Collaborate with the Competition

Vince Menzione, Founder of Cloud Wave Partners, join me, Jen Spencer to discuss long-term relationships with partners, compensating partners, collaborating with the competition and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast.

Effective selling takes an ecosystem. Join host Jen Spencer as she explores how to supercharge your sales and master the art of never selling alone. Welcome to the Allbound Podcast, the fundamentals of accelerating growth with partners. Jen: Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Allbound Podcast. I'm Jen Spencer, and today, I am joined by Vince Menzione, who is founder of Cloud Wave Partners. Welcome, Vince. Vince: Jen, thank you. I'm just so excited to be here. I've listened to some of your episodes. You've had some amazing guests, and just delighted and honored to be here. Jen: We're glad to have you, as well, especially because your business experience just screams channel, and I love getting a chance to chat with people who have seen all aspects of channel sales and marketing. I mean, you were VP of Sales at General Dynamics, you were a general manager of Partner Sales Strategy at Microsoft, you host your own podcast, "The Ultimate Guide to Partnering." You're truly ingrained in the partner ecosystem. Can you share a little bit about what drew you to and what has really kept you working in the channel? Vince: That's a really great question. You know, I think it all started, Jen, because when I started off in selling right out of college, and I had a degree in marketing and wound up in sales because that's where the big money was. I saw that the people in my organization were making most of the money in the sales organization. And so I worked with companies, in four companies, that were, kind of, underdogs in their market, and candidly, I hated cold-calling. And so, you know, being a Marketing major and realizing that I needed to create credibility for my company in my offering, I started early hosting events and inviting complimentary companies to present their solutions along with my company's solution in order to build our credibility and our brand, and that led to a lot of, sort of, ad hoc collaboration with organizations that grew over time and then formalized into relationships, alliances, channel partners, and the like. And the one company that I was with at the time, we took that company from about 6 million in sales to about a 125 million. And then I did a turn-around where I was actually asked to start the government sales business and build a channel from scratch for that business, and that was a pretty interesting time. It was right after 9/11, we were selling to the government ruggedized computers, and we had a very unique offering, but we're underpenetrated our market. And so, I leveraged the relationships that I was building. I leveraged PR, events. I even spent time on Capitol Hill trying to get our message out through local congressmen and the staffers and the like. And so, this resulted in an amazing success that led to my joining Microsoft to lead the channel strategy all up for public sector. And so, I've always believed in the philosophy of one plus one equals three or more and mutual success and collaboration and at my core, I'm a connector. So I guess partner is just really ingrained in my system. Jen: Yeah, absolutely. I love that. I love that philosophy, and you wrote this article. It was called "The Three P's and how every partner needs to think in the Third Wave," and those three P's were partnership, policy, and perseverance. And you talk about driving business outcomes, you talk about shareholder value and market share. I'd love if you could elaborate a little bit. It was such a great piece but elaborate, for this audience, about, you know, how does partnership really fit into what you're referencing as being the third wave, the Internet of Everything, and then we'll link to the article in the show notes also, but, you know, can you give us the Cliffs Notes version? Vince: Sure, happy to. And that article was a direct result of seeing Steve Case speak, actually, at an event, a Microsoft event, hearing him being interviewed by my leader at the time and then also then reading his book "The Third Wave." And what really resonated for me there was just this evolution, you know, from the Internet to the app economy to the internet of things, and that there was this need that I still believe is under-appreciated around working across policymakers about just the amount of cooperation and collaboration that needs to take place between government agencies and private business. We're moving into a whole nother economy right now as you know. I mean, this disruption in the cloud is changing everything, and the Internet of Everything is all about, you know, things like smart cars, the ability to monitor for, you know, police officers to monitor things like gunshots and doing gunshot detection that ties into how a police officer responds to how municipalities deal with water and wastewater management to, you know, traffic lights, all kinds of things that were not part of the computer ecosystem in the past. And it requires this collaboration, again, between the agencies as well as just a common working knowledge on policy and things like that that those policies...some of those policies need to change or be updated to support this 21st-century environment that we live in. I'll give you an example actually. I was thinking about this. Jen: Yeah, that'll be great. Vince: Yeah, so you know Uber? I mean, you know, an incredible disruptive technology, right? But Uber has, kind of, built itself on disrupting and not collaboration. And I think about this at times because, you know, you'll go into certain cities, you'll land at an airport, and you'll realize you can't get an Uber, right? Because the city has basically blocked them because they feel like it's predatory and competitive to what their cab services do and what they feed off of that, their tax revenue dollars to that. But what if Uber had gone to those agencies, to those municipalities in a spirit of cooperation rather than fighting them, and said, "Hey, you know what? We can collaborate more effectively together. Why not have it so that Uber can then communicate to the mass transit systems in those cities?" Think about things like this, I take the train to my exit or my stop, I should say, and my Uber is then waiting for me because Uber has created a bridge or a collaboration technology to that municipal transit system and knows when that train or bus or you know, other motor transportation will arrive at that stop and you know, calls an Uber and my Uber shows up for me automatically. I mean, these are the type of things that you could see happening with the closer collaboration in what a lot of people are calling smart cities or cities of the future and those kinds of technologies where municipalities and private industry come together for the greater good. Jen: That's a great example, and it's that we really...I think that the crux of it is that we have to evolve in terms of that policy, our business practices. And far too often, I see organizations trying to kind of shove tomorrow's collaboration into today's or yesterday's practices, and it's hard. I mean, what you're suggesting is innovative and it's optimistic. It's challenging, right? This isn't something that's gonna come very easily. Vince: It is challenging, and also, the companies don't always get it, you know? I talked about the need for not just the collaboration, the cooperation but the patience and persistence that are required, and I might have mentioned this in the article. I was reminded of this because it takes a long time...If you're going to work in a regulated industry like healthcare or government, the sale cycles might be longer, the hurdles that you have to face or overcome like, you know, regulations, like HIPAA compliance and health care, or maybe just the fact that you're selling to a government entity and you have to have the right contracting vehicles, and the sales cycle is longer, those things take longer. And I was reminded of an example from that company that I built the government practice for. We initially had a CEO running the business who didn't get that. He didn't understand the government sales cycle and how long it took to build the government practice. Often, government agencies look at you and they frowned upon companies just coming in and kinda poaching business in their market. They wanna know that you're gonna be in that business for the long haul, and they wanna see a track record of proof and success for a period of time before they'll award business to you. And so that particular CEO didn't get it. He didn't wind up staying in that role very long, but we persisted and the business took off from there. And so, again, you have to have the patience and persistence to drive forward if you wanna achieve an objective. Jen: You had some really, you know, great experiences and successes in managing channel for Microsoft's public sector. I was really hoping you might be willing to, sort of, share, recount one of your best partnership stories with our listeners. Maybe a time you achieved a great revenue goal together, there was some big accomplishment or some strategic alliance that was able to be formed. Do you have anything for us? Vince: You know, I have a lot of stories for you, and if we've got time, I can tell you, actually, more than one great example. I kind of paint a couple of stories for you here. But there was one particular instance where, you know, we were getting into the cloud space and competing directly against Google for email business, and this was at a time when Google was going into the cities, and they were the cool, new, you know, shiny, new object, I guess, if you will, and Microsoft was just moving...I don't even think we called it Office 365 yet. It might have just been called BPOS which was Business Productivity...That was the original name for Office 365. And we were looking for partners to help us be successful in that market and recruited a partner of Google's, one of their launch partners for the Gmail product to the Microsoft ecosystem, but I had trouble getting that partner engaged with the sellers in the public sector business because they were averse to working with anybody that worked with a competitor. And so, I really had to break down some barriers. My team had to break down some barriers to demonstrate that that partner would firewall their Google business from our Microsoft business and that they wouldn't share information between the entities so that if they were gonna work with us on an account, they would not work with a competitor and vice versa and that they would firewall any information they knew. And it took some time, but that partner wound up being very successful, being a Partner the Year, getting elevated in status. They're now what they call a National Solution Provider or NSP, and they won Partner of the Year Award in Education, and they were just spotlighted in the healthcare business for a great success that they've had in the healthcare business this past year. And so that was one example. Jen: That's great. Vince: I had another example too that I wanted to share, too. Jen: Yeah, please. Vince: I was thinking about this one, and this one was, again, in the government space, but it was a large systems integrator, whose name will, you know, go unmentioned here. But this systems integrator was an influencer in their market but very vendor-agnostic. They didn't partner with other organizations, but they became a big fan of Microsoft, and this led to...And again, this was persistent. This was like years and years of working with them, meeting with them, getting them in to engage with our teams that they really became the big fan of the technology when we released Surface, when we started moving to Azure and the cloud. And we developed this strategic alliance and started to co-develop some very cool technology around security, and it was through some of those agencies and government that we really can't talk further about, but you know who they are, and they went from being very vendor-agnostic to being raving fans and creating an alliance and strong partnership with Microsoft that took off. And I was actually reminded that when I was trying to kinda bring this partner along. I had a very senior Microsoft sales leader at the time say to me, don't waste my time with them. "They're not gonna partner with us. That's not their approach." And that person's no longer with Microsoft, but we persisted. Again, persistence, trying to drive the right outcome for the business, and you know, just having the end in mind in terms of what we need to do in order to be successful. Jen: It's actually a really good segue. I love hearing success stories. The benefit of having channel sales and marketing professionals on this show is also to hear about some of the problems, some of the mistakes that have been made over the years, so that we can make sure, you know, we teach those and those mistakes aren't made again. Are you willing to share any mistakes or problems you've seen business leaders have to deal with when managing alliances for their business? Vince: Yeah. That's quite a bit of what I do on "The Ultimate Guide to Partnering" is I try to uncover the pitfalls as well as the success stories. And on both sides of this equation, it comes down to not really understanding or having a common vision of what the outcome needs to be and not understanding each other's operating model. So in the case of partners that are looking to engage with companies like Microsoft, and this is true of other tech giants, is it's just not understanding, you know, the cadence of the business like when is a good time to engage, when it's not a good time because it's the end of a quarter or end of the fiscal year. It's thinking that just because you are a partner that "you're just going to get all these leads and access to customers where these big companies have lots and lots and lots of partners," and they can't just open up the doors. It would erode their customers' confidence in them if they did that, so it's understanding how to best engage with a field organization. And again, it comes back to this kind of being in it for the long haul, understanding the mutual outcomes that you're looking to drive, and being in it together. In the case of Microsoft...Again, it comes back to...I'd mentioned that one partner, particularly Google partner. Sometimes, the field sales organizations don't want to collaborate with a partner that they see as being somewhat competitive to them because they offer other offerings. And in today's world in this time of rapid transformation, you need everybody, actually, to help drive your business, and so you have to be a little bit more open to the conversation and maybe firewall the conversation so that we're specifically going after this particular outcome together, and maybe we're competitors someplace else. Jen: I think, you know, a lot of what you touched on regarding, you know, those challenges or the way to really approach an alliance or a partnership, it's really cultural in nature. And you know, for me, I see that as this is...that's top-down, right? That's the leadership of the organization and from the CEOs level going down into the organization of making sure that there is a culture of partnership, that there's the understanding of "why," why are we doing this, learning from each other, looking at the KPI's that we're gonna be holding our team accountable to and ensuring that they are the right sort of KPI's, you know? But also, I talk to people all the time who go, "Wait a minute. I'm just a cog in this machine. I have a job to do." And so, do you have any advice you would give somebody for, you know, who really wants to build partnerships successfully, build partnerships with transparency, and the way that you're suggesting, when they've been inserted into and organization and maybe don't have the opportunity to craft that culture from the onset? 16:20 Vince: That's a really good question, and I think you're right. It comes from the top-down in the organization. And I see this way too often where sellers are very good at one specific function, and that's calling on the end customer. And in many cases, some of those best sellers, bestselling people, best sales people are the ones that are also, I'll call them control freaks for lack of a better term here, and they don't want anybody else involved with their account, and anything that's introduced into the account is an issue. I would say to those sellers or sellers that are in an organization that thinks that way is that you have to think differently, right? You have to really think about the adage of, you know...I can’t think of this term. I'm gonna come back to that one. But just the adage that I mentioned earlier about one plus one equals three or more because it really is a collaboration leads to a greater set of outcomes for you and for the customer. And it leads to raving fan customers as well as a partner that will collaborate with you and bring you into opportunities later on versus kind of having the blinders on and saying, "No, I want to control this account. I don't want the partner involved." Not being willing to kinda give up the reins or give up control of the outcome or the time frame for the outcome to happen is a reason why a lot of people are unsuccessful working in partnerships with other organizations. Jen: Well, there’s certainly a lot of fear. I think that that control freak, sort of, nature, you know, that you're talking about comes from this fear of, "I'm not gonna be successful," or "Someone's gonna encroach on my work or what I'm doing." And I guess, it's up to those leaders to, you know, set the culture but also identify the processes, procedures, provide the tools and resources so that everyone's worst fears, whatever they are, get them all out on the table, "Okay, what are you most worried about happening? And let's make sure that those things don't happen," or "Let's just dispel this rumor, okay? This is not...That is never gonna happen. Don't worry about that." Because I think, it just comes down to trust, and people want to feel like, you know, they're being taken care of by their organization. And when you bring a partner into the mix...sometimes, if you haven't had experience working collaboratively with partners, you know, I think that could be a little bit daunting for some folks. Vince: It is, and then it's also knowing just that this is a relationship. This is an ongoing long-term relationship. It's not transactional. Before Microsoft evolved the cloud business, there were some people at Microsoft that only engage with the partner that was transacting the Enterprise Agreement. And so, I would get the phone call around this time of year, which is the end of Microsoft's fiscal year, and that was the only time the sales person wanted to talk to the partner person. And of course, it was really...they were really ready to just jump on them because the order hadn't come through yet. Rather than building that relationship, having lunch once a month to discuss account strategy and account planning, all the things that should have happened, these people were just really in the moment for the transaction to happen. And it was just about that time of year or that time of the cycle versus having this ongoing relationship. You mentioned trust, building trust, having transparency, a mutual respect for each other's business, and business cadence and you know, set of outcomes. What's in it for me? Knowing each other's wins is so important, right, that that radio station, WIIFM, you know, What's In It For Me, that both organizations have, right? Each organization has its own business and set of outcomes that they're trying to drive against, and understanding that mutual respect is just so important to success. Jen: There's something else I want to ask you about, and a lot of the people that we talk to, you know, here at Allbound are either, they're in one of two camps...they either are have been hired to enter an organization and literally breathe life back into the channel partner program. So in those cases, it's typically the company has some kind of a partner program that really wasn't very well architected. Maybe they kind of fell backwards into it, right? Someone comes to them, and says, "I wanna refer your business," or "Let's cut a little bit of a deal." And the beginnings of a partner program are put into place and other folks kinda jump on board, and then it becomes its own living beast, and now, someone's got to come in and wrangle it. So we talk to a lot of people that are in that kind of world, and then we talk to folks who mostly, you know, at rapidly growing SAAS companies that have gone...their go-to-market strategy has been direct, but now, they have these goals to start a channel program. They're starting from scratch, and it's just this open field, like of, you know, what do they want to build? And I'm wondering if you have any advice for either one of those people. I don't know if that advice would be different or if it would all be rooted in the same. If you can kind of like think back to sort of the beginnings of what it's like to start building something. What advice do you have to give these people who are setting out to build a successful channel partner program? Vince: It's a really great question. I think about just how, culturally, the organization has to think differently, right? And in both of those examples, right? So we had a program, why wasn't it working, you know? Maybe it was that conversation we're just having earlier about mutual trust and respect. A lot of times, I see organizations, they wanna go fix something, and they think that one particular individual could come in as the new channel chief and just that person will create some type of magic or hocus-pocus on the situation. It's much more ingrained in the culture of the organization that tops down approach. It has to be buy-in from everyone in the company especially from the financial acumen, the chief financial officer CEO level, all the way down into the field organization. Compensation has to be structured so that sellers win when partners win. That's an important aspect. Compensation drives behavior, right? So if I were to look at a program, an existing program, I want to look at a few things. I would want to interview the partners. I'd wanna interview the sales people. I'd wanna understand where the cultural imbalance was and then design programs and readiness tools and compensation incentive models that drove the right behavior both for internal sellers as well as for partners. And so, that's how I would think about that. I think from this SaaS model, I think it's fairly similar, as well, again for companies that are moving from the Direct model, they're trying to grow through their channel. Again, they have to take a look at their current business model, their revenue streams. You know, what could be changed to drive this mutual behavior, this behavior that drives to a successful outcome ultimately for both the sellers, the partners, and for the customers? Jen: Great, that's wonderful, wonderful advice. And I love that you mentioned compensation because it is what drives, you know, everyone. And if those compensation structures aren't aligned, that can really cause a lot of headaches with the partner program and making sure that program is successful. This has been so great chatting channel with you. Before I let you go, I do put all of our guests through a little bit of a speed round of more personal questions. Are you ready? Vince: I'm ready for this. I've listened to a few of your episodes. I don't know what's coming my way but go for it. Jen: All right. Okay. So first question is, what is your favorite city? Vince: That's a good one. My favorite city is Philadelphia. Jen: Okay, tell me why? What do you love about Philly? Vince: Well, we lived outside of Philadelphia for about 26 years. My kids love Philly. My daughter went to Temple University. It's a city that's on the rebound which is what I love about it, and it's become my new favorite place. Although I love Washington DC and spend a lot of time there, Philly has got this new exuberance about it, and I love the phoenix rising from the ashes. And I see Philly in much the same way. They're building new skyscrapers, Millennials are moving back in the city at a pretty high clip. It's still an affordable city and a very livable city, and they have great, great restaurants. Lot of great BYOBs, and just they're underrated in many ways but just a great little city. Jen: And pretty much...I went to Philly once and all I did was eat when I was there. Vince: It's a common thing to do in Philly. Jen: Right. Okay, question number two, would you consider yourself an animal lover? Vince: I am. I am, actually. I didn't grow up an animal lover, so that's a great question. I didn't have a dog until about 15 years ago, and we had 2 dogs up until a couple weeks ago. We'd lost...one of them just, you know, passed, and so I've learned to love dogs. And I've learned a lot about life through dogs and just giving back to them and just getting all that love and loyalty that you get from a dog. Jen: Yeah. Sorry to hear about that loss. What kind of dogs? What breed? Vince: Shih Tzu and Shih Tzu-Bichon blend were the two dogs we had. Jen: Oh, yeah. Fluffy, fuzzy. Vince: Fluffy, fuzzy. And the other reason why I didn't have dogs when I was younger, I had really bad allergies as a kid, and so they're hypoallergenic and they're just, you know...they're terrific dogs. Jen: Yeah. Okay, next question, Mac or PC? Vince: Well, PC. Jen: I should've known, right? Vince: Yeah, you know, I do...I'm a huge fan of the Surface, and I knew Panos Panay at Microsoft when he released it and just, you know, still a super fan. Although, I will tell you that I have iOS. I have an iPhone, and I do love the apps and the finished quality of the apps. Jen: Excellent, and last question, let's say I was able to offer you an all-expenses-paid trip, where would it be to? Vince: I'm a real beach person, so, you know, it's probably gonna be Saint Barths, but there's this other piece of me that wants to be on the coast of like Sicily right now...and eating great Italian food, so I'm gonna go with Sicily instead of Saint Barths, how's that? Jen: Yes. Well, Sicily, right? So you can...there's water, right, and the food. You get the best of both worlds. Vince: That's right. Beautiful blue water and great Italian cooking, so, you know... Jen: Perfect. Vince: Well, thanks so much for taking some time with me and with our listeners today. It was great. If anyone would like to reach out to you personally, what's the best way for them to get a hold of you? Jen: So I have become a fan of social, and in fact, just...really getting the hang of Twitter but my Twitter handle is @vincemenzione, that's V-I-N-C-E-M-E-N-Z-I-O-N-E. I can also be reached at LinkedIn and Facebook at the same handles and on Instagram, as well, and then my email address is vincemenzione, without any dots or dashes, @gmail.com. Vince: Perfect. Jen: Thank you, Jen. This has been a great pleasure. Thanks for inviting me. Vince: Again, thank you for your time today, and thanks to everyone for listening, and we'll catch you next week with an all-new episode. Man: Thanks for tuning into the Allbound Podcast. For past episodes and additional resources, visit the resource center at allbound.com, and remember, #NeverSellAlone