The Partner Channel Podcast

Daniel sits down with Gilbert Vendryes, Senior Executive specializing in Global Partner Programs at Zoom. He has more than 25 years of experience delivering strategy, programs, and processes to benefit global revenue growth projects and together they look at the successes and challenges of Zoom’s partner program. They’ll also uncover how Zoom transitioned to a partner-focused selling model.

Meet Michelle Gunter, Executive Vice President at Partner Perspectives, who has an extensive partner channel background. She’s focused on guiding companies in launching channels, helping grow and expand existing ecosystems, and developing new ways to improve channel performance. Daniel and Michelle discuss the sometimes uncomfortable conversations you need to have with partners and how to identify and help partners who may be at risk.

Daniel talks with Doug Remington, General Manager & Head of Sales EMEA at DTEN, on mistakes and lessons learned in the channel. Learn from Doug’s 20+ years of experience managing global sales and channel sales programs. He also shares his vision for what the channel industry will look like in the next 5 years.

Sunir Shah, founder and president of The Small Business Web, joins me, Nicki Kamau to discuss the partner as a customer, the disconnect between SaaS and the world, the opportunity for channel sales to expand and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast.   What are some of the biggest challenges that you see vendor organizations face when it comes to partner collaboration? This is my bread and butter right now, because I'm doing a lot of consulting for folks, and it's pretty interesting. So the companies that are doing really well, view their partners as customers of the partner team. And the ones that do poorly view partners as somehow employees in the sense that they feel that the partners owe them something in order for them to get their respect. Like, you work for us to make money. And very few SaaS companies give enough money in commissions to a partner to make a difference. Because partners make all their money, almost, from actually providing professional services on top of the software.   It’s like if I my basement rented out. I'm sure my general contractor made money on the furnace. It was probably $500. But where he made real money is actually doing the work. And so, marketing agencies make all their money from doing the actual marketing communication work, not the software. But a lot of SaaS vendors think they're the most important thing in the relationship. The partners that are doing really well view the customer as the team. They apply the exact same discipline that the product team would apply to the corporate customers of the core product, to the partner program. So they do a lot of customer development, they do a lot of customer interviews, they're very responsive, they have a support desk for the partners, they have a newsletter, they have a dedicated community manager/partner communications person. They have actual metrics they're measuring. They're looking at the finances that is a business line. They'll do Facebook ads at events and try to market to acquire more partners. They don't look at it as a passive source of revenue.   I mean, obviously, if you invest in something, it's gonna grow. And it's also the attitude of thinking of them as customers of your partner team rather than somehow they're your employees. And this is actually a very common thing in channel, it's not just in SaaS, where you look at your channel partners as your sales staff, you treat them as such. If they screw up, you can't yell at your partners and say, "I want more quota." Good luck with that! They'll drop you and find other vendors. They don't need that from you. They're customers, you know. And so that's really the core attitude that I find is critical. Treat your partners like they're the customers of the partner team. And when you do that, it becomes a lot more obvious what they want. It's like, "Well, we want a heads up on feature changes. We want to have sales collateral. We want to have support, or a once-a-month phone call. When you're in town let us know so we can hang out for a meal/" Simple stuff, right? What are the biggest opportunities that you're seeing for the market as you dig into your research?   I'm gonna be a little bit controversial. Well, a lot controversial. I've been working on this problem for a long time. In fact, when I ran partnerships at FreshBooks, it was the first time I became aware of how much of a problem it was. When people would call us up and say, "Hey, Sunir, I could sell a lot of FreshBooks to my customers. But I need a cut, and I don't wanna send the customers to you directly. Can I white label it? How do I manage, the visioning and the account management? I want to have an account login." And I'm like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. That's a lot of work. Why don't you try selling a few?"   And we had this problem where I didn't have any resources to build a channel program, or even a channel admin for them. And I didn't see any leads coming from it. And meanwhile, all the resources were going to the core product in the core marketing. Because that's SaaS. And the fundamental gaps between the traditional channel and SaaS is not the disconnect in ideas or concepts. When I was there, I had a lot of strange comments. A couple people said, "Oh, SaaS, that's just what the millennials are using." I'm like, "I don't think just millennials are using SaaS." I wouldn't call Salesforce the millennial tool, or Zendesk. It was a little bit strange to hear that. A couple people were like, "Subscriptions. Who buys that? Who buys subscriptions?" Like, everybody? Everybody. The reason why, I think, is that when SaaS was conceived as a business model, you'd hear this language around it, especially from the futurists and the investors, that it was great because you could sell direct and make a recurring revenue. And when you sell direct, you disintermediate all the middlemen, all the value chain, and take all the gross margin for yourself. It looks like a cash cow. Because the internet, while it was a great marketing machine and you could reach all the customers just yourself. Because thinking that reach means they could reach you. But, actually, the problem is you need to reach them.   What happens was a couple things. One, there is no gross margin in SaaS. It's amazing. Because what happens is when you build one good SaaS product, guess what? The internet is huge. There are lots of competitors. It pushes a lot of the gross margin down. either because you dropped the price, or more likely, for the best products, they put a lot of engineers and designers and support, and customer success in behind the product to to keep the subscriptions going. And so there is a little bit of accounting magic. But if you realize that people won't keep using your software if you cut the engineering budget in SaaS. That's the thing. You'll lose them.   The second problem is because the SaaS companies are spending all their money on a product to be competitive. And so it's very hard to put engineering in the partner per channel. So you can't invest in the channel unless you have a vision.   The third problem is that there's a current view right now in SaaS that it's quite popular to spend a lot of money building a direct sales team inside sales, and more direct marketing to acquire. And that's fine. It works. But the problem with that is you can't literally phone everybody in United States who might want your product. You can't know everybody. You have to work the channel. And so the model of SaaS, it has disconnected itself from the channel. And you'll hear this talking to people who are potential resellers, solution providers, partners. They feel like when they send a customer over to a SaaS vendor, the vendor tries to steal the customer from them. And there's not enough money coming back to the partner.   The economics are not positive working with SaaS. And so there's a disconnect in the fundamental business model and the political economics, if you believe it, of SaaS versus the traditional channel. And I think all the exciting work will happen in order to make SaaS either work or fail will happen in fixing how SaaS can work with partners by providing them value and respect, providing them channel support. I mean, that's why Allbound exists, right? You believe in channel support in order to build up a channel. And I think a lot of the SaaS companies who have gone through the direct sales build that cycle, realizes there's a limit to that. You can only smile and dial so many leads before you've exhausted your relationships. And those people who did direct sales a couple years ago have definitely moved more into partnerships now looking to build the channel. As I was saying earlier, the exciting stuff is that the resources are coming back to partnerships to invest in bigger, chunkier channel programs.There's a couple ways of solving this problem. I don't think SaaS vendors will ever have enough resources that can apply to partnerships to build the middleware, to build a market. If you have a business degree, you know that supply chain management is built on logistic companies, and just SaaS, because the SaaS model broke a lot of the tech logistics. We're gonna have to build some new ones at the model, or work with existing partners like Ingram Micro or ScanSource, or distributors like that. So there are other existing resources coming to market. And the reason I say that is that there's enough SaaS vendors now that are succeeding. There's an overall market size of B2B SaaS that has now reached a sufficient enough size. There's enough fractional resources, per vendor, that you can start paying for these middlewares, so Allbound is a good example. There's an opportunity to start fixing some of these problems. When I was at the ChannelCon, I would say about 20% of the audience there now had a pretty reasonable cloud or SaaS-based parts of their business. And that's a good sign too. So if you have endors like you, and maybe other vendors in the space trying to do channel support, and you have businesses on the other side who are trying to build businesses natural to it, and you have organizations like ChannelCon working on bringing people together, I just feel like a matter of time now. So I think that's the opportunity. And, of course, whoever figures out how to fix the problem stands to make a lot of money, because right now, the industry for SaaS, B2B SaaS, stands around $20 billion roughly, globally, out of $400 billion for all software.   So Microsoft alone made $90 billion. And then Salesforce probably makes $7 billion or something last year. So you could see the huge difference between the size of the SaaS market, which still is very much in the infancy, which is amazing after 13 years. It's only because we broke the business model for the distribution. But when we fix it, then it will go from $20 billion to $100 billion dollars. And so if you think it's like, "Oh, it's not happening." It's going to happen now.

Aaron Ross, Author and Co-Founder of Predictable Revenue, joins Allbound's Director of Sales, Greg Reffner to discuss outbound and the partner channel, empathy and business, balancing inbound and outbound and more on the 43rd episode of The Allbound Podcast.

Joel Maloff, the Senior Vice President of Strategic Alliances for phone.com, joins Nicki Kamau, Allbound's Director of Marketing, to discuss partner compensation, living channel marketing plans, staying engaged with your partners and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast.

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

Narrator: Effective selling takes an ecosystem. Join host Jen Spencer, as she explores how to super charges your sales, and master the art of never selling alone. Welcome to the Allbound Podcast, The fundamentals of accelerating growth with partners. Jen: Hi everybody. Welcome to the Allbound Podcast. I'm Jen Spencer. And today, I am joined by Travis Smith who is Technology, Global Channels and Regional Vice President for HMI Performance Incentives. Welcome Travis. Travis: Hi Jen. Thanks for having me. Good to be here. Jen: It's great to have you. And for those of you listening who don't know Travis has a lot going on. So, in addition to his role at HMI Performance Incentives, he's also the CEO and Founder of Move the Channel, which we're gonna talk about, and CEO and Founder of TribeVest. So we're gonna get into a lot of good channel talk. But first, can you tell us a little bit about Move the Channel, because I know that's something you're really passionate about. I'd love to get a quick overview of what this is. Travis: You bet. Absolutely. Again, thanks for having me Jen, and good to be here with all your listeners. Move the Channel, absolutely is something I'm passionate about, and it's hard to believe it started eight, almost nine years ago. And in the way that it came to be was…of course, you know, I come from the technology space. So worked with a number of manufacturers and developers, worked for some distributors, was even a VP of sales for a system integrator and re-seller. So, along the way I had met a ton of friends. You know, colleagues, partners, and people I liked and really respected in the channel marketing and channel sales space. And, as you know in technology, there's a lot of moving that goes around, so it's sometimes hard to keep track of everybody. And so, I was playing around in this new thing called LinkedIn. You gotta remember this is 2010. Jen: Right. Travis: So it was kind of a very new...it's hard to believe. Jen: Right. Travis: In particularly, groups were even more new or more foreign to some of us. What I saw was that it was an opportunity to create a group, a community of old friends that I had met and worked with over the years. And so, I came up with the name. I'm convinced it's dumb luck, but it's a little bit of the genius of what has become Move the Channel community, and that's the name, Move the Channel. And we...I invited probably 40, 50 of these people in my network. Again, as a way to kind of keep in touch, and really, not just keep in touch but it turned out to be this network of friends that supported each other, collaborated, opened doors for each other. We even went as far as calling ourselves the Move the Channel Mafia, which I'm glad we didn't do. Sounds exciting doesn't it? Jen: I know. Travis: But, you know, it didn't take long. Here was this tight-knit group of 50 of us. And before we knew it we had 50, and then we had 100, and 1,000, and then, you know, 4,000. And now we have over 6,000 channel marketing, channel sales professionals worldwide. Jen: It's awesome. Travis: And that's how we came to be. Jen: I love it. And I just love, you know, your mission, the vision of it, you know, really trying to cultivate a community. And a lot of people try, and it doesn't always work. And so, I think you got in early like you said. You've kept it very helpful, it's organic. And I think that it's authentic. And I think that's part of why it's been so successful. Do you have like a success story about channel leaders who have been part of this community? Anything that you can share, like an anecdote of something really cool that's come out of it? Travis: You bet. And you nailed it. If you were to go try to start a group today, there's just so much noise and so much out there, it's hard to stand out. So, you know, credit a lot to the name, which I think captured a lot of people's attention and creativity. And the timing of it, getting in first, was obviously a big deal. I think we were, if not the first, one of the first groups dedicated to channel marketing and channel sales. Over the years we've really just been blown away by the impact that Move the Channel, and the reach that Move the Channel has been able to have. And there's...you know, I think about the successes out there, and all the channel leaders in the community. I mean, every time you see these lists of the channel chiefs, the women in the channel, at anytime they're kind of recognizing leadership in channel marketing and channel sales. There's a really good chance that they're a part of this community, whether it's in a Move the Channel group, or our movethechannel.com. But, you know, what we're probably most proud of is just all of the connections that have led to business successes in this group. It's impossible to measure, but I can't tell you how many stories I hear about two people, two leaders getting together, you know, connecting, finding each other from the group or Move the Channel community, and connecting and helping each other. Look at their respective channels from a different angle, through a different lens. And so we don't take credit for these big events that happen, or huge successes, but we like to take a little bit of credit when they actually...those connections were made in the Move the Channel. And a lot of, you know, finding new hires, more teammates, and even vendors. Finding vendors that have helped them achieve their goals, getting referrals to vendors that have helped them achieve their goals. So, you know, there's a lot of specific people that come to mind, but I think highlighting the success of the community is what I'm most proud of. Jen: Well, I think it's definitely something to be proud of. And maybe people listening here, well, if they haven't found Move the Channel yet, they'll go join that community and start reaping the benefits of it as well. Let's talk about HMI Performance Incentives as your, kind of that's your day job, right? That's your main gig. So tell us a little bit about that. And I really wanna learn how you've seen incentives really put to use in the channel. Because it's a big question, you know, people talk about incentivizing sales reps, gamifying experiences, incentivizing your channel. Channel sales reps are, you know, they're just their sales reps that are just not working all the time for you, right. So I'll stop talking. You tell me more about HMI. Travis: You bet. Absolutely. Yeah, you're right. You know, and there's a lot of buzz words out there. It's tough to know what's the appropriate strategy when it comes to engaging, not with just your channel partner, right? And I think of the channel partner at the organizational level. And then there's the channel sales person, the person, the human that works for the partner organization, or the partner sales engineer, or customer support. And HMI, gosh, it's such an exciting company right now. Even though we've been around for 35 years, we really are at an exciting point. We continue to innovate and move the incentive world forward. You know, Jen, when most people think of incentives, they think of the reward. And don't get me wrong, the reward is so critical. If you don't have the right reward, and the reward isn't motivating, your strategy is dead on arrival. Jen: Yeah. Travis: And more than ever, the reward options are more compelling to your target audience. You know, we're seeing huge trends towards experiences, and sporting events. You know, pick out not just merchandise or things like that. You can actually pick out the event, the theater, the summer concert. And don't just stop there but pick the date, the venue, the seat. And what about booking a hotel, and a shuttle to the show, you know, all this online in the incentive program, real time. And it's really, really cool. But let's be honest, I mean, compelling rewards are the baseline, you know, that's just the beginning. And I think what's most exciting that we're seeing at HMI is how channel incentives are solving big problems, you know, big challenges in the channel. And again, most people don't think of incentives like solving challenges. Jen: Right. Do you have an example, like an interesting use case you've seen for a particular partner program? Travis: Yeah, there's a lot of them that come to mind. You know, when I think of these challenges that we're solving, I think of…you know, the three that come to mind that are most common out there is the manufacturer distributor, either, A, doesn't know who's selling their stuff. They might know the partner that they've signed up to distribute or sell their solutions, but they don't necessarily know the sales person on the front line. And so, you know, they don't even have a database to communicate to them. And that's one challenge. The second challenge is you know who these people are. At least you have their contact information, but you don't really have any insight into them. You don't know how they're selling it, or what else they might be selling, or how your solutions might be complimenting their total solution that they're bringing to their customers. And then, C, you know, the third would be insight. They know who the customers are, they have a pretty good insight into their business, but they don't have...are they really winning the engagement, you know, the mind share, and grabbing the mind share and wallet share of these partners? And, you know, HMI has a pretty, really cool story to tell around solving these problems through channels and incentives. So for example, if you were looking to bring in a new, you know, someone that you didn't know. You don't have their information, but they're supposed to be selling your stuff, but you wanna communicate to them. It's much easier to get them to come sign up and register for an incentive program than it is a partner portal or something like that. Jen: Right. Travis: Right. And I know you guys understand why the indirect sales force are just not going to those types of applications. And therefore, you can't really engage with them very well with the traditional partner portal. But anyway, you know, an incentive program, it's pretty easy to not only get them to come register, but to surrender all sorts of information. Even maybe competitive information on who else they're selling. But anyway, back to your main question, you know, I think if I was gonna kind of single out one impressive program out there that just comes to mind, it's with my buddy Todd Owens over at QLogic and Cavium. Who's probably one of the...Jen, I've got to introduce you to him if you don't know him. He's one of the brightest and most strategic thinkers in the channel as far as I can tell. But what he did was he took HMI and his program and turned a traditional incentive program on its head, where most incentive programs are at the core incentivizing for sales. He doesn't reward for any actual sales but rewards all for engagement and enablement. So things like watching a 90-second video and taking a quick quiz, setting an appointment with one of his sales engineers in the region. So there's all these kind of other things that he's measuring and tracking, and ultimately giving rewards out for, which has been really cool. Of course there's a direct correlation between the people that are engaged in doing these things, and the sales that come in the end. Jen: I love that. Yeah, you have to introduce us, because I love the idea of incentivizing. Not the end result, but the behaviors that you know are gonna lead to the end result. So that's awesome. Love it. I want to ask you about your time at ProfitStars. So you were at ProfitStars before you joined HMI. When you were there, you were really in the thick of it, living, you know, day-to-day strategic alliances, identifying, recruiting, on-boarding, and then managing those partners. I'd love to hear some of the biggest struggles that you had in executing your job effectively, because a lot of our listeners are living that life right now. Travis: You bet. Yes. You know, but before HMI and Move the Channel, that was my world. You know, that was the world I was living. And I mentioned working for a number of manufacturers and distributors. And so, a few years ago, I was actually recruited back to that world where they wanted me to run their strategic alliances and roll out partner programs. And was just an incredibly awesome and exciting initiative…for those of you who don't know ProfitStars, it's part of Jack Henry, the $1.8 billion software company that sells through banking channels, so banks and credit unions. And then ProfitStars is the division that sells through all the other partners. So everybody that's not a bank or credit union. And that was the division I was in. And it was pretty easy, because the name was so well-known and they're so respected. You know, getting a meeting with the owner or CEO to sign them up as a partner wasn't a difficult part. And, you know, the CEO and the partner got the value prop that ProfitStars and Jack Henry were bringing to the table. So closing the partner, and you know, recruiting partners was a little bit the easy part. I know that not everybody has that luxury, but that was the case. And it turned out that, you know, the biggest challenge wasn't finding and signing up the partner. It was, you know, how can we engage with that new partner's front line. The sales people, the account managers. Jen, as you know, they're the ones that have the influence over the sale. Jen: Yeah. Travis: So that was our challenge, you know, and that was the fun part. And had a lot of good success, and very proud of the work there. But, you know, it's not something you solve and say, "Oh, we're engaged with the front line and sales people check." Jen: Yeah. Travis: It's something that you're always working on. Jen: Right. Travis: You're always, you know, making sure that you continue to engage and have their mind share. Jen: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think, you know, speaking of that kind of engagement and results that you get. You know something we talk about quite often here is that 80/20 rule in the channel where, you know, right, 80% of revenue comes from 20% of partners, or even more. You know, even 90/10 sometimes, or more often, lately it seems that we're hearing that. And a lot of that goes back to recruitment, and then how you're engaging, how you're maintaining mind share. You know, what are your thoughts on this principle? Is it something we just have to accept, that this is just the way it's gonna be? Is there a way to avoid it? Love to hear your thoughts on that topic, because I know there are people that definitely fall into both camps. Travis: Sure, sure. Yep. There are people out there that just accept it, and the statistics would be tough to argue that. But, gosh, great question. We've seen though, HMI specifically. I think we're uniquely positioned to help with this dilemma. You know, here's the thing, it's way easier to move up, you know move up an existing customer, a partner, than it is to find and train a new one. And, you know, recruitment and out there finding new partners always needs to be part of your plan. But, if we could just take a look at that middle 60, you know that middle 60%, and focus on them. You know, there's a great opportunity to move them up to that next level. And the challenge has between with performance incentives and channel incentives is a lot of companies kind of roll out these blanket reward programs, right? And when you do that, you have the same 20% hitting those goals and enjoying the rewards, or the president's club trip to Hawaii. And, you know, taking a page out of Allbound's book here, you know, it's all about…today, it's all about personalizing it, and customizing it to each individual person. So, to be honest, the technology wasn't there five years ago. But today, literally, each person that logs in to, you know, an HMI system for example, has a completely unique experience. You know, they see their unique goal or threshold, or unique promotion that's available to them because they sell a certain product or in a certain region, or there's unique rewards available to them. You know, all depending on their demographics or how we've segmented the customer/partner database. So, and then those goals are based on how much they sold from the previous quarter, or how much they sold from the previous year. It's not this, you know, "You have to sell this for us to get our attention," it's, "If you show us progress, we're gonna invest back in you." Jen: Awesome. Travis: And we call this intimacy at scale. You like that? Jen: I do like that. I do like that. Travis: I'm trying to get it to stick. Jen: No, I like that because I think it's something that; you've hit on something that really plagues, you know, a lot of sales and marketing professionals. And the tactics that really work well tend to be ones that are very hard to scale. Because as soon as you start scaling something, you start automating it, it makes it impersonal. And then, you lose that effect, right? Like, you think about the experience, the feeling you get if someone takes the time to write a handwritten note to you, right? And so, I like getting this note, right? Well, then it becomes, let's just e-mail everybody, right? And then it's just another piece of noise in your inbox. And so I like that, I like that idea of intimacy at scale. Yeah. I'm a fan. Travis: Right on. No, that was an awesome perspective. You're right. You know those things that work we try to scale them, and then in the process, we lose the personal touch. And that's usually what it is. It's the personalization that we lose. But, you know, I think technology is finally there. We can still personalize and have the user feel special, because they are, if you're using the right systems out there. Jen: Yeah. Travis: And as a result, you know…so getting back to the 80/20 rule, you know, if we kind of segment our partner, customers in your A tier, and B tier, and C tier, you know, we're all about moving those C tier customers to B, and the B's up to the A tier. And then...now, the only problem is how do we create a new tier for those A's because we've run out of letters. Jen: Right. Right. So I've one more, like channel question for you. And I'm gonna ask you to kind of look through your crystal ball here. Wondering about the future of partner programs, you know, you think about like the last 10 years or 20 years, and then where we are today, they've definitely evolved. If you were to look ahead, where do you see the future of partner programs going? And what are you most excited about for the next decade or two of this world of strategic alliances? Travis: Gosh, that's a fun question. Good question. You know, partners...it used to be…I mean, I guess if we were going to look back before we look into the future, it used to be, you know, the strategy was build it and they will come. And that included all these resources. And they would build these things and kinda put these libraries in place. And back in the day when there was only a handful of vendors doing that, they actually had a little bit of success. They would actually get their partners to come and use these resources. But today, there is just so much noise. Everybody has these resources that they expect their channel partners to come to and access and use. And it's not happening, and it's not gonna happen in the future. It's not build it and they will come. Jen: Right. Travis: It's not the field of dreams. And so, you know, what we're seeing now is...and where I see the future is, it's not getting all these assets and resources. It's how can you integrate with your partner? How can you integrate? And you've always tried to integrate your product into theirs. You know, you've got to keep doing that. You've got to integrate your marketing into theirs. You've got to keep doing that. And you've got to keep doing it better. But the real advance is gonna be, how can you integrate with the buying experience? And can you help your partners be more effective out there selling, and help them through the journey? And, you know, we don't have all the answers there but it's starting to crystallize. Again, companies like Allbound are doing things in ways that people had never seen before or considered just a couple few years ago. And those are areas of advancement that are starting to show us the future of channel marketing programs. And on the HMI side, five years ago we weren't having intimacy at scale, and customizing each participant's experience in the channel incentive program. Today we are. There's a long way to go, but that's where it's heading. Those are gonna be the vendors that win. The ones that can integrate into the buying experience. Jen: I agree, because it's all about the customer. That's exciting. I'm looking forward to seeing that all transpire along with you. So thanks for this. Thanks for sharing a lot of your time today with me about incentives and channel programs. This has been awesome, and I do hope that folks who haven't had a chance to participate in Move the Channel will get over to LinkedIn and join that group and start contributing to that group's success. Thank you for starting that. I think it's...I'm glad, I'm very glad you did. Travis: Also, I think it's where we first crossed paths, virtually. Jen: Yep. That's right. So, but Travis before I do let you go, like, really, I have some more personal questions that I always ask our guests. Just so we can get to know you a little bit better. So I'm gonna put you through that rigor now. So, my first question for you is, what is your favorite city? Travis: Gosh, great question. Cleveland, Ohio. Jen: Really. Tell me why you love Cleveland? Travis: You don't get that answer very often, do you? Jen: No, I don't. I don't. I've been there once, and I liked it when I was there. But why do you like Cleveland? Travis: You know, I'm a little bit from Ohio, and a little bit from California. I always joke my parents when I was really young, so there was a lot of back and forth. I was born in California, more raised in Ohio. But growing up in Mansfield, Ohio, which is about an hour south of Cleveland. I became the biggest die hard Cleveland Browns, Cleveland Indians, Cleveland Cavs, and everything Cleveland. And it was always such a big trip to go to the big city. And so, I have really fond memories of it. And to this day, it's still one of my favorite cities to go visit. Jen: That's great. That's wonderful. Okay, next question for you. Do you consider yourself an animal lover? Do you have any pets? Travis: I do. I'm not a cat person, although my wife is. Jen: Okay. Travis: But fortunately, she's also a dog person. And we saved a mutt from the pound, about seven years ago, and it's part Boxer, part Lab, part Golden Retriever, and a few other things that we're not quite sure. But it is still a puppy today. Seven years later, it has not calmed down a bit. And her name is Honu, which is turtle in Hawaiian. Jen: Yeah. Travis: So, we call her a dog turtle. Jen: What inspired that? I've never met a dog named turtle. Travis: We went on our honeymoon in Hawaii, and went swimming with some honus, some sea turtles. And we found ourselves kind of calling them, and trying to get their attention like you would a dog. Jen: Okay. Travis: And so, we said, "When we get a dog we're gonna call him or her Honu." Jen: That's great. Oh I love it. Okay, next question, Mac or PC? Travis: Oh gosh, I"m sitting here looking at both right now. Jen Spencer: Oh, you're one of those. Travis: I have both, and I love both of them. I have recently been turned onto Mac, and that's where I run a number of my businesses. But, you know what, I have the Microsoft Surface Pro. Jen: Okay. Travis: And, pretty sweet, I have to say. They've come a long way. Jen: Yeah, I've heard great things about that. Okay, last question for you. Let's say I was able to offer you an all expenses paid trip, where would it be to? Travis: It would be to Sydney, Australia. Jen: All right. Have you been there before? Travis: I have. I spent a summer abroad over there. And I've been trying to get back ever since. Jen: Well, I hope you have a chance to return. Travis: Well, should I expect that package in an e-mail after this, or? Jen: No, not any time soon. Travis: No, I was just curious. Jen: Never. It was just hypothetical. Let's say, I was able to offer this. Travis: Yeah. I would say there or Patagonia, Chile, which is another place I've been before, but I'm dying to go back. Jen: Well good. Travis: How about you? I'm curious, what's your answer on that one? Jen: I wanna go to Greece. I really wanna go to Greece, because I want...my background is in theater, and there's a lot of history there, and I want to be able to experience that. But then, I also just love to like just chill on a beach and do nothing. And as far as I can tell, I can do both of those things in Greece. And so that's what I would like to do. Travis: Beautiful. Jen: Yeah. Travis: You've almost made me change my mind. Jen: Oh. Travis: Now, I want to go to Greece. That sounds awesome. I've never been, and that's definitely one high on my list too. That's cool. Jen: Well, thanks for again spending some time with me today. It was awesome. So if anyone wants to reach out to you personally, obviously, they can go to LinkedIn and they can join the Move the Channel group. Is there another way for them to get a hold of you if they want to chat, maybe about HMI or anything that we've talked about here on the show? Travis: You bet. You can go to movethechannel.com and reach me there by submitting just an e-mail, which is perfect. And also, at my HMI e-mail, tsmith@hmiaward.com. And I look forward to it. I love this stuff. I'm kind of nerdy when it comes to channel marketing and sales programs, as you can tell. Jen: Perfect. That's what I like to hear. Thanks again. Thanks Travis for joining me, and thank you everyone else. And we'll catch you next week with an all new episode. Narrator: Thanks for tuning in to the Allbound Podcast. For past episodes and additional resources, visit the resource center at Allbound.com. And remember, never sell alone

Not one, but two channel thought leaders share the spotlight today: Larry Walsh, CEO and Chief Analyst at The 2112 Group and Scott Salkin, CEO and Founder of Allbound. Larry and Scott chat about driving more revenue with the right partners on this episode of The Allbound Podcast. Larry, you wrote an article called "Scale Matters, but the Channel has Size Limits" and you state that if an organization wants to double its channel-generated revenue then its number of partners will need to increase by 115%. Can you explain? What I was saying in that blog post is there are natural limits to productivity. And if you accept that the 80/20 rule is alive and well in the channel, then you've also accepted that there's a speed limit to the number of partners, or the potential growth that you can get out of any side. Let's start by looking at the tenants of what the channel is supposed to do. The channel's supposed to extend market coverage, and particularly get you into niche markets. The other purpose is to create points of presence to create points of sales for customers to come in. Now, that theory works well, but there's a certain point after you start to exceed capacity, which is the reason why we actually have such an exaggerated 20% rule in the channel. So, the notion of squeezing more value out of the long tail, particularly, the extreme end of a long tail, becomes less advantageous. If you start pushing down the long tail, and you want to start growing your channels and thinking that you're going to double your channel revenue just by adding more partners, then you actually have to over-subscribe and get lesser value out of your partners over time, which is the reason why we come to a 115% increase just to double revenue rather than just a pure one over one increase.     Scott, reruitment has an enormous influence on channel program success. What should channel leaders be doing today when it comes to recruitment so they can focus on quality over quantity? Today's channel leaders have so much more access to data now that can tell them which partners are having the most success and also predict which partners are best postioned for success. We've got to get smarter with new more modern day KPI that doesn't just measure success based on how many partners you're bringing in, but exactly on what those partners are —  things like velocity rate, and how they're actually growing the business with you.   What advice can you give leaders who would like to transition into a more account-based partnering strategy? Larry: Start at the end.  When you make recruitment a metric, then it's all about bodies, or it's all about the number of companies. Stop making recruitments, or the number partners important. Make productivity of it important. When I say "start at the end," one of the other tenants of the channel is that it has to be a net contributor to the vendor or to the enterprise, and enterprise in this case, means business venture.  Scott:  Channel has to be aligned with your entire business. if you don't have the education, enablement, empowerment and training nailed down for your channel partner program, it's going to be hard to drive more revenue, create more margin, and add more logos to the business. You've got to take care of the partners you have, and you've got to help them be more successful.  To learn more about driving more revenue with channel partners, tune in to episode 39 of The Allbound Podcast.

Sue Fernand, VP of Channel Sales at Cirrus Insight joins us to discuss how smaller businesses can scale quickly and effectively with both the right channel partners and the right tools on this episode of The Allbound Podcast.   Effective selling takes an ecosystem. Explore how to supercharge your sales and master the art of never selling alone. Welcome to the Allbound Podcast, the fundamentals of accelerating growth with partners.   Jen: Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Allbound Podcast. I'm Jen Spencer and today I am joined by Sue Fernand, VP of Channel Sales at Cirrus Insight. Welcome, Sue. Sue: Thank you, Jen. Happy to be here.   Jen: Well, I'm really glad to have you, and especially I wanted to share a little bit about your background because you've been working in a channel for about 18 years, and you've pretty much had almost every role within the channel. So, from like being strategic accounts director at Esna Technologies to different specialized director of channel roles, and I know you also serve as a strategic advisor, focused on like I.E partnerships and channel for the small business web, so you definitely know channel inside and out. We are just really, really, really glad to have you here on the show. Sue: Well, thank you. I'm glad to be here.   Jen: So let's dive into some questions I have for you. You know, you've got a lot of experience, not just in channel, but in tech, and we think about like rapidly growing software companies and the software industry and SaaS. Would love to hear from you where you think the software industry has the greatest opportunity, specifically when it comes to channel, and knowing that channel has been more of a traditional hardware type of go-to market strategy for many, many years.   Sue: Yeah, that's definitely a good question, because you're right, and in my early years of being in sales and being in channel sales, it was. It was all hardware. You know, in the OEM space a little bit, as well as, you know, just being an additional product in like a telecom vendor's portfolio. And then SaaS is a little bit different.   I think the partnership story and channel story, you know, changes a little bit, but I think the greatest opportunity is really for growth, right? I mean a lot of the, like you mentioned, small startups, you know, they don't have the scale out the gate. So trying to get the word out on your own about what your product does or getting in front of, you know, customers that would be a good fit, it's oftentimes challenging, and you can spend a lot of money doing events and, you know, you might blow through any sort of VC, let's say, that you have. But you can get a really strong partner ecosystem that knows your product, sees the value in it, sees the value for their clients, I think that's a really great way to scale.   I mean, again, a lot of these companies that you would sign up to be a partner, they have clients already and it's, you know, super...I think it's a great place to start, and that's one of the things I always do when I bring on a new partner. It's like, "Let's get some webinars or events or things like that set up with your existing clients. Let's get in front of those clients." I think it's always easier for customers to sell to their existing customers, right? So it's a really great way to kick off the relationship and it's a great way to have some initial wins.   I think, you know, getting success out the gate is a good way to do it. You know, even if you have to maybe spoon-feed a couple of deals to your partners, I think that that kind of creates a good environment when the relationship kicks off, instead of spending a ton of time training and creating awareness and creating, you know, collateral, and then it's like there's no opportunities, so things just sit there. But I think, you know, being able to get in front of, you know, whatever channel you choose, get in front of their existing clients and make sure that you can kind of have some pipeline right away. Jen: That's such a good point, and you know what it makes me thing of, it reminds me of when we recently promoted one of our BDRs to be an account exec, right? And when we did that, we didn't just kind of set him free, right? Actually our director of sales kind of worked with him and, you know, did those sort of ride-alongs and got a win under his belt, right, and really helped him see that and taste it, right, and be hungry for more.   And it's an approach I see a lot of sales leaders taking when it comes to their direct business, but when it comes to channel, I mean, they're still just...they're salespeople. So how do you teach them how to have a win and get that win for them, help get that win for them, and then let them go and do it on their own after that? So I think it's just something I hadn't really thought of before and then you mention this, and it's like that makes perfect sense to me.   Sue: Yeah, exactly. It kind of started out with a positive. That way, the story can kind of resonate throughout the company, and people will pay a bit more attention to, you know, your offering. Jen: So, you know, I try to be a really good social listener and pay attention to some of the really great content that's being shared in the space. And you had shared an article that was written by one of your colleagues at Cirrus Insight. It was called "Why Small Businesses Are Struggling Without Sales Software," and I really liked that piece. We'll link to it in the show notes. So in it, the author says that only around 50% of all businesses survive 5 years or more and only about one third make it a full 10-plus years. And if you want to be a success now, it's such a key to work carefully, so it was pretty eye-opening.   And, you know, from our perspective, you know, here over at Allbound, we 100% agree sales software, partner sales software can make a world of difference in those companies being successful. I would love to hear from you what you think a business needs, you know, for their channel to create a path that's gonna lead a business to that 10-plus year mark, given the fact that so many small businesses are, you know, struggling to survive. Sue: Yeah, definitely, and that article was super interesting because some of the statistics in there were just crazy. You know, it said, you know, of the people that were polled, 74% of those companies were managing things manually, and only 16% even leveraged CRM, which just seems surprising in this day and age. But, you know, that's true, obviously, and you do see it. I mean, I think being in the sales and tech world, sometimes we tend to live in a bubble and we assume everybody's using all these really cool things and managing their business in the most effective manner, when, in reality, that's not the case.   And I think small businesses, in general, sometimes try to do a lot of things manually to maybe cut some corners and save some money, or they'll like patch together a bunch of free apps, let's say, but I really think that's where you fail, right, because you're not getting any of the tracking data either, so how do you even figure out what's working or what's not working, and those types of investments, they definitely pay off. And I think when you're managing a channel, you have to have a really good system in place of how that's gonna work from beginning to end. Otherwise, it would be just a big mess because, again, it's probably gonna be, you know, one or two people managing an ecosystem of partners, so you need to have some automation. And you absolutely want to track the data, track performance, so that you really can figure out where your efforts are best served, right, which partners are bringing you the most leads. That's hugely important. Which partners are maybe bringing you the bigger size deals, so you're gonna want to put your efforts there, or which partners are just not getting it, they're just not engaging, and, you know, what can you do to get them engaged or maybe that's just not a good fit, and you move along. But I think it's really important to invest in sales or partner enablement software because there's a definite investment upfront, but it's going to pay off.   Jen: And, you know, I think you'll agree with me when I say that successful partners and salespeople, successful salespeople, tend to be really happy. They're gonna be your happy partners. They're going to continue to drive business for your organization. And if they're unhappy, that probably means they're not making money, right? So, you know, how do you do it? How are you enabling your partners to sell more efficiently? Are you running promotional programs? Are you producing any types of materials or marketing tools? You know, love to hear a little bit about what you do to ensure that those partners are well enabled to sell. Sue: Absolutely, yes. I kind of have three different channels within the channels that I focus on. The majority of the channels that I'm focusing on now with my current role at Cirrus are Salesforce consulting partners. So they're actually referral partners. They're not actually selling our licensing, but, you know, they are involved with their Salesforce deployments, all of their clients, our Salesforce users, so it's really, really important for them to know about what our product does. So one of the things we do for them, and I think it's a really smart move, is give them the software to use in-house. So they're using it, and it's a great app. They love it and they know that it's going to help increase Salesforce adoption, so it makes natural sense to recommend it.   Then, obviously, we also pay referral fees and we launch, you know, different types of promotions from time to time, you know, that will offer the ability to maybe win a trip or get a gift card, or something like that. But constant engagement and having a really easy way for them to get to that content too. Like, we've got a landing page with resources, so we've kept up-to-date, but it's got all of our marketing materials, tape studies, tutorials, everything, you know, is right there so that they're not having to, you know, go all over the place to kind of figure out what they need.   As well as we've done what we call micro-sites, so when someone signs up to be a partner, we'll create a custom branded page with their logo and a little description. We'll also list them as a partner on our site, but they are referring people to us. It has that really nice look. You know, we've got their logo on there, and it just, you know, shows that there's a relationship there. So I think that that's, you know, important, to make sure that you not only have a program, but make sure that it's easy and continually, you know, query the partners too, like, "Is this working for you? Is this a mutually beneficial relationship?" And if you need to make changes or you need to maybe launch something as a promo, then you can, you know, go ahead and do that just to kind of keep that engagement going. Jen: That's a good point. And I'm wondering, have you ever created something or worked for a company where you guys put something together, whether it was a promotion or it was some, you know, content or something that you did that just fell flat, that you thought like, "Oh, this is gonna be great," and the partners just not respond to it? Has that ever happened? Sue: Oh yeah, definitely. You come up with this great promotion, let's say, and you're like, "People are gonna be signing up left and right, and we're gonna get so many leads or so many referrals out of this," and it just doesn't take off. I think you really need to figure out what's important to their business, because, you know, their business has needs, right? And I think for us, like with our consulting partners, their business is services, they're implementing, so that's what's hugely important to them.   Retail partners, they're selling something else, and we're a bolted-on attachment, so that's a little bit different because they're making potentially a little bit more money off of it. So I think you almost have to continually, before you launch a promotion, really understand what's gonna drive them. It's gotta help their business, not necessarily the actual prize at the end of the day, but it's got to be something that's gonna overall effect and allow them to have more business out of the promotion that you're offering.   Jen: I'd love to hear a really great partnership story. I'm wondering, from your experience, whether it's at Cirrus or maybe at Esna, you know, really anywhere you've worked over the course of your career, if you have just, like, one of your favorite partnership stories, whether that's like the most revenue, or a really big accomplishment, or some like amazing strategic alliance that you were able to build. Do you have any anecdotes for us? Sue: Yeah, definitely. I think probably like the most challenging but exciting time in my career of managing in channels was when I made the switch, when I was, you know, with the previous employer, Esna. We'd kind of switched from working with like traditional telecom hardware vendors to trying, you know, working in the SaaS base. Even though we were technically still equipment, we were repositioning and attaching ourselves to SaaS products, like Google and, you know, Office 365, and other, you know, cloud based platforms. So we had to seek out a different kind of partner, and that was an exciting time, challenging time, because it was very different, and a much, much different approach, but it allowed me to really get involved in a lot of the early on enterprise companies, you know, moving to the cloud.   One of the deals I worked on with one of our partners was with LinkedIn, and that was a super exciting opportunity, super exciting deal. We were very critical in that decision of moving that entire company over to Google. I know they've now been acquired by Microsoft, but it was a very exciting deal, and it really solidified the relationship with that partner, because, you know, it's pretty obvious without our piece of it, maybe that deal would not have gone down, and we really worked very strategically together on it, so that when it came through, it was very, very exciting. So it was a real success and a win, and I think it left a better engagement for both parties, because that was so much investment on both ends and it was a very long process, but it was definitely a big accomplishment. Jen: I think, you know, recruiting the right partners is so important, and it's something that we've talked about a great deal on this podcast or other content that we created at Allbound about, you know, who you decide to partner with and build those alliances with. And, you know, ideally, it's all of your partnerships all result in these amazingly successful relationships, you know, like the one you shared. You know, but realistically there are partnerships that fall flat, you know, that don't quite get to where we had hoped they want to. And then there are some that we consider like those diamonds in the rough, right, where you didn't know how amazing it was gonna be, and then it just blossomed into a really great partnership. Do you have an effective recruiting tool or a strategy that you've used to really help gain meaningful partnerships? Sue: Yeah, definitely, and that's hugely important, because I think, you know, there is the challenge of knowing who the people are, the players, and their respective base that you want to get into. And I think sometimes we all want to go right to top, right? We want the biggest ones, like, you know, in the Salesforce ecosystem that would be like the Accentures. You know, we want to go right to the top. And I think that for my purposes, what I found is going right to the top isn't always the best way. Yes, they're very, very big companies, and they have lots of clients, but it's very, very hard to get mind share in those large organizations, because, you know, there may be potentially even a lot of red tape to even get that partnership going, and then once you're there, you know, it's really hard to get mind share.   So I think kind of going for, you know, more of a smaller business, but maybe if you're looking for particular verticals, a business that focuses entirely on that vertical, that makes sense, or more of a boutique type, you know, partner, and a lot of times can be that diamond in the rough, right? Like, maybe it's only a two- or three-person operation, but they've got this reputation, where they're just bringing you these really big deals.   I really like to, you know, take a look at people's websites quite honestly and see what kind of work they've done, what kind of content they're putting up. I like to see people that are kind of thought leaders, because then I know that they're gonna get the ROI and the story that we're gonna bring to the client. So I like to do a little bit of investigation, not just knowing, "Hey, this is a big partner, this is a successful partner," but let's see what kinds of clients they have, what's on their website, what's on their blog, what are they putting out there, what's important to them. So certainly bringing social into the mix is a lot about how I do the recruitment or seeking out additional partners. Jen: Well, I think that's really smart because I've seen culture make or break a partnership, right? So you can have two organizations. You might be both targeting a similar, you know, that same ideal customer profile or you might be focusing on the same buyer percentage. But culturally, if you're extremely different in your approach, that could definitely impede the success of that partnership. So, I mean, I think that's really, really wise, but there's not always a clear-cut way of figuring that out, right? That takes time. Like you said, going onto someone's website, consuming some of the content that they're creating, looking at what they're posting on social media. I mean, do you have a team that helps you with that, or are you kind of doing that on your own? How do you scale that kind of...yeah. Sue: At Cirrus, we're small, we're a startup, but yeah, it's kind of on me. But in the past, gosh, I mean I remember back in the early days of my career, you know, going and getting like the phone books and going through and finding like all the interconnect companies in a particular area, you didn't have, you know, as many online resources, so you had to go a little bit, you know, more old school on that. But I think that, in general, you're right, the culture thing is super important, and you also need to understand the rules of engagement, too. That's big as well.   You know, some partnerships will want you to be very hands off. You know, they'll want you to entirely enable their teams, but they don't want you talking to their customers. They want to own the deal and they're just gonna kind of come to you, you know, to order it, let's say, or if they have technical questions. Where other partners are gonna really want you kind of side by side in the deal, especially the larger strategic ones. So I guess knowing, you know, what the rules of engagement are and how much, you know, visibility you're gonna want into their pipeline, let's say, you know, these are all things that you kind of need to find out when you identify what types of partners you're looking for.   Jen: Oh yeah, I agree 100%, and it's like it's not a one size fits all, right? So you have to adjust that communication. Sue: Yeah, definitely not, definitely not. And I've even worked in OEM relationships too, where you can't even...it's not even something that you're publically saying that it's your product, even though it is your product. So that's a whole other different partnership, where it is, really, truly hands off, and you're just kind of managing, you know, the actual relationship between the two companies, but there's not gonna be any sort of a forward facing discussion with the client.   In my experience, I prefer it when it's more of a, you know, collaborative approach. I think it's more successful, and maybe that's just the types of products that I've sold, but I think no one can tell the story better than you can. You can definitely enable your partners, and they can tell that story, but when it comes to a really large strategic deal, I think having, you know, both people there, them selling their company and their services, and you coming in as, you know, supporting them as the expert on your technologies. For me, that's been the recipe for success.   Jen: Before I let you go, I was just thinking, Cirrus Insight's a younger company, like you said. You've got this partner play. Maybe you can kind of take a step back and share a little bit about the company, you know, so all the listeners have an idea of like, okay, who is Cirrus Insight, right? And then also, you know, love to know when the organization decided to make that go-to market, to make that partner play and have a go-to market strategy around channel partners. Was it right out of the gate? Did it come later? Can you just shed a little bit of light on how you did that? Because I know we have a lot of listeners who are in similar situations or maybe even like a year or two behind where you are, I think it would be great to hear your story. Sue: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I mean, I joined them almost...so it'll be two years next month. So when I came onboard, they already did have, you know, partners. I think out the gate, they focused on the partner model right away, because they knew that was gonna be the way to scale, and Salesforce partners were the way to go because they owned the relationship, and building a name and a brand in that ecosystem, that's where you had to go.   In terms of, you know, the company and the history, it's kind of a funny story actually. I was one of the first users of Cirrus Insight when I was at Esna, so I actually found the product. We were a Gmail shop. We used Salesforce and, you know, quite honestly we were struggling with our adoption, and I found it, and I used it, and I was a huge fan. I have posted one of the first reviews on the app exchange, so I knew about them for quite some time and was a big fan.   So when I was looking into new opportunities, it made sense for me to reach out to other products that I loved and used and I knew made my life easier because I think, you know, that adds a lot of credit and validity to your story when you can say, like, "Hey, I've been there, I've seen the transformation, and I use this," or it's not like you're just selling a product, so to speak, if you have a little bit of history on it.   But yeah, they've been partner focused before my time. I know that's how they grew the company. So when I came in, there were already some established partners, and now I've just taken that process and just grown it even further and brought in some additional relationships with OEM Salesforce partners and building up a little bit more on the resale side and getting a better handle on tracking, the referral partners that we have and just having a point person that's just engaging with them on a regular basis.   I think, in general, with any channel, it's just about enablement and engagement. And, again, the thing that we were talking about earlier, having a system in place that allows you to do that, not manually, but having something in place that allows you to use some software so that you can have the data that you need, and be able to track that, and track the metrics on it, and figure out what's working and what's not working. Otherwise, I don't think, you know, it's going to be a successful channel if you don't do it right. Jen: Absolutely. It's like, you know, if you were a DemandGen marketer and you never paid attention to what marketing efforts produced the most number of leads, right? If you did that, you know, that would be very foolish, right? So putting the same approach, the same thing we're all doing with the direct sales and marketing efforts, putting those same processes and holding those same standards, you know, with indirect sales and indirect marketing as well. So it's a big passion point of mine for sure.   Sue: Yes, definitely. I agree.   Jen: So before I totally let you go, I do like to ask a couple of more personal questions so the listeners can get to know you a little bit better and maybe bond with you over some other commonalities besides just channels, because we are more than our jobs, right? So my first question for you is, what is your favorite city? Sue: My favorite city, oh gosh, that's a good question. You know, I hate to say it, because it's so close to home, but New York City. I just always find something new and exciting to do there, and I'm pretty close to New York. I'm in Connecticut, so I get there quite often. So I've been in a lot of places in the world, but I do have to say New York City is definitely my favorite city. Jen: Awesome. Okay, question number two, do you consider yourself an animal lover? Do you have any pets? Sue: You know, it's funny. If you asked me this like five years ago, I would say no, but I have a dog now, and I'm like a complete convert. I was against it. My children really wanted a dog, and, of course, made all sorts of promises that they were gonna take care of the dog, and that's really not what happened. I take care of her, but I am like...I just like ride or die for that dog.   Jen: What kind of a dog is it? Sue: She is a long-haired Chihuahua. So she's like a little, you know, a little lap dog, but she's adorable, and I just adore her, and I didn't anticipate myself feeling this way about a dog, but I do. Jen: I'm a very similar story, and actually he's like five-eighths Chihuahua. There's a couple other things in there. We did the whole like doggie DNA thing. So, yeah, I have a Chihuahua, and I swear I think he would be most happy if he was in a Baby Bjorn attached to me at all times. Like, if he could get inside my skin, he would be happy, right? It's so funny. They're funny dogs. Okay, question number three, Mac or PC? Sue: Mac all the way. In fact, you know, I think I used like a PC laptop like once in my life. I've been a Mac user since I was a child. Jen: Awesome. Last question for you. Let's say I was able to offer you an all expenses paid trip, where would it be to? Sue: Ooh, I would go to Italy. Jen: Ooh. Anywhere particular in Italy or just like see it all? Sue: I would just like to go. I would like to see it all and eat my way through Italy.   Jen: Yeah, sounds good. Sue: And drink wine as well.   Jen: Sounds really good. I know I went to Italy a number of years ago, like a good, you know, like, I don't know, 14 or 15 years ago, and I think I remember it being actually cheaper to drink wine than anything else, and so that was what I did. Sue: Nice. Jen: But I do hope you get to Italy, even if I'm not the one who has the opportunity to send you there. Sue: There you go, exactly. Jen: Well, thank you. Thanks for joining me and joining us in the Allbound Podcast. If anyone wants to reach out to you, maybe they're interested in becoming a Cirrus Insight partner, maybe they kind of want to pick your brain about some of the thoughts you've shared, what's the best way for them to get a hold of you? Sue: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, feel free to follow me, obviously on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram. But if you want to, you know, directly communicate with me, you can just e-mail me at S, as in "SAM," fernand, F-E-R-N-A-N-D, @cirrusinsight.com, and I'm happy to talk channel. And then hey, if we happen to be in the same town, have a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, whatever works, I'm happy to share thoughts. Jen: Great. I'm sure folks will appreciate that, especially considering the experience you have and what you're building over there at Cirrus. So, again, thank you, Sue, for joining us, and thanks everyone else for joining us for the podcast, and we'll catch you all next week.   Sue: Excellent. Thank you so much, Jen. Male: Thanks for tuning into the Allbound Podcast. For past episodes and additional resources, visits the resource center at allbound.com. And remember, never sell alone.