprint for what's to come in the future for themselves.

 

Wendell: Sure. So let me, first of all, tell you how they are similar. Both programs work with Five9 sales and sales engineering staff to ensure that we've provided the optimal team to compete and win in the market with the partner. The teaming of the Five9 experts with our partner experts makes for an unbeatable team. The programs are different, though, based on the scope of services that each type is really ready to deliver to a client. So in the agent or master agent kind of a program, they're really focused most of the time on the pre-sale side of a customer's selection of the solution and solving the need, bringing technology and different kind of solutions to bear on that customer problem.

 

The resale program not only does that, and works in that pre-sale process, but they also want to manage and deliver the solution, they want to train the customer, they want to own the operational consulting and ongoing support with the customer. I mean, the reseller really wants to have a day-to-day operational engagement with clients to continue to grow the success with a joint solution that they're bringing the services and the day-to-day engagement experience along with the Five9 product.

 

So, when you look at the two ways, one of them is the beginning to end relationship where the other one is really focused on the pre-sale engagement side, and that's why it's a great avenue for people to perhaps start as a referral relationship and be able to grow into the resale kind of soup to nuts delivery of the relationship over time. That makes it an easier way for all of us to get started.

 

Jen: So if I'm a customer and I come to purchase your product via that reseller program, do I ever have any interaction with anyone on the Five9 team, or is my only interaction with your product with that individual reseller?

 

Wendell: No, I mean, that's one of the things that, I think, is differentiated value for Five9 in that we team our sales and sales engineering, and frankly all the resources that those people can bring to bear with the partner to be able to put the best foot forward across both organizations. We want to get all the right resources available to ensure that when we're out there in the competitive market space, Five9 and the partner gets to win their unfair share of business.

 

Jen: I love that, unfair share, perfect. I don't think I have ever heard anyone say that. I think I might have to steal that from you, Wendell.

 

Wendell: That's okay.

 

Jen: So, one of the biggest challenges that we hear over here at Allbound when we're talking to organizations who have partner programs is they have a lack of engagement with their current partners. Can you share a little bit about some of the biggest challenges that you've had engaging with partners and maybe what steps you've taken to try to overcome those challenges?

 

Wendell: Sure. So, as you undoubtedly know, there's a lot of transition going on in the contact center infrastructure market these days. That is both the biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity from where Five9 views what's going on. There's a lot of concern and questions in the minds of the reseller community that've had longstanding relationships with providers in the past but they're changing now. I mean, this is mainly because new ownership is making changes in programs and personnel that they've grown accustomed to and perfectly well understood previously.

 

So Five9 is the only company in the Gartner contact center as a service leader quadrant that's not currently being assimilated by another company. I believe this makes us a more stable and predictable partner for our resellers to engage with and to help them plan a path forward they can count on. So in helping our partner community be more successful, we're diligently working with them on all aspects of training for a better understanding of how to deliver value to their customers with Five9, and this starts with sales and marketing, it transitions into demand generation, and it continues all the way through implementation and customer service.

 

We're taking a holistic view of helping our reseller partners make the move to the cloud, and that's what I think really changes our engagement strategy and approach with partners today, because we believe we have to interact with them on every one of those functional areas and put the right people in place to help them in those roles.

 

Jen: That leads me really nicely on to the next question I have for you. When we look at what makes a successful partner ecosystem, a lot of making the channel part of a strategic part of the business, making sure that there's a culture of partnership within the organization, and really making sure that the partner teams are properly resourced. So can you share with me, what are some of the internal resources or team structures, anything that you've put in place that are there to support Five9's entire partner ecosystem to ensure that you can be successful in engaging with these partners and making this a strategic part of your business as a company?

 

Wendell: So one of the great things at Five9 is we're on a tremendous growth path over the last five years. I mean, we've been growing roughly 40% a year each of the last years, and that growth means we can hire people and put them in the right position to manage all aspects of our business growth. So we've been giving people that come into the company a partner tattoo as we bring them into our sales and sales engineering teams, also into sales operations, because there's always transactions that are going back and forth between us and our partners.

 

We've also brought partner resources into our marketing team, because frankly, we're pretty good at the marketing of cloud contact center, and many of our partners, this is a new set of stories to tell. So we can help them in telling a cloud monthly recurring kind of a story versus a premise perpetual licence kind of a story. So there's a lot of learning and experience that we can transition that way. It goes right into our professional services. I mean, we've had to align people in our PS organization to be the point of contact for partners, because as they take on those responsibilities, they need a go-to resource to be able to help them overcome challenges or obstacles.

 

Our guys have seen a lot of implementations of Five9 and other cloud technologies, and they can help share that insight with our partners. And then finally support. I mean, everything happens through the support organization after the sale, and we want to do a mind meld with our partners so they can deliver those kinds of services the same way we do, which got us the recognition in the Gartner Magic Quadrant as being one of the best at execution in this sector.

 

Jen: That knowledge transfer piece, I mean, everything you're talking about has to do with that knowledge transfer. How do you get information from one entity to another, especially when they don't work for you, they're not in your building, they're not on your payroll necessarily, and transferring your knowledge down to the partner but then getting the partner's expertise and their customer knowledge back up to you is so critical. So that's great that you were able to create an infrastructure to support that effective knowledge transfer.

 

Wendell: Yes.

 

Jen: Oh, go ahead.

 

Wendell: I was going to say you're right on target with it because it's all about collaboration and we can't ever leave a partner stranded. We've got to be there to provide the safety net for them and for the customer to ensure that we have a continuing great experience with our clients in the base, whether they've come to us directly or through a partner channel.

 

Jen: One more question for you, and it's kind of a big one, but we mostly are talking to software companies. What do you think is the software industry's greatest opportunity when it comes to Channel? Channel's traditionally been a very traditional sort of like hardware-focused type of industry. So what can software take advantage of with Channel?

 

Wendell: I've been in the contact center business for over 30 years and I've been in the cloud space for 17 years now. I think we're finally at a place that we've hoped for as evangelists for cloud services back 15 years ago. I mean, we knew we were trailblazing and we knew that we were fighting an uphill battle against the established norm, but the market is right, customers are ready, and the partner ecosystem is also ready to take on cloud services and deliver them to their customers.

 

The time is now to be able to take the transitional move from perpetual premise licensing to the cloud model and software as a service. So I personally think after my time in the space, it's finally time to write the tsunami of the cloud contact center into the new omni channel paradigm of 2017, and that's why partners are getting excited today, because they see that opportunity too with their customers and now where you had to sell...or in the past when you had to sell people to think about the cloud, now they're asking about the cloud first and having that as being their first choice.

 

Jen: Right, absolutely, absolutely. I think that's a great way for us to wrap this up, although I don't let anyone go kind of without bugging them with a couple of more personal questions. So, totally unrelated to what you do at Five9 or Channel or software, are you open to answering a couple of questions?

 

Wendell: Sure, I'm fine with that.

 

Jen: Okay. I promise they're not too hard. My first question for you is, what's your favorite city?

 

Wendell: Gosh, it's hard not to be Dallas-biased, and been my home for 30 years and I can't imagine living anywhere else, but I do very much like to visit San Francisco and London and Paris. So I'm kind of a world traveler and I have a lot of favorites for different reasons. So can I cop out on that question kind of like that?

 

Jen: Sure, sure. The whole point of this is to get to know a little bit more about you, so we did just that. The second question I have for you is, are you an animal lover? Yes or no?

 

Wendell: I am.

 

Jen: And do you happen to have any pets?

 

Wendell: Yes, a white lab that I love and adore. So she is a great friend and a member of the family in every way.

 

Jen: Awesome. What's her name?

 

Wendell: Millie.

 

Jen: Millie, it's a nice name. Okay, question number three, Mac or PC?

 

Wendell: Both, actually. I have a MacBook Air on one side of my desk and a Microsoft Surface on the other.

 

Jen: Really? Very interesting. Most people I talk to either like one or the other, right? Like their brain has now been trained to use one kind of device, so that's great. The last question I have for you, let's say I was able to offer you an all expenses paid trip, where would it be to?

 

Wendell: You know, I would...I think I like to go do Asian coast tour, and so I have a mind that...the Tibet, Vietnam, Cambodia area is one that I haven't spent much time in and would like to go get to know better. So I think that's what I would target today. But a year from now, it could be some place totally different.

 

Jen: Well, and who knows where the business will take you? You might find new and exciting places that you never even knew really existed. I think that's one of the beauties of Channel, Channel is so geographically dispersed, you get to experience so many different countries, cultures, experiences, so it gives you a lot of opportunity.

 

Wendell: Couldn't agree more.

 

Jen: Well, thank you so much for taking some time sharing your insights with us today, it was a pleasure. If any of our listeners would like to reach out to you personally to follow up, ask you any questions, what's the best way for them to reach you?

 

Wendell: So my email is pretty easy, it's wblack@five9.com, and I would be delighted to engage with the partner community that way. I'm also on LinkedIn, Wendell Black, and would be happy to engage with people out there in the social world as well. Five9.com would be my third recommendation. You can find me in the partner section of our website and would be happy to get connected via that as well. So Jen, it's been a pleasure speaking with you today, and thank you so much for the opportunity.

 

Jen: Oh, you're very welcome. Thanks for joining us and thanks, everyone, for tuning into The Allbound Podcast.

 

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