Improve Your Partner Experience

Narrator: Effective selling takes an ecosystem. Join host Nicki Kamau 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. Nicki: Welcome to the Allbound Podcast. I'm Nicki Kamau, and today I'm joined by Diane Krakora, principal at PartnerPath. For those of you listening who don't know, Diane has been awarded one of the 50 most influential women in the channel, and has worked in the channel for what seems to be her entire career. Welcome Diane. Diane: Thanks Nicki. Thanks for having me today. Nicki: Yeah, we're so glad to have you here. You know, you're bringing a really unique perspective to our podcast today. Our typical guest manages the channel and partner relationships, and we've also had a few guests presenting us with the viewpoint of the partner or reseller. But you're one of the few guests that we've had that runs a company that provides services and acts as a consultant specifically for the channel. So I'm really excited to dig in with you. Diane: Yeah. We've been doing it for 18 years, so we've got a lot of history there. Nicki: That's awesome. Diane: And we're working with technology companies. Nicki: That's great. And you know, because of the nature of your business I think it would be beneficial for our listeners to hear what PartnerPath does, and how your services benefit channel managers. So go ahead and take it away. Diane: Great, thanks Nicki. We focus on helping mostly high-tech companies grow their partner sales, both channels and alliances. So, some of our research we do helps these channel professionals with a great benchmark on how you're doing against to the rest of the vendors. You're all fighting for partner mindshare, be the ISB relationships or the solution providers. You're all fighting for mindshare, so we're trying to give you some benchmark data to see how you're doing. We also help you stay on top of trends with some of the research we do, some of the consulting. Really, the goal here is to ensure your partner programs are future-proofed. What's coming down the pipes to you guys in channels, and what's changing, what's gonna happen in 2020 and beyond, so that you can make sure that your channel partners and your programs are ready for these changes. And then lastly, our consulting services ensure that the channel professionals are effective, really, at engaging and empowering partners. We all don't have as much budgets as we'd like to be able to go out and create programs. So we really need to look at that kind of efficiencies and effectiveness, and how you increase sales. Do more with less, really. Nicki: That's great. That's really great. There was a blog post that you wrote, and it was titled "A New Age of Channel Partner Recruitment," where you talk about the differences in selling to potential partners now versus in the past. And in it, you know, you talk to your audience, and you tell them to seduce the next generation of solution providers like you sell your customers, nurture them and provide value to them. And you know, I couldn't agree more. It sounds like you're suggesting inbound marketing for partner recruitment, which, you know, we are all about inbound here. Could you talk to us and our listeners about that and the future of the channel? Diane: Yeah, we're all about inbound as well, and we, you know, we do call it inbound. The goal here, the focus, is to think about buying journey, right? We all talk about the buyer's journey has changed. Really from selling to the consumer and/or individual buying it, right? So the funnel that we see is mostly marketing, right? You educate, you inform, and you allow, you know, you allow people to gather information and then choose to buy, right? We just bought a new car about six months ago. My husband has done all the research on what kind of car he wants. He did all, you know, what colors were available, what extras were on, and he had it all tapped out. He knew exactly kind of the car, the color, the make, the model, all these things that he'd care about. And what…basically, he went to the dealer and said, "This is the car I want, and oh, by the way, it's five miles away in this town. Go get it for me." It's true. So since we all know, we all agree that it's changing for end customers, but as technology tells people, we still think we can sell solutions providers into buying our stuff, right? There's still…a lot of the recruitment efforts are like, "Go, go find me 400 partners," right? And it's just like, that doesn't...if the buyer's journey has changed, why do we think the solution providers and them making their decisions hasn't changed with those times as well? So that's why we really think about it as inbound. You're always recruiting, just like you're always pulling to your customers, right?   How do you create an education that process, but not only the partners that are in your program, but that is across the partner ecosystem, right, into podcasts, or articles, and trade shows, that you're educating. So when these partners do have a need for your product or a new technology, that you're already talking with them. Nicki: Yeah. You can't see it, but I'm sitting here nodding along with you because it's, you know, I completely agree. You just being able to educate all of those potential, you know, potential partners. Educate all of your potential customers. That's really that inbound methodology of bringing everybody in, and allowing them to make the decision, and have you be the solution provider. So I really love your thoughts on that. Diane: Yeah, and one of the things that kind of lead to that is a statement that I talk about a lot, which is the partners have the power in the channel, right? And this sends everybody in a tizzy every time I say it, right? The channel, the solution providers owns the customer relationship. They are putting together the solution, the hardware, software, and services to meet a customer's need. So they're that last mile, right? It doesn't matter if you've got the greatest widget or the best software product on the planet as a vendor, the solution provider owns the customer. So how do you help educate those solution providers on your product and your offering so that as they're trying to put together that solution for that end customer that they're coming to you? And that's why we really think of it as a constant inbound education awareness-driven event, not a, "Hey, go find me 400 partners in the next two weeks, because I need to get my numbers up." Nicki: Yeah, yeah. With your career history, as we're continuing here, you have a really unique view of partner programs. You're helping young channel programs. You're helping broken channels, or maybe even channels that have growing pains as they rapidly expand, and organize, and optimize their programs. In short, you see the good, you see the bad, and you see the ugly. I'd love to hear some stories about, you know, these experiences that you've had. Can we start with a success story? Diane: Sure. It's been 18 years, and we've worked with over 300 technology companies. From guys like Apple and Palm...do you remember Palm? Remember them way back then? Like Cisco, Verizon, PayPal. We also work with a lot of small companies. As you said, we've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. Guys like FireEye, Sophos, Box [SP], Century [SP]. It's often, you know, good, bad, but there's, oh, so much ugly out there in the last 18 years. Now, I can give you some examples, but I can't share any names. Nicki: That's fine. Diane: Because, you know, I have to protect the not so innocent, right? No one wants their company name flashed across the podcast. So one of the things that we see...and we worked with a company that is a security company based in Boston. And we worked with them for over, about a year and a half, of various projects, right? The most of our stuff is kind of short-term, a couple of months long. But there's three things that we did. One is help create a benchmark to understand where they were against their competitors. Not only the technology competitors, but also those mindshare. So when you're trying to sell through solution providers or resellers, or VARs, or whatever you wanna call them, not only are you selling against your technology, but everything else that guy sells. So looking for that as a benchmark. Where are you as a vendor, good, bad, and ugly? Where are you hurting the partner's overall experience with you so that they're not engaged? So the first thing's usually kind of a benchmark. And we do a lot of reports that you could kind of like benchmark yourself. And then the second thing we did is refresh their partner program. Really kind of bring it in to the next generation. Looking at, you know, instead of tiers and types, then there's three levels and six types of partners, how can we streamline this to make it easy for the partners? And then, kind of the third thing is always around the people. You'd be surprised...I know that sounds surprising. But really helping to educate or train, or help the people within the organization to understand the value of partners, and to understand what helps drive a partner's relationship, and what hinders that. So the guy we worked for there, over this year and a half, he was promoted twice in that year and a half that we worked for him, just because the programs were working so awesome. And now he's a big mucky-muck and a big shot at another security company. Nicki: That's great. So there's, you know, there's so much that we can learn from that. Do you have a company that you've worked with that you could maybe call the most improved for their channel program? Maybe a program that was considered a problem child, or is riddled with problems and lack of processes? We'd love to hear, you know, what their pains were, how you went about sending them on the right path, and just kind of improving their overall channel program. Diane: Yeah. There's…again, protecting the not so innocent. These people are still our customers, and many of them are my friends, so I don't want to out them as having ugly stepchildren. But we usually work in the background, really helping the channel professionals in these organizations to look good, right? That's our goal, right? How do we help you as a channel professional and a company to look good, right? We don't want to take credit. We're mercenaries. We just want to get the job done and then help them kind of raise these mistakes. So some of these...one company that we worked with recently, in their base in San Francisco, and they are a SaaS company, which a lot of the SaaS companies we work with have the same challenge, right? They're fast-growing. They don't really...and they have a strong value proposition for why a channel partner should work with them, right? Because it's a fast product. They're getting a couple of dollars on licenses a year, right? The services may not be that robust. So one of the things that we did with them to help accelerate their partner ecosystem was starting to look at kind of the variety of types of partners. So we stopped talking about labels. Are you an ISB, or a reseller, a VAR, or a systems integrator? And we talk about...so we go from noun, from verb to noun. I mean, from noun to verb. So we're looking at what are they doing. What are the partners doing? Are they reselling? Are they referring? Are they bundling? Are they integrating? So we're able to structure kind of a new way of working with different types of partners based upon what those partners are doing. So these guys in the city, we were in San Francisco. We were helping them understand the different types, and how each partner makes money. And to create a very specific value proposition, i.e. if you're a partner and you do these things in this time frame, you will get X returns. And really to create that ROI for the partners. And that has grown their partner ecosystem fourfold in six months, just because they've got that really strong story to tell. Nicki: That's great. That's a really big change there, and I'm sure that that was something that they were...you know, they're continuing to work at, and...but wow, four times, that's really great. So... Diane: Yeah, and it's easy to do with SaaS companies, right? Because there's not an extra product you have to go buy or build, right? So that's…definitely growth is accessible to you guys as you're…as SaaS companies, they're just starting to leverage channels. Nicki: Yeah, that's so true. Like, I mean, there's no extra cost for all that hardware...yeah, yep. All that software, hardware. So yeah, that's great. And I know that, you know, in your job, it's kind of like every day is research for you, because you guys have so many different clients that you can provide services to. And so you're really learning every day from all of those experiences. But I know that you do a lot of primary research. And you have a study, and I was hoping that you could tell us about your recent study, "The Six Pillars of Partner Experience." Diane: Yeah, thanks. We do three studies a year. We do...we produce three research reports a year. And they're free, they're on our website. They're, again, we're inbound, right? We're part of the education reform who, you know...we believe this is part of kind of the growth of the ecosystem. And the last one we did is, as you mentioned, "The Six Pillars of Partner Experience," which we look at from two aspects. We look at it from the partner's aspects. We had 200 solution providers respond to this. And the question was what affects their experience with a vendor most, right? What contributes to a good or a bad experience with a vendor? Because our perspective on this is that the better the experience that the solution provider has with the vendor, the more engaged they'll be. And the more engaged they are, the more they sell. And that's why we're all here, right? We're trying to grow those channel sales. But as we're experience economy these days, right? We all vote with our feet in terms of what experience we want, had an experience value trade-off. You know, we select our movie theaters that way. We select our cars that way, right? Or restaurants, right, in terms of the experience that they give you. So we're really looking at how does the experience...how is that affected by decisions that the vendors make around people, and programs, and their channel model, and how they measure partner performance, and the systems, right? You'd be surprised. We were surprised that systems, like partner portals and the stuff that you guys do, was ranked number third in terms of...out of the six pillars that really affects experience. And just really seeing that 90% of solution providers said they prefer to work through the portals and the systems if they're good systems. If they can get what they need online, that's the preferred method of engagement. As they should be able to go on and search, as we did when we bought a new car, in terms of finding information and data, and the tools that they need to be able to go sell and deploy the product. So that was the one that we did at the end of the beginning of this year. So we called it the, it's the 2017 data partnering study. This is the 11th year we've done this data partnering study. Again, solution providers as well as vendors. So we have vendors also answer the questions to see what they're doing, and how it lines up to the solution providers' expectations. Nicki: That's great. That's really great. And like you said, I mean, it's such valuable information. It's things that you don't even think about every day, you know, if you want to find something. If you wanna find a restaurant, you go onto Yelp and you type it in, and you search for it, and it's all...everything is so self-service these days, you know? You expect to have things at your fingertips when you want it. And you want to be able to access it easily. And so it just makes so much sense, what you're saying, that that is the preferred way to access that information. Because it doesn't require, you know, an email to be sent, and four hours later to receive an email back that says, "We're looking for this for you, but we don't have it yet." Or, you know, it just slows down that process so much. Diane: Or God forbid a phone call, right? No one wants to talk on the phone these days, right? Nicki: God forbid a phone call. Yes. Diane: God forbid a phone call, right? Oh, don't make me call. Oh, we just had the treadmill replaced...fixed in the house, and I'm like, "I have to call the guy to get the treadmill guy out here?" Nicki: Isn't that funny? Diane: Can't I go online and...right? I'm like, I spend all day on the phone. And I'm like, "I'm not gonna call the treadmill guy." Nicki: Things have just changed. The way that everybody accesses information, and it's, you know, like you said. It's all part of the experience. If you can experience something...yeah, you know? But if you can experience something without having to wait on hold for 15 minutes, you probably would, so it makes sense. Diane: Right, right. So I know we wanted to talk about the three pillars, but there's also three other research reports that I mentioned just in case you pique any itch. As I mentioned earlier on, we do a lot of trends. So last year we did ten trends for 2020 Channel Vision, which is really great to help people and channel managers and channel marketing people keep ahead of the curve, right? How are the channels changing? And this is all data-driven, from solution providers and vendors. And then, the one before that was on driving cloud transitions. So if you're trying to move your channel from kind of the on-prem world onto a SaaS or on-demand world, we looked at the solution providers are doing, and how they're adopting cloud. And how do you drive that cloud transition for the partners. And then fourth one out there that might be interesting is my favorite, which is called partner profitability. The what and how of partner profitability. Because it is all about the partner's profit. Not necessarily just revenue, but how are they being profitable with you? The more profitable they are with you, the more likely they are to pull your stuff. So those are the kind of four research reports that we did, and we're starting to talk about next year. So you'll see a bunch of posts from me coming up around topics for next year's research report. So give me some ideas, people. Nicki: Great. Yeah, we'll have everybody, you know, in the reviews, go ahead and leave some notes. Or in the blog, go ahead and leave some comments about what you'd like Diane's reports to be on. Because I'm sure, you know, those...everything that you've mentioned that you guys have already produced, all of those studies, they all sound valuable. I mean, it just reaffirms everything that we state here on the podcast, and that our guests talk about. Everything, you know, from 1 plus 1 equals three when it comes to partners, and mutual beneficial relationships. I mean, it just sounds like all of that would be just reinforcing all of that information for all of us, so that's really great. And let's see here, we've got one last question before we go into our speed round, so... Diane: Uh oh. Nicki: So I would love to know if you have a sound bite or, you know, a concise piece of advice that you can offer to leaders in partner marketing, so that our listeners can really just get that one sound bite from you. Diane: Yeah, this is the...this is what I call the...the guy sitting next to me on the airplane goes, "Oh, you do a channels? What should my channels do?" And I'm like, "All right, here's the answer. I know nothing about you, but here's the answer." There are three things that partners care about. One is that the product does what is advertised. So, as a partner marketing person, be honest with your partners, right? If it doesn't spin blue sideways, don't tell them it spins blue sideways, right? Let's be very specific about what the product does and what it doesn't do. Don't try to sugarcoat it too much because your solution providers are counting on that to make themselves look good in their customers. So they want a product that does what is advertised. Nicki: Right. Diane: Number two, the partners need to have a way to make money with your stuff. Even if it's their own services, and I know with partner marketing that's always kind of a hard thing. It's like, well, we don't set the price with the partner can buy, or how they make money. But you can position it. You can create that value proposition and say, "Here's where else you make money." Even if they only make a couple of dollars on a license as a staff solution as a mock, right? That's not gonna be interesting to them. But you can also say, "Here's the services that wrap around our product, and here's the consulting you might need to do as a solution provider," or, "Here's the analytics that you can do in terms of driving and providing data back to your customers." So always looking for how does a customer...how does your partner make money on your products because even if it's the coolest thing since sliced bread, if they can't make money on it, they're not gonna sell it, right? They're not gonna waste their time, because you know, they need a return on that. Nicki: Right. Diane: And the third thing that partners care about is…and what we call ease of doing business. Or getting the product, or getting contact, or saying, you know, "How do I get the product? How do I get services for it? How do I order it, provision it?" And that really comes down to that experience, right? How can you streamline the processes and the kerfuffle that a partner has to go through to be able to place an order, or get our customer up and running on your product. Because again, if it does what is advertised and they can make money on it, but they can't get it, then they're still not gonna go work on that, right? They're not gonna be able to come work with you guys and sell your product. So those are kind of the three things that when you're looking at how do you make your partner program better, or how you accelerate your partner sales, were usually tied into one of those, or all three of those, to say, "Is the message clear? Are they making money on it? And how do we remove kind of those costs of doing business with you?" Nicki: That's great. I'm sure that that's a perfect little sound bite with the three points there, and like you said, it's just...there you go. Airplane information, right? Airplane advice. Diane: Right. The guy sitting next to me on the airplane, "So you do channels?" Well, like, okay. Nicki: Awesome. Diane: I sit on a lot of planes. Nicki: Oh, I feel you. So that's great. This has all been some amazing information. I'd love to finish up with this speed round with you. It's a little bit less channel, and a little bit more fun and getting to know you personally. You up for it? Diane: Sure, bring it on. Nicki: Okay. Okay, so question one. What's your favorite city? Diane: San Francisco. Nicki: All right. How come? Diane: The city by the bay. I grew up here, I grew up in the Bay Area. I just...I love the water, and I just...it's small enough that it's a walking city. You can walk through it, but it's big enough to have all the culture, and the theater, and great restaurants. Nicki: Yes. Diane: And I just love all the water, and just, you know, being able to kinda hang out by the…by and on the water. Nicki: Love it, that's great. I like San Francisco too. It's a great city. All right, question two. Animal lover or do you love the animals, or could you deal without them? Diane: I love all the animals. Nicki: Do you have any pets of your own? Diane: I have a cat. My cat after 16 years just passed away. Big, fat, fluffy. Her name was Zoe. So 16 years of having this big, fat, huge cat that, you know, was more like a dog. She would greet me at the door when I came home, and curled up...she curls up on my lap all the time. So yeah, she just passed away. Nicki: Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. Diane: No, she lived a great life. Nicki: I was gonna say, it sounds a long, like a long happy life, so, she's greeting... Diane: Long, happy life. Nicki: Yeah. Greeting you at the door, that had to have been a good life. Diane: Yeah. Nicki: All right. And the next question here, do you prefer Mac or PC? Diane: Oh, God. I am a PC girl. I am trying to be Mac. Everybody else in my family, everybody else in the company is Mac, except for me. I am a PC girl, and that's because I am addicted to Outlook. I just need my Outlook. And the email systems on Mac just aren't the same. I am addicted to my calendar and my email structures and Outlook. Nicki: Yeah. Diane: And I…the entire rest of the company, everyone is on a PC other than me. Nicki: We seem to have a pretty much split 50-50 here on all of our guests. It's, you know, Mac or PC 50-50. So there's not really a trend in the channel that we're seeing so far. But all right, we got the last question here. If we could provide you with an all expenses trip paid trip, where would you go? Diane: Italy. Nicki: Italy. What part of Italy? Or all of Italy? Diane: Well, I'm like, if it's all expenses paid, I'm gonna go to the whole side of Italy. I'm a wino, so I would end up in probably one of two regions. You know, either the west side of Italy or kind of the northern lake area, just because I would...I tend to stay out of big cities, so I'm not gonna go be Rome. But I love the kind of the countryside, the Tuscany...super Tuscan wine. I might kind of jump down the coast of Portofino and spend a few days kind of looking out at the water, but Italy is kind of on my top of my bucket list right now. Nicki: Yeah, that sounds great. And sounds like it would be a wonderful time. Diane: Well, I'm spoiled. I do get to travel most of the time for free. So my husband's a pilot, so... Nicki: Oh, there you go. Then you guys can go right over to Italy. Diane: Right? Nicki: Yeah. Diane: I went to Paris for four days earlier this month. Nicki: Oh, perfect. That sounds wonderful. Well, you know, it's been really great talking to you, and I just wanna thank you for sharing your insights, Diane. It was a pleasure. And if any of our listeners would like to reach out to you personally, what's the best way for them to do that? Diane: I'd say call me, but that would be a joke. Call me. No, it's either through our website, or just email me. It's dkrakora@partner-pass.com. So emails, I love email. I do them well into the night, as do all of y'all as they know it. Also, I do a lot on LinkedIn, so if you need to...if you wanna message me through LinkedIn that works as well. Nicki: Great, great. Well everybody, there you go. That's your way to contact Diane if you wanna, you know, maybe order some services and work on some consulting, or just chat with channel about her. Narrator: Thanks for tuning in to the Allbound Podcast. For past episodes and additional resources, visit the resource center at allbound.com. And remember, never sell alone.