Ultimate Guide to Partnering® 267 – The 1% Club: Elastic’s First Secrets to Partner of the Year Status
Recorded Live at Ultimate Partner LIVE in Redmond, WA
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Welcome back to the Ultimate Guide to Partnering® Podcast.
This was a fan favorite as I was joined by former Microsoft executive and current Elastic leader, Alyssa Fitzpatrick, as she reveals the strategies behind achieving pinnacle success as a Microsoft partner. Learn how Elastic consistently earns “Partner of the Year” awards by prioritizing technology innovation, fostering deep engineering alignment, and ensuring maniacal focus across all functional teams. Alyssa shares invaluable insights on gaining executive buy-in, establishing clear communication “swim lanes,” and leveraging data to drive impactful decisions. Discover the importance of consistent engagement, human relationships in partnering, and why adaptability is the new IQ in today’s rapidly changing market.
Key Takeaways:
- Achieving “ultimate partner” status requires a deep understanding of how to congruently apply principles across all aspects of the business.
- Executive commitment is paramount; the entire leadership team must be on board and actively driving the alliance strategy.
- Aligning functional teams (build, go-to-market, sell) with their Microsoft counterparts through dedicated points of contact ensures effective feedback and execution.
- Leading with technology and embedding innovation is the “secret sauce” for winning partnerships, going beyond traditional co-selling to integrate roadmaps and push for new functionalities.
- Resource allocation must align with strategic focus; sometimes trade-offs are necessary to maintain intensity on critical hyperscaler relationships.
- Data-driven decision-making and continuous analysis of performance are crucial for adaptability and predicting market shifts, allowing leaders to defend and explain their strategies to leadership.
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Key Tags:
.Microsoft partner, Elastic, ultimate partner, partner of the year, cloud go-to-market, alliance strategy, executive commitment, technology innovation, engineering alignment, co-selling, go-to-market, influence strategy, partner resources, adaptability, data-driven decisions, human relationships, BRS, QBR, EBC, channel leadership.
Transcription:
[00:00:00] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: Adaptability is that has become really the most important thing that any leader needs to do in this, this world that we’re in. Um, it’s no longer one, two year roadmaps. It’s three months.
[00:00:16] Vince Menzione: We believe this time is like no other. We believe we refer to these as the tectonic shifts,
[00:00:22] Intro: all the hyperscalers in the world, if you add them all together.
Managed services will be one and a half times larger
[00:00:28] Vince Menzione: because it is the customer buying behavior that has created the need for all of us to rethink our models.
[00:00:34] Intro: Until we have data quality, the effectiveness of AI cannot be realized and effectiveness of the partnerships cannot be realized. Can you figure out, first, what your purpose is and how Microsoft can support your purpose and how you can support Microsoft purpose?
Now we have a partnership. It’s the ultimate partnership.
[00:00:54] Vince Menzione: Welcome to The Ultimate Guide to Partnering. I’m Vince Menzi, own your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. We just came off Ultimate Partner Live at Microsoft Redmond Campus.
Our most powerful event yet. Over two days, we gathered top leaders to tackle the real shifts shaping our industry. If you weren’t in the room, this fireside chat with Eissa Fitzpatrick, the partner leader for Elastic, an award-winning partner, brings us right to the edge of what’s next. Let’s dive in. So we always talk about like the pinnacle of success, like how do you get to be the top Microsoft partner?
And that’s one that we aspire to is where we came up with the term ultimate partner. ’cause an ultimate partner is a partner that she’s their greatest results. They understand how to be part of that 0.001 point. Percent, you’re not in that 99, 9 per percent. And I saw that quite a bit when I was at Microsoft.
I got to see the one per the 1% that knew how to, how to operate in a, in a, in a congruent way. They knew, knew how to apply all these principles in order to be successful. So we wanted to have, as our next guest, an organization and a leader that’s been driving that. In fact, this is also somebody who’s former Microsoft who’s gonna be joining us and having a conversation about.
How do you get to be partner of the year? How do you get to the pinnacle of success as an organization? And so I’m thrilled to invite, and I think she’s in the back ready, uh, Alyssa Fitzpatrick, I don’t know if anyone knows Alyssa. Alyssa was at Microsoft for many years. She was in the global partner organization.
Uh, she’s now running Elastic, which if, if you, if you haven’t been keeping up, like who are the top partners, especially in the marketplace world, elastic is at the very pinnacle of success across the entire ecosystem. Of partners and cloud go to market. And so I’m so thrilled to have her spend some time with us talking about how do you get to that level?
How do you become the most successful partner out there? How do you become a pinnacle partner? And so Alyssa, so great to see you, my friend. That’s great to meet. Thank you. Great to see you. Thank you. Great to see you. We were comparing scars the other day. Yes. I had, um, we both had accidents within the last month or two, right?
Yes. Yes. Your, yours is much better. You look much better. Mine. Mine was a little bit easier
[00:03:13] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: than the getting hit by a car. I, uh, I did it all to myself. Um. When you have low blood pressure, there is a you swoon sometimes, and if you don’t get yourself to a place where you’re stable, you can fall over and the heaviest part of your body is your head.
So I broke my fall. Right there. So it was three weeks ago. I’m healing pretty well, but I had a couple of black eyes for two weeks, which was really wasn’t Turn the camera on, I’ll tell you that. But um, but yeah, I was,
[00:03:43] Vince Menzione: I wasn’t turning the camera on either, so. Well, it so great to see you. Thank you, dad. So great to have you.
Yeah, we’re in, we, we brought the event up to you.
[00:03:50] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: Yes, you did. We did. I love it. Yeah. Yep.
[00:03:53] Vince Menzione: And I wanna sit, I wanna sit down with you and have some conversation’s today. Let do, let’s do, uh, it’s so great to have you. I mentioned the fact that you spent many years at Microsoft. That’s how we first met you were at Microsoft.
[00:04:03] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: Yep.
[00:04:03] Vince Menzione: I knew. I knew even back in that day. You were in the sailing. You were a big sailor. Yeah,
[00:04:07] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: I did. But you didn’t grow up in
[00:04:08] Vince Menzione: the Pacific Northwest. No. Yeah. So tell us more about your background. I grew up in
[00:04:11] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: Colorado, actually in Boulder, Colorado. Nice. Beautiful town
[00:04:14] Vince Menzione: and, uh,
[00:04:16] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: kind of, it was a small town in the seventies.
Very, very small town, very different. Um, but I did come to University of Washington for school, but I quickly left because I was only up here for the school year, never spent a summer. Oh, and if any of you have ever experienced a summer in Seattle, that’s why, you know, we live here and I didn’t until 30 years later.
When I came back to work for Microsoft and I was like, how did I not know this? I got to work in all these other places. I lived in San Francisco, I lived in London, I lived in New York. Um, finally came back here and, uh, it, it’s outstanding.
[00:04:54] Vince Menzione: Summers are beautiful here. Yes, absolutely gorgeous.
[00:04:56] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: It is, it’s amazing.
And I, yes, I love boating and I’ve taken my passion for sailing, which I’ve been sailing for about 35 years, and I’ve transitioned that into cruisers. Um, there’s a lot that you can accomplish up here and up into Canada and just, it’s the most beautiful boating place in the world. So I love it.
[00:05:16] Vince Menzione: I love it.
And you know, we had Lori Borg gun just before you. Mm-hmm. Spent 26 years in the Microsoft ecosystem at a partner. You, I know you’ve had several. Points before you got to Microsoft, but you went from being a Microsoft executive. I want you to talk about what you did at Microsoft and then you went back, you went back out now and leading a top award-winning partner.
So take us through a little bit of that. Yeah,
[00:05:36] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: it’s, it’s actually been a lot of fun. Yeah. Um, and, and I will, you know, kind of caveat it, that you don’t have to come from Microsoft to have a successful partnership. Um, because it was already happening before I got there. It was, it was already in line. And so, um, I can’t take credit.
For the, the Partner of the Year awards because I joined Elastic a year ago. And, um, and that motion was already happening and, and what the, what I see is, um. A company that made commitments and followed through on them and was very, very focused in, uh, making the partnership itself work. And so it doesn’t mean that because I’ve got a background at Microsoft that that was the recipe.
Um, it really is understanding all of the programs and the opportunities that your partner provides, and then tapping into that, um, being on the Microsoft side, it, I got to see. Who are the partners that were tapping into our programs and how are they working for them? And taking the feedback of, well, this is gonna work if we do it this way.
We need to drop the threshold here, or we need to do that. And I learned a lot about how my partners. Worked, transacted, engaged, marketed cosal, and, and that really gave me a different perspective because when I came into Elastic, I, I understood the ecosystem in a way that I, I hadn’t before Microsoft. And so it.
Really made it clear how do we go to market as elastic together with our ecosystem because our technology powers, um, all the ISVs out there as well. So we’re, we’re all, we wanna partner with everybody. Um, and so when I look at what I learned at Microsoft and the power of the engines that they build, that we can tap into the partners that do.
Are the partners that win. And so that, that really is it. It’s as simple as that. It’s understanding what’s available and then tapping into it. And when it doesn’t work for you, feed it back. Give that feedback so that they can modify because. Coming from Microsoft, I knew I wanted programs that worked for my partners.
Interesting. And if it wasn’t, then I wanted the feedback so I could modify. And that’s really important to not just ride along and go, well, it doesn’t really work, so I’m not tapping into it. Mm-hmm. Figure out how to make something work for you or go and give that feedback so that you could say, Hey, what if we did it this way?
Yeah. Microsoft will listen. Our partners will listen. We all want to win together.
[00:08:10] Vince Menzione: How do you give the feedback in a way that’s both deliberate and diplomatic?
[00:08:15] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: So, um, I’ll take a page from what Lori just said, the. Go to market build with go to market, sell with. It’s, um, it’s probably been the mantra here for almost 10 years now.
Yeah. And, um, if that is not your mantra in the way that you’re running your partnerships, um, with Microsoft, I strongly recommend that you, you adopt that. Um, and it works for everybody else. And so that’s what’s the nice part about it is every partnership that we run at Elastic, we look at what is the build piece.
Where’s the innovation coming from? What’s the solution that we’re trying to build for our customers? The how do we market that? How do we tell the world about what we built together, what we have, and then the sell? How do we empower our sellers to understand how to work together? And so making sure you, you really have that spectrum and, and you’re working that, and then decide what works for you.
Yeah. And, and to bring that feedback in, you’re gonna have, you, you need to have points of contact for each one of those, um, those swim lanes and working with
[00:09:15] Vince Menzione: those functional, functional areas that I like to refer to as Yeah. You’re working with
[00:09:17] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: Microsoft. Yeah. And that’s where you give the feedback.
[00:09:19] Vince Menzione: Yep.
[00:09:20] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: If it’s a build, you give it to the build team. If it’s go to market, let’s take the marketing team and show them what we need to do. So it’s really important that you land the feedback in the right place so it can be, um, taken in and then addressed. Um, otherwise it, it tends to float around without, um,
[00:09:36] Vince Menzione: yeah.
You bring up a really great point, but, well, you brought up a couple, several good points I wanna make sure I want to highlight. First of all, you talked about executive commitment and that’s super critical to success. Like if your executive team is not on board and helping to drive the the alliance strategy all up.
You’re gonna lose. Um, but you talked about the, the swim lanes and making sure that you, you’re aligned by role. And one of the things we’ve encouraged organizations to do over the years is not just have one person who’s responsible for the alliance mm-hmm. But to embed leadership from your organization with leadership.
At the Microsoft partner leadership level. So your build team and their build team are aligned. Your go-to market and their go-to market are aligned, your co-selling, their co-sell are aligned, and any other areas, right? There are other functional areas that are gonna align with your business. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Is that how elastic Exactly? Yeah.
[00:10:26] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: And, and it’s very empowering for the teams because the marketing team, they, they, they work incredibly well together and the rest of us are like, oh, what are they doing over there? Alright, that’s great. And then I get in, you know, information from what’s happening on the build.
And you know, we, at every single Microsoft conference or, or any of our partner conferences, we try to release. Um, do press releases on new functionality and that’s coinciding exactly with roadmaps. And so we really wanna make sure that the build team, all they’re thinking about is how do we innovate together and make sure that everything that we’re doing from our roadmap and their roadmap are aligned.
Marketing, empower them to go and find those opportunities and drive it. And then the cell team as well, it having each team have a connection versus one person trying to work the, the entire, um, agenda. It really does empower the team and make it agile, quick and innovative at, at the very, um, source.
[00:11:24] Vince Menzione: And let’s dive in on executive commitment.
’cause all those things are, all those teams are reporting into a C-suite leader. Mm-hmm. Right. Generally the CEO of the organization or or other role, how do you drive that and how do you drive the communication from your level of role within the organization driving partnerships and strategy there? How are you then communicating with that leadership team and how are you sprinkling in the priorities that you need to drive into the business?
[00:11:48] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: You know, I think that’s probably the. Biggest challenge for, um, individuals in the, um, the global channel leader role is getting the buy-in from our executives and getting them to understand the opportunity to the magnitude that, that we see. And they’re very numbers oriented. Yeah. And so it’s a challenge.
It’s a, it’s tough to really go in and get the leadership to understand what the opportunity is, because a lot of times it is. Belief, you know, build it, they will come. Well, we do have proof for that. And there are partnerships out there that you can point to and say, look at somebody our size, our scale, and what they’ve done by doing X, Y, Z.
So I think the best way to sell your story is to look in the industry at peer group successes or even bring in and, and I know this sounds crazy, but bring an analyst in because. Your leadership, hearing it from you is one thing, but when they hear it from someone else, there is a different impact. And I’ve, I’ve recognized that as I’ve been trying within Elastic to, uh, modify and move our focus going to my senior executive team.
By myself is less effective than going to my senior executive team when I bring in outside data or even an outside consultant. Yeah. To really prove the story. And it doesn’t mean that there’s not credibility with me. It’s, there’s so many ways to do partnering. That is your way, the best way. And so trying to find that right recipe for your company, it is important to do the research.
Do your homework, make sure you’ve got a financially driven plan, that you have, a metric that your leadership can say, okay, I believe in that metric when it goes up or down. That’s what I’m gonna hold you to. That is really important. Otherwise, you’re asking your leadership to, um, you know, really believe in something that may or may not happen.
You’ve gotta prove the story.
[00:13:52] Vince Menzione: So what’s the secret sauce? What, I mean, you, you’ve given a lot of it, but Right. But partner, the year status, multiple years. Right? This is, uh, you’ve, you’ve just been awarded again, some of the other cloud, uh mm-hmm. Hyperscalers as well. What is the secret sauce within Alaska?
Elastic that helps you become partner of the year? Like what, what do you think it is?
[00:14:12] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: Well, I actually think, um. Lori nailed it with technical intensity and I do remember when, you know, when Satya said that is the most important thing for Microsoft and our partner ecosystem. What I’ve seen, the way that Elastic engages with our partners is technology first, and that is something that’s different.
I’ve been in. Partnering for 35 years, and the early days of partnering was all about co-selling, and it was all about how do we line up our sellers? How do we engage ’em, spiff ’em, do whatever we can do to have a meet in the market. Well, that doesn’t work anymore if you don’t have the technology.
Innovation. And so it really does come down to leading with your technology first and embedding your tech in, uh, Microsoft or vice versa, somehow making it hook in and understanding what are the release cycles, where, what is the next innovation and. Until you get deep in, you may not hear what those roadmaps are.
And so you’ve gotta build those relationships so that you can become part of the fabric that is doing the innovation. And then you’re actually. Driving Microsofting. So what I’m seeing now is the way that Elastic and Microsoft work is we have these innovation sessions regularly where we look at our technology and we, we compare roadmaps.
Yeah. And as we do that, we’re affecting each other’s maps. Um, we ask for functionality in, um, the marketplace. It took a few months, but we pushed and pushed and pushed, and it’s something that we really needed so that we could do multi-year transactions with our partners. Um, they responded and we worked together and, and we made it happen.
And so I think the secret is, I. Lead with your technology and make sure that it is something that can really work and hunt with the partnerships that you’re trying to build and then wrap the relationship around that, that’s where you start. Um, and I do think that that is the secret sauce that has made Elastic very successful, is we are fearless in going into the engineering organizations and, and really asking for more.
Um. I love it. I come from an open source background, um, at, at Elastic, and it is fearless. It’s like, Hey, let’s build here. Let’s do that. Let’s do this. And it is, um, so it’s a very, it’s fascinating, um, exciting time to watch this happen, but when you think about the partner world. It has changed so much, and yes, co-selling is very important, but if you don’t have the nucleus of technology and innovation together, it, it doesn’t matter what you’re selling out there.
[00:16:53] Vince Menzione: So I’m hearing tech intensity, I’m hearing engineering. I’m, I’m seeing, I’m visualizing your engineers in the room with the Microsoft engineers in the room, having very, very deep conversations about product alignment. Mm-hmm.
[00:17:05] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: And fit.
[00:17:06] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. And, and re-engineering the technologies on both sides.
[00:17:09] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: And I think that to get to that point, to be in the room is, it’s important to, to push, to have the conversations, but then do what you say you’re gonna do.
Deliver on time, deliver those features and that functionality that you both agree to. And that’s what really proofs it out.
[00:17:29] Vince Menzione: You’re speaking my language. I talk about this all the time. Like I would sit in those rooms with the PowerPoint slides. We’d have great meetings, we’d have great alignment. We’d, we’d set goals with one another.
We we’re all high fiving each other at the end of the meeting saying, we’re gonna achieve incredible success this year. And then crickets. Yes. We never hear back from them. And it comes back to that maniacal focus. People miss the maniacal focus part of this. Mm-hmm. Right? Mm-hmm. And it sounds like you’re doing all that, right?
Your engineering teams are maniacally focused, working with Microsoft. You’re driving the go-to market strategy. You’re driving the co-sell strategy across the organization. Yep.
[00:18:03] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: Yep. It.
[00:18:03] Vince Menzione: It’s quite a bit. What would you say from a, like a resourcing perspective, how do organizations need to think about their resourcing for a successful partnership like yours?
[00:18:12] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: You know, that’s a, that’s a really interesting question because that is probably the biggest challenge that we, we all face every day is, that’s right. Our, our teams are never big enough. Um. When I came into Elastic, I, I was astounded because the partner organization, um, is of size. Um, but for the size of company that we are, it’s, it’s, it’s pretty lean.
But the hyperscaler element of our partner organization is about 15% of the org all up. And so there was a clear decision made, and this is before I showed up, that the hyperscaler relationships were king. They were the top, top dogs. We’re going to make sure we get that right. And so that actually for three years, it was that maniacal focus, which did make other partnerships suffer, right?
Because we just didn’t have the resources. But that was a choice, and those are the choices that you have to make. Sometimes you can’t do it all. And right now I’m making trade-offs where I’m like, this year. I’m not gonna be able to do that because I’ve gotta get this right and this is going to stay healthy and this is gonna stay strong.
And so it is trade-offs. But I would say that if you want to go. Part of the hoop and you really wanna make Microsoft or a hyperscaler relationship work or any partnership, it is focus and intensity around that and putting the resources where your focus is. And that should align all the way up to the the board.
Because if they are, let’s make this work and you move your resources and say, look, another part of the partner organization may suffer as a result. That’s understood. Yes, as long as you communicate and you’re clear with that. But I would say that resourcing, um, making sure that you’ve got, you know, the right leadership that’s connecting at the leader level and running those BRS and QBR and making sure that you constantly have, um, you know, an EBC every six months that keeps the executives together and has that rhythm of the business.
That’s really important. So you’ve gotta have that executive leadership and that alignment. But then you’ve gotta have folks in the field that are helping your sellers really work the deals. Um, it’s not easy. I mean, it’s not just hit a button and get it done. And so we, we do have to help our sellers get it across the line and drive a marketplace first mentality.
In our company. And so it, it is, um, resourcing I think is, is critical to make sure you got the top and the field resources. We have a whole team on marketing and we wouldn’t, we wouldn’t be where we’re at right now without the, um, the incredible focus from marketing and engineering.
[00:20:53] Vince Menzione: And I think I heard you say getting your executives aligned at the top.
By the way, the upstairs of this building is the EBC, it’s the executive briefing center for Microsoft. I’m sure you use this quite a bit for some of those meetings. What do you find is like the secret sauce or the sweet spot getting the, your executives in, the Microsoft executives at that level aligned?
Is there some level of engagement? Executive sponsorship. How do you, how do you do some of those things? Well,
[00:21:18] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: so you do need to have executive sponsorship. That’s important. Um, and then you choose where that comes from. Does that come from the partner team? Does that come from engineering? Does that come from marketing?
’cause that sponsorship can come from different parts of the organization and, um, and that, that’s important ’cause that really does kind of give you that north star of what you’re doing. But then, um, in order to make those, those. Consistent meetings, those qbr, those brs successful, you do need commitment from your leadership.
And so when we have an EBC or even A QBR, my. My CEO will fly up. My CRO will fly up. We bring everyone here to show the commitment, and we do that twice a year. So Microsoft knows we’re gonna come in. Yeah, we spend an entire day together and, um, there is an entire, um, afternoon of engineering and then they say.
Been off and the engineers go in another room and I don’t even know what they talk about. But, um, but we do bring everyone together and it creates the relationship, it creates the consistency and the understanding. ’cause when your CRO hears directly from the top brass at Microsoft about what they’re doing Yeah.
He’s motivated. Yeah. And so it is important to not just have ’em dial in on Zoom or teams or whatever, get ’em here. Get them in the room. That’s when it really, the magic does happen. It is human relationships that we do that partnering. I, I’ve been 35 years in partnering and, and my kids ask me what I do and I say, I built human relationships.
Yeah. Um, where they weren’t before. And, and then we create business out of that. That’s what it is. But it starts with the human relationships first. And, and so get your leaders here. It makes a difference. It really does. And
[00:22:59] Vince Menzione: demonstrating that your leaders are willing to make the commitment to come here.
Mm-hmm. And engage with the other executives in the room is critical. Yep. It also takes a lot of the pressure off of you as a leader of the partnership organization to not have to have the, be the intermediary to the conversation about like, we’re not driving the right results on co-selling with our C-R-C-R-O.
To have the CRO kind of put in the hot seat in a way. Yep. Right. Yep. It’s okay. It’s okay to have that conversation with the other aligned executives on the other side of that. Mm-hmm. And I think that’s part of your secret sauce.
[00:23:31] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: Mm-hmm. Yeah. As as long as everyone’s in the know as well, when you hit those roadblocks, which you will hit, having your leadership understand what’s happening in the relationship not only helps you get over those roadblock, it helps.
You not get as much and you know, you don’t get on fire as much. Right. You’re not gonna get shot at because now you know, like your leader knows Okay, they can’t transact that way. We have to do it this way. Yeah. And so you’re not in the middle going, wait, wait, wait, let me explain all this stuff to you.
They’re in the know. And that’s so helpful to, you know, the, the velocity of the business.
[00:24:08] Vince Menzione: So we talk about embracing change. We talk about adaptability. We’ve used the term adaptability quotient, in fact. Mm-hmm. Like that’s, that’s the new iq. And EQ is the aq. Right. It’s, it’s something you really need to lean in on.
Right? Yeah. How are you leaning in now? You, you’re sitting here as a. And you work with the others as well, but you’re sitting here with Microsoft being a very significant part of your business, knowing that in a couple of months as things are gonna change, right? We’re at the end of 25. Moving into 26, what are you doing from an adaptability perspective within your own organization and how are you also, uh, how are you in tuned with Microsoft on some of this now so that you are able to get the feedback loop going in a way that you’re thinking about your planning and process.
Mm-hmm.
[00:24:51] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: Um. Adaptability is that has become really the most important thing that any leader needs to do in this, this world that we’re in. Um, it’s no longer one, two year roadmaps. It’s three months and the fourth month something could pop that you didn’t know about. And, and, and. It could derail your strategy.
So you, you, you’re constantly adapting. You’re constantly watching. You have to do your homework more than you’ve ever had to do your homework because your homework changes every day. And so, um, being adaptable to what’s happening in the market, but also looking at your performance, looking at how is your relationship actually working and starting to be your own data science scientist and figure out, well, when this happens.
And these two things come together, that’s a great opportunity. Or really start analyzing how does the business happen? Where is it good? Where is it suffering? Where can I actually close some of those gaps? And, and looking across the business. At a, a regular cycle. So you’re seeing, um, we used to, we, we called it a correction of error.
I don’t know if they still do at Microsoft, but whenever there was something that was kind of going off the rails, we would have a COE, a correction of error. And it was kind of like whack-a-mole. Like whenever something came up, we were like, oh, everyone would jump on it, fix that problem. Something else would pop up over here.
That’s the same thing that happens in our world, but we’ve got to be agile in looking at not only knowing those are coming, but predicting them and looking at our business and saying, okay, I’ve seen this, this play out before and I think we’re heading into this kind of, um, gully or whatever it is, moving the boat, getting back on track.
And so I do think it is really important as leaders of our organization to know our data, to know what’s happening and really. Wallow in it and, and watch, because the market is changing so quickly, our data is going to tell us a lot of the things that we may are pontificate about and try to give excuses or reasons.
Yeah. Focusing in the data is going to help you make Dr. Data driven decisions, but also give you the confidence and the credibility. As to why you did that. And so I really think agility does come from, um, being able to adapt to changes in the market, but doing it in a smart way, in a way that you can defend and explain to your leadership.
[00:27:24] Vince Menzione: So that’s your advice for the partners in the room is what I’m gathering, right? It’s that you really need to pay attention to your data. Your data will tell you where you need to go as an organization.
[00:27:33] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: I, I, you know, you can get data to tell any story, like everybody knows that. But reading your data and looking at trends and using what you know, you’re in these roles for a reason, using what you know to make those decisions and powering it with what you’re seeing in front of you and how the, the business is actually transacting and actually, um, you know, moving through the cycles.
[00:27:57] Vince Menzione: I wanna spend a moment on influence strategy though. Okay. We really, we’ve talked about a lot and I think we’ve covered a lot, and I hope people are getting a lot of great nuggets here today about aligning your business, getting your executive team involved, getting everybody in the right room. Mm-hmm.
Doing it on a regular basis. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. How do you think about your influence strategy, like as the leader coming into the organization? Like you said, all about a year enrolled. Mm-hmm. You can’t take all the credit, but you’ve been driving obviously more success on partner of the year award. Um, what is your influence strategy?
How do you think about your influence strategy with the. Both your leadership team as well as the Microsoft Leadership team.
[00:28:33] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: So, um, I, I do actually think about that quite a lot because, um, I came into role a year ago and we were, you know, it always feels like it’s in a state of emergency. Um, I came in, there were nine different organizations all rolling into different leaders that there had been no one in the channel, um, chief.
Uh, had had a channel, no one had been in this role for two and a half, three years. Wow. So it was a little bit, you know, wild out there. Yeah. Um, I had 42 different compensation plans across a team of under 142 comp.
[00:29:07] Vince Menzione: You sound like Microsoft with 42 compensation plans. And
[00:29:09] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: I’m like, what are these people doing?
What? Everyone’s doing something different. Right. So. I had to really bring things together so I had an influence story, so I had a place to start because I really wanted to go to my leadership and say. We’ve gotta bring this together. We’ve gotta be a cohesive team. We’ve gotta have a culture of our own and, and something that we’re striving for.
Everyone has a different goal. We need a North star for our organization. Yeah. And so my influence journey started with. I gotta get a number that matters. Yeah. Like what’s gonna matter to my leadership and what’s gonna matter today. That number that I landed on, which was, uh, you know, a specific revenue target, um, will change.
And it’s a specific revenue target. ’cause it’s not all of revenue. It’s a kind of revenue that I’m, I’m saying this is most important, this is what we’re gonna go after and I’m gonna fix this. Next year might be a different one, but right now I’m laser focused on showing. Progress and showing improvement and bringing the organization together and everyone rowing the same direction.
Um, I’m down to six compensation plans guys, so
[00:30:20] Vince Menzione: Very cool.
[00:30:21] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: Yes, I know. Thank you. That was a lot of, it took a year to get us kind of organized, but now the teams. Understand what they do, and they can cross pollinate, they can work across the regions and actually share best practices. And so my influence strategy started there, which is let’s create a unified structure and then I can start to prove what we’re capable of.
Yeah. The part that. Tends to get lost is you need an influence strategy across the entire organization. Because partnering is building a company inside of a company. It is, it truly is. When I love that, when I, when I talk to my CEOI say, we have sellers. And what we do with our own sellers is we compensate them to do the things we want them to do.
We give them marketing so they can get demand gen. We give them compliance, we give them, uh, Salesforce, we give them a portal to work in, um, you know, uh. All the things that they need. So we have to do the same thing for our partners, but we don’t get to pay them. To do what we want them to do. So we have to create an incredibly attractive partner program and value for our partners to wanna work with us, and it has to be compliant.
They need a portal. They need sales and marketing. They need demand gen. They need everything that we’re offering our entire internal organization. We need that for partner. And don’t let me forget engineering, right? We’ve gotta have engineering as well because our partners push us to do better. And so it is like building a company inside of a company.
So your influence strategy cannot stop with sales and it cannot stop with the CMO and the chief product officer. You’ve gotta get into the services team, you’ve gotta get into legal, you’ve gotta get into the IT department because if you don’t have it working for you, your stuff’s gonna be at the.
Bottom of the list, right? So your influence has to go all the way across the organization. I love this. I love this. It’s exhausting too.
[00:32:20] Vince Menzione: Well, and we could, I mean, I’d like, I’d love to, I know we’re short on time, but, uh, you, I think what you said too is you develop a strong point of view as well. Like you came in and you had to go solve for some real.
Nagging issues mm-hmm. Within the organization. And then you develop a strong point of view that you bring into those other organizations. Yep. Because you’re the one beating the drum every day. Yes, yes. Yeah. So you, you gotta come at it with a very consistent theme.
[00:32:46] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: And I think the consistency is critical because I, um.
I, I’ll, I’ll give you a fail fast. Um, it wasn’t as fast as I’d like it to have been, but uh, when I came in we had a bunch of metrics that we would put up and say, okay, these are our partner numbers. And I started watching my sales team and, you know, they kind of just started tuning out and I’m like, what is going on?
Like. What, what’s wrong with my data? Why? Why don’t they like this? And I got closer and closer where I was like, okay, and here is the source revenue. Here’s the deals brought by partners. Here’s the deals we’re co-selling. Here’s the deals that are going into marketplace. And they started to finally clue in and they’re like, well, that number’s not right, or That doesn’t work for me.
And I finally got them to wake up and I was reporting partner data. That my partner team deemed important, but my selling team didn’t care at all. Hmm. So make sure your data, your whatever you’re reporting against, lines up to the way that sales reports theirs, because if you’re looking at different slices, you’re gonna lose the audience.
I love it. So
[00:33:57] Vince Menzione: many great nuggets. It’s really important. So many great nuggets because I did lose the audience, but I got ’em
[00:34:01] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: back. But
[00:34:02] Vince Menzione: yeah, that was a, that was a surprise for me. But the course correction is important. I know we’re running up on time now, but I think just to the point there is you come into these organizations, the team is already set up line a different way that what they’re reporting is not relevant.
And you have, that’s where you have to come in with that very strong point of view. Yep. And go fix it. Yeah.
[00:34:20] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: And ask yourself, is this right? Yep. I didn’t do that until it, it was too late. Not late, but it obviously has worked. E so
[00:34:28] Vince Menzione: well, I want to thank you. Yeah. This has been a really great tutorial, I think a great instructional, um, we’re gonna, we’re gonna play this again.
It’ll probably be on the podcast because I think most of us as leaders in organizations, we miss this. We miss all. How do you get to that pinnacle? Mm-hmm. And there’s so many things you need to do in an organization to drive this level of success that an elastic will drive. Mm-hmm. Within a Microsoft or within the hyperscale community.
Yep. So, so thrilled to have you join us. Thank you. Today. You, this was wonderful. Thank, I really enjoyed it. Thank you. So
[00:34:56] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: it’s my favorite talk topic to talk about. I love
[00:34:57] Vince Menzione: it. I’ll you back again. Thank you all. All right. Well, thank you Alyssa. That was fantastic. Thank you. What a great conversation. Thank you for joining us this morning.
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