Ultimate Guide to Partnering®

Welcome back to the Ultimate Guide to Partnering® Podcast. AI agents are your next customers. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/  Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this insightful session, Vince Menzione is joined by Erika Irby of Veeam and Pat Primavera of Microsoft to discuss the evolution of their strategic partnership. They unpack Veeam’s transition from a “drinking company with a software problem” to a $2 billion enterprise aiming for $5 billion, revealing the tactical shifts in engineering alignment, sales play development, and co-sell activation that led to their landmark five-year agreement. Pat shares his framework for precision execution within the Microsoft ecosystem, while Erika details how Veeam leveraged “customer zero” strategies and internal alignment to drive success. Key Takeaways Engineering alignment is the critical first pillar before attempting to execute go-to-market strategies. Successful co-selling requires specific packaged plays tailored to distinct seller roles like security specialists or ATSs. Alliance leaders and cloud sales leaders must be in the same room to create joint plans rather than doing internal selling later. Veeam’s commitment to Azure and aligning with Microsoft seller compensation was vital for their five-year agreement. Partners should act as “Customer Zero” by using tools like the Data Resilience Maturity Model on themselves first to prove value. The next major growth opportunity lies in Partner-to-Partner (P2P) collaboration to bundle solutions for the marketplace. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags: Veeam, Microsoft partnership, co-sell activation, ISV strategy, engineering alignment, precision execution, Veeam Data Cloud, Data Resilience Maturity Model, Azure commitment, partner-to-partner, P2P collaboration, channel marketing, sales plays, crossing the chasm, cyber resilience, agentic AI, customer zero, marketplace growth, alliance strategy, ecosystem transformation. Ultimate Partner is the independent community for technology leaders navigating the tectonic shifts in cloud, AI, marketplaces, and co-selling. Through live events, UPX membership, advisory, and the Ultimate Guide to Partnering® podcast, we help organizations align with hyperscalers, accelerate growth, and achieve their greatest results through successful partnering. Transcript: [00:00:00] Erika Irby: Kinda what you were talking about earlier about the, the idea of the channel is non-existent anymore, right? Like we’re, we’re all in this kind of universe of different entities and we all, you know, work together and orbit each other and compliment even, you know, frenemies. I mean, we look at them like, how can we learn? [00:00:15] Erika Irby: How can we grow? You know, how can we be better? [00:00:19] 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 Carahsoft Training Center in Reston, Virginia. [00:00:35] Vince Menzione: Over two days, we gather top leaders to tackle the real shifts shaping our industry. If you weren’t in the room, this episode brings you right to the edge of what’s next. Let’s dive in. We have another incredible group of another organization here, and this is a really great conversation point too. Maybe I kind of alluded to it. [00:00:57] Vince Menzione: Um, you know, those who know me, when I started the podcast, I was actually doing individual consulting work, uh, before we got to do these events and really started to get front and center with the community in a big way. Uh, and Veeam was actually a client of mine back for several years. Um, so this is gonna be a really interesting conversation. [00:01:17] Vince Menzione: Uh, so we have two incredible leaders gonna be joining me up on stage here. Uh, Eric, I guess I’m gonna introduce ’em, right. So, Erica Irby, who recently rejoined Veeam, who’s been on stage before at other ultimate partner events and is a sponsor for us, and Eric Irby, who leads the channel marketing organization. [00:01:38] Vince Menzione: So taking Veeam, which is a large ISV, and making ’em front and center with the channel and the reseller community. And Pat Primavera, who I worked with at Microsoft, in fact, way back in the day, and his wife as well, who is now a leader in the ISV organization. We’re gonna have ’em go in the specifics of their roles, but having them join me on stage today. [00:01:57] Vince Menzione: So welcome you both on stage. Come on up and join me. I feel like come on down. Come on now. [00:02:08] Vince Menzione: Thank you. Thank you. So good to see you, pat. So great to have you here. It’s really great. So, um, yeah, so we are interesting. Great conversation by the way today. Uh, and it kind of flow, it’s kind of flowing into each other, right? ’cause we, we just had a couple of marketplace leaders up on stage talking about marketplace. [00:02:27] Vince Menzione: And at one point people thought that it was ISVs directly selling to customers, right? And there’s this whole other world out there. Uh, when I was working with Veeam, um, there were some, uh. Pratfalls, I guess probably looking for the right word here. Uh, but things have really changed in the last several years. [00:02:46] Vince Menzione: So first of all, Erica, maybe an introduction first to you and your new role. You were at Microsoft before this, but you were at being before that. So you boomerang back and then a leadership role. So take us through your, your role and your organization. [00:03:00] Erika Irby: Yeah. Uh, we call it, uh, Veeam Ringing, er, everything at Veeam. [00:03:05] Erika Irby: Uh, you have to have put Veeam in front of it, but, um, I started back at Veeam in 2014 and you had brought up earlier about, um, you know, when cloud. Was the new thing. And I remember very distinctly, um, attempting to get people to trust that they could put their backup in this nebulous thing called the cloud. [00:03:25] Erika Irby: And, you know, it was pretty wild back then. Yeah. Um, but I, I had several roles and then I ended up, um, moving to Microsoft and my ex-boss is right over there. Yeah. Thank you so much. Um, and then Veeam had an opportunity for me to come back and, and run their America’s channel marketing, and I said, sure. And I have been on board now for th my second three months, and, um, I’m loving it. [00:03:50] Vince Menzione: Very, very cool. Great to have you back again. And Veeam is, and Mark e sponsored the event as well. So really appreciate your support ultimate. Sir, uh, new role for you too, or fairly new. You’ve been around Microsoft. I’ll let you go through your history and [00:04:06] Pat Primavera: background. Sure, [00:04:06] Vince Menzione: sure. [00:04:07] Pat Primavera: Uh, what Vince didn’t share when he introduced me is he actually enjoys working with my wife better than working with me. [00:04:13] Pat Primavera: She, Kelly was an amazing, that’s leader. She was really great to work with. She’s doing great. She’s doing great. Uh, yeah, so Pat Primavera, uh, I’ve been with the company 16 years recently, came back to the ecosystem after doing some other things within Microsoft. I like to joke that I’ve completed my ecosystem Bingo card, where I’ve run distribution. [00:04:32] Pat Primavera: I’ve run the reseller channel. I’ve run OEM. I ran our hardware business, hardware business for a while too. I got to ISB and, and my bingo card is complete. Nice, nice. Uh, but listen, it’s, it’s, I’m super excited. This is right in the growth and heartbeat of the company. Uh, it’s where transformation’s happening with great partners like Veeam. [00:04:51] Pat Primavera: And so I, I wouldn’t want to be in any other place at Microsoft. And so there’s just a ton of opportunity for everybody in this room. Yeah. [00:04:57] Vince Menzione: And you work with some amazing friends of ultimate partner as well? Uh, yeah. Your leader is, was a podcast guest and was up on stage at one of our events. One of our first, yeah. [00:05:05] Vince Menzione: We, we [00:05:05] Pat Primavera: worked with some of the most strategic ISVs in the ecosystem and so, um, you know, I have a, a portfolio of a lot of the, the partners that are driving the application and infrastructure modernization out there happening. And so it’s, it’s just, it’s a great time to, to be in the ecosystem together. [00:05:21] Vince Menzione: So for those, I, I, you know, we, leaving out the audience, we’re, we’re gonna have a great conversation up here on stage, but I do wanna ask people like, how many of you actively working with Veeam or No, Veeam. [00:05:32] Vince Menzione: Uh, so show of hands. So a lot of, a lot of organizations here. That’s really terrific. And then also working with Microsoft. I’m just gonna take the, like a lot of hands there, I’m just assuming. Right. So that’s, I I just thought I also like Gipping and we we’re all gonna dance a little bit later too, so I hope everybody’s up for that. [00:05:47] Vince Menzione: So, uh, so great to have you both. I have a personal, like sit, you know, I worked with Veeam way back at, at a point when I was. Again, doing some consulting work and uh, it was an interesting time for Veeam. Veeam had been a top partner, Microsoft, um, and kind of fallen out of favor, I guess is probably the right term to use. [00:06:10] Vince Menzione: A few years. It was a, that was a way back period of time, but then had a lot of learnings from that experience. And I thought today we would share some of those learnings. And one of the things I, I remember having some early conversations with Microsoft about Veeam. Veeam has an incredible pedigree of selling, not, not only moving all their technology to the cloud. [00:06:30] Vince Menzione: ’cause originally it was on-prem and it was, it was in on boxes and all kinds of things. That was how, how backup and recovery was done, but also building out really a very vibrant channel. I, I don’t think I’ve seen many organizations quite candidly. That were as vibrant, building out the relationships, the level relationships. [00:06:51] Vince Menzione: I remember talking to one leader, one of the top resellers in the market that everybody would know, and that person said, Veeam is my favorite partner. Like hands down by far. And I’ve seen that type, so I thought maybe we’d spend a little bit of time there. Why did that grow first? And then I think there were a lot of lessons learned from that ex from like that time. [00:07:14] Vince Menzione: Like it always hurts. We all have to go through that process, right? We’re on top of the world. We get knocked down, knocked down a rung, and then we overcome and we, we achieve more. So maybe, I thought we’d start there. ’cause both of your perspectives on that. [00:07:28] Pat Primavera: Yeah. Listen, as we think about a lot of the topics that have come up today, I mean, you’ve been talking about it almost every session, which is around data and. [00:07:38] Pat Primavera: You start to get into not just data management, data security, cyber resilience. Yeah. Like it is mission critical. And so, you know, partnering with Veeam is absolutely huge for us because that’s the world of AgTech ai like that is core to what every customer needs to have a plan around. And so that’s where like partnering with them is just amazing because what we’re able to do is scale because of the channel aspect that you had mentioned. [00:08:06] Pat Primavera: Yeah. And so we think across our segments. So while as Erwin mentioned earlier, we have verticalized enterprise industries, we also have horizontal scale. And what we love just around the V model is how we can effectively do that across all fronts. Because speed, as everybody knows right now, matters. And so the pace at which we’re able to move out with our partnership has just been tremendous. [00:08:30] Pat Primavera: Yeah. So, um, you know, we’re seeing that growth, uh, jointly with Veeam. The engagement has never been better. Uh, and so she’ll highlight I think a little bit of the, it didn’t happen overnight. [00:08:40] Vince Menzione: Yeah, it didn’t happen overnight. No. Take us through it. [00:08:43] Erika Irby: Well, first of all, it’s kind of surreal for me to sit up here, right? [00:08:45] Erika Irby: Because back when I first started being the first time, you know, we could hardly get Microsoft to like talk to us, right? We would like beg them to like come to a meeting and, but part of our issue in the very beginning was that. Our connection to them was simply that we sat on Hyper-V, we, we just sat on their product and we didn’t really have a, a strong message other than, look, I promise we’re super cool and we are in the stack, and, and you know, partners love us, customers love us, but we didn’t have that, that solid of a story. [00:09:14] Erika Irby: And I do credit, you know, folks like you. S. Amazing people at Microsoft Veeam brought in some really solid leadership that knew that they had to work really hard to come up with a real story and to be very targeted about our solution plays and to, um, not only on the, the engineering side to be super integrated, but to have that field alignment to really get nitty gritty on like, this is how we’re gonna compensate. [00:09:41] Erika Irby: This is how we’re going to help, this is how we’re gonna drive this. You know, you had mentioned like falling outta favor and I think it was more about Veeam had to definitely grow up a little bit. Um, we started off honestly just at the edge of technology. I mean, Veeam has always been an innovative leader. [00:09:59] Erika Irby: If you read the book, crossing the Chasm, that is how Veeam. It follows that exact path. Yes. And, and Rap Mirror had had told we all had to read that book, by the way, when we first started. It’s a great book. Um, it is a great book and it, it really does talk about like those early adopters and we, we bet on that. [00:10:15] Erika Irby: And so we had all of the makings of being an incredible company, and by the way, we will hit $2 billion at the end of this year and we have a goal to hit 5 billion in three years. We are not messing around. That’s really, [00:10:26] Vince Menzione: that’s incredible. You really have taken up. But, [00:10:28] Erika Irby: but it is because of that, that we’re able to be an a, a true. [00:10:34] Erika Irby: Partner with Microsoft, we can help scale, we can, you know, drive these solutions into our market. And then, and really we have our own skin in the game, and then we’re providing our own value. I mean, obviously Microsoft is a behemoth, right? Yes. They, yes. They’re not gonna choose just anybody. And we take that seriously as a partner. [00:10:52] Vince Menzione: So, um, I, I don’t wanna put you on the spot, but I do recall there were some, there were some pitfalls I wanna make, like I’m, I’m only gonna bring ’em up because I think people need to understand it, like. Uh, in the beginning there was this approach where we’re just gonna put every deal into partner center and some of ’em may not be Microsoft deals and we’re just gonna hope they’re all gonna land, uh, you know, gonna make us look good. [00:11:15] Vince Menzione: ’cause we can get rewarded a certain way. That’s something you don’t do, by the way. And this was when Cracker, right? Oh yeah. So you’re the guy who runs the ISV business. So you could talk about like what to do, what not to do and then, uh, and then connecting the dots was a tough part. And there, maybe there weren’t tools then that there are, now we’re gonna have Jason Rook talk about marketplaces a little bit more. [00:11:36] Vince Menzione: Erwin talked about it a little bit this morning, but, um, you know, it wasn’t, there wasn’t this cohesion between those big resellers that love Veeam by the, that one in particular, if that comes to mind, and how a seller gets paid. Yeah. Like there was a disconnect. Yeah, there was a big disconnect. So it felt like Veeam was operating in its own silo by itself. [00:11:57] Vince Menzione: And hoping that putting stuff in partner center was gonna make them look good and the channel was operating differently down here. Like those three things weren’t connecting. Yeah. [00:12:08] Erika Irby: I, I, I, again, I think, you know, we had to mature and we had to, um, also rethink our own, I think strategy. You know, Veeam plays across multiple. [00:12:20] Erika Irby: Pieces of the market. We support storage partners, we compliment other security partners. We, um, you know, touch an ai like we’re, we have so many alliance partners. We have a slide that has all of our alliance partners, and it just looks like a mess because there’s, we’re like, oh yeah, we play with everybody, but I think we have a slide. [00:12:39] Vince Menzione: Don’t we have a slide? [00:12:39] Erika Irby: And, and it’s awesome, right? Like all of us. You know, kinda what you were talking about earlier about the, the idea of the channel is non-existent anymore, right? Like we’re, we’re all in this kind of universe of different entities and we all, you know, work together and orbit each other and compliment even, you know, frenemies. [00:12:54] Erika Irby: I mean, by the way, we have a lot of respect. Like, I know Cohesity here, Rubrik, we look at them like, how can we learn? How can we grow? You know, how can we be better? And, and that’s, you have to kind of adopt that and change. Our co-founder, he, he’s gone to start another company, but he used to say that we were, um, a drinking company with a software problem. [00:13:16] Erika Irby: And like that was kind of our mentality, which by the way, resellers that thought we were super fun. Yeah. We were freaking fun. [00:13:22] Vince Menzione: Yeah. I [00:13:22] Erika Irby: mean, super fun. I’ve seen [00:13:23] Vince Menzione: some of the things you do. It’s crazy. We were known [00:13:25] Erika Irby: for our veeam parties and things like that. Yeah. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Like we had to establish ourselves, but over time we also had to, you know, we wanna be taken seriously, then we have to be serious. [00:13:35] Erika Irby: Yep. [00:13:37] Pat Primavera: Yeah, I, I’d say especially as you get into where the rubber meets the road, and I’ll kind of dovetail this into to co-sell because I think this is what will be valuable for everybody here. ’cause everybody’s in different states of maturity. But the thing I loved about when I started to engage with Veeam, so I started in the spring and they cornered me at Von and were like. [00:13:57] Pat Primavera: Yeah, it’s not working. How does this work? And it was the perfect timing because yes, I just come from my old role, which I had the accountability of taking all of our commercial solution areas and all the product and solution plays that get built, and then how do you land that across all of our thousands of sellers across workloads in the field. [00:14:17] Pat Primavera: So that was my, that was my jam for the last couple years, is how does Microsoft do that at scale and consistency? Um, and so I was like. Okay. I know what to do. Um, and so it was great because they said it’s not working. We sat down at Beamon and we figured out what is our plan to go change and, and get to a world where we’re not talking about systems, we’re not talking about partner share, we’re talking about pragmatic ways that we’re gonna co-sell together and what does that look like? [00:14:45] Pat Primavera: And so there’s a couple key pillars that, that we anchored on that we gotta get right. Number one was just around engineering alignment and they have done a great job. Aligning with our engineers. Yep. Uh, and our engineering leadership, uh, that has to be in place, uh, as partners. And the reason is, is the business is moving so fast that having those hooks into engineering matters from a product roadmap and build with perspective. [00:15:11] Pat Primavera: Um, and so making sure those hooks were in place, number one. Um, and, and so that helps us around product strategy. The corporate strategy and where the partnership fits in. [00:15:21] Vince Menzione: And that wasn’t there before. [00:15:22] Pat Primavera: Right? The strategic partnership was, but the engineering piece had to get built. The [00:15:26] Vince Menzione: engineering piece had to be built. [00:15:27] Vince Menzione: Yes. Um, [00:15:27] Pat Primavera: and what’s great at, at Microsoft right now is now more than ever, I am seeing our engineering leadership lean into our partners as executive sponsors, as participating in, in actual working meetings, resolving issues. I’ve never seen the level of leader engagement that I’ve ever seen as I do today. [00:15:46] Pat Primavera: So that was number one. Number two was around GTM and sales play alignment. So one of the things that we talk about, and I see this with some partners, is, Hey, we’re working with your engineering team. I’m like, okay, that’s great. [00:15:59] Vince Menzione: Yeah, what? [00:16:00] Pat Primavera: That’s fantastic, but what are we gonna package up from a go to market and take and go sell together? [00:16:06] Pat Primavera: And so really getting specific around what are the actual plays we’re gonna go run. Yep. Because that’s the way our sellers think they think in terms of packaged plays. And so getting the partners to understand, this was where Veeam was like, okay, right? So we sat down, we started talking about Veeam Data Cloud, okay? [00:16:22] Pat Primavera: We broke it down by what’s the play? What’s the messaging and value prop to customers? Is there industry alignment that we need to prioritize around? And who are the sellers, right? Everybody says, oh, I need a Microsoft seller. Who are the sellers we’re gonna actually gonna go target? Ah, is it a security specialist? [00:16:40] Pat Primavera: Is it a AI business solution specialist? It is an account technology strategist. Yeah. Who’s the right role that we can go jointly co-sell with that’s actually going to make this work. And then we got into the co-sell activation piece, which is, okay, great. Don’t tell me you’re great at everything. Where are the pockets of strength that we’re gonna go after? [00:17:01] Pat Primavera: Yes. And we literally came up with a targeted set of accounts. It wasn’t a thousand accounts, it wasn’t 300 accounts, it was a smaller set of accounts that we targeted across several operating units. With strong sponsorship. And we went and went hard on those accounts and then we kind of came back as a team and said, what’s working well? [00:17:21] Pat Primavera: What’s not working well? Is the messaging resonating? Do we want to tune it? Um, and so that’s the type of work that we’re doing. Can tell. It’s very tactical, but that’s how you make it work, in co-sell. And so that’s what I try and guide people to is get really specific prioritize. And then tweak and tune so you can move fast. [00:17:41] Pat Primavera: And so they’ve just done a fantastic job. And we’re not saving month, you know, the talking to monthly business reviews, we’re literally meeting every Thursday. [00:17:51] Vince Menzione: Yes, yes. And it’s [00:17:52] Pat Primavera: a very tactical, we already have the strategy alignment. It’s a very tactical meeting where we’re tuning all the time. Uh, and I just, I appreciate that because we, we like to joke all the time, like my favorite two words are precision execution. [00:18:07] Pat Primavera: Yeah. Right. You do that really well. You focus, you win. And so we’ve been able to get the partnership to a point that that’s what we’re doing. [00:18:14] Vince Menzione: So, uh, um, I wanna hear your input too, but I just want to annotate this. Yeah. One second, because I’ve had, if I had a slide, it would be this one slide. What you did is you took the entire organization, you took the engineering teams on both sides of the company. [00:18:30] Vince Menzione: You took the go to market, the marketing organizations would traditionally just sell, sell through. Like they, they reach audiences, they don’t think about partners. You took the, you took the co-selling piece, so how to, how to work with Microsoft, so the alliances piece, and then you took the, probably you took the customer facing piece. [00:18:46] Vince Menzione: And then you probably put a layer, a leadership layer above that because you wanted to make sure all the executives on both sides were talking to each other, right? [00:18:54] Pat Primavera: That’s right. [00:18:55] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So it takes, it, it takes a village, right? [00:18:57] Pat Primavera: It it, it does. And the timing was great because, again, if you start to think about where Microsoft is at in terms of driving momentum in marketplace, but also our sellers and how they’re compensated now, like the time was now to go do that because we’re gonna get their attention and, and so having a very intentional plan that says. [00:19:16] Pat Primavera: Hey, in healthcare and life sciences, this is the play we’re gonna run. Here’s the 10 accounts we really care about. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [00:19:23] Erika Irby: And uh, we started our relationship with Microsoft back in 2010, but we did not sign our five year agreement until 2024. Wow. And we also, earlier this year, Microsoft made an investment in Veeam to really fuel our innovation. [00:19:37] Erika Irby: Very cool. But one of the things that Veeam, I think has made abundantly clear, and it took a while for us to, again, target and hone in on this is our commitment to Azure. Yeah. And we. Realized, you know, hey, if, if we want to have this buy-in with Microsoft, we have to buy into them. We have to have the same goals and, you know, backup for Azure VDC for Azure, all these things are incredible, but we have to make sure it ties back to what their sellers are getting paid on. [00:20:03] Erika Irby: So that in the end, it, you know, it benefits us and, and that agreement definitely, you know, hammered that out. The weekly, you know, rumbles, wallows, it, it’s so critical to give that feedback right away. Now, I, I do wanna emphasize things are not perfect, right? Like, there’s still a lot of sausage making in the back. [00:20:19] Erika Irby: But, you know, you brought up the point about partners. One thing is Veeam is really trying to do is integrate our alliance strategy through our partners. Because at the end of the day, if they are not included. Then to your point, it’s all of us just kinda like spitting on a fire, right? Yeah. We’re not, you know, taking that direct approach and, uh, distribution is actually a huge point for us as well. [00:20:42] Erika Irby: They have everybody, everybody is at the distributor and leveraging that, that entity is kind of, that epicenter of the ecosystem is, I think, you know, a, a great way to have success because we’re all there and, and we can leverage their scale. [00:20:55] Vince Menzione: And what you said is super important, and people don’t realize this too. [00:20:58] Vince Menzione: I see this so many times in ISVs. The Alliance team sits over here and is stove piped? Yeah. From the sales team and the channel team. Sometimes they sit in a marketing function. Nothing wrong with being in a marketing function, but they’re stove pipe. They don’t talk to one another, and I see this continually. [00:21:15] Vince Menzione: There are probably a hundred ISVs either in the room or on on screen watching us today. They probably could say that that’s still the way they’re operating, [00:21:22] Pat Primavera: that that is one of the first questions I ask my team is when we have some of these meetings. Are the alliance folks and the cloud sales leaders in the same room. [00:21:30] Pat Primavera: Yeah. Important. And I ask that they be in the same room because ultimately we’re gonna come out of there with outcomes. And oftentimes those outcomes lead to A CRO that we’re asking for commitment from. Mm-hmm. And so we want to make sure we’re not having to leave our working meeting and then go do internal selling again. [00:21:47] Pat Primavera: It should be a joint plan that we’re gonna run. Yeah. [00:21:49] Vince Menzione: And I just wanna say one other thing about the five year commitment. You touched on really being important. But it wasn’t possible to even do that because you also had to re-engineer your product to get there. Right? And so then you moved it to the cloud. [00:22:01] Vince Menzione: And by you moving to the cloud, then you can make those commitments that got Microsoft excited in investing. Yeah, [00:22:06] Erika Irby: a absolutely. And you know what’s so funny is when I started at Veeam, the first thing I looked for when I opened my laptop was that copilot icon. Because you know, you talked earlier about eating your dog food, by the way, you can say drink your own champagne. [00:22:18] Erika Irby: That is, that is a, a better, um, saying for that. But. I’m glad you talked [00:22:22] Vince Menzione: about [00:22:22] Erika Irby: ai. [00:22:22] Vince Menzione: Let’s, let’s go into this a little. [00:22:24] Pat Primavera: Erica and I actually used Copilot last night. We were looking up some details around the market around, what was it, cyber? Cyber, cyber insurance. Mm-hmm. And some things around cyber insurance. [00:22:33] Pat Primavera: And so we actually, she and I were in my computer digging on copilot, so that [00:22:36] Vince Menzione: is cool. Let’s talk about AI though. Since you brought up ai. ’cause I think you’ve, you’ve infused it into your solutions and you’re driving against it now. [00:22:44] Erika Irby: Absolutely. Yeah. And you know, Veeam, again, cutting edge innovation. We know we, we really wanna make sure that we’re taking advantage of that. [00:22:50] Erika Irby: But one thing, um, I do wanna call out real quickly about the team, um, integration is on our, our VP of channels has a, a alliance leader underneath him. So she’s integrated into our channels. And I have Michael Bowie here with me today. He’s our, um, Alliance Marketing manager. Michael, stand [00:23:07] Vince Menzione: up over there so we can see you. [00:23:09] Erika Irby: Everyone talk to Michael today. Go talk to Michael [00:23:11] Vince Menzione: after. [00:23:11] Erika Irby: Um, I also have, um, some other folks here with me, George Kelly and Brian Morris as well. But, uh, alliances falls under me, so under our channel marketing. So my alignment is with our VP of channels and then everyone has like a direct counterpart. So we’re all, you know, not having 14 meetings to have one meeting, you know, we’re, we’re already on the same page. [00:23:29] Erika Irby: Um, but in terms of ai, yeah. One of the things I think also helps make our, our partnership good is that I kinda referred to this last night as our company Morals. We’re focused on security. You know, Microsoft leads in security and Veeam is absolutely one of the most secure focused companies. You know, we, we want to move into the future, but we wanna do this compliantly safely, you know, protecting that data, making sure that. [00:23:58] Erika Irby: Things are not getting out where they’re supposed to be. At Veeam, we have our own, sorry to copilot, but we call it Veeam, uh, GPT. It’s it a chat, GPT. So the folks will use this, but it is secure only, you know, for our data. Right? Um, so, and, and we have, uh, internal teams, you know, driving our AI usage, and then we also integrate into our, our products. [00:24:17] Erika Irby: So that insights and. Anything that, that, that customers are monitoring, using it for, it is providing, you know, all of that. And it fits so perfectly with Microsoft’s ai. Innovation and threat [00:24:27] Vince Menzione: protection is so important to Right, because you’re really on the front, the front end of that, the ransomware attacks and everything that hit, hit everybody these days. [00:24:35] Pat Primavera: Well, and she, she mentioned it’s really symbiotic. I mean, with us, because if you look at how we go to market, yes. Obviously we have security teams, we have teams that are gonna be focused on cloud and ai. But it’s a really niche specific conversation that you have to have with a customer. And so they are the experts. [00:24:56] Pat Primavera: You know, we obviously can carry a broad conversation, um, and some of our sellers, I mean, our cloud and AI sellers have to carry every workload. And so the fact that they can come in and help us and partner to jointly have that sales call to carry that really specific conversation. That they really lead from is, is just fantastic. [00:25:14] Pat Primavera: Yeah. And [00:25:14] Vince Menzione: you are a leader in this. You have a tool, it’s the data resilience, uh, tool. [00:25:19] Erika Irby: Yes. So take us through that. Thank you for bringing that up. I did wanna call out our, our, our Data Resilience maturity model. Yep. My CTA to you guys today is that that is an assessment tool that’s really designed for partners to leverage for their customers and it, John Jester, our CRO, he really talks about actually leveraging it for, um, opportunities beyond Veeam. [00:25:39] Erika Irby: It is an outstanding tool, but I would encourage everyone who is a partner in this room to leverage it for the. See what kind of resilience gaps that you may have, because if you have a gap, then your customers will have a gap. Yeah. And you know, Microsoft has the customer zero approach around copilot. We all had to use it. [00:25:57] Erika Irby: We, uh, really pushed our partners to use it. Your partners? Our partners did. It’s whatever. And with the DRMM, I really wanna encourage our partners to use that for themselves. Be that customer zero, because then you’ll create your own success story and when you go to your customer, you can demonstrate, this is how it made a difference for us, and this is how it’ll make a difference for you. [00:26:16] Erika Irby: And I guarantee it’ll open up opportunities. [00:26:18] Vince Menzione: Yeah, it’s fantastic. And it is, you know, ransomware, again, I come back to it because I remember all the attacks we had. Healthcare was a big market for attacks as well. So you talked about retiring Mac, uh, through this co-selling and alignment and incentives. [00:26:32] Vince Menzione: What are the most important elements for partners to succeed in this, in this motion with you? What do you see? [00:26:38] Pat Primavera: Yeah, I, listen, I’ll go back ’cause we’re, I know we’re short on time. Is those those pillars that I provided? Yeah. Right. Is going through the, the process of how are we doing in terms of engineering alignment. [00:26:48] Pat Primavera: As we start to think about that build with strategy as an organization on the roadmap, I start to think about go to market and, and sales play development. You know, where are we there? And then I think there’s the co-sell activation piece. And so each of those have very discrete things that you gotta do, right. [00:27:04] Pat Primavera: Uh, to get to a place where you’re actually ready to engage the field. Uh, yes. And data sharing and all the system stuff that we’ve talked about in the path. Yeah, that’ll happen to me. That’s just output. Yes. But all these other pillars you have to get right to be successful and get to the point where you’re sitting face to face. [00:27:21] Pat Primavera: Rep to rep talking about how you’re gonna go engage a customer. And so, um, that’s what I’d say there. Um, my call to action that I would say for the group, uh, ’cause I love how you just did that is the opportunity is awesome for this group to actually partner together. So one of the things that is in my priorities for this year is, yes, we work with Veeam. [00:27:41] Pat Primavera: I work with a lot of great partners, but the opportunity to actually go partner, to partner to partner. And find these solutions that work that eventually we can kind of bundle together and take to marketplace. That is the opportunity. And so I’d encourage everybody in this room to think through what are offerings or opportunities you have across the aisle from other people that are here that we can actually get together and go brainstorm on. [00:28:04] Pat Primavera: I’m working on several right now that actually several people in this room where we’re all kind of coming together. To actually go build some of those things. And so that’s the opportunity for us. The marketplaces are there now to support those scenarios. And that’s my ask I have of this room because again, I start to think about services capability. [00:28:21] Pat Primavera: The MSPs, we gotta accelerate migration from on-prem to cloud. There are, that’s a sweet spot for so many people in this room. [00:28:30] Vince Menzione: Yeah, that’s really great. And Eric, I know you have a lot of insights as well on, on how to work with Microsoft, the SEM process, but we are gonna have some, we’re running outta time and we are gonna have some other sessions that’ll be very specific to that task. [00:28:44] Vince Menzione: But I think what you called out your both of your call outs for this group, it’s just incredible. Yeah. And I want to thank you both the incredible leaders up on stage. So great to see you to be back. Thanks. Great. Great to have you Erica. So good to have you and and the Veeam team as well. [00:28:59] Erika Irby: Yep. [00:29:00] Vince Menzione: Thank you so [00:29:00] Erika Irby: much. [00:29:01] Vince Menzione: Thank you. Alright, thank you. Thanks for tuning into this episode of Ultimate Guide to Partnering. We’re bringing these episodes to you to help you level up your strategy. If you haven’t yet, now’s the time to take action and think about joining our community. We created a unique place, UPX or Ultimate partner experience. [00:29:23] Vince Menzione: It’s more than a community. It’s your competitive edge with insider insights, real-time education, and direct access to people who are driving the ecosystem forward. UPX helps you get results, and we’re just getting started as we’re taking this studio. And we’ll be hosting livestream and digital events here, including our January live stream, the Boca Winter Retreat, and more to come. [00:29:48] Vince Menzione: So visit our website, the ultimate partner.com to learn more and join us. Now’s the time to take your partnerships to the next level. [00:30:00] I.

Welcome back to the Ultimate Guide to Partnering® Podcast. AI agents are your next customers. Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/  Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this critical discussion, Mike Levy from AWS and Jon Yoo from Sugar sit down with Vince Menzione to explore the seismic shifts occurring within the AWS Marketplace, focusing heavily on the recent launch of AI Agents and Tools. Mike Levy details AWS’s comprehensive strategy to provide not just off-the-shelf agents, but the foundational ‘ingredients’—like security, guardrails, and knowledge bases—via the marketplace to help enterprises become “agentic.” Jon Yoo provides the partner perspective, highlighting the immense but often misunderstood role of channel partners in marketplace revenue, and provocatively challenges the current state of AI ‘features,’ emphasizing that the future requires agents to truly understand a business’s tribal knowledge and processes, not just rules-based workflows. The conversation culminates with the two sharing best practices, including the AWS COSS (Characteristics of Successful Sellers) framework, to help ISVs and partners accelerate their growth and effectively monetize in this new, AI-driven cloud economy. Key Takeaways The AWS Marketplace is now offering a comprehensive suite of AI agents and tools, including agent development platforms and essential security ingredients. AWS is working across the AI stack, from underlying hardware like Inferentia chips to foundational services like Bedrock for accessing LLMs. The Marketplace organization at AWS is strategically integrated within the Partner Organization to build go-to-market channels and procurement systems. The growth of the private offer business and the inclusion of Channel Partner Private Offers (CPPOs) is fundamental to the Marketplace’s future strategy. Successful sellers on AWS Marketplace are guided by the COSS (Characteristics of Successful Sellers) framework, which has been shown to accelerate growth by 31 times. Partners new to the Marketplace should “start narrow” by proving their motion manually before investing in automation, focusing on a clear, simple value proposition. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags AWSMarketplace, AIagents, Bedrock, ISVstrategy, ChannelPartner, COSSframework, CloudMonetization, Sugarplatform, AmazonQ, AgentCore, PrivateOffers, LLMs, GenerativeAI, GoToMarket, CloudEcosystem Ultimate Partner is the independent community for technology leaders navigating the tectonic shifts in cloud, AI, marketplaces, and co-selling. Through live events, UPX membership, advisory, and the Ultimate Guide to Partnering® podcast, we help organizations align with hyperscalers, accelerate growth, and achieve their greatest results through successful partnering. Transcript [00:00:00] Michael Levy: Uh, if we just double click on, you know, what it, what is an AI agent? ’cause it’s probably important, then we kind of have a shared understanding of what that is. Um, there’s a number of, uh, call it ingredients to the recipe of an AI agent. [00:00:15] Vince Menzione: Welcome to the Ultimate Guide to Partnering. I’m Vince Menzi, your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you. [00:00:22] Vince Menzione: Achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. We just came off Ultimate Partner live at Caresoft Training Center in Reston, Virginia. Over two days, we gathered top leaders to tackle the real shifts shaping our industry. If you weren’t in the room, this episode brings you right to the edge of what’s next. [00:00:43] Vince Menzione: Let’s dive in. So I am thrilled to welcome. So the first time as a sponsor of Ultimate Partner, and also to be up on stage with me, an organization that I also had a, you know, I was at Microsoft, you have to realize the lineage of how these organizations all work together. Uh, this little company that was a, they were like a bookseller company, a little company. [00:01:10] Vince Menzione: And then they, uh, decided that they were gonna, they had all this computing horsepower and never, but wasn’t being used consistently. And what if we just like, share, you know, sell some, swipe a credit card and we’ll share some timeshare on it. Uh, this little company called AWS incredible and so I’m really privileged to have AWS join us as a sponsor this year. [00:01:32] Vince Menzione: Um, and just I think it gives the world a much more well-rounded view of what we’re seeing in our world of ecosystems as well. And I would love to invite to join me up on stage. Mike Levy from AWS Mike is nearby somewhere. Here he comes. Uh, so, so great to have you, Mike. Join us. Thank you so much for joining us. [00:01:54] Vince Menzione: Absolutely. Um, and then also we’re gonna have, we’re gonna have some really good conversation today. So I want to, you have the distinction of being the very first AWS guest and an ultimate partner event. Hopefully not the last It’s an honor. [00:02:05] Michael Levy: Yeah. First, uh, first of many, hopefully. [00:02:07] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Well, great to have you. [00:02:08] Vince Menzione: Uh, we got to meet recently and we’re, and, and we’re also gonna be joined by a partner, uh, in a little bit here. So, uh, John Yo is a good friend of ours and he is also gonna be up on, on with this as well. But I thought we’d spend a few minutes because you are up on stage this summer, in fact, and really carrying the message. [00:02:26] Vince Menzione: We be, we talk about marketplaces and it’s incredible world, world of mar marketplaces and AWS really led the, the fold on this, right? Because coming from the pedigree of retail and all the automation that AWS had. You were the first to market with marketplace, and you’ve also been an incredible innovator. [00:02:43] Vince Menzione: So I thought we spent a little time, I wanna give you a little time to talk about that, if you don’t mind. [00:02:47] Jon Yoo: Absolutely. [00:02:47] Vince Menzione: And I can stay up here with you or give you a couple minutes alone if you like. Yeah, we can have a seat. That’s fine. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Let’s, [00:02:52] Michael Levy: let’s [00:02:52] Vince Menzione: sit down and talk. [00:02:53] Michael Levy: Happy to. Um, so yeah, so for those who don’t know me, Mike Levy from the AWS Marketplace Team, um, and as Vince was referring to this summer, we launched, uh, an extension of AWS marketplace. [00:03:04] Michael Levy: Which is AI agents and tools in marketplace. So first I wanna say thank you to, to Vince for having us as a sponsor, uh, and to the incredible community that you built here. It’s, thank you. It’s really super impressive. Thank you. And we’re very glad to be a part of it now. Um, and second, I want to thank all the partners in the room, a number of which were part of that launch of AI agents and tools in marketplace. [00:03:24] Michael Levy: And I think the big thing for us and importantly for our mutual customers is really launching a comprehensive strategy when we say AI agents and tools. We really mean AI agents and tools, because I think we all know in this market, many of our enterprise customers or even startup customers, you’re not just buying an a w you know, you’re not buying an AI agent off the shelf and just setting it free in your production environment. [00:03:47] Michael Levy: Um, and so it’s really the, the tools aspect that’s an important part of the launch for us, um, and really a comprehensive offering. Of kind of, regardless of where a company is on their Ag agent AI journey, the idea is that there’s something for them in marketplace that they can procure and use in, in their own business. [00:04:04] Vince Menzione: So tell us more about that. Take, take us down another level or, or step within that conversation. Yeah, so we’ll [00:04:09] Michael Levy: double click. So the, the launch was big and we’ve seen a lot of momentum since then. Uh, but we had over 900 listings in marketplace. Uh, and that really runs the gamut. So there are off the shelf AI agents that you can take. [00:04:22] Michael Levy: Procure, uh, and deploy through marketplace and through AWS. And there’s, uh, things in between, like agent development platforms, think Salesforce agent force, uh, LR writer, some of these newer companies that are really focusing on this space and how to help enterprises really transform and become agentic, um, or develop their own ai. [00:04:42] Michael Levy: And tons of services partners as well. So obviously tying it all together, really honing, you know, what is the agent strategy for your enterprise is really part and parcel with what a lot, a lot of our services partners are helping customers with. And so the listings that we have in marketplace, uh, and the solutions that we have and the partners that we’ve worked, been working with really kind of run the gamut. [00:05:03] Michael Levy: Um, and then tools. When I say tools, uh, if we just double click on, you know, what it, what is an AI agent? ’cause it’s probably important, then we kind of have a. Shared understanding of what that is. Um, there’s a number of, uh, call it ingredients to the recipe of an AI agent. Things like memory, things like security, things like observability, um, guardrails is a part of it. [00:05:25] Michael Levy: Um, MCP servers, if we’re, if we’re familiar with MCP. Uh, we can double click on that. That’s really just, it’s a common protocol of, uh, basically calling various tools. So an agent is nothing, uh, if it doesn’t have the right data sources, like a knowledge base, if it doesn’t have the right tools, the right capabilities to call and actually implement a, a plan. [00:05:48] Michael Levy: And so we have MCP servers, we have knowledge bases, we have guardrails, um, sort of. Wholly built AI agents and then all the ingredients to the recipe as well. If you’re an enterprise that’s looking to build your own AI agents as well. [00:06:00] Vince Menzione: So you’re working with partners that are building these agents. Is AWS building any of the agents as well, or are you enabling any Yeah, [00:06:06] Michael Levy: I, I think from, uh, from an agent perspective, AWS is kind of operating across the stack. [00:06:11] Michael Levy: Yeah. So we have AI agents, uh, like Kiro is a coding agent, Amazon Q you might be familiar with. Um, and then underlying infrastructure as well. Everything down to to, to the, you know, the hardware and traum chips. Um, to things like Bedrock, which is really the fundamental way that customers access multiple, uh, LLMs through Amazon. [00:06:32] Vince Menzione: Very cool. Yeah. And you sit in the market, so explain the organization for those who don’t know it. Right. I’m, you’re our first guest here from AWS and I think it kind of helps you sit in the marketplace organization, which is foundational to marketplace success, obviously. Yes. And it’s been a, i I mentioned this earlier, like you were fir first footed on marketplace in a big way. [00:06:51] Vince Menzione: So it’s a pretty significant size organization. [00:06:54] Michael Levy: Definitely. And, and just for context, so the marketplace organization, both product engineering, business development, we all sit within the partner organization. [00:07:02] Vince Menzione: Nice. That’s very, which is super important. [00:07:04] Michael Levy: And when I say partners, I mean ISVs and technology partners. [00:07:07] Michael Levy: I mean services partners, migration partners, consulting partners, everything, channel partners, resellers, et cetera. So we’re all part of one overall organization. Right. Um, which is really important because if we think of marketplace as building procurement. Systems for our customers. It’s also building go to market channels for our partners. [00:07:24] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:07:24] Michael Levy: Um, so I work very closely with our product team who’s building the feature roadmap, um, for our partners that are going to market on marketplace. And importantly for our customers that are using Marketplace really is their primary procurement vehicle. Um, for, for partner solutions, be they services, software data or AI agents. [00:07:42] Michael Levy: Yeah. [00:07:43] Vince Menzione: And that changed a couple years, maybe two years ago. Right. Because wasn’t it an engineering function marketplace? So, so [00:07:50] Michael Levy: there was a, I think one of many reorgs Yeah. Like 2, 3, 4 reorgs ago. Yeah. We all lose, lose track in a large organization. Um, but yes, it was intentional that marketplace was moved into the partner organization. [00:08:02] Michael Levy: Um, and the partner organization now is led, led by uba. Borno, if you’re familiar with her. Um, she leads partners and specialists. So, so specialists associated with our, our AWS service teams marketplace being one of them. [00:08:12] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So then, then those, those resources are available to support those partners in interacting with the marketplace organization as well as developing their own ip. [00:08:21] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So you [00:08:22] Michael Levy: can think of the partner organization as kind of the one entry point for, for you as a partner of AWS, um, whether that’s your partner manager, whether that’s the folks that are developing. Uh, you know, the super important programs like go to market funding, co-sell, co build, co-market. All the programming associated with each, um, is all within the partner organization. [00:08:41] Michael Levy: Very cool. Very cool. Anything [00:08:43] Vince Menzione: else about the announcements you’d like to share? [00:08:45] Michael Levy: Yeah, I think, uh, I’m interested to hear from a lot of the partners in this room, so I’m excited for this opportunity of you bringing the, the community together because we’ve been talking with a number of partners, both ISVs services partners, trying to get a feel for where they are in their age agent journey. [00:09:00] Michael Levy: Mm-hmm. I think what we’ve seen a lot of is some of the newer, maybe startup partners that are born and bred in the ag agentic space. Yeah. Have AI agents that are off the shelves, but then we have ISVs that. Have a SaaS platform and have for decades. And how are they sort of thinking about reinventing themselves? [00:09:18] Michael Levy: Yes. Um, you know, maybe they built an AI agent as a feature of the SaaS platform and I think that’s where we see it. We’re seeing it starting. Um, but how it evolves is how we’re, what we’re really curious about. Um, you know, is it sort of just a trial balloon where you’re putting ’em an ai AI agent ’cause everyone needs an AI agent? [00:09:35] Michael Levy: Or are you sort of fundamentally rethinking how you deploy your software, how you do your commercials? Um, things like that we’re, we’re really interested to, to talk through. [00:09:45] Vince Menzione: Yeah, I think we’re gonna be joined by somebody in a moment here. Absolutely. Who also knows a little bit about marketplace I’ve been told. [00:09:52] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:09:53] Michael Levy: Uh, just a minute on, on, on Sugar and John in particular. I think he’s really on the leading edge of, uh, partners that work with our partners to help them go to market in cloud marketplaces. Um, and the features that they’re developing together with our product team are really just making a, a really complete experience for our partners that go to Market on Marketplace. [00:10:13] Vince Menzione: So, uh, without further ado, then we won’t keep ’em long. Yeah. Hopefully he won’t mic up over there. So, John. John. Yo, how are you? Is it like [00:10:21] Michael Levy: a talk [00:10:22] Vince Menzione: show where I move over one seat or is that Um, I think, well, no, we’re gonna put John on the other side, I think, but also an incredible friend of mine as well, John. [00:10:30] Vince Menzione: So great to have. Wanna give you a hug for those? Uh, we do. So John has been, uh, he’s been a guest on a podcast. He’s been at our studios in Boca. We did a live stream together and a winter retreat event together. So great to see you again. Thank you for making the trip out from San Fran. [00:10:47] Jon Yoo: Thanks for having me. [00:10:48] Vince Menzione: Are you mic [00:10:48] Jon Yoo: there? Ah, there you go. It, it’s working now. All right. [00:10:51] Vince Menzione: So maybe a little introduction, uh, for those of that don’t know you, John. [00:10:55] Jon Yoo: Yeah. Uh, hello everyone. I’m John, co-founder, CEO of Sugar. Uh, you know, we automate workflows to help companies. Let’s transact and co-sell across cloud marketplaces. So we work super closely with AWS Microsoft as well. [00:11:09] Jon Yoo: Sorry. And, uh, we, you know, I think there’s a lot of interesting things around ai agent marketplaces, especially around. How it’s deployed, some of the adoption that’s happening. So excited to talk about that. [00:11:19] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Good. Well, I, we, we thought having you in the room as well, because a lot of what partners face in terms of implementation, getting onboarded and all those things, I think is a really great perspective here to have both of you up on stage and having, having a conversation. [00:11:34] Vince Menzione: So, um, it’s really evolved over the last couple years, Mike, right? I mean, incredibly, um. What is the strategy today versus what it was when it got started? I think it was 2016. That marketplace really just got started. [00:11:47] Michael Levy: It was more like 2012, was it that far back? Geez. Um, I think we’ve been part of probably many different, as you said, tectonic shifts. [00:11:56] Michael Levy: Yeah. Like the shift away from, you know, AMS and usage base where you can just sort of spin up a workload to now, you know, fully SaaS, uh, you know, software. The private offer business has also been a big evolution. Um, I think the evolution is really changing. Like where, where marketplace started was, you know, it workloads that you can spin up, um, almost like shadow it where, you know, developers could easily spin up a workload and it was very self-service focused. [00:12:26] Michael Levy: And then we really developed, uh, at, at the necessity of our customers and partners, this private offer business. So this negotiation at an enterprise level. For SAS software in particular, and that’s really exploded. And then from, uh, developed channel partner private offers as well. Um, and that, I think if we look at the strategy going forward, incorporating channel partners, uh, as you said, the multiple seats around the table. [00:12:49] Michael Levy: Yeah, that’s really a fundamental partner of the part of the marketplace strategy going forward is how are we talking to channel partners, dis IES resellers, et cetera, um, really to help serve our mutual customers through marketplace. [00:13:03] Vince Menzione: And John, you came to being as an organization just a few years ago. I feel like I met you when you just got started, but probably you were already at it for a couple years and fast [00:13:12] Michael Levy: accelerating. [00:13:13] Michael Levy: Well, fast [00:13:13] Vince Menzione: accelerating. Take us through what you find because I, I think it, organizations still struggle here. Like how do I, how do I become transactable? Right? Remember when this all started, it felt like brochureware originally, right? I mean, it wasn’t, but it was in many respects. And then how do I then. [00:13:31] Vince Menzione: Fulfill or actualize where I need to be to really support your organization. What do you, what do you see John, on your side? [00:13:36] Jon Yoo: Yeah, I mean, I think there’s two, uh, interesting thing that I, that I, I didn’t quite foresee when, when starting the company was like, uh, one, just the amount of PLG, you know, self-serve signup flows that go through. [00:13:50] Jon Yoo: Um, so some of our customers are like Snowflake and five Tran and a lot of people just spin up a cluster, for example. Um, and. That was very interesting for me to see of like, can we actually bring a consumer experience to B2B sales where, you know, the same way that I can go, uh, look at Egyptian cotton threat counts for my bedsheets and be able to one click purchase. [00:14:12] Jon Yoo: Yeah. Uh, you know, you start to see a lot of that. And the second piece of it is just how many channel partners are involved. Um, I mean, I’m from San Francisco. I live in the. Silicon Valley SaaS bubble. Yeah. I, I don’t know the channel world and you know, I know a lot of folks in this room are from the channel world, and it’s just been so like surprising just how prevalent it is in the enterprise software space. [00:14:36] Jon Yoo: Yes. And for marketplaces, like we have certain customers who are doing hundreds of millions of dollars and marketplace volume, and its majority channel partner driven. And I think that’s only gonna be, you know, there, there’s always a concern or kind of thought of, uh, Hey, is Marketplace going to Disin intermediate channel partners? [00:14:54] Jon Yoo: Um, or are they gonna be along for the ride? And I think is very clear that they’re gonna be along for the ride. Uh, there’s, you know, channel partner, private offers, but also in the age of AI where you need like a really. Tight knit implementation, understand tribal knowledge because intelligence is getting commoditized. [00:15:13] Jon Yoo: That channel partners are only gonna be way more prevalent than they’ve ever been. So pretty excited to, to lean into this space. Well, it feels [00:15:19] Vince Menzione: like AWS saw this early, right? In terms of enabling the channel partners to work with the ISVs you brought that, you brought that. Capabilities. Yeah, [00:15:27] Michael Levy: definitely. I think it was, it’s always been part of our partner business, obviously from A GSI migration strategy, all of that. [00:15:33] Michael Levy: But now it’s becoming fundamental to the marketplace business, which is really the default path to market for AWS partners, uh, and more and more how our customers are looking to, to procure, whether it’s the consumer experience that, that John was talking about, be able to kind of point and click. Um, but also the implementation after that is hugely important. [00:15:51] Michael Levy: Um, I would say before and after that. [00:15:54] Vince Menzione: What are you seeing? I’m, I’m kind of curious on the agentic piece too, because you have organizations that are traditional ISVs, but then they’re also building a agentic or, or agents like you talked about Salesforce. I can think of rattle of hundreds of names that are in this room or around, or community. [00:16:10] Vince Menzione: Do they, do they treat them? Do they bifurcate it and treat it separately? They do it together. How do they think through that process of, since you have a separate agent, AI. Capability. [00:16:20] Michael Levy: Yes. Uh, I think we’re seeing a mix. So I think we’re seeing some ISVs that are thinking about ag agentic as like a feature of their overall platform. [00:16:30] Michael Levy: And then we have others that are really kind of thinking big, as we say at Amazon on how they redevelop their entire platform. Yeah. So not just re-architecting some features on the roadmap, but how are they actually transforming their business? And what that looks like starts to change, especially when you think about commercials. [00:16:48] Michael Levy: Before it was, you know, usage based on-prem software, then it was SaaS based seat license. Now everybody’s talking about outcome-based pricing and how do you do that, um, from an agentic perspective. And so we have partners that are thinking about all aspects of that. And from a marketplace perspective, we want to be flexible enough. [00:17:06] Michael Levy: Um, both commercially so you can charge your customers the right way and the way that works for your business and then deploying, right? Yeah. We wanna get your software in the hands of customers more easily, more quickly, and reduce that time to value. What, [00:17:19] Vince Menzione: what are you finding from the monetization process? [00:17:21] Vince Menzione: ’cause you brought up a really interesting point ’cause people are still trying to figure through that. Right? [00:17:25] Michael Levy: I think they’re still trying to figure through that. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I think we’ve had some that are building and launching ag agentic listings. Like you can do an API based or an MCP server on marketplace and you can have that be contract based. [00:17:38] Michael Levy: Uh, well we just released now that you can have container offerings that are, uh, ag agentic and integrated with, uh, Amazon Bedrock Agent Core, and those are contract based or usage based. And so I think we’re seeing combinations of both of those things. Uh, in order to figure out how to reinvent the commercial model, [00:17:56] Vince Menzione: what are you seeing from your side, John, from your clients? [00:18:02] Jon Yoo: I, I’ll be a little bit, uh, maybe provocative is, is the best way. Put it, you know, some big [00:18:05] Vince Menzione: clients we won’t mention, by the way, I’m not [00:18:07] Jon Yoo: talking about our customer. Like when it customer, it snows outside one of your clients’ names starts to come to, but what, what, what I’m seeing in this space is, uh, I, I actually think a lot of these AI features or agents or whatever the heck you wanna call it from a marketing perspective. [00:18:21] Jon Yoo: Are a lot of crap out there. Um, there’s not a lot of differentiation. I think there’s, uh, it’s just a series of prompts and there’s some sort of return output, or they are like messaging workflows or like RP alike functionalities as, you know, agentic workflows when in fact it’s like really deterministic and rules-based, but they just put agent on top because it’s, yeah. [00:18:44] Jon Yoo: This agent is taking a bunch of actions. Oh, I mean, we, we used to do that. Earlier on, like two years ago before, you know, we actually started to develop these AI native functionalities. And I, I think what will be a telling, uh, kind of development is right now when you deploy an agent, you have to con configure the agent. [00:19:03] Jon Yoo: So specifically, uh, to, to set guardrails, to, to feed it the, the context, like the tribal knowledge of a, of a, of a business that may not be codified. But I think what will open the door on this piece is, um. The, the same way that a user can like look at a decision or like make a trade off decision. And a lot of it is based on what they know about those internal processes and teams and make that decision. [00:19:29] Jon Yoo: The agent should be able to make that decision without having like these rules based because they’ve, they’re able to, uh, understand all the historical processes and these travel knowledge, like speak, so, you know, so to speak. And so I think once that happens, we’ll be able to see a lot of these agents deployed in enterprise because now. [00:19:48] Jon Yoo: You’re not having to like configure like these six month POCs and, you know, set up the right evaluation, uh, heuristics almost. But you’re actually able to just like, to your point, like one click deploy this agent and it totally understands your, your tech stack, your, your, you know, SOPs for example, and be able to make these, you know, decisions independently. [00:20:09] Vince Menzione: We’ve talked about data. I dunno if you were gonna respond to, to John first. So, ’cause you also work with these organizations to make sure they’re enabled properly. How do you, how do you both think through this data conversation too? Because the agent relies on the data that’s resting that to access. Um, how do, how do you help them through that process to make sure that they’re, the data that they’re presenting is correct and, and usable. [00:20:34] Jon Yoo: Start. No, go for it. [00:20:38] Michael Levy: Uh, yeah. Yeah. I think it’s a, it’s a big part of data. Architecture’s a big part. Obviously there’s, from an AWS service perspective, making sure they’re architected correctly. And I think partners are a big part of that. Yeah. So whether that’s data transformation partners, data and analytics partners, services partners, that will help kind of prepare you for the next evolution of agentic ai. [00:20:58] Michael Levy: Like it does start with data. Um, and I think we’ve seen partners that sort of try to skip that stage and, uh, you know, falter or like. You know, you have an ai, it’s one thing to have an AI model hallucinate. It’s another to have an AI agent hallucinate because that thing can actually take action. It can do dangerous things. [00:21:15] Michael Levy: So it makes the underlying data structure super important. Uh, I think from a marketplace perspective, we also do have data providers in the marketplace. So when it comes to third party data, uh, that’s super important. Um, when you’re building an AI agent, making sure that has access to the right knowledge base. [00:21:30] Michael Levy: Um, so whether that’s internal knowledge or external knowledge. And then like anything with, like, anything with AWS security and governance is, is paramount. So making sure that it’s respecting all the right, uh, privileges. Um, there’s some building blocks that AWS released recently called Amazon Bedrock. [00:21:47] Michael Levy: Agent Core. Yes. You can think of that as just a series of. Call it Lego blocks to build and deploy agents, rock Agent Core at Rock, agent Core, that name that. Um, so if you’re building agents, uh, that is a very easy framework for you to use and deploy and go to production and to do so in a very secure and compliant manner, um, including data, data structures as well. [00:22:07] Michael Levy: I, [00:22:07] Vince Menzione: I keep thinking about your organization, the fact that the partner organization, the technical resources, and the marketplace, all sit in the same. Organization, do you go across, do you wind up like, I, I need, I need help here. So data, governance, security, all those things. Do you help bring those organizations together? [00:22:24] Michael Levy: We do, and we have specialists. Uh, so the partner organization is actually the partner and specialist organization. Yep. Um, so the bolt on is really some of the specialists data and I special, uh, like product specialists, uh, that focus on a lot of those, particularly gen ai, particularly agent ai. Um, and data and analytics is a huge focus for us. [00:22:42] Michael Levy: And so they help our customers and work with our partners to help our mutual customers understand what are the best AWS services to use? How do they get organized from a data perspective in order to then move to more agentic workflows? [00:22:56] Vince Menzione: So you help broker those conversations. Definitely help broker those relationships. [00:22:59] Vince Menzione: I always, always wonder if AI is helping with that, that process too. Does it also make recommendations? [00:23:04] Michael Levy: AI is helping with our partners in general, particularly when it comes to co-sell. Um, so we’re developing tools internally for our sales teams to use to automatically match partners to specific opportunities, uh, which is just a huge benefit to both. [00:23:18] Michael Levy: I guess all three legs of that, the AWS seller, the end customer, as well as our partners. Nice. Um, so that’s a big focus for us as well. [00:23:25] Vince Menzione: Also, you, John, on the AI side, you’ve been using AI since I met you. In fact, you were like an early implementer. [00:23:30] Jon Yoo: Uh, definitely for internal processes. And then we, we’ve been building like our own AI agents, uh, for the past, like year or so. [00:23:38] Jon Yoo: Um, yeah, I mean, getting access to clean well structured data is definitely very difficult. Um, there’s a lot of concerns around. Hey, what, what do you have access to within our Salesforce? Um, so yeah, I think two themes are emerging. One is there’s like a whole host of startups that are starting to figure out how do I like, kind of help structure the data so that it can be fed into an LLM securely. [00:24:02] Jon Yoo: Uh, that’s certainly one. The, the second piece is, uh, you know, I am, I’m sure CISOs are having like constant nightmares these days just at the, the level of surface area where, you know, these threat vectors can be. Can be introduced, but um, yeah, the quality of the data and how much of it I think is so important even for, as we think about our own agent, how do we feed it not just like, you know, CRM data or like NetSuite data for it to be able to take certain actions or for user to, to query the answer that our user ultimately wants. [00:24:35] Jon Yoo: But, uh, how can we actually read it, uh, internal processes, like if someone has questions around, Hey, at, at my company, right? This is the steps that you should take to create a private offer or here’s the governance. Um, and we want to be able to answer that specific by specific, um, because every company’s quite different. [00:24:55] Jon Yoo: Uh, and so, but, but, but the other piece of it is like, there, there seems to be this, uh, like platform wars, if that makes sense. Yeah, it does feel like that. Something, yeah. Like Gle, gleans a customer. They are, they have a kick butt product that everyone just loves using. You know, they integrate very deeply into a company’s ecosystem or like, of data and whatever. [00:25:18] Jon Yoo: And you know, there, there’s a big announcement about how Salesforce and, and Slack kind of cut off their access and now open AI starting to enter this like knowledge base and you know, kind of generalized agent. And so it’ll be really interesting to see who does the data belong to the customer or like this, you know, Salesforce for example, have the right to cut off access. [00:25:37] Jon Yoo: Yeah. Um, or is that ultimately up to. The, the company. [00:25:43] Vince Menzione: It’s funny ’cause that was part of the conversation earlier about CRM solutions, right? And people have legacy data platforms that are out there. The data’s there. Yeah. I don’t need that structured approach on my screen all the time and try and searching through it. [00:25:55] Vince Menzione: Right. The AI can do it for me. That’s a really interesting point. Do you have a perspective on that, Michael? [00:26:00] Michael Levy: No, I think, uh, I like the earlier point that Erwin made about, uh, you know, are you thinking about your SaaS platform in terms of like the next UI feature? Yeah. Or are you thinking about how to make your SaaS platform accessible to AI agents? [00:26:13] Michael Levy: Right. So if it’s AI agents that are going to be doing some of these workflows, some of these like more manual tasks. Is it, are the, is your platform able to communicate with them? Is your next buyer an AI agent? Or is your next buyer, you know, a a procurement human that’s sitting in a, in a, in a line of business? [00:26:30] Michael Levy: Yeah. Um, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a really good question. Good. I think a lot of ISVs have to try to answer that. [00:26:35] Vince Menzione: Yeah. It’s gonna be interesting. [00:26:36] Jon Yoo: I mean, the, the next conference is gonna be AI agents sitting up here, right? Yeah. Just a panel. Pretty much. I’ll, I’ll be [00:26:41] Vince Menzione: replaced. I’ll be on more break time, by the way. [00:26:43] Vince Menzione: Get that team more break time. Um. So I’d love Agents don’t need breaks. No, I know. That’s why if we have agents, I don’t have to be up here. We could just have little, little facsimile of me. So we’ve got it like three minutes left. So I think that like what I would wanna know if I’m sitting out in the audience. [00:27:01] Vince Menzione: It is like, how do what? Do the best do better? ’cause that’s what I want be, I wanna be the best. Right? So what are the best organizations that work with AWS’s Marketplace do better? And I, and having both of you here on stage is really great ’cause I have the vendor perspective and I have the company that helps hold these companies, get to the marketplace here. [00:27:21] Vince Menzione: I’d love to get both of your perspectives on this. [00:27:23] Michael Levy: Yeah, I, I think I can start. So what, what we’ve done is we’ve tried to distill some of, ’cause we get that question a lot. What does good look like? How do we, yeah. How do we do better? What does great look [00:27:31] Vince Menzione: like? Right? Yeah. What does great [00:27:32] Michael Levy: look like? And we distilled it into a model that we call cost or characteristics of successful sellers. [00:27:38] Michael Levy: Nice. Um, and there’s six pillars to cost and you can look them up. And I think what’s important is we kind of created a rubric for what it looks like to be good on marketplace and how to reach success. And we are, we’re mil, we like to say, we’re like minting. There’s a billionaires club. Of people who are doing over a billion dollars on, on marketplace, and I know we all wanna be there. [00:27:56] Michael Levy: Um, this isn’t like the keys to the castle, but it’s, it’s the next best thing. Um, and so we use that model to work with our partners. So if you’re, if you’re a partner of AWS or interested in becoming a partner, a of AWS to work with your partner manager on that model, um, and it’s, it’s fairly simple. Some of it’s very simple. [00:28:14] Michael Levy: It’s about sales alignment, it’s about sales enablement on marketplace. It’s about putting your best foot forward as far as product selection on marketplace, things like that. We should probably add a seventh pillar, which is maybe working with folks like John and Sugar and the team, um, to get to go to marketplace. [00:28:27] Michael Levy: But that’s really, uh, what we talk about. And I think the benefit there is we did an IDC study that folks that implement this cost framework, uh, basically accelerate 31 times faster than AWS sellers on marketplace that aren’t using the cost framework. So you’re talking about accelerating business and talking about doing more business and what good looks like. [00:28:45] Michael Levy: That’s really what we’re. What we’re focused on. [00:28:47] Vince Menzione: And so if people wanna find that study, [00:28:49] Michael Levy: honestly I did it to make sure it was out there. There’s blog posts. You Google AWS marketplace and cost, and you’ll see cost. KOSS, uh, C, oss CS characteristics [00:28:57] Vince Menzione: C say characteristics. Okay. Very good. [00:28:59] Jon Yoo: John? Um, my, my only like kind of top thing around working with AWS is uh, like start narrow. [00:29:07] Jon Yoo: I think everyone tries to over automate and they try to run before they’ve even proved that some motion works. Uh, within a small subset, you know, so do something manually at the beginning. Figure out what’s the right messaging that actually sticks and works. ’cause you probably got 20 other competitors that’s trying to pitch AWS and other hyperscalers the same thing. [00:29:27] Jon Yoo: And so providing a unique messaging that is very simple to understand. Kind of like a, if X then me, if y then, you know, whatever else I, I think is a type of simple heuristic. Makes it easy for AWS to partner with you. Um. And then three, once you have that you know, piece kind of really figured out, then automate right then, you know, you can kind of drive sales adoption and, uh. [00:29:51] Jon Yoo: You know, have your deal desk and rev ops and finance all align on the same piece. But until that, until that point when you have the engine working, start small, get that flywheel going. Yeah. All [00:30:01] Vince Menzione: set. Yeah. Billion dollar club, you mentioned it earlier. That was a big, that was a big announcement last year and Jay McBain, you know, is gonna be your tomorrow to talk to, talks about that. [00:30:10] Vince Menzione: There were five companies last year, five ISVs. Some announced it publicly, some didn’t. I think one of ’em is actually in the room that was not public about it. We won’t mention any names. Uh, and then there was a services partner, I think it was Presidio. I think they made an announcement. So where are we at? [00:30:25] Vince Menzione: Where are we now with the billion Do billion dollar club? [00:30:28] Michael Levy: We’re, we’re trying our hardest to mint new ones every day. Yeah. Yeah. As best as we can. But how [00:30:31] Vince Menzione: many, how many are we up to [00:30:33] Michael Levy: now? I don’t, I don’t know the number, especially those that are public. I think Salesforce maybe went public that they’re in the $2 billion club. [00:30:38] Michael Levy: Yeah. Um, it’s also, uh, I think the goal is driving as much revenue and we’ve seen so many of our partners. Implementing costs as a seller, but more importantly, just working with marketplaces in general to help drive sort of more deal, win more deals, bigger deals, faster deals, is kind of the goal. Um, and we’ve seen that, uh, work not just in kind of the traditional infrastructure space, but you think about. [00:31:03] Michael Levy: Uh, folks like Salesforce in the business application space, even industry vertical ISVs is really the next frontier. I work with many of them very directly, um, to help just crack, crack open the, the co-sell system. Fantastic. [00:31:14] Vince Menzione: So good to have you on stage. Thanks. And John, also so great to have you. Uh, one point I’ll say it’s, it is really great to see marketplace take this front and center. [00:31:23] Vince Menzione: Uh, I remember just, it was only a few short years ago where I would talk to some big ISVs, and I won’t mention some of ’em are actually in the room. And they’re like, why do, why do we need to do a marketplace? We have a channel or we have something else that we’re doing. We don’t need it. Right. And I think people miss the big point at that, that level. [00:31:40] Vince Menzione: So it’s great to see the Absolutely. The transformation. Michael, so good to have you. So great to have AWS John, you and Sugar, great friends of ours. Great and incredible organization. Uh, these guys will be around hopefully for the rest of the day, and if you want to grab them. Uh, some incredible insights today. [00:31:56] Vince Menzione: I appreciate you spending time with us. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks for having us. Thanks for tuning into this episode of Ultimate Guide to Partnering. We’re bringing these episodes to you to help you level up your strategy. If you haven’t yet, now’s the time to take action and think about joining our community. [00:32:16] Vince Menzione: We created a unique place, UPX or Ultimate Partner experience. It’s more than a community. It’s your competitive edge with insider insights, real-time education, and direct access to people who are driving the ecosystem forward. UPX helps you get results, and we’re just getting started as we’re taking this studio. [00:32:38] Vince Menzione: And we’ll be hosting live stream and digital events here, including our January live stream, the Boca Winter Retreat, and more to come. So visit our website, the ultimate partner.com to learn more and join us. Now’s the time to take your partnerships to the next level.

AI is changing everything: Are you ready?  Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Is your business ready for 2026? Welcome back to the Ultimate Guide to Partnering® Podcast. As we kick off Thanksgiving in the United States this week, I’m incredibly grateful for this exclusive interview with Craig Abod, President of Carahsoft, which reveals the mindset and unique market strategy that fueled the company’s astronomical growth, hitting over $22 billion in bookings. Craig discusses the crucial role of the channel in serving the government and public sectors, how Carahsoft built its foundation by partnering with emerging technology companies like Salesforce and Splunk before they were giants, and how they balance massive $30 million deals with tiny $30 orders. He also shares his vision for the next chapter, including expansion into a $10 billion hardware business and a focus on accelerating partner implementation services, alongside his perspective on the inevitable, fast-approaching ‘aha moment’ for AI transformation across all industries. Craig shared this journey as we kicked of Ultimate Partner LIVE. This was the second LIVE event we hosted this year and the fourth Ultimate Partner Event of 2025, including Winter Retreat, UP Live Spring, and our Executive Breakfast at Microsoft Ignite. Through our events and community, you have access to exclusive content, workshops, and strategies that help you achieve more and stay ahead of what’s next. The buzz around our community is simply astounding. We are building something I couldn’t even dream of when we started a simple podcast almost 9 years ago out of my spare bedroom. If you haven’t already, please consider joining our Ultimate Partner Community, where the most compelling leaders in the technology partnership world come to experience, share, learn, and grow. Thanks for being on this journey with us. — Vince Key Takeaways Carahsoft has grown by roughly $3 billion annually for the last three years, reaching over $22 billion in bookings. The company’s strategy involves centralizing vendor ecosystems to help partners and government customers find, acquire, and deploy technology successfully. Carahsoft established early success by partnering with emerging tech companies like Salesforce and VMware before they became major franchises. A key element of their philosophy is operational excellence, taking the same care of the smallest customers as the biggest ones. The company is focused on expanding into a $10 billion hardware market and growing its services/MSP capability, which currently processes $1.5 billion in implementation services. Craig Abod believes AI will lead to an “aha moment” in the next few years where the value of self-driving cars and automated systems will become undeniable. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags Carahsoft, Craig Abod, public sector, government IT, channel ecosystem, technology distribution, VMware franchise, Salesforce, Splunk, emerging tech, hyper-growth, AI adoption, self-driving cars, Max CPV, MSP, implementation services, deal registration, long tail work, verticalization, enterprise healthcare, education market, Google Ads, Ultimate Partnering, Menzione. https://youtu.be/5uhSY9BydrM Ultimate Partner is the independent community for technology leaders navigating the tectonic shifts in cloud, AI, marketplaces, and co-selling. Through live events, UPX membership, advisory, and the Ultimate Guide to Partnering® podcast, we help organizations align with hyperscalers, accelerate growth, and achieve their greatest results through successful partnering. Transcript [00:00:00] Craig Abod: We’re all gonna wake up and go, yeah, why are we driving our own cars? Why isn’t, you know, why isn’t there a self-driving car in every city, in every, in every parking lot? And we’re gonna have a, an aha moment in, um, 24 months, or 36 months, or 48 months, where we’re all like, why, why do I own this car that, that I have to drive, I have to drive myself. [00:00:18] Craig Abod: And you can apply that to, um, payroll systems and collection systems and bidding systems. There’s an odd moment where, Hey, do I deploy some of this AI today or do I wait just two months and see what’s out there? [00:00:35] 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 Caresoft Training Center in Reston, Virginia. Over two days, we gather top leaders to tackle the real shifts shaping our industry. [00:00:57] Vince Menzione: If you weren’t in the room, this episode brings you right to the edge of what’s next. Let’s dive in. I, I am, uh, incredibly privileged. Uh, in many respects I feel like. Like, I had to keep benching myself for just life in general and just, uh, the amazing opportunities that just happenstance come our way in, in so many forms and functions. [00:01:20] Vince Menzione: I, I’m, I wanna save the time with Craig when he comes up here, but, ’cause I, I don’t want to steal the thunder of the conversation, but what an incredible organization he’s built. I want to, I wanna just wanna say thank you. I said this a little bit earlier. The team of people that have just surrounded my team and supported us doing our event here has been incredible. [00:01:39] Vince Menzione: Like they don’t need to do this. They don’t need to make their facilities available to organizations like ours. They make them available to some of their top partners, some of which are in the room here today, are gonna be up on stage over the next two days. And, um, I talk about mindset and I will say without, I haven’t even talked to ’em about this, but I think that mindset really drives how organizations thrive. [00:02:02] Vince Menzione: And so hopefully you’ll see this demonstrated like all these principles that I talked about briefly. You’ll see this print, this, uh, demonstrated in different ways over the next couple of days just by some of the conversations that we’ll have in the room. So, uh, without further. I do, uh, Craig Abbo, I’d love to invite you to the stage here. [00:02:21] Vince Menzione: Uh, thank you sir. Thank you for having us. So Craig, just, uh, ’cause I mean there might be people in the room who don’t know you, but I know there are some people in the room that do maybe just a little bit your title and role at, at Caresoft And is it on [00:02:39] Craig Abod: guys? Thanks everybody for coming out. Um, uh. Vince mentioned the building. [00:02:46] Craig Abod: Um, uh, four years ago, uh, we said, Hey, we ought to, um, use this building for more than just, um, what it was being used for. And we started offering it to our vendors, uh, and reseller partners, uh, for big events and little events. And, um, so far this year we’ve had 40,000. Um, visitors in the building. Wow. For events like this, there’s a Coast Guard event going on downstairs. [00:03:15] Craig Abod: Um, two Saturdays ago we had a charity event. Uh, uh, in the building. Um, and it’s been, it’s been, it’s been really a good, um, privilege to be able to, to do this. We’re a little bit uniquely positioned to, um, uh, to loan the, to loan the space out to people. And, um, it’s been, it’s been fun. So, uh, where did we, where did we come from? [00:03:36] Craig Abod: Uh, we’re, we’re 21 years, uh, in business. Um, we should end this year. A little over 22, uh, billion dollars in, in bookings. Um, we’ve grown, uh, about $3 billion a year for the last three. The last three years. Um, we’re up, we’re up more this year than we were last year. Uh, a little bit. Uh, somebody said, in spite of all the turmoil that’s going on in the, in the public sector market, and maybe it’s a little bit because of all the turmoil, um, we’ve sort of centralized a lot of stuff and a lot of the vendor ecosystem, um, supports us. [00:04:15] Craig Abod: So 20 years ago, 21 years ago, we had a unique opportunity to start a business and, um, have developed it into, it’s funny, we run. We’re gonna switch to mic four. Okay. That’s good. That’s good. Um, and we’ve de developed it into a business that, um, helps our vendors and the, the channel routes to market ecosystem. [00:04:43] Craig Abod: Um, and our government customers, um, find. Technology, acquire technology and then successfully, um, deploy technology. And if you take those three things 20 years ago, what we found was there was a lot of activity from the manufacturers, um, helping TriNet find government customers that need needed their product. [00:05:10] Craig Abod: And there was a lot of work by the reseller community at the procurement office door. Um. Just trying to close a deal. But those two were really, really disconnected and, and we got in the market, um, with a sales and marketing kind of, uh, mindset into the market and found, yeah, if you do a lot of selling and marketing at the front end, you might not get the order at the back end. [00:05:33] Craig Abod: Yeah. And helped the vendor community sort of figure out that, um, deal reg was important and demand creation was important, but you gotta reward the right, um, the, the right partners. Um, and five or six or seven years ago. Um, an interesting phenomenon where a lot of partners were still in a direct mindset. [00:05:54] Craig Abod: Um, we started taking on a lot of small companies and a lot of emerging tech companies, and what we found was the VCs were telling them, Hey, if you don’t start to build out a channel today, you’re gonna be a, a really, really tough business. Um, a year or two from now when all your founder led sales and all the sales you can generate on your own. [00:06:14] Craig Abod: Um, when you’ve plateaued that if you don’t have a channel out there helping you sell and helping you, your customers deploy the technology, you’re gonna be flat. And all the VCs said, Hey, we don’t wanna invest in a company that’s gonna get to a hundred million and, and be stuck there. And, um, they, the, a lot of the VCs have embraced sort of, Hey, bring your products into Caresoft ’cause we can help you get into the, into the rest of the ecosystem. [00:06:37] Craig Abod: So a little bit about our beginning, a little bit about where we end up here today. [00:06:41] Vince Menzione: I, I find it fascinating ’cause I don’t know anyone that’s doing what you’re doing and uh, uh, kudos to you for doing it. But, you know, I talk about growth mindset, but you have a, maybe ’cause you, you do have a unique market. [00:06:53] Vince Menzione: You have kind of the, the government sector and, and, but you, you have expanded beyond that. Um, what, what, what got you started? Like you’ve been, you’ve been in DC your whole life, I think. Um, what was the spark? ’cause you were at other organizations before Carahsoft. What was the spark that. Got you started to do this versus what you were doing prior? [00:07:15] Vince Menzione: Well, um, [00:07:15] Craig Abod: you know, I’ll, I’ll go 20 years back, pat, before we started, I went to work for a guy named Denda Young, who Yeah. Started to sell into the government back when it wasn’t, wasn’t as big a market. Um, and he had two different businesses in a big integration business and a business distributing at the time, apple, uh, into the government. [00:07:34] Craig Abod: And, um, it was really a good first, uh, job. I was with him until he sold both his, his, his companies. And, um, you got to do a million different things and learn the business from the top down. And I’ve told this still, uh, uh, friends with him, I, I told him, Hey, I learned a lot about things to do and a lot about things not to do. [00:07:55] Craig Abod: Um, and then, uh, 21 years ago we had a, we had an opportunity to build this, um, ourselves and, and took the opportunity. [00:08:02] Vince Menzione: That explains quite a bit. I, I remember GTSI was the one company that, they were the behemoth, they were the biggest player out there at the time. Long time. Yeah. And that was, uh, incredible. [00:08:11] Vince Menzione: So now, now I understand that spark. Um, what were some of the ch, I mean, so we talked about like it’s, it seems like you’ve, it’s easy what you’ve done, but. It doesn’t feel like anything is easy when you’re growing a business, especially to $22 billion. I mean, everybody’s sitting in this room probably saying, well, help me get there. [00:08:28] Vince Menzione: Uh, I certainly want to know how to, how to get there, but what were some of the things, the obstacles you faced in the beginning that you had to overcome, and what do you think helped you get, get here? Yeah. I guess is what I would say. Yeah. [00:08:41] Craig Abod: So, um, I, I think there’s two, there’s two sides to it. When we first started, um. [00:08:48] Craig Abod: Uh, we, uh, went to a couple of the big vendors and they had zero use for us. They had, they had no need at all. Um, and thank God I was at, I was at one meeting with a big vendor who said, Craig, you could do all that sales and marketing, you could do all that stuff for us, but you will never, ever get an order. [00:09:07] Craig Abod: All our deals are big ELAs. You’ll never get in that, in that market. So we regrouped a little bit and we went and talked to a lot of little, um, emerging technology companies. And we built the business in the beginning around some emerging technologies that are today really, really big businesses. Um, I have, um, I have, uh, um, uh, a story about, um, our first trip to go talk to Salesforce. [00:09:35] Craig Abod: And Salesforce wasn’t the Salesforce we know today. Um, nobody was really interested in the cloud. Nobody in the government needed A-A-A-A-A-C-R-M. Um, and we, uh, we took Salesforce on, um, their IPO was $120 million, um, initial, um, uh, cash inflection from their, from their IPO. Um, we have a single customer today that buys a hundred bigger than $120 million deal today. [00:10:06] Craig Abod: Wow. Um, and we took on. VMware before VMware was VMware Today, it’s a $2 billion franchise with us. Um, all of the stuff we do for, for Broadcom, um, uh, Splunk is about a, a a billion dollars now, part of, um, part of Cisco. Cisco. Um, and when we took on Splunk, I, I sort of was like, guys, this is the, like, I don’t even understand what this word Splunk is. [00:10:31] Craig Abod: Why, who’s picking this? Who’s picking this vendor? So we had, we had some good fortune with, um, the little guys. And today our business is, hey, we take care of some really, really big guys in the market. We, we take care of AWS Azure, uh, Google. We have almost a billion dollar Google, um, business, and we still take care of, um, um, I’m gonna call it a thousand emerging, um, uh, technology companies that those VCs are bringing us, that our government customers are bringing us, that our channel. [00:11:02] Craig Abod: Uh, ecosystem. So it’s been, it’s been a, a tale of big and, and small, big vendors and, and small vendors. Um, we take care of big channel partners in the Leidos and GD and Northrop’s all the way down to little companies that are just getting started, and we’ve got a path in that that helps the, the, the little companies and, um, sort of big orders and small orders. [00:11:29] Craig Abod: One of the things that we are. Really, really proud of is, um, that hey, we take care of the smallest customers as same way we would take care of the biggest customers. Wow. And, um, half of our orders, so 120,000 orders, um, combined add up to less than 1% of our revenue. Um, now 1% of our orders. Account for half of our revenue and then 49%. [00:11:59] Craig Abod: 49%. And the message there is though, for our vendors, for the channel partners that we support, and for our government customers, hey, they still need to buy one copy of something and there’s gotta be somebody there that takes care of that. And we said, Hey, how do I, how does my customer trust me for their $30 million deal if they don’t trust me for their literally $30? [00:12:18] Craig Abod: Um, deal. And we’ve built a business around this operational excellence that, hey, we take care of the big guys. Really easy to understand how you take care of the big guys, hard to figure out how you take care of all those small, um, customers and small vendors and small, um, resellers, and do it at scale. [00:12:32] Craig Abod: And that’s been, um, the challenge, but also one of the big drivers in our [00:12:36] Vince Menzione: growth. That’s incredible. Did, did you feel like the small, those smaller organizations that were on a growth trajectory helped drive the hyperscalers to you? Because I, I assume the hyperscalers came later. Probably. Yeah. [00:12:49] Craig Abod: Yeah. So, um, um, building out, um, sort of ecosystems of partners. [00:12:57] Craig Abod: We, we kind of started to do that really consciously eight or nine years ago, and now have some significant, um, ecosystems around either customer segments or, um, technology segments. Um, you know, you, you talk about the ecosystem. Um, in marketplaces, um, if I, if I pick on, um, Salesforce one more time. Sure. We represent, um, about 120 of the Salesforce app exchange partners. [00:13:27] Craig Abod: And every Salesforce deal we do has, uh, every other Salesforce deal we do. So half our orders have at least one of those other add-on products that run and enable, and one of our biggest customers. Um, one of our biggest customers and one of Salesforce’s biggest customers. It might be Salesforce’s biggest customer, but I only see my orders. [00:13:48] Craig Abod: I don’t see all of all their orders. Um, uh, they buy, um, $150 million worth of Salesforce every year and they buy $20 million worth of all those little add-on products, and we think we’re taking really good care of those little guys. But the, the, that customer wouldn’t be getting the ROI on that system if they weren’t getting all those ecosystem partners. [00:14:09] Craig Abod: And then one of our sort of verticals that we support and, and the, around this, you know, sort of ecosystem mentality. Um, one of our verticals is healthcare and we’re doing close to a billion dollars in enterprise healthcare today. Um, plus government. Plus government healthcare. Wow. And we had a small, um, emerging healthcare company and we look at healthcare as both. [00:14:36] Craig Abod: The customer set as well as the technology set. So I sell into healthcare products that everybody buys, and I also sell into healthcare products that only healthcare buys. We had a small healthcare, um, VC funded company, and they came to us and they talked to us, explained their product. Everybody was super excited and the, and then the CEO said, but I’m not selling. [00:14:55] Craig Abod: I’m not gonna let you sign you up unless you really have us. Uh, a healthcare practice. And I went, wait, wait, hold it. We do, and we gave ’em our healthcare practice pitch. And it was that sort of moment where, hey, wait, these, these, um, ecosystems and verticals have really become, really, become important. And that translates into what we do with, with AWS. [00:15:14] Craig Abod: We run, we run 200 different vendors through marketplace Wow. Um, transactions in the last, in the last 12 months, um, we’re in the ice in the intelligence community marketplace. Um, we’re in their, we’re in their regular marketplace, so. Um, figuring out how customers take get best, ROI on those kind of investments been important. [00:15:33] Vince Menzione: And you’re in other verticals as well, right? You’re in the education market and other markets? Yeah. [00:15:39] Craig Abod: So, so federal, state and local education, both higher ed and K through K through 12. Yeah. Healthcare, the defense industrial base. And then we’re, we’re helping our vendor partners where they need us in commercial and enterprise. [00:15:54] Craig Abod: Um, um, we do a lot of, we call it long tail work. Where our vendors come to us and say, Hey, you do this really, really well for me in government. Can you help me with all my small orders in, um, in their enterprise and in their commercial, um, segments with, they’re not, they’re not doing, um, for lots of different reasons, not doing really, really well. [00:16:13] Craig Abod: They’re not, they’re not, um, um, tuned, tuned for those small orders. We have one partner that brought us, um, a big bucket of almost a shoebox full of, um. Uh, customers that didn’t renew over the last 24 months and said, here, you guys wanna take these, take these. Wow. Um, so a lot of those kind of things have, are pulling us into, um, enterprise and commercial markets. [00:16:35] Vince Menzione: I’d love to know the convert rate on those. [00:16:37] Craig Abod: Um, pretty high. I’ll tell you. Um, it was a $5 million bucket of business. We showed back up in 90 days with $2 million worth of business, and I was like, what’s our secret? What did we do? And the sales manager said, we called the customer and we got the customer a quote. [00:16:53] Craig Abod: Um, but it was, thank you, thank you. The manufacturer. The manufacturer was just not set up and skilled at calling hundreds and hundreds of 2000, 3000, 5,000 customers. But what they found is if you lose those little customers, those are the ones that grow into 50 K customers and the 50 K customers go into a million dollar orders. [00:17:14] Craig Abod: So you gotta take care of those little, um. Every tree started as a seed. Not every seed grows into a tree, but if you don’t take care of those seeds, you’re in trouble. Yeah, [00:17:24] Vince Menzione: that’s a great philosophy. So, you know, we talk about tectonic shifts. I mean, the world is cha rapidly changing. Um, I’d love to get your perspective, I mean, what you’ve seen in the 20 years of Caresoft and even bor before Caresoft to what we’re seeing now in terms of technology transformation. [00:17:41] Vince Menzione: And, you know, we’ll talk about ai, I’m sure AI is part of all the conversations here in the room as well. But what are you seeing in terms of, and how are you positioning. To lead in this, uh, time of transformation. [00:17:52] Craig Abod: Yeah, so I think we’re in an interesting, uh, clearly we’re in an interesting time. Um, there, there’s an old, uh, adage that technology changes faster than we think it will in the long term, but a lot slower than we think it will in the short term. [00:18:09] Craig Abod: And, um. We are in this mode of where, boy, everybody’s seeing all this great technology out there. Um, and I think the, everybody’s having a hard time, um, digesting it and their expectations that technology is gonna do something really, really good and really, really fast, um, is, is tremendously tremendous high. [00:18:29] Craig Abod: So we’re investing a lot in, um, Hey, how do we enable our partners better? And how do we enable our partners to go, enable their customers? And every day we’re having, I’ll call ’em forward deployed engineer conversations, but it’s a bigger and different topic than forward deployed, uh, engineers. Um, but hey, how do we get this technology into the right customers, um, and get them to get a quick ROI, um, I, I tell a story that I think is. [00:19:00] Craig Abod: Um, something we’re, uh, that I, I consider it sort of a not successful story for me. We had a really, really good partner that won a contract and he’s implementing an, uh, a system for a government agency and he’s explaining to me. Hey, I got this, um, thing and we’re building the system for the government and it’s really, really cool and it’s gonna do all this great stuff. [00:19:22] Craig Abod: And I go, but why? Why are you doing that? He goes, guys, we won this contract. Like this is the, this is the best day of our lives. And I said, no, but, but why are you doing that? He said, Craig, I don’t, don’t understand what you’re talking about. I go, you’re building the system that like eight other people have already built. [00:19:37] Craig Abod: Why don’t you just take something that’s already built into the government? And so that helping our government customers find technology, helping ’em acquire technology, and helping them. Deploy it successfully before they go hire. Uh, God bless ’em, a really good, really good partner, a really good integrator to go build it from scratch. [00:19:53] Craig Abod: And I think it, it’s a measure of the difficulty our customers are having, sorting through everything and getting, and getting to the right, getting to the right solution for themselves. [00:20:02] Vince Menzione: I also think that speaks volumes about trust. You know, we talk about most, most organizations, vendor partner, uh, being able to have that conversation, Craig. [00:20:13] Vince Menzione: Do you agree? I mean, it just seems like they’re, you’re trusted to have a conversation like that with them. [00:20:18] Craig Abod: Well, where we are in the market, right, we’re we sit firmly between the government, the partner ecosystem, and the vendor. And hey, it’s really easy for two of those two guys to talk and figure out that, oh wait, the problem here is that Caresoft didn’t do stuff. [00:20:33] Craig Abod: So we end up being the guys who, okay, the. The vendor needs something to get a deal done. The partner doesn’t have that capability and the government says, yeah, but I’m not placing the order unless I have that. And we’re end up being the guy sort of in the middle, sort of gladly pulling all those pieces together. [00:20:49] Craig Abod: Um, and trust is, is a, on all three sides is pretty important. [00:20:53] Vince Menzione: I love it. I love it. Um, I kind of put you on the spot here about AI because you, you kind of alluded to this, but do we think we’re over pivoting too quickly or we we’re talking about it constantly, right? I mean, what, what do you, what are your, what’s your perspective is, is what I would ask about that. [00:21:09] Craig Abod: Um, so I, I, um, um, I don’t think we’re over pivoting and I think we’re all gonna wake up and, um, uh, I told somebody. We’re all gonna wake up and go, yeah, why are we driving our own cars? Why isn’t, you know, why isn’t there a self-driving car in every city, in every, in every parking lot? And we’re gonna have a, an aha moment in, um, 24 months, or 36 months, or 48 months, where we’re all like, why, why do I own this car that, that I have to drive, I have to drive myself. [00:21:39] Craig Abod: And you can apply that to, um, payroll systems and collection systems and bidding systems and, and, uh, uh, lots of, lots of different, um. Um, systems in the, in the government. Um, but I think that, um, there’s, there’s an odd moment where, Hey, do I deploy some of this AI today or do I wait just two months and see what’s out there, out there? [00:22:05] Craig Abod: Then yes, I, I tell people, Hey, the, what’s worse than graduating from college and having a hundred thousand dollars in student loan debt? What’s worse is not graduating from college and still having a hundred thousand dollars in student loan debt. And hey, if you de, if you pick up technology today and make a generational change on your technology and it’s the wrong one and you do it too soon, um, because because stuff’s changing so, so quickly, um, it’s, it’s, we’re, it’s gonna be, it’s, we’re in an interesting time and these decisions our customers are making are, are really important. [00:22:43] Vince Menzione: So 3 billion, you’ve added 3 billion to the top line each of the last three, four years. Is that what, what’s next? I mean, where, where do you take this? You, it, it seems like you’ve, i I would say lack of a better term, conquered the government market and maybe also moving down this road with verticalization. [00:23:02] Vince Menzione: What’s, what’s the next chapter look like for Caresoft? [00:23:05] Craig Abod: Yeah. So, um, uh, we do, um. We do a couple billion dollars in hardware. Um, and that hardware business for us, um, uh, is growing and growing significantly. Um, it’s a little bit, um, the conversations and workflows are different in hardware than it is in software. [00:23:29] Craig Abod: Um, and so I think I’ve got, I’ve got a, a $10 billion hardware business, um, that’s sitting at, at at 2 billion and we’re in the, um, the education. Market and we do a billion dollars in education. There’s probably a $10 billion market that we’re not, yeah, we’re not there yet. Um, and then our commercial, our commercial business is, is over a billion dollars. [00:23:52] Craig Abod: Um, and that’s a $10 billion, uh, that’s a $10 billion, um, market. And then one piece that underlays all that is, um, we, uh, support. A billion and a half dollars worth of implementation services that get done in the market, that go through us. And, um, every, uh, dollar of that with, with one kind of exception that involves some clearances. [00:24:19] Craig Abod: Um, 99% of that billion and a half dollars we go, we take and bring those deals to an implementation partner or an MSP or to the manufacturer. And, um, that building out that, um. S solution and services capability so that our partners can get better access to, um, uh, selling those services to the customer, and the customer gets faster. [00:24:43] Craig Abod: Deployment is something that we’re, we’re really, really focused on, and that that billion and a half dollars could be a. A, a three or four or $5 billion business if, if a few pieces fall into place. [00:24:53] Vince Menzione: That’s fascinating. ’cause we think the MSP market is ripe for transformation. We’re even have a session on MSPs today. [00:25:00] Vince Menzione: But these are mostly MSPs that have clearances, that have the capabilities and clearances, or No, [00:25:03] Craig Abod: it’s MSPs that deploy for state and local. They deploy for education, they deploy into defense industrial base. What we find is if we have a, a lead generation conversation with a customer and the next meeting we can pull in an MSP or implementation partner. [00:25:18] Craig Abod: That has implemented the same solution for another town or the same solution for another, another customer, the our probability of win goes from 20% to to 80 or 90%. And the speed it takes to get the deal done goes from a year down to six months because the customer’s comfortable that they’ve got the right partner who can, who can implement and has done it before. [00:25:38] Craig Abod: And the partners like us, ’cause hey, you’re bringing me into a customer that’s the exact right fit for them. [00:25:44] Vince Menzione: That’s fascinating. I. I don’t wanna make you blush or, uh, but I, I feel like you’re unique. I really do. I, I, I speak to many leaders in this industry and you, what you’ve done is incredibly unique, Craig. [00:25:58] Vince Menzione: And, um, I mean, just this incredible business you’ve built your philosophy, your mindset around it. I don’t hear this from most CEOs and presidents of organizations, so I just, I, I need to, I need to call that out. And for those of you, uh, I just wanna, I just wanna. Take a moment here, because I do think what Craig has done to this, this organization for our industry, our, our learnings that we all could take forward in terms of how we grow the business. [00:26:22] Vince Menzione: And we like, you know, we do this very rarely, we don’t do like a lot of awards. Uh, we do basically two awards a year. And Craig, I just, you know, I talked to the team before we came out here and we said, you know, the work that your team is doing is it, it’s demonstrated in. What we see, and then everyone we talk to, so many of your partners are in the room speaking at this event too. [00:26:44] Vince Menzione: We rattle off a bunch of names. I don’t wanna just call out one. But I’ve heard so many incredible stories about what Caresoft does and how it represents the partnership world that we wanted to rec recognize you as well. Uh, we do a leadership award, but we also wanted to do this year a separate partner award. [00:27:02] Vince Menzione: And so on behalf of Ultimate Partner on behalf of our community. I want to recognize you as our Partner of the Year award winner. Thank you. And we wanna wanna thank you for everything you do for our industry and that we, it’s, it’s small, but it’s mighty. I understand it’s pretty heavy here, but, uh, just maybe with, I think they’ll one to take a picture of, of, of this with you. [00:27:23] Vince Menzione: Um, and I just wanna thank you a, for inviting us to your beautiful facility B for like engulfing us with incredible support. Your team. Um, it’s just been incredible to work with and just being a, a voice of advocacy in this partnership world. That’s a, that’s a really great voice. It’s, it’s a voice of, of understanding reason about trust around collaboration. [00:27:50] Vince Menzione: I don’t see this at all, and we just really want to thank you for everything you do for this community. [00:27:54] Craig Abod: Vince, you know, thanks, Vince. Thanks, and we appreciate you guys doing this event here. Nothing better than having a room full of great people. Um, here. And, um, I appreciate the recognition on behalf of the whole, the whole company. [00:28:06] Craig Abod: So thank you. Thank you very [00:28:07] Vince Menzione: much, sir. Appreciate it. Thank, thank you. Wow. [00:28:15] Vince Menzione: Thanks for tuning into this episode of Ultimate Eye to Partnering. We’re bringing these episodes to you to help you level up your strategy. If you haven’t yet, now’s the time to take action and think about joining our community. We created a unique place, UPX or Ultimate partner experience. It’s more than a community. [00:28:36] Vince Menzione: It’s your competitive edge with insider insights, real-time education, and direct access to people who are driving the ecosystem forward. UPX helps you get results, and we’re just getting started as we’re taking this studio. And we’ll be hosting live stream and digital events here, including our January live stream, the Boca Winter Retreat. [00:28:59] Vince Menzione: And more to come. So visit our website, the ultimate partner.com to learn more and join us. Now’s the time to take your partnerships to the next level.

AI is changing everything: Are you ready?  Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Is your business ready for 2026? Welcome back to the Ultimate Guide to Partnering® Podcast. What a thrilling week hosting partner leaders at Ultimate Partner LIVE in Reston, VA at the Carahsoft Training Center. Even if you couldn’t be with us in person at the groundbreaking event, you can listen to the most profound sessions. In this exclusive interview, Erwin Visser, a key leader at Microsoft, discusses the company’s major organizational restructuring into Enterprise and SMEC (Small, Medium, and Corporate) divisions, and their massive, channel-led $600 billion bet on partner-led growth, with a core focus on AI and security. Visser outlines the “Frontier Firm” mindset—a commitment to being AI-first across customer experience, employee productivity (with Copilot saving users an estimated 34% of their time on boring tasks), business processes, and product innovation. He details Microsoft’s enormous investment in partner enablement, a new dedicated partner sales organization, and the urgent challenges of data compliance and software sprawl in the new age of AI agents. He concludes by sharing the three non-negotiable traits of a great partner, providing crucial guidance for anyone looking to navigate the tectonic shifts of the current business world. Through our events and community, you have access to exclusive content, workshops, and strategies that help you achieve more and stay ahead of what’s next. If you haven’t already, please consider joining our Ultimate Partner Community, where the most compelling leaders in the technology partnership. Thanks for being on this journey with us. Key Takeaways The three non-negotiable traits of a great partner are integrity in business, leveraging Microsoft’s investments, and possessing proven technical/sales ability to deliver solutions for customers.. Microsoft has restructured into two core divisions: Enterprise and SMEC (Small, Medium, and Corporate), with SMEC representing an estimated $600 billion market opportunity. The company has made its largest ever investment in partner training, financial incentives, and programs for the SMEC segment, viewing it as a major channel-led bet. A “Frontier Firm” must adopt an AI-first mindset, focusing on transforming customer experience, employee experience, business processes, and innovation. Early adoption of Copilot for employee experience is the fastest win, with one belief suggesting it saves employees 34% of their time on boring tasks. Microsoft has created a new Partner Sales Organization and an “outbound share” metric to ensure its sellers actively share opportunities and co-sell with partners in the SMEC space. https://youtu.be/xmUFSbk_IyQ I Ultimate Partner is the independent community for technology leaders navigating the tectonic shifts in cloud, AI, marketplaces, and co-selling. Through live events, UPX membership, advisory, and the Ultimate Guide to Partnering® podcast, we help organizations align with hyperscalers, accelerate growth, and achieve their greatest results through successful partnering. Key Tags: Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Transcript:: Transcript [00:00:00] Erwin Visser: I, I believe that when, uh, people start adopting copilot, they save 34% of their time. Yeah. Have, uh, and it’s, it’s the, and it’s the 34% that you don’t wanna do often. [00:00:15] Vince Menzione: Welcome to the Ultimate Guide to Partnering. I’m Vince Menzi, your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. [00:00:25] Vince Menzione: We just came off Ultimate partner live at Carahsoft Training Center in Reston, Virginia. Over two days, we gathered top leaders to tackle the real shifts shaping our industry. If you weren’t in the room, this episode brings you right to the edge of what’s next. Let’s dive in. Uh, I also wanna, I wanna invite another friend up on stage here. [00:00:49] Vince Menzione: Uh, he’s been at many of our events. He’s been incredibly supportive of our ultimate partner. And, uh, as many of you know, uh, Microsoft has been a sponsor, has been, uh, may have been the title sponsor for this event and for many of our other events, uh, over the last few years. Uh, incredible support from that organization as well and what we do. [00:01:09] Vince Menzione: And, uh, when I picked up the phone and I said, Irwin, I know you got a really busy calendar this fall, but we really need to hear from you. And one of the things I love about doing these is that we’re gonna have a very intimate conversation. Around what’s going on at Microsoft. And I hear this, by the way, I hear this from a lot of you, like, eh, we’re figuring out our strategy. [00:01:29] Vince Menzione: We got it with company B, but we don’t have it with company A or A and B. And so, uh, we’re gonna have a really great conversation today about Microsoft, about the tectonic shifts that have been impacting. The, the world and how Microsoft sees the world. So with further ado, Erwin Ser, my incredible friend, also from Florida, by the way, [00:01:53] Erwin Visser: first of all, Vince, uh, uh, it’s great to have you, uh, on stage after you. [00:01:58] Erwin Visser: Thank you, uh, after your recovery, I think, uh, thank you. A lot of people were shocked seeing what happened to you, and it’s awesome to be here. And the pictures of your daughter. Uh, sweating. So, um, no, very happy that, uh, we have, uh, this event with, uh, with all our friends here. And, uh, thank you. I’ve had a [00:02:15] Vince Menzione: lot of reasons to continue going on. [00:02:17] Vince Menzione: Yes. Uh, including, uh, I’ll just share this for a second. ’cause I, I haven’t shared this on stage with many people, but um, as they were driving me in the ambulance, I yelled out to the guy, I, I don’t remember very much, but I remember yelling out, said, I’ll be okay, honey. I’ll be all right. And then when they got me to the hospital, my wife called my daughter who was getting married in eight weeks from that day. [00:02:37] Vince Menzione: And I, I’m yelling out in the background, Hey honey, I’m gonna be able to walk you down the aisle now, meanwhile, my foot was, was, was broken in two places and I was in a cast and I went from a wheelchair to Walker to crutches. Uh, but I got, I was able to get up and I was able to get through physical therapy and, and do that within a fairly short period of time. [00:02:58] Vince Menzione: So, yeah. Yeah. Amazing grit. [00:02:59] Erwin Visser: Thank [00:02:59] Vince Menzione: you. Amazing grit. Thank you. Thank you. And, uh, you’ve had some things as well, so we, we share ailments kind of getting all Yeah. Yeah. This is [00:03:07] Erwin Visser: probably the real reason we we’re doing this shit thing. Correct. You’ve had multiple hip [00:03:10] Vince Menzione: replacements as well. Exactly. And now he’s climbing mountains again. [00:03:13] Vince Menzione: It’s crazy. Oh, yeah. I, uh, I wanna stay [00:03:16] Erwin Visser: busy as long as I can. Yes. [00:03:17] Vince Menzione: And for those who don’t know, uh, Irwin is. Has one of the distinctions that very few people in our world have been. You climbed a very important mountain at one point, not a couple years ago. Yeah. Maybe just share that for a second. We started, [00:03:31] Erwin Visser: yeah, I was, uh, yeah, I was able to, uh, climb Everest, uh, two, uh, two years ago. [00:03:34] Erwin Visser: Yeah. Uh, some of it, yeah. It’s, uh, incredible. It’s, uh, uh. It’s hard always to describe Everest because it’s, it’s almost every superlative you can use. It’s like amazing. It’s traumatic. Uh, it’s hard. Uh, the hardest thing I ever did. And so any, any excess, it’s kind of what, uh, what Everest was. Well, you talk about it like it’s these Oh yeah. [00:03:56] Erwin Visser: I was over, over at Everest. [00:03:57] Vince Menzione: Last week. [00:03:59] Erwin Visser: Yeah. No, this, uh, it takes some preparation and, uh, yeah. You, you do learn, uh, to know your own boundaries and your thresholds when you do something like that. Yeah. And, and, uh, yeah. I know we, we have so many topics to, uh, to go through, but one of the reasons for me. To try to climb Everest. [00:04:18] Erwin Visser: Was, was also kind of curiosity, you know, it’s the, had the, I was always intrigued by seeing the, as a, as a young kid by seeing the movies, read the books. And as I always ask myself the question like, would I be able to do something like that? You know? And so the curiosity of finding out where your, where your own like, uh, boundaries are, uh, yeah. [00:04:40] Vince Menzione: And I don’t wanna go down a path here ’cause we have a lot to talk about today. Yes. But I just will ask you one question. Do you think going through the, that whole process, did that, has that prepared you for the business world? ’cause it’s changing rapidly. Today we talk about tectonic shifts. Uh, there’s even changes within your organization. [00:04:57] Vince Menzione: Do you think having like that fortitude and that strength that you develop around that helps you? [00:05:03] Erwin Visser: Yeah. Yeah. I, I think so. It’s, um, like, it’s, it’s hard sometimes to describe, but it’s, I, I think professionally I. But also in my personal life, you, you learn really not to sweat the little things anymore. [00:05:17] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:05:17] Erwin Visser: Super. And you, you kind of cave up like a lot of things that maybe would be frustrated in the past or irritated. I, I became much more patient, but also like an an a no ca like attitude, like really focused on. Things that are important. Yeah. And be able to really put aside the, the minded details. I [00:05:35] Vince Menzione: love that. [00:05:36] Vince Menzione: I love that. That’s mindset, that’s maniacal focus. That’s, yeah. All those things combined. So let’s talk about it. Right. Uh, beautiful. About having you, we’ve been on stage multiple times together and we had this conversation like, let’s not do this slide. Let’s just have a riff today. I mean, you know, elephant in the room. [00:05:54] Vince Menzione: There’s been a lot of changes at Microsoft the last several months, and if you, if you’re not navigating and understanding all the changes, they’re all good. Right. There’s been a, but there’s been a lot of shift. Uh, big AI spends like over $120 billion in chips and data centers, right? Um, and then organizational changes in a big way. [00:06:12] Vince Menzione: And we can go through those individually, but maybe I’ll just turn it over to you to maybe share some of what’s happened and what’s changed. [00:06:18] Erwin Visser: Yeah, yeah. Let, let me start with the organization ’cause I think it’s maybe most, uh, relevant for the people in the room here. Uh, and it’s, it’s, uh, there were a few different steps here, but I think. [00:06:28] Erwin Visser: At the, maybe the most, uh, important for our partners is that, that we, we kind of like, like we, we created two different like divisions or organizational units. Yeah. One really focused on enterprise and one focused on what we call the S-M-E-S-C markets, small, medium enterprise. And, and the, I’m, I’m part representing the S-M-E-S-C, uh, business here at, uh, Microsoft. [00:06:53] Erwin Visser: So the. The, for SME and C, the, it’s really a big bet on our partner and our partner channel. Yeah. And we we’re making significant investments, uh, in, uh, not just in, uh, in our partners financially, but also through incentives, through programs. We, uh, we we’re making the largest. Training investment ever at Microsoft this year. [00:07:15] Erwin Visser: Uh, in technical skills, in sales, skills of our partners and, and really getting very close with our channel partners around helping our small, medium enterprises, anything outside enterprise Yeah. To really, uh, transform with AI and security. And, and so, and that is, uh, where we, we, uh, Ralph Halter is the, the new president of, uh, of our organization. [00:07:38] Erwin Visser: And, and he is, it’s, it’s really a big bet on our, on our partners left to right. That’s where we, uh, are all super focused on. [00:07:46] Vince Menzione: And, uh, without having an org chart and doing slides here, but, um, for people that don’t know, by the way, Ralph Hap took over for, what was Kevin Pi role, correct? Because Kevin been on stage multiple of our events. [00:07:58] Vince Menzione: And also this S-M-E-N-C organization, small, medium enterprise and corporate. Represents. If I had took a pyramid and we looked at it, maybe the top 9,000 organizations would be enterprise. And then there’s this huge chunk. That’s why we talk about the acre diamonds. Yeah. And layering it in is really because partners need that reach to those customers. [00:08:18] Vince Menzione: They’re all significant companies, by the way, too. There are a lot of big enterprise organizations there. Yeah. And then just so you know, it’s. It internally, it’s known as the fourth region. So you have America’s, you have emea, you have apac, and then you have S, M, E, and C. People sometimes refer to it that way as well, right? [00:08:34] Erwin Visser: Yeah, yeah. That’s, that fourth region changed with the, the latest announcements. Okay. Allon being the CEO Oh, that’s right, yeah. Of the commercial business. So we, we now, uh, in our organization chart, and I, I’ll, I’ll, I will not go too deep in Microsoft. Uh, structures, but, uh, Deb Cup is, is leading our enterprise business. [00:08:53] Erwin Visser: Okay. Uh, and Rolf, uh, is leading our SMEC business. Oh, they did? And they are next to each other. Oh, very nice. [00:08:59] Vince Menzione: Very nice. And Deb ran the Americas business prior to that, correct? Yeah. That’s great. [00:09:03] Erwin Visser: Yeah. And so for America, say, if you think about the opportunity and so, uh. Uh, approximately, uh, uh, only the top 7,000 companies in Americas, they are enterprise. [00:09:14] Erwin Visser: So everything else, else we call s, m, E, and C. There’s a, a lot of large corporations in that. Everything else. Yeah. Uh, that’s why we also started to use the word enterprise and not like SMB because that’s. Companies don’t wanna be a small business like everybody has like an, uh, an aspiration. So we, uh, we, uh, if we look at the opportunity for, for us as Microsoft, those of our partners estimated, uh, $600 billion. [00:09:40] Erwin Visser: And I know that’s a huge number, but it’s, it’s kind of, it’s, it’s out there in opportunity in the next period to really with AI transformation. So it’s, uh, yeah, significant, uh, uh, market. [00:09:53] Vince Menzione: So I’m slipping, I’m skipping through your slides. Yes. You want, and we’re, but we’re gonna talk about this. So, uh, I’m glad you mentioned about Judson as well. [00:10:02] Vince Menzione: So Judson’s role has in increased significance as well. Now he is now the CEO of the commercial business. Is that correct? Yeah. Is that, yeah. And what does that mean and what, what, how does his role line up with Satya’s role? [00:10:16] Erwin Visser: Yeah, so I think it was. Probably the natural next step for, for Judson. Uh, you, he, he has been the architect for our sales organization for our go to market for the last years. [00:10:28] Erwin Visser: And, and this is the, the, the next. Like, I would say evolution, where also Akashi and his marketing organization is now reporting into Judson. He also, uh, uh, some other operational, uh, organizations and he kind of oversees our, our, uh, our commercial business now left to right. Uh, and so keeping such a probably more opportunity to, to think about the innovation Yeah. [00:10:51] Erwin Visser: And what it really means, not just for Microsoft to become Frontier. It’s, it’s, uh, one of the. Terms we have been using also around our, uh, our AI days, but also, uh, what it means for our partners and what it means for our customers. Yeah. At this, uh, this AI transformation, [00:11:07] Vince Menzione: we’re gonna talk, we’re gonna dig in on Frontier in a second. [00:11:10] Vince Menzione: I, I, by the way, I apologize. We’re gonna, you’re gonna see these slides later on from an, from Matt Berg who’s gonna be up on stage. So you’re not gonna miss some of this, and it’s all in the decks that we’ll share. But we wanna dig in on the conversation here, reference here. And the other thing I, I also think about. [00:11:25] Vince Menzione: Uh, frontier. One of the other changes that were made to the ISV organization, the Software Development Corporation Organization Yes. Yep. Was a, was an additional focus. On. This is where I think the Satya conversation comes in with the, uh, the LLMs, the chip manufacturers and sort of the startups that are very focused on ai. [00:11:46] Vince Menzione: Right. So that’s maybe an area where Satya is gonna spend more time. Yeah. Versus Judson on the core business, the commercial business. Is that what you Yeah, no, that’s [00:11:53] Erwin Visser: a hundred percent. Uh, and the, and I think this is always the ever, its, uh, so I’m, I’m aging myself now. I, uh, I started, uh, working, uh, uh, in it in the early nineties, or the middle nineties I should say. [00:12:06] Erwin Visser: And so the, so I was kind of still the tail of the PC revolution or the client server. And then we had internet and like we have a, we have seen a couple of those transformations and I, I think what’s. It, it always feels that we, um, overestimate the impact in the first two years and we underestimate Yes, the longer term impact and the changes in the markets. [00:12:31] Erwin Visser: So true. And, and so and so, like if you. If you would be an, a betting man in the nineties, and you would’ve put all your money on, say, companies that just came up there, like Google, uh, Amazon, uh, you, you probably would, would not be sitting here, but maybe living on the yacht in, uh, in the medi. But so do you, do you have the, and this will happen again in 15 years from now, there will be brands that will be top 50 companies in the world. [00:12:58] Erwin Visser: That currently don’t exist or are maybe in a startup phase? Yes. Uh, because AI is gonna create this, this transformation, and I, I think what makes Microsoft’s, uh, pretty unique is that we were able to like go through three or four of those transformations successfully. And, and so I think, uh, understanding what AI really means and what’s at it’s, it’s. [00:13:21] Erwin Visser: But I sometimes think it’s funny. It’s like we talk a lot about the AI transformation that is that what it means for our customers? I think as Microsoft even and, and with our partners, we should probably spend also some time around what AI transformation means for us. Uh, ’cause we also know that our business will be different in five years from now, 10 years from now. [00:13:40] Erwin Visser: Yes. But I think having that, like having that innovation mindset is gonna be very important for Microsoft and other companies in this market to really. So, so five the next, uh, 15 years successfully. Yeah. And [00:13:54] Vince Menzione: there’s a genesis story here for those who I, I, most people might know this, but I wanna point this out. [00:13:59] Vince Menzione: So chat GBT, November, 2022 comes out like outta nowhere. Yes. But what we didn’t realize was that Satya was in the room making a lot of these things happen five years earlier and leaned in in a big way. To chat, GBT, data centers, resources, all kinds of things, and leaned in with the company and also was the first one, I will say this, uh, even with AWS in the room and others, uh, leaned in, some of the other organizations were flatfooted. [00:14:29] Vince Menzione: Microsoft leaned in, in a big way with co-pilot and with other technologies before others were really advancing on ai. And so I think the natural progression of that is this frontier firm because what you’re, what you’re demon, what you’re saying. To each of us is we all need to lean in as well. Right. So take us through that. [00:14:47] Vince Menzione: What, what does it mean to be a frontier firm? [00:14:49] Erwin Visser: Yeah. Yeah. It’s the, a frontier firm is really to start thinking like AI first and, and, uh. Uh, think about your as a company, and that is a statement for you as a partner, but also for your customer. Like, what does it mean for like your most core businesses that you, that you drive as an organization? [00:15:11] Erwin Visser: And then, and you have to think through like your customer experience. Like what can ai, how can AI transform your customer experience, your employee experience, and how can you, uh, improve the productivity, uh, improve the work that your, and, and also the, the wellness of, of your employees, eh, and take, take out all that, all that, that freaking administrative work and, and use AI for people to really leverage their creativity and their. [00:15:38] Erwin Visser: Uh, their impacts where they, where they wanna spend their time, uh, business processes. Uh, I think there’s a huge opportunity for agents to start really automating business processes and workflows. Uh, the, it’s AI and, and, and agents are kind of like developed as a, as a technology for, uh, for that opportunity. [00:15:57] Erwin Visser: And, and last not, but not least, innovation. Like, how can you leverage your opportunity to really leverage AI into your data, into your customer information, to start innovating you yourself as a company, innovate your services, innovate your products, uh, yeah, your, uh, your added value in the market. And so Frontier is really around. [00:16:20] Erwin Visser: Having an AI first mindset in those, in those four parts of your business and, and try to lead with it. And I, and I think what’s the, the biggest, uh, uh, opportunity or challenge is for a lot of companies is that where, um, in the past we, we have seen kind of like business inno, business led innovation, and we have seen it led innovation. [00:16:47] Erwin Visser: Arguably clouds was, at least for a long part, was like an it led innovation. Yeah. Um, AI has to start with business innovation, and so making sure that the leadership of the organization has like an AI agenda and an AI strategy. And then creating the, the, the discipline and the knowledge across the organization. [00:17:11] Erwin Visser: That means business users, business leaders, uh, developers, it to really adapt it. But it, it, often what we see is that it’s really starts with the senior management to, uh, to really adopt ai Yeah. As an, [00:17:25] Vince Menzione: as a strategy. And what you’re saying is you use the term customer zero at Microsoft. I used to use the term eating your own dog. [00:17:31] Vince Menzione: Food. Right. That was kind of like a, not a politically correct term, but that’s what you’re saying is you need to internally. Embrace, commit and apply across your business first, and then you can then help other organizations transform. Is that what you’re Yeah, that’s what you’re saying [00:17:48] Erwin Visser: with it? Yes. Yes. [00:17:49] Erwin Visser: And, and for partners and we, um, we spend a lot of time with partners also helping them to adopt, co-pilot, uh, helping them to adopt AI because it’s, it’s hard to, uh, if you are a salesperson or a technical person. And, and you wanna talk to your customer about AI transformation, but you are not using AI daily yourself. [00:18:08] Erwin Visser: You’re probably not really representing that technology. Uh, well, and, and so we, uh, as in Microsoft, we did a lot of like early education. ’cause even in an organization like Microsoft where, where you assume that all the employees have an innovative mindset, otherwise, why would you. Start working there. [00:18:26] Erwin Visser: Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s, it took a little bit of like, uh, time for us ourselves to a hundred percent adopt co-pilot, make sure everybody start really leveraging agents and co-piloting their daily life. So I, I think that is, that discipline is, is super important. Uh, what, [00:18:43] Vince Menzione: what are you seeing both internally and externally from the best of the best? [00:18:48] Vince Menzione: Like what do you, what what, what have been the nuggets of success you’ve seen like early adopting? [00:18:53] Erwin Visser: It’s, um, it’s a great question. I, I think the, the nuggets are really at the, the first big win for a lot of companies is like the employee experience. That’s the easiest. And we, we, we can show you, uh, and probably, uh, all the Microsoft presenters today, tomorrow will show you the, the, the specific stats, but I, I believe that have, when uh, people start adopting copilot, they save 34% of their time. [00:19:19] Erwin Visser: Yeah. Uh, and it’s, it’s the, and it’s the 34% that you don’t wanna do often. Right. And it thinks that, that the, the boring tasks, you can automate that. And it, it makes people available for much more added value tasks. So the, the productivity that you create by just rolling out co-pilot or co-pilot chat and having people left use it is, is huge immediately. [00:19:42] Erwin Visser: Yeah. And then the, the second phase is really. Around, uh, workflow agents where we see success and, and this can be, yeah. And I, um, if you think about an agent, like a lot of the, the work that you do with copilot is kind of like interactive. It is prompted and where agents are gonna be proactive and so they can start like automating a workflow or automating and um, and conversation in an automated way. [00:20:09] Erwin Visser: And so that’s the often the second one. And then, and then the third one is really the, the, it, it, it’s, it’s a theme probably over the last five years, but, uh, the opportunity with data. Yeah. Uh, where, uh, and, and a lot of companies still have a lot of data on-prem, and this is probably the still a huge opportunity for partners to help customers with their data strategy. [00:20:31] Erwin Visser: But when, when we start, when customers start leveraging analytics and AI on top of their data, always magical things start, yeah. Uh, happening. Uh, [00:20:42] Vince Menzione: well, and you also bring up a really good point. Most that data states gotta be clean, it’s gotta be governed, it’s gotta be secure. So, and that’s where some of the partners in this room come in, because what you don’t wanna have happen is somebody doing something errantly. [00:20:57] Vince Menzione: Like going in and finding out the CEO’s compensation for the year because they asked Yes. They asked chat GBTA question that, and that data wasn’t secured. [00:21:06] Erwin Visser: Right? Yeah, yeah. You’re you’re totally right. Yeah. That’s, by the way, uh, our most asked question or the first, um, I would say the, the, the, the. The concern that customers have by running, uh, by using copilot or Jet GPT. [00:21:22] Erwin Visser: ’cause there’s a lot of like gray AI coming into companies and that’s why we think we have a great offer with, with copilot chat and copilot it, uh, MT 65 copilot because you, we, we have the controls for data compliance and data management. And so making sure that people don’t have access to the data Yeah. [00:21:40] Erwin Visser: That they should not be able to see. And uh, there were one or two stories early on that I think, uh, shocked a couple of business owners. And so we, we, uh, this is probably one of our leading stories and, uh, the leading story of a lot of our partners is to make sure that we first of all may have the data compliance, uh, in place. [00:21:59] Erwin Visser: Yeah. [00:21:59] Vince Menzione: And we’re gonna have some other partners talk through some of their capabilities and, but what are you, what is your organization doing today? To, to enable those organizations to be frontier firms and to be successful implementing copilot, implementing AI technologies, a agents and, and security and governance of data. [00:22:18] Erwin Visser: Yeah. It, it’s, uh, uh, if I, if I think about enabling partners, I always think in, in kind of three buckets. Uh, first of all is like. Um, helping partners to build solutions that they can, can resell. And so, and this is often is, uh, we help them with solution building, with technical training, sales training, marketing training. [00:22:40] Erwin Visser: So it’s kind of the enablement of the partner to be successful and haven’t differentiated value prop in the, in the. Place. The, the second one, uh, bucket for me is what we do around go to markets and, and for people that work with Microsoft, you know, we have a lot of like investments that we put in markets with our partners, and we have program investments for pre-sales, for post-sales. [00:23:03] Erwin Visser: For, uh, for marketing, uh, the partners can, uh, can benefit. Uh, we have, uh, incentives in markets. Uh, we, we do all kind of like different investments in our, in our top partners. So we, we wanna make sure that they have an, an end-to-end goal, to market to be successful. And then the third one is really co-sell. [00:23:22] Erwin Visser: And when we, we talk about co-sell, we, we thought we are, we’re doing a lot of co-sell at this moment with our channel partners and we, we have created a, a news organization structure. Uh, against that. Uh, but we also talk about marketplace co-sell as a huge opportunity and, and especially with the announcements, uh, lately. [00:23:41] Erwin Visser: Uh, and there’s, so this. Co-sell, co-marketing is, is how we really help partner help Talk about the new [00:23:48] Vince Menzione: organization. You mentioned the Manu a new organization. What, what was that one? [00:23:52] Erwin Visser: Yeah, it’s, it’s the, uh, the partner sales organization. Okay. Yeah. We invested, uh, worldwide and the partner sales team that is really, uh, closely aligned with, uh, with our top partners and, and helps them on top deals, works together on the top deals. [00:24:06] Erwin Visser: So really helping, uh, make sure that. Our opportunities are shared with partners because in, we are a hundred percent partner based in the, in our market, but also make sure that we help our partners close their, their largest deals with Microsoft sellers. And are [00:24:20] Vince Menzione: these partner sellers across all of the operating models, or is it just in the channel model? [00:24:26] Vince Menzione: Is it across the enterprise model? It’s a, in the channel model. It’s in the channel model. In the channel. So you’re helping some of these channel partners to be more successful by providing resources to them. That are Microsoft badged? [00:24:38] Erwin Visser: Yes. Correct. Okay, that makes sense. And then also giving partners like early insight in opportunities that we have recognized. [00:24:43] Erwin Visser: And so one of the, one of the metrics of our own sellers in SME and C is there, we, it’s a technical, like a little bit of details now, but we call it outbound share, is like, are you sharing those opportunities with partners and are we doing, uh, co-sell on those opportunities? That’s have one of the key metrics how we look at our own sales organization is how many of the opportunities are being shared. [00:25:07] Erwin Visser: ’cause we, uh, it’s, it’s the, we really wanna. Build out and work together with our partners around this opportunity. That’s a huge [00:25:14] Vince Menzione: op uh, component by the way. ’cause I, I think people might, might have missed that, that, that, that is new and that is overlaying and supporting the organization in a bigger way on partners, which is really incredible. [00:25:25] Vince Menzione: Yeah, it [00:25:26] Erwin Visser: was, uh, our largest investment in headcounts starting, and we, we started our fiscal year in July. And our largest investment in headcounts, uh, was this partner sales organization. Yeah. [00:25:36] Vince Menzione: So Nina Harding has been a guest on the podcast. She lives actually five miles away from me in Florida. Uh, we all live in Florida. [00:25:44] Vince Menzione: Uh, my [00:25:44] Erwin Visser: long-term plan is to move Microsoft headquarters to Florida. I think it makes sense at this moment. It’s like one by one. It’s, [00:25:51] Vince Menzione: it’s a long trip, by the way. It’s a long, it’s a long journey trip from Florida to Seattle. But let’s talk, talk to me about how your organization is working with her organization, which is much more enterprise partners, ISVs, GSIs, uh, but, and Ben also supporting the Americas organization. [00:26:08] Vince Menzione: How does that all work together? Like how do you guys coordinate? Yeah. Most people here are Americas, so I would assume that would be in Nina’s. [00:26:15] Erwin Visser: Yeah. Uh, geography. It’s a great question and, and I, I think that, you know, there’s have a, if, if you have full of Microsoft. You know that we have been going forward and backwards and we had a single partner organization and we had a split partner, partner organization between enterprise and non-enterprise. [00:26:32] Erwin Visser: And we, we can go historically. Yes. We went a few times left and right. It’s like a pendulum. I, I think there’s. There’s, uh, there’s clearly pros and cons on both. Yeah. Um, I think the, the, the pro in our current organization is split as a partner team is that we, we really are very close to our, the market and to our sales organization. [00:26:57] Erwin Visser: So we have that integration that we can deliver. That is harder when you, when you are one central team, the, the con. And, and we talked about it a lot, is that, and we have a lot of our partners and probably a lot of you sitting in this room that sell both in enterprise and in SMEC. And so how do we make sure that you have one partner experience at Microsoft? [00:27:18] Erwin Visser: Yes. And not two different organizations. And so, um, I’m, I’m pretty sure we’re not a hundred percent perfect here, but, uh, we, we working very closely with Nina’s team and Nina’s organization. Nice. Uh, to make sure that we, we, we operate still as one partner organization. And we have one very nice, so that you don’t feel that you get like, boxed in into a certain business as a partner. [00:27:44] Erwin Visser: And if you, if you, uh, encounter that, please give me or anybody else at Microsoft in the partner organization feedback because we really wanna make sure that we enable you and be successful across those boundaries. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, it’s a, it’s, uh, and you sat [00:27:58] Vince Menzione: in that organization prior to your new role, which is more of a global role now. [00:28:02] Vince Menzione: Yes. So you know both organizations very well as well. Yeah. Which is good. Yeah, I live both, [00:28:06] Erwin Visser: uh, both worlds multiple [00:28:07] Vince Menzione: times. Probably multiple times. Yeah. I am going to open it up for questions. Um, do we have mic? Thank you. Susan’s got a mic, so if there are anybody that has any questions, I thought, you know, I’ve been asking all the questions. [00:28:22] Vince Menzione: Yeah. We wanna open it up to this incredible group of people here. I’m sure people wanna know like the inside story about how do I work with Microsoft. Um, Susan’s got a mic if anybody wants, if anybody has any questions and wants to raise your hand. Not that we’re putting anybody on the spot right now because we Wow. [00:28:40] Vince Menzione: No questions. We must have, we must be pretty good. [00:28:42] Erwin Visser: No. [00:28:46] Erwin Visser: Oh, there’s a question. [00:28:47] Vince Menzione: Oh, there’s a question back here. Here we go. Good. Do you have any else? Altitude sickness. Did you have any altitude sickness? Yeah. Uh, [00:28:55] Erwin Visser: yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s hard not to have altitude sickness. Uh, I assume you talk about est not by Microsoft. I live in Florida, but this is not that high. [00:29:06] Erwin Visser: Yeah, yeah. The, yeah, the, the, the. So, uh, you spent six weeks, uh, we spent six weeks, I, not everybody, but we had bad weather in the base camp or above. And base camp is, uh, 17,000 and a half feet, and so 5 6500 meters for people, uh, that are in meters. And so the, you have 49% of oxygen there. So you, like, you, you kind of feel, uh, let me say that in nice English, uh, you, you kind of feel not a hundred percent every day like you are. [00:29:39] Erwin Visser: You, you have all kind of problems that, uh, altitudes, uh, uh, lack of oxygen creates. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I can imagine. [00:29:47] Vince Menzione: That’s incredible. And the fact that we’re able to do it too. ’cause the weather sometimes impacts people’s ability to go their way, right? Yeah. [00:29:52] Erwin Visser: You know, it, it’s, uh, I think you also have to be lucky. [00:29:55] Erwin Visser: Yeah. And the luck is, uh, I always think luck is often an underestimated part of life, but, uh, especially when you climb Everest, you, you have to be lucky. ’cause the, the best climber can be hit by an avalanche. And then, uh, and mediocre climber like me can just be lucky and walk through them. So, yeah. Yeah. [00:30:13] Vince Menzione: Did you lose anyone on your trek? Yes, unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah. I’m [00:30:17] Erwin Visser: sorry to hear that. That’s terrible. Yeah, I know that that’s the, that’s the traumatic part is that, um, and I don’t wanna, uh, this isn’t, this is an optimistic event, so I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna trade. It’s fascinating. I don’t wanna be, uh, uh, uh, start this, tell sad stories here, but you, you get very close to debt. [00:30:36] Erwin Visser: Because you see dead bodies, uh, and we have unfortunately a fatality in our own team. Um, and so you, you, you start really. Feeling that had, uh, I had, uh, and my wife will absolutely tell me, uh, I had PTSD when I came back, uh, certain levels. That feeling just from being so intense for a few weeks that coming home it was very hard for me to relax. [00:30:59] Erwin Visser: I, I couldn’t sleep. I had. Yeah, so it, it takes like two, three weeks to really settle back in the, yeah. Yeah. [00:31:05] Vince Menzione: That’s fascinating. Well, I think it’s the incredible challenge in overcoming the challenges that are important here, and I think you bring that forward into this conversation as well. So thank you. [00:31:13] Vince Menzione: Yeah. I think we have one more question. We have question if we have [00:31:15] Guest Question: time. Uh, Rob Lawrence from Microsoft. I actually have a comment, uh, because you guys were talking about the importance of the data state with, uh, with AI right now. And I just wanna say like, it’s even bigger than you’re talking about because with Agen ai, we’re gonna have. [00:31:33] Guest Question: AI executing processes inside of companies. So it’s not only about data leaks and privacy, but it’s also like, are we getting the right results and and are processes being performed completely correctly? So I think that the partner community has a huge opportunity around data estates and securing them and making them. [00:31:53] Guest Question: Secure, functional, um, but also that, so that they’re training and grounding AI correctly. So it was a really good point to bring up, and I just wanted to like highlight it for the people in the room. It’s like super, super important. [00:32:06] Erwin Visser: Yeah. Hey, thanks for emphasizing that. I a hundred percent agree. Yeah. [00:32:09] Erwin Visser: Wonderful. We have another question. Yeah. Yeah. [00:32:16] Guest Question: Good morning. [00:32:18] Vince Menzione: I think you’re on. Yeah. Good morning, [00:32:19] Guest Question: Marion Breeze from User Lane. Um, and I just to, to add to that, you talked about the data estate. What about the software estate? We see software sprawl with software applications and the opportunity to consolidate that for customers where they can do so much more now with Dynamics, um, and other Microsoft tools. [00:32:40] Guest Question: And what does that look like for consolidating software? [00:32:43] Erwin Visser: Yeah, that’s, that’s a great question. It’s, and the. So there clearly there’s an opportunity with, uh, with AI to, uh, to modernize your, your software infrastructure. And, um, and we, we invest a lot in our dynamics product, uh, to, to help customers innovate. [00:33:00] Erwin Visser: Uh, CRM, uh, ERP finance. Uh, so that is, it’s, it’s absolutely an, an opportunity. The, you, you, you may have seen some, uh, comments in the past about SaaS. Is that or other, uh, statements? Yes, and I, I, I was kind of, um, uh, thinking that through, eh, is that, um, I, I think that there, there will be an opportunity in the future. [00:33:26] Erwin Visser: Or in the, now I have to say future. The future is now the future. Okay. Uh, to start leveraging agents and build AI agents to, to extend the life of, uh, your transactional systems. Because in, in a world where as an, where less and less people are going to use the UI of the application, you, because you get abstracted through AI agents. [00:33:53] Erwin Visser: You don’t have to rebuild the transactional system. If you want new functionality, you build it into the agent and you kind of. Go around the transactional system. Um, so yeah, there is, there’s gonna be, I think customers will have a, a choice in the future. And do I wanna invest in a new CRM system or do I build AI agents that built out the experience in addition to the CRM system? [00:34:18] Erwin Visser: Uh, while I said that, and I, uh, I was reflecting on that and we, in the, in the nineties, we talked about the end of the mainframes. I read a stat like a week ago that still, I believe more than 60% of the top 500 companies still use a mainframe. Yeah. More or less. Great. So it’s, it’s, and so this is one of those where yes, the opportunity’s there, but this is a, a thing that will be distributed in change. [00:34:44] Erwin Visser: Yes. It’s not that everybody will. Stop buying CRM and go to agents [00:34:49] Vince Menzione: because the data’s already there. Why we replace it, right. It’s structured the data, laid it out as foundational, and then you let, then you attach [00:34:56] Erwin Visser: it a hundred percent. Yeah. So it, it’s, uh, yeah, we’re, but there’s, I think there’s gonna be more choice and more opportunity to, uh, to innovate with AI and, and think about, uh, the, the lifecycle of a transactional system in the future. [00:35:10] Erwin Visser: Yeah. Very great. Thank you. [00:35:14] Vince Menzione: We’re good. We’re off time. We’re good there. Last one, last, last one I’ve been told. Okay. [00:35:19] Erwin Visser: What does a great partner looks like to you? That’s, whoa, that’s a great question, by the way. Uh, how come I didn’t ask that? Yeah. What does a, I, I think, um, what does a great partner look to us? [00:35:34] Erwin Visser: I, I think probably I would say, uh, the first part is clarity and integrity. Heck, so I, I know that, uh, we have some partners and we love them that are dedicated to Microsoft, and we, we love those partners, but we also love our partners that have multiple businesses. I, I think the, the, the clarity and integrity around where we work together. [00:35:58] Erwin Visser: And where we don’t work together is very important. Yeah. Uh, so that, that is, uh, one aspect. Secondly, I think, uh, partners that are really leveraging our investments and make sure that they, they have, uh, their specializations. In our technology proven like, uh, understanding proven impact at our, uh, our customers, um, and partners that, that, uh, leverage the investments in the, in the go-to market that we put in the marketplace. [00:36:29] Erwin Visser: Those would be my top three, like integrity in how we do business. It’s still a people business. And so we, we need that integrity together, uh, leveraging our go-to market investments and really ensure that you have the, the re the, the technical and sales ability to, uh, dr. Like, uh, proven to deliver solutions for our customers. [00:36:52] Erwin Visser: Yeah, [00:36:53] Vince Menzione: I love that. I love that clarity is so important. Yeah, we’re, we will talk more about it after the break actually. Yeah. But guess what? We’re at break time. Awesome. I wanna, so I wanna thank you. You’re an incredible friend. You flew up for this, for this event. You’ve been on the road nonstop. And your support and your organization’s support of us is outstanding. [00:37:11] Vince Menzione: And I just want to thank you [00:37:12] Erwin Visser: from the bottom of my heart for your friendship and support. Ah, thank man. Yeah, thank you very much. I appreciate to be here. You and, um, [00:37:21] Erwin Visser: I, I, I may put you on the spot now, but uh, maybe as an idea for the next Ultimate Partner event, I spent 30 minutes on Everest because I see there’s some interest there. I would love, yeah, I would love for you to do a keynote on that. [00:37:32] Vince Menzione: Yeah, I would love that to be a keynote for our event. Absolutely. You’re on. [00:37:35] Vince Menzione: You’re on. Alright. Thank you Irwin. Appreciate, thank you so much. We can leave that here. Thank you, sir. Isn’t Irwin great? Thanks for tuning into this episode of Ultimate Eye to Partnering. We’re bringing these episodes to you to help you level up your strategy. If you haven’t yet, now’s the time to take action and think about joining our community. [00:37:57] Vince Menzione: We created a unique place. UPX or ultimate partner experience, it’s more than a community. It’s your competitive edge with insider insights, real-time education, and direct access to people who are driving the ecosystem forward. UPX helps you get results, and we’re just getting started as we’re taking this studio, and we’ll be hosting live stream and digital events here, including our January live stream. [00:38:25] Vince Menzione: The Boca Winter Retreat and more to come. So visit our website, the ultimate partner.com to learn more and join us. Now’s the time to take your partnerships to the next level.

Unlock the secrets to explosive growth in the digital landscape!  Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Is your business ready for 2026? Welcome back to the Ultimate Guide to Partnering® Podcast. In this episode, Vince Menzione and Reis Barrie, CEO of Carve Partners, dive deep into the 12 most common pitfalls that can derail a successful Microsoft partnership. They discuss the misconception that Microsoft will simply send leads, the critical need for a dedicated partnership owner, and why a misalignment in sales compensation can be a recipe for disaster. The conversation also covers the importance of speaking Microsoft’s language, the proper way to leverage certifications and incentives, and the necessity of having a one-page plan. This is a must-listen for any organization looking to maximize its partnership with Microsoft by avoiding the mistakes that lead to stagnant growth and missed opportunities. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. https://youtu.be/p0mkz5C0JvU?si=RASwYNmZxHT0L_OH Key Takeaways: Microsoft acts as an amplifier for your efforts; you must be proactive and put in the work to see results. A Microsoft partnership requires a dedicated, full-time owner or team to manage its complexity. Misaligned sales compensation models can doom a partnership before it even begins by creating internal conflict. Partners must translate their value proposition into Microsoft’s language, focusing on shared priorities and seller incentives. Certifications and badges are a start, but their true value lies in leveraging the benefits and programs they unlock. A one-page plan is a critical tool for aligning internal teams and providing a simple, consumable reference for Microsoft sellers. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Join Us In Reston, Virginia, October 27-29th. As we enter the last four months of the calendar year, you are probably asking yourself, “What events should I attend this fall and why?” Many Partners and Leaders are trying to determine if the big events make the most sense and what they will learn. Many of these events are big and unyieldy, and while you may bump into some friends, you need to really ask yourself if they will help you achieve your greatest results – as a leader, as an organization, or as a partner. Our attendees tell us they get more accomplished in two full days than in most of the year at our events – they learn from Hyperscaler Leaders, Top Award Winning Partners, and the Masters. Learn from the best, meet the best, grow your business faster and further. Why Ultimate Partner is Unique An Ultimate Partner LIVE is like YOUR Masterclass. We begin with a view of “Where We Are Today” as the tectonic shifts are happening faster than ever before. Our first day sessions explore the advances in AI, Hyperscaler Growth, Marketplaces, Co-Selling, Ecosystem Led Growth, and more. These sessions are led from the leaders driving the discussions at Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, AvePoint Veeam Software, Carahsoft, Elastic and more. Bringing it All Together On Day Two, an Industry Analyst will bring it all together as our industry experts help you plot the future course – applying the learnings to maximize results. And, you’ll learn more from the Partner Technology firms, Partner Consultants, and others helping partners like you achieve more and walk away with over a million dollars worth of insights, learnings, and practical advice to apply to your business. In fact, we will have over 10 unique workshops at the fall event alone. The Executive Experience You will be in the room with other executives like you, or partner leaders looking to get to that level. Join us for a unique welcome reception and – if you’re fortunate – you’ll be joining our Executive Dinner. This event will feel more intimate than past Ultimate Partner LIVE settings. You’ll love the experience. Book your tickets today and get ready to join this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I look forward to hosting YOU this fall! Click HERE while time still lasts. Key Tags: Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Transcript:: REIS BARRIE AUDIO PODCAST [00:00:00] Reis Barrie: I’ve seen this really interesting trend, frankly, of lately, of people not only just not, not only going net neutral, but going. Uh, incentivizing it. Yeah. And so, absolutely. I think, you know, we’ve all been surrounded by a lot of these stats and, and facts about what partnerships drive, whether it’s, uh, access to more budget, access to more customers, uh, faster sales cycles, bigger deal sizes, all of these things. [00:00:23] Reis Barrie: Like, you hear these, you hear these outputs, and you start to think like, well, why wouldn’t I incentivize something that gives me that? [00:00:32] Vince Menzione: Welcome to The Ultimate Guide to Partnering. I’m Vince Menzi, your host, and I’m thrilled to welcome a great friend and an expert in the world of partnering to this podcast. Reese Barry is the CEO of Carve Partners. He’s been on stage here in in Boca Raton at our events, and he’s gonna be joining us soon at the next Ultimate Partner Alive Reese. [00:00:55] Vince Menzione: Welcome to the podcast. [00:00:56] Reis Barrie: Yeah, it’s always great to be here. It’s so good to have you back. Super excited to, to, frankly, you mentioned the event. I’m, I’m stoked to be there. Uh, I can’t wait. [00:01:03] Vince Menzione: Yeah, so, and you’ve been supporting us since day one? Yeah. In fact, from the very, I think this is number seven. On the events that we’re doing now. [00:01:10] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So incredible time. Yeah. Great to have you back. Yeah, great to have you back here in the studio. You’ve been here a few times. This is not, you’re a familiar face here to our, i, i viewers, listeners. [00:01:19] Reis Barrie: I am. Yeah. It’s great to be here, frankly. Yeah. It’s, it’s, yeah. Awesome studio. I always, I always love coming down here. [00:01:25] Reis Barrie: It’s, uh. Pretty quick drive for me too, so, well, [00:01:27] Vince Menzione: we’re gonna have some more going on. We’ll talk about that at the end. We’ve got some more things coming up in January here in the studio. We’re gonna share with you all soon. But today we’ve got a really incredible topic. You’ve been doing quite a bit of posting lately, by the way, on your own. [00:01:41] Vince Menzione: I [00:01:41] Reis Barrie: have been, yeah. Some really great content. I made some commitments to myself and so we’re, uh, we’re, we’re full steam ahead. I love it. Uh, sharing as many insights as we can, getting as much knowledge of the ecosystem as we can. Yeah. So it’s, uh, yeah, I’m super excited [00:01:53] Vince Menzione: and you’ve got a tremendous amount of insight. [00:01:55] Vince Menzione: You work with some of the top bias vs some of the top SDCs, as we call them now, software development corporations. And today we’re gonna spend some time talking about, we, we’ve always talked about like what it takes to be the most successful. Mm-hmm. But today we’re gonna roll over on that and say. About pitfalls. [00:02:12] Vince Menzione: We’re gonna talk about you, you call it the 12 pitfalls to successfully partnering with Microsoft. [00:02:18] Reis Barrie: Yeah. [00:02:19] Vince Menzione: And so I thought we’d start here, right? This is a, a set of 12. We’ll take, we’ll take our listeners through this massive opportunity for them to drive the greatest results. So the first one you have is Microsoft sending us leads. [00:02:32] Vince Menzione: And this is something I’ve heard many times mm-hmm. From organizations, they kind of expect it. But why don’t you take us through why, why that’s a pitfall and why organizations misunderstand working with Microsoft. [00:02:44] Reis Barrie: Yeah, a hundred percent. So, and, and even just to back, back up a like a moment from there is I would say, people always ask me what to do and. [00:02:55] Reis Barrie: It’s just as easy if not easier to say like, oh, just don’t do these things. Yeah. And you’ll naturally gravitate towards the things you should be doing. I love it. I love it. And so I, the concept of, of what not to do is frankly, something that I, I resonates with me. I’m probably learning more, more what not to do than what to do. [00:03:11] Reis Barrie: Um, and so, yeah, starting with number, like starting with the first one you mentioned, just like that, that leads conversation. And so, oh man, this is. By far the most common conversation I have when I’m first yes. Jumping in or starting with a, starting with a particular someone on the, like who has dealt with Microsoft less or they’re earlier in kind of their partnership journey. [00:03:31] Reis Barrie: And it’s often this, this, uh, resetting of the frame of like, well, what’s the value of a Microsoft partnership? And they went into it for whatever reason, with the assumption of, Hey, I’m gonna, I’m gonna list on marketplace. And all of a sudden, you know, this windfall of, of deals is gonna, is gonna, is gonna come towards me. [00:03:50] Reis Barrie: Um, and most of these times these people I’m talking to are like maybe recently or part of I v’s. Success, uh, leveraging some of the great value, they can’t get there. And they got published, they got transactable and they kind of just like. I’d sit around and like, wait. Um, so bad. Yeah. It’s un it’s unfortunate, but we reset that frame and, and, and it’s not about, um, it’s not about getting leads on the front end. [00:04:15] Reis Barrie: I’m not saying you never get leads ’cause you, you actually, once you start, start the flywheel and start the momentum, like you do actually get these things. Um, but it’s not where you start. It’s like it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a, that’s a very mature, um, part of the partnership. And so I often just, um. Talk about, hey, we have to be proactive. [00:04:34] Reis Barrie: So we list doesn’t mean anything’s gonna happen from that listing. We have to start being proactive in terms of what we’re actually doing. Um, and then just resetting the frame of Microsoft is an amplifier, like they are, you know. I use a lot of different metaphors in this one ’cause, try to make it relatable, but like we’re even us sitting here today, we have microphones, right? [00:04:54] Reis Barrie: Yes. If I don’t talk into the microphone, nothing, nothing actually happens, right? That’s right. The Microsoft, so if, if Microsoft is the amplifier or the microphone in this case, like you have to put, put stuff into it to amplify our voice. Yep. Right? And so Microsoft, that’s a, it’s a great analogy because what we put into Microsoft, um, comes out into the ecosystem amplified. [00:05:15] Reis Barrie: Um, and so. Um, it’s really on that front end. It’s about putting, putting things in, showing that you can win, showing the value of, of you as a company. Um. Starting to partake in different programs and different benefits of being a, a partner that now that you’re transactable, um, and then you start to see a lot of the, kind of the flywheel start to spin and then more mature stages, you start to do like more fun things with account planning and lead, [00:05:42] Vince Menzione: lead gen. [00:05:42] Vince Menzione: I also think it’s like a lack of understanding around how Microsoft works, right? Yeah. I had there, somebody posted something on LinkedIn about Microsoft not giving. Their partner’s leads mm-hmm. A while ago and I was thinking about it and saying that’s not, that’s not the way they’re wired as an organization. [00:05:57] Vince Menzione: Yeah. As well. They co-selling is really, we’ll talk more about the totally opportunities around co-selling, but they’re not just flipping you leads. Mm-hmm. It’s not like a lot of companies treat. Partners like the channel. Mm-hmm. And they push things out their way. Yeah. And that’s not near, that’s not the way Microsoft operates. [00:06:14] Vince Menzione: I think it’s understanding like the core of how Microsoft sales organization operates as well, don’t you? [00:06:20] Reis Barrie: Yeah. A hundred. And even in partnerships in general, like the, the concept of like, I’m a partner, so I get leads, is like, it’s a very shallow partnership if like Exactly. If that’s the, if that’s the expectation. [00:06:30] Reis Barrie: Um. It’s like that’s a, it’s a, it’s an output, but it’s, it’s, it’s one of the many, many, many outputs, frankly. Exactly. [00:06:37] Vince Menzione: Um, totally. And it’s something that’s, yeah, I’ve, I’ve heard it many times. I’ve heard it up being on the inside. Mm-hmm. I’ve heard working with organizations when I was consulting with them as well. [00:06:47] Vince Menzione: Uh, it just seems, it just seems to be the biggest, one of the biggest misnomers there. A hundred percent. But I think one of the things too is, let’s talk about another pitfall is you often say partners succeed. They don’t succeed without a clear owner. Yeah. And this is another area too, where people just like, like, okay, we have a partnership with Microsoft, but nobody’s owning it. [00:07:08] Vince Menzione: Who should own the Microsoft partnership from day one in the organization? And why does it matter? [00:07:13] Reis Barrie: Yeah, that’s a, that’s another really common one that we get really. Um, and so if, even if you take, take a step back from who, who should own it? It’s the concept of having an owner. So yeah, so often I, like I go in and I, it’s this person’s third job, this person’s second job. [00:07:30] Reis Barrie: This person’s like the back burner thing that they do on, you know, when they’re, when they’re have extra time on Friday. Um, and that’s like, that’s the results that come out of it, right? Yes. It’s, it’s the third, fourth priority of, of multiple people. And so. That’s what kind of, it shows very clearly not only to your results, but also to Microsoft, frankly. [00:07:51] Reis Barrie: Um, and so the concept is having an owner of somebody who wakes up every day, and that their, their role is to move the partnership forward is something that, um, if you’re committing to this, this, um, you know, this, this partnership, which is a behemoth of a partnership. They’re a gigantic, massive company. [00:08:08] Reis Barrie: Um, there is huge returns to be had by partnering with them. But you don’t account for the complexity of it requiring like a dedicated owner. Yeah. Like with, there’s, there’s a, there’s a paradox that with, with, with high, uh, with high impact comes high complexity. Yes. And Microsoft partnerships are not, they’re not necessarily easy by any means, but done. [00:08:32] Reis Barrie: Right. Generate significant revenue [00:08:34] Vince Menzione: and it requires that I talk about maniacal focus is one of the principles. And really when you start, when you back up from it, you go, okay, I need my entire organization to be part of this, and that means I need to get the technical team involved, product team involved. [00:08:49] Vince Menzione: I need to get marketing involved. I need to get sales involved. I need to get the executive leadership of the organization and I need to align all of my organizations to all of Microsoft. In a way that’s gonna make for a complete partnership. Right. Hundred percent. I think to your point, that’s, that’s a full-time job. [00:09:05] Vince Menzione: Oh [00:09:06] Reis Barrie: yeah. [00:09:06] Vince Menzione: And maybe multiple people and Thenso and maybe multiple people in the organization. Yeah. And it’s why they need organizations like Carv in order to be successful doing it. Right? [00:09:13] Reis Barrie: Yeah. And so, I mean, yes, I agree with, that’s the last, the car statement for sure. But the, uh, the, and it kind of brings back to the, the original question, which is like, where does it sit? [00:09:23] Reis Barrie: And so. Um, we have these like really strategic alliance teams that sit, sit with partnership. Yes. And usually I see partnerships sitting somewhere under like the, um, the revenue, like the revenue organization, whether it’s the CRO or, uh, VP of sales type of type of, um, structure. But that’s, but it is a dedicated person and or team. [00:09:44] Reis Barrie: Yeah. Um, that is, is there to drive a, a partnership channel, partnership revenue. Um, and frankly, this person. Has to be, um, they’re a quarterback across Yeah. Every department. Every department. So again, we’re gonna, I think we’re gonna talk about finance here soon. We’re gonna talk about sales, marketing, operations, product. [00:10:04] Reis Barrie: Like they have to quarterback all of these different departments across organization. ’cause when partnership, like, uh, partnership is truly, um, getting all of those departments to. Uh, lean into the, the needs of the partnership. Yeah. And, and align, [00:10:19] Vince Menzione: right? Yeah. So one of the areas you were talking about, like aligning, you’re talking about VP of sales mm-hmm. [00:10:25] Vince Menzione: Is this whole area around compensation. [00:10:27] Reis Barrie: Yeah. [00:10:27] Vince Menzione: People miss, they misalign their compensation models as well. Yeah. I think that’s one of the other pitfalls that you see. [00:10:34] Reis Barrie: Yeah, totally. So, um, I, I would say that at a baseline it has to be net neutral. Absolutely net neutral. At least. And so if there’s any aspect of like working with Microsoft or any partner for that aspect. [00:10:47] Reis Barrie: Um, feels like a detriment or attacks to me as a salesperson. Like that is a recipe for failure. Yeah. Um, that’s one of the few, there’s very few things that I say like, do not start, like, do not start until this is solved. Yeah. That is like one of the foundational things. Like, I, I do not recommend starting a partnership until that aspect is solved, because unwinding that distaste for partnership in your, like in your sales organization is extremely difficult. [00:11:12] Reis Barrie: If you start on a bad, bad foot and then you’re trying to. Pivot to a, to a good foot, it’s very difficult. Or, or taking [00:11:17] Vince Menzione: the, the deals away from the sales reps and saying, well, these are Microsoft deals, so you’re not gonna get paid on these and we’ll have our partner people do them. I’ve seen that happen as well. [00:11:25] Vince Menzione: And that, that messes things up. It [00:11:26] Reis Barrie: just, yeah, it, it leaves a really bad taste in, in your organization around, around partnerships. And so, um, that’s one of my first like non-start, like one, a few non-starters I should say. [00:11:36] Vince Menzione: So get compensation, right. At least. So get it right. And then [00:11:39] Reis Barrie: I’ve seen this really interesting trend, frankly, of lately, of people. [00:11:42] Reis Barrie: Not only just not, not only going net neutral, but going. Uh, incentivizing it. Yeah. And so, absolutely. I think, you know, we’ve all been surrounded by a lot of these stats and, and facts about what partnerships drive, whether it’s, uh, access to more budget, access to more customers, uh, faster sales cycles, bigger deal sizes, all of these things. [00:12:02] Reis Barrie: Like, you hear these, you hear these outputs and you start to think like, well, why wouldn’t I incentivize something that gives me that? Exactly. Um, and I’m starting to see a lot of companies start to, yeah. Actually incentivize the marketplace transaction or incentivize the, uh, co-sell deal for their own reps as well, similar to how Microsoft incentivizes their reps. [00:12:19] Reis Barrie: Which [00:12:19] Vince Menzione: makes, makes perfect sense, especially when you’re jump starting a new, a new thing like marketplace. Mm-hmm. If you weren’t in marketplace before or it’s a new partnership. [00:12:27] Reis Barrie: Yeah. [00:12:27] Vince Menzione: Yeah. A hundred percent. So you mentioned another hidden area, a pitfall around finance. So could you dive in on that one for us? [00:12:36] Reis Barrie: So anytime we’re, anytime we’re jumping in to a, to a, to a supportive partnership, uh, with one of our clients, finance is the one we probably usually start with. Okay. Because they’re usually one of the harder stakeholders to, to, um, convince, to get aligned and convince. Um, but ultimately there’s like, there’s two main aspects that I’m trying to align with finance on. [00:12:58] Reis Barrie: Um, one is just the concept of private offers, right? Our customers are buying a different way. We’re receiving money in a different way. And so we’ve gotta make sure that we actually can receive that money and everything is like tied up so that that process is sound. Um, that’s like the less fun of the two. [00:13:14] Reis Barrie: So the more fun one is more related to, uh, incentives and benefits. And frankly, Microsoft pays their partners a lot of money. Yeah. Uh, when they align to Microsoft priorities. And it just so happens that Microsoft priorities often align with. Partners making money as well, selling their own solutions. So, um, biggest thing there is aligning with finance of, hey, when we earn these incentive dollars, they’re gonna come back to us. [00:13:39] Reis Barrie: We’re gonna reinvest in the partnership. Yeah. Um, and so, uh, frankly, we started working clients six months ago, or, or, or so, and, you know, across our entire portfolio, we’re in like the, the tens of millions in incentive dollars that we get from different various Microsoft incentives for our clients. And so this, that’s huge. [00:13:56] Reis Barrie: This, uh, huge numbers. Oh yeah. They’re huge numbers, especially this year. Um, yeah, some of the numbers that they’re throwing out there with, uh, these incentives are just, uh, crazy. I’ve never seen it. Um, and so they keep growing year over year, and I keep getting surprised year over year. Um, but with this particular client, we, uh, you know, we, we align with finance. [00:14:13] Reis Barrie: The money comes back to the partnership team and they. Uh, they paid for their Ignite sponsorship with that, which is a big bill for anyone who’s sponsored the night before. Um, they paid for their Ignite sponsorship with that funding. Um, they, they’re, they’re, there’s Reston. Yeah, I was gonna say people, people [00:14:32] Vince Menzione: use that, that funding. [00:14:33] Vince Menzione: They’ll be, they’ll be support the ultimate partner live event as they’ll, as there’ll be, there’ll be [00:14:36] Reis Barrie: resin sponsoring that. Um. And they, they, you know, obviously fund some of the work that we do for them and get a lot of Big R, big ROI on that. Yeah. And so the amount of. Um, you know, injecting the money back into the partnership just again pushes the flywheel back. [00:14:53] Reis Barrie: And so we wanna make sure we align with finance on both the, you know, they’re gonna receive money in a new way via like private offers or marketplace. And also they’re gonna start to see dollars come in from Microsoft. And we wanna make sure that that doesn’t just go to the bottom line. That it comes back to that flywheel. [00:15:07] Reis Barrie: You bring [00:15:08] Vince Menzione: up a really good point. First of all, the predictability of knowing it’s coming. Uh, always a factor too, ’cause like where did this money come from? What is it accountable to? And I’ve seen organizations put it on the bottom line. Mm-hmm. As opposed to attributing it to the right spot in the organization. [00:15:24] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And then reinvesting the money, as you say here. So I think it’s really important that organizations get that right. [00:15:29] Reis Barrie: Yeah. A hundred percent. Once it’s, once it’s at the bottom line, it’s very hard to get, like, it’s very hard to get it, get it back to the partnership team from that. So that proactive alignment just, uh, is a, is a must. [00:15:40] Vince Menzione: So this next one is near and dear to my heart as well because it’s about speaking Microsoft. That’s one of the pitfalls. Organizations don’t understand what sellers really want to hear. Yep. Right. And. We help them kind of get that training, that muscle. Yeah. Worked up in a way, but take us through that and what you see. [00:15:59] Reis Barrie: Yeah, so again, if you, anyone who follows me on LinkedIn or watched like my posts or my webinar, like almost all of my content is around this because, uh, yeah, I get, uh, I get the privilege to work with. Thousands of Microsoft sellers. Um, and, and there are [00:16:16] Vince Menzione: thousands, I think it’s 50,000 now. There’s tens of thousands. [00:16:19] Reis Barrie: And so I get to, I get the privilege to, I always understate numbers ’cause it’s hard for me to, no, no. It’s the amount, the amount of people that there are at this, at the company. Uh, and so I get the privilege to work with all these sellers. And then, and then, um, that means I get to hear the good, the good. [00:16:33] Reis Barrie: The good pitches. The bad pitches. Yeah. Uh, I get to hear a lot of these things. I get to hear what resonates and what, what doesn’t resonate. Um, and kind of pretty early on I kind of started identifying, hey, like these people are talking most about their product and I can see the, I can see the blank stairs on the seller’s faces. [00:16:50] Reis Barrie: ’cause, um, because their product is, the product is their language. And if there’s, that’s right. I think the latest number is half a million partners. And so if a seller can’t be expected to understand a half a million languages, no. Um, and so you have to be, you have to be that translator. And so you have to, you have to get it into their language. [00:17:06] Reis Barrie: And frankly, the partners that cut through the noise are the ones that do the best job at talking Microsoft. Yeah. [00:17:15] Vince Menzione: Translating to Microsoft, right? Yeah. [00:17:16] Reis Barrie: And so, and I’ll often say like, treat, like, just treat Microsoft like a customer. Treat your partners like customers, frankly. That’s right. Um, ’cause if we, if we, we would never dream of talking to, um, our customers in this like. [00:17:30] Reis Barrie: Internal jargon, technical language. We talk about, we resonate with, with what their needs are, right? And so we talk in their language. So it’s, it’s the same concept of Microsoft. They’re, they’re, you’re, you have to talk to them in their language. They understand what priority are you aligned to? How are you gonna influence their compensation? [00:17:47] Reis Barrie: Like, you know, how are you gonna make it easy? Uh. How is, how are you easy to work with, frankly? Like how are you [00:17:54] Vince Menzione: preparing for it as well? Right? Yeah. Because so many times these sellers are not well prepared. They don’t really understand, especially when you get to seller, to seller combat. And those sellers just really, they jump on a call and it’s like they’re winging it. [00:18:09] Reis Barrie: Yeah. [00:18:10] Vince Menzione: And they’re just going into their sales pitch. [00:18:12] Reis Barrie: Mm-hmm. [00:18:12] Vince Menzione: And they’re just expecting Microsoft to absorb it. Like a customer would absorb it. Yep. And then just take it and go, oh yeah, sure. Great. Mm-hmm. We can just go do this together. And. Being able to have that tangible conversation with Microsoft is so important. [00:18:25] Vince Menzione: A hundred percent. Yeah. [00:18:26] Reis Barrie: Just like you build scripts for your customers, like you, you have to build like what are your, you know, what are your, you know, your 10 go-to phrases of how we provide value to, to you. Like, have those, have those phrases just locked and loaded, ready to go? You, you jump on a call and it’s, and it’s, you know, this is how we as a partner or as your partner, um, provide value to you and make it easy to work with and this is what we need from you to, to be successful in this deal. [00:18:51] Vince Menzione: You almost want to create like a dictionary for your, for your partners. Oh yeah. Maybe you’ve already done some of that. We do, yeah. There you go. See, we do, whether it’s speaking call language, acronyms, whether it’s speaking language acronyms, or just the [00:19:02] Reis Barrie: translation of, of what, what programs they’re uh, involved in and what benefits. [00:19:07] Reis Barrie: They can do and how, how they’re aligned to their, to their priorities. Like, um, part of our like seller enablement and stuff that we, we do for our partners is, is really about I see. I [00:19:19] Vince Menzione: see an AI tool coming here somewhere. Oh, for sure. I’m sure. I’m sure. I’m sure there’s an AI [00:19:24] Reis Barrie: tool coming, uh, like a translate tool coming there for sure. [00:19:27] Reis Barrie: Microsoft translating. Yeah, I like it. [00:19:28] Vince Menzione: This next one is also another pitfall that I’ve seen quite a bit of. Um, it’s, it’s kind of like sitting back and bragging about your badges that you’ve got, your certifications. I’ll never forget, uh, doing some work way back, one of the big sis, big large si, uh, international si and all they talked about was their certs. [00:19:46] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. Like that was gonna be a reason why it was gonna be compelling for Microsoft to just jump and give them all their business. Yeah. Take us through that one. [00:19:55] Reis Barrie: Yeah. So actually, so that’s, I. Just very timely, uh, because, um, there’s the, um, certified software designations Yeah. Which are in Microsoft years, very, very new. [00:20:07] Reis Barrie: Um, very new. I remember just a couple years now. So, and if you rewind, you can just hear how much they are talking about them and the importance of them. Yeah. Which to me tells me that there’s a bigger, there’s, there’s even a bigger plan than what they already unlock. Um, if they’re, if they’re putting this much emphasis behind. [00:20:24] Reis Barrie: Getting them. Um, and so it’s, it’s, it’s, again, it’s one of those things that like, it kind of goes back to the like, um. If you build it, you know, they’ll come type of thing. And that being a bit of a fallacy in the Microsoft, Microsoft land. And so, um, just getting the certification doesn’t really do a whole ton if you don’t leverage all the, the levers that it unlocks. [00:20:42] Reis Barrie: And so, uh, whether that’s tapping into different incentives and benefits, that’s like, I would say one of the primary pieces of getting the certification. So not just getting the certification, but actually taking advantage of all the things that it unlocks from a partnership benefits standpoint. Huge. Um, as well. [00:21:00] Reis Barrie: Um. There’s different programs that you get to get to get to tap into, which might be like a partner reported. A CR is probably the biggest one where I, I, I see so many partners get the certification and then not take advantage of partner reported a CR, which is like. Just another, another value to stack it, put in your value stack when you’re talking to a Microsoft. [00:21:18] Reis Barrie: Um, and, [00:21:19] Vince Menzione: and for those that don’t know, that’s prac. [00:21:21] Reis Barrie: Yeah. Pricker Prac. Yeah. Parker reported a CR. And so ultimately for like, for a SaaS solution where the a, the, the consumption lands on your tenant, this is the way to ensure that the Microsoft seller gets that long tail consumption as well, not just the upfront, up, upfront component. [00:21:35] Reis Barrie: So [00:21:35] Vince Menzione: super important to the Microsoft sellers. So you gotta be able to handle that. Yeah. Because otherwise they, you’re ignoring, you’re ignoring where they’re gonna make money. A [00:21:43] Reis Barrie: hundred percent. Yeah. Um, and honestly, the partner report a CR is, is, um, this year particularly, they’ve made it, um, of course with any new rollout, there’s some issues, so I’m not gonna de deny that there’s issues with it this year. [00:21:56] Reis Barrie: Yeah. But, um, but they’ve made it, they’ve made it a lot easier for partners to report. And so that just means that there’s a, there’s an expectation from sellers that, oh. We’re being told it’s easier, it’s part easier. Partners, uh, must be reporting more of it. And so if we’re, if we’re eligible to do it and we’re not doing the thing, like that’s, it’s not a good, it’s not a good story to tell when you have the opportunity to, to take part in it and make that part of your value stack. [00:22:19] Reis Barrie: It’s, it’s, it’s a really meaningful piece. Yeah. Um, and it gets you [00:22:23] Vince Menzione: a lot more attention from the sellers. It does. [00:22:25] Reis Barrie: Yeah. It does. And I’m not, I’m not gonna ignore the fact that it is, it is a, it is a badging, it is to an extent a badging too. And so. Um, you know, you have, uh, Jamie Bain on here a lot. Yeah. And he talks about all the different, like touch points that part that that customers go through before they, at 28 moments. [00:22:41] Reis Barrie: Yeah. [00:22:41] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:22:41] Reis Barrie: And before they, I’m one of those people I, I show up ready to buy because I’ve already done my 28, probably 50 moments. Exactly. Um, and so. It does provide some, like a, an element of social proof for certainty for customers too, as, as, as it is, it is also badging, uh, but it is so much more than that as well. [00:22:58] Reis Barrie: So I don’t wanna discount the fact that it, it does provide that, that social proof on their marketplace as well to [00:23:02] Vince Menzione: customers. It does, it does. So this next one, number seven, is really important as well, and people. They overlook it in many respects. And it’s actually having a plan. Yeah. And having a very concise plan. [00:23:13] Vince Menzione: You talk about having a one page plan. Take us through that as a pitfall and why organizations need to pay attention here. [00:23:20] Reis Barrie: So this is, there’s a simple, there’s a, there’s a, there’s two pieces to this. Um, the one page plan, um. I stress the importance of it. ’cause it seems, it, it, uh, it is, is, uh, achievable, very achievable than like, if you were to say, have a 30 page plan. [00:23:34] Reis Barrie: Yeah. Um, but it does two things. One, if you have a one page plan, it means you actually have a plan, uh, which is the first checkbox that you gotta, you gotta, you gotta have. And so it’s a, it’s a, it’s an easy way to just make sure that you do have a plan. You are working towards something. Um, you have, you have some goals. [00:23:52] Reis Barrie: You have it where you, where you align with their priorities outlined. Um. We’re actually working towards something. So that’s like foundation number one is just check the box, have a plan. Yeah. The second one is honestly like you meet so many different personas across, um, Microsoft, that, um, you really want to have this like, you know, often these, sometimes they’re called like battle cards or one page or whatever it might be, but you really want to have this piece that just like, is a highly consumable, simplified version of if you do have this. [00:24:22] Reis Barrie: Maybe you have this 30, 30 page partnership plan with Microsoft that’s, you know, really in depth and all these things, but you really want to have this simplified piece that you can just, whether it’s handout or remember back to and talk to. Yeah. Um, because you’re gonna, you’re gonna, you know. You’re gonna go to Ultimate Partners and you’re gonna meet all these people, you’re gonna go to all these places, you’re gonna see these people and you’re gonna want to have like, be able to quickly reference back to what are the things that I am working towards in my partnership with Microsoft, and how do we align and how do we sell together, and how are we better together and all these different things. [00:24:55] Reis Barrie: And so we consolidate it all in one page so that we have this essentially that what feels like an elevator pitch of, of our, yeah. Why are we partners? What are we working towards [00:25:04] Vince Menzione: together? I’ll, I’ll add another layer to that ’cause I did this way back in the day too, is like, it’s, it’s also, it’s your rallying point with your executive team. [00:25:13] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. Yeah. When you give, do your, hopefully you’re getting in front of your executive team and doing a review on this is such an tangible, important part of your business. Totally. Uh, that you’re kind of, and, and you know, execs are not gonna sit, go through your 30 page plan, but you have that one pager. [00:25:28] Vince Menzione: And it identifies their area of the business as well. ’cause it’s gonna to have all the touch points in the business and what’s working and what’s not working. Yeah. And I think it’s super important you do that and you con concisely communicate with your executive team. [00:25:40] Reis Barrie: Yeah. [00:25:41] Vince Menzione: I I No more words ’cause you know, it’s perfectly said. [00:25:44] Vince Menzione: It’s ’cause it’s, it’s painful when it’s not working. It really is. It’s just painful. [00:25:49] Reis Barrie: It really is. Yeah. Um, yeah, the, the, that component and just. What are we working towards? Yeah. I always miss the people, like it’s a simple one, but it, it’s always missed. Like it’s just going through the motions without like, what are we working towards? [00:26:03] Vince Menzione: And I come back to, I come back to the internal victory all the time, Reese’s, because I’ve seen it so many times. And the CEO will say the right things. The, the executive team will say the right things. Mm-hmm. But. When you peel back, they’re not really, and when you’re talking about billion $2,000,000,008 billion companies, yeah. [00:26:21] Vince Menzione: There’s a lot more to carry in that relationship. Oh yeah. And you’ve gotta get everybody aligned the right way. It’s so important. Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. Good stuff. So, uh. You talked about partner center a little bit and about sharing referrals. Uh, you, you touched on this one a little bit, but this was number eight on your list of, uh, pitfalls. [00:26:41] Vince Menzione: Take us through this a little bit more too, because you were talking about a little bit about this. [00:26:46] Reis Barrie: Yeah. So when it comes to referral sharing, like this is the other topic that, yeah. Microsoft language and referral sharing. If you, if there was two things that I’d probably say a hundred times a month. [00:26:56] Reis Barrie: It’s, it’s, it’s these two. Um, and so. Yeah. Referral sharing is the foundation of most partnerships, but particularly for Microsoft partnerships, we’re like referral sharing back and forth. Yeah. Um, is just incredibly important. ’cause data is, like, data is essentially the foundation of this partnership. [00:27:14] Reis Barrie: Absolutely. And so, um. Not even getting to the point now where, like I’m saying like, you should be co-selling. You shouldn’t be co-selling, but just even if you’re not co-selling right now, like there’s a, there’s an option to share, share referrals that you’re not co-selling on. Maybe you’re not ready to share, like to actually co-sell. [00:27:29] Reis Barrie: You’re not mature. It’s not time yet, yet. Right. But just the act of getting referrals in into partner center is a huge. Has a huge impact on just showing Microsoft, like where are we penetrated? What customers are we talking to? Yeah. What industries are we, are we impacting? What’s the total, like, what’s the total, uh, area that we’re, that we’re, we’re working in? [00:27:50] Reis Barrie: Yeah. Uh, where, where are we strongest in terms of geography? Um, are we mostly this country? Are we most, are we global? Like it tells them there’s so many data, data touch points that it gives that if you either log nothing. Then they have no data to touch point off of, or they log or you log partial, then they have partial data and they’re assuming it’s full data, um, which is not good either. [00:28:12] Vince Menzione: I’ve seen people put too many in that were not even deals that they’re working with Microsoft on as well. [00:28:17] Reis Barrie: Yeah. That works against you. Yeah, it works That, yeah, that works against you as well. And so, um, there’s a, there’s just this, this need of, we need to log relevant, relevant referrals into partner center, um, because. [00:28:32] Reis Barrie: It’s how they make decisions. It’s how you show up on their scorecards, their dashboards. It’s how they make their decisions. And when they’re looking to, what partners are we gonna manage this year, they need, they need touch points and data, data to, to provide that. And so, so it’s [00:28:46] Vince Menzione: establishing your credibility with Microsoft as a hundred [00:28:49] Reis Barrie: percent. [00:28:50] Reis Barrie: Yeah. Um, and I’ll even, I could probably talk about this next piece all day, so I’ll just stay at service level, but, um. Microsoft is one of, if not the leading AI company in the world. Yeah. And like, if it’s, it’s, you know, there’s 28 touch points that Jamie Vain talks about. Like that’s, uh, I, I, I personally believe that that’s soon to be a lot of assessed by ai. [00:29:15] Reis Barrie: And so yes, if, if AI is looking at this, all of these different touch points and referrals happens to be one of those touch points, um. You want to show up? Well, yeah. [00:29:26] Vince Menzione: Um, you wanna show up really well? Really good point. So the next one, which we’re, we’re up to nine already, by the way. We’re almost, we’re almost through the list of 12. [00:29:35] Vince Menzione: So hopefully you’re watching Yeah. And listening and paying attention and rewinding. Yeah. Uh, this one is about treating all deals as co-sell deals. This one is interesting to me ’cause I think, I think people like over pivot in some respects towards co-selling. I think so too. Yeah. So tell us about that one. [00:29:51] Reis Barrie: It was super timely ’cause I just literally had a conversation yesterday with, uh. I, I won’t, I won’t end the company, but very, very large, very established, uh, organization. And as we were doing a workshop with them, and I, okay, like how many, you know, how many deals do you share? Why don’t we share about a, you know, I think it was about a thousand a year or something like that. [00:30:10] Reis Barrie: Yeah. Um, okay, great. Like what’s your, how many, how many of those are co-sell? Well, we actually, all of them, so. That’s a lot of deals to expect [00:30:19] Vince Menzione: to be co-sell. Super [00:30:20] Reis Barrie: fascinating. So one, like, I don’t even think they could take a thousand calls if they, if they had, if they, if they booked calls with every single seller, like a thousand calls, that’d be a lot. [00:30:28] Reis Barrie: Like, that’s a lot. I, I doubt they could even scale to that, that amount. Uh, so it’s, part of it is, can you scale to that? Another piece is like, where do you actually need help? Um, exactly. You know, they’ve been around for 50 years, like. Yeah, I, I have full confidence in this particular example. Like they, they can sell a lot of their solutions by themselves. [00:30:46] Reis Barrie: Yeah. They don’t need Microsoft at all. And so, but there are, there are three to five really valuable use cases where we, they really do truly need help on co-sell. And so when you, when you put everything as co-sell, but not, but you don’t actually need true help on everything, uh, it dilutes from the fact of where you actually do need help from. [00:31:04] Reis Barrie: And so, um, when we identify. When we come into some of these, some of these places who are sharing everything as co-sell, we wanna identify, okay, one, like what’s your capacity to actually to take calls? Because if I book, if I book 50 calls this week for you, like are you gonna be able to do it or not do it? [00:31:21] Reis Barrie: Um, and some people have giant, giant teams that can do it and some people just can’t. So what’s the actual capacity to do that? And that’ll dictate. How much we can actually, uh, look at. And so, and then we look at what are the three to five like use cases that are really high value for you to talk to a Microsoft seller where you have a really good, uh, case to talk to a Microsoft seller. [00:31:42] Reis Barrie: So, uh, we’re going there with actual, like, we need this type of support, not just going there and say, oh, I just, I want to, I wanna talk [00:31:48] Vince Menzione: about this customer. Um, and it, it makes the impact so much greater if you pick the 1, 2, 3, whatever the number is and where you really need help. [00:31:58] Reis Barrie: Yeah. [00:31:58] Vince Menzione: Totally. I need to reach the CIO. [00:32:00] Vince Menzione: Yeah. I need to have this conversation. I need Microsoft to really like lean in on, on our relationship. ’cause my competitors are in there as well. What, whatever that might be a hundred percent. But if you try to do that across a thousand deals, you’re not gonna get the support. Yeah. You’re just not gonna, it’s not gonna happen. [00:32:15] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:32:16] Reis Barrie: So we’re just, we’re trying to create like. As many positive experiences between the partner and the MI and Microsoft seller as I possibly can. And so, uh, there’s al it’s very rare that I’ve seen where someone can create, like truly needs that much value from Microsoft seller. And there’s a great, great cause for that. [00:32:33] Reis Barrie: So when we, when we narrow down, we actually create more positive experiences, actually come, it comes back to the lead situation, which create more positive experience of easy to work with, high value partner. Um. Then actually like, then you start to get into some interesting like account planning type stuff. [00:32:48] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Um, those are fun. Yeah, those are fun. They’re, so this next one, number 10, talks about rewards and incentives. And we, we, you were touching on this earlier about like, there’s so much more out there right now with Microsoft, but, and it could be rocket fuel, but not using them effectively, underusing them. [00:33:05] Vince Menzione: Where should partners start? [00:33:07] Reis Barrie: Yeah, so we, we’ve already, uh, we’ve already established the, uh. Don’t put it at the bottom line. Yeah, that’s the, that’s, that’s a bad one. That’s where you establish what not to do. Yeah. Uh, we’ve also established to tell finance it’s coming ’cause uh, probably one of the worst situations I ever had to try to work with a partner on is where they didn’t tell finance it was coming. [00:33:26] Reis Barrie: They don’t know it’s there. Uh, finance thought it was a mistake and sent it back to Microsoft. Oh. And so not good. Once you send it back to Microsoft, they’re not gonna, they’re not sending it back. It’s, it’s not gonna come back that easily. And so we’ve already established those with, those are two things that we wanna make sure we’re aligned on and not doing. [00:33:42] Reis Barrie: Um, but in terms of like what we, what we, what we are doing, um, anytime we can use it as a, uh, pre-sales or post-sales incentive to get a customer to either, uh, commit faster or buy more. Um, these are, these are good use cases. Um, anytime we can, uh, take it back in-house and, um, re uh, reinvest in the partnership. [00:34:07] Reis Barrie: That’s, those are good use cases. I’ve seen partners where they’ve actually used some of the funding to, um. You know, be like their, uh, actually their Quest customer swag bucket where they’ve sent, like, they keep, they kept customers on like a swag list and, and used all the incentive money from Microsoft to keep the, keep the funnel going of, of any co-sell deal. [00:34:27] Reis Barrie: Got got a particular like swag package. I love it. I love it. And so you can do some fun, you can do some fun stuff with it, but ultimately it comes back to. Um, how are, how are we reinvesting it? Either you can reinvest it into headcount, you can reinvest it into events, you can reinvest it into, uh, co-marketing or just marketing to generate leads. [00:34:44] Reis Barrie: People say Microsoft doesn’t gimme leads, uh, they give you a lot of money and you can use that money to get leads. That’s right. Um, and so, uh, the fundamentals come back to, um, how are we using it to. Move the flywheel faster and faster and faster because, um, reinvesting it back into the partnership. And, and there’s many ways you can do that. [00:35:07] Reis Barrie: Um. I’ve, I’ve seen that be the exponential growth that partners are like really looking for. [00:35:13] Vince Menzione: And you mentioned earlier, I’ll reiterate it now, that there’s a lot more money coming back to partners now than ever. Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s actually, it is a factor by of 2, [00:35:24] Reis Barrie: 3, [00:35:24] Vince Menzione: 4. What do you think the factor is? [00:35:26] Reis Barrie: Um, so I would say the, um, this is a, you put me on the spot, so I’m gonna give you on the spot rough number. [00:35:34] Reis Barrie: I love it. So I would, I would give it like a. Uh, from numbers we’re seeing like we’re able to, to pull in probably three x the amount X that we did last year. Three [00:35:42] Vince Menzione: x. You’re that partners. Yeah. It’s time. It’s a lot, it’s time. [00:35:45] Reis Barrie: Um, but, but also get it right, its. It’s easier. Yeah. Um, in many aspects to, to acquire the, the funds ’cause it is getting, it is getting easier. [00:35:54] Reis Barrie: And then the bucket of funds is either like, uh, caps are getting raised or removed. Uh, new programs are getting added to either like where post-sales, maybe it was just a post-sales program before, now there’s a pre-sales component to it as well. Nice. Um, and, and just different aspects are getting, uh. [00:36:13] Reis Barrie: It’s getting easier to, it’s getting easier to pull it in. Um, and it’s getting into bank accounts faster. Yeah. Frankly, in many ways. [00:36:21] Vince Menzione: So we’re up to 11. I can’t [00:36:22] Reis Barrie: believe it. [00:36:23] Vince Menzione: Up to 11 already. We’re gonna go through ’em one more time at the end. Yeah. [00:36:26] Reis Barrie: Can’t believe it. This [00:36:27] Vince Menzione: one is, I wanna ask you that this one partners scale. [00:36:29] Vince Menzione: What’s the first thing that breaks. Ooh, usually operations. Operations usually. Um, [00:36:35] Reis Barrie: yeah, it’s usually operations. ’cause we’re like, um, yeah, we’re, we’re, it’s like a lot of pill folks are sales and marketing focused and so it’s, it’s a lot of times the operations, the piece that I see that, that get overlooked and so, yeah. [00:36:45] Reis Barrie: And it gets [00:36:46] Vince Menzione: overlooked sometimes early in the process too, right? It, they’re not maybe pulled in as quickly as they should be. [00:36:51] Reis Barrie: Yeah. It gets, um, I’ve seen too many partners, uh. Scale a bad process. Yeah. And so they have a really, like, they have a really, like a, a, a process that’s meant for, um, you know, five deals a month and then there’s scale to 50 deals a month, and they try to use the same process and that that just doesn’t work. [00:37:10] Reis Barrie: Um, ’cause it just amplifies all the flaws that the process had in the first place, um, with lack of process, uh, in the first place. And so, um, and frankly like the, that’s the, those are the foundations that everything gets built off of. And so this operational. Um, this operational backbone of how are we managing the partnership? [00:37:29] Reis Barrie: How are we making sure that we’re, you know, if there’s 30 things we have to look across over the course of the year, how do we make sure that we have rhythms built in the business where, you know, somebody is accountable and owning that component. Yeah. Um, how do we make sure that we have, um, the right. [00:37:45] Reis Barrie: Things built into our serum system to be able to pull, pull accurate data in terms of like what we actually want to co-sell on. Um, and so we wanna make sure we have all these kind of, these operational backbones and rhythms built so that when we do scale from five to 50 to a hundred to whatever the number may be, um, that the process can scale with us and it’s gonna evolve over time. [00:38:07] Reis Barrie: But ultimately, like. Uh, we wanna make sure that it’s, it’s a front of mind thing that we’re actually Yeah. Looking at. [00:38:13] Vince Menzione: So get rev ops involved early. [00:38:15] Reis Barrie: Yeah. [00:38:15] Vince Menzione: Rev ops is a huge component, a huge part. Getting, get ’em in, integrated into your process. Uh, c you mentioned CRM system. You’ve got a, you’ve got a. Kind of break your CRM solution to support the partner Yeah. [00:38:27] Vince Menzione: Org. And there’s a lot of that that needs to then go into partner center that you Yeah. You help organizations through, but you really gotta get that rev ops piece. Yeah. The s and, and two [00:38:36] Reis Barrie: factors too. Not only, uh, not deal, not only deal sharing, but also, uh, uh, private offer management as well. Yeah, exactly. [00:38:43] Reis Barrie: And so they have to, they have to be able to manage both. So such a big component. If you can, if you can sell a hundred deals and you can cost a hundred deals, that’s, that’s one thing. But if you can’t, if you, if you have no process to actually share the private offers, that’s a totally different problem. [00:38:56] Reis Barrie: Yeah. So we want to, we need to make sure we’re building both in parallel [00:38:59] Vince Menzione: and we’re not gonna get into the whole marketplace dynamics here, but it’s super important that you understand that these organizations are sometimes burning down their commitment, which means you need to get rev ops involved in that process so that they can properly burn down the commitments. [00:39:14] Vince Menzione: And attribute it and so on. So that’s part of the rev ops components of it as well. [00:39:19] Reis Barrie: Yeah. Yeah. And it just, the reading the stat, these 80% of enterprise companies are buying through, like through marketplaces right now. Yeah. And so this is like a, yeah. Um. It is quickly becoming a a, it is quickly becoming and will continue, I think, to become a customer preference in many, in many cases. [00:39:37] Reis Barrie: And so [00:39:38] Vince Menzione: I love it. ’cause two years ago nobody was talking about it. I know. We, we, we started talking about it at our events and trying to encourage organizations to go this route. So it’s so, it’s so great to see. It is really cool. It’s, yeah, it, [00:39:48] Reis Barrie: it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, we get to watch like kind of, uh, from a different perspective. [00:39:53] Reis Barrie: A, it’s crazy. A lot of people kind of jump in either midstream, but seeing, seeing how things play out over a period of, um, you know, multiple years. Yeah. Um, is always, it’s just an interesting perspective. So like. To look at things about. It’s ’cause we’re [00:40:04] Vince Menzione: on a rocket ship. It’s a crazy, crazy time in our industry and we are on a rocket ship. [00:40:09] Vince Menzione: So this last one is near and dear to my heart as well. Right. So you talk about the feedback loop, the communication loop, we always talk about communications almost being like the eighth principle of successful partnering. Mm-hmm. Yeah. We’ve talked about it. In fact, super important. One of the articles we wrote, it actually was in their communications being important. [00:40:25] Vince Menzione: What happens when partners fail to build good communication loops or feedback loops with Microsoft? [00:40:32] Reis Barrie: It just, uh, the quick answer is just they go, the partnership goes stagnant. Yeah. Um, goes to hell on am starts. Yeah, it does. It starts to stall out. Yeah. But like, uh, uh, it’s a funny, it’s a funny concept ’cause even the word partnership like implies deep communication, deep feedback loops, like working in, working in partnership with each other. [00:40:54] Reis Barrie: And so like, it’s, it’s naturally just implied in the term that we’re talking about. Um, but so many times I see, like, I just, I see the, uh. The partner who is like dying to become a managed partner, got like, got the PDM, did the whole thing, and then like now it’s, uh, you know, oh, I can’t make, I can’t make this call, I can’t make this call. [00:41:13] Reis Barrie: I can’t make this call. I’m just like, okay. Like that’s not good. This is, this is, this is the start of the end right here. Yeah. Because the moment you start to deprioritize, like the rhythms and the communication and the feedback loops, um. Things go south really fast because your ROB, [00:41:29] Vince Menzione: your rhythm of the business. [00:41:30] Vince Menzione: Yeah. By the way, if you, that’s a big Microsoft term. Huge one. Huge one. And I, you know, we, we’ve, we’ve talked about it before this, the whole idea about like having a very strong rhythm, rhythm of your business with Microsoft. Yeah. This is so critical to success. I talked about the Kumbaya meetings, right? [00:41:47] Vince Menzione: We’d have, we’d have these big meetings. PowerPoint slides, executives lining up on both sides of the table. Yep. We all like high five each other at the end. I’ve crickets. And then of those, and then crickets, nothing happens. That is su such a recipe for failure, as you say in number 12 here, not not having a feedback loop. [00:42:04] Reis Barrie: Yeah. Yeah. So no feedback loop and the rhythm of the business. I can’t, I can’t emphasize that enough because that’s [00:42:09] Vince Menzione: so what’s a good rhythm? Is it a monthly call? Is it. [00:42:12] Reis Barrie: Um, let’s see. It depends on who you can, who you can, who you can plug in with. But if you have a PDM, then weekly or biweekly, frankly, is, is a great, great cadence. [00:42:22] Reis Barrie: Um, talking through, um, pipeline incentives, uh, upcoming events. Upcoming what upcoming. Programmatic shifts and things like that, making sure we’re staying, uh, in pace. Um, some partners are part of different, like partner councils, which are great feedback loops as well, uh, to be able to influence whether that’s solution areas or marketplace or partner center. [00:42:43] Reis Barrie: And there’s different partner councils as well. So we can, if you can work your, say you work your way into one of those, like those are honestly great feedback loops, uh, as well. Um, but again, like it’s, uh, it’s a, um. You gotta show up. Yeah. Um, I love it. It’s, you gotta show up. I’ve, I, I harp on this because I see it, so I see it so often where you want it, like, partners wanted something so bad now that they, now that they have it, like it’s, it’s now we’re, we’re starting to get complacent in certain areas and it comes back kind of to that, uh, I think number two, which was having owner. [00:43:16] Reis Barrie: Yeah. Um, and so. I’ve also seen organizations where they have like an owner, but the owner also manages, you know, eight other partnerships within the company and, and can’t give enough time to this particular one. Or misses meetings ’cause it’s, you know, during a month or at events and, and, and different conferences and whatnot. [00:43:34] Reis Barrie: And you know, don’t talk to Microsoft for a month. It’s long time not talk to your partner. [00:43:39] Vince Menzione: Reese, this is so valuable. Again, I’m gonna tell you all, go back, rewind this. If you’re on YouTube, you just move that little bar back and hit play again. But it’s expecting Microsoft to send you leads. It’s no, that’s number one. [00:43:53] Vince Menzione: It’s no owner for Microsoft Partnership. Number two. Misaligning compensation models. Three. Finance isn’t ready. Number four, weak Microsoft specific messaging. Number five, certification as a logo. Number six. Mm-hmm. No one not having a one page partner Plan number seven, not sharing referrals in partner center. [00:44:12] Vince Menzione: Number eight. Not treating, uh, or treating all deals as co-sell deals. Number nine, underusing rewards and incentives. Number 10. Scaling without ops ready, being ops ready, number 11 and no feedback loop with Microsoft. Number 12. Yeah, Reese, you just hit the nail on the head, man. This is incredible. [00:44:31] Reis Barrie: Awesome. [00:44:31] Reis Barrie: It’s, yeah, all my passion. Yeah, so I love talking through these. I, I love talking through these and if [00:44:35] Vince Menzione: you’re lazy or if you really want to get. Deep in this come to our event October 27th through the 29th Reston, Virginia. It is not a public sector event, by the way. I just wanna be clear on this. ’cause a lot of people said, oh, you’re doing a public sector event? [00:44:49] Vince Menzione: No. Mm-hmm. Just, we picked the East Coast location being Washington, DC Yeah. Reese is gonna be doing an incredible workshop. Yeah. His workshops are usually sold out, standing room only. He’ll be, he’ll be on stage with us as well at this event. We’ve got some incredible leaders from Microsoft. We also have AWS in the room and some other organizations, some incredible partner sponsors, and also other sponsors, technology sponsors there. [00:45:15] Vince Menzione: I think there’s 23 sponsors actually for this event. Oh, that’s incredible. Yeah, it is incredible. And this will be another incredible event. We will be live streaming if you can’t make it, but we want you in the room. You’re gonna be elbow to elbow with leaders like Reese. You’re gonna learn from executives, from Microsoft, as well as other partners that have gotten it right, working with the tech giant. [00:45:34] Vince Menzione: But you’re gonna learn more and the immersion is incredible. I hear it all the time from our events. So we hope to see you in Reston, Virginia, October 27th to the 29th. Reese, so great to have you back here. [00:45:45] Reis Barrie: Yeah, so great to be here. I look forward to seeing, seeing you in Reston. Yes. Seeing everyone else in Reston as well. [00:45:50] Reis Barrie: Doing those workshops is like one of my favorite things, Frank. Yeah, it’s [00:45:53] Vince Menzione: gonna be awesome. And then we have some other things we’re gonna be talking about, uh, probably in Reston you’re gonna hear more about what’s gonna happen here in Boca. And we have a couple other things that are going on that we will share. [00:46:04] Vince Menzione: It’s kind of under the covers right now. So you gotta come, you gotta come see us all and you’ll learn firsthand what’s happening in the world of Ultimate partner. Thank you so much for watching, listening, and supporting the ultimate Guide to partnering. Thank you.

Unlock the secrets to explosive growth in the digital landscape!  Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Is your business ready for 2026? Welcome back to the Ultimate Guide to Partnering® Podcast. In this powerful discussion, Vince Menzione shares his personal journey and the mission behind the Ultimate Partner movement. After a near-fatal accident, he gained a new perspective on the importance of community and the power of partnerships. Vince dives deep into the “tectonic shifts” reshaping our industry—from the rise of AI and cloud marketplaces to new buyer expectations. He introduces the seven Operating Principles of successful partnering, a framework designed to provide leaders with the clarity and conviction needed to thrive in a world of constant change. This is more than a podcast; it’s a movement built on the belief that success is never achieved alone and that together, leaders can achieve extraordinary outcomes. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k64CcIbLZNc Join Us In Reston, Virginia, October 27-29th. As we enter the last four months of the calendar year, you are probably asking yourself, “What events should I attend this fall and why?” Many Partners and Leaders are trying to determine if the big events make the most sense and what they will learn. Many of these events are big and unyieldy, and while you may bump into some friends, you need to really ask yourself if they will help you achieve your greatest results – as a leader, as an organization, or as a partner. Our attendees tell us they get more accomplished in two full days than in most of the year at our events – they learn from Hyperscaler Leaders, Top Award Winning Partners, and the Masters. Learn from the best, meet the best, grow your business faster and further. Why Ultimate Partner is Unique An Ultimate Partner LIVE is like YOUR Masterclass. We begin with a view of “Where We Are Today” as the tectonic shifts are happening faster than ever before. Our first day sessions explore the advances in AI, Hyperscaler Growth, Marketplaces, Co-Selling, Ecosystem Led Growth, and more. These sessions are led from the leaders driving the discussions at Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, AvePoint Veeam Software, Carahsoft, Elastic and more. Bringing it All Together On Day Two, an Industry Analyst will bring it all together as our industry experts help you plot the future course – applying the learnings to maximize results. And, you’ll learn more from the Partner Technology firms, Partner Consultants, and others helping partners like you achieve more and walk away with over a million dollars worth of insights, learnings, and practical advice to apply to your business. In fact, we will have over 10 unique workshops at the fall event alone. The Executive Experience You will be in the room with other executives like you, or partner leaders looking to get to that level. Join us for a unique welcome reception and – if you’re fortunate – you’ll be joining our Executive Dinner. This event will feel more intimate than past Ultimate Partner LIVE settings. You’ll love the experience. Don’t Miss this Early BIRD Opportunity – Ends in a Week This is your last chance to take advantage of a unique opportunity to sign up early and SAVE.> Next weekend, Early Bird Pricing Ends – and will NOT be available again. Also, our special Hyatt Regency Reston will only last for a short time. Book your tickets today and get ready to join this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I look forward to hosting YOU this fall! Click HERE while time still lasts. Vince Menzione, Microsoft, Ultimate Partner, The Ultimate Guide to Partnering, business strategy, cloud marketplaces, AI transformation, partnership principles, technology leadership, organizational alignment, growth mindset, executive commitment, visionary leadership, scalable startups, resilient leadership, tectonic shifts, ecosystem growth, tech industry, B2B sales. Transcript: Ultimate Partner Promo 2025 [00:00:00] Vince Menzione: Welcome. I’m Vince Menon, and if you followed me, you know me as the host of The Ultimate Guide to Partnering. Some of you have attended our events or maybe you’re part of our Growing Ultimate Partner community. But today I want to go deeper. I wanna share my journey, what’s happened earlier this year, and how my friends and team have rallied behind me and why I believe this movement we’re building together. [00:00:26] Vince Menzione: Is about to become bigger than ever because in this moment of massive change, these tectonic shifts, we talk about reshaping our industry and our lives. We need clarity, we need frameworks, and we need community more than ever, my journey began way before ultimate partner. I grew up in a family that taught me the power of resilience and trust. [00:00:50] Vince Menzione: I ran a small business while in college. Scaled startups from a few million dollars to hundreds of millions of dollars and later led a multi-billion dollar partner business at Microsoft. Through it all, I learned one powerful truth. Success is never built alone. It happens through partnerships. When I started Ultimate Guide to Partnering nearly a decade ago, it was my way of amplifying those lessons. [00:01:19] Vince Menzione: To bring you the voices, insights, and stories of the leaders shaping our industry. Over 270 episodes later, it’s grown into a trusted platform, but more importantly, it’s grown into a movement. A community of leaders committed to helping each other achieve their greatest results, and then this year changed everything for me. [00:01:44] Vince Menzione: You see, a near fatal accident brought my life to a halt. Overnight. I went from building businesses and hosting events to fighting for recovery. In those difficult months, I was carried by my family, my team, and by so many of you friends and colleagues reaching out with encouragement, support, and belief. [00:02:07] Vince Menzione: It reminded me of something powerful. You see, this mission is bigger than me. Ultimate partner is about all of us. A collective of leaders, builders, and innovators navigating change together. That clarity gave me even more conviction to double down now on this work, because let’s face it, the world isn’t slowing down. [00:02:35] Vince Menzione: AI is transforming every business and redefining what’s possible. Cloud marketplaces are reshaping how customers buy and how we go to market. New buyer personas and new expectations are changing. The way we sell the ecosystem is no longer a nice to have. It’s the multiplier for growth. These are the tectonic shifts we talk about at Ultimate Partner and in times like this, leaders need frameworks, clarity, and a community they can trust. [00:03:09] Vince Menzione: That’s why I developed what I call the seven Operating principles of successful Partnering. These principles come from decades of experience, hundreds of conversations with leaders and the lived lessons of this community. Here’s what they are and how they guide everything we do at Ultimate Partner. You see, the first is a growth mindset. [00:03:32] Vince Menzione: In a world of change, curiosity and learning are the superpower. Winners embrace possibility. The second is executive commitment. Success requires leadership buy-in and organizational alignment. It doesn’t happen at the edges. The third is vision and value alignment. Great partnerships are built when leaders align on purpose, outcomes, and value creation, and once you’ve got that, you need the fourth maniacal focus. [00:04:04] Vince Menzione: The best results come when we prioritize, simplify, and concentrate energy on what matters most. Once you get to there, you need the fifth element, Brandon’s story. You see, your story is your magnet partners and customers rally around belief, credibility, and trust. And it’s the easiest way and the best way to sell with the hyperscalers. [00:04:29] Vince Menzione: And once you start to build that flywheel, you get to getting results. Number six, where outcomes are the currency of trust winning partners obsess over execution and measurable impact. And once you’ve gotten those first six, all right. And you’ve reached the pinnacle of success. What happens? Things change. [00:04:51] Vince Menzione: The world changes. We have tectonic shifts. We have organizations like Hyperscalers, like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon changing programs, changing priorities. And you need to change because change is your constant. Leaders must anticipate pivot and leverage change before it overwhelms them. These aren’t just abstract ideas. [00:05:14] Vince Menzione: This is the heartbeat of Ultimate Guide to Partnering our live Ultimate Partner events, our community, and this movement. So what do we stand for? We stand for helping technology leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. We do it through our podcast, bringing you the most relevant voices in technology. [00:05:36] Vince Menzione: We do it through our ultimate partner live events and events that we host here in our studio in Boca Raton, where leaders gather to align, learn, and connect, and we do it through our community where frameworks, best practices and experience sharing, create clarity and confidence. And we do it together because no single leader, no single company, can thrive in isolation any longer. [00:06:05] Vince Menzione: This is why I say ultimate partner is more than a podcast, more than an event. It’s a movement and it’s about to become bigger than ever because as these tectonic shifts accelerate, leaders who embrace growth, align on vision and commit to partnerships will be the ones who thrive. So I wanna say thank you, my family, my team, my friends, and this community for lifting me through this year. [00:06:34] Vince Menzione: And giving me more clarity and the path ahead. And I wanna invite you, join us, subscribe to the podcast, come to our live events, become part of this community because together we will achieve our greatest results through successful partnering. And yes, the best is yet to come.

Unlock the secrets to explosive growth in the digital landscape!  Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Is your business ready for 2026? Welcome back to the Ultimate Guide to Partnering® Podcast. Join Peter Graber from Ingram Micro and Christine Mulcahy from ContentGen as they unveil a powerful synergy transforming the MSP and SMB landscape. Peter details Ingram Micro’s evolution from a traditional distributor to a “platform first, experience-driven company” with their Al-powered Xvantage platform, seamlessly integrating commerce, insights, automation, and enablement for multi-vendor, multi-solution environments. Christine then introduces ContentGen, an automated content development platform leveraging Al to drastically reduce the cost and complexity of content marketing for partners, enabling them to tell compelling “better together” stories and accelerate their go-to-market. This session highlights how these innovations are providing MSPs with simplified management and strategic growth, crucial for navigating the complex world of Al, hardware, and software solutions. https://youtu.be/MR2mGDnEbik Traditional distribution is evolving beyond logistics to focus on intelligence, integration, and enablement, driven by the increasing complexity of hybrid cloud, multi-vendor, and AI environments. Ingram Micro is transforming into a “platform first, experience-driven company” with its AI-powered Xvantage platform, designed to be a growth engine for partners by simplifying operations and accelerating market access. Xvantage unifies commerce, insights, automation, and enablement, allowing MSPs to manage subscriptions, hardware, SaaS, and services seamlessly in one intuitive interface, even integrating with their existing ERP/CRM systems. ContentGen provides an automated, AI-powered content development platform specifically for the partner channel, drastically reducing the cost and complexity of creating diverse marketing materials. Partners, particularly MSPs, need to tell differentiated stories for various audiences (customers, platform partners, resellers) requiring tailored content, which ContentGen helps to scale efficiently. The combined offering of Ingram’s Xvantage platform and ContentGen empowers MSPs with simplified management and strategic growth, enabling them to effectively deliver complex AI and multi-vendor solutions to the SMB market. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. As we enter the last four months of the calendar year, you are probably asking yourself, “What events should I attend this fall and why?” Many Partners and Leaders are trying to determine if the big events make the most sense and what they will learn. Many of these events are big and unyieldy, and while you may bump into some friends, you need to really ask yourself if they will help you achieve your greatest results – as a leader, as an organization, or as a partner. Our attendees tell us they get more accomplished in two full days than in most of the year at our events – they learn from Hyperscaler Leaders, Top Award Winning Partners, and the Masters. Learn from the best, meet the best, grow your business faster and further. Why Ultimate Partner is Unique An Ultimate Partner LIVE is like YOUR Masterclass. We begin with a view of “Where We Are Today” as the tectonic shifts are happening faster than ever before. Our first day sessions explore the advances in AI, Hyperscaler Growth, Marketplaces, Co-Selling, Ecosystem Led Growth, and more. These sessions are led from the leaders driving the discussions at Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, AvePoint Veeam Software, Carahsoft, Elastic and more. Bringing it All Together On Day Two, an Industry Analyst will bring it all together as our industry experts help you plot the future course – applying the learnings to maximize results. And, you’ll learn more from the Partner Technology firms, Partner Consultants, and others helping partners like you achieve more and walk away with over a million dollars worth of insights, learnings, and practical advice to apply to your business. In fact, we will have over 10 unique workshops at the fall event alone. The Executive Experience You will be in the room with other executives like you, or partner leaders looking to get to that level. Join us for a unique welcome reception and – if you’re fortunate – you’ll be joining our Executive Dinner. This event will feel more intimate than past Ultimate Partner LIVE settings. You’ll love the experience. Don’t Miss this Early BIRD Opportunity – Ends in a Week This is your last chance to take advantage of a unique opportunity to sign up early and SAVE.> Next weekend, Early Bird Pricing Ends – and will NOT be available again. Also, our special Hyatt Regency Reston will only last for a short time. Book your tickets today and get ready to join this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I look forward to hosting YOU this fall! Click HERE while time still lasts. . Key Tags: Ingram Micro, Content Gen, distribution evolution, MSPs, SMB market, AI platform, Advantage platform, ecosystem enablement, automated content, channel marketing, go-to-market strategy, strategic growth, digital transformation, cloud solutions, hardware-software integration, recurring revenue, partner profitability, AI agents, cybersecurity, hybrid cloud. Transcription: [00:00:00] Christine Mulcahy: Well, I’d say, you know, if you’re any type of partner in the ecosystem, buy into these platforms because they, there’s a lot of smart people building them and doing all the work for you so that you don’t have to figure that out as part of the rest of your biz dev strategy, and you can just focus on what you do. Well, [00:00:17] Vince Menzione: we believe this time is like no other. We, we refer to these as the tectonic shifts, [00:00:23] Intro: all the hyperscalers in the world, if you add them all together. Managed services will be one and a half times larger because it is the customer buying behavior that has created the need for all of us to rethink our models. 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. [00:00:55] 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 episode and interview features Peter Grabber from Ingram Micro and Christine Mulcahy from Content Gen for a lively discussion on the future of distribution. We take it right to the edge of what’s next. So let’s dive in now, and we’ve talked about this SMB moment. And the MSPs and this incredible opportunity area. This is where the fire hydrant is gonna come at us and the, and the power is coming at us really strict right now in terms of how we drive more success in our marketplaces. I am thrilled to invite on stage for the first time. Ingram Micro as both a speaker and a sponsor or event, and Peter Grabber is joining me for an in-depth conversation on what’s been going on in Ingram. We talked, we heard PAX eight yesterday, but Ingram has an incredible approach, has an incredible pedigree as a distributor and is really evolving their business as well. So I wanna welcome to the stage Peter Grabber. Thank you. Thank you for joining us, Peter. Thanks Vince. So good to have you join us. Thank you, sir. So, so great to have you on stage. Absolutely. Thank you. And supporting our event. Awesome. Awesome. Peter’s from Buffalo, New York. For those of you go Bills who might be part of the Bills mafia. Yes. Uh, they are my second favorite team after the Philadelphia Eagles. So, so great to have you. Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. So, so great to have you join us. Um, some really exciting things happening in your organization. Uh, for, I, I want you to. Tell us about your role and maybe a little bit about Ingram. I don’t want to pre assume some things, even though I know about Martha and Bronson back in the day. Sure, sure, [00:02:57] Peter Graber: sure. Go ahead. Um, so Peter Grabber, I actually run our, uh, Cisco and our Microsoft practice at Ingram Micro. Plus a couple other hats that I wear as well. Um, but Ingram Micro is a global distributor. Obviously. We have a, a huge scale from a distribution standpoint, multi-vendor, multi solution service generated organization. And, um, we’re, we’re taking the leap into a platform company, which is something that I’ll, I’ll dig into a little bit. [00:03:21] Vince Menzione: Fantastic. Yeah, and I think the really important to note, because back in the day, distribution was a very different thing than it’s today, right? We used to think about credit. Availability of product. Right. And shipping and all those things. Sure. That were so important to be a distributor and why people use distributors back in the day. [00:03:38] Peter Graber: Absolutely. And now all that still is valid, but it’s being rolled up into a platform now. Yeah. That will be pretty seamless. [00:03:44] Vince Menzione: Yeah. I want, we wanna hear about that, right? Yeah, we want to talk about that. So let’s talk about this, we’ll call the future of distribution. Right. As we, we, we go back to the old days and we need a product delivered. We needed credit, we needed all those things to have distribution. What’s changed and what is the future of distribution from your perspective? [00:04:02] Peter Graber: Yeah. So, so thanks Vincent. That is, um, I, I think it’s a great topic. It’s interesting, especially over the last couple days when we’ve talked about how our industry is evolving. And distribution definitely needs to be part of that discussion. So no longer is distribution, just about logistics, like you said, or moving product from point A to point B. Um, it has necessary to evolve beyond that. Um, so the way that we look at the future of distribution is really, um, based on, um, intelligence integration and enablement. And that’s a huge shift for every player in, in, in our space, from CSPs to MSPs and every partner type. Um, the one thing that I’ll say, and we, we talked about over the last couple days too, and it’s obvious that, um, our industry is exploding in complexity. Yes. And it’s something we all know and it’s not slowing down. But if you think about everything we’re dealing with in terms of, um, hybrid cloud environments, um, uh, multiple subscription, uh, models. Managed services, cybersecurity, LA layers, multi-vendor environments across the ecosystem of product. [00:05:09] Vince Menzione: Ai, [00:05:10] Peter Graber: ai, ai, ai. Absolutely. And we have something called, um, customer expectations that we continue need to manage ’cause those continue to rise and evolve. Um. So we also know too, that our partners, especially MSPs, aren’t just sourcing product anymore. They are building customized, full scalable solutions across a multitude of vendors and services. When you add all of that together, that’s a lot to manage and scale. Yeah. So that’s where the transformation of Ingram comes in. So we are no longer distributor. We are a platform first, experience driven company. And what is driving or at the heart of that transformation is Advantage. Advantage is our, uh, AI powered. A digital experience platform. Interesting. And it’s more than just a, a portal. It is an intelligent interface that stitches together commerce, insights, automation, and enablement. [00:06:11] Vince Menzione: Wow. Um, so I, ’cause I was gonna say marketplace, but it’s more than just even a marketplace from that perspective, right? [00:06:17] Peter Graber: Absolutely. It’s a very intelligent interface that is, provides a simplified experience. Um, one platform to handle all of your business. So when we look at, at the, at the future of distribution, we look at it really in three stages. It’s, it’s about the platform, right? So moving out of the, um, the back office from a distribution model standpoint, it into the front office as a growth engine for our partners, um, by offering digital experience tools. Uh, second stage is, uh, AI and automation. Um, AI for intelligence to predict needs and, uh, automation to, uh, reduce friction and create a smarter, faster path to market. [00:07:01] Vince Menzione: Fascinating. [00:07:02] Peter Graber: And then the third piece is ecosystem enablement. It’s all about providing the new, that the full solution that’s going to produce business outcomes and not just focus on the product. Advantage is built for all of that. [00:07:14] Vince Menzione: So tell us, take me through ecosystem enablement. To me that’s taking multiple partners. Uh, on the path to the same customer. Is that, is that what it looks like? [00:07:22] Peter Graber: Um, you know, the way I would define ecosystem enablement is when you look at the product portfolio and bringing it all together under one platform. So when you look at the, the span of hardware services, sas, um, et cetera, being able to provide that in one unified platform seamlessly. Um, without any friction. Yeah. [00:07:44] Vince Menzione: And I think one of the things that dis distinguishes Ingram is sort of the pedigree of the business in that you’re not just software, you’re software and hardware, you’re all things to the customer. Correct. And if I think about MSPs, the old days was that we worried about boxes and cables and things like that, right? That’s what you delivered. Now in this new world of ai, you’re delivering agent ai, you’re delivering. Uh, cloud, you’re delivering all the different solutions from ISPs. So they’re coming to your portal, they’re coming to your solution set, and they’re able to deliver all that to their customers. Is that, is that what I’m, the way it’s coming about a hundred percent. Yeah. [00:08:19] Peter Graber: Seamless, um, easy path to provide operational efficiency, but also strategic growth. [00:08:26] Vince Menzione: Nice. And it is strategic in that you’re able to support that partner. And add anything they need to do for that customer, not just one point of the, of the spear. Yeah. [00:08:39] Peter Graber: So if you look at the dis, the traditional distri distribution MO model that you talked about in the beginning, a hundred percent, that’s not going away. Right? And you know, obviously there’s a lot of talk about the cloud and. Subscription models, recurring revenue. That’s right. That’s certainly important. But hardware’s not going away either. It’s not going [00:08:58] Vince Menzione: away. I still need servers on site. I still need other technologies that I’m utilizing. [00:09:03] Peter Graber: A hundred percent. So how do you create a platform that brings all of that together under one seamless, intuitive interface that removes the friction for our partners, and that’s what Advantage does. [00:09:13] Vince Menzione: It’s fascinating. Tell us a little bit about how Ingram is structured, like number of partners, like size of the organization. We didn’t get into the details. Just I think from a framing perspective for everybody, it’d be good to cover some of that. I mean, from [00:09:26] Peter Graber: a, from a global standpoint, I mean I obviously we’re a $50 billion plus organization, um, you know, serving servicing. Thousands of, of partners, all, all partner types, whether it’s an SMB, mid-market enterprise, um, CSPs, MSPs, um, et cetera, you name it. Um, we, we service that, uh, full portfolio. [00:09:50] Vince Menzione: Let’s, I, I wanna jo, dive in on the solution. I think we have a graphic here about Xan. I was thinking maybe we could talk about how it’s helping the market and how it’s unique, uh, and maybe differentiate it a little bit too. ’cause I think this is an opportunity to stand out in a big way. Sure. Uh, Ingram brings a set of skills and capabilities. As well as, uh, a portfolio of vendors that you help scale and bring to the market, the s and b market. I think about specifically of one that’s going through incredible growth. I look at the MSP myself and I go, there is a tremendous transformational moment. Now, I’ve been in many of these events. I’ve seen some of and met with some of these MSPs and they’re living in the past. There are organizations that maybe worked in Telco, worked in other markets, break fix. But the customer is not there anymore. The customer is on this transformational journey with agentic AI and layering multiple is V solutions in and pulling it all together for a customer. Right? So this is what you do. [00:10:53] Peter Graber: Absolutely. And you know, MSPs need help. To simplify things. Yeah. You know, and that, that’s what’s unique about the, about what we’re bringing and how we’re helping the market in very simple terms, in very, very powerful ways. Because advantage just simplifies everything, creates a faster path to market and accelerates growth. At the end of the day, you know what, what Advantage is really doing, it’s taking a, a very fragmented, messy, um. Slow manual process and modernizing it under one platform. [00:11:28] Vince Menzione: It’s fascinating. [00:11:28] Peter Graber: Um, you know, if you think about, um, the things that the MSPs have to deal with on a daily basis, um. And, and, and we, we’ve kind of talked about it in terms of, um, you know, managing renewals, um, putting multi configurations together, figuring out how to order ’em, produce ’em. And they’re oftentimes, our MSPs are doing it through multiple systems Yeah. And manual processes. Um. Advantage, simplifies all that under one platform. It’s very intuitive. Um, it offers recommendations, cross-sell, upsell opportunities to help them grow their business. Um. So to to, to answer your question, there’s uh, a lot of things that are happening with Advantage, um, especially when we look across the industry and what’s unique about Ingram Micro and what we bring to the market is, um, our size and our scale. [00:12:23] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:12:23] Peter Graber: And the fact that, um, we have, uh, the ability to have a global reach, a vast, vast product portfolio. And, um, the ability to, um. To bring that all together under one platform is pretty powerful. [00:12:39] Vince Menzione: Under one platform, $50 billion company. Correct. Yeah. So that, that, that alone sets you up. Oops. I’m sorry. I’m just popping up a couple of slides here. Um, yeah, so, uh, incredible opportunity for our, our partners that, oops, I’m one slide ahead. I’m, I’m moving quickly. There’s something’s happening. Either it’s going fast or I’m going slow. One or the other. Um, maybe it’s the end of the day type of thing. Yeah, that’s right. But yeah, just incredible opportunity for partners to take advantage of this. Uh, these are organizations that are fairly less complex. Let’s say some of these MSPs are smaller, although we’re starting to see this aggregation. We have MSPs that are now growing to billion dollar companies. But then the ability to serve this customer, this SMB market, in a very unique way, is the way I’m, I’m, I’m reading what you’re having to say. [00:13:24] Peter Graber: Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. You think about MSPs and, and we, we talked about it in terms of. Needing to simplify everything. And if you, we, we talked about the multiple, multiple systems that they use and, and many times, um, they have their own systems, whether they’re ERPs or CRMs and things like that. Uh, one of the things that is very unique about Advantage is you can actually plug it in to your. You don’t have to. An MSP doesn’t have to go outta their system to take advantage of all of the goodness of an AI powered model. Um, you can plug it into your ERP, you can plug it into your RM, RMM, um, et cetera. And. Everything’s at your [00:14:04] Vince Menzione: fingertips. It’ll be seamlessly integrated with your, your complete solutions inside, inside your organization. So these organizations struggle in many respects as well, right? So these are companies that are the precipice of growth in my perspective. They are, there’s a huge opportunity for them to grow. There’s a market, this SMB market is going to, we had the conversation with Alistair talking about, we call it this smec, which is enterprise and channel, but that gets to be in that SMB market is, is relatively small, but they’re still very complex and, and how they need to drive it. A lot of these organizations do struggle with how to go to market though. Right. And so we were gonna, we were asking Ashley, Christine Mulcahy to join us up on stage. Christine is the founder and CEO of Content Gen. And her company helps a lot of the partners in your ecosystem to be more successful, to have a stronger go to market. So I’m excited to welcome Christine Mulcahy to join us. And we’re gonna continue the conversation ’cause we haven’t really spent a lot of time. We talked about go to market from the Microsoft lens. We talked about how partners can do a lot of things, but we really haven’t. Touched on this really important subject, uh, what we need to do with these, uh, with these organizations. So it’s, uh, great to see you, my friend. [00:15:20] Christine Mulcahy: Great, thank you. [00:15:21] Vince Menzione: And, uh, why don’t you introduce yourself, Christine, and what content Gen is all about and what your organization does. [00:15:26] Christine Mulcahy: Sure. So I’m Christine Muli. I’m the founder and CEO of Content Gen, which is. An automated content development platform really focused on the partner channel. I’ve been working at Microsoft and in the channel for the last 23 years, um, developing go to market materials, doing a lot of the consulting that you see here, um, in the workshops in the afternoon about that joint value proposition, the better together story, and we recognize that there’s a. Massive need for content marketing. You know, partners get their stories, they get their solutions built, they put them in the marketplaces. They have kind of those three bare minimum pieces of content to get them listed and think, why aren’t the leads coming? And why aren’t I, are my leads seeing many ROI? Where’s my revenue? And the fact is that that’s just, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You have to be able to then tell your story and not just your two customer story, but your two partner story. And we’ve heard a lot about, um, marketplaces and all of the different, uh, partners in those marketplaces. You’ve got your platform partners, you’ve got your integration partners, your build with partners, and your reseller channel partners, and they all. Need something different from you. They, you’ve gotta align your messaging with the platform partners. And then you’ve got to tell a better together, you know, what makes us sticky? How could we go, uh, um, attack customer sales together, and then what’s the, you know, what’s in it for resellers? And you need different stories for each of them, and that requires a different set of content for each of them. And content is. Ridiculously expensive. Yeah. ’cause you need a dozen pieces of content to lead a buyer through a journey or a partner through a journey. And so, um, it’s fantastic that AI has come along, but you’re still, you know, if you’re just using Chad GPT to create content, you still have to create every single piece of content. And so content gen massively simplifies that process for partners and helps them create content together without all of the back and forth and rev cycles and what have you. And so I love the term you were talking about earlier, the, um, ecosystem enablement. Yeah. Somebody should trademark that because that’s what we need to do. We’ve gotta enable, you know, you’ve gotta tell your two customer story, you’ve gotta enable your partners, and then you’ve gotta enable your sellers to know how to sell your solution. Because that’s the magic of these ecosystems. Mm-hmm. Is that you can connect all those people, but until you tell them what, you can’t just say, here’s my two customer brochure. Go sell it. Right. They need to know why. What’s that value prop? [00:17:59] Vince Menzione: So how do you help partners work with organizations like Ingram and their solution and platform? [00:18:05] Christine Mulcahy: So we, you know, we have done all of our work in the Microsoft Partner channel in the past. Yes, yes. Um, but really, you know, the, this new platform at Ingram is fantastic because it’s not only a marketplace, but it’s connecting that partner to partner story and providing opportunities for partners to work together. So really, I mean, the tool can be used, content gen can be used by, um. Um, partners in channels where we can work with Ingram and say, okay, well what’s the services story that you want to put out there through your channel? Mm-hmm. And then we can build that into the tool and say, okay, so if you need proof points or you need, you know, industry trends, or you wanna really tell the story of your. Services, then the partners can go out, build their own content. It’s partner branded, it’s partner, you know, look and feel messaging led, and then they can pull in those, um, those messaging pieces so that they can align with their platform partner and tell the story. [00:19:05] Vince Menzione: Very fascinating. Fascinating. So, um, how should MSPs and Partners position derive success with Microsoft Ingram? How would you, how would you position them for success? [00:19:19] Christine Mulcahy: Well, I think that. The ecosystem is moving so fast and every time we turn around there’s a new solution popping up. Mm-hmm. And what I have learned, you know, I’ve been consulting on the channel for decades, but now on the opposite side as a partner, um, trying to navigate it, it’s a whole new world. And so I would say I’ve learned, you know, also being a software developer is very different from being a marketing consultant. Um, so I’ve learned that you’ve learned [00:19:47] Vince Menzione: that. Front end, [00:19:48] Christine Mulcahy: there’s a huge need. You know, we kind of talked about like Jay Mc, Bain’s concept of the seven partners that you need to work with. Yes. [00:19:54] Vince Menzione: The seven seats at the table we like to talk in about. Yeah. [00:19:58] Christine Mulcahy: And I, it just, I, I knew, but I didn’t know, I didn’t internalize it like I should have gone out and looked for help in the. In the ecosystem long before I ended up developing with the developer that I worked with. Right. Or, um, at the last Ultimate Partner event, I was sitting at a table with Cloud Atlas and Justin asked me, well, how did you, um, who helped you get listed in the marketplace? And I thought, well, we had to go figure it out ourselves. I didn’t, it didn’t even occur to me that there were partners that could have helped me with that, you know? So I’d say, you know, if you’re. Any type of partner in the ecosystem buy into these platforms because they, there’s a lot of smart people building them and doing all the work for you so that you don’t have to figure that out as part of the rest of your biz dev strategy. And you can just focus on what you do well. [00:20:43] Vince Menzione: Nice. [00:20:43] Christine Mulcahy: It’ll change your life. [00:20:45] Vince Menzione: So we’ve got the best, like a better together story here. It feels like. I think so too, Peter. Yep. We’ve got this incredible platform that you’ve built that allows these MSPs to get into the s and b market more effectively. Mm-hmm. And there’s. Tens, hundreds of thousands of these organizations in the SMB market, right, that have certain size and scale. And then Christine, we’ve got your capabilities to help reach those, reach those audiences more effectively. [00:21:10] Peter Graber: Mm-hmm. [00:21:11] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:21:12] Peter Graber: I, you know, I, and I would say this too, is, um. You know, there, there’s two things you talk about enablement and things like that. You know, when you, when you break it down, it come, I, I think it comes down to two things for a, a partner is simplified management and, and strategic growth, smarter growth. And once you solve for those from a simplified management, taking the friction out of the business and helping them from an operational flow standpoint, and then if you can point them in the right direction with AI and insights and how they grow their business. Mm-hmm. Yes. Is those are the two biggest points. And then you bring enablement on top of that. Mm-hmm. In terms of continuing to grow their business from a, a, a product standpoint, a knowledge standpoint, um, understanding where to align their resources more effectively. Mm-hmm. Put marketing on top of that and that’s a, a very good recipe for success. [00:22:06] Vince Menzione: Sounds, sounds terrific. Actually. And I think this market opportunity is huge. Right now. Ingram is coming about at very differentiated. You’re, you’re providing all the tools and resources I need as an MSP to be successful both within your platform as well as the vendors supporting your platform. And then content gen is helping me go to market in more effective ways. [00:22:28] Christine Mulcahy: Yeah, and I think one of the other topics that I just had in the hallway conversation, um, was that, you know, content marketing is extremely expensive. Yeah. To create a campaign, you know, you’re spending $30,000 on your two customer campaign and then another 30 on your two partner, and then the messaging isn’t right. And you need to tweak it and you’ve gotta go. And agencies are expensive and we can’t afford that anymore, you know? There was just a Gartner, um, industry trends report the other day that said, by 2028, 70% of marketing budgets will be spent on offline events like this. [00:22:58] Intro: Interesting. Yeah. You know, but you [00:22:58] Christine Mulcahy: still have to have a digital presence. Yeah. You still have to have content to tell your story. They’re just not going to. Spend that much anymore. So you’ve gotta bring those costs down. And with a tool like Content Gen, you can create all that content and then you can ab test it. And if you wanna tweak it, you go and just modify it a little bit or clone that campaign and then change the messaging for the partner audience and just, you know, you can keep telling the story in different ways over and over again because you’ve got the content all there already in your platform. [00:23:28] Vince Menzione: Peter, where can partners in the room and other partners watching us learn more about your solution and how do they, how do they engage with you and the team? [00:23:38] Peter Graber: So I think most partners that have a relationship with Ingram know who their main points of contact are from a, from a sales perspective. Okay. Um. You know, I, I think the best way to learn more about that obviously is you can Google, you can look it up online, et cetera. Yeah. But I think the best way to do that is to contact your Ingram Micro Associates that you deal with on a daily basis, and they can walk you through not only what we’re doing from an advantage and platform standpoint, but all of the services that we’re bringing to market, all of the tools that we’re equipping our MSPs with to help them grow their market, um, more strategically. There is a boatload of information that we can download. I could probably spend a half a day talking about everything that we can bring to market from a standpoint. [00:24:23] Vince Menzione: Very cool. But we can Google all that information and get it. We can bing it too. ’cause we’re in a Microsoft facility. They still bing around. But How about from your side, Christine? I. [00:24:32] Christine Mulcahy: Uh, grab me in the hallway content gen.com. Uh, you can go take a, you can sign up for a free trial right now. Yeah. Um, there’s contact information on the website. We can do a demo and get, and you’re both [00:24:44] Vince Menzione: utilizing ai really. We talked about AI so much. Gentech ai, you’re both utilizing AI and Gentech AI to drive these solution sets mm-hmm. And make for a better experience for these partners, right. Ly. So you’re both doing that in a big way? Yes. Yes. Great. Yep. I want to thank you both. Uh, this has been incredible in terms of sharing the information. I think there’s an awareness about what you’re doing, what Ingram’s doing, what content Jen is doing, and we are about lunchtime and I know that people are like really dying to eat. It’s Friday afternoon, it’s been a long week, and I want to thank all the people for sticking around and spending some time. I want to thank you both for Absolutely. Thank you, spending time with us today. So thank you so much for being here. Thank. Thanks for tuning into this episode of Ultimate Guide to Partnering. We’re bringing these episodes to you to help you level up your strategy. If you haven’t yet, now’s the time to take action and think about joining our community. We created a unique place, UPX or Ultimate partner experience where leaders come to learn from each other. It’s more than a community. It’s your competitive edge. With insider insights, real-time education, and direct access to people who are driving the ecosystem forward. UPX helps you get results, and we’re just getting started. We’ve got big plans for you this summer as we’re taking this studio, and we’ll be hosting livestream and digital events here, and it’s all coming to you soon. So visit our website, the ultimate partner.com to learn more and join us. Now’s the time to take your partnerships to the next level. Join Peter Grabber from Ingram Micro and Christine Mulcahy from Content Gen as they unveil a powerful synergy transforming the MSP and SMB landscape. Peter details Ingram Micro’s evolution from a traditional distributor to a “platform first, experience-driven company” with their AI-powered Advantage platform, seamlessly integrating commerce, insights, automation, and enablement for multi-vendor, multi-solution environments. Christine then introduces Content Gen, an automated content development platform leveraging AI to drastically reduce the cost and complexity of content marketing for partners, enabling them to tell compelling “better together” stories and accelerate their go-to-market. This session highlights how these innovations are providing MSPs with simplified management and strategic growth, crucial for navigating the complex world of AI, hardware, and software solutions.

Unlock the secrets to explosive growth in the digital landscape!  Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Is your business ready for 2026? Welcome back to the Ultimate Guide to Partnering® Podcast. Join Vince and Hayley McSpirit from PAX8 as they explore the immense opportunities within the Small and Medium Business (SMB) space, particularly through the lens of cloud marketplaces. This session delves into how PAX8 is disrupting the traditional channel by being a cloud-first organization , empowering MSPs and SMBs to rapidly adopt and leverage AI, often quicker than larger enterprises. Discover the evolving role of MSPs , the power of community-first approaches , and how marketplaces are becoming the critical platform for delivering comprehensive, integrated solutions to this underserved yet highly lucrative market. https://youtu.be/4lcMHcoiejE Key Takeaways The SMB market represents a significant and often underserved opportunity for cloud and AI adoption. PAX8 differentiates itself as a cloud-first marketplace, focusing on providing best-of-breed technology and a complete customer lifecycle for MSPs and SMBs. SMBs and MSPs are at the forefront of AI transformation, capable of adopting and transforming with AI much faster than larger enterprises. The traditional channel is evolving, with MSPs increasingly becoming software development companies (ISVs) and system integrators, driven by new tech opportunities. Community-first approaches and strong partner engagement are crucial for supporting MSPs in their growth and adoption of new technologies like AI agents. Marketplaces are becoming the primary vehicle for delivering integrated solutions and enabling new business models, including the reselling of AI agents by MSPs. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. . Key Tags: SMB market , MSPs , PAX8 , cloud marketplace , AI transformation , channel disruption , cloud-first , digital natives , software development companies , ISVs , community-first , customer lifecycle , agentic AI , business growth , technology adoption , partner ecosystem , Microsoft , innovation , procurement, cybersecurity, data security , unified solutions Transcription: [00:00:00] Hayley McSpirit: And as the new wave of AI as well has come in and, and we see MSPs and SMBs at the forefront of that, to be able to transform far quicker honestly than enterprises. And so we think that we are best placed to, to be doing that. [00:00:18] Vince Menzione: We believe this time is like no other. We believe we refer to these as the tectonic shifts, [00:00:24] Intro: all the hyperscalers in the world, if you add them all together. Managed services will be one and a half times larger because it is the customer buying behavior that has created a need for all of us to rethink our models. 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. [00:00:56] 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 episode featuring Haley McSpirit, the SVP of Pax eight, brings us right to the edge of what’s next in the SMB segment. Let’s dive in. So this is gonna be an incredible session. We have, uh, the next half hour or so, you’ve heard me talk about this moment right now in the SMB space in a big way. We’ve talked about marketplaces, the marketplace moment. It’s continuing to evolve. You heard about, about the incredible investments you see. You know, it’s kind of the tip of the spear with Cy talking about it, but you also heard Sandy talk about this as well, just this incredible investment opportunity around marketplaces. There’s another area where marketplaces are having another significant impact, and this is in the SMB business, right? We thought about the s and i, I’ll just share, as a Microsoft executive, we didn’t quite know how to manage this SMB business when I was a, a partner leader GM at Microsoft, uh, it’s, it’s, it’s handled very well. But there are organizations that do an even more incredible job and there’s a huge opportunity in this MSP space. In fact, there’s gonna be a workshop on MSPs. Hopefully you’ll be able to attend that session. Uh, but we wanted to get the market leaders in the room and we were very fortunate to have PAX eight in the room. And Haley McSpirit is gonna join me up on stage really talking about the future. Of SMBs and this marketplace opportunity ahead of us. And for those of you who don’t know PAX eight, I’ll have Haley take us through it. But I’m, I’m delighted to invite ha Mc spirit to the stage. Great to have her here. She didn’t have to travel as far as some of us. Great to see you, my friend. Good to see you. Uh, you’re gonna be here and I’m gonna be on this side of you. Thank you. Uh, we got to work together at Microsoft, so it’s great to have you here. [00:03:04] Hayley McSpirit: Thank you for having me. [00:03:04] Vince Menzione: Um, you were in an incredibly innovative portion of Microsoft. I’ll tell you. You tell your story. Yeah. But, uh, we got to interact when I was, uh, after I left Microsoft, in fact, and was leading a large ISVs organization. So, so great to have you in the room. [00:03:19] Hayley McSpirit: Yeah. Thank you for having me, uh, [00:03:19] Vince Menzione: up on the live stream as well. Yeah. Uh, great opportunity for discussion today, so I’m so glad you could join us. [00:03:25] Hayley McSpirit: Thank you. Thank you for having me. So where would you like to start? [00:03:29] Vince Menzione: Um, you know, I’ve been talking about PAX eight. Mm-hmm. I, I do think that PAX eight leaned in, in a very significant way on the SMB market. Uh, how are you different than the rest of the channel, though? And it seems like the evolution of PAX eight is important here and how the company evolved and where, where it’s going. But, uh, you’re making waves in the market as well recently, and I think there’s some conversation we’ll have. Uh, we won’t trip any wires in this conversation, but, uh, let’s know that you’ve made a big noise in the market, which I think has been heard. Right. And, um, how does PAX eight see itself differently and what is the industry getting wrong about PAX eight? [00:04:08] Hayley McSpirit: Yeah, well, so yeah, let’s, let’s say we like to make some waves and, uh, we’ve recently launched. Some brand campaigns Yes. Out there. Um, to disrupt the market. We are really going back to our roots in terms of how we like to be a disruptor, how we like to have a big place. And um, actually I think also. Put focus on the SMB. Yes. So the SMB market is, um, an area which we thrive in, and which we see a huge opportunity. And so where we see a differentiator for us is we truly are a marketplace and we truly bring together what our partners, um, are looking for in terms of that best of breed technology and that complete customer lifecycle, which is the piece that I heard Nicole talk about earlier around how we really need to continue Dr. Driving that. Um, and I think, you know, PAX Eight’s different because we are a cloud first organization as well, so we’re very much focused on that. And as the new wave of AI as well has come in and, and we see MSPs and SMBs at the forefront of that to be able to transform far quicker honestly than enterprises. And so we think that we are best placed to, to be doing that as well. [00:05:20] Vince Menzione: Yeah. You mentioned first of all the cloud. Approach is incredibly significant. And we’ve had this conversation backstage. Uh, I’ve been to some of the events where some of the SMB market comes, uh, some of the MSP market comes to, and it really isn’t cloud first. It isn’t cloud significant. Mm-hmm. And I’ve been in the room speaking at some of these groups and some of these meetings where a lot of these organizations are kind of playing in the past. Right. And, um. It’s really great to see the embrace that Pax has had. And I’ve, I haven’t been to, I’m, I’m hoping to come to your event this June. Oh, I hope to see, yeah. I’m gonna be there. This, it’s a great event this June, but I’ve heard they’re really happening, so I thought maybe you could talk about that a little bit. It’s almost like a, I don’t wanna use the word cult ’cause that’s always misinterpreted. Yeah. But there is a very strong, uh, engagement with the, with the partners in, at your events. [00:06:06] Hayley McSpirit: Absolutely. So, um. I mean, it is a great event. I think that’s an opportunity to come together. And Community First has been such a driver for PAX eight around the MSPs out there and being able to support them in the enablement of their journey. Uh, and so we’ve, we’ve. Put a lot into that as a way of bringing partners together, help them understand where the market’s going. Um, we’ve talked, uh, you, I’ve heard our CEO Scott Chaison talk about the AgTech AI and the future and had some very bold statements last year on stage around ai, which actually has sort of moved forward very quickly and, and so interesting. A little bit more of a visionary in terms of seeing where it’s going. And I think that event is a way of us really. Starting off, it coincides a little bit with the end of the Microsoft fiscal year, beginning of the new ones, which is helpful as a big partner of ours, and we’re very grateful. And to be able to build that momentum into the next 12 months of supporting those partners through growth. I mean, it’s, a lot of the sessions are focused on academy and focused on how do we help them build their business, um, and think about how do they integrate other solutions, um, as they grow. So. Yeah, it’s a great opportunity. It’s a great place to, um, come and hang out and spend time and get to know people, but also an opportunity to learn. And one of the things that you may have seen or, or be aware of is we also launched last year our Voyager Alliances program, which is our way of helping partners see where they are on their journey. [00:07:40] Intro: Interesting. And [00:07:41] Hayley McSpirit: so that’s very much. Uh, helps, helps signify to the market and to our partners, how we can help them build their business and what’s available to them within the Pax PAX eight ecosystem of services and, and other things to take advantage of. [00:07:55] Vince Menzione: So, PAX Eight’s not been in the market for a hundred years. Uh, you came into a mature marketplace. Mm-hmm. Probably less than a decade, maybe a decade ago, [00:08:03] Hayley McSpirit: around about that. Yep. [00:08:05] Vince Menzione: And what has made PAX eight. Different, like, how does PAX eight think about the market differently? How, how, how have you, how’s your approach been different or unique? [00:08:13] Hayley McSpirit: Yeah. So, um. A distribution is an interesting word inside of the walls of Pax A. And we like to say that we are not distribution. Okay? We aren’t, we are a marketplace first. And uh, we have been very bold about how we position that in the market. Yes, and how we think about what we offer. And the reason why we see ourselves as differently is because we’re founded on a marketplace and a platform. So if you hear any of those, the terminology, and when we think about the marketplace, that is the true moment of where the e-commerce comes together with the fulfillment and the whole lifecycle of that from a licensing point of view, as well as product features and functions. But then the extensibility of our platform is where we really see the difference. So where we focus on the integration with third parties, where we are looking at. The enablement of what we call embedded marketplaces. So how do we help others come towards PAX eight and really, um, embrace the opportunity to enter into the SMB space, which for some is a little bit daunting or a little bit expensive. Um, if you’re looking at building out into the true S of SMB. And so that’s where we see ourselves as different to the market. Okay. And that we are thinking truly about that and then underpinning it with ai. [00:09:25] Vince Menzione: So the value you’re bringing to the partners software development. Companies mm-hmm. And the like that want to enter the space is you’re helping guide them into that SMB market. [00:09:34] Hayley McSpirit: Absolutely. I [00:09:35] Vince Menzione: look at, I look at some of the big ISVs that are in the room that have been, that’ll be talking at our event, and a lot of them don’t have a very strong SMB focus. [00:09:43] Hayley McSpirit: Yep. [00:09:43] Vince Menzione: So that’s where you come in. You help guide them through that process. [00:09:46] Hayley McSpirit: Yeah, we do. So there is sort of two ways of looking at it when we think about SMB and what PAX eight can offer. Yeah. One is, um, those partners as MSPs who want to serve the SMB on a, on a SMB size and stature themselves. So how do we help them continue to grow their business directly as our hero in this, in this story. But then when we look at those, um, software houses, software development houses, or. Companies or ISVs or digital natives. I think we’ve got lots of different words, but however we want to term it, um, and look at how they want to enter into the SMB market or perhaps we. We’ve configure how they think about the SMB market. We see ourselves in a pivotable spot because we understand we live and breathe it every day. I mean, where I would say is we, we serve the underserved in terms of that market segment. When I talk to Microsoft, they, they share that, you know, we are really thinking about SMB and I love Microsoft Daily. Um, but when I say, what’s SMB, they’re like. Well, a hundred seats and above, and I’m like, yeah, a hundred seats is, is still a little big when we think about our average customers. So there are lots of really small businesses out there. Um, and so what we’re, what we’re positioning is, um. Help us, uh, let us help you by being your SMB custodian. Let’s be your SMB as a service solution. How we can create either a modular approach that suits your business, um, or a complete package of, of service offerings that we can give to you, uh, that enables you to essentially. Park that SMB business outside of your day to day, um, and alleviate some of that overhead costs for yourselves, and then we would partner to run that. But [00:11:28] Vince Menzione: Interesting. You [00:11:29] Hayley McSpirit: know, you can take it different ways. [00:11:30] Vince Menzione: Yeah, no, I, it’s, it’s very, it’s fascinating to me, in fact, because, um. Nicole was on first this morning mm-hmm. Talking about this market, right. This small medium market and SM BSMB market. Mm-hmm. And that is, it is a rich opportunity area. It’s, and that, uh, most partners shy away from it because they don’t know how to address it. Mm-hmm. Or they try and address, address it with the wrong set of skills or the right, wrong set of investments. Mm-hmm. Like direct sellers. Mm-hmm. Going on a hundred. Person organizations mm-hmm. Are pretty small. So there’s some things you do within the organization to help drive that. Right. How do you, how do you, how do you address the, let’s talk about the SM SMBs themselves. Yeah. The, uh, let’s talk about them as a group of organizations. How do you think about the MSPs themselves? [00:12:15] Hayley McSpirit: The MSPs or the SMBs, or. Well, [00:12:17] Vince Menzione: let’s talk about MSPs. I’m sorry. Yeah, no, that’s okay. I was conflating the terminology here, but these are, these are organizations that are managed service providers. [00:12:25] Hayley McSpirit: That’s right. Yep. [00:12:26] Vince Menzione: And the, the kind of the growth of the SP market started with. The, the hardware business. Right. It was like, I have a laptop or I have like a 50 laptops and somebody needs to come service me. [00:12:37] Intro: Yep, [00:12:38] Vince Menzione: yep. And it was very old, old it, old school it mm-hmm. Is the way I would look at it. Mm-hmm. How do you think about that market today? [00:12:45] Hayley McSpirit: Yeah, so it’s an interesting one. Um, I actually heard the, the term, if you’ve heard some that boots slammers or like [00:12:51] Vince Menzione: boot slams. [00:12:52] Hayley McSpirit: I think it’s that car, but you know, like [00:12:53] Vince Menzione: it’s not this type of boot. Okay. No. Maybe I’m, maybe [00:12:56] Hayley McSpirit: it’s like my British isms coming out, but essentially, you know. The, the traveling salesman kind? Yeah, the original, uh, reseller. The, how do I just fix break, fix? What’s that? You know, going through and just servicing individual customers with, um, immediate support needs. Um, and then as you look now and the evolution of the MSP, it really is that complete services package. Yeah. Um, and we have some. Really fascinating conversations right now going on with some of our, um, MSPs who are coming to us and saying, look, AI agents, we, we get it. We’re on board. We wanna do it. Help. Help us create those. Mm-hmm. And help us resell those through your marketplace. Interesting, interesting. And how quickly can you do that Pax? Eight. And why are you not doing it now? Right. Like so, which we are, we’re starting, we are moving very quickly and we’ve created a, um, internal AI transformation office where we are research development creating. And how do we repackage that quickly and. Even faster, uh, so that we can provide that context. And also guidance for the MSPs because they’re, they look to us and say, well, you know, Microsoft and others, they’re out there talking about the world of ai. Um, help us become that. I mean, we truly believe, um, and a year ago I would’ve said, I don’t think I do believe, but now I do that some one day that there’ll be a completely autonomous. MSP that will not have, as an AI agent, that will not have people, it will just be running on its own. So I think interesting. I think we gotta be moving with the times, and I think that’s where the MSP evolution of that next generation of MSP is coming faster than ever. So [00:14:37] Vince Menzione: it makes sense. And it also from a scale perspective makes a tremendous amount of sense. We had Sandy and Pat up here a little bit earlier talking about Agen ai. Mm-hmm. Yep. And some of these ISVs and some of these organizations and. Also how ISVs and sis are emerging capabilities. Yep. In some respects, you, you replace that SI component, right? You take that ISV solution set. And layer it down to the MSP so they can deliver it to the customer. Is that what I understand? [00:15:02] Hayley McSpirit: Yeah. There’s that. I mean, I also think that the lines, the, the lines between distinction of partner types is blurring. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. I think, I think that’s, no, but I think it’s, it’s interesting to see, I mean, when you, when you reference. Uh, the MSP now evolving. I actually think the MSP is becoming an ISV and is becoming a, a systems integrator. And they, they’re becoming all of these things because of the opportunity out there with what’s available in terms of the tech and also in terms of what the market’s asking. Um, and I think that SMBs, SMBs size of organization and MSPs serving the SB are the ones that are gonna be there first. Um, I think that you, you see copilot chat and we. We engage with co-pilot chat and we think it’s great. We’re, we’re customer zero on co-pilot, so we are all in. Very nice. Um, but the other component is we, we are seeing our MSPs actually move past chat because they’re like, yeah, well I don’t, I’m, I’m all in. Right. So I don’t need to start with the chat. Yeah. Whereas for the enterprise, that’s a little different. There’s a need to kind of bring that phased approach in because you’ve got a lot more investment to make. You’ve got a lot more processes to deal with. Yeah. So yeah, we’re kind of all in there. [00:16:15] Vince Menzione: So where’s it heading? I. So talk about the future [00:16:18] Hayley McSpirit: robots. No, I dunno. Where is it heading? Um, I mean, it might, uh, the, uh, you know, for us it’s how do we nail the, what is the value proposition of AI solutions for s SMBs and for Ms. P serving. The SMB and how quickly can we get there and how can we ensure that it is safe? And the secureness to that. I think there was a conversation earlier about the data and getting the data right. I mean, that’s our number one blocker out there. Um, making sure that data’s secure and data is right, so we can make it, make headway in that. But, um, we we’re, we’re very much in the, in the exciting space, so. [00:17:01] Vince Menzione: So, um, I know you’re gonna talk about this event that’s coming up in June, which I’m thrilled to join you at. Uh, tell us more about it and why the partners here and that are watching us on the livestream should join us. [00:17:14] Hayley McSpirit: Yeah, absolutely. So Beyond is our flagship event and uh, it’s taken place in Denver. The eighth through 10th. Um, we also have beyond, uh, in EA as well, which happens later on in the year, in the October timeframe. And this is our, I mean, it’s, it’s already 75% sold out, which is fabulous. Wow. That’s fantastic. We are just really excited to, to have such an amazing group of, uh, partners attend and, you know, signed up as soon as, as beyond was over last year. We have, um, over a hundred ISVs, our vendors, um, participating. We, um, really. We’ve brought in some amazing speakers, uh, in terms of industry speakers. [00:17:57] Vince Menzione: I’ve heard some names, some very interesting names. Yeah, Malcolm Gladwell was with us last [00:18:00] Hayley McSpirit: year and, um, some Olympians as well on stage, which is always wonderful. But then in terms of the topic and content, it’s, it is about bringing the community together. It is about talking about the trends and really how do we enable those MSPs, um, and what can they do to, to dig into the, into the data as well as. Be hands on. So there’s a lot of enablement sessions. It’s a great opportunity to really get a sense of what SMB communities are all about. Um, and it’s just, it’s just a really fun, I mean, I’ve been to, and I’m sure you have, I’ve been to a lot of Microsoft events, which are I have, which fabulous. Um, but I think we do it [00:18:38] Vince Menzione: better. Yeah. You’ve got some amazing speakers this year as well. Yeah. Got [00:18:41] Hayley McSpirit: some good speakers. [00:18:42] Vince Menzione: I don’t want to, I don’t want to tip my hat that I know about some of the names that’ll be there. [00:18:46] Hayley McSpirit: I know, but it’s perfect. It, [00:18:48] Vince Menzione: yeah. And then we also have our Ms. P event, uh, a session that’s going on this afternoon and tomorrow. So hopefully you’ll have a chance to jump in with some of our leaders. [00:18:55] Hayley McSpirit: Absolutely. Absolutely. Because [00:18:56] Vince Menzione: I do think there’s a huge opportunity for organizations to come on board in a bigger way. [00:19:00] Hayley McSpirit: I, [00:19:01] Vince Menzione: yeah, [00:19:01] Hayley McSpirit: would love those conversations. I mean, we are really seeing an interest with those, those enterprise ISVs that are just like, I would love to have a conversation about how I can enter this SMB space and we can do everything from design consulting to pre and post sale to customer lifecycle management. It’s, it’s. S the whole package, um, of that SMB as a service that we, we just would love to, you know, have more conversations, engage and, and also learn like what else are we seeing out there? What else can we learn from others? So. Yeah. [00:19:31] Vince Menzione: Well, we’re delighted to have you today. Thank you. Thank, hopefully you get some time to spend. I know there’s a lot of networking happening outside this room as well as inside this room, so hopefully we get to spend some time with our ultimate partner members here today. I’m [00:19:41] Hayley McSpirit: excited to do so. Yeah. Thank you for having me. So great to have [00:19:43] Vince Menzione: you, Hailey. [00:19:44] Hayley McSpirit: Yeah, [00:19:44] Vince Menzione: thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. So great to have you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks for tuning into this episode of Ultimate Eye to Partnering. We’re bringing these episodes to you to help you level up your strategy If you haven’t yet. Now’s the time to take action and think about joining our community. We created a unique place, UPX or Ultimate Partner Experience where leaders come to learn from each other. It’s more than a community. It’s your competitive edge with insider insights, realtime education, and direct access to people who are driving the ecosystem forward. UPX helps you get results, and we’re just getting started. We’ve got big plans for you this summer as we’re taking this studio, and we’ll be hosting live stream and digital events here, and it’s all coming to you soon. So visit our website, the ultimate partner.com to learn more and join us. Now’s the time to take your partnerships to the next level.

Our First LiveStream From the Boca Studio Unlock the secrets to explosive growth in the digital landscape!  Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Is your business ready for 2026? Welcome back to the Ultimate Guide to Partnering® Podcast. Join industry leaders Vince Menzione, Scott Sacket, Per Werngren, and Nabil Aitonumeziane as they discuss the evolution of MSPs, the critical role of AI readiness, the power of strategic partnerships within the Microsoft ecosystem, and the growing importance of co-selling and digital marketplaces. Learn actionable strategies for profitability, navigating new buying behaviors, and becoming an “ultimate MSP” by focusing on outcomes, building trust, and embracing community. https://youtu.be/Z9towXE6hfk?si=Gjy11ItjqSN8yxf_ Key Takeaways The MSP landscape is undergoing “tectonic shifts” driven by cloud adoption, AI integration, and evolving customer buying behaviors through marketplaces. Successful MSPs must evolve beyond the “break-fix” model to become strategic partners, focusing on business outcomes rather than just technology. AI presents significant opportunities for MSPs, but requires immediate adoption and internal training to avoid being left behind. Strategic partnerships, particularly within the Microsoft ecosystem, are crucial for MSP growth, emphasizing mutual value and trust. Standardizing offerings and specializing in specific technologies or solutions can significantly improve MSP profitability and success. Engaging with communities and peer groups like Ultimate Partner provides invaluable networking, learning, and collaboration opportunities for MSPs. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags: MSP,Managed Services,AI,Artificial Intelligence,Microsoft ecosystem,cloud transformation,hyperscalers,marketplace,co-selling,partner strategy,Nabil Aitonumeziane,Scott Sacket,Per Werngren,Vince Menzione,AppPoint,FSI strategy,Ultimate Partner,channel growth,digital buying,data security,governance,copilot,agentic AI,recurring revenue,business model,profitability,trusted advisors,community building,IT business,technology evolution,strategic partnerships Transcript: [00:00:00] Vince Menzione: We believe this time is like no other. We, we refer to these as the tectonic shifts, [00:00:08] Intro: all the hyperscalers in the world, if you add them all together. Managed services will be one and a half times larger because it is the customer buying behavior that has created the need for all of us to rethink our models. 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. [00:00:42] Vince Menzione: Good morning. I’m Vince Manzione, the CEO of Ultimate partner, and the host of the Ultimate Guide to Partnering Podcast. And I’m thrilled to be back in the studio here in Boca Raton. We have a lot of stories about Boca Raton. It is really the seminal point in the start of this ecosystem we all care about. It’s also where we host the Ultimate Eye to Partnering podcast where we host our events, and we’re gonna do our very first live stream here today. Uh, it’s designed for you to achieve incredible success as a partner. We’re working with hyperscalers like Microsoft. Our topic today is becoming the ultimate MSP. This is a topic that we care deeply about as, as our guests do as well. And each of my guests that are here today, I am so privileged to have members of our community, friends, uh, people that I truly appreciate and admire who are here now, who feel the same and are so passionate on this subject. I wanna invite them each to say, introduce themselves and say a couple words about why they believe this MSP moment is so unique and why it’s so relevant to all of us today. So s Scott, good to see you. [00:01:49] Scott Sacket: Great to see you. So exciting to be here alive, right? Gotta be careful. So for those who have, I’ve not met yet. My name is Scott Sackett and I’m the senior Vice President of Partner Strategy at AAV Point. And, um, I’ve been in the channel ecosystem now for over 25 years. I was a partner, of course, I’ve been at AAV point, leading channel now for many years, um, almost 20 years. And, um, this moment’s incredible, right? Um, you know, cloud really democratized what, what partners could do. And how to build up, um, and, and support many customers, small and large. And, and today, MSPs really are, um, the linchpin to how we build and, and, uh, manage it. So it’s an incredible moment for them and, and it’s only getting, uh, more important as things change and grow and evolve. So exciting times. [00:02:36] Vince Menzione: I love the linchpin comment ’cause it really holds it all together. I love that. And p Wgre, another great friend of ours, p uh, please take a moment and introduce yourself to our audience or all of our friends that are watching [00:02:47] Per Werngren: us today on the line. Yes, thank you, Ian. It is a privilege to be here. So I’m the CEO of Idex. We do AI and Azure operations. And why do I love MSPs? Well, I’ve been doing subscriptions all my life, and recurring revenue is such a beautiful thing because you start small, you sell a little bit. You sell more and you don’t lose what you have sold. You just keep on building and it all piles up. Beautiful business model. [00:03:16] Vince Menzione: I love it. I love it. [00:03:19] Nabil Aitonumeziane: Right. Hi, great to see [00:03:20] Vince Menzione: you, my friend. [00:03:21] Nabil Aitonumeziane: Thanks for having me. I mean, it’s been, uh, amazing coming to Florida. To the Hot Florida. But, uh, I’m Nabil Ian. I’m the president of FSI strategy. We’re an MSP. Uh, we specialize in Microsoft. We’re a, uh, managed service provider, but, uh, we specialize a hundred percent in Microsoft, uh, technologies. So thanks for having Well, [00:03:41] Vince Menzione: and you are an MSP, right? Yes. We talk about this all the time and how you’ve evolved your company. You a case study. We are, but [00:03:48] Nabil Aitonumeziane: we are not Your traditional MSP, which is. Managed service provider. We are more of the modernization solution partner ’cause we are trying to, uh, live in the AI era. Yeah. World. So we had to change our name as well. How to help our customers, uh, move forward with this technology is moving very fast. So [00:04:10] Vince Menzione: I’m gonna frame that and we’ll go right into, I’m gonna, I have, I’m gonna hit you with the first question, but you know, we talk about this tectonic shifts. That we’ve seen in our world, in our lives, and we’ve been talking about transformation and ultimate partner for many years. It started back in my Microsoft days, 10 years leading the partner business for public sector and growing that organization during the clouds transformation. But we’ve been talking about a, a, the hyperscalers really at the center and really the, we talk about Boca, the fact that Bill Gates came down here in 1981 and signed an agreement with IBM really sparked this ecosystem. There’s over a half a million just in the Microsoft ecosystem of partners. Probably well over a million if you put Google Cloud and AWS and, and you look at that center of the universe and we’ll talk about that center and how there are now seven seats at the table. But then, you know, we talked about the last couple years, AI really became a thing. Chat, GBT started it all back in November, 2022. And now, you know, we’ve had this incredible transformation that we’re gonna talk about, why it’s so fundamental today. And why it’s even more important, and then also how marketplaces are so fundamental to success today that the buying behaviors have changed. The millennials, the new buying persona, and they buy from, they’re very comfortable in marketplaces. We’re all more comfortable now hitting our phone three times and having a box show up at the end of the day, right? We’re all used to digital buying and it’s becoming the buy. The buying process has changed dramatically. And the hyperscalers have all embraced this marketplace. But then what do you need? Fundamentally, in order to have success, you need to have engagements with those sellers. And that’s why co-selling is so critical and important. We’re gonna talk about that as also an important component. And then the hype. We talk about this ecosystem and why you can’t go alone. And then we, we’ve been around ultimate partner. We created ultimate partner. ’cause we recognize that success is all about coming together. And I talk about the seven seats at the table because the buying persona is May now making a decision about driving a solution. They’re not buying a one-off vendor solution. They’re creating a solution set, and they need multiple vendors to come together. And this conversation today is how MSPs need to embrace these tectonic shift. Nabeel, you’ve owned this successful MSP for many years. You said 25 years you’ve been in this business, which is incredible. Long [00:06:29] Nabil Aitonumeziane: time [00:06:29] Vince Menzione: you don’t even look old enough to have been No. Been doing this for 25 years. Tell us what successes look like for you and your organization and what has the change been like? Can you speak to the change that we’ve been seeing? [00:06:40] Nabil Aitonumeziane: So we have seen the big changes in the past 10 years when it comes to the MSP world. Uh, we went, I think all of us in the MSP world, we came all from the break and fix model. To all you can eat, which became kind of very hard to kind of manage. But, uh, the past 10 years I’ve seen the MSP world really growing very fast because seeing the, the big companies out there, uh, ISVs, who are also now providing MSP services because. All the big scalers, if you ask me, they are trying to cover it all. Yeah. Like, you know, take a customer from soup to nuts, help them with everything they need to do with technology. And that’s why we’re seeing more and more bigger player into the MSP uh, community these days. And it’s one of, I think, one of the fastest growing technology businesses out there. I mean, I’ve been in it for 25 years and the past 10 years I’ve seen. Tens of thousands of companies that have came out of nowhere. So it’s becoming the hot business in the IT world. So, uh, the big change also that I see, it’s the technology that’s moving very fast. And I feel like the MSPs who are moving as fast as the technology is moving, they’re gonna be succeed. They’re gonna succeed. But the ones who are waiting. Trying to figure out the whole AI era that we’re living in. Yeah, they’re gonna be left behind. Yes, because the train already has left the station. For the ai, it started, like you said earlier, November 20, 27, uh, 22, but co-pilot, it started for me, 2024 copilot came out of one of the, you know, AI technologies that came out there for Microsoft. It was not the biggest success out there, but now with agents, they are fixing all the little issues that they had because, yeah. Anyway, I think we’re gonna have time to discuss AI a little deeper. Yes. And what’s going on with it. But those are the difference that I see. It’s, uh, it do not move fast enough and getting the ai, you know, trained today, you’re gonna be left behind. As an MSPI, [00:08:55] Vince Menzione: I am in violent agreement with you. You know, Scott, you’ve been at AppPoint for many years. I’ve, I’ve known AppPoint for close to two decades. And you know, you start off in the big enterprises, right? Big organizations, big public sector organizations, all the big government agencies use AppPoint technology. What have you seen this shift now to, uh, to moving out beyond just the largest customers and how is AAV Point addressing that? [00:09:21] Scott Sacket: Yeah, so it’s, it’s an incredible journey. Right. We started as a SharePoint, ISV. Yep. Uh, doing things like migration and backup and governance. Um, and the world changed drastically while we’ve been in business. I mean, just past this past July, 24 years in business, publicly traded. Right. Uh, the last four years. Yep. Um. And what we saw evolve was cloud really changing the game for us. Um, on premise became Cloud. Cloud of course, grew from just SharePoint online for us to exchange online in OneDrive. And then Teams, oh my goodness, teams just blew up everything. And when we started thinking about how we continue to evolve, our business partners became such an important and critical piece to how we grow. Because what was really expensive and complex for an SMB organization 20 years ago, server Farm, right? Really expensive hardware all of a sudden became a really simple service to flip a switch and just to log in. And so as we were thinking about this ecosystem where SMB actually comprised of 50% ultimately of the market, how were we going to scale? Yes. How were we going to be able to bring benefit? To those types of customers, and when we really started digging into it, MSPs were not just important. They’re really the superhero. Yeah. Right. They are the ones who are keeping that entire segment going and, and building out technology and exposing technology to them that they never had before. Because they have that sort of level of competency and expertise that many s and b customers don’t have. That’s right. And so we started really heavily investing in the MSP space over the last 10 years and not just taking our enterprise products and, and just handing it to, to, you know, MSPs and saying, okay, go figure it out. But we repackaged the whole thing. We built it from the ground up. We built a platform that allows for scale and automation and service delivery. Which is just so unbelievably important as we move into this next era right. Of, of ai when you layer in security and governance. ’cause that’s what’s keeping people from actually realizing that vision. [00:11:32] Vince Menzione: Yeah. You, you bring up some really great points. So I think back of the server being in the closet in the back of the room at the ss, the SMB organization and then this move to the cloud. This shift from the cloud started about eight, 10 years ago. Well, MM 365 drove Microsoft’s engagement, their Google Cloud as well. But then Azure took off in a big way in these organizations. They finally have started to realize the benefits and I feel almost feel like the MSP community was sitting behind doing break fix on computers while the customers were saying, we need to engage and we need to embrace all this. And then you start thinking about data because if you are gonna do things like ai, which is now. We talked about just the, the relevance of ai just the last couple years. You gotta get your data state right, and then if you’ve got data out there, you need to protect that data. And that’s where you, you know, you come in with all this set of tools. Right. So that point addresses all of [00:12:24] Scott Sacket: this. The, the move to AI is been so challenging for so many customers and partners. We have been building a lot of technology to help break down those barriers. That is by far the most requested and deployed service that we’re building for. Um, and we wanna solve that problem for our partners, right? Because we know once they get to AI, there’s so much goodness to unlock, right? And more productivity to unleash. [00:12:52] Vince Menzione: And you enable these MSPs, right? Oh yeah. ’cause you bring the tools, you bring the systems and tools. Uh, you take out some of the complexity for them, but then you make them the superheroes in front of those customers. [00:13:02] Scott Sacket: Absolutely. I mean, the whole idea is to get our partners to be at scale, to automate, to integrate with their existing technology right there. Yep. Their rs, you know, their PSAs, their RMMs Right. The existing, uh, infrastructure and, and to ultimately build a better business. Right. And to make them so valuable to their customers that the stickiness is, is, you know, obvious. [00:13:24] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Eric, you’ve been around. Partners for almost as long as I have, maybe even longer in some respects. I mean, you were the, you were the founder of Micro, the Microsoft partner ecosystem. It’s it’s association back in the day. And so you’ve seen this evolution up, up, close and personal, right? With, within the companies that you’ve run, you’ve been a serial entrepreneur, what are you starting to see and what, what are the characteristics that the MSP’s watching today and maybe watching this either live stream or. A recording of this, either on our YouTube channel or or on the podcast, what do they need to be doing differently? What are the characteristics that makes a successful or the ultimate MSP? [00:14:06] Per Werngren: So, that’s a good question. And I don’t know how many days we got to answer that question, but we’ll start now. Uh, [00:14:11] Vince Menzione: we’ll be here for a few days. So [00:14:13] Per Werngren: I would say that many MSPs, they give too much power to their technical people. Business decisions should be made by business people, and too many times technical people influence strategically important decisions that they should not have a say about. And that means that many MSPs, they have a product portfolio that is too broad, way too broad, and. [00:14:46] Vince Menzione: That’s broad for our American listeners today, right? [00:14:49] Per Werngren: I’m European and uh, that means that, um, uh, it is hard to entertain all the technologies that are involved. Yeah, I’m a big fan of Better Together. I want technologies to be integrated with each other because that saves cost and probably also give better outcomes for the customers and too many MSPs, they don’t dare standardize. Instead they customize a little, little bit too much. And when you customize well, then you kind of lose the ness of being an MSP. The last thing is probably that, um, when you have a product portfolio that is too wide, you will never become really good at all the offerings. Instead, it is better to look at what should you produce in-house? What can you produce in-house with good quality and good profitability? And then you find partners whose services that you resell. So this mix of, uh, creating your product portfolio and, uh, dare to kill your darlings. They’re to say no to producing everything in house. Try to become a little bit more narrow in what you do is one path to success and profitability is really bad among many MSPs. [00:16:13] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Because they’re trying to be all things to all people. [00:16:15] Per Werngren: Yes. If you try to be jack of all trades, well, you will never be successful. And, uh, that will hurt your profitability. That will also hurt the day when you want to exit your company. [00:16:29] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So let’s talk about, ’cause this is really a, it’s winning and successful as an MSB, but a lot of this is around the Microsoft ecosystem today. Neal’s organization, you would, what do you say? You eat, sleep, drink and bleed. Microsoft, is that it? Nabi, eat, [00:16:43] Nabil Aitonumeziane: sleep, breathe Microsoft. [00:16:45] Vince Menzione: Breathe Microsoft. So what are like the quick wins for the MSPs out there? What can they be doing? What are, what are the things you’ve done in the deal within your organization? We can talk, we can start top down with getting your organization right. Uh, I think P alluded to some of that as well. We can talk about like, engaging with the Microsoft Field organization, what, what, what seems to work. [00:17:07] Nabil Aitonumeziane: It may also start, but stop thinking like a service provider. Yeah. As an ms. Yeah. Alright. We are more of a, a strategic, you need to keep your mic up a little bit higher there. I’m getting, I’m sorry. Uh, that’s right. I dunno if you guys could hear me, but, uh, I feel like every MSP needs to stop thinking like a service provider and think more about the strategic partnership that they’re gonna build with the customers. We’re here to help customer. And then one thing I think Scott used talk about, it’s. The sellers, uh, in the MSP world or in the technology world, they need to start talking more about business and stop talking about technology. Yeah. Because we are dealing with C executives. [00:17:46] Vince Menzione: That’s right. [00:17:46] Nabil Aitonumeziane: They are thinking more about how can we help the business move forward and grow, and how can they do more with less? That’s why we need to have those con AI conversation. They’re more of business conversations than techno like technical conversation. You’re gonna confuse them. Because what we’re trying to do with the AI era, that’s why I think for all the MSPs out there, you need to get on ai. Now, yesterday, not today, yesterday, because our job now with our all our customers, we’re gonna help them navigate this whole AI era that we’re going through, all the confusions were out there, how can we help them? What are the solutions that we can build? And then have them repeatable with different customers, with their ai. But if you’re not in the AI world today. You need to be in it, otherwise you’re gonna be left behind because that’s how fast the MSP word is. Uh, moving. [00:18:42] Vince Menzione: Well, I’m gonna turn it over to you P but I just wanna, I want to kind of frame out a little bit like, ’cause we. You know, we talk about like, you need to be able to speak Microsoft if you’re working with Microsoft, right? So [00:18:52] Nabil Aitonumeziane: he said something earlier about Jack of all trade and master of none. This is how FSI, uh, about eight years ago decided to, uh, partner with one of the biggest partners in the world, Microsoft, for the reason we were tired of being Jack of Trade and master of none. We wanted to be good at one thing and be very good at it. So we went and we chose Microsoft. I always liked working with them, so we went with Microsoft. But it’s not about just Microsoft as a partner, choose your partners. Be very wise about how you choose your partners. ’cause the culture is also important when you working with a partner. Like I’ve worked with a point, which we have an amazing relationship. I work with Black Point, I work with Huntress, I work with Microsoft a lot. But the common things that we all have together, we are all Microsoft companies. Yeah. And the culture at FSI is Microsoft. So if I went to F Point, because F Point was also eating, breathing, sleeping. Microsoft as well. Yes. ’cause they started their business in 2001. They were a SharePoint company. So they know, they understand how Microsoft functions, whatever. But my point to you guys here. Having the right partner will help you succeed and move forward. So an ISV that you’re buying, uh, uh, services from or software from. Work with them, do marketing with them, do events with them. Uh, create things. I think this is something that we have lost. We don’t see that much anymore. We see a lot of ISVs in the conferences where they’re just over there. Selling? No. Do things together. Yes. To the community, to our customers. Yeah. For example, I’m working, I’m doing RO show with a point. I do the same thing with Microsoft where we get all our customers and our customers have also access to our ISV directly. So they know when I’m telling them, Hey, you need to buy that product I’m bringing. My partner to the discussion, they can talk with them and you know, so partnership is very important. [00:21:00] Vince Menzione: So you talked about a couple things. I’m gonna frame it and I want to turn it over to P ’cause he’s had some, he had raised his hand in a way. Uh, you talked about outcomes. So talk, start talking about the outcomes that you’re, we’re gonna help you achieve. And then you also, what I, what you implied is we bring value back to Microsoft. So this is like, how do I get a seller’s attention? And you might be in the SMB market, but they have a sales organization called Small Medium Enterprise and Channel Ssec is the new term. Not my favorite term, but, but they have taken Nicole Deen’s organization who spoke at our last event where you all were there. Um, and they’ve combined those organizations to help get the scale to the SMB market. But they have salespeople, they have sellers and specialists that support even these smaller customers. PI know you wanted to, to jump in with some thoughts on, on this, and how do you get yourself aligned better? With that Microsoft organization. [00:21:55] Per Werngren: So don’t ask what Microsoft can do for you, ask what you can do for Microsoft. Nice. [00:21:59] Per Werngren: We heard that before. It is important to understand that the Microsoft people, they have lot of things on their plate and so many emails are flowing in and there are 500,000 great partner in the world. Yes. [00:22:12] Per Werngren: So you need to make sure that you make it easy for them to understand what you bring to the table. And something that they love is when you communicate wins. Wins with clients. And the best, and you know, that you do it beautifully, is to take care of clients that are underserved. Clients that are kind of forgotten, do a great thing and communicate that with Microsoft. They love that. [00:22:39] Nabil Aitonumeziane: So one of the thing that Per was talking about, it’s uh, the way I work with Microsoft as an MSP, uh, specializing, like mostly in Microsoft, it’s, I work with the sellers. We have a plan together, so don’t go and knock at. A point, or Microsoft or whoever, uh, the, the partner is, and ask for handouts. You need to do some work. So what we do at FSI, we do, we run marketing campaigns for the sellers. Alright? We utilize our SDRs internally to make phone calls for debt accounts. With that, uh, ISV that we’re working with. So [00:23:14] Vince Menzione: you’re generating leads. So we [00:23:16] Nabil Aitonumeziane: are doing the work, we are doing the dirty work as well. We are not, we just, we’re trying to like, what I call it the three Ws, win, win, win. Not only Microsoft wins. Microsoft wins. FSI wins the customers power [00:23:28] Scott Sacket: of three. Power of three. [00:23:30] Nabil Aitonumeziane: Here we go. So it’s, uh, that’s what we’re doing. Like, so my point, don’t go to, uh, a partner. And expect them to just because you are buying a software from them, that they’re gonna be giving you referrals, whatever, do things with them, build a relationship with them. Partnership, I think is one of the most important thing for success for any MSP out there. You need to choose a partner wisely and work with them closely. So this is how it works. I mean, you have to build that. It’s, uh, you’re becoming one because, for example, I’m gonna go back to it again. F point, I’ll sell their stuff for the backup. It’s part of my onboarding. Every customer that we onboard, their backup is going straight to F point. So what? What the whole meaning of this. When FSI wins, F point wins. The customer wins. Yeah. And Microsoft, you have created And Microsoft. Yeah. And the trust. Trust, yes. And the whole, by the way, talking about partnerships, if there is no trust, there’s no partners, there’s no partnership. It’s the same thing. Like in a marriage. Yeah. No trust, no marriage. No trust, no partnership. It, I think it’s for me to succeed as an MSP today because of all the competition out there, you need to choose wisely your partner and partner with them and go all out. I mean, don’t go ask for handouts, do the dirty work, work with the partner. Come up with ideas, you know, be, be the person out there who’s gonna give them ideas to run the marketing campaign for their own customer. ’cause they’re gonna benefit from it. Yep. It’s not only FSI or whoever the MSB is [00:25:05] Per Werngren: and not the person that is being shown on a big screen on a cool, that’s right. [00:25:09] Vince Menzione: So I, I gotta turn to that because that point is, is genuinely probably one of the best at brand and story and getting and, and doing things that are not traditional. Like how do you kind of sit back and wait for things at Point has an incredible reputation for really making things happen. Like really like going out above and beyond. I want. I was hoping, Scott, you could talk a little bit about this as well. [00:25:34] Scott Sacket: Yeah, and I’ll, I’ll, you know, frame it in the lens of the Microsoft story as well. [00:25:38] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And partner of the year for like, seven, eight years, something like that. Maybe nine years running, something like that. Um, [00:25:43] Scott Sacket: hopefully more. Yes, yes. You know, as we go. But, um, you know, similar, similar to, to, uh, everyone, we spend a lot of time understanding Microsoft School. Right, what outcomes they’re looking for. Yeah. And, and we really do build our messaging, our, our stack, even our commercial bundles. Around those outcomes. Right? So, you know, our MSPs, our resellers, ultimately our partners, I mean, everybody, um, needs to understand sort of, you know, we’re revolving around the sun, right? Yes. Microsoft is sort of the center of that, that solar system. And we want to make sure that Microsoft wins, we win, our partner wins, right? That power of three story is really, really critical. Super [00:26:26] Vince Menzione: critical. [00:26:26] Scott Sacket: Um, and when we do that, this, it’s very simple to partner. It’s very simple. Right, because we understand that Microsoft wants everyone to get into co-pilot. Microsoft wants people leveraging AI workloads or, or, uh, Azure workloads and AI workloads. Certainly, yeah. Right. Um, this is what is very clearly written. I mean, we’re in, um, you know, in a new fiscal year, right. Microsoft new fiscal year. Yeah. We’re all kind of unpacking, uh, what the new program is. Right. It’s, it’s not always easy to figure it out. That’s right. Right. But there’s some obvious themes, right. Ai, Azure, right. Building workloads and, and technology on there. I mean, agents are starting to become really prevalent, right? And we have a story around even agents and governance. So there, there’s a lot there that, um, you know, we, we think about it in the, in the Microsoft lens, right? And how we deliver that ultimately to our partners, which empowers them to be successful. Which, ’cause that’s the key here. We can’t, you know, just sell, right? That’s right. We need to enable our partners with technology, with support co-marketing, as Nabil alluded to, right? Co-marketing is so important. Co-sell. Unbelievably important, right? Really important. It’s, it’s really finally, finally, co-sell is so hard, right? We build our whole team around, co-sell with partners. So it, it’s a, it’s a huge opportunity, but you have to think about it in, in sort of the lens of what Microsoft is trying to accomplish. [00:27:49] Vince Menzione: Let’s dive in a little bit on ai. We’ve kind of, we’ve skirted around it as a subject, but let, let’s talk about a couple things. First of all, Nvidia, $4 trillion market cap and growing, by the way, they just, they just got. Entry now into China in a big way. The Trump administration has approved them selling some of their better chips into China, so we’re gonna see this thing continuing to grow. Data center movement is huge. Power companies, utility companies are becoming huge now, by the way, because they’re, they’re downstream of this. Somebody’s gotta drive the power consumption. And we’re seeing big deals right in, in, in the Middle East. We’re seeing big deals here worldwide. Tons and tons of these data centers, big chips. Uh, Microsoft leaning in big with it, with chat, GPT and copilot, but you know, also more, more involvement here. And people are starting to see the benefit finally. Right? Because we talked about the early days, like people overestimated what you would see one year and they underestimate what they see in 10. And that’s what we saw with AI the first year was like, eh, it was underwhelming. And then the first couple years of selling copilot, eh, I didn’t see the results right. Well, now we’re getting to this point where now AG agentic is starting to get layered in. We’re starting to see Microsoft, in fact, creating a separate group for, for startups where they’re gonna be laying in, Jason Grey’s gonna be running this new initiative to go and embed AI into all these organizations. You’re starting to see more of that motion happening, and this means also, this is where the MSPs are gonna come in the, the layering in the, somebody’s gotta layer in all the agenda ai, all the AI across these platforms. And who is gonna do it? Let’s talk about ai. I know we, we all have points of view on it. I think we all are very passionate about it. I believe personally, five years our world is gonna be radically different than it is today because it’s happening so fast. We’re starting to see this hockey stick. What would you have to say to that, Scott? [00:29:40] Scott Sacket: Yeah. I mean, we think about AI in, in really multiple angles, right? We of course think about AI in what we can build into our own technology. Right. We wanna make our technology smarter and leverage best of, you know, breed technology. We think about AI and how we can build a better company. Right. Of course. Right. We’re an organization. Yeah. That wants to be more productive. That’s right. And we think about AI in how we can help our partners get their customers there. So we have like three different work streams when we think about ai and we’re leveraging all three, right? So we build technology that ultimately. Is smart and scales right, and is automated and, and comes up with, you know, suggestions and, and different ideas for the person using the technology ultimately to make the right decisions. Um, we think about AI readiness and security, right? The number one reason why people don don’t. Deploy copilot today is data security risk. Yeah. Right? And, and it’s a really public cloud. I mean, right. It’s a really, really important problem today, surfacing that risk. You know, are you oversharing? Um, you know, do you have proper governance on a, on a team, right? Yeah. All of those different complex issues. Um, and then once again, internally, we’re building agents, right? How do we get smarter? We have something called chat, A VPT, right? And we use that. I mean, I think Microsoft did a really nice, um, case study on us actually. Uh, about how we’re leveraging AI today internally. So we, we, we think AI is once again disrupting everything. It’s changing the way we think about business. I am, you know, just astonished to see what will become right in the next few years, of course. Um, but it, it’s layered everywhere, right? Everything we do should be thinking about, you know, prompts. Yeah. And, and, and, you know, that should be our first, you know, reflex, you know, reflexive ai, right? You know, first thing you think about is, well, how can I use AI to do. Task X, Y, Z. Yeah. Right. So it’s very interesting times. [00:31:33] Per Werngren: So we use, um, ai of course. Um, internally, we want to be a good customer, zero. And, uh, we use it, uh, to, um, make ourselves more efficient, more intelligent. We also use it, uh, when it comes to, uh, operating Azure, and we have our own service called AI Operations, which is about taking care of all these AI workloads and make sure that they run 24 7. That’s a beautiful service. So we live and brief. Ai, but looking outside, um, our company ID next, I think that MSPs in general need to think about how can they swing ai. Um, the low hanging fruit is, of course, using it internally, but then making sure that they are exploring if they can set up services. Subscription services that are based on AI and that leverage this momentous that we got in AI right now. So perhaps we are used to, uh, renting a car at the airport, Hertz rent a car. We, we might see Hertz rent an agent. So like, think about it because if you are not thinking about it, someone else will. [00:32:49] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Yeah. Very good point. Good [00:32:52] Nabil Aitonumeziane: point. Uh, per. But per just said it all, so, but uh, no, the way I look at it, uh, for us as an MSP, uh, when it comes to ai, first of all, we need to drink our own Kool-Aid. Yes. Alright. I think the same thing went with a lot of companies. They were promoting a lot of AI and they were not using it internally. Didn’t even know what it meant. So I feel like for us, uh, at FSI, we already, uh, we are using AI copilot in our help desk. We even moved our, uh. ConnectWise moved it to Dynamics where in the CRM we run our, uh, ticketing system through Dynamics. Uh, we run our sales through dynamics. We run our marketing through dynamics and all that. We have ai, uh, involved in it. I love it. And we are trying to change the culture internally with our people. It’s to push people to, uh, be using more AI because the reason why we are already helping customers. With ai, if we don’t know about ai, how are we gonna be helping someone else with ai? That’s right. [00:33:56] Nabil Aitonumeziane: So what per said, start thinking about it because ai, it’s exactly what happened when the internet came. What year did the internet, uh, uh, appeared? [00:34:07] Vince Menzione: Oh, it was in the nineties. Yeah, in the [00:34:09] Nabil Aitonumeziane: nineties. Yeah. It was the same thing. What’s happening right now. No one knew what was, what was going on, what’s happening, and so my only advice I will give to any MSP. Get on AI because if you don’t, someone else is gonna come and take it from you. Well, [00:34:25] Vince Menzione: you’re gonna [00:34:25] Nabil Aitonumeziane: fall back. Somebody else is gonna support your customers. With ai, [00:34:29] Vince Menzione: I feel like every day you wait, you’re falling a month or a year further behind. It’s happening. Absolutely. So rapidly now, [00:34:36] Scott Sacket: it took chat GPT two months to get to 100 million users. Yeah. That’s crazy, right? I mean, it took cloud Facebook years. To accomplish those things. Yeah. Imagine where we’ll be in a year. You cannot wait and the [00:34:49] Vince Menzione: hallucinations are dropping dramatically. The power and the the quality of the output is so much better than it was even just a few months ago. Go ahead. [00:34:58] Nabil Aitonumeziane: No, I was gonna say, uh, when it comes to ai, we have to learn it because we have to think about it ourselves as executives. It only be makes us better. Absolutely. It’s [00:35:10] Nabil Aitonumeziane: the same message we need to take to the leaders out there. Telling them ai, it’s only going to make you better. Make your business better, think faster. That’s why I’m telling all to all the MSPs out there, learn it, do research, start working on it, because actually, ai, believe it or not, for an MSP, is gonna open up a lot of opportunities. For example, security. Data cleanup, so all that. So you need to be part of this, uh, era. [00:35:39] Vince Menzione: I’m gonna put you on the spot a little bit, NABI. Sure. Because we’ve had this conversation for a while. We’ve been doing Ultimate Partner for years. The podcast, about two plus years ago, we started doing events. We did our first live stream and then our first in person. And we’ve continued down that route. We, one of the things I get from MSPs quite often is, I don’t know where to start. I don’t know what to do. Can you help me? What do you say to some of those MSPs to help them be more successful? [00:36:09] Nabil Aitonumeziane: So one of the biggest advice I will give over here, join a group. Like for example, I joined Ultimate Partner. That’s how, believe it or not, that’s how I’ve met Docs, Scott Pair, and those are the people who became part of my life, my Microsoft life. Yeah. Alright. But I had the exact same question few years back where to start because. For example, as uh, FSI, working with Microsoft, it’s not very easy to work with Microsoft. So I have to start somewhere, right? And my beginning, it all started, believe it or not, it was an ultimate partner in Dallas at Las Colinas. Yeah, when we’ve met the original [00:36:48] Vince Menzione: event, yeah. It was, I think one of the [00:36:50] Nabil Aitonumeziane: best, uh, shows ever and it just opened up my eyes to the Microsoft world because. I was never able to be, uh, anywhere near president of Microsoft or a C-level executive who is in the same room as you. And then you can ask the question or other partners who are just like you, who either they have 20 years of experience and they’re doing $10 billion, or they are five years and doing 5 million. But that’s what I met the people through Ultimate Partner. That’s what I started to meet the right people, the exact people that I needed to meet with Microsoft, for me to start working directly with Microsoft. So that’s what I was talking earlier. Partnership For me, uh, personally, as an MSP owner, it’s one of the most important thing. [00:37:37] Vince Menzione: And you’re not gonna find that surfing the web or going on a LinkedIn profile, right? No. You will [00:37:41] Nabil Aitonumeziane: not find this, these things you have, uh, to meet either the right group or the right people. Yeah, to put you in touch. And there is a lot of groups out there. Like I said, I was lucky enough, uh, to be in Dallas for the ultimate partner and I was, uh, privileged to meet with Kevin Piker at the time, which was a big deal. Was a president of Microsoft. Uh, but yeah, for me, that’s, uh, how we work. I think partnerships are very important. Yeah. And [00:38:08] Vince Menzione: then you met up with Ducks, Raymond Sa, who you knew from many years ago, but you hadn’t seen each other funny enough. [00:38:13] Nabil Aitonumeziane: Uh, the story with Ducks, I think I, uh, keep repeating that story over and over, but it was here in Boca about a year ago. Uh, went to breakfast with Ducks and Per was there, uh, docs opened up a laptop while we’re having breakfast. Like, oh, let me show you a product. We have no joke. Within five minutes I picked up the phone, called my office, I said. You need to see what this company has to offer. And believe it or not, it’s been a year, it’s been one of the best partnerships we’ve had because we also get a lot of support from our partner. So by the way, partnerships is two ways. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That’s why I was talking earlier when I said about Microsoft. For any MSPs out there, don’t go ask for hands out. So, you know. Do something for them. So they do something for you. It has to go both ways. [00:39:01] Vince Menzione: So I was at one of the, on one of the AF point calls just about a month or so ago, and they were talking, they were glowingly talking about your company and how much business you’ve generated for them. [00:39:11] Nabil Aitonumeziane: We actually have generated a lot of business things to, uh, our, uh, partner a point. Uh, and again, a point has been a big help for us when it comes to the whole AI era as well, because. It started all with copilot readiness, which was ai. And through that we got so much going on with helping our customer clean up the data, you know, uh, secure their data. Like all that is created projects for us. And it’s funny because AF Point kind of introduced us to AI and directly ’cause we were doing the copilot readiness. I love it. That’s how it all started. So [00:39:49] Scott Sacket: you’re gonna make me blush. Yeah, please don’t. I love that. I love to see that [00:39:53] Per Werngren: there. You’ve been talking about this. Yeah. A small thing that you said that I want to emphasize a little bit. You made a technical decision, which vendor should we go with? Which vendor’s? Technology. Yep. You made it as a business person, and that is often more successful than technical people making decisions that [00:40:13] Nabil Aitonumeziane: absolutely. Absolutely. I think decisions have to be made in as a business, not as technical. [00:40:19] Scott Sacket: Yes, but, but also, right. The product solves a really hard problem. Of course. That’s right. But what has taken the partnership to another level? Co-sell, co-marketing, personal relationships, advocacy. Yes. Right. That is sort of the difference between when you think about, do I take on a vendor, do I onboard a vendor, or you know, nah, not for me. Right. That’s the piece that separates, you know, many MSPs from Good to Great. [00:40:44] Nabil Aitonumeziane: And they feel like when it comes to vendor, you have to work with the vendor that you love. Yes. It’s like really, it’s like a marriage. ’cause don’t forget that you’re selling this product to your customer. That means you gotta be selling them something that you believe in. And that’s why when you said it’s the trust and that personal relationship with the vendor, because you know why, when you have a personal relationship. You can run ideas with them and they can run ideas with you as well because you are in it together. When you grow, they grow. Your customer grows. It’s everybody wins in here. So, [00:41:16] Vince Menzione: you know, we talk about the principles of success, but it starts at the to top with the growth mindset and the executive commitment, and you see the difference in organizations like a point that maybe some other organizations out there that maybe are not as. Little bit more reticent on the partnering side. Maybe not as, not as the trust is. What [00:41:33] Nabil Aitonumeziane: a good point, Vince. Honestly, it makes all the difference in the world that personal relationships and when you have C-level, uh, executives who are open to talk to any of their customers, whoever, like, that’s what I had my relationship with that point today, uh, I feel very comfortable. If there’s an issue, I’ll call because I have, I feel comfortable to say good or bad. ’cause we’re in it together. [00:41:56] Vince Menzione: Agree. I wanna stay on this topic of communities and a little bit of a call out to p who’s been around for me for several years. We, we started having conversations five during COVID about the fact that we really needed to do something here to bring, ’cause we had the people, we just needed to get them all in the same room back in those days. P So [00:42:15] Per Werngren: what happens when you bring people together is that you build trust. And when you have built trust, you start helping each other and that builds even more trust. And even if you’re not doing business together, you will influence each other’s business. You will help each other, and that’s good for the group. As a whole, and it’s also good for all individual members, but you need to have a mentality where you’re willing to share, where you’re willing to expose yourself and talk about what is not working well and get help from others. And that is the essence of a great community and ultimate partner has really become a wonderful community. Where the trust level is super high [00:42:59] Vince Menzione: because of people like each of you. And AV Point has come on as a big sponsor, a big supporter of our, of our events. I wanted to talk about this for a minute ’cause we are gonna only have a few minutes left. So unselfish, plug here a little bit. Right? So these gentlemen were just at our event in Redmond just a couple of months ago, right? May 1st and second. It seems like it was yesterday. In some regards. And, uh, you’ll be back again. October. We’re gonna be in Reston, Virginia, Washington DC area. Really the tech hub of the Washington DC Metro area, but also [00:43:28] Nabil Aitonumeziane: must attend. [00:43:29] Vince Menzione: Yeah, must attend. And that’ll be on the, we’ll start on the 27th of October with a beautiful reception. And then we have two full days of content at Csof, which at point is responsible for us hosting that event and co-sponsoring the event with us. And then we’re hoping to do something also around the Ignite Conference as well. So we’ve got a, we’ve got a rich fall coming up, and then we’ll be back in the studio in the winter. We’ve, we’ve all agreed that this is our favorite place to come in, like January and February. So we’re probably gonna do a couple of our, our live. And it’s, and [00:43:59] Nabil Aitonumeziane: it’s also, people need to know, I mean, for the MSP uh, community out there, it’s the place where you’re gonna come and learn everything. How to do business with Microsoft, by the way, at those events, this is what I’ve learned. Uh, how to work with Microsoft. It’s through building relationship with people who are coming to the Ultimate partner, uh, event. And this is the place to be. You have to come, there will be Microsoft people, there will be other ISVs who are gonna, uh, share stories with you, other sis who are like, just like you, who can tell you what works, what doesn’t work, you, you know, it’s kind of basically it’s a peer group. That’s why I love it. It’s, uh, I built new friends. [00:44:36] Vince Menzione: And we’ve had some mentors and we’ve had some of the other vendors come in like PAX eight and Ingram in the last event. So we’re starting to see, again, this ties into what App Point’s been doing already in getting, I, I call it the long tail, but it’s the, it takes you all through the mid-market, all the way down to the smallest customers. You need a mechanism to get there, and this is what we’re talking about now. And then even the large organizations need to become more like MSPs. So we’re hoping to get some of the resellers in the room because they, the ones that are successful, the ones that are building their own ms. MSP or they’re a requiring MSPs. We could talk about some of that as well if we had another hour today. But, [00:45:12] Per Werngren: and that blend is beautiful, that you have members that are coming from different corners of the industry and that makes, uh, good network o opportunities. Yeah. [00:45:22] Scott Sacket: Yeah. The, the partner ecosystem is changing rapidly. Um, everyone has to learn quickly how to do service delivery. Um, you know, you, you feel it when you understand, you know, licensing and margins and kind of where the world is going in AI as well. Um, and this is a really, a great community right, to start investing in, frankly, because it, it’s gonna help you on that journey. And I, I love to see, um, distributors and LSPs and all different sorts of partners that we know are doing great service delivery, right? They need to do it at scale, they need to be automated, right? And they need to do it profitably. Um, and this is really a great combination of vendors and other partners to, to kind of have that peer group and no group is greater from a peer to peer perspective than the MSP community. Yeah. I am always blown away with how well everyone works together. Yeah. Well, [00:46:12] Vince Menzione: thank you Scott for that. And I wanna just call out these gentlemen all flew in today just to be here in the studio. I’m just, I feel so privileged to have you as friends and supporters. You came in from New New York area, Stockholm, Sweden. Right. And the DC area as well. And all flew in today just to be here to help you, and I want to thank everyone. I know we’re basically at time right now. I want to thank all of our supporters, what an incredible community we’re building with, with you. Uh, I have a personal mission to help each of you achieve your greatest results. I’m very fortunate to be here and I, I, I don’t discount that in any way. So, uh, come to ultimate. The, the ultimate partner.com or ultimate Guide to Partnering, you’ll find us at the same, I’ll take you to the same website. Um, the event in rest, and the registration is opening either today or tomorrow. So you’ll be able to register. We’re gonna have, these gentlemen will be in the room again. Uh, we’ll have a deep conversation. We’re gonna have an MSP track. We’re gonna be growing that. We’ll have some of the other top ISVs in the room, some of the Microsoft leaders, some of the other leaders in the hyperscaler market will be in the room with us at this event. Helping, nurturing your growth. This is what it’s all about. We also bring the top partner tech companies in the room that support us. Companies like Sugar and Tackle and Work Span all come in and support our events. And then some of the top consulting companies are also in the room, the Carve partners, the the Bridge partners, uh, all of those organizations to help nurture your growth. And so one ticket, a couple of days of time, you’re gonna learn more in that period of time. You heard p talk about that. So come to the ultimate partner.com and then you can also watch us. You’ll wa you can watch this recording. Um, the edited version of this will be on our YouTube channel, ultimate partner.com or ultimate partner YouTube channel. You’ll find us there. And then if you wa would like to listen in your car or while you’re taking the kids to soccer or riding your bike or doing whatever exercise you’re doing, just you can watch this on Ulti, whatever. Wherever you listen to the Ultimate partner or the ultimate guide to partnering, you’ll find us. So I want to thank each of you. For your support, for being so supportive of this. Great, these great gentlemen, this part of this great community that we are building together, and, uh, we’ll hope to see you all in Reston, Virginia in just a few months. And thank you for joining us today. Thank you.

Microsoft’s America’s Partner Leader joins Ultimate Partner Unlock the secrets to explosive growth in the digital landscape!  Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Is your business ready for 2026? Welcome back to the Ultimate Guide to Partnering® Podcast. Nina Harding, Microsoft’s partner leader for the Americas, joins host Vince Menzione to discuss the seismic shifts happening at the start of Microsoft’s fiscal year 2026. This isn’t just another discussion; it’s a deep dive into Microsoft’s renewed partner-centric strategy, the transformative power of AI, and the tactical steps partners need to take now to thrive. Nina reveals how partners are now “front and center” in Microsoft’s priorities, how a new industry-based structure is changing everything, and the crucial role of AI in boosting sales and innovation. She shares actionable insights on co-selling, the new “Frontier” mindset, and why being a “customer zero” for AI is no longer optional. This conversation provides a strategic roadmap for every partner looking to align with Microsoft’s vision for the future. Key Takeaways Partners are now one of Microsoft’s top three priorities, with a major focus on tighter integration with sales teams and a “partner-first” tone from leadership. Microsoft is moving to a 100% industry-based structure in the US, with new industries like oil and gas and gaming, to focus on solving customer problems with industry experts and partners. The new “SDC” (Software Development Company) term is more comprehensive and inclusive than the traditional ISV (Independent Software Vendor) term. AI is delivering a 10% increase in pipeline, a 23% higher close rate, and a 9% larger book of business in revenues for sales reps who use it consistently. The “Frontier” mindset is Microsoft’s new theme for FY26, emphasizing the exploration of possibilities with AI, moving beyond out-of-the-box functionality. The most critical advice for partners is to become “customer zero” for AI, differentiating themselves by articulating their value proposition and depth of expertise by industry. If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags: Microsoft, Nina Harding, Vince Menzi, Ultimate Partner, partner strategy, fiscal year 26, FY26, AI, artificial intelligence, Copilot, Microsoft partners, co-sell motion, customer engagement methodology, CEM, industry-based, operating units, OUs, Total Addressable Markets, TAM, small medium enterprise, SMC, software development companies, SDCs, ISV, channel partners, account executive, AE, solution areas, Biz Apps, security, Azure, Microsoft field, America’s Partner Brief, APB, agentic AI, marketplace, digital transformation, Frontier, enablement, technical roles. Transcript: [00:00:00] Nina Harding: We’re finding such intense productivity. Um, for example, with our sales reps, the ones that are using AI consistently, we’re seeing, um, about a 10% increase in their pipeline. We’re seeing a 23% higher close rate and 9%, uh, larger book of business in actual revenues. [00:00:25] Vince Menzione: Welcome back to the Ultimate Guide to Partnering. I’m Vince Menzi, the CEO of Ultimate partner and your host, and I am thrilled today to welcome Nina Harding, Microsoft’s partner leader for the America’s business. Nina, welcome to the studio here. [00:00:41] Nina Harding: Oh, thanks so much for having me. [00:00:42] Vince Menzione: So excited to have you. Was great. Many of you don’t know this, but Nina actually lives here in Florida. Yeah. We both live in Florida only. Yeah. We live [00:00:50] Nina Harding: pretty close to each other everywhere. Pretty close together. Yeah. What, three and a half miles, maybe? [00:00:54] Vince Menzione: Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. It’s crazy. Yeah. And this is our Boca studio. For those of you who haven’t been here yet, Nina’s gonna be here this, this winter. We’ll have you, we’ll have you on stage. [00:01:03] Nina Harding: Great. [00:01:03] Vince Menzione: In front of our partners, all of our partners that watch and listen to the ultimate guide to partnering, but so, so thrilled to have you join us today. We have such an amazing conversation to have today because. This is an important inflection point in Microsoft’s year, right? The beginning of fiscal year 2026. Yeah. For those of you looking at your calendars and watches. Uh, it’s 2025, but for Microsoft we’ve started fiscal year 26 and so, so many changes that are happening. So much excitement and enthusiasm around the new year. [00:01:33] Nina Harding: Absolutely. We have a lot [00:01:34] Vince Menzione: to cover today. [00:01:35] Nina Harding: Yeah, we do. Yeah, [00:01:35] Vince Menzione: we do. So I thought maybe we’d spend a minute on that, if you don’t mind. Sure. Maybe we’ll start there because there were a lot of announcements made. Sure. And, uh, Judson and Nicole and some others were on the on stage just about a week and a half ago talking him through the changes. Yeah. I thought maybe you could help lead us through some of the conversation Yeah. On what’s changed and what’s stayed the same. [00:01:56] Nina Harding: Right. Um, well, I think the. Biggest change I’ve seen is partner is front and center as one of the top three priorities at the company. [00:02:06] Vince Menzione: I’m so happy to see that. So [00:02:07] Nina Harding: that is really exciting. Yeah. So, uh, we had to start, as you mentioned, a couple weeks ago, and every single. Presentation every, some single executive was talking about our partners. Uh, when Judson normally has like a panel of customers up there. This time he had two partners in one customer. So I love that the tone is really, uh, forward on partners. The major changes that you’re seeing, uh, first is that we’re trying to bring the partners more into the core business. Uh, align them with the sales teams. So what that means is our channel partners are now sitting toe to toe, shoulder to shoulder with the um, sm. C and e folks, right? Yeah. Yep. So, um, what we hope with that is there’s even tighter integration. We get rid of some of that friction that might have been there, and we operate as one. I love that our partners really become that extension of our Salesforce, um, out, out there on the front lines, um, on the, on the other side. We have an opportunity in the enterprise to go even tighter and deeper with our services and what we’re now referring to as our SDC software development. SII [00:03:24] Vince Menzione: know, it’s I know, I know, I know. Good [00:03:26] Nina Harding: old, good old Sandy [00:03:27] Vince Menzione: Gupta and I had a conversation about this at our last event and, uh, it’s so hard it doesn’t roll off the tongue very easily. [00:03:33] Nina Harding: No, it doesn’t, but it’s actually much more inclusive. Yes. So, um, it’s funny, I had a conversation with an Nvidia and. They were the ones that kind of prompted even that opening with me of saying, Hey, we don’t see ourselves as an ISV. And they’re not, they’re not, right? They’re, and so SDC is much more comprehensive, but kind of going back to some of those changes, that’s, uh, that’s where we’re seeing even tighter integration and how that shows up. That shows up in the way. Um, we look at pipeline, how we do reporting, um, in each of the ou, um. Do you want me to talk about the OU as well? I do. Let’s [00:04:11] Vince Menzione: talk about, so just for people that don’t under, don’t understand our acronyms. Yeah. But, uh, so Small Medium Enterprise and corporate is Ssec. [00:04:18] Nina Harding: Yes. Is smec and [00:04:19] Vince Menzione: a lot of partners we’re gonna, we’re gonna talk about where, what partners sit where. Sure. And then the OU are the operating units. Correct. Uh, they are. And what people don’t always realize about the way how Microsoft is structured, because you sit on a leadership team and you’ve got representatives that are very industry focused, right? Correct. Across various aspects of the business. They have their own vp, they have their own marketing organization, they have their own selling organization, and so on and so on. [00:04:43] Nina Harding: Yeah. [00:04:44] Vince Menzione: So talk to us about that. That’s the operating units, [00:04:46] Nina Harding: right? So, um, we affectionately call them operating units, but they’re really, as Judson affectionately calls them tam capture units. Right. So, um, a country, uh, you could have a country, yep. Or, um, an aggregate of countries or you could have division of countries. They’re really based on the TAM capture opportunity. So in the United States and TAM being total [00:05:12] Vince Menzione: addressable market, correct? Most correct. Sorry. No, that’s right. Yes. [00:05:14] Nina Harding: Um, but for example, in the US. We have gone 100% industry based this year. I love it. It’s really, really exciting. Yeah. So we no longer have territories anywhere, and we’ve actually been able to introduce some new industries like oil and gas, right? So I’ve [00:05:31] Vince Menzione: seen that [00:05:31] Nina Harding: gaming, those are real industries that make a difference, uh, to everyone. And so what’s exciting about that? As the conversation is changing, we’re going further and further away around how do we position product to how are we really solving customer problems? And the conversation is all at that industry level, in that language with the experts from the industry helping to solve problems with the customer. And that’s where our partners come in too. [00:06:01] Vince Menzione: It makes such a big difference. And then the partners that are surrounding that, or that sales organization are ones that are laser focused on that specific industry, right? [00:06:09] Nina Harding: Absolutely. And that’s so critical. Um, I think today where our partners and even Microsoft sellers, we. Perhaps we’re comfortable positioning product or doing implementations, [00:06:22] Vince Menzione: selling that ea. [00:06:24] Nina Harding: Right, right. Um, now we’re moving into this kind of imagineering stage. Yes. Where we’re really, where we’ve talked about being the strategic advisor to, uh, a customer. Well, now it’s really here. Yeah. You have to speak their language, you have to understand their business problems, and then you have to help them also reimagine what the future looks like. [00:06:45] Vince Menzione: It’s so critical. Uh, we were the first industry in public sector when I was there, and we were the only ones who spoke a different language. And then the rest of the field organization was territories. And it was, you know, accounts were just split up. They had different sales reps. There was really no knowledge of what that customer did. And like you, like you’re saying here, I mean, it’s so, it’s so critical and important. [00:07:04] Nina Harding: Absolutely. Yeah. [00:07:05] Vince Menzione: So I wanna dive in a little bit on Ssec and the channel and how that integrates. So the OU relies on partners and co-selling is an incredible piece of what they do as well, right? [00:07:16] Nina Harding: Absolutely, absolutely. So, and [00:07:18] Vince Menzione: I know that you, you said that they’re paid a little bit differently. Before we started you were, you were talking about compensation packages. [00:07:23] Nina Harding: Yeah. So we’ve, we’ve really, uh, made an effort this year to make sure that for our enterprise partners, so in particular the services and the. SDCs, right? The ISVs, yeah. Um, that we have a really strong co-sell motion, right? So we’re focused on making sure that we’re understanding all the opportunities together. Uh, we’re looking at propensity maps and that we’re making those introductions at a deeper level from a compensation perspective, um, and even a review. The methodology and making it, um, part of the day-to-day rhythm of the business. As we refer to it as, yes, uh, Microsoft, um, means it even is in the way we do monthly business reviews, how we’re showing up, evaluating the business. What is the partner attach rate? Are we seeing a difference when a partner is attached at stage one versus stage two versus after the deal closes? Yeah. Um, are certain partners performing better? Is the size of a deal getting bigger because the partner is in there? Um, those are the things that we’re able to do now that we have much tighter integration with Microsoft’s SEM model. Yeah, [00:08:36] Vince Menzione: and that’s why I was, I, I knew you were alluding to the sem. Yeah. So a lot of people that have been to our events before. We’ve had, SEM has been repeatedly covered or talked about. [00:08:47] Nina Harding: Yeah, [00:08:47] Vince Menzione: so that’s Microsoft’s customer engagement methodology. [00:08:51] Nina Harding: Very good. [00:08:52] Vince Menzione: And, uh, and it, and what’s really, really terrific about this, this wasn’t there when I was at Microsoft, is really this. Structuring of this is, this is the steps you take in the sales process. These are the things you do. This is when partners get engaged in the process with you. Right, right. It helps the sellers better understand what the expectations and accountabilities look like. [00:09:13] Nina Harding: Yeah. Especially the accountabilities around the different roles. And that’s what I like, is that we’ve actually gone down to the role level and not only what their role is with the customer, but what is their role with the partner. Yeah. And then what role does the partner play at different stages? So the maturation of the model has really opened the aperture, I think, for the opportunity for partners to come in and make a material difference and be part. Of the engagement process. Yeah, [00:09:41] Vince Menzione: that’s so, so critical. And one of the things we do at our events and some of, in fact we’ll cover, we’ll have a co-selling workshop conversation here later this month. We’ll have a couple of experts come in, um, including Jen Weis, who’s one of the partner development managers, uh, well known. And then we have a lot of leaders that come in here to talk about this because partners don’t always, aren’t always aware. Of what their role is, right? Mm-hmm. And May and maybe the partner alliance manager, the leadership does, but within their own organizations, there’s some coaching that they need to do with their As as you’ve had to do with your organization. Yeah. They have to do with their organization as well to make sure that they’re showing up right when they have those conversations and meetings [00:10:21] Nina Harding: and actually in showing up. Right. One of the conversations I’m finding I’m having with a lot of partners, more than I’ve ever had is going back to some of the basics. Like, when was the last time as a partner that you looked at what your internal profile looks like? How are you showing up in our systems? Um, what are the areas of expertise that you have? What are the customer success stories that are associated with you? And I know that that all sounds very simplistic, but we’re also in the world of ai. Yes. And if we’re starting to put agents in front of all this information to help make recommendations to the field. And so I encourage our partners to go back and look at some of the plumbing, look at the basics. We’re going as far as in the Americas we’re introducing something called the A PB, the Americas Partner Brief. And I know it sounds crazy, A PB, [00:11:12] Vince Menzione: this is a new one for, for me. I know, I [00:11:13] Nina Harding: know. Um, it’s just, and what is it exactly? It’s just getting introduced. Um, it is a detailed, much longer profile on a partner, that act that can be built with. The partner, uh, that goes into their industry expertise more around, uh, their customer penetration and what they’ve done, uh, helping to understand the workloads that they really can make a material difference on. It’s not just about migration, but. What release of Oracle can you migrate to Azure? Yeah. That’s the level of detail that our field needs. And as a partner, you wanna differentiate yourself by these types of things. Yes. So these APBs allow us to have that much more detailed conversation about the value proposition and what differentiates each partner. And then in front of that. We have an agent, and so as a sales rep is out there, and maybe they’re in healthcare life sciences, maybe they’ve got an epic implementation, but now they can say, Hey. I, it’s an epic, uh, implementation on Azure and I need to understand which partners can do that migration. Nice. Um, which partners have built, agents have worked with, you know, any plethora of, um, solutions and ideally that’s what comes to bear. [00:12:28] Vince Menzione: So this is happening in partner center, I’m assuming, or is happening outside of partner. [00:12:32] Nina Harding: It is happening internally right now. Okay. Um, as a tool internally. So, so it’s [00:12:37] Vince Menzione: an AI tool. Yeah. We’re gonna talk a little bit more about the opportunity you’re around. [00:12:41] Nina Harding: No, we have not exposed it through partner center yet. This is [00:12:43] Vince Menzione: eating your, your own lunch here basically. Absolutely. [00:12:47] Nina Harding: Yeah. We, we need to be AI first and everything that we do. Um, and I, I have a. Ton of examples of around, around how it’s transformed the way I do business, how I even work with partners, how I prepare to work with partners, how I go to market, or how I even do performance reviews. Yeah, I mean, it’s really fun. That is amazing. Um, what it’s doing to. [00:13:10] Vince Menzione: And then what you’re saying is too, these partners need to show up in a certain way so that they can be identified. Right? You, you need to have the right articulation of what your value proposition looks like. [00:13:20] Nina Harding: Mm-hmm. [00:13:20] Vince Menzione: So that Microsoft can find you. This is, this is almost like SEO years ago with finding a search engines and things. [00:13:27] Nina Harding: Well, it also will highlight their designations and their special specializations, but those are used to really unlock. Access, right? Yes. Um, unlock access to different, uh, incentives or access to EI, right. Or access to the field. But it’s that next click down where the magic happens. And as we all know, there are quite a few people that can get to the designations, but they don’t necessarily have the magic sauce that your. Firm has. Yeah. Right. And that’s what we’re trying to do is make sure that we can help you illuminate that differentiation. [00:14:01] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And, and, and your sales teams are perfectly aligned with the customer and know exactly what the customer is asking for at different levels. Right? Absolutely. And I think a lot of people miss this too, of, I do want to jump in on, on some of this tectonic shift conversation mm-hmm. Because AI and some of the other areas, but I do think that people misunderstand, like, what does an account executive do? What does the sales team look like? Maybe you can just help us double click a little bit on that. I look at the account executive as almost like the quarterback. [00:14:30] Nina Harding: Mm-hmm. [00:14:31] Vince Menzione: And then they have solutions people that support them, right? Yeah. They, whether it’s ai, whether it’s cloud, whether it’s, uh, you know, office and, and other applications. How do you, how do, how should a partner think about engaging with that, that team? [00:14:47] Nina Harding: Well, there are a number, number of, uh, caveats to that. I’m just saying directly engage with that team, right? Yeah. Yes, exactly. The first. The first is, uh, I do recommend that partners, if you have a partner development manager, that you’re working with them on understanding and fine tuning. Your value proposition with regards to a particular opportunity. Um, when we introduce you into the account, it is very effective. And then we’re actually tracking it. And going back to that reporting I was telling you, it’s on the leaderboard, right? And so even leadership is paying attention to all of that. But as you’re looking at the account team, you’re absolutely right. We do have the ae, which is like the quarterback, right? Yeah. They’re responsible for the overall. Relationship. Um, but we now have, this year we’ve moved to just three solution areas. So yeah. Ah, is that ah, is that wonderful? Yes. [00:15:41] Vince Menzione: I’m relieved. [00:15:42] Nina Harding: I know. Well, I think everyone is. Yeah, right. Yeah. Um, so what [00:15:45] Vince Menzione: are they? [00:15:45] Nina Harding: Right? So, so we have, uh, Azure in ai, right? We have our biz apps. And then security. I love it. Pretty straightforward. Very straightforward, right? And then you, you put it all together there. Um, but what’s nice is that then you’ll have the, the specialist by those three different areas. And as a partner, you wanna understand where you fit across all of them, or one or two. Right. Um, and then we also have, um, our customer engagement, right? So they’re looking at the success of the customer and the implementation. Those are actually a really key person for a lot of our partners, in particular, our services partners. ’cause they often are right in their, um, uh, making the recommendations Yeah. On which partners to bring in to help make what we’re positioning real. [00:16:33] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So Azure and ai [00:16:36] Nina Harding: mm-hmm. [00:16:37] Vince Menzione: Which pretty self-evident business applications. Mm-hmm. We double click on that with me. ’cause we always thought talked about dynamics as kind of being its own separate thing, but this is also tying in the, the whole office suite and everything else into it as well. Right? [00:16:50] Nina Harding: Yeah. [00:16:50] Vince Menzione: So there’s everything that’s customer facing. Yeah. Per, [00:16:53] Nina Harding: you know, your stuff. That’s good. Um, yes. We’re in this, uh, this world where you’re seeing the commingling and blurring of the lines Yes. Between productivity tools and actually your Yes. Traditional ERPs, CRMs, right? Um, and that is where we’re unlocking a lot of the magic. There’s a lot of momentum for us, um, right now, um, for our partners as well as, as a lot of the customers are saying, Hey, I want that blending. I want my, uh, end workers to be able to fluidly go between their experience in Outlook. And being in the ERP system. Yeah. Right. Um, I wanna be able to use co-pilots that go across, both generate the emails, uh, you’re, you’re a sales rep. I wanted to automatically send some of these emails or write the emails that then I can add to, uh, before I send it to my customer. We’re finding such intense productivity. Um, for example, with our sales reps, the ones that are using AI consistently. Consistently. So that top quar quarter, shall we say, like in everything that they do, we’re seeing, um, about a 10% increase in their pipeline. [00:18:09] Vince Menzione: Interesting. [00:18:10] Nina Harding: Yep. We’re seeing a 23% higher close rate. That’s interesting. That’s really, and 9%, uh, larger book of business in actual revenues. That’s pretty cool. [00:18:23] Vince Menzione: It’s very, well, it says as a seller it says, I need to get on board. [00:18:27] Nina Harding: You do. [00:18:27] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:18:28] Nina Harding: We all do. Yeah. Right. [00:18:29] Vince Menzione: So, well, let’s, let’s talk about that a little bit too. Yeah. Like ai, we can’t, you know, I’ve talked about the tectonic shifts, right? So we talk about how rapid change transformation has been going on for quite some time. We used to talk about the fact that COVID. Was it an accelerant four, five years ago? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But then this thing called chat, GBT happened. Then copilot happened like three years ago. Let’s call it three years now. And Oh, you’re [00:18:50] Nina Harding: being generous. It’s not that long get that. It’s, [00:18:52] Vince Menzione: it’s, no, it was November of 22. That’s of two. Yeah. [00:18:55] Nina Harding: When [00:18:55] Vince Menzione: chat GBT hit hit the market. [00:18:57] Nina Harding: Yeah. Yeah. [00:18:57] Vince Menzione: And then copilot. The spring afterwards. [00:19:00] Nina Harding: Right. [00:19:00] Vince Menzione: But this accelerant is happening so fast. In the beginning, we overestimated what we expected. The bill Gates comment like, we overestimate what’s gonna happen in the year. We underestimate what’s gonna happen in 10 years. We’re starting to see this hockey stick now. What would you say? [00:19:14] Nina Harding: Yeah, it’s incredible. Um, where we saw customers may be dipping their toe into things like copilot, right? Yeah. Um, now we’re seeing them double down and. Make it pervasive and available to everyone at the company. You’re starting to see it transform the way, uh, we’re setting up, uh, call centers. Yeah. The way HR is engaging, um, the way that we’re putting together sales proposals, it’s in every piece of the business. Now, finance, help me understand what, what are you seeing from my numbers? Gimme some intelligence so I look a little bit smarter. Right. Um, and you’ve [00:19:48] Vince Menzione: been talking about verticals. I think about financial services. I [00:19:52] Nina Harding: think about [00:19:52] Vince Menzione: healthcare. [00:19:53] Nina Harding: Oh, healthcare. Yeah. I mean, the [00:19:54] Vince Menzione: impact in healthcare is astounding. [00:19:56] Nina Harding: Oh, absolutely. Like the going to your doctor now you actually get to have a conversation with your doctor. Yeah. They have Dragon there, right? That’s right. That’s recording the conversation, putting it, putting it into, uh, the system. And I know with my, my doctor, I feel complete transformative relationship. It’s almost like we went back 25 years, but not. With today’s technology in healthcare [00:20:20] Vince Menzione: because now they have Epic or, or Cerner, whatever, whatever the application. But Epic is 90 per 80% of the market right now. Right? [00:20:27] Nina Harding: Yeah. You have [00:20:27] Vince Menzione: a great relationship with Epic as well. [00:20:29] Nina Harding: Absolutely. But what I love is, to your point about healthcare, um, we’re back to like actually caring for the patient. Not having to do all the data entry. [00:20:39] Vince Menzione: Oh, I used to hate it. The doctors just sitting there tapping away. It still happens. By the way, they’re not all using Dragon yet. Oh, that’s blue. They’ll, they’ll get there. We’ll, got some work to do. Partners. [00:20:47] Nina Harding: Let’s get ’em. [00:20:48] Vince Menzione: I’ll give you a list of some of my, my doctors. [00:20:51] Nina Harding: Yeah. [00:20:51] Vince Menzione: But no, it’s fascinating. Um. Agentic ai. Yes. Right. So we layer, we talked mostly about the, the current use and copilot and other, and other uses. But this agentic AI really starts to change the game. [00:21:03] Nina Harding: Mm-hmm. [00:21:04] Vince Menzione: Because now applications start talking to one another, talks about this business applications that all spark start speaking to one another. Yeah. You work with organizations like ServiceNow, as an example, that have been really leaning in on agentic ai. Yeah. Hopefully they’ll be coming. Michael Park will be coming to the podcast here soon. [00:21:20] Nina Harding: Good. [00:21:20] Vince Menzione: He’s also a former microsofty, but um, just this whole agentic piece is really, what are you starting to see there? [00:21:27] Nina Harding: Oh, it’s exciting. Yeah. Um, it’s transformative. So let’s, let’s give a practical, everyday example, right? We’re all partners here, understanding in the partner world, I had someone on my team. In a matter of maybe two hours, build an agent that digested all the information around all our incentives worldwide. Oh [00:21:47] Vince Menzione: my gosh. [00:21:49] Nina Harding: And now you can just ask the agent a question on incentives. Can you believe that? I mean, that’s just a little basic, practical two hour project. What we’re seeing is agents are showing up to help our, our, you know, practical reasons around partners, help our our field find the right partner. Ask really interested, interesting, like kind of nuanced questions and be able to address that. Um, but it is allowing us to have autonomous and semi-autonomous. Workflows, right? Yeah. It’s, it’s really, uh, in incredible what we’re, uh, doing. I’m looking at every part of my business on where can I supplement to create a better experience for our partners or for my team. Using an agent. Yeah. So that they can focus on the value added work. Just like we were talking about healthcare. I want my doctor to talk to me. Yeah. I want him to have a conversation with me. Absolutely. I want my team to have conversations with the partners and explore what’s possible. Not trying to kind of look through the, the minutia detail. [00:22:55] Vince Menzione: Well sit there in partner center and trying to figure out how much business you’ve tracked this year. Oh yeah. They don’t have to do that any longer. [00:23:01] Nina Harding: No, we now have agents that can actually put all of the information together and distill it in one place. I so love it. And then even go out, you can ask it to go out and get market information. Yeah. Or think of new ideas and concepts. What haven’t I considered on doing with X, Y, Z partner? Yeah. [00:23:18] Vince Menzione: Let’s talk about the organization a little bit more. Mm-hmm. I wanna double click on the fact that now you have this separate organization that’s very channel focused and your organization is enterprise partner focused. [00:23:28] Nina Harding: Mm-hmm. [00:23:28] Vince Menzione: Because the two do come together at certain points. Absolutely. Right. The, those channel partners. Selling first party, Microsoft’s first party products into those, uh, into those accounts, as well as selling those partners that you’re working with. So there’s this combination. I see a lot of it happening in the marketplace, right? I see this collaboration happening. What’s your point of view on marketplace and the collaboration with the partners that you work with? [00:23:52] Nina Harding: Yeah. I think, uh, marketplace is a very, very powerful co-sell, um, tool, right? Yeah. It, it, it allows, uh, in particular our software development companies and even services companies and then software development companies can bring in channels, channel partners as well. Yeah. But it allows you to reach out to our entire customer base, um, and have the ability to accelerate the sales. Yeah. And also help highlight what your offerings are. And tailor them. Uh, I think that’s, uh, really important. But getting back to kind of the concept of, of the small SME. And c and, uh, we don’t want to say [00:24:33] Vince Menzione: smec do, right? EPS well, I, it rolls off the tongue sometimes, but say, but those [00:24:38] Nina Harding: are internal organizations, right? And so we really don’t externalize it too much, right? For example, uh, when I do addresses to the America’s partners, it’s across all of, all of the different Absolutely. Areas. And our partners take an ISV, very few ISVs. Only sell into enterprise. Yeah. They’re really across all segments. So we work together and, uh, my tagline internally is that if partner people don’t know how to partner and do business across all sorts of areas that we’re in the wrong business. Exactly. So, um, I’m not, I’m not, so I’m excited about how it’s energizing and connecting with the sales organizations where it’s also. Uh, positioning our products to make sure that they’re segment specific and they’re addressing the needs of the customers in the segments. Uh, as well as that we have incentives that are really geared around the different behaviors that the partners are driving and the benefits that they’re driving for our customers, um, across multiple segments. So it allows us the fidelity to meet. Our customers and our partners where the value proposition is even more [00:25:46] Vince Menzione: effectively. And it makes, it makes perfect sense and you start thinking about the enterprise and how you’re driving across it, and then also against the ous. And then I, we like to talk, talk about the long tail, right? You start getting into even the mid-size market and then into the smaller accounts. [00:26:01] Nina Harding: Mm-hmm. [00:26:01] Vince Menzione: And, and all of the Microsoft toolkit. And the partners toolkit are coming into those customers. We just did a session here last week on MSPs. [00:26:09] Nina Harding: Mm-hmm. [00:26:09] Vince Menzione: Because that whole world is changing because they now need to be ready on Microsoft technologies and understand how to work more closely with Microsoft. ’cause it’s no longer the old days where they were turning the crank and worrying about a laptop computer. [00:26:22] Nina Harding: Yeah. [00:26:22] Vince Menzione: They are really, they’re, they’re doing AI now. Yeah, they’re doing cloud in a big way [00:26:26] Nina Harding: and it’s a different, it’s a different model, right? Yeah. Um, we’re very quickly moving away from this transactional sales approach. Right? That’s right. And I don’t mean to simplify it to that extent, but yeah. The paradigm has shifted to, wow, you’re actually advising a customer on changing their business processes or, yeah. Or, uh, bending the curve on innovation or, uh, what, how do you have more intimacy with your customers? Um, or how do you make. The day in the life of an employee better. Right, exactly. Those are the, those are the conversations you need to be having and that’s very different. [00:27:04] Vince Menzione: Very different than the transactional, I want to sell you an EA or whatever the, whatever that conversation was. And that was the old model. [00:27:10] Nina Harding: Yeah. [00:27:10] Vince Menzione: To your point, that’s how they need to think differently and operate differently. You’re starting to see some acquisitions happen, like some of your partners. Mm-hmm. Like Insight is a good example. [00:27:18] Nina Harding: Yeah. [00:27:19] Vince Menzione: They’ve gone after organizations that did that. Exactly. That understood solution selling. And bringing the whole portfolio to a customer. Mm-hmm. And you’re starting to see more and more of that m and a activity happening in this market? Well, [00:27:30] Nina Harding: it’s critical. Um, it’s no longer go in and position and sell the solution the customer wants you to be. There through the duration to actually have the impact. [00:27:39] Vince Menzione: So critical. You know, it’s almost like Microsoft picks a theme every year. And this year for me, watching start and seeing Judson up there talking about Frontier for the first time. Yeah. Uh, I, I love it. Um, it’s not a novel concept, but I, I think the approach is like, we’re gonna lean in in a way that we haven’t before. Yeah. We’re gonna, we’re gonna. Appreciate partners and customers that also lean in on this frontier. Can you, can you take us through what frontier actually means? Yeah. So we’re [00:28:07] Nina Harding: talking, we’re, we’re really going hard on front the frontier company, right? Yeah. Um, and what that is, is it’s a mindset shift, right? Think about the frontier. That’s where the, it’s the world of the possible. The West, [00:28:21] Vince Menzione: I think about the west. The west, [00:28:22] Nina Harding: right? Um, but it, it’s really around making AI. Absolutely centric to the way ev everything you do. Yeah. Right. So it’s about the, um, the agenta computing, the use of copilot, um, even GitHub as you’re, you’re developing your solutions and it’s really thinking around what is the world a possibility versus being limited by. What functionality came outta the box. Right. In theory. Right. Um, so we’re really excited about it and we’re excited about bringing our partners along on the journey. The conversation is shifting. We’re talking about that all the time with customers. It’s just fundamentally, it’s, it’s about exploration of what we can do together. I love that. Um, as you’re looking at that, we need to almost have the ecosystem in our sellers and every company on the frontier of what is possible, uh, with AI and making sure that we’re as efficient as effective, creating the experiences that are optimal for our clients all the time. And then re-imagining how do you go about serving your customers differently? [00:29:37] Vince Menzione: I love it. I love Frontier. I’m, I’m ready to get my cowboy hat, Adam. Um, I wanted to spend a minute here, if you don’t mind. I have a favorite question I ask each of my guests. Sure. A little bit off the track of partners, but in a way it ties back into it. So Nina, you are hosting a dinner party and. It could be anywhere in the world. We were talking about Denmark earlier. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. We’re talking about South Florida, talking about New York City. Mm-hmm. Another great location. Mm-hmm. We both, you lived there and I just came back from New York. [00:30:07] Nina Harding: Yeah. [00:30:08] Vince Menzione: Um, you can invite any three guests to this dinner party. Mm. Your choice. Present, current, or past? Some people have even referred to the, in the future, somebody in the future that they would invite to this dinner party. [00:30:22] Nina Harding: Mm. [00:30:22] Vince Menzione: Whom would you invite and why? [00:30:26] Nina Harding: Ooh, that’s a good one. Um, first I’d invite my mom. Um, okay, so I. I lost her at 26, so she never knew me as an adult. So, um, and she was one, you were 26 at the time? I was 26. Uh, she was 54. Um, and uh, so it would be really interesting to know her as an adult and have an adult conversation around, uh, career family. Children, just the, the way the world works. Uh, she spoke seven languages and watching what’s happening in the, in, in the world today. She was definitely, um, a woman of the world. Uh, let’s see, who else would I, I’d actually invite my grandfather too, so I’m, I’m leaning in on family. I think I love the family [00:31:12] Vince Menzione: conversation. [00:31:12] Nina Harding: Um, the, the reason is I think. Family is so core to who I am. Um, it’s one of my most important values, uh, whether it’s my personal family or my work family. I treat them, um, with that kind of respect. But with my grandfather, the reason why I’d love to bring him into the conversation is, uh, he was in Denmark and very. Involved in World War ii and, uh, he, I found out he wouldn’t talk about it, um, very much about the resistance in Denmark. But, um, he helped with a lot of, uh, getting the Jews out of Denmark into Sweden on boats at night. Wow. And I’d love to have. A conversation now that I understand that. Yeah. About it. Yeah. Um, he was also, uh, involved in setting up the eu. He was on the, uh, tax board in Denmark. Uh, and so just to see things that I’m living and breathing in my world today to, to have conversations on what his thought process, he also did business in Burma. Oh my goodness. Right. And, uh, all over it was a Burma back in the day. Yeah, right. Exactly. And he adopted, uh, a boy from Burma who became my uncle. Wow. Uh, so just the things and the experiences that in today’s world, uh, I never had a chance to explore there. Um, and then in the future. Going back to family. Uh, I have two little boys, uh, four and 13 months. Oh boy. Can you believe that? Oh boy. I know. I crazy boy. Um, I would love to invite, um, their wife. [00:32:46] Vince Menzione: Oh, I love that. I love that because [00:32:48] Nina Harding: I would love for them at this dinner party to meet the previous generations and the roots, um, and have the exposure to the history, the, um, the multicultural nature of our family. Um, but. The reality is I’m also a little bit older. I don’t know if I’m gonna have the pleasure that you just had a few weeks ago. Oh, such a great with the weddings and I’m really looking forward, um, that I’d have a chance to really spend some meeting time with that. I match that though [00:33:15] Vince Menzione: as a young child to meet your future wife, like, and for you to meet their future wife at that point. [00:33:21] Nina Harding: Mm-hmm. [00:33:21] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. And time. [00:33:22] Nina Harding: It would be pretty cool. Yeah. [00:33:23] Vince Menzione: And so cool to have your mom back. [00:33:26] Nina Harding: Oh, [00:33:26] Vince Menzione: and um, and your granddad. My dad was, I lost my dad when I was in my twenties, so I understand that, like, that hole that you feel like you’ve gone many years without. [00:33:36] Nina Harding: Yeah. [00:33:36] Vince Menzione: And he was also World War ii, so, uh, was part, was part of the occu, he was part of the D-Day invasion and the occupation and everything. So, but [00:33:45] Nina Harding: yeah. [00:33:45] Vince Menzione: But that whole generation was so different. They were so quiet about. There, time spent there. [00:33:50] Nina Harding: Very, very, and I think, um, in today’s world, I, I would love to get to some of those core values and those decision and, um, points and what guided them. Yeah. Um, those truths. So cool. That are part of your core. [00:34:04] Vince Menzione: I always like to ask this question. It sets us up, uh, as we finish the conversation today. All of our amazing partners that are watching and listening today. Yeah. [00:34:11] Nina Harding: Yeah. [00:34:12] Vince Menzione: Nina. We’ve got a big year ahead, right? A lot of, a lot of incredible things. Um, Microsoft, in my opinion, has built the most incredible ecosystem, the largest ecosystem by far, and has done the most work here. And I think a lot of organizations, I, I tend to go on sometimes with LinkedIn with people, and they really don’t understand how Microsoft operates, which is why we do what we do. We try to help. Them to better, uh, establish relationships and engage and co-sell and mark marketplace and the like with you and your team, what would you say to them now about what they need to start doing as we get into the, because it’s still the summer here, at least a, a [00:34:50] Nina Harding: few Hey, we’re, we’re, we’re way into Q1 here, right? So it’s [00:34:53] Vince Menzione: Q1. We’re, we’re kicking, we’re kicking into the year in big time. Yeah. What if these partners need to do better, differently? How should they be thinking about fiscal year 26? [00:35:03] Nina Harding: Yeah, well, you’re, you’re hearing it in almost every question you’ve asked. AI is central to everything we’re doing, so, um, get on board, learn. Um, we know that it can be scary in the beginning there, um, there could be some hesitancy from people, um, and. Uh, I really encourage you, we have so much training, uh, but the most important thing is to become customer zero and to embrace that technology. With yourself and then with your, your colleagues and at your company. So, so important because how are you gonna position, how are you gonna evolve with your customers if you don’t inherently know? Yeah. Um, I often recommend to people just start with something that’s personal. Yeah. So I’m Danish. Uh, Danish, uh, at birthdays and weddings and celebrations. You write an a song in honor of the bride and groom where? The birthday. Birthday. Oh, how cool [00:35:59] Vince Menzione: that is. [00:35:59] Nina Harding: And, uh, oh gosh. I would sw sweat having to put these songs together to rubber ducky or, oh, Susanna, I, I can go now in to copilot and it can write me a song in 30 seconds. I mean, it’s awesome. So just start with something that. Doesn’t feel scary. Then very quickly it’ll move to performance reviews. It can, it can move to how you prepare for a customer engagement or a partner engagement. Uh, it can help you innovate on ideas or market opportunities, help you look around corners. So that’s the number one thing. Yeah. [00:36:34] Vince Menzione: And customer zero. People don’t all understand that. That’s Microsoft’s terminology. We used to say eating your own dog. Food, food, food. Right? Yeah. Which we don’t use the term dog food any longer, but essentially like use the technology that you’re selling. [00:36:46] Nina Harding: Absolutely. Absolutely. So that’s the number one thing. Um, because you have to evolve with it. Or unfortunately, I don’t know what that market is gonna look like for you three, five years from now. [00:37:01] Vince Menzione: And you, the leading indicators will. Show us that you need to be on board. You need to be staying trained every day on top of this because it means that your pipeline, your sales, everything is going to be impacted by that. [00:37:12] Nina Harding: Yeah. Uh, the second thing that I also encourage for partners is in this world where, um, everyone wants to do everything. I think the power of differentiating yourself and creating your value proposition is so important. What that means is your value proposition on. Success you’ve had with customers, making sure that that’s tangible in stories and videos, whatever. Um, making sure that you understand by industry what your value proposition is and your depth of expertise. If you’re doing everything right, you know that expression in your peanut buttering peanut butter, you’re probably not showing up as doing something great that. From a field perspective. So that differentiation is really, really important. [00:37:56] Vince Menzione: I’ve worked with some of the large, but when I was doing consulting work back in the day before we started up the, the events and podcast, um, these organizations wouldn’t understand how to engage at the OU level. Mm-hmm. And they didn’t speak the language going into the meetings. Mm-hmm. They’d have, they’d have a healthcare conversation the same as a financial services [00:38:14] Nina Harding: company. Yeah. You can’t do that anymore. Yeah. And these were [00:38:15] Vince Menzione: large ISVs. These are multi-billion dollar organizations that don’t understand that. [00:38:19] Nina Harding: Yeah. Well, and, and that’s what you’re seeing at Microsoft. Uh, in the US we’re a hundred percent verticalized, right? All industry based with Canada, Latin America, but even within the countries you click down one level, it’s verticalized. Yes. So, um, the power of that differentiation and the application to a customer. Pain point, uh, trends by industry Absolutely critical. So, [00:38:47] Vince Menzione: so critical. [00:38:47] Nina Harding: Um, and then the [00:38:48] Vince Menzione: differentiation, I’m sorry, you mean, but like getting, getting people’s attention, right. You need to be able to show up in a way that people understand what your value looks like. [00:38:57] Nina Harding: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. You can’t do everything, but you do these things really, really well. [00:39:02] Vince Menzione: Really well. [00:39:03] Nina Harding: You want something to pop in the, in, in the, in the mind of the sellers when they hear, yeah. X, y, Z scenario. Right? Absolutely. Um, so that’s, that’s really critical. Uh, I enablement. Um, it is, we are, we are evolving so quickly. If you did training six months ago on ai, I hate to break it to you, it’s a new world. It’s old ready, right? It’s old. So make it, make it part of like your Friday mornings or your Friday afternoons. Make learning. An experience. It’s part of your routine. It’s something fun. Do it with your colleagues. Share top 10 best tips and tricks. You need to really embrace the enablement piece, um, more so than I think we’ve ever needed to before. [00:39:48] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And being technical in that regard too. Being, being on top of that. Technical expertise is so critical. Yes. You’ve put more resources there as well. Right. You’ve, you’ve lined up more resources for enablement. [00:39:59] Nina Harding: Absolutely. You’ll see that in our field sales organization, we shifted where our. Resources are. So, um, it was in the news, right? We made some, uh, big changes, uh, in early July, but we also are hiring up in other places. Yes. So it wasn’t a net deficit, it’s actually an increase in technical roles. Yeah. Um, so we’re seeing it speaks [00:40:21] Vince Menzione: to too, as AI has proliferated, uh, our world and our, our movements. Um, we, certain roles are not as important anymore. The roles that are important are the ones that are more specific to executing performance, which are more technical in nature and enablement. So it makes, this makes perfect sense. [00:40:39] Nina Harding: Yeah. For example, in uh, the US we have, what, 350 open roles right now for, um, solution engineers. Nice. Nice. So what you’re seeing is this shift and for our partners, I encourage you to look at where the conversation is going. Um, but what happens is, is that you have to be able to translate between the technology and the business. Yes. And that is what’s so critical right now. Um, I would of course always say, make sure you’re looking at things like your designations and, um, making sure that you’re on top of the incentives and how those are all growing and shifting. There has been a tremendous amount of investment made into partners this year. Very nice. Um, and then, um, outside, outside of that, I think, let’s have fun. Let’s have fun. Let’s go. Let’s go solve some real. Problems together. Yeah. Let’s innovate together. Let’s collaborate. It’s in the conversation that I’m finding the magic now. It’s not just in the routine kind of kind of map and play of of, of, um, mapping an AE to an AE on a deal. It’s actually in the exploration of what’s possible. Yeah. [00:41:53] Vince Menzione: And what’s possible is amazing. We have an incredible year ahead. Yeah. Yeah. And we would love to have you come join us. We’re gonna have a busy. Fall and winter year. So for those of our. Viewers and listeners who haven’t heard it yet, we just opened up our registration for our rest and event. Washington DC area is always a popular spot, October 27th through the 29th. Great. We’ve got an open invitation for you to come. Great keynote for us. Great. Uh, we’ll be doing something around Ignite. We don’t know exactly what that looks like. TBD and then this winter we’re gonna be back here. I’ll hopefully be joining you in January Yeah. With, with what you’ll be doing. But then we’ll have some things going on here as well. [00:42:33] Nina Harding: Great. So [00:42:33] Vince Menzione: I’d love to have you back here in the studio. [00:42:34] Nina Harding: Absolutely. Thank you for the opportunity. It’s wonderful to you. It’s so great to make, have [00:42:38] Vince Menzione: you make the trip today and be with us. Yeah. So great to have you with our partners that are watching a lot of, a lot of which you listen, some, we’re starting to get more YouTube now. More people are watching us. But, uh, so great to have you here today. So thank you so much for being here. [00:42:52] Nina Harding: Absolutely. Thank you. [00:42:53] Vince Menzione: Thank you, Nina. Thank you for watching and listening to this episode of The Ultimate Guide to Partnering. We’re online@theultimatepartner.com or ultimate guide to partnering.com where you can find all information about our community ultimate partner experience, as well as our live events. And we’ve got a busy fall plan for you where we’re hosting our live event in Reston, Virginia, in the Washington DC area. On October 27th to the 29th, we’re gonna have an amazing list of speakers and people there in the room. So great way to continue learning how to become the ultimate partner and stay tuned ’cause we’ve got more ahead that we’ll be announcing that the fall continues, uh, possibly another event in the fall, as well as being back here in the Boca Studio this winter. So thank you again for watching and supporting us.