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| Title | Pub. Date | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 247 – Unlocking the $827 Billion Generative AI Opportunity | 03 Dec 2024 | 01:04:28 | |
Neeti Gupta, Dux Raymond Sy & Sri Ganapathy Join Ultimate Partner®
Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-… Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experi… The Billion Dollar AI Opportunity with Neeti Gupta, Dux Raymond Sy & Sri Ganapathy The Ultimate Partner LIVE ’24 event showcased the unparalleled collaboration between Microsoft, industry leaders, and award-winning partners, emphasizing the $827 billion opportunity in generative AI. A panel led by Neeti Gupta highlighted rapid AI-driven changes, while Dux Raymond Sy of AvePoint discussed monetizing AI and addressing data governance issues hindering GenAI adoption. Sri Ganapathy from Microsoft’s Azure AI team stressed the importance of strong data cultures and client readiness, outlining consulting opportunities in assessing technological maturity. Successful AI integration, they noted, hinges on secure, high-quality data and tailored solutions using tools like Copilot Studio. Examples like H&R Block and Vodafone demonstrated AI’s transformative impact across industries. Key takeaways included fostering leadership support, building strong data cultures, and addressing ethical and regulatory challenges in AI. As AI models grow cheaper and more efficient, pricing strategies and ROI localization become crucial. Microsoft’s efforts in responsible AI, data security, and educating policymakers on tech advancements underscore the need for collaboration to balance innovation with regulation, ensuring a simplified, transformative journey for customers. What You’ll Learn The Generative AI Opportunity
LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-… Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experi… | |||
| 246 – Empowering Enterprises with AI: Glean’s Innovative Approach | 18 Nov 2024 | 00:09:08 | |
MP Eisen, VP of Partnerships at Glean, Joins Ultimate Partner®
I am thrilled to bring you my latest conversation with MP Eisen, VP of Partnerships at Glean, from the Google Cloud Marketplace Exchange! Glean is redefining the way enterprises access and utilize internal data, creating an “enterprise work assistant” that operates like an internal search engine, helping users find strategic insights, project updates, and account-specific information. MP shares Glean’s journey as a Google Cloud partner, from their first Marketplace listing in 2023 to a rapid trajectory that’s driven millions in consumption. Their approach? A laser focus on aligning Glean’s offerings with Google’s value propositions, from compute to Vertex AI’s Gemini, resulting in a partnership that has rapidly scaled across multiple industry segments. Key takeaways from MP’s insights:
Listen in on The Ultimate Partner to learn how Glean is setting new standards for leveraging marketplace and hyperscaler partnerships! https://youtu.be/BZQ0W0ZoXX4?si=DfFpyELKSHy9QBY_LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Ultimate Partner ExperienceEver wonder what you could achieve with the right partners? Dive into the Ultimate Partner Experience Community (UPX) and discover a world of possibilities! Exclusive ContentGain access to cutting-edge content and events crafted by partnership professionals. Stay ahead with strategies, trends, and in-depth interviews with the industry leaders in partnerships. Access to a Like-Minded CommunityOur next event is just around the corner and everyone is welcome. Although the event is open to the public, we want to give a special privilege to our members. Which means the Q&A session is exclusive to members only. It’s bound to be an exciting event and we look forward to seeing you all there! Make Connections That Matter!Dive right in and send a direct message to any member of UPX community! You are not just joining a group, but unlocking an open and vibrant network of professionals waiting to connect with you. Seize this golden opportunity to expand your horizons, fuel your career growth and discover exhilarating business prospects. The world is your oyster at UPX, let’s explore it together! Come Join UsI’m thrilled to welcome you to this journey. Let’s navigate, thrive, and redefine success in the tech partnership landscape together. Come Sign Up LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Now on YouTube | |||
| 235 – Decoding Customer-Centric Innovation, the Future of Partnerships at Cisco | 18 Sep 2024 | 00:50:42 | |
Rodney Clark Joins Ultimate Partner®
I was delighted to welcome Rodney Clark, Senior Vice President of Partnerships and Small and Medium Business at Cisco, to Ultimate Partner. Rodney and I worked together at Microsoft, and he was a guest on this platform while leading Microsoft’s Industry-renowned Ecosystem. This distinguished technology sector leader is bringing his expertise to shape Cisco’s market evolution, specifically the future of partnerships and co-selling to drive innovation and growth. Throughout his career, Rodney has played a key role as a global leader in technology, fostering collaborations that empower businesses of all sizes. His insights into how companies can leverage technological advancements have made him a respected figure in the industry. In this conversation, Rodney and I delved into his new role at Cisco and his vision for the future of their partnership, go-to-market (GTM) approach, and sales strategy. We highlighted the crucial role of artificial intelligence (AI) in shaping the future of technology, the importance of maintaining a customer-centric focus, and how significant shifts driven by hyperscalers—such as cloud commitments, marketplaces, and co-selling—are influencing his plans and strategy. He believes businesses must adapt to this new environment and offers a roadmap for how organizations can thrive. This is a must-listen episode of Ultimate Partner. I hope you join us for this thought-provoking leadership discussion. What You’ll Learn From This Episode:
LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Ultimate Partner LIVE – Executive Summit ’24 – Now OPEN! https://web.cvent.com/event/048d3ecc-7af8-49f8-a392-bb6f762811e8/summary?tm=EJH77Dldc2o1TtIQSEJd7SLqmotpUE_ik2AhshHjwOE Don’t Miss Out – Sign Up Today!I’m thrilled to announce the Ultimate Partner LIVE Executive Summit 2024, which will be held in Dallas, TX, on October 22nd and 23rd! This year’s summit promises to be bigger and better. It will be an immersive experience bringing together over 300+ partners across ISVs, LSPs, and SIs. Join us for two days of insightful discussions, hands-on workshops, and unparalleled networking opportunities with industry leaders and Microsoft executives. REGISTER HERE Transcript Keywords:partner, buyer, microsoft, marketplace, talk, year, company, customer, buy, achieve, partnering, partnership, number, ecosystem, moments, thought, inflection point, aws, money, product Transcript (provided by Descript) [00:00:00] Rodney: It’s important that all of us put the customer at the center of this is because it is the Customer buying behavior or the shift in, in, in customer expectation that has created the need for all of us to rethink our models. [00:00:15] INTRO: Microsoft’s purpose is in service of your purpose. And again, 2024 is the year that partners come out on top. [00:00:22] INTRO: As the leading edge of the spear on finding this buyer intent, you show up to every meeting and demonstrate why you are relevant [00:00:31] INTRO: every day. I have to force myself to make sure that I’m taking one step ahead in terms of my own learning. [00:00:36] INTRO: That flywheel success is where you will build momentum and that momentum will continue, and then you feed into the other systems to say, this is what we did. [00:00:45] INTRO: This is how we did it together. [00:00:46] Vince: Welcome to the Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzione your host. And my mission is to help leaders like you. Achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. Today we have a very special podcast for you. We’ve been talking about the tectonic shifts we’ve been seeing in our world, in our lives, the change in dominance of the hyperscalers, the role of the ecosystem and the changing in buying behavior that we’ve been seeing. [00:01:11] Vince: And I’m excited to be joined by a friend and leader here at Cisco’s Global Sales Conference. My good friend, Rodney Clark, is the SVP of Partnerships and Small and Medium Business at Cisco. Rodney, I’m so excited to have you here today. [00:01:26] Rodney: Vince, Thank you for being here, and thank you for joining our 20, 000 Cisco employees and splunkers at our Global Sales Exchange. [00:01:34] Vince: Such a small, intimate event. [00:01:36] Rodney: Just a small, intimate event, but it’s so good that you can pop in and spend some time with us. [00:01:37] Vince: Well, thank you for accommodating me and making me so welcome here today. Of course. I’m excited to be here. I’m so excited to spend time with you. I’m gushing a little bit. [00:01:49] Rodney: There’s that word again. [00:01:51] Vince: I got to spend a little time with your leadership and your team last week. And this is such an exciting time. So you and I are good friends. We both worked at Microsoft for a number of years together. You’ve been a guest on the podcast. Yes, I have. As a leader of Microsoft, as their channel chief. And, uh, back again today and so excited for your new role now. [00:02:12] Vince: So I was hoping we could spend a little time. Cisco has been a tech giant. I mean, yes, defines the word tech giant. Yes. And, uh, excited for what your plans are and what you’re looking to do. So why were you hired to Cisco? Let’s start right, let’s start right, let’s go right into it. Like, [00:02:28] Rodney: I’m not really sure why I was hired at Cisco. [00:02:30] Rodney: I’m sure there’s a lot of people. Wondering the same thing. No, it’s, it’s so good to be, uh, first off here at Cisco. Uh, it’s so great to be in a role where we’re connecting different companies, uh, and, and, and connecting different people of all walks of life, uh, as well as companies in different industries to, to come together and deliver customer value. [00:02:55] Rodney: Uh, Cisco is a large tech behemoth, a large tech company with a huge responsibility to continue to drive innovation for our customers. And part of me joining and why I’m here was that I have a chance to work with our partners. Cisco as a partner led company and ordained partner led company and helping all of our partners participate in this experience with us. [00:03:18] Rodney: And so it’s been eight months now that I’ve been on board and it’s, it’s been an absolute blast getting to know. The channel in the ecosystem through a different lens. Through a different relationship as well as quite frankly, you talked about the tectonic shifts helping a company like Cisco, you know, evolve and redefine what it means to be a trusted player in the channel. [00:03:41] Vince: Yeah. It’s funny because I always think of Cisco when I think about the traditional channels, the vendor channel relationships that we always see. Referred to in our industry and Microsoft was always around partnering and I think about Microsoft really built the first ecosystem Yeah, Bill Gates. I mean it spurred 500, 000 companies into that ecosystem and This I’ll call it the sparking of the ecosystem that we’re seeing now this change in buying behavior Where we’re seeing a real change from vendor to channel customer. [00:04:15] Vince: the customer actually pulling and completing a solution amongst a group of vendors, bringing those together, bringing the solutions to market together. And Cisco is so well poised in this area. I’d love to dive in a little bit more, but bringing the complete networking solution observability. We could talk about a I would talk about all these other components, but bringing it all together for the customers. [00:04:37] Vince: It’s just this unique opportunity that you have in your role. [00:04:40] Rodney: You hit on a few key words that I like to use when I describe our journey. You know, in 1994, we started out as a company that needed a channel, needed a channel to get our core networking products into the hands of customers. And a big part of our strategy then was transactional. [00:04:59] Rodney: I think it was for most companies that started programs back then. And you mentioned Microsoft kind of evolving to this ecosystem. Well, I think. The entire industry is involved to this notion of ecosystem where we need a fairly significant set of skills in order to complete and drive customer outcomes. [00:05:17] Rodney: It’s not just the transaction anymore. It’s the value that the collection of companies, it’s not just one company anymore. It is the combination of two to three to seven and ultimately what they bring in the overall solution in our portfolio. has grown since 94 and since those early days. And we have one of the largest portfolios in the industry. [00:05:39] Rodney: If you look at it from networking and edge point technology to routers and switches all the way to security through collaboration, IOT, and it definitely requires an ecosystem of capable partners in order to deliver on the customer promise. [00:05:55] Vince: And Cisco has been building out its portfolio, hundreds of companies and now parting or part of the Cisco portfolio I refer to. [00:06:03] Rodney: That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. Not, not just, uh, you know, I look at those, those companies is, is not just companies that do we do business with from a, from a, from an ecosystem perspective and from a day to day perspective, companies that we’ve had to acquire to help make us better as well, looking at it from both sides. [00:06:20] Vince: So I want to dive in on this buying behavior change, right? And I’ve been talking about this tectonic shifts being about five years ago with COVID, right? So we’ve been talking about transformation, you and I. I’ve been talking about transformation for decades now, right? And it was happening at a pace, I’ll call it a slow pace, a predictable pace. [00:06:40] Vince: And then COVID happens, changing, changes everything. Everything accelerates. Satya Nadella says, we saw two years of transformation in two months. We probably saw seven years of transformation in seven months. I clicked my phone three times and boxes show up at my front door. Healthcare is delivered differently. [00:06:55] Vince: Education is delivered differently. We don’t even think about those changes that happened. Buying behavior started to happen differently and the persona of the buyer also changed, right? So no longer do people want to be sold to they nobody picks up a phone and here’s an SDR BDR Anymore, it’s really about the trusted relationships. [00:07:15] Vince: Yes, and we all learn that right? We we make the same type of decisions about buying technology that we do about buying a vehicle Absolutely, where we talk to the seven or eight seats at the table our friends our trusteds And this is why partnering is so important now and ensuring that all those seats at the table are your trusted as well. [00:07:35] Vince: Those are the organizations that you go to market with that are surrounding your customers. I want to talk about that now and how, how you’re viewing this. I know you know about this and you’re bringing in infusing it into Cisco. [00:07:46] Rodney: Yeah, well, it’s important that all of us put the customer at the center of this is because it is the, Customer buying behavior or the shift in customer expectation that has created a need for all of us to rethink our models. [00:08:00] Rodney: And at the end of the day, it’s no longer point product. There’s no one thing that we sell anymore that is going to solve a problem at the customer. Data and AI is driving a lot more sophistication in terms of what companies need. And the more that companies invest in data and AI, they need the assurance that things are going to be connected, protected, uh, and secure. [00:08:26] Rodney: And so for us, what we’ve been looking at is how are customers buying and how are they ultimately making decisions today? It’s not even the traditional, uh, you know, IT buyer. It’s line of business decision makers. Uh, it can be the marketing department making decisions on something like a demand gen. Uh, you know, data repository that then connects back into some I. [00:08:48] Rodney: T. System that they didn’t use to connect it to their overall commerce cloud. It could be a number of things. But for us, it’s Cisco. It’s how are we enabling our programs to adjust to those buying patterns and needs? How are we enabling partners to connect to other partners? I was in a conversation yesterday with our good friend J. [00:09:10] Rodney: McBain from countless. And we talked about the number of organizations, like a midsize organization typically has seven plus or minus partners or companies that are engaged in helping them sustain their outcomes. When you get into large enterprises, it can be anywhere upwards of 20 to 25. And so for us, as we look to manage and map to those, our program has to evolve and will evolve so that we’re making those logical connections and creating a scenario where we’re basically. [00:09:42] Rodney: serving up those seven entities, those seven companies that are going to go deliver outcomes, or we’re facilitating the connection of more. That’s a really significant shift from years past. [00:09:52] Vince: Yeah, it’s a significant shift, but it’s a natural shift for Cisco, right? I started thinking about this holistically. [00:09:58] Vince: And you know, I also talk about the role of the hyperscalers. We can’t discount that role. I think a lot of organizations tend to ignore the fact that these large cloud commitments, right? There’s We’ll use Microsoft as an example. Let’s call it 50, 000 field sellers. [00:10:13] Rodney: Yes. [00:10:13] Vince: That are going into these organizations and saying, you know, consume more of our Azure. [00:10:18] Vince: These decisions are now being made, not in the line of business, they’re being made at the board level. Absolutely. At the C suite level. The CEO is the new CIO in many respects, right? Because they’re really driving a set of different behaviors, which are then in the line of business consuming against. And so their role is important. [00:10:35] Vince: And I know you’ve been partnering along with with these organizations and you have some thoughts about how to take the company in the future, but we can’t forget that. And the fact that marketplaces are also going to become more significant. Yes, and I know Cisco has a big commitment to marketplace as well. [00:10:49] Rodney: Yeah, that’s a fairly significant shift for not just Cisco, but the entire industry. And you look at the addressable market and depending on how you look at it or through what lens you get to numbers that are 250 billion. Yeah. Uh, to 85 billion over a certain period of time. And I look squarely at that 85 billion for what we do as Cisco as an addressable market over the next couple of years. [00:11:11] Rodney: And to your point, these companies are basically making commitments to AWS and EDP, Azure and Microsoft on commit to consume, where they have to basically spend in a certain amount of time on projects that are going to drive more cloud consumption for these hyperscalers. And so for a company like Cisco, it’s, you know, what are we doing to re platform our core assets onto those clouds so that those customers can take advantage of that as well? [00:11:44] Rodney: Or how are we opting our services, because we are software services and hardware, how are we opting our services so they can also be a part of these broader negotiated terms from AWS, Microsoft, GCP, and others? It’s a massive push for us. We’ve made a pretty significant investment both on Splunk as well as on, uh, at Cisco, where we are driving growth upwards of 40 to 55 percent year over year business with hyperscalers. [00:12:15] Rodney: And I love to talk about it because we have to remind our partners that there’s an opportunity for them to participate in that as well. It’s not an AWS and Cisco sell. It’s an AWS, Cisco and insert name of partner. [00:12:31] Vince: So you are speaking my language. I mean, so I got up at the channel partners event this past spring and had a conversation and it reminded me of the conversation you and I had about the cloud with our partner ecosystems back in the day when we were both leaders at Microsoft. [00:12:45] Vince: Bunch of people that were doe eyed about this marketplace thing and really haven’t embraced it yet. And I think you’re you’re hitting the nail on the head here about getting the partner ecosystem. engaged in this whole marketplace opportunity in a bigger way. Do you want to expand on that? [00:12:57] Rodney: Yeah, we, we have to get them involved and engaged. [00:13:00] Rodney: A big part of my business here at Cisco, uh, is in something that we call routes to market. What are the routes to market that are driving customer outcomes? Or how, in essence, are our customers buying, back to your previous question, and what are they buying through? Managed services for our ecosystem is big because, you Our customers are needing and wanting more integration services, especially as they get involved and engage in things like a I a route to market could be a does this do we involve at scale a distributor who goes through, you know, a second tier of reseller to get to a point solution, a route to market could be something like, Hey, the I. [00:13:41] Rodney: S. V. As the actual primary integrator, you name it. Our focus is on routes to market. And what we’ve really been building out for our partners is a muscle around this marketplace route to market. You know, what are we doing to help them get ready and prepared for that? Some of it is in just the core, uh, uh, you know, relationship building three way between an AWS, Cisco and said partner. [00:14:07] Rodney: Some of it is in getting our partners really, really. Enabled on our core technology in order to drive something through a marketplace transaction. Transaction. Cisco is doubled down, doubled, doubling down on on networking and security. And so we’ve got to get our partners really, you know, built up around capability so that they can sell secure networking solutions through. [00:14:32] Rodney: Marketplace. We’ve got to get our partners really enabled on a I s and and what it means to be a Cisco a I partner so that they can participate in this opportunity that is marketplace. So it gets a bit, you know, multifaceted and multidimensional, but it’s all something that’s squarely, uh, you know, a priority for Cisco. [00:14:54] Vince: Yeah, I mean, it looks like you’re eliminating some of the complexity. From the organization, right? This, this channel complexity and bringing us into this, like, what, what is the, what is the win win here for the partner ecosystem? How do you activate that? How do you think about this broad, not only the broad portfolio, but the broad set of partners? [00:15:12] Vince: How do you think about the activation? [00:15:14] Rodney: Yeah, the, the activation is, is, is great. By the way, I’ve got a team that is dedicated, uh, solely focused on marketplace and marketplace acceleration and transaction. That same team, by the way. Is looking at our cloud and hyperscale partnerships as well as our ISV partnerships. [00:15:32] Rodney: And so the first part of activation is getting us to the point where we’re building out the domain knowledge and expertise from within. Because it’s a route to market, we don’t have a handful of partners that go, Okay, these are my marketplace partners and these are my other partners. It’s just, every, every one of our partners participates in this. [00:15:49] Rodney: I mentioned our distributors earlier. You know, some of them have their own marketplaces and some of them participate. Okay. In our hyperscalers marketplace, and we want to make sure that we’re supporting every way that we can the front end in terms of how we categorize opportunities and then the back end in terms of how we transact opportunities. [00:16:06] Rodney: I haven’t talked a lot about that, but a big part of how we support our partners is being able to actually transact on our end. These marketplace opportunities so that they can see the incentive that we offer is Cisco. Nice. So that was a big body of work that we had to do in order to enable that as well. [00:16:22] Vince: Yeah, because I, again, with the activation component of it, right? How do you, how do you create the there there for them, right? We could, we could talk, you and I could sit here and talk to all the partner community all we want, but until there’s the revenue recognition. the incentives. How am I going to get paid? [00:16:36] Vince: I’m doing all this for the channel, right? [00:16:38] Rodney: That’s right. And we spent a lot of time doing that. Now our partners know exactly how they get paid and it’s very similar to how they would get paid in a traditional transaction. And the great thing for us is we’ve also then had to match that to our internal sellers, right? [00:16:53] Rodney: So any partner out there listening to this, by the way, it’s also marketplace transactions are great. It’s the quickest path to go. You can get paid on it and our Cisco sellers are paid exactly the same way that our partners are paid. And so everybody wins in this. The customer, the partner, and our internal team. [00:17:11] Rodney: By the way, that’s the hierarchy. Customer, partner, and then our internal team. [00:17:16] Vince: Yeah, and if you’re listening to this podcast and you’re not as well informed on marketplaces, those customers have already made those commitments to those hyperscalers. Right. So the money is already spent. It’s available. You don’t have to find incremental budget to go get it. [00:17:29] Vince: So as a seller working with a customer or a partner working with a customer, you just need to ask. That’s it. Who’s your cloud provider? What’s your commitment like? Can we can we can work this through your cloud commitments? That’s the beauty of what we’re seeing. [00:17:51] DALLS TRAILER: We’re excited to announce Ultimate Partner Live Executive Summit, October 22nd and 23rd in Las Colinas, Texas. We’re bringing back the event that we hosted last year, but in a new facility with state of the art capabilities and live streaming. This is your opportunity to engage with other technology leaders to learn the what, why, and how to achieve your greatest results, partnering with Microsoft and other technology leaders, featuring leadership tracks, fireside chats, and workshops. [00:18:23] DALLAS TRAILER: Designed to help you achieve more. The registration is now open. Go to theultimatepartner. com to learn more. [00:18:31] Vince: So we can’t have a conversation today, Rodney, without talking about, [00:18:36] Rodney: Let me guess. AI? [00:18:37] Vince: And I feel like every conversation since November of 2022. When Chat GPT hit the ground, that seems like every conversation has embedded AI. I mean, it’s a 158 billion partner opportunity by 2029. That’s Canalys, our friend, Jay McBay’s organization has predicted it might even be bigger than that. Uh, he and I had a conversation. I said, is it, is there hype? He says, yes, there’s a little bit of hype, but I think we’re past the hype cycle now. [00:19:10] Rodney: Yes. Yes. [00:19:10] Vince: It’s an exciting time. And I want to hear your view and where you’re taking Cisco in this conversation. [00:19:15] Rodney: Yeah, well, it is definitely not hype. Uh, it’s definitely forcing A. I. Being it is definitely forcing every organization to rethink how they operate and it’s okay that every conversation is around A. [00:19:30] Rodney: I. Because it is that important. It’s the next wave. It’s what the Internet was for us many years ago. It’s what the move to cloud was for us many years ago. And A. I. Is here to stay at Cisco. I want to parse this in the two things. One is how we’re thinking about it broadly as a company. And then I want to take separately how we’re enabling our ecosystem to do it, because I think it’s important to cover both of those things. [00:19:52] Rodney: Uh, you know, events that Cisco, you know, for the last 40 years has been primarily a networking company and really a networking and security company. And that hasn’t changed. Networking is at the core of what we do. And we think networking and the network itself is at the core of the AI opportunity. [00:20:10] Rodney: There’s really a few ways that we think about how we power AI and how we focus on it from Cisco. The first is powering AI ready data centers. And I’m going to try to double click on, on, on, on each of these, by the way. The second is focusing on what we call future proofed workplaces. And the last thing in that. [00:20:32] Rodney: That supports it all is this notion and concept of digital resilience. If I start with a data center and we look at the progress that we’ve made or the stalls that we’ve had, you have things like high latency and low efficiency that were very frustrating. And in today’s AI world, it just doesn’t work. [00:20:50] Rodney: It undermines a lot of the investments. That’s right. And so for us, Cisco is revolutionizing how infrastructure and data connect to protect organizations and allow the facilitation And that means reimagining the data center for increased bandwidth and efficiency, driving cost lower, focusing on things like sustainability. [00:21:12] Rodney: If you look at our overall portfolio, and I mentioned networking and security earlier, we’re really the only company that brings the power of the network together with industry leading security, observability, and collaboration. So that puts us in somewhat of a unique category. In and of itself, especially today. [00:21:30] Rodney: Absolutely. Absolutely. And when you look at further on the on the data center and the networking piece today, we have over 31 million networking devices that connect over a billion clients every month and our security suite observes more than 800 billion events per day. So when you look at the totality of the AI ready data data center, we’re really poised to maximize the opportunity for our customers and to help them again and protect them in this AI era. [00:21:59] Rodney: If I just click on workspaces and workplaces just for a second, and when you hear workplace and you think about it in the context of AI, we automatically go to, you know, Hey, what’s our post pandemic, you know, office plan to get employees back in. That’s not what we’re talking about here. When we talk about workplaces, and when we talk about future proof workplaces, the workplace isn’t just the office where we go to work anymore. [00:22:24] Rodney: We need secure networking, and we need AI in operating rooms, we need it in cruise ships, we need it in banks, we need it everywhere, and we need to know how AI is being delivered across the networking, uh, excuse me, across the network, and ultimately how we collaborate In that same environment. So again, it’s not just the networking and the security, but it’s ultimately in those workplaces, how we’re collaborating, and that’s key. [00:22:51] Rodney: And the last thing I’ll touch on is digital resilience, and this is really looking at how all of the things, the two things that I just talk about operate in a company’s own network, and then their non own network and how we’re driving a seamless and secure experience across both of those things. So it’s a really comprehensive approach to AI that we’re taking. [00:23:12] Vince: And such an important approach. First of all, I want to just touch on the fact this, uh, the investments that are going on right now in data centers. Yes. I mean, I use Microsoft because I know the numbers from their reports. But, 50 billion dollars this year. Yes. Just in build out. Chips in data centers. You need to have a reliable, fast, and resilient network. [00:23:32] Vince: Let’s talk about security. I mean, we’re, we’re hit with threats all the time. Let’s say from bad actors, from criminals, uh, having been on the public side of Microsoft, public sector side of Microsoft, I got to see some of that firsthand. And no one, no one does a better job here than Cisco in driving that. [00:23:51] Vince: And the observability, and we talk about it, IOT and some of the other areas, bringing it down to the point of use is so important. And, and, and, and. And securing all of that and making sure you have reliable connections and all of that is so important. Yeah. And AI is going to drive more and more usage for everyone. [00:24:08] Rodney: Yeah, and that’s why we are committed to, uh, the strategy that I just talked about. Because again, it is, it is the network that’s at the center of it. It is. Uh, and again, that’s the core of what we’ve done at Cisco for, for years and years. Uh, and if I go back to the partner piece, because we are here, I want to talk. [00:24:28] Vince: I want to ask you about that. I’m glad you’re bringing back the partners. [00:24:33] Rodney: I got to take it back. I’m like, there’s a role that we need partners to play. [00:24:33] Vince: This is the ultimate guide to partner. So, so tell me, what are the imperatives? Like, what do partners need to think about? What do they need to go differently? Do differently here now? [00:24:43] Rodney: Yeah, it’s not so much to do differently, but I want to focus on three things that our partners need to really be focused on. Okay. One is to, is to really get educated on the Cisco AI story. And it’s not just the story for the sake of telling the story, but Cisco has been focused on AI for over a decade. [00:25:03] Rodney: And we really started, uh, introducing, uh, areas and aspects of AI into, uh, silicon based projects, into, uh, different pieces of, of, of products that we’ve been building. We’ve been playing around and, and focused on AI agents For many, many years, and now we have a single AI agent that spans across our entire portfolio. [00:25:25] Rodney: And so the first is partners getting educated on, on Cisco and our overall approach to AI and what we’ve been doing over the years. The next thing is really leaning in on the networking and the security expertise and capability. We have thousands and thousands of networking partners that are in the market today working on behalf of Cisco everyday and with Cisco everyday. [00:25:49] Rodney: Thousands and thousands of security partners. How do we get to a point of secure networking and how do those two constituents, those two partners that are deep in each of those architectures work together, or those who already have capability in both really lean in and build on their, their position of strength, because that’s our starting point is Cisco. [00:26:11] Rodney: So that would be thing. Number two, thing three, I touched on it just a little bit in, in the previous response, but it’s really getting focused on enablement. Like, we’ve made a pretty significant investment in enabling, helping our partners along this journey around networking and security, helping them get familiar with telling the story. [00:26:32] Rodney: I think we are less than three months in and we’ve got over, uh, 500 partners that have gone through our AI, uh, for fundamentals. Uh, course, which is, which has been awesome, and over 450 of our partners, and we’ve got over 1200 that are, that are signed up today to go through that. So we’re seeing more and more uptick and more and more interest in that today. [00:26:53] Rodney: And that would be the three things that I direct partners. [00:26:56] Vince: Yeah. So that enablement and activation, right, bringing them along, having them, you know, cross-trained, I guess is the, is the terminology I would’ve used for that. And then having them show the success of the program, right? That’s exactly right. [00:27:06] Vince: That’ll build that flywheel. That’s exactly right. So, where are you headed? I mean, you’re sharing so much today, and I’m so appreciative of the time, kind of opening up the kimono with us here at Ultimate Partner to tell your story and your vision for the future of Cisco. Where are you headed? [00:27:24] Rodney: Yeah, for us, it’s it’s building, uh, an ecosystem starting. I always start when I say ecosystem at the breath of partners that we have. How are we building up their capabilities? And I’m going to go away from AI just for a second and go back to the to the architecture pillars of networking, security, collaboration, uh, and ultimately cloud and AI. [00:27:49] Rodney: And what are we doing to go deep? And help our partners really build out their expertise around that. Now, in addition to that, we also have a life cycle that, that we support. How are we enabling our partners to support the usage of our products? Yes, hugely important. And we’re investing in ensuring that our partners are able and capable of doing that, not just going deep in the architecture, but able to support ultimately the life cycle that all of our partners are going through. [00:28:17] Rodney: And then in this world that we live in today, it’s a competitive world. You know, we want our partners adding new logos and new customers. And how are we enabling that? And so our future is based on going deep in those architectures and then connecting the dots so that we get this platform effect of companies who were invested across multiple areas of architecture for us. [00:28:39] Rodney: And then it’s building a definition of what a successful Cisco partner looks like across performance. across enablement, across engagement, and those things become our primary push into the future. [00:28:53] AD: We are thrilled to announce our partnership with InPartner Software, the world’s leading provider of partner management technologies, serving over 4 million partners globally. [00:29:04] AD: Inpartner excels in delivering cutting edge solutions for partner relationship management and partner marketing automation. Their robust platform offers essential tools like program compliance tracking, customizable partner journeys, and comprehensive business planning. These features empower partner teams to swiftly transition from program design to achieving maximum value. Inpartner is dedicated to supporting partner ecosystems everywhere, and continues to innovate with new modules like analytics studio designed to help track and maximize the ROI of your partner program. For more information, visit Inpartner.com. [00:29:48] Vince: You said something here. I want to make sure we dive in a little bit on, or maybe emphasize you said platform and I truly believe we, Cisco is not a product or technology company. It’s a platform company. [00:30:01] Rodney: Absolutely. Absolutely. And when you start to see the power of networking and security working together, I talked about workplaces and the fact that it’s secure networking and it’s also collab in those spaces. [00:30:16] Rodney: You start to string those two, those three things together in our portfolio and you start to see them compound. That’s right. And established or in essence, create this platform effect. That’s where we’re taking our Cisco partner ecosystem. [00:30:31] Vince: And I also think about the partners that I know out there, you and I both know, that are partners with the hyperscalers, that are partners with some of the other ISVs. [00:30:40] Vince: There are a lot of partners today that are bringing the whole portfolio to the customer. Yes. We’ve had some of them as guests on our podcast. Yes. Some of them are multi billion dollar companies, some of them are smaller organizations. But they also enhance and they bring the capabilities of the Cisco platform along with the other platforms. And they’re already poised for this. [00:30:58] Rodney: Yeah, yeah. You said something that’s key. And, and that is that some of them are, are large, and some of them are not. That’s right. In our new world, what we’re building is a capable partner who can deliver on the promise of a customer, right? And so you balance across performance and transaction, and you blend that with capability, uh, and you blend that with a proven track record of, you know, adding customers and managing the lifecycle. [00:31:26] Rodney: Yeah. And you start to see not only those partners who are already established in our ecosystem continue to grow and develop, but you start to see these boutique partners, I’ll call them for lack of a better term, that start to rise up in significance because they’re either building and, and, and driving to this notion of platform effect or their partner to partner or their partnering strategy has them working with other organizations that are also Similar to them. [00:31:53] Rodney: And so it’s for our broad ecosystem in terms of how we’re building and designing. And it’s also for our largest and most capable partners. And we’re basically working on both ends of it to ensure that at the end of the day, the customer wins at the end because they’ve got a capable Cisco partner. [00:32:10] Vince: And the customer makes their decision based on their trusted advisors by the organizations that they have brought along or brought them along. [00:32:18] Vince: Yeah. And I’ll, I’ll add another point here because without sharing the name of the hyperscaler or the person who told me this, but a lot of the multi party offers the things that are going on now where the hyperscaler is bringing along a transactional or selling partner along to the customer. [00:32:36] Vince: They’re not the traditional partners of the past. They’re new partners, and they’re surprised by that. [00:32:41] Rodney: Yes Yes, and that’s what our our future is designed to capture Yes, you know those those those new partners who again I called them boutique earlier You described it much better than I did because boutique doesn’t translate everywhere But hey a partner that maybe has been a niche partner, you know a specialty partner focused on XDRs You know as a security stamp now all of a sudden they have relevance in this Because XDR could be a part of a broader security, um, you know, opportunity, uh, and an outcome that a customer wants to deliver. [00:33:13] Rodney: And now all of a sudden, they’ve been elevated because of the investments that they’ve made. And so we’re really trying to, to, to rebalance this so that we give, uh, equal footing to that, that, that, that small partner who’s got, you know, a niche area of focus and expertise, but super capable. Working alongside either one that looks like them or even a larger one that perhaps could be an integrator and not necessarily an ISV or the labels that we sometimes put on partners. [00:33:41] Vince: Yeah. We do that. Don’t. Yeah. So big vision and for partners watching or listening to great opportunities, right. For growth, for continued growth and success. Like organizations, how do I make money today? How do I sustain, how do I survive? During what is still economic headwinds that we’re seeing right now. [00:33:59] Vince: But that vision requires a mindset. It requires changes to culture and organization. And you’ve, you know, you’re coming here from with a very storied background of another organization and a growth mindset. How do you infuse some of that? How do you make the cultural changes that are necessary to take Cisco into the future? [00:34:18] Rodney: This one is actually easy. Um, I said it to my team yesterday. The cheat code for me is just using voice of customer. and voice of partner. Our customers have already made the choice. That’s right. The market has already responded. And so it’s up to us to ensure that we stay one step ahead of the market. I like to tell my teams that the pace of innovation at Cisco is like ridiculously awesome right now. [00:34:49] Rodney: It is, we’re in a really good spot, uh, and we’re building new products and incorporating new capabilities every single day. Our partner ecosystem and our push has to stay one step ahead of that. [00:35:02] Vince: I love that. [00:35:03] Rodney: We do 90 percent of our business through our ecosystem And if our ecosystem is not ready to sell the innovation that we’re building Then our customers lose at the end of the day. [00:35:13] Rodney: So customer voice Market data and insight drives in essence our pace Uh, which has to be again a bit faster than market so that we enable all of our partners to participate in the opportunity. [00:35:28] Vince: So I’m sure you’re on a listening tour right now, right? [00:35:31] Rodney: Every day, every day is a listening tour. [00:35:32] Rodney: Yeah, yeah. Some would say that, uh, you know, not always with both ears, but, uh, but every day is a listening tour. And that’s the, that’s the important thing in this, in this day and age and at the pace of innovation. Uh, we can’t be afraid to, to, to try new things. Yeah. We’ve heard the term fail fast. Yeah, that’s that’s kind of we know what that means. [00:35:54] Rodney: But for us, we don’t want to fail at the expense of our customers and partners. So we have to take very informed but quick decisions. And that is a cultural shift for us at Cisco as well as our broader ecosystem. But everyone understands why it needs to happen that way. [00:36:13] Vince: So what do you believe after being on this listening tour every day? [00:36:17] Vince: What do you believe makes a great partner for Cisco? [00:36:20] Rodney: We have an incredibly loyal partner base. Vince, I was like surprised. I joined Cisco in January, but I had a two month preview because I, I, I participated in partner summit, uh, last year in November and I walked in and after my first day, I’m like, is, is it just me being here and you know, the partners are being really nice. [00:36:48] Rodney: Some of the same partners that I did business with in my previous, at my previous employer. And after day three, I’m like, Oh my gosh, like these partners love Cisco and Cisco loves these partners. And so for me coming in, knowing that we already have a loyal partner base was like unbelievable. I can’t describe it. [00:37:11] Rodney: And I try to, and I never find the right words because it’s not the world that I came from previously. Now the push that I give, and when you are that loyal, you know, Hey, if you’re walking down the street with your best friend. You know, if you notice a hole in the back of his shoe, are you going to tell him? [00:37:27] Rodney: Well, you got a decision to make, right? So I want to know not only that there’s a hole in my shoe, but I need a new one. And I want to know what kind of shoes I should be wearing. Terrible analogy, but I think we get it. [00:37:38] Vince: I think you’re right, though. People are afraid to give the unvarnished truth sometimes. [00:37:43] Rodney: Yeah. And so where we, you know, the, the feedback comes in, it’s like, you know, Hey dude, you got a hole in your shoe. But I’m like, no, maybe I also need some new shoes. Yes. And so the, the point there is that while we have this very loyal partner base and that’s kind of the, the, the charm of our relationship with the ecosystem at Cisco, we, we should be pushing each other a little harder to make sure that we We stay, uh, you know, focused on customer outcomes and that we maintain the share positions and the profitability more importantly. That we expect to see. [00:38:19] Vince: I want to touch on something here because I do think it’s important like this change from channel to what I’ll call co selling. Yes. And infusing that change in behavior into the organization. How do you see that happening? [00:38:31] Rodney: Yeah, we’ve done that very successfully. I mentioned our marketplace growth being, you know, upwards of, you know, in the, in the 50 percent. [00:38:38] Rodney: Yep. Our co sell business, uh, has grown similarly. Uh, co sell is, is a, is, is a bit more fluid for us. Because we can get some of our hardware, uh, uh, components and pieces in there as well as software and services. And so we’ve had tremendous success with Microsoft, with, with AWS and a number of other companies on CoSell, uh, contributing quite a bit, uh, new, uh, new incremental revenue for us over the last 45% Uh, year over year. [00:39:12] Rodney: And so that becomes, we talked about routes to market, that becomes another way that we partner to get ultimately customers, you know, the outcomes that they’re looking for. [00:39:22] Vince: What about, are there any challenges you’d like to highlight that partners face that they need to think about addressing? [00:39:29] Rodney: Not so much that partners need to think about addressing. [00:39:32] Rodney: I think we have to tackle those things together. You know, for us being a large company, uh, we get saddled with this term of complexity. Uh, and, and it occurred that once or twice, just once or twice. Uh, you and I were kidding, I think last week where I’m like, I haven’t seen a partner program that doesn’t have complexity associated with it. [00:39:52] Rodney: And then at the same time, uh, the, the onus is on us to, to make sure that we simplify, uh, we want to make sure that we’re driving cost out of doing business as opposed to adding costs. And so that’s been a big focus of our, of ours as well. You know, everything from our back end systems to our incentive programs and how many we manage and ask our partners to manage to our expectations of them in terms of things like co selling or things like deal registration. [00:40:22] Rodney: All of those are efforts on our end to be. You know, uh, to drive more simplicity. Uh, and we’ve got probably seven or eight different initiatives that we’ll, we’ll share more on in the, uh, in the October timeframe. [00:40:35] Vince: I was, I was going to bring up October. I know you’ve got your big partner event. [00:40:39] Rodney: I’m so pumped. So excited. [00:40:41] Vince: Is there anything you can share with us ahead of time? Or is it, is it… [00:40:44] Rodney: I think what I can share is, is I’m really excited for our theme this year, which is forward as one forward is one, and that if that doesn’t capture Ultimately, where we want to be with our ecosystem, I don’t know what does. [00:40:59] Rodney: We talk about, today, this notion and concept internally of One Cisco. Our partners are included in that as well, because they’re such a key and critical part of how we deliver value. And so, Forward as One basically pulls them into the fold. It says, hey, you know, as we march forward, as we pace on our innovation, as we pace on our program evolution, forward as one. [00:41:22] Rodney: Uh, as we pace on on everything, driving simplicity that we’re doing it with our partners. As one. [00:41:29] Vince: Forward as one. And what are the dates of your big partner event? [00:41:32] Rodney: We are October 27 through 30, and someone is going to yell at me in a second that’s here in the, the studio audience and tell me of whether or not those are the right dates. [00:41:45] Rodney: Uh, but we’re in Los Angeles this year, Los Angeles, and I’m pretty, I’m pretty excited about that. [00:41:49] Vince: Okay. Well I’m looking forward to being with you. [00:41:50] Rodney: Yeah, yeah. Looking forward to seeing you there as well. [00:41:53] Vince: That’s really exciting to be there and for our partners. listening today to be the it’s an exciting time. [00:41:58] Vince: Forward is one. I love it. So we can’t have an interviewer conversation without me asking this question I ask this, this is my favorite question, I ask this of each of my guests… you’re hosting a dinner party and you can invite any three guests from the present or the past. We had one or two guests actually pick people in the future to be at this amazing dinner party. We can talk about where we’re gonna have this party, too. I love your locations. I know you just came back from Europe, and, uh, I’m about ready to head over that way. Um, whom would you invite to this amazing dinner party and why? [00:42:38] Rodney: Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Okay, I’m gonna talk a little bit while I build myself into my guest list. All right, great. Um, first off, I love hosting people at home. And I love cooking and in particular this time of year, I’m on the grill. [00:42:52] Vince: I have seen posts from you. [00:42:54] Rodney: Yes. Yes. I love, I love to barbecue. And so let’s assume that there’s a, there’s a rib and a beer associated with this, right? Whether or not my guests are going to appreciate that. That’s how it’s going to go down. [00:43:05] Rodney: So we’re going to start there. Um, yeah, three people. Okay. I’m going to go with, um, This is totally influenced by a recent trip that I took, but, uh, uh, Plato, [00:43:22] Vince: Plato. [00:43:23] Rodney: Yeah. And, and not, not the seasoned, you know, hardened philosopher that, that he became later in life. But I want that like fresh 15 year old, you know, uninhibited free thinker, and just really get into the mind of some of that formative thinking. [00:43:43] Rodney: And, and as I’m, as I’m building my list, you’ll, you’ll, you’ll now start to see and, and just the conversations that, that, that we’d have, uh, let me, let me keep going because… [00:43:51] Vince: Well, I, I was thinking about it with, with Plato, especially about how he influenced the ages. Yes. Really. Yes. I mean, not just, not just the Greeks, but the Romans and then beyond. [00:44:00] Rodney: So much influence, right, across so many things from, from, from religion, uh, to taboo topics at the time of things like, like, like sex to, uh, to just general philosophy around, you know, how the world should, should evolve to even sometimes economics for the time, just like really, really incredible breadth of, of influence. [00:44:23] Rodney: Uh, and so, uh, I’m, I’m just enamored lately with Plato. My second guess, not necessarily in order. Uh, Muhammad Ali. I think he could give Plato a run for his money, by the way. [00:44:35] Vince: Uh, yes, that would be very cool. By the way. I’d love to have you both in the same room. [00:44:40] Rodney: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, and that’s, that, that would be amazing. [00:44:43] Rodney: And, and, uh, although I, I knew you were an gonna ask a similar question, but I really wasn’t prepared to think about it until just now. But, um, obviously a hero for, for many of us who grew up in that era. Uh, not because of his athleticism, but because of the stances that he took, uh, both from a, a political standpoint, uh, the piece that he tried to drive and create, uh, within his life, and just the, the, the figure that, that, that he was. [00:45:07] Vince: Challenged, the status quo in so many areas. [00:45:09] Rodney: Yeah. Yeah. And can I cheat and go four? [00:45:12] Vince: Absolutely. [00:45:13] Rodney: Okay. So, um, you know, the fourth is, uh, it’s hard to ignore what’s happening in the U. S. right now, uh, and, uh, although I don’t want to politicize our conversation, uh, but wow, I would love to have Kamala on the day, Kamala Harris on the day that she found out that she was going to actually be in, you know, in, in run for the nomination, right? [00:45:38] Rodney: Uh, and, and, and just really get that fresh thinking and perspective based on today’s issues. And then that conversation. And I’m gonna round it off with a fourth, which is my Dad. Uh, who’s no longer with us. Uh, but, uh, one, we’d laugh to no end. At the conversation that would happen between the other three. [00:45:58] Rodney: Uh, and then too, he, he, uh, he was a bit of a philosopher himself and I think he can give both Plato and, and, and Muhammad Ali a run for their money. [00:46:07] Vince: Well, and I know a little bit about your dad from our previous conversation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was an executive at IBM. [00:46:12] Rodney: That’s right. That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. So that would, that would round out my, uh, my dinner table. [00:46:16] Vince: That is an amazing, do you mind if I come along? I can bring dessert. What a conversation. I just, I’m just thinking about this conversation now. Like Muhammad Ali riffing with Plato. Can you see it? Maybe challenging him a little bit on some of his philosophy. [00:46:32] Vince: Kamala come in. I want to hear what happened. I really want to hear that conversation that Sunday. [00:46:39] Rodney: succulent ribs. [00:46:40] Vince: I love it. I love it. And your dad and rainier beer, right? Rainier beer and your dad along for the conversation as well. Well, that’s a fascinating group. [00:46:49] Vince: And I’m excited to join you for that dinner. So I want to thank you for that. Um, before we leave today, I want to ask you one more question. Um, we are getting towards the end of the year. You’ve got a lot. You’re going to share in the near future. Yes, sir. This leaning in for partners. I want to I want to maybe ask you to give the partners watching and listening today. [00:47:08] Vince: A lot of them might be the first time they’re listening or watching Ultimate Partner because they’ve been Cisco partners and not hyperscaler partners. What advice would you give them for setting up for success going into the new year? [00:47:21] Rodney: Yeah, it’s a good question, and we’re going to spend a lot of time on this in the next month. [00:47:25] Rodney: And, you know, we’re talking about Cisco is a company that has a core in networking. And security. I touched on that a couple of times today. Very intentionally, you know, success for us is aligning to our priority architectures, of course, of which networking is one security is one cloud and A. I being one collaboration being another. [00:47:47] Rodney: We want to work with our ecosystem to build that platform effect that we talked about, and we need partners to go deep in each of those so that we can start connecting all of these dots together to bring this value. And so it’s Go deep from a certification standpoint from an enablement standpoint in each of those areas and then work with your PAMS Work with your partner account managers to really understand what it means to support Cisco engagement across the lifecycle and with that will come the addition of new customers and logos And so really our whole conversation has been that blueprint of really what I’m asking partners to do But now more than ever We need to really harness the moment. [00:48:32] Rodney: And this week, by the way, our theme is meet the moment. I almost went into script, so I’m going to do it because I’m already there. We really need to meet the moment and make sure that all of our partners are focused on those things. [00:48:43] Vince: Yeah. I think what you’re saying resonates so well with me, hopefully for our viewers and listeners too, and these platforms coming together. [00:48:50] Vince: And I have a, I’m of a firm belief by the way, that there’s going to be consolidation. Of these platforms over a period of time, we are no longer going to be stitching together thousands of different SAS solutions over a period of time because the security risks are so great. That’s right. We’re going to start to see this consolidation and Cisco is so poised to be part of that. [00:49:11] Rodney: Yeah, I think we are. Yeah. [00:49:13] Vince: So great to see you, my friend. [00:49:16] Rodney: Good to see you. So great. Thanks for having me on the, uh, on the podcast. [00:49:18] Vince: Thank you for hosting me here in beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada for our Ultimate Partner episode. Rodney. So great. Thanks. Thank you so much. Yeah. Appreciate it. And thank you for watching. [00:49:29] Vince: Thank you for listening to the Ultimate Partner. You can follow us on all the podcast platforms and please subscribe on Apple, Spotify, and our new YouTube channel where you can watch and listen to all of our 240 plus amazing episodes. Thank you again for joining us today. Thanks for listening to this episode of Ultimate Partner. [00:49:51] Vince: Hopefully this episode and all the episodes we’ve recorded are helping you better align your partner strategy to achieve your greatest results. So I want to ask you something. Have you implemented everything you’ve been learning? And are you now achieving the growth and revenue objectives that you hope to achieve? [00:50:09] Vince: If not, it’s time to take action now. Join Ultimate Partner Experience. We’re building the community I’ve always dreamed about. With UPX you get access to exclusive industry insights, unparalleled networking opportunities, tons of educational resources, and support from a community that shares your goals. [00:50:31] Vince: Join us now. Visit our website, theultimatepartner.com and sign up today. | |||
| 234 - Why Millennials are Redefining Tech Buying Behavior | 02 Sep 2024 | 00:19:11 | |
Jay McBain Joins Ultimate Partner®
In today’s episode, we revisit a conversation with a special guest, Jay McBain, Chief Analyst at Canalys. Jay McBain is an accomplished speaker, author, and innovator in the IT industry. Named Channel Influencer of the Year by Channel Partners Magazine, Top 40 Under Forty by the Business Review, Channel A-List by CRN, Top 8 Thought Leader by Channel Marketing Journal, Top 20 Visionary by ChannelPro, Top 25 Newsmaker by CDN Magazine, Top 50 Channel Influencer by Penton, Top 100 Most Respected Thought Leader by VSR Magazine, Global Power 150 by SMB Magazine, and Top 250 Managed Services Executives by MSPmentor. Jay joins our host, Vince Menzione, for an enlightening discussion. Together, they navigate the ever-evolving landscape of the technology industry, covering diverse topics such as changing market dynamics, the transformative influence of generative AI, and the digital-first mindset adopted by millennial buyers. Join us as we uncover invaluable insights into business strategies, partnership dynamics, and marketplace trends. Whether you’re a CEO, industry professional, or tech enthusiast, this discussion promises to be intellectually stimulating and enlightening. Don’t miss this opportunity to better understand the modern tech ecosystem. What You’ll Learn From This Episode0:00 – Millennials as the New Buyer 2:35 – Understanding the New Buyer’s Behavior 5:08 – The Role of Ecosystems and Marketplaces 7:25 – The Death of the Cookie and the Rise of Second-Party Data 12:42 – The Future of Partnering and Marketplaces 16:47 – The Importance of Customer Obsession and Partnership Skills https://youtu.be/xe9MTL6krak?si=hs3NmzLPis8MiYhDLISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Ultimate Partner LIVE – Executive Summit ’24 – Now OPEN! https://web.cvent.com/event/048d3ecc-7af8-49f8-a392-bb6f762811e8/summary?tm=EJH77Dldc2o1TtIQSEJd7SLqmotpUE_ik2AhshHjwOE Take Advantage of Early Bird Pricing – Ultimate Partner LIVE ’24I’m thrilled to announce the Ultimate Partner LIVE Executive Summit 2024, which will be held in Dallas, TX, on October 22nd and 23rd! This year’s summit promises to be bigger and better. It will be an immersive experience bringing together over 300+ partners across ISVs, LSPs, and SIs. Join us for two days of insightful discussions, hands-on workshops, and unparalleled networking opportunities with industry leaders and Microsoft executives. REGISTER HERE Transcript Keywords:partner, buyer, microsoft, marketplace, talk, year, company, customer, buy, achieve, partnering, partnership, number, ecosystem, moments, thought, inflection point, aws, money, product Transcript (Generated by Otter A.I. – Please Excuse Any Typos) Jay McBain 0:00 And that leads to marketplaces. Yes, they’re okay buying seven layers to solve a problem. No one wants to buy this all you can eat. You know, best in class, end to end. Platform. I’m okay building layers to my outcome. Per Werngren 0:00 I think you shouldn’t be just in one community. It will enrich in you and will enrich the other communities. If you are engaged in multiple communities, yes, and multiple communities means that you will get more business opportunities. Mike Gervais 0:18 Microsoft’s purpose is in service of your purpose. And again, 2024 is the year that partners come out as the leading edge of the spear on finding this buyer intent. You Vince Menzione 0:29 show up to every meeting and demonstrate why you are relevant every Sharon Schoenborn 0:34 day. I have to force myself to make sure that I’m taking one step ahead in terms of my own learning that Vince Menzione 0:47 that flywheel success is where you will build momentum, and that momentum will continue, and then you feed into the other systems to say, this is what we did. This is how we did it together. The five reasons why the next generation of CEOs will be partnership leaders, warms my heart to know that as a partner leader and former chief revenue officer as well. So I thought maybe we’d start here. I wanted a deep dive, but you had some very insightful comments. I thought maybe you could maybe summarize the five steps, and then we can deep dive into them. Jay McBain 1:09 Yeah, sure, absolutely. So, you know, for years now we’ve been making these future predictions. You know, this is what’s going to happen to marketplaces. This is what’s happening to the new buyer. This is what’s happening to the economics of partnering, and they were all a David Letterman Top 10 List of trends, somewhat interconnected, but at some point, coming to an inflection point. And 2024 happens to be the year of that inflection point where number one, the new buyer, is actually here. By the end of the year, a millennial will lead the majority of tech and telco purchasing over $5 trillion and that’s both by number of millennials, as well as by budget number two, this platform economy, not just in the hyperscalers, not just in SaaS companies, but taken hold in security, but outside of tech. Jay McBain 1:40 You know, we always got confused that the biggest automotive companies and pharmaceuticals and banks wanted to become tech companies. Every company was going to become a tech company. Where we were confused is they actually want to become platform companies. And what that means, yes, and that drives a whole different set of economics with the way partnerings worked for over 40 years down here in Boca Raton with August 12, 1981 and that first IBM PC with the first IBM program with Microsoft and others. But now we’re looking at a very different thing, and this is the year that it all changes, and then generative AI and other things that come into it. So again, inflection point all into one time. Yeah, I thought Vince Menzione 2:35 we would deep dive on these. It was really great and insightful conversation. Let’s talk about the millennials first, right? Because we’ve been talking about the tectonic shifts and this new generation of buyers, right? The different buying persona used to clicking three times on my my phone and a box shows up, right? And and maybe they don’t want to speak to as many salespeople. They want to make their own decision. They go through their own process. You’ve talked about this and how the decision making process has changed. Can you spend a minute there on that specifically? Yeah, so Jay McBain 3:08 in a different psychology, different behaviors, different journey that they’re on, but suffice it to say they’re either digital first or digital only, right? And when you said, you know, maybe I don’t want to talk to a human, the latest research says that 75% of them would actually like to get to end of job. And this is to buy a million dollars worth of software. This is to buy a car. I’d like to get to end of job at a very important, big decision. Digital only, yeah. And so that’s 75% so this is a different way to treat those first 28 moments before they make that decision. So that’s one thing. Second is they’re subscription and consumption friendly. Jay McBain 3:40 You know, growing up on Netflix, growing up on Spotify, yes, they’re okay to pay $1 a month for the rest of their life for a toothbrush that just gets replenished. And they understand that they’re in it for life. And this goes again across technology, but it goes into every industry, absolutely, and the way they bank, the way they buy insurance, the way they, you know, buy manufactured goods or, you know, pharmaceuticals. It’s, it’s okay to buy, be in these subscription or consumption models, and that leads to marketplaces. Yes, they’re okay buying seven layers to solve a problem. Jay McBain 4:20 No one wants to buy this all you can eat, you know, best in class, end to end platform, I’m okay building layers to my outcome, and I’m okay building it as a team sport. So in the older generations, you and I generation, you know, we kind of look for a single throat to choke, somebody that was our trusted advisor, somebody that could really orchestrate it for us. Right? The new generation, it’s okay to build a team, and it’s not going to be a team of the seven, seven, same seven people. It’s going to be a team of different types of people that have expertise in my industry, that have expertise in my geography, expertise in the sector segment that I’m in, the compliance and governance that I’m under, all of the different. Angles. I want to build a team. And I go back to sports, I don’t need seven quarterbacks that’s or 11 quarterbacks on the field. I need, you know, 11 different players, but I need them to each do their job. Neil belichuk, well, you know, we Vince Menzione 5:13 talked about partner to partner for years now, Microsoft parlance was around partner to partner. We’ve been talking about the decade of the ecosystem. I don’t know who coined that phrase, maybe someone we know personally, but this is, this is really about ecosystem. This is really, when I think about the I call it the marketplace moment. In fact, we’re taking, we’re digitally buying, right? There’s a lot of things that come with along with that, right, the ability to consume against these large cloud commitments, but also the opportunities, you say, to stitch together the solution that best supports your requirements. And this is where we get into multi party offers, in fact, where you can, in fact, layer several solutions together, bring it, serve it up to a customer who already has made $100 million commitment to a Microsoft, Amazon or Google, and say, This is exactly what we need, right? So it’s exactly what you’re talking about. Yeah, and Jay McBain 6:02 that’s about. Yeah, and that’s the final piece of research on this new buyer. Is integration. First integration. First of all, the things you’d write into an RFP that’s important to you. You know, the price is important, your service, your support, things like your brand reputation. You know, all these things would have criteria around how I’m going to make my decision. Number one criteria now is how you work in my environment, this is both as a, you know, personal story as well as a professional one, where Apple got on stage last year and said 79% of people won’t buy a car unless it is Apple CarPlay. Yeah, they neglected to mention Android Auto. But the fact of the matter is, you know, here’s an industry that’s $4 trillion in size. You may be, you know, taking over a dealership from your great grandparents, and all of a sudden you’re going to lose four fifths of your buyers because there’s not a technology integration in place. It’s amazing. And so watching this, and then, you know, feeding that into all the other parts of life, I’ll buy a product that’s 80% as good as the competitor if it works better in my environment. So how do we feed an integration first buyer, a digital first or only buyer, a subscription, consumption, marketplace, friendly buyer. This is a complete reconstruction of how we do marketing, how we do selling, and how we do long term customer success. Vince Menzione 7:15 It’s fantastic. Vince Menzione 7:22 The we’re excited to announce ultimate partner, live executive summit october 22 and 23rd in Las Colinas, Texas. We’re bringing back the event that we hosted last year, but in a new facility with state of the art capabilities and live streaming. This is your opportunity to engage with other technology leaders, to learn the what, why and how to achieve your greatest results, partnering with Microsoft and other tech giants, featuring leadership tracks, fireside chats and workshops designed to help you achieve more. So the next thing you talked about was the death of the cookie. You brought this up before as a big factor, right? And really why partnering is so important right now and again, with my experience in partnering and as a CRO formally, what would you say about the old acquisition models and new models? Yeah. So Jay McBain 8:20 we talk about 2024, as an inflection. Point, and this end of the cookie, if you happen to be in marketing, has been coming for years. It’s actually three years ago that on the iPhone, you could say, I don’t want to be followed. I’d no longer want to be the product on the internet. And back then, you know, Facebook was publicly saying, this could put us out of business. We rely on this. You think of Google, who’s half their company, relies on this business model of selling our personal data in those first 28 moments. And obviously there’s active buyers. So this is the third party data system where a couple of weeks ago, to start off 2024 Google updates Chrome and Android to actually stop limiting cookies. They also made a declaration, by the end of 2024 the cookie will be dead. Yeah, so in a world that moves from third party data, you remember the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and, yes, you remember, you know, the billions of dollars which has created trillion dollar valuations for these companies in third party data, selling our private data is now moving to second party. The channel partners, ecosystem alliances are who own these first 28 moments, the ebooks, the podcasts like this one, all the things that happen in these 28 moments now becomes a second party data problem and CMOS need to shift from third party to second party. And again, 2024 is the year that partners come out as the leading edge of the spear on finding this buyer intent. And this is just a remarkable thing happening along with everything else, Vince Menzione 9:53 but it’s what we’ve been saying for so many years now, right? I mean, many years ago, I went through a course by Miller High. In strategic selling. And the whole idea was to find out as much situational analysis or awareness of your client, and the best way to do that is other people that are talking to your client, who else talks to your client than you the seven or eight seats at the table, they might be competitors, they might be potential partners, they might just be friendlies, and be able to have those conversations. And now what you’re saying around this is, that’s why it’s so important that we have this new data intelligence and we find new ways to approach the customer, because we don’t have cookies, Jay McBain 10:29 yeah, and so, you know a story around Microsoft, for example, you know they did a better job of surrounding the buyer. Yes, they didn’t have a better price than than AWS. They didn’t have better product. They didn’t have better Super Bowl ads. What they did is had better coverage of the seven people that surrounded every buyer. They had more Microsoft endorsements sitting at the table, and that sat in the ebooks at the events. It sat in the podcast. It sat in all the different moments that the customer was friendlier to that solution versus that one. And that’s one example, but that’s the future of selling. Is a surround strategy of these seven trusted people, and how you get them to influence that buyer in those first 28 moments, it Vince Menzione 11:17 feels like the rest of the world is going to start speaking our language, Jay McBain 11:21 this was part of the why the next CEO should have partnerships in their resume or be a partnership leader. Yeah, Vince Menzione 11:29 we are thrilled to announce our partnership within partner software, the world’s leading provider of partner management technologies, serving over 4 million partners globally. In partner excels in delivering cutting edge solutions for partner relationship management and partner marketing automation. Their robust platform offers essential tools like program compliance, tracking, customizable partner journeys and comprehensive business planning. These features Empower partner teams to swiftly transition from program design to achieving maximum value. Impartner is dedicated to supporting partner ecosystems everywhere and continues to innovate with new modules like analytics studio designed to help track and maximize the ROI of your partner program. For more information, visit impartner.com you we’ve Vince Menzione 12:25 discussed the 45 billion that you had predicted by the end of 2026 I think it was originally 2025 Yeah, 2520 25 and now you said that that’s under called and potentially this year, what are we saying? Yeah. Jay McBain 12:39 So, I mean, at Wall Street now we’ve got, not only the Big Three hyperscalers, but we’ve got now with the bigger marketplace, SaaS companies and others starting to show what their future commits are. And it’s one of these, again, to get these high valuations, investors love to know how much money you’ve got committed to you, and just the top three have over $340 billion committed pounding, and then somebody at some point has to figure out how to put that into product SKUs and put that together into seven layer stacks. But that 45 billion, which was a hockey stick, it’s an 86% compounded annual growth. We think it might be doubling every single year, and we don’t see it stopping after 2025 this is just a trend that continues feeding this new buyer. Well, in fact, the number went from 300 billion to three 40 billion in one quarter, correct? So we’ll see what the what it’s expanding. And we’ve also got, in the last 30 or 60 days, we’ve got four press releases now, I’ll use AWS Marketplace as an example. CrowdStrike, snowflake, Palo, alto and Splunk have all issued press releases that they’re running a billion dollar business on one marketplace. And one of the predictions we made alongside the 45 billion, which we also undercalled, is that AWS as a leading marketplace would join the likes of TD cynics and Ingram as a top 10 distributor by 2025 again, under called it, they’re already there. They’re there. Now you have to get to about 5 billion to overtake dnh, or an exclusive networks, and they’re already there. Yeah. So this is an area where they may have achieved, you know, $5 billion as one marketplace. But their sites are on the 60 billion at TD, cynics and 50 billion at Ingram. The numbers are astounding, and when you’re doubling every single year, it doesn’t take you long to get there. So what does this do to the channel and to distribution? Well, the blow up was, this is the channel from decades ago was at the point of sale. All the economics worked at the point of sale, and partners were only measured at that point of sale. Yeah. How much do you sell? Well, the fact of the matter is, money is changing hands in a very different way. And one thing that happened, and Microsoft led this, and everybody soon followed, is Microsoft declared that a marketplace fee shouldn’t be 20% or shouldn’t be 35% which has apple in court with epic and 45% of what they’re trying to. Was in New York Times, but Microsoft’s like, we’re not going to make money off our ecosystem. It costs us about 3% of the fee to run a marketplace, so much like a MasterCard or Visa swipe and consumer it’s about 3% of the deal to architect the movement of money, which is complicated. It’s, you know, we’ve got to move the money. We’ve got to take on the risk that the customer doesn’t pay. We’ve got to wait for the time value of money, net 30, net 60, net 90. And in the end of all that, we have to hire Biff to break knees when that customer doesn’t pay. But for forever, we thought in the 1980s that that was worth 40% margin. Then it was 30, then it was 20. And you know, we’re all kind of deciding what that’s worth, but it’s now been declared, and Google followed Microsoft, and just a few months ago, AWS is finally there on board, yes, but everybody’s at the point now, and all the end users know that the whole value add of taking my money on behalf of a vendor is worth three so let’s talk about where the other 17% of The gross tenets are. And a partner would tell you, Well, I guess I do free consulting, I do free design and architecture, I do free implementations, and it’s great. I’ve always got paid at one point, and a lot of the other stuff that maybe other partners, like a system integrator, would charge for, I’ve ended up giving for free. And then now in a marketplace model, I could still go get the other 17% on a private offer or some sort of multi partner offer, and I might be willing to give up the 3% because that’s a part of the business I’m not all that interested in. Vince Menzione 16:31 Exactly, exactly, yeah, it’s changing the entire value chain equation, is what I would say there. So I loved having you here today, and next time, we’re going to have a longer session. We’re going to have we’re going to host you here and maybe even have some partners in the room. But we’re on a tight timeline today, so for our viewers, listeners, what do they need to be thinking about and doing differently now that we’re in 2024 in a big way. Jay McBain 16:59 I mean, the first thing, and this is not a surprise to anyone, is continue to be obsessed about your customer. Get obsessed about the people they trust. Get obsessed about what they read, where they go, who they follow. Get obsessed about a journey that isn’t about the point of sale. It’s about the 28 moments before that. It’s at the point of sale, regardless of how money changes hands, so getting the customer to the dance, getting them on the dance floor, and now with every company keeping them dancing all night long, every 30 days, forever. You know, one company a couple of weeks ago became the most valuable company in the world by telling Wall Street, we’d be the most sticky, predictable, reliable, repeatable and scalable revenue, not reliant on a September launch of a product every year. Yes, and the market responded. So, you know, we can talk about a $3 trillion company, or we can talk about a startup. The same thing is, if you get obsessed about your customer, when you move outwards from your customer, you’re going to find that there’s partnerships everywhere, in the integrations, in the go to market, in the routes to market, in all the influence, all the things you need to do around your customer are really partner driven at this point, and that’s why I think your leadership should have much better skills in partnerships. Vince Menzione 18:16 I love what you have to say. Thanks for listening to this episode of Ultimate Partner. Hopefully, this episode and all the episodes we’ve recorded are helping you better align your partner strategy to achieve your greatest results. So I want to ask you something, have you implemented everything you’ve been learning, and are you now achieving the growth and revenue objectives that you hope to achieve? If not, it’s time to take action now join ultimate partner experience. We’re building the community I’ve always dreamed about with UPX. You get access to exclusive Industry Insights, unparalleled networking opportunities, tons of educational resources and support from a community that shares your goals. Join us now, visit our website, the ultimate partner.com and sign up today. You. | |||
| 233 – 21 Minutes Unlocking Exponential Ecosystem Growth with Greg Sarafin | 27 Aug 2024 | 00:21:29 | |
EY’s Vice Chair Emeritus Joins Ultimate Partner®
In this episode, Greg Sarafin delves into the imperative of the ecosystem, the pivotal role of chief partner officers, career progression in consulting, and the dynamics of organizational leadership. Discover how Greg oversaw EY’s Alliance Partner Ecosystem, driving substantial growth and impact, with a staggering 40% contribution to EY’s growth over the past six years, surpassing $10B in revenue. With insights from his extensive experience, including leadership roles at IBM and BearingPoint, Greg shares invaluable perspectives on strategic partnerships, technology implementation, and leadership skills essential for C-suite roles. Learn firsthand about the intersection of technology, business, and partnerships as Greg discusses the tech industry’s influence on GDP growth, AI value creation, and business process reengineering. Gain actionable insights into partner operations, cost management, and the profound impact of partnering functions on organizational success. Tune in to uncover the secrets of effective partnering, leadership, and capital allocation in today’s rapidly evolving business landscape. Don’t miss this enlightening conversation with Greg Sarafin, a seasoned leader with a wealth of experience in driving impactful partnerships and organizational growth. What You’ll Learn From This Episode0:00 – The Decade of Ecosystem and Partnering Efficiency 2:16 – Industry-Specific Partnering Models 5:08 – The Role of Chief Partner Officers 14:24 – Challenges and Benefits of Partnering 14:58 – Elevating Partnering to a Core Competency 20:36 – The Future of Partnering https://youtu.be/JjqVclyjBo0?si=jW8TJq85b0HST_bzLISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Ultimate Partner LIVE – Executive Summit ’24 – Now OPEN! https://web.cvent.com/event/048d3ecc-7af8-49f8-a392-bb6f762811e8/summary?tm=EJH77Dldc2o1TtIQSEJd7SLqmotpUE_ik2AhshHjwOE Take Advantage of Early Bird Pricing – Ultimate Partner LIVE ’24I’m thrilled to announce the Ultimate Partner LIVE Executive Summit 2024, which will be held in Dallas, TX, on October 22nd and 23rd! This year’s summit promises to be bigger and better. It will be an immersive experience bringing together over 300+ partners across ISVs, LSPs, and SIs. Join us for two days of insightful discussions, hands-on workshops, and unparalleled networking opportunities with industry leaders and Microsoft executives. REGISTER HERE Transcript Keywords:Vince Menzione 0:39 flywheel success is where you will build momentum, and that momentum will continue, and then you feed into the other systems to say, this is what we did. This is how we did it together. Vince Menzione 0:50 Greg Sarafin 1:12 I’m gonna take it up from the world of tech and SI, because I believe this movement is much bigger than that. I know that because there’s a natural affinity for tech and consultancies to partner for four decades now, if you think about it, and that Bill Gates moment, right, exactly, and so. And the reason for that is that clients, if they just adopt technology and they don’t get business value, or value realization, I think, is the word we typically use, right? What was the point of spending the money on technology so you, you, you hire the consultants to a make sure you don’t screw up the implementation, because that’s easy enough to do, and never happens. Greg Sarafin 1:40 It’s never happens and then, but more importantly, hopefully, you then adopt it and use it for a business purpose that returns shareholder value, client value, employee value, stakeholder value, right? You want value creation from having deployed capital and OpEx to put in this deck, and so there’s been a natural synergy. But there are partnering models all over. Like every industry has its version of partnering models. They’re just very different by industry, right? If you look at consumer products, they do a lot of partnering, they do a lot of cross licensing, they do co branding, right? They do supply chain sharing, right? Greg Sarafin 2:03 They do a lot of things that are partnering models that are value creative to their end customers, but don’t look like the way that we partner between sis and tech companies. Automotive, automotive, automotive, massive partner, massive partner, dealers, technology, exactly. Now you’re getting play in my, in my that’s another partnership. You have bow stereo, you have Brembo brakes, you have roqueros C you have BorgWarner transmission, right? Those are all. Those were all supply relationships that turned into value relationships, and even co brand relationships in some cases, right? Greg Sarafin 2:40 So let’s take it up a level. The reason it’s the decade of ecosystem is because partnering is more capitally efficient in many value vectors. The path to getting to a particular outcome for a client. If you try to do it within the four walls of your company, you probably don’t have enough capital or time to get there. You are speaking my language, so you need to combine your capital. And when I say capital, I mean it broadly. I don’t just mean money, resources, resources, IP, access to customers, access to supply. How big is that today? That’s huge. Route to supply is one of the most highly valued data is another highly valuable one, especially with AI, right? So to me, the reason it is the decade of ecosystem isn’t because what we’re doing in our little world of SI and tech. It is because Tech has taken down the barrier to interoperability between companies. I love that. Greg Sarafin 3:13 And AI takes it down even further you can in cloud. And you again, you come from a very famous cloud company, right? How much value did Microsoft Cloud unlock not because people move their workload from a data center to the cloud. It turns out that might actually be more expensive. The value on lock is when multiple companies can form these really valuable value propositions for no cost of interrupting the marketplace is driving it even further. The Marketplace creates an accelerant, seamless so to me, the biggest thing that Microsoft is doing economically and its peers is it’s unlocking the ability for companies to pull capital together and new value creation models, and that is why. It is the decade of ecosystem because and you’re going to see this in every industry. We already are seeing in every industry. Greg Sarafin 3:50 And here’s the good news. And I dropped the mic now, if you are listening to this, and you are, and you’re like me and Vince and others who have been banging our heads against the wall, hey, flat spot, right here. Right it? You know all your inner direct sales, etc, all of a sudden you’re you’re entering a decade where your worth to pharma companies and and energy companies and automotive, you’re there. They need you, yes, because they need to try to figure out how to do this, because they don’t have what we have, which is experience doing partner operations, partner governance, partner relationship handling and go to market motions. Absolutely, they don’t have any of that experience or, no, they don’t know. And the people listening to this do. And I’m telling you, more than half of you in 10 years will not be in tech. We’re GSI, right. Vince Menzione 5:58 We’re gonna help the transformation of the rest of the world, right? Yeah, I see that as well. I talked to and that is why, yesterday, about this very same topic, Vince Menzione 6:11 we’re excited to announce ultimate partner live executive summit October, 22 and 23rd in Las Colinas, Texas. We’re bringing back the event that we hosted last year, but in a new facility with state of the art capabilities and live streaming. This is your opportunity to engage with other technology leaders, to learn the what, why and how to achieve your greatest results, partnering with Microsoft and other tech giants, featuring leadership tracks, fireside chats and workshops designed to help you achieve more. The doors are opening next week for Early Bird registration. So let’s dive in here. The talk that you gave at my event was around the CPO, which were the chief partner officer, new term, by the way, although I think you’ve been espousing the benefits and the value of this, I think about your organization, I love the talk you gave. And I also think having been on both sides, having been at the Microsoft and then in the billion dollar ISV, where these things don’t necessarily happen as easily. What do you think about when you think about the chief partner officer, role, its value and where it needs to sit in an organization? Yeah, Greg Sarafin 7:28 so I actually flip it on its side. So I believe that for companies to pull, allocate capital, create new value vectors and then drive go to market at scale, they need to have a partnering function. Yes, you’re speaking my language. You don’t have a partnering function. You’re not doing that function. Not just a bolt on, thank you. A function not just a bolt on. And at many companies, it’s a bolt on, as you know many and it’s actually a go to market bolt on, that’s it’s not a value creation bolt on based on where it sits Vince Menzione 8:05 in the organization, right? Greg Sarafin 8:06 So you need a function, and that function, just like the finance function or the tax function or the HR function, the supply chain function, it’s an L zero function of the company, and it is a steward of a set of business processes. Yes, Vince Menzione 8:26 it’s a steward of the processes. Say that processes from Hell, yes, take us through them. Greg Sarafin 8:32 So first of all, as you know, partnering touches every internal, every other internal function of the company. That’s right. It can alter rev, rec, it can alter your tax position. It can alter your capital position for the for the better. Hopefully, it changes how you think about marketing and branding. Right now, you’re co branding, multi branding, what is that? Yeah, right. So, so Vince Menzione 9:02 far, you’ve touched the CFOs office and the CMOS office. Greg Sarafin 9:05 Oh, by the way, if you’re partnering, you’re creating interoperability. Now you’ve created a nightmare for the CIO, because the CIO now has got to work a very about cybersecurity, yeah, through all these other threat factors, that’s right, right? You’re no longer it’s no longer the it within your organization. It’s the it across your organization, and the partners that you’re working with, like and I could go on every trust me, we’ve done this, every ro function we didn’t get revenue. Your go to market complete and your product function, yes. Are you engineering a product to be complete? Are you engineering a product to be the digital core? Now I’m back to tech, right? Yes. Are you? Are you? Are you engineering your product to be the digital core, and then your your partner ecosystem does the last mile around it. Because as that core gets bigger, you know that it goes by the square of the radius, right? So your cost of making that too big, you can, you don’t have the capital, right? So you can only take that core as. Are you want the minimum liable core, and then you want your partner ecosystem to fill in the last mile around it. That is your ideal scenario. So your product strategy has got to be informed by your partner and go to market strategy. The point is, there are places you can go today, and you know what it allows. You’re an expert in these processes, right? So you’ve got these processes that are intra company processes that affect every other function of the company. Yes, but then you have the intercompany processes from hell. We talked about this before the cast, right? Your old company and my company are to the largest, most complicated beasts in the world. And, you know, let’s say Judson and a Andy go. Hey guys, we want to do this thing, and energy, and, you know, like, and it takes them 30 seconds, you know, stroke of the pan, we’re gonna go do this. And then it gets then who’s to get handed to you? It gets handed the partner organizations for us to then try to figure out, Oh, my God, there’s, there’s 12 corporate functions, or, you know, there’s 12 entities within Microsoft, and 32 with an EY, and then, like, and who, oh, my lord, you need a calculator to figure it out sometimes. Yeah, right, so I joke a little bit, but you know just how hard that is do. Vince Menzione 11:14 And I call it maniacal focus, right? You get from the Kumbaya, you get from the vision, oh, yeah, like that trickle down to the OKRs, and then you got to get into execution, yeah, and the Greg Sarafin 11:23 execution this, that’s a lot, right? Which is why you only do big motions. Yes, you do that, right? Because, right? Because the cost of sales is, is too high otherwise, right? And that’s one thing I’ll spend the organization in multiple directions simultaneously. You get, you know, my rule is, you with any partner, what are the five motions that matter that are gonna get you to 80% of your value creation revenue? And just focus on those, because each motion has a hurdle cost, yes, a very large hurdle cost, and so you can’t spin up 20 of them. Vince Menzione 11:54 So what is your guidance to other organizations? This is a this, by the way, this is considered a new role, right? There are. It’s, you’re saying it’s, it’s the at the top level, the L zero level, Greg Sarafin 12:05 yeah. And it’s considered a, it’s, like you say, every company has some form of partnering today, but it lives in it’s a bolt onto a different bolt on there’s a channel chief, there’s an alliances leader. There’s multiple alliances, strategic supply chain lead. In the case of automotive, there might be a marketing function that is business development and energy, yeah, a lot of its JVs, yes, yes. So, and then there’s some, there’s some businesses that are, I call, you know, partner, partner native, like Airbnb and Uber and all those folks, right, that just are built in the cloud. They’re orchestrators, they’re value orchestrators, and they bring together a bunch of participants to trade and receive value for which they take their piece. Yes, so And do they have partnering functions? I don’t, I don’t, I don’t know. Or are they just partnering entities? Yeah, I think Vince Menzione 12:55 they’re just partnering, partnering. They’re almost like mark their marketplaces in many respects. Greg Sarafin 12:59 Yeah, those, I would agree with those are market I look at Microsoft or Amazon’s Vince Menzione 13:03 marketplace or Google’s marketplace right now, I’d say it’s more analogous to that. I would agree. Vince Menzione 13:08 We are thrilled to announce our partnership within partner software, the world’s leading provider of partner management technologies, serving over 4 million partners globally in partner excels in delivering cutting edge solutions for partner relationship management and partner marketing automation. Their robust platform offers essential tools like program compliance, tracking, customizable partner journeys and comprehensive business planning. These features Empower partner teams to swiftly transition from program design to achieving maximum value. Impartner is dedicated to supporting partner ecosystems everywhere, and continues to innovate with new modules like analytics studio designed to help track and maximize the ROI of your partner program. For more information, visit impartner.com you Yeah, so Greg Sarafin 14:03 partnering is just at every company. It’s just small p partnering. It’s not big P partnering, right? It’s not an L zero function. And you’re not allowing all the different types of partnering mechanisms if you just keep small p partnering, and you’re never going to be able to scale it. If you’re small p partnering, if you really want to scale, you’re going to have to you’re going to have to raise it to an L zero function, and then L zero functions have an officer that are accountable to the board and the CEO for the efficacious execution of that function and contribution to key KPIs of the company. Vince Menzione 14:41 And how do you get there? Like, what is that function? What does that function look like? And what Greg Sarafin 14:45 are the attributes of that function? So that function has a number of layers to it. So there is a governance layer, and the governance is in part, a governance into the capital allocation process. Yeah. So, how are we allocating our capital? And let’s not think about capital allocation as just deploying our resources. I call it. I have this saying, I use, I say, you know, companies need to make a pivot from the the economics of scarcity, the economics of abundance. Yeah, mindset. It is a mindset. It’s very much a mindset. And that mindset can have, it can be night and day. Yes, the the impact of which side of that mindset you fall on. Because if you’re in the economics of scarcity, it’s like me, me, me, my here’s my capital, my people, my resources. I’m going to deploy them as effectively as I can to out muscle my competition. That’s right, that’s the old mindset. That’s the old mindset, yeah, right. Whereas the new mindset is, I have asset value and asset classes, I have all these other entities out there who I can work with, who also has asset value and asset classes, and I’ve got customers out here who have permission to help on a particular to a particular outcome, that’s right. Jeff Bezos understood that better than anybody. Didn’t they did. He did, right? And Satya Nadella and Satya Nadella two of the two of the great towers of CEOs in history, right? So they understood that. And so both of those companies are masters at delivering the outcomes that we want, either in our personal lives or professional lives or both. And not just saying what, what are, what of my assets am I going to deploy? How am I going to orchestrate a lot of different assets to get you to that outcome, yes. So right away, you have to govern decisions about capital allocation, about who you partner with and don’t partner with, because here’s another one for you. More is not more, no and channel, even in channel, right? More is dilution. Yeah, less is more. That’s right, who are your strategics? There should be very few of those. And then who are your specifics, the ones that you’re partnering with, because they have a very specific thing. It’s not strategic as a relationship overall, but you still need that asset class, and they’re the most logical provider of that asset class as companies realize, Oh, my God, I need to have an abundance economics mindset, and I need to be able to think about capital allocation and value creation broader than just what I have within my four walls. They will realize, maybe some faster than others, that this is no longer a bolt on, as you said earlier, this is a core competency of the enterprise, from decision making all the way down to execution. And I think you’re seeing the secular trend now. There are, there are more chief partner officers named every day. True. Vince Menzione 18:00 I just want to make sure that that is where it needs to sit, or is it just entitled only? That’s the Greg Sarafin 18:05 other piece I’d like. So many chief partner officers are actually chief channel officers, or they are Chief Business Development Officers, or they are whatever they are, right? They are not actually running an L zero function of the company. They are not in the C suite discussions. Um, and again, I think it will get there, and I think economics will drive it there. Yeah, it’s just, can we help ourselves by elevating this conversation, right, and, and, and frankly, also elevating the understanding of what a partner function does, because it is the of all the fun like now, if you ask the average person, they actually understand the difference between fpna and, you know, basic accounting. No, they probably don’t know right or indirect tax from direct. No, they don’t. Yeah, for some reason, partnering doesn’t get that break. It’s like we don’t know what you do. We don’t trust you. Why are you spending all that money? Where’s it going? Right? Vince Menzione 19:10 The least understood function is terrible. Greg Sarafin 19:12 It’s just I feel sorry for everybody listening right now, I feel sorry for myself. No, actually, I don’t feel sorry for myself. Because, Vince Menzione 19:19 well, how did you get how did you get from point A to point B? Maybe that helps you. And you Greg Sarafin 19:23 know what form it starts with measurement. Yeah. I realized very early on that, yeah, well, we all know people are belief driven, and so if I’m, if I’m in a system of belief that says we shouldn’t be partnering. We can’t partner. Partnering doesn’t matter. And if we do partner, it’s too expensive. We’re not getting the value right. All those negative things, and we’re all familiar with those sorts of attitudes at our companies. So the first thing you need to do is say, Okay, this is why we partner. You. We don’t partner because we’re trying to make money from Microsoft, right? One even partner because we’re trying to make more money for ourselves. Necessarily, we’re partnering so we’re relevant to our clients. So you start there, right? You keep going. Guys, look at the market. Look at the secular trends in the market. This is happening. Look at the most valuable companies on the planet, and then go down a layer and say, Why are they most valuable? Why is Microsoft the most valuable company on the planet? Because it unlocks capital value creation. Vince Menzione 20:32 Growth Mindset. Greg Sarafin 20:34 Growth Mindset. Vince Menzione 20:36 Thanks for listening to this episode of Ultimate Partner. Hopefully this episode and all the episodes we’ve recorded are helping you better align your partner strategy to achieve your greatest results. So I want to ask you something, have you implemented everything you’ve been learning, and are you now achieving the growth and revenue objectives that you hope to achieve? If not, it’s time to take action now join ultimate partner experience. We’re building the community I’ve always dreamed about with UPX. You get access to exclusive Industry Insights, unparalleled networking opportunities, tons of educational resources and support from a community that shares your goals. Join us now. Visit our website, the ultimate partner.com and sign up today. You. | |||
| 232 – Unlocking Growth: How to Become an Ultimate Partner to Microsoft in 2025 | 19 Aug 2024 | 00:17:54 | |
Per Werngren Joins Ultimate Partner®
In this episode, we sit down with Per Werngren, CEO of Idenxt, an expert who advises partners within the Microsoft ecosystem across North America and Europe. With a wealth of experience in building relationships and growing business opportunities, Per shares his insights on how partnering with Microsoft can drive success, particularly through the strategic use of AI. We also explore the tech industry’s crucial role in shaping policy, focusing on its impact on local jobs and taxes. Drawing from his extensive experience, including leading the International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners (IAMCP) to expand from 4 to 44 countries and generate over $10 billion in annual revenue, Per discusses the importance of collaboration and the value of the P2P Maturity Model he developed. Join us to gain valuable insights from Per’s leadership experience in multi-national organizations and his expertise in fostering partnerships that drive growth across cultures and geographies. What You’ll Learn From This Episode0:00 – Partnering with Microsoft, building relationships, and growing business opportunities. 4:27 – Tech industry’s role in shaping policy, with a focus on local jobs and taxes. 9:41 – Leveraging AI for growth through partnerships with Microsoft. https://youtu.be/Ek7R1oxR4js?si=MFxE2emqmUAjl-c1LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Ultimate Partner LIVE – Executive Summit ’24 – Now OPEN! https://web.cvent.com/event/048d3ecc-7af8-49f8-a392-bb6f762811e8/summary?tm=EJH77Dldc2o1TtIQSEJd7SLqmotpUE_ik2AhshHjwOE The Doors Are NOW Open – Ultimate Partner LIVE ’24I’m thrilled to announce the Ultimate Partner LIVE Executive Summit 2024, which will be held in Dallas, TX, on October 22nd and 23rd! This year’s summit promises to be bigger and better. It will be an immersive experience bringing together over 300+ partners across ISVs, LSPs, and SIs. Join us for two days of insightful discussions, hands-on workshops, and unparalleled networking opportunities with industry leaders and Microsoft executives. REGISTER HERE Transcript Keywords:partner, microsoft, ai, communities, partnering, ultimate guide, years, stockholm, organization, msps, call, icp, voices, achieve, leaders, great, talk, created, local, innovation Transcript (Generated by Otter A.I. – Please Excuse Any Typos) Per Werngren 0:00 I think you shouldn’t be just in one community. It will enrich in you and will enrich the other communities. If you are engaged in multiple communities, yes, and multiple communities means that you will get more business opportunities. Mike Gervais 0:18 Microsoft’s purpose is in service of your purpose. And again, 2024 is the year that partners come out as the leading edge of the spear on finding this buyer intent. You Vince Menzione 0:29 show up to every meeting and demonstrate why you are relevant every Sharon Schoenborn 0:34 day. I have to force myself to make sure that I’m taking one step ahead in terms of my own learning that Vince Menzione 0:39 flywheel success is where you will build momentum, and that momentum will continue, and then you feed into the other systems to say, this is what we did. This is how we did it together. Welcome back to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince menzion Your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results. Through successful partnering, we’ve been bringing leaders that are driving the transformation to this platform. And over the years, I’ve gotten to know so many great, award winning partners, and also leaders of communities and just great leaders in this world of hyperscaler and Microsoft and and the like. And I have had a great fortune of having a friendship with an incredible leader who’s here in the studio today because he came all the way from Stockholm, Sweden to join our event. Pear waringgren, thank Per Werngren 1:27 you. Vince. Communities like these are the things that we need in this ecosystem, and it’s a pleasure being here. It’s a pleasure supporting ultimate partner experience. And I have a background, as you said in it. Well, I used to have hair, and I have been running IT companies and it financial companies who in my life, and I discovered the beautiful thing about recurring revenue in the 90s, and that has been my mission. All companies I’ve been running should be recurring revenue. Companies, you Vince Menzione 2:02 were ahead of the curve with that. And you You also were headed the curve in terms of working with Microsoft and helping to build the, what we now call the ecosystem. We used to call the Microsoft Partner Network. Take us on on that journey a little bit. Why? Why did, how did you get involved with Microsoft? And then you helped start the imcp. You were the founder the imcp, the International Association of Microsoft channel partners. Tell us how you got there. Per Werngren 2:25 Yeah. So as everyone I wanted a closer relationship with Microsoft in at the turn of the century, and I engaged with what was a very small organization called the amsp association of Microsoft solution partners, I think it was called, Oh, Vince Menzione 2:44 interesting. I never heard of that one. And Per Werngren 2:47 they quickly changed their name to amcp, and then they changed and we changed our name to iamcp, because that was when I joined. So it was a tiny organization, and we were, or we claimed that we were in four countries, but in reality, it was only us interesting. And I took that association to 44 countries. So I was traveling the world, meeting Microsoft people, meeting partners, opening up local chapters, and it was super fun and also a good education, because I learned what makes the partner ecosystem tick, what makes partnering tick. And I quickly understood that every country said that we are unique per in our country, we do things very differently, but after having visited so many countries, I saw so many commonalities, and then I thought that, Okay, I better capture this into a model. So I created a P to P maturity model. Vince Menzione 3:50 Yes, you’ve covered it on our podcast. You run our earlier guest on our podcast a few years ago with that, that’s right. Per Werngren 3:55 And during these years, when I run the imcp, when I expanded imcp, I also built my relationship with Microsoft, so I got the inside track on so many aspects, and I was part of efforts in Europe trying to swing legislation in favor of Microsoft partners, interesting. So after a few years, I saw the fruits of that of these efforts, and saw that legislation were coming our way. And it is the same thing that ICP have been doing in the United States, talking to legislators, or government elites, as we call them, about things that make sense for smaller companies that employ locally, pay taxes locally. Yes, that’s what politicians need to hear, absolutely. And they hear the multinationals talk all the time. But when they hear Microsoft partners smaller companies, they see that, wow, the needs for the multinationals are really the needs for the smaller companies, right? And they are aligned the Vince Menzione 5:01 taxpayers locally, they’re driving the economy locally in your country or your region, yes, and this is, this is really what we call voices for innovation today. Was it called Voices for innovation? Then? Yeah, Per Werngren 5:11 absolutely. So. So voices for innovation. I think we started 2006 the year my daughter was born, and our first event was with Steve Ballmer at the Conrad hotel in Brussels. So that was amazing years. Vince Menzione 5:36 We’re excited to announce ultimate partner live executive Summit, October, 22 and 23rd in Las Colinas, Texas, we’re bringing back the event that we hosted last year, but in a new facility with state of the art capabilities and live streaming. This is your opportunity to engage with other technology leaders, to learn the what, why and how to achieve your greatest results, partnering with Microsoft and other tech giants, featuring leadership tracks, fireside chats and workshops designed to help you achieve more. The doors are opening next week for Early Bird registration. And you know, I’m active with voices for innovation today, absolutely, and I’m on the advisory task force here in the United States, and it really became more of a US function. I believe, right? I think the international components faded off or didn’t continue. Yeah, Per Werngren 6:29 and also, the issues that we were fighting for in Europe we came over to was yes, yeah, prominent. And I think that voice for innovation is an phenomenal platform, and there has been so much success around voice for innovation in like, 15 years now, Vince Menzione 6:47 yeah, and it’s fascinating, you know, this is a great conversation we can have about what we don’t see from legislators. I’ve been on Capitol Hill meeting with my local congressmen and senators. I’ve been to the White House with Microsoft as part of voices for innovation, and it’s striking technology is driving the world right now, and yet our lawmakers do not really understand the issues surrounding technology the way they should. Many of them are octogenarians, and I mean, they print off emails and handwrite notes on them. I mean, these are people that don’t even use common tools that we take for granted today, and yet we’re asking them to pass legislation around topics like AI, like Cloud for good, all these, all these topics that are so important, so germane to threats and all the issues that we have in the world. And yet we need to educate them. And to your point, when a Microsoft comes to them, or a Google or an Amazon, it’s one thing, but if you as a local entrepreneur like I am, and you employ people locally in your region, and it impacts jobs, it’s a very different conversation that you can have with your local lawmakers. Yes, Per Werngren 7:55 they love to hear that story. And it is also, as you say, it is complex for these octalionarians, that it is easier to understand farming, and perhaps the needs for the AI industry is harder for them to grasp. But we can explain for them that they don’t need to understand AI, but they need to understand that local jobs, local taxes are important, and they listen to that. Vince Menzione 8:20 So I want to talk about community for a second. I’m going to say some things that are maybe a little bit provocative, because I tend to be a little bit provocative at times. I said this, you know, we talked yesterday at our event. I talked about Walt Disney, which one of the most amazing entrepreneurs, visionary and entrepreneur, right? Creative and entrepreneurial skills together. He created something that didn’t exist. He created the Disney Empire, the Disney World. Disneyland because he didn’t see what he hoped to see from the world. And he created something fresh and something new. And I’ve been saying for a long time, since I left Microsoft, in fact, I was disappointed when I came out that there wasn’t the organization that I expected to see. And this is not as you know, I’ve been a member of imcp. I’ve been member of other partner communities and organizations. It’s the reason why we started ultimate partner experience, because we want to build something unique, something different. And you’ve been a big supporter, champion, if I if you will, and I want to bring all that. I want to I want this to be a big tent. I think we could do more together. I look at ultimate partner and ultimate partner experience as an education platform, not necessarily just a community, but a place where we can bring great leaders in the room, like we did yesterday at this event, and maybe do something that nobody else can do. Have a unique and independent point of view, but a supportive point of view for the hyperscalers, and that’s where I see where we’re going with this. And what would you say? Per Werngren 9:41 So, so, like, with customers, we talk about multi cloud, yes. And why not have multi communities? Yes. So, like, you don’t need, and I think you shouldn’t be just in one community. It will enrich and you and will enrich the other communities. If you are engaged in multiple communities. Is yes, and multiple communities means that you will get more business opportunities. So we have the imcp, we have the women in cloud, we have the vit network, and we have a few other really nice communities that are growing and that are doing a great job, and now we have the ultimate partner experience. What I think is unique with ultimate partner experience is that here in this community, we are agnostic to technology. We love technology, but we love all vendors. We want to build a big tent, and ICP members that I’ve spoken with see that this is something that adds value to the imcp Vince Menzione 10:47 Yes, we had some imcp members in the room yesterday, Per Werngren 10:49 absolutely. And I had great conversations with them, and they see that this is something that really adds so I would encourage imcp members to also become members of this lovely community. Thank you, and also take a look at other communities, because it will enrich them. I Vince Menzione 11:09 appreciate that, and we’re going to share this with our community and with broadly with the community. We are thrilled to announce our partnership within partner software, the world’s leading provider of partner management technologies, serving over 4 million partners globally in partner excels in delivering cutting edge solutions for partner relationship management and partner marketing automation. Their robust platform offers essential tools like program compliance, tracking, customizable partner journeys and comprehensive business planning. These features Empower partner teams to swiftly transition from program design to achieving maximum value in partner is dedicated to supporting partner ecosystems everywhere and continues to innovate with new modules like analytics studio designed to help track and maximize the ROI of your partner program. For more information, visit impartner.com Vince Menzione 12:11 you are big in this community, this partnership world. You work with a lot of organizations to help them achieve their greatest results. We’re entering the second half of the near the new the beginning of Microsoft’s new fiscal year 25 what would you say to our viewers and those listening today? What should they be doing better differently to help them achieve their greatest results? So Per Werngren 12:35 nothing is constant. Change is something that you shouldn’t try to avoid change is something that should embrace now. We are in the middle of change. We are in the cloud era. Some are more in the cloud era than others. I think everyone need to become more into the cloud era and also around AI. Perhaps AI is not the money maker for partners, but it is the conversation starter. They need to make sure that their people understands AI, that their salespeople can have conversations around AI, and they need to make sure that they improve the performance of their companies with the use of AI, like when they are developing software, use AI when they are trying to make their customer Help Desk more efficient. Use AI, etc, gives co pilots for everything that builds knowledge, but also it builds profitability. But selling AI to customers, is not a money maker today, but it is what you need to do. Because if you’re not doing it, someone else will have those conversations, and someone else will sell the vanilla projects. So and it’s Vince Menzione 13:52 and it’s helping to spark the rest of the transformation of those organizations, right? Yes, absolutely. It becomes the plumbing, in a way, yeah, yeah. Per Werngren 14:00 Very much, very much. And there are some the low hanging fruit around AI, when it comes to making money, today is the projects where you get ready for implementing AI. That’s right. And I have never been a fan of projects, because projects end, recurring revenue never ends. But projects, many partners, are making a living out of projects, and it’s a great way to start an engagement with a customer around AI, but then try to find the formula for creating some kind of recurring revenue. Recurring revenue is important not only for the value of the recurring revenue, but also it gives you a reason to be in constant contact with your customer. So Vince Menzione 14:43 you’ve done a lot of work. I mean, you’ve led several or you’re I’ll call you a serial entrepreneur, right? If you’ve led several different organizations, what’s what strikes you the most now? What are you working on now that is most informed, that will help our like, Where should our. Viewers, listeners, think to reach you, and what value do you want to add for them? Yeah, Per Werngren 15:05 so I love to help MSPs to find their module, to find profitability. As Jay McBain has said, there are many MSPs that are not making a lot of a profit. And I think as an MSP, if you do things right, you should have a decent return on the investment that you have made running your business. So Vince Menzione 15:27 that’s what you’re helping that’s what you’re driving today. Primarily random, yes, absolutely. Per Werngren 15:30 And then general questions around partnering. Everyone wants to become a better partner to Microsoft, and they want to become a better partner to others. And what I often explain, and I know that you are a fan of that, is that it starts with the top if you don’t have senior leadership buy in, partnering will never fly. That’s right. So you’ve got to get the mindset right, absolutely, and that is important. And sometimes people need my help to convince boards around the value of partnering. I Vince Menzione 16:04 love that. I love the work that you do. I love your passion around partnerships, around Microsoft. I love having you as a friend. I appreciate you so much for coming here, flying all the way from Stockholm. Still, my heart warms by just the fact that you made the trip out here for our event Per Werngren 16:21 like vice Vince, it is an honor to be here, and I’m proud to call you my dear friend. So it was an easy decision to see that it had value coming from Stockholm all the way to nice Boca Raton to be part of this wonderful event. Thank you, sir, because I truly support this organization and I truly support the work that you and your team are doing. Vince Menzione 16:41 Thank you so much, my friend. Great to see you. Great to see you. Thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. I want to thank you for supporting the Ultimate Partner. If you like what you’re listening to, please subscribe on either Apple Spotify or subscribe to our new YouTube channel the Ultimate Partner. Thank you so much for listening and watching. The Ultimate Partner. Thanks for listening to this episode of Ultimate Partner. Hopefully this episode and all the episodes we’ve recorded are helping you better align your partner strategy to achieve your greatest results. So I want to ask you something, have you implemented everything you’ve been learning, and are you now achieving the growth and revenue objectives that you hope to achieve, if not, it’s time to take action now join ultimate partner experience. We’re building the community I’ve always dreamed about with UPX. You get access to exclusive Industry Insights, unparalleled networking opportunities, tons of educational resources and support from a community that shares your goals. Join us now. Visit our website, the ultimate partner.com, and sign up today. You. | |||
| 231 - Unlocking Revenue Growth: How PartnerTap is Leading the Co-Selling Revolution | 13 Aug 2024 | 00:34:21 | |
Cassandra Gholston Joins Ultimate Partner®
Join us as we dive into partner-led sales with Cassandra Gholston, CEO of PartnerTap, the industry’s leading Ecosystem Co-Selling Platform. Cassandra is a visionary leader who has dedicated her career to driving revenue growth through strategic partnerships. In this episode, she shares her journey from being an enterprise sales rep to founding PartnerTap. This groundbreaking platform empowers companies like HPE, ADP, SAP Concur, and more to maximize their partner ecosystem. Cassandra discusses the growing importance of co-selling and how automation is revolutionizing partner-led sales in the tech industry. She also delves into innovative sales plays and data-sharing strategies, the transformative power of partnerships in enterprise software, and the key to leading change in co-selling. Finally, learn why co-selling transformation is critical for business success in today’s landscape. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from a true industry leader and get insights on taking your partnership sales strategy to the next level. What You’ll Learn From This Episode0:02 – Co-selling and its growing importance in the industry. 4:44 – Partner-led sales and automation in the tech industry. 11:48 – Partner-led sales plays and data sharing in the tech industry. 17:10 – Sales transformation and partnerships in the enterprise software industry. 22:46 – Leading change and co-selling in organizations. 29:12 – Co-selling transformation and its importance in business. https://youtu.be/AmJOaATguoELISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Ultimate Partner LIVE – Executive Summit ’24 – Now OPEN! https://web.cvent.com/event/048d3ecc-7af8-49f8-a392-bb6f762811e8/summary?tm=EJH77Dldc2o1TtIQSEJd7SLqmotpUE_ik2AhshHjwOE The Doors Are NOW Open – Ultimate Partner LIVE ’24I’m thrilled to announce the Ultimate Partner LIVE Executive Summit 2024, which will be held in Dallas, TX, on October 22nd and 23rd! This year’s summit promises to be bigger and better. It will be an immersive experience bringing together over 300+ partners across ISVs, LSPs, and SIs. Join us for two days of insightful discussions, hands-on workshops, and unparalleled networking opportunities with industry leaders and Microsoft executives. REGISTER HERE TranscriptKeywords: Keywords: partner, sell, company, talk, organization, playbook, microsoft, customer, spreadsheets, cassandra, work, ecosystem, hosting, leader, transformation, seller, opportunity, teams, drive, people Transcript (Generated by Otter A.I. – Please Excuse Any Typos) Jay McBain 0:02 Music. Microsoft’s purpose is in service of your purpose. And again, 2024 is the year that partners come out as the leading edge of the spear on finding this buyer intent. You Vince Menzione 0:13 show up to every meeting and demonstrate why you are relevant every Sharon Schoenborn 0:18 day. I have to force myself to make sure that I’m taking one step ahead in terms of my own learning Vince Menzione 0:23 that flywheel success is where you will build momentum, and that momentum will continue, and then you feed into the other systems to say, this is what we did. This is how we did it together. Welcome back to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince benzione, your host, and I’m on a mission to empower every individual, organization and partner to achieve their greatest results through successful partnering. Much of the discussion we’ve had over the last several months has been around the tectonic shifts this decade of the ecosystem, the increasing dominance of the three hyperscalers, the changing buying behavior and effective co selling today I welcome back an industry leader driving the transformation of CO selling as the CEO of partner tap a platform transforming selling. Cas, welcome to the podcast. Cassandra Gholston 1:12 Thank you so much. Vince, so good to be here. Cassandra Vince Menzione 1:14 golston, so good to have you in the room. You’ve been on the podcast twice now. We’ve known each other for several years. We go back to, I guess it was around 16 or 17. Cassandra Gholston 1:26 So I actually looked up yesterday on LinkedIn, the message I sent you back in 2017 2017 about Vince. I love the podcast. I’m going to spend the weekend listening to all your episodes. There weren’t as many that, right? And I want to meet you, and I so long ago, but here you are. We’re in the Boca studio. Boca Vince Menzione 1:54 studio, where we recently hosted a live in person event, our executive Summit, and you were up on stage. It Cassandra Gholston 2:01 was awesome. Such a great time. That was such a great event to just the really intimate the people that were in the room, and great business leaders, Vince Menzione 2:13 incredible leaders. You were part of our executive panel and kicked off the event. We had some incredible conversations that we’re going to continue today. Cassandra Gholston 2:22 I’m excited for what’s to come. Well, Vince Menzione 2:24 I am as well, and I love watching your trajectory. We’ve been friends now since that time, in fact, we had some early conversations. We started mind melding. We can go on about our journey together, but I love the trajectory that you’ve been on. And you know, you focus in on really the enterprise level. CO selling is what I would say. Like, you have worked with some of the largest organizations. We were at another event earlier this year. You had at&t on stage. I mean, you work with lumen, HP, the biggest brands. In fact, we probably can’t even talk about some of the brands that you’re working with today, and I can go on and on here, but for our viewers and our listeners, and you’ve been on the podcast before, tell us a little bit more about Cassandra partner tap and what the mission that you’re on as an organization. Yeah. Cassandra Gholston 3:14 So we founded the company back in 2016 and I feel like in 2016 I knew that CO selling was going to be huge. And I remember telling one of my mentors, I’m I’m leaving, I’m leaving concur, and I’m going to launch this company, and it’s all going to be around co sell. And I remember him saying to me, Cassandra, you know, co sell is only something that we do at concur. Not very many companies actually do this. And so you fast forward from 2016 where, you know, we were building the technology and for a couple of years before we even signed our first enterprise customer. But, you know, from then to now, you know, Jay McBain comes out with his report on the CO sell matrix, co selling software category last December. I mean, it’s, it’s awesome to be part of, you know, this huge transformation that is now taking shape. The market is here. But, yeah, I was running around since 2016 coastal is a thing. It’s going to be huge. And there’s a big opportunity, a big white space. We’re building technology around it. And so, I mean, I’m really proud to say that on that report, I think there was 14 companies we Vince Menzione 4:44 were general tech stack, yes, he’s been highlighting and supporting, yeah, Cassandra Gholston 4:48 and you know, we were in the top four. We’re the only company female founded, not venture backed. I mean, we we have investors, but not venture investors. Dollars. So it’s just an exciting time. And one of the call outs in the report was the fact that we have some of the largest enterprise customers. So it’s just exciting and a validation to Casandra, back into 2016 to Cassandra now, Cassandra Gholston 5:20 so I remember meeting you, or maybe was the first conversation we had before we met. And originally, I think it started as a mobile app, didn’t it? Yes. And I was thinking, you know, I had been at Microsoft, leading the partner organization for nine years. At that point, it just left. And I was thinking, I was thinking back to the spreadsheets and literally trying to do territory analysis, trying to map territories and sellers to sellers and partner managers to partner managers, and trying to work through that process was, it was maddening, I guess is what I would say, right? This was always changing, right? And what I called the Southeast, and you called the southeast were two different things. And where I Cassandra Gholston 6:00 sell industries, and you sell geography, nothing, Cassandra Gholston 6:03 nothing ever. And as soon as you got a spreadsheet, it was outdated, right? Start the process all over again. And I remember that my PDMS were using spreadsheets to drive that, and it was just driving us all crazy. It was it was never relevant. We were never able to action on it, right? And so Cassandra Gholston 6:22 people did and do action on it. It’s just you can’t do it at scale. You can’t do it at scale. I mean, the only reason why we’re sending spreadsheets around is because you do actually get something out of it. Get something, but it is hard, hard work, and who has time for that kind of not well, Cassandra Gholston 6:44 and who’s going to maintain the spreadsheets, who’s going to keep it current, right? How many you know we talk about the economic headwinds and the layoffs that go on in organizations in the tech sector, it’s changing constantly, right? Cassandra Gholston 6:55 Right? So I think we’re at this pivotal time now, and this is the reason that this has become a category is because, you know the go to market playbook, this direct LED playbook that we’ve all been running, every PE backed company, every publicly traded company. I mean, they all run the same playbook, and in this market at this time, everyone’s realizing it doesn’t work. And everybody is like, what do we do? And so now it’s like, we have to be partner LED. We have to, I mean, these, you think about these large companies, they have these vast ecosystems, channel partners, si ISVs. I mean, they it like massive ecosystems. How do we get these companies working together? Yes, surround that. Surround our buyers and customers. How do we get them to be leading those deals where they have those great, tight relationships, and that journey for a company that the DNA is direct, LED is so hard, but, yeah, the exciting thing for everybody in partnerships is that the playbook, the new playbook, is the partner team actually holds the keys to this new playbook. Yes. So the Vince Menzione 8:29 changing and buying behavior we talked about like we’ve seen the, you know, the the end of the cookie is Jay McBain talks right? He talks about the decade of the ecosystem. He was here talking the Cassandra Gholston 8:39 23 moments which are gonna go away, gonna go away. Vince Menzione 8:43 And then also, you know, getting rid of the old mindset within the organization, the old CRO right, that used modern marketing like Marketo and eliqua and HubSpot, and then relied on an SDR, BDR, and a seller at the end of it, that that, that that playbook goes away, right, Cassandra Gholston 9:00 because buyers are getting younger. They don’t trust sales people. I mean, this is, this is the research coming out, you know, from, from Forrester Maria chin and, and so it’s all so there’s the shift right from vendor to partner, and the partner actually oftentimes has that trusted advisor relationship. So Vince Menzione 9:30 well, Microsoft got it early, right? So I had it in the DNA of Microsoft. But Microsoft even strong. Look at Cassandra Gholston 9:36 that, the most valuable company in the world. Exactly, yes. So everyone’s looking to Microsoft, going, what are they doing? And have little secret to tell events, that even at Microsoft, everybody’s operating on spreadsheets. We’re talking about CO selling. I mean, they have a co sell desk, and this is where, you know, we. Talk a lot about CO sell and CO selling. So co sell being this transaction, this, you know, one and done through marketplace. And CO selling being this verb where it’s an action and it’s top of funnel, you know, where should we be running plays? How do we orchestrate those plays before an opportunity is even created? That’s the future of CO selling could never it’s what we were doing on spreadsheets, yes, or trying to do on spreadsheets. Completely not scalable. They’re the like, it’s hard to drive strategy around that. And so you have these co sell desks, which are extremely reactive, instead of, you know, where we see this heading is with automation. You know, companies like partner tap have come out, you know, and we’ve been around since 2016 building and, you know, enterprise ready for scale. So it’s such an exciting time that we can move these companies from these random acts of CO sell, which we call them. Everyone’s sending spreadsheets around and trying to do this top of funnel activity, and now with automation, with a platform where you can identify, securely, share account, opportunity data, align, drive white space plays, drive up, sell, Cross, sell plays, drive multi partner plays where you’re engaging top of funnel. It’s yeah, that’s, that’s Vince Menzione 11:47 you’re talking Yeah, that’s talking ecosystem, which is why we use the term spark the ecosystem. Cassandra Gholston 11:53 I love that. Vince Menzione 12:02 We’re excited to announce ultimate partner live executive summit october 22 and 23rd in Las Colinas, Texas. We’re bringing back the event that we hosted last year, but in a new facility with state of the art capabilities and live streaming. This is your opportunity to engage with other technology leaders, to learn the what, why and how to achieve your greatest results, partnering with Microsoft and other tech giants, featuring leadership tracks, fireside chats and workshops designed to help you achieve more, the doors are opening next week for Early Bird registration. I’m going to take that. We’re going to talk about the Microsofts and the hyperscalers on their side, they’ve been doing this CO selling activity, but it’s a one to one, it’s been right, and this is where I believe partner taps like, this is your acre of diamonds. And I’ll share my point of view on it is that it’s one to one, it’s a Microsoft seller, and then maybe an ISV seller or an SI seller. But it’s only, it’s only two organizations working together, right? It’s a much bigger picture than that. We talk about the seven seats at the table. We talk about the buying behavior changing, becoming more consumer like and this is where partner tap plays such an effective role, because you you orchestrate and aggregate all those selling influences in one system, right? And then you could feed it up to a partner center or an ace, right, or Google, right? Tell us more about that, like, how do you? How do you? You talked about this running through and creating these opportunities and kind of working within the ecosystem and bringing it all together Cassandra Gholston 13:38 so every company has a CRM system, and no company is going to say, hey, you can have full access to my CRM system. You can see everything. No, no. Security Teams would never go for that. That’s why everyone sends spreadsheets around of account lists. But when you’re talking about top of funnel orchestration for the good of the customer, right? We have a secure platform where you can sync CRM. You can bring your top partners into the system, where they also sync data and then securely share. And in some instances, you know, we see NSPS, for instance, like the that data to them is keys to the castle. You know, they have these close relationships. And so in those instances, it’s like companies can share to them, and they don’t necessarily have to share back until they’re ready to orchestrate plays. So yeah, through this system, you can share data at scale, and each side decides what they want to share. You can have an ecosystem wide view to. Figure out that multi partner sales play and then have people opt in, pre funnel, right, pre opportunity. So I think Microsoft was like, yes, we know what’s in funnel, and that’s what’s running through the CO sell desk today, but the future is we want to drive plays ahead of time. I loved the talk that Aaron feiger, jen Weiss and the other Vince Menzione 15:30 Barry, yes, yeah, and and Brian coper and Cassandra Gholston 15:35 they talked yesterday about, you know, the sales plays for Microsoft being inside a partner center. Well, every large company has their sales plays defined to really or to really go after and drive massive growth you need to be orchestrating ahead of time. This is partner LED. This is partner led those sales plays, who are the best partners, using data that’s right to determine ahead of time and then have partners agree to opt in to work together Vince Menzione 16:11 as a customer, I’m making a decision about solving for a business application. We talked about at our event. We talked about the fact that the decision on the cloud consumption, the cloud commitments, happening at the board level and the CFO and the CEO level, but then in the line of business, I’m saying I need a backup and recovery. I need the security, I need a data protection, I need an SI to pull it all together. And they’re having these conversations. And wouldn’t it be great if instead of bumping into each other in the hallway, the way we normally do in sales calls, yes, we were working together, yes for that common customer and yes, coalescing that solution, which is what I believe partner tap does, Cassandra Gholston 16:53 right? I love to yesterday on the panel with Greg Serafin, he did such an eloquent job of really explaining the right co sell, collaborative sales process ahead of the ahead of time. Yes, that was such gold. I’ve never heard anybody that has really done the research and goes, this is what works. And he said, you know, you have these account teams, but the customer truly is only going to listen to two sellers. So that’s right, Vince Menzione 17:30 if you have, can’t bring all seven people the same time, and Cassandra Gholston 17:34 it’s not just the seven people, right? It’s the product teams, it’s the, you know, the marketing team, it’s all these teams, the solution engineers, right? So having these pre calls, and then who’s gonna lead, right? We all have to agree who leads. So there’s these new, emerging roles that we talk about, and this is why this is such a big transformation? Yeah. Vince Menzione 18:02 So it’s change management of the organization, big time, not Cassandra Gholston 18:05 just of your organization, of your partner’s organization, because it sells teams and your side sells teams on the partner side. So, Vince Menzione 18:15 so how do we get there? What? Tell Tell us more about these, well, leadership roles. Cassandra Gholston 18:19 I just think it’s an exciting opportunity for so many consulting firms, right? Like this new playbook goes, goes in, in, in sales teams, the direct sales teams you are now explaining and coaching to the CROs of the future, of how to run this. I mean, this is a hard, hard playbook, but I think back. I mean, before I founded partner tap, I mean, I was one of those sellers, top, top, number one, you know, four years in a row before i i launched only partners, only ever worked with partners like that’s who’s leading the deal. Absolutely, that’s how you have consistency. But what I didn’t realize is that it’s not natural to everybody. There’s this fear of it’s my customer and it’s not your customer, it’s everybody’s customer, and the seller that realizes that it’s not Vince Menzione 19:24 your customer, it’s everyone’s customer. Well, it Cassandra Gholston 19:27 truly is. It truly is. It’s that security firm, it’s that, you know, whoever’s doing business, but each seller is like, it’s mine, but no, when we’re going and we’re driving business outcomes, both in mid market and enterprise. I mean, these processes are just as complex you’ve got, you’ve got, really, yeah, everybody has, has a piece of the customer, and so we have to come together and figure out who. Actually has the best relationship, that is, who should be driving the deal, right? So may Vince Menzione 20:05 not be your company that’s driving the deal. No partner might be a partner of a partner, no, Cassandra Gholston 20:09 I mean, even internally, in partner tap, right? We are co selling with our partners. And there are, you know, we are only selling to the enterprise. And, you know, in some instances, yeah, the partner is leading the entire deal, and we have to be okay with taking the back seat. And, you know, being there to support and trusting, yes, interesting, yes, that is CO selling, and in some instances we’re going to be leading and we’re bringing the partners in. But I think, I think one of the most exciting things is, like, for any of these consulting firms, like sales transformation practices, are going to look so different. And the firms, the big firms, the small firms that see this now, we’ve built our own playbook that we are sharing with with our I would love to Vince Menzione 21:08 share, I would love to share that with some of our listeners and viewers. Here we do that, yes, absolutely, provide links. Absolutely. We are thrilled to announce our partnership within partner software, the world’s leading provider of partner management technologies, serving over 4 million partners globally in partner excels in delivering cutting edge solutions for partner relationship management and partner marketing automation. Their robust platform offers essential tools like program compliance, tracking, customizable partner journeys and comprehensive business planning. These features Empower partner teams to swiftly transition from program design to achieving maximum value in partner is dedicated to supporting partner ecosystems everywhere and continues to innovate with new modules like analytics studio designed to help track and maximize the ROI of your partner program. For more information, visit impartner.com Vince Menzione 22:12 you work with some of the largest we mentioned, some of the I’ll call marquee clients, enterprise clients, big companies like at&t and HPE. What do you see from the best? Cassandra Gholston 22:22 It’s so funny. I hear a lot of times in these companies that say these are vintage companies. Like I’ve heard other ISVs that are kind of in the space. They call these companies vintage companies. And I’m like, these are companies that are actually really trying to they are transforming, Cassandra Gholston 22:42 they are doing the transformation. Yeah, Cassandra Gholston 22:43 they, they all are. And what, what that means is, you’ve got leaders inside that are change agents, right? And, and it’s scary, I think, for people in today’s market to lead change. Because, yeah, Vince Menzione 23:03 change is Cassandra Gholston 23:04 what if I fail? What if it fails and risking it? And, you know, the days of fail fast and being okay are not so secure, it feels like, but I think if you don’t, if you’re not the change, then your company is just going to be left in the dust. And you can see a massive company go down by the up and comers. Vince Menzione 23:32 So what’s required there to drive the change? And I know you’ve used the term co sell, quarterback role? Cassandra Gholston 23:37 Yes. So one thing I’ll say about change agent leadership, this is important. You don’t have to be a leader to be a change agent. You have to be willing to learn and do the research, and then you have to be willing to go and take this up to the leadership. So I think there’s a great opportunity for anyone in the organization that wants to go and put their name behind something that is going to, you know, drive big ROI is, you know, leading edge to go and and and talk about CO sell transformation and what these companies are doing. So I’m you don’t just have to be a leader, but, you know, we work with lots of change agents, whether they’re lower level or leaders, they’re getting to the leaders. And, you know, Vince Menzione 24:39 we’re helping. They’re assuming a leadership capacity. And so you Cassandra Gholston 24:44 do that inside your organization. Well, guess what? Who’s up for the next promotion? Yeah, right, that’s that’s the up and coming that that we do see in some organizations. But you know, in one company, that and I. Love talking about this company, lumen. I mean, this is a company where the CEO is talking about transformation, yes, Microsoft, right. X, Microsoft, co sell, okay, she gets it. Oh, yeah. And guess who else gets it, the entire team. But you’re transforming an organization that, again, direct, indirect, we don’t really work together and and, you know, they are going through big transformation. They told us that we were their most strategic vendor. That says a lot. It does. I mean, the woman in 2016 that was saying co sell is a thing, I mean. And what they said is, you know, all our partners have a component of CO selling across the board. So you think about that, and you know, they’re lucky they have the change agent from the top down. And so the people inside that organization are are looking for ways to go and transform. Vince Menzione 26:13 So I need a leader. I need people that assume leadership roles, whether they be the leader or not, somebody, somebody has to, like Be the change agent in the organization. Yes, I think about Greg Serafin again, because Cassandra Gholston 26:25 we, I love him. I just met him yesterday. Yeah, he’s like, but he’s a real deal. Well, he Vince Menzione 26:29 was here in that seat telling us what he did at EY amazing. And his role got elevated, because absolutely his role, his role is now at the Vice Chair level, yep, of the organized state global vice chair of EY Cassandra Gholston 26:43 so he is Chief partner officer. And I think yesterday, I said, yeah, the chief, the chief partner officer. Everybody’s talking about this new role, the person that takes that role that is a transformation leader, yes, transformational leader that is going to come in and move this new playbook, go to this new playbook of direct LED, to partner LED. And, you know, he’s, he’s, he’s done that, yeah. And I think the numbers that he gave out were, you know, they got to 20% partner LED. Now they’re 4040, 45% Vince Menzione 27:23 and the actual numbers were under a billion to ten billion Cassandra Gholston 27:27 amazing. Yeah, amazing. This is, yeah. This is the transformation. This is what is possible. Vince Menzione 27:33 And that leader also has to be able to speak the language of each of they have to have an influence strategy and be able to speak the language and understand the requirements and the needs and the pains of each of the members of the C suite. Yep, they had this. They had to speak finance, they had to speak marketing, that speak product engineering, right, right? And partner. Cassandra Gholston 27:52 And in some cases, it’s not just their C suite. It’s the Partner C suite too, because right, we’re, we’re driving change, not just in our organization, but our partners are leading. So it’s, it’s the the connections over there. So, yes, I love it. Vince Menzione 28:12 I love it. I so let’s we’re, I can’t believe we are almost at the halfway point. We’re at the half point, point of 2024, and I was just wishing you had happy new years just a couple weeks ago. Feels like for our viewers and listeners today, what do they need to go do that they maybe haven’t been doing yet? With regards to co selling, what would be your advice for optimizing for success in 2024 Cassandra Gholston 28:37 Well, I would say to anybody that is operating in this random acts of CO sell, where we’re putting, you know, spreadsheets across the way and, you know, trying to go and action those in a manual fashion. Like, there’s technology for that. There is a way to scale that. But there, you know, I any customer that we’re working with, this is a three, three year transformation journey. There’s a crawl, walk and run, and Vince Menzione 29:11 what are the first steps that organizations normally take? So Cassandra Gholston 29:16 the first step is really building a program around co selling, and that program needs to be designed around this shared customer, right? This is no longer just my customer. This is our customer. And then we need to incentivize. We need to build incentives that drive collaborative behaviors. And if we don’t have those incentives right from the beginning, well, then the program will fail, right? So you need to be able to speak CFO, right. You need to be able to go and right, talk to them about the incentive programs, that Vince Menzione 29:57 is. And you need the investment dollars from the CFO, right? It. Resources and dollars and change in policies and incentives to support the new behavior. Yes, Cassandra Gholston 30:05 and then we’re talking about a lot of enablement of my field teams, lot of enablement of my partner’s field teams. I mean, that’s why this is so massive, but very exciting times to you know, see companies that we’ve been working with for now, some are on to four years. And you know, we’ve never lost an enterprise customer. That’s fantastic on the journey. I Vince Menzione 30:37 love it. Cassandra, so good. I have one more question, though, okay, you are hosting a dinner party. Cassandra Gholston 30:44 Okay? This is a, this is a ringer that you just gave me Vince Menzione 30:49 exactly, exactly. I love this. I love to throw these in. Yes, you’re hosting a dinner party. Could host this dinner party anywhere in the world, okay, discuss where you’d want to host it. Like favorite locations, you can invite any three guests to this amazing dinner party from the present or the past. You might, you might have somebody from the past that you want to invite to this amazing dinner party. Whom would you invite and why? Cassandra Gholston 31:14 I think that so past. I would definitely, I would want to, I would want to sit at the table with a Gandhi, and then I would also always want to sit at the table with Oprah. Vince Menzione 31:26 I love it. Cassandra Gholston 31:27 I mean, she was the original female entrepreneur. I love her. Vince Menzione 31:30 An influencer. She was an influencer before there was an influencer, right? Cassandra Gholston 31:34 And then I just Gandhi. You know, my people lead me like i Vince Menzione 31:39 Be the change you wish to see in the world. Absolutely, one of my favorites. Yes. And where are we hosting the party? Cassandra Gholston 31:46 Where are we hosting party? That’s a tough one. Could we come to Boca? We can Vince Menzione 31:50 come to Boca. We can have a great dinner, like we did at our event on the beach. That was wonderful. People have to come join us for our next big event. Cassandra, you are such an amazing leader. I’m so excited for partner, tap and the journey you’re on. Any final words or closing advice, we talked about quite a few things around co selling today you’d like to share with our listeners and viewers. Cassandra Gholston 32:10 I just I just think that companies need to be aware that if you’re not thinking about CO sell transformation, if you’re not starting the journey, just know that your competitors are already either in motion or they they’ve got the plan to be in motion. So way too long. It’s it’s a now. It’s happening. It’s happening. Well, Vince Menzione 32:37 I want to thank each of you, our listeners and viewers for following along on Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince menzion, and I appreciate all of your support. If you haven’t already subscribed on Apple, Google, Spotify, please do so and watch our new YouTube channel. If you’re not watching us today, go to our ultimate partner YouTube channel and please subscribe there as well. We’re getting a lot of followers on our YouTube channel, and in fact, the event that we just discussed with Greg Serafin and Cass is on our YouTube channel. You can watch the entire seven hours, over seven hours of amazing leaders and content from the ultimate partner executive Summit. Thank you again for joining the Ultimate Partner. Thanks for listening to this episode of Ultimate Partner. Hopefully this episode and all the episodes we’ve recorded are helping you better align your partner strategy to achieve your greatest results. So I want to ask you something, have you implemented everything you’ve been learning, and are you now achieving the growth and revenue objectives that you hope to achieve, if not, it’s time to take action now join ultimate partner experience. We’re building the community I’ve always dreamed about with UPX. You get access to exclusive Industry Insights, unparalleled networking opportunities, tons of educational resources and support from a community that shares your goals. Join us now. Visit our website, the ultimate partner.com, and sign up today. You. | |||
| 230 - Decoding Partner Ecosystem and AI Innovation: A Microsoft Leader Shares All | 06 Aug 2024 | 00:49:32 | |
Oguo Atuanya Join Ultimate Partner®
In this Ultimate Partner episode, I enjoyed welcoming a friend and leader into the studio for an insightful conversation. Oguo Atuanya, a General Manager within Microsoft GPS, leads the selling efforts for one of Microsoft’s most important segments, SMC – Small, Medium, and Corporate. With over 20 years at Microsoft, Oguo shares his proven track record in global business strategy development, organizational culture transformation, partner ecosystem transformation, and reversing declining businesses. He is educated across three continents and integrates his diverse cultural background and rich career experiences to create effective global strategies, with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion as core principles. He operates consistently on his foundational values: Integrity, Dignity, and Dedication. What You’ll Learn From This Episode0:02 – Partner engagement and growth strategies at Microsoft. 5:25 – Mentorship, family, and mental health awareness. 11:24 – AI impact and Microsoft’s copilot technology. 16:16 – AI adoption and transformation in a large multinational company. 21:25 – AI, security, and partner success in the tech industry. 25:39 – Microsoft’s mid-market strategy and partner channels. 31:11 – Microsoft’s SMB strategy, partner engagement, and AI solutions. 36:33 – Partner engagement and success strategies. 44:15 – AI strategy and partner alignment for Microsoft’s new fiscal year. https://youtu.be/kkM4xUq1pV8?si=yi0LE7rVtft-OnsWLISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP For more insights and detailed discussions, tune in to the full episode of The Ultimate Partner. Subscribe to stay updated with the latest trends and strategies in the world of technology partnerships. TranscriptKeywords: partners, microsoft, ai, talked, cosell, isv, year, organizations, people, solution, opportunities, terms, strategy, impact, cloud, customer, journey, understand, smc, mentoring Transcript (Generated by Otter A.I. – Please Excuse Any Typos) Jay McBain 0:02 Microsoft’s purpose is in service of your purpose. And again, 2024 is the year that partners come out as the leading edge of the spear on finding this buyer intent you Vince Menzione 0:13 show up to every meeting and demonstrate why you are relevant every day, I have to force myself to make sure that I’m taking one step ahead in terms of my own earnings, that flywheel success is where you will build momentum. And that momentum will continue and then you feed into the other systems to say, this is what we did. This is how we did it together. Vince Menzione 0:32 Oguo Atuanya 1:30 events. Big thanks for having me again. absolutely a pleasure to be back. Vince Menzione 1:33 It is so hot. I’m so excited to have you finally in the studio looks great. But you got to be in the room when we just had our big event yesterday, we recorded yesterday, our big event types. And I’m glad you could stick around today, spend a little bit more time with us. Oguo Atuanya 1:49 Thank you Vince Menzione 1:50 have you have an important role. We got to know each other in fact, because I was working with an organization that was trying to figure out how to work with the partner ecosystem that you manage. But for our listeners, I want you to maybe double down on that introduction that I just gave maybe explain your role in a little bit more detail and the mission of your organization. Oguo Atuanya 2:11 Yeah, it’s it’s a very interesting and fulfilling role, I think. So I responsible for a set of wonderful partner development managers in the Americas that look after those large partners that you talked about, as well as an organization or channel sales organization that’s responsible for cosell? Yes. Vince Menzione 2:36 Right. So it’s such an important process, the Oguo Atuanya 2:39 interlock of those two roles we found have been pretty powerful in helping you know, our partners, the head of technological trends. Specifically, this year, of course, we’re focused on helping our partners get ahead when it comes to AI, and security. And you mentioned earlier, the growth of that small, medium corporate segment. And Vince Menzione 3:04 you’ve been at Microsoft quite some time. I mean, you’re pretty young guy. So I stayed in grade school, you must, must have started very, tell us more about this career journey. You’ve had a fascinating career journey to this level at Microsoft. It’s a pretty big role at Microsoft. So tell tell us a little bit more about ago. It’s Oguo Atuanya 3:21 been sort of wonderful, right? I’ve been at Microsoft for 22 years. Mostly all on the partner side, I started my career at Microsoft as, as what used to be a global account manager. But now a PDM. I run one of our partners, largest partner in the embedded space. Now IoT net. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we had some fun. We actually work together to unset Linux and Wind River as the leader operating systems and embedded, replacing them with, you know, Windows Embedded and CE. One day, so I did that for a while and moved over to the classic OEM side where I was a BDM for some of our system builders. Went back to the embedded group, Randy America’s direct team. And then Steve Guggenheimer tapped me to run the Windows Mobile, open channel. vision strategy we had we had such, you know, huge traction and progress with, you know, phones that were locked to operators. But on the other side of the equation, there was nothing going on with this open channel forums that were really really big in places like Asia and Europe, Middle East and Africa. So I went to run that did that for a bit. went over to the SMS NP side, you remember, worldwide distribution strategy eventually ran their distribution team out of Redmond. And then I spent about four and a half years in Europe. Living in the UK, running devices, business and IoT business is Vince Menzione 5:23 so fascinating journey to this point. Oguo Atuanya 5:25 It’s been awesome. It’s been fulfilling. Had a lot of all that said I, one of my most fulfilling aspects of my career has just been to have the opportunity to mentor, a group of people across the world have got about at any given time 10 to 15 leaders that are mentoring across the globe. So Vince Menzione 5:48 how do you find time to do that, that is fast, it’s just Oguo Atuanya 5:51 a passion. I love watching people grow. I love watching people grow from different perspectives. You know, just having that ability to work with people from different walks of life, different parts of the globe, just been enriching. Vince Menzione 6:05 I love that. Tell me about like you, you have a group of 15 people you’re mentoring or mostly younger folks? Or like what? What is the what is the the typical profile of somebody that you mentor? And how does that engagement start? Oguo Atuanya 6:18 They actually quite dispersed, you know, along the plains. I mean, I’ve got I’ve got people who are, what is it about three, four years into Microsoft earlier and career Early in career, I’ve got people who about, you know, 10 years, Microsoft, some I see some managers. So midpoint, and I’ve got some, a couple of very senior folks. And, you know, they’ve come to me from, you know, a compilation of, of, or confluence of touch points, some introductions from people, some of them actually know people who work in my organization that will reach out to those people and say, hey, it’s kind of leader like to, you know, speak to and grow from, and those introductions are made, and then tried to just find time. Vince Menzione 7:07 Yeah, it strikes me you’re and I got to know you. And some of the people work for you. They, your people are very important to you. Absolutely. That’s number one for Yeah, yeah. Where does that come from? Where does that passion come from Oguo Atuanya 7:18 it. I come from a very close family, very close knit family. And I really watched my parents kind of do the same thing in their careers. And my parents always told me that the number one asset you have, as a human being are human beings, you know, everything else comes along for a ride, you nurture that and, and everything falls in place. And we were always taught to, you know, make time no matter what, yeah, a lifetime I love. So that’s that’s sort of persisted was, Vince Menzione 7:53 you know, at our event, we talked about mental health awareness. And younger people today, the rate of suicide, and I’m bringing this up. Because I think that this maybe this is something that’s lacking in our society today, is having someone to speak to and I do think that we’re, we’re investing, making contributions in organizations to support that. And I’m just wondering what your point of view on that was, since you are mentoring some earlier people? Oguo Atuanya 8:21 Yeah, it’s, it’s really unfortunate. If you think about the things that our young folks have to face today, that we didn’t have to deal with the litany of social media out there. Yeah, the material that’s put out just the gravity of, you know, some negative gravity of negative Vince Menzione 8:46 fantasy, or the aspiration to something that’s so hollow, in terms of superficial Oguo Atuanya 8:52 and superficial people just get caught up, you know, trying to be whatever. Yeah, so any opportunity that I have to sort of sit these young individuals down and just ground them and sort of give them a dose of, you know, you know, reality, and also let him know that you’re never really alone. In this journey, makes a difference as he never know where an individual is at a certain point of their lives and the impact he can have in terms of turning them one way or the other. Visibly, whatever they’re facing at that point. Is Vince Menzione 9:34 there a common piece of advice or guidance that you provide them? Or is it is it situational across each other? Oguo Atuanya 9:41 It is, it is mostly situational. But But I think young people just have to understand that your journey is your journey. Yeah, you know it you’re not gonna live someone else’s life. Right? Don’t compare yourself. It may be wonderful for someone else you’re not you’re not Lebron James. I Um, and believe me, he’s got his own problem still that has to deal with. That’s right, no matter what you’re going through. Someone else always has it worse. That’s right. And then the last thing I tell people even, you know, you know, speak to folks, their mind musician about this is it if everybody’s health is intact, you don’t have a problem. Yeah, you have issues that you, you get to deal with and overcome. But once you have a problem with somebody’s health, then things are really out of control. So that’s kind of the perspective Vince Menzione 10:40 is reminds me about the nuclear, you talked about having a tight knit family, I came from a tight knit family as well. And it seems that today, we don’t see as much of that as we used to, and it’s a shame. Oguo Atuanya 10:50 It’s really, it’s a detriment, the negative impact to the young folks. Yeah. But again, we, as you know, leaders have you had this, say, and I’m originally Nigeria, and we always had this thing about it taking a family. When I was younger, and if I did something wrong, I never really got home before was discipline. I got discipline along the way, by me. So, in a sense, my parents didn’t have to do much, because Vince Menzione 11:23 you had the cat, there was an accountability trail. I Oguo Atuanya 11:26 already went through that. I love it. I love checking those boxes. And you Vince Menzione 11:31 were if I recall, you were born in Nigeria, and then you came to the United States as a teenager, or when did Oguo Atuanya 11:36 you get back? So I was born in Nigeria? So we spent some time in, in Europe, and then also, I think, into the US. Yeah. And so you know, luckily, those values persist. Yeah, that’s good. And when I came here, we sort of fell into the same, you know, cluster of great individuals. So that really was not, you know, anything lost. I think if you if you’ve got these values, they will transcend no countries and continents. Vince Menzione 12:14 Good. I was gonna ask you was there one great piece of advice you received during that journey during that time growing up? Whether it was in Nigeria, Europe, or here? Actually, it’s Oguo Atuanya 12:24 the same thing my mom always told me, which is what I tell young people, be yourself. Your journey is your journey. In a world that constantly pushes you to be yourself and be Vince Menzione 12:39 yourself. Be yourself. Yeah. Oguo Atuanya 12:41 I love to be true to yourself. Be true to yourself. Yeah. Vince Menzione 12:44 All right. We’re gonna shift gears now to business. I, we could spend all day here and I love this conversation. I love the personal journey and the conversation. So Microsoft has been on a tear. You know, 18 months ago, we wouldn’t be having a conversation about AI. And I think it was right after right around Thanksgiving of 2023. Yeah, that open AI took off like a rocket ship, right? Yeah. I think Microsoft was caught a little bit off guard to like a little bit like, okay, yeah, this is great. We made this investment. But nobody saw that rocket ship taking off. Certainly Google was flat footed. They were like, well, yeah, we’ve been. We’ve been holding on to this technology. We haven’t done anything with it yet. And Microsoft’s been on a tear with copilot. It’s copilot. Everything. Microsoft recently finished the build event, lots of big announcements around copilot about infusing AI, basically, and all the Microsoft tools and technology and Wall Street has been very appreciative of that Microsoft stock has had a really great bounce, I would say this past year, call it a bit of a renaissance. Right. Would you agree? Oguo Atuanya 13:52 Absolutely. Vince, listen. It’s been amazing. And if I take a step back and just talk about AI, because it’s wonderful technology. I don’t want to take away from technology that it is, but what is even more impactful to me. And I think somebody like sat here as well, the way he goes about, you know, driving the strategy of AI is the impact that it will have on humankind. Yeah, you know, if you I always tell people that there’s never been a better time, you know, to be in our industry. Yeah. Right. If you think about the impact this will have on the medical field, you know, research and trading, accelerating the treatment of no illnesses like cancer. If you think about the impact or have on education, if you think about the impact they’ll have on developing countries, you know, human development, if you think about it, Just the advancements that will drive in their countries. And also, you know, most of these countries that are really potential rich, but have had issues with governance and compliance. Yes. Right. So massive, massive impact. So for me, that’s even more impressive than than the technology. So then then, you know, when you when you come down to the technology, itself, copilots has just been amazing. What we’ve done in terms of taking the Lang sorry, the large language model and coupling it or integrating it into your work content and context. Right, so that it reasons how it reasons and just reduces the digital overload you have making individuals more productive, enhancing productivity, elevating their human creativity, right? I’m just customizing where we work. Just, that’s just been immense. And I think I think a lot of people got caught flat footed as people like us who are leading the fray. Because if you think about cloud transformation, that was it driven? Vince Menzione 16:15 That’s right. That’s right. It was yeah, it was lift and shift, it was taking your data center moving into the cloud. Oguo Atuanya 16:23 It was some sort of, you could predict what would happen and you could pace what what, you know, what would happen? Yes, in this case, this is actually driven, you know, by people wanting those outcomes, that’s going to impact where they work and the way they live. So that’s why it’s been so overwhelming, in a good way. Well, it’s Vince Menzione 16:43 the promise, you talked about IoT a little bit earlier. And to me, this is the promise of the cloud. Because, you know, firstly, it was having the Central Intelligence of bringing everything into the cloud, then it was having IoT be the tentacles, right, the bringing, bringing all the information into the Central Intelligence, and then layering in like large language models and all the capabilities around AI to that data set, and being able to act on it in real time. I mean, that’s where we’re going. Oguo Atuanya 17:15 And then the interesting part about it is, we’re right at the surface, we’re just at the beginning, we’re right at the surface, it’s gonna get, it’s gonna get more pervasive, it’s going to in a good way, right? It’s gonna get more powerful. In fact, that’s why I tell the partners that are in my patch, that, you know, it’s not just about, you know, this wave that we’re facing right now. It’s about them getting ready for it. Yes. Right. So just ensuring that you build in this practices, you’ve got the resources to support it, you’re compensating those resources in accordingly. You’ve got the services that will convert, especially in the case of, you know, co pilot, you know, those licenses that you sell, through adoption and consumption. They very critical that we learn that and we’re here to help them. Well, let’s Vince Menzione 18:12 talk about your world for a second. I’m going to break it up into two conversations, right? Because I look at the partners that you manage in your business. Yeah. We talked about him. We talked about the Bill Gates moment, right. I talked about this, what happened here in Boca Raton, 43 years ago, Microsoft created a licensing model. And we already three years ago, and that created a channel. And though some of the largest calm channel partners are the companies that you manage, right, we can rattle off names like CW, and insight and crayon and some of our other great friends. And some of them have been guests here on the podcast as well. They’re massive organizations. And I and you know that management of that processes. You know, it’s not for the faint of heart like you, these are massive organizations that you’re infusing Microsoft across. What is happening with AI? And how is your business aligned and changed working with these partners now on AI, but also, you know, this new world of hyper scalar co selling and marketplaces? How are your partners thinking differently than maybe they were a year year and a half ago? Oguo Atuanya 19:20 Yeah. First and foremost, as you mentioned, these is a large multibillion dollar company, hence, Vince Menzione 19:28 publicly traded, publicly traded. Oguo Atuanya 19:30 So things are moving fast. Yeah. You know, what we typically do with this, folks is, when we define our priorities at the beginning of fiscal year we sit down with him, let him back up. We actually have conversations with them before they define right. So we have, you know, defined Vince Menzione 19:49 you have an ongoing ongoing dialogue. Obviously, we Oguo Atuanya 19:52 find it we get input in consideration, right. So it’s collaborative. And then the Get to land it. And in some cases, they get to, you know, staff up the resources to go execute against the strategies and priorities. And that then has to trickle down through the organizations. So my point is it like mentioned, it’s a large ship. Yes. We’ve seen some pretty positive, you know, steps in terms of transformation. And I think we each of them that you’ll speak to, they’ll tell you that while we’ve seen some progress, we still have, you know, a long way to go. Yeah. I think the advent of AI is pushing everybody. Yes, it is pushing everybody. Because this discussions that we’ve had, you know, year in year out for the last, I don’t know, four or five, six years. I think everybody now realizes that. If they’re not manifested, you will get left behind. Yeah. Right. So again, I commend these partners, because we’ve talked with in a conference, they’ve listened. They’ve talked to us who have listened. We’re implementing the strategies. They’re creating budgets, to hire resources, in cases that need to be and Vince Menzione 21:24 where are they investing? Is it an AI? Is it across other roles? What were you seeing the investments? It did Oguo Atuanya 21:30 this huge investment in AI? You know, security? Data? Yeah. Right. Because don’t forget that journey is customers have to get their data estate. Yes. Yeah. Right. to then be able to leverage AI. Vince Menzione 21:45 Yeah. And then they have to layer in security to make sure this Oguo Atuanya 21:49 has to be secure. Right. So they’re beginning to their credit, they now understand, you know, the importance of that left to right investment. Vince Menzione 21:59 We’re thrilled to announce our partnership within partner software, the world’s leading provider of partner management technologies, serving over 4 million partners globally, in partner excels in delivering cutting edge solutions for partner relationship management, and partner marketing automation. Their robust platform offers essential tools like program compliance tracking, customizable partner journeys, and comprehensive business planning. These features Empower partner teams to swiftly transition from program design to achieving maximum value in partner is dedicated to supporting partner ecosystems everywhere and continues to innovate with new modules like analytic studio designed to help track and maximize the ROI of your partner program. For more information visit in partner.com. Vince Menzione 22:56 We talked about this yesterday. But you know, we talked about Microsoft’s priorities not really changing as much as they changed before in the past, right last year was we’re going to talk about SMC in a moment. But AI being at the forefront marketplace is being an important, but this year, layering in Security Security is foundational to partner success. And would you say that’s that’s a new area? Or it’s an area that’s gotten increased importance and maybe scrutiny? I Oguo Atuanya 23:24 think it’s the second part, because it’s not really a new area of Vince Menzione 23:27 No, no, no, but But it’s getting more Oguo Atuanya 23:29 it’s, it’s become more critical. Yes. And, you know, our partners, we have to succeed when it comes to security, and we have to succeed with them. We think we have probably the most comprehensive, you know, security framework, right solutions from working, because, you know, we start from the devices back to the end of the cloud. I mean, we just liked, you know, a co pilot plus devices. What was it about two weeks ago? Yeah, probably the most powerful devices with the most powerful and the most secure. Yeah, right. And when you it’s creating a Vince Menzione 24:07 resurgent resurgence for the PC market. And see, Oguo Atuanya 24:12 you can’t really divorce this discussion. That’s right, you know, between the hardware and the cloud, and then everything happening in between and whatever, Vince Menzione 24:18 maybe partners that don’t know the ecosystem. The way you and I do is that these are large organizations that provide end to end middle cell devices, they’ll sell cloud they’ll sell ISV solutions, a Oguo Atuanya 24:30 one stop shop, one stop shop. It’s a one stop secure and powerful stop and 1000s Vince Menzione 24:37 of sellers and organizations huge organizations, you know, we had de Berger on just recently like we talked about like how organizations like his are embracing the change, right? Not Not every organization is like that. What are you seeing from the majority they’ll like it, or I’ll say I’ll put insight maybe towards the top, top ranks, but what do you think For the majority of the partners you manage, Oguo Atuanya 25:02 we’ve we’ve got a mixed bag. Right, we’ve got we’ve got, you know, partners, some of them that, that I ended up top tier that forefront insight. You know, this some in the middle, right, but middle of the pack middle of the pack, what I still trying because they understand the urgency, right? We know some of those as well. Yeah, yeah. And what I will tell you, though, is that where we used to have a lot of partners in lower tier pack, we don’t have a lot of anymore. That’s a good thing. It’s been there’s been this push to get to the middle. Yeah. Vince Menzione 25:39 And that’s good. I remember we had those conversations. We’re Oguo Atuanya 25:43 working very aggressively with them to get to the top of the pack. Vince Menzione 25:46 Yeah. Yeah. Nobody wants to be left behind. Yeah. Oguo Atuanya 25:48 And the other the other concept that’s that that’s really beginning to, you know, take hold and gain traction that we’ve talked about in the past, but it never really has, is that concept of PRP. Right? Because we talked about this. What was it three years ago, when we spoke, it must have been three years. Yeah, we talked about the fact that not everybody, you know, has all the constituents to build a comprehensive solutions, right yet to pull in an ISV, if needed yet to pull in a hardware provider or an OEM, right. So what a lot of this these folks are doing right now is they now have a very pronounced VDP strategy, where they either engage, you know, with a partner who has a piece of what they’re looking forward to build a complete solution, or they engage in BI, or they’re now talking about, you know, building, you know, from in house. So, in the case of security, and Vince Menzione 26:51 it’s also changing, we could dive in on this whole conversation, we might lose a few people along the way here. But the cloud and the dominance of the cloud commitments is changing the dynamic for those organizations that would normally sell, they would sell maybe ISV. Software independent of Microsoft. Yes. And then they sell Microsoft separately. Yes. And now it’s infusing the two going together into the account, right? Because maybe, maybe this ISV is maybe committed to a Microsoft agreement, they have a SaaS solution now sitting on Azure, and they’re trying to get that SAS solution to the customer where it was normal, maybe it was an on prem solution before let’s let’s use backup and recovery. So they’re having to change their internal models, right? The the ISV is changing their model, their compensation, the reseller is now coming to market a little bit differently with them. But at the end of the day, it’s driving Microsoft Azure, it is driving Microsoft products, maybe Office security, all these other solutions into that customer. So it’s more complex. Yeah, Oguo Atuanya 27:53 I think more importantly, it’s enabling the outcome they want to drive for the customer. That’s right. I love the fact that we’re where we are right now. You know, from the MPO. perspective, you know, that’s a mechanism that I want to make sure that our partners get really, you know, familiar and conversant with, because it really gives the ISV the ability to scale along with the partner when fulfilling those needs, on marketplace, that you know, is becoming more and more prevalent as a medium to purchase. Yep. Vince Menzione 28:28 Right. For those that don’t know, MPO is Microsoft. Multi party offer multisoft term for multiple positions coming together in a marketplace solution. The other guys use a different term for it. I think it’s Oguo Atuanya 28:42 CPP PPO. Yeah. Vince Menzione 28:44 We get down to the Microsoft speak. And we you know, we get some people here, they’re like, talking about, let’s let’s use another Microsoft acronym for this next part of the conversation. You participated in a panel discussion at our amazing event with one of the leaders from the SMC business, and we’ve had Kevin P skor. Here on stage we’ve had Kevin Biesecker. In the room, we had no no an actor was with you yesterday. SMC is Microsoft’s Small, Medium corporate accounts, business people don’t understand what that means they think it’s SMB. But it’s the mid market. And to mean, it’s actually a pretty significant part of the Microsoft business people don’t regulate. There’s a huge opportunity here. And I remember you and I having a conversation probably about a year ago, that it was underdeveloped and needed to create some muscle and you know, I know you, you exercise and you understand about building muscle, but that we felt we needed to build some muscle. Right. And that’s, I think, what how your role has evolved since we last met in on the podcast is that now you have these channel sellers. So tell us more about that part of the role, and why that’s so important to our listeners and viewers watching. Oguo Atuanya 29:49 Yeah, we did a really interesting, good thing. You know, last year at the beginning of the fiscal year, we went from if you recall my role Last year was only in one country, the US what happened? All the channel partners had Vince Menzione 30:05 telco distributor, Oguo Atuanya 30:09 what we call a scale partners, domain providers. I had them all. It was fun. It was fun. And then I also had accountability for all segments. Yes. Right. But there really wasn’t a lot of focus. That’s right. Right. So yeah, what we did was we went to that singular segment, you know, focus alignment. And we took a look at our channels and said, Hey, which of these partner sets would provide us working with them the biggest bang when it came to focusing on certain segments? Because the scale partners for me. And we took a look at opportunities within each of these segments, by far and wide, the largest opportunities that we had witness MC, small, medium corporate segment, by far, and it was just on the top. Vince Menzione 31:08 I’m not surprised, by the way I’ve been calling this the acre of diamonds for a year. Oguo Atuanya 31:11 That’s that’s such an apt term, but But you understand, you know, Microsoft, you know, how well resourced the enterprise, you know, businesses, Vince Menzione 31:19 there’s, everyone gravitates to the top right, so now you have hundreds of partners going on to those 11,000 customers, basically, yeah. And then they’re ignoring this mid market, which is huge, huge. Oguo Atuanya 31:31 And then it keeps growing, because you’ve got you’ve got, you know, a customer in the in the smaller tier SMB that eventually rise into, essentially. That’s right, right. So it continues to grow. Vince Menzione 31:44 And people don’t realize that and some of the enterprise customers move down to the corporate space as well, because Microsoft focuses on a smaller patch, in some cases, organization. So the corporate account space gets gets bigger. Yeah, it gets bigger on both sides. So Oguo Atuanya 31:57 we did something very deliberate. We carved that out, we assigned a partner portfolio to it. Now, that doesn’t mean the way I like to explain it to partners is with us, you major in SMC and you minor in other things. Right. We encourage you to major and live in SMC doesn’t mean that we’re going to dissuade you from doing anything else. But this is where the opportunity and investments we made some significant investments in resources in incentives. Yes, right in. Right. So that landscape looks very different. We’ve got a nominee we’re talking to yesterday. We’ve got sellers. We’ve got my PDM. We’ve got my channel sales managers, you facilitate now cosell? Vince Menzione 32:54 And just in the US market, there’s what 10,000 corporate accounts, roughly athletic nominees 5000 for the East. Oguo Atuanya 33:01 Yeah, yeah. So roughly across the Americas even much more than much bigger, you have much more of Vince Menzione 33:06 all of the Americans. So that was the other thing that happened differently. Microsoft last year, your role expanded from a geo perspective. Yeah, exactly. So Sam, and Kenneth, you Oguo Atuanya 33:15 went vertical, you know, partner says, right. So to provide a focus. Yeah. Vince Menzione 33:22 And it makes the most sense, because, again, those are the partners that you manage scale into those mid market organizations most effective. Oguo Atuanya 33:29 Yeah. And they’ve been, they’ve been very receptive to that shift in strategy, because we’re seeing in the fruits of focusing on those opportunities together. Vince Menzione 33:41 So let’s, we got partners, watching and listening to us today that are looking to maybe potentially engage with you and your team on the SMC side. What did they need to do? Like? How did they engage? And what do you do to help them foster the growth? What does your team do there? Oguo Atuanya 33:56 So the first thing I like to say is if you’re not engaged, email me. It’s all at one or at you NYHA microsoft.com. Now, you know that we’ve got a very elaborate, you know, partner, management and development program. Alright, so we’ve got a set of BDMS that manage Vince Menzione 34:23 depending on where you are, what type of partner are you are, if you’re an SI a GSI, an ISV? I mean, exactly. You’re ultimately going to your teams can ultimately work with them to bring them into the customer, potentially, or help them guide them into the journey. Yes, but they might be managed or unmanaged. In one of those others. Yeah, yeah. Oguo Atuanya 34:40 But what’s what’s what’s blanket and universal across the board is that at the beginning of the year, again, we define this priorities right. This branch is defined along solution areas, you know, more than one Azure, these apps and then we’ve got you know, solution plays on The neat solution areas that are very specifically aligned. Right? To segments. Right, right. And then what this team that I just talked about, is make sure that through partner business planning, you know, our partners engaged into those opportunities in a very defined way. Right. And then in addition to making sure you’ve got your AI strategy, there are three things that that we’re going to focus on this coming. this coming fiscal year. Here’s one, land copilot, Vince Menzione 35:37 land copilot on every desk, Oguo Atuanya 35:39 every seat. Dr. Jen AI design wins. And you know, absolutely proliferate Microsoft solution. Security Solutions. Vince Menzione 35:52 With the land land, Jen AI, wins, what does that look like? So it’s, it’s something that customers Oguo Atuanya 36:01 it’s a little, it’s kind of broad, right? Because if you have a Gen AI solution that you’ve developed as a pot, right, you drive an opportunity win with it. Now there’s so many different things that we look at in terms of calibrating those wins, right? You know, things that that you know, spin the Azure data consumption in the backend, right. But it’s just going out there secure net win with a customer. We want our partners to drive all theirs as much as possible. Right. And then of course, we talked about security, but security, probably the most important, one of the most important things that we need to get done in terms of partner engagement with our field is cosell. We talked about cosell yesterday? Yes. Vince Menzione 36:55 Quite a bit. Actually. We Oguo Atuanya 36:57 did. Yeah, we spent a lot of time on an important topic. It’s very, very important because we need the sellers, from our partners and sellers from SMC organization to really get down to the tactical level in terms of where there’s opportunities. What are we going to use to fill those opportunities? How do we attract those opportunities? Right. So now kushiel bid is very important. Partners have to get really comfortable with you know, partner center. That’s right, right, as I’m moving these, Vince Menzione 37:30 and many of them are working with some of our coaches, right, we have these ultimate partner ambassadors that were up on stage yesterday, these are organizations that actually helped coach these or help these partners along because you can’t do everything alone. You can’t always rely on Microsoft to do it all you were with you. With some of the help that we we have people that know how to do that really well. Oguo Atuanya 37:49 So how how are you successful, let’s align on those imperatives. There’s three imperatives that I’ve talked about. Let’s align on how we drive what I call a relationship with yourself. Right? Those are the four really important legs of the stool, I would say when when engaging successfully with us. Vince Menzione 38:10 And so the fourth one being the cosell effective. Relational cosell. Oguo Atuanya 38:17 I call it relationship because our relationship. What is the difference Vince Menzione 38:20 between relationships cosell and any other cosell because they’ll by any other name? I think Oguo Atuanya 38:25 you know, some people think that quiz sale is that point in time engagement where you sit down? Vince Menzione 38:31 Right? Yeah, like let’s let’s compare spreadsheets. And Oguo Atuanya 38:34 yeah, off you go. Yeah. Yeah. Relationship cross sells. Actually, you start that pre work beforehand. It’s right. And beyond that meeting, you know, you’re still connected. Yeah. Right. You heard no more mentioned yesterday, if something goes wrong, pick up the phone and call your counterpart. Right. Vince Menzione 38:51 And the relationship is all about building the trust. Right. In fact, we have Cassandra gholston Here. recently talking about the fact that CO selling is a verb. It’s something you do all the time. Yes. Right. It’s not an amount of one and done. It’s not a noun. It’s a verb. Yeah. Yeah. Oguo Atuanya 39:08 I mean, we actually even get now to level where we now I want to make sure we map the names of our sellers. Yes. On platinum sellers. Yes. And make sure that their contact information is exchanged. And they live with one another. It’s, it’s getting to that point. Vince Menzione 39:26 So cool. What advice do you have for these partners watching or listening today to optimize success? Like if you, you talked about these four areas, but if you want to, like, within 30 seconds, if we’re on an elevator, what would you say to them? What do they need to go do differently or better to optimize for success? Oguo Atuanya 39:44 I would say, one, understand who you are, and be very definitive in terms of what you do. Right, you know, while it’s wonderful to say you can do everything That doesn’t always work, right, you’re better off, you know, taking those two or three things that you know how to do and do well, and filling in, you know, very specific gaps in terms of needs, you know, that we’ll have when we’re trying to get to that customer, you know, requested outcome. In at the second thing I would say is, be very, very intentional from a cultural perspective, right. Make sure that we’re connected, make sure that we’re having those follow ons from a relationship point of view. The third thing that I will just mention is, let’s also stay aligned on imperatives. Right? Because we can really succeed without the partner. And that, I would like to think vice versa, right. So if we begin the fiscal year, step for step aligned in the same direction, and understanding how to leverage the resources that we have, will be successful. The other thing that I think partners should think about is, let’s understand what you’re doing from a GTM perspective. Because we can evangelize, we integrate, we can interlock we can evangelize, Vince Menzione 41:27 right, and understanding what makes you different and better and different, and makes you stand out gives you that opportunity to then go evangelize. Oguo Atuanya 41:34 Yes. It’s a branding campaign, right. So Phil, somebody hears about a CD wo insight or soft choice of crayon. Is that one of the two things that’s right, that pricks and they understand that they’re strong idea, and you pull them into opportunities. I Vince Menzione 41:50 love that. I love that. So I want to pivot for a second, I want to ask a personal question is one of my favorite questions. And want to ask now that we’re in the studio here in Boca, you are hosting a dinner party, and you can host this dinner party anywhere in the world, we could talk about all the fabulous places you’ve lived. And you can invite any three guests to this amazing dinner party from the present or the past to this dinner party. Maybe even in the future. Somebody somebody once said, a guest in the future. Whom would you invite? And why? A gua. Oguo Atuanya 42:23 So I always say this, I would invite my mom from the past, right? I mean, the significant impact she had on my life at indelible. I have a soccer star that I loved growing up as a child, Socrates, Olivia. Vince Menzione 42:44 Socrates Olivia era from Brazil from Brazil. Okay. Wow, I know Pele. Oguo Atuanya 42:52 But I love Socrates. I would I would, I would invite Socrates. And I would probably invite my, my college football coach, Dave Aslanian. What’s his name? Dave Aslanian. Vince Menzione 43:05 Dave is learning. Yes. Interesting. Interesting. As you play again, Oguo Atuanya 43:09 we will state university Nice, nice. So there’s a I mean, if we kept the list of three, and that would be it. Vince Menzione 43:15 And obviously, I get the impact of your mom. Some was the soccer player, just we’re just a huge fan. I was just a huge fan growing up as a child, and tell me about the impact of your football coach. Oguo Atuanya 43:26 Coach Aslanian had a style of autumn. He was he was a real human being he wasn’t your typical coach. He was that coach that would tell you hey, listen, useful policy, get what you want out of life, versus football using. He’s that coach now give me a pep talk and say, Hey, listen, we’re not really out there to hurt anybody. Right? We’re out there to achieve an outcome. Right? So do what you need to do, but then make it personal. I just love this integrity as a human being and I loved you know, just as authenticity made an impact on me. Vince Menzione 44:15 Wondering, I’m wondering about the mentoring that you do now wondering if you’re taking some of that forward, thinking forward. A lot of that a lot of that comes in Oguo Atuanya 44:25 you know, he’s a very powerful individual came from a very, you know, prominent powerful family, but was very understated. Nice. So that really struck a chord and stayed with. Vince Menzione 44:41 So awesome. So awesome. A gua I want to thank you. But before I do, we are at this we’re like the halfway point of the year beginning of Microsoft’s new fiscal year. One last thing for our partners on leaning in for the second half of the year. How do they think how do they need to be thinking differently? going into the second half of the year beginning of Microsoft’s new fiscal year. Oguo Atuanya 45:05 I think if I could just borrow a co pilot, as your as some sort of a microcosm to just learn this, we spent the first six months or so landing it, testing things out trialing. Right. Now we’re ready for scale. Right. Now, when you sort of draw that parallel back to AI, and you know, all the movement that AI is going to drive in the industry, that’s really where we are right now. Vince Menzione 45:43 Yeah, yeah, Oguo Atuanya 45:44 we need to scale now. I think we’re past. You know, the trial show and tell. So it’s time to lean in and say, It’s time to lean out. It’s time to execute against all the strategies. It’s time to scale. Because if you don’t, you’ll find yourself behind. Yeah. And if you find yourself behind, and this AI race, it’s Vince Menzione 46:05 gonna be tough. It’s a fast race. Oguo Atuanya 46:06 It’s not like Cloud transformation. We talked Vince Menzione 46:09 about it. We have lots of years to get the cloud transformation. We don’t have we don’t have years here in the Oguo Atuanya 46:14 cycle, if you want to stay relevant. I go back to those things I talked about, right. Develop a managed services, practice and strategy if you don’t have one yet. Right. Second thing is hurry up and get that AI strategy. Yes. The thing is security. Fourth, is amplifying that cosell. Right. Because that’s what we’re all about. Moving into FY 25. Yeah. Vince Menzione 46:46 Excellent. Excellent. I want to thank you so much for coming down here to Boca Raton, making the trip for this event and for being on the podcast here today in the studio. I can’t thank you enough. And for our listeners and viewers, I want to thank you for joining thank you for supporting the Ultimate Partner. And if you haven’t subscribed to our YouTube channel, please hit the subscribe button at the top. You can also rate and review us on Apple Spotify. And leave a comment in the note section on either of those platforms. It helps us continuing to get great guests like a good to join us on Ultimate Partner with gua thank you so much for joining us today. I mean, Oguo Atuanya 47:25 it’s been wonderful. The event yesterday was absolutely incredible. Vince Menzione 47:30 Thank you. Hey, gentlemen, thank you. Thanks for having us. Thanks for being part of it. And thank you for watching and listening. Thanks for listening to this episode of Ultimate Partner. Hopefully, this episode and all the episodes we’ve recorded are helping you better align your partner strategy to achieve your greatest results. So I want to ask you something. Have you implemented everything you’ve been learning? And are you now achieving the growth and revenue objectives that you hope to achieve? If not, it’s time to take action now. Join ultimate partner experience. We’re building the community I’ve always dreamed about. With up x you get access to exclusive Industry Insights, unparalleled networking opportunities, tons of educational resources and support from a community that shares your goals. Join us now visit our website, the ultimate partner.com and sign up today. | |||
| 229 - 200% Pipeline Growth: Co-Selling Tips Revealed by Industry Leaders | 30 Jul 2024 | 00:34:41 | |
Sanjay Mehta & Erin Figer of Tackle.io join Ultimate Partner
I so enjoyed bringing two friends and experts into the studio for an insightful conversation. In this episode, we explore the world of cloud go-to-market strategies and co-selling with two of the industry’s top leaders: Erin Figer (VP of Co-Sell) and Sanjay Mehta (Chief Cloud Officer) of Tackle.io. With extensive experience in B2B technology marketing and the hyperscalers ecosystems, Erin specializes in amplifying your reputation to boost pipeline and optimize program alignment. Her proven method has resulted in 200% pipeline growth, higher close rates, ISV Partner of the Year, and achieving Co-sell Ready status in just 60 days. Erin’s mission is to help you achieve the best results through a structured framework. A seasoned business leader and sales strategist, Sanjay brings a wealth of experience in cloud technology. At Tackle.io, he focuses on enabling software companies to sell through the cloud marketplaces of AWS, Microsoft, and Google Cloud, driving significant revenue growth and market expansion. Whether you’re looking to strengthen your partnerships with Microsoft, AWS, and Google, or optimize your sales strategies, this discussion is packed with valuable insights. Get ready to learn how to maximize your co-selling efforts, boost your pipeline, and accelerate your wins with actionable strategies from industry experts. What You’ll Learn From This Episode 0:02 – Cloud go-to-market strategies and co-selling with Microsoft and partners. 4:37 – Coselling strategies for ISVs with cloud providers and partners. 10:12 – Partnerships and ecosystems in the tech industry. 13:57 – Marketplace growth, validation, and potential for universal buying mechanism. 18:03 – Leveraging data to power sales strategies and improve customer engagement. 22:39 – Leveraging Salesforce marketplace for ISVs, with insights on data-driven approach, ecosystem power, and partner acceleration. 26:41 – Optimizing partner strategy for success. https://youtu.be/do5M_jePeJA?si=ZdRU14Kddp0XvP7DLISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP For more insights and detailed discussions, tune in to the full episode of The Ultimate Partner. Subscribe to stay updated with the latest trends and strategies in the world of technology partnerships. TranscriptJay McBain 0:02 Microsoft’s purpose is in service of your purpose. And again, 2024 is the year that partners come out as the leading edge of the spear on finding this buyer intent you Vince Menzione 0:13 show up to every meeting and demonstrate why you are relevant every Sharon Schoenborn 0:18 day, I have to force myself to make sure that I’m taking one step ahead in terms of my own learning Vince Menzione 0:23 that flywheel success is where you will build momentum. And that momentum will continue. And then you feed into the other systems to say, this is what we did. This is how we did it together. that flywheel success is where you will build momentum. And that momentum will continue. And then you feed into the other systems to say, this is what we did. This is how we did it together. Vince Menzione 0:36 Welcome back to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Manziel, your host, and I’m on a mission to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. We’ve been talking about these tectonic shifts we’ve been seeing in our world and in our lives, and the role and dominance of the hyperscalers. And this cloud, go to market moment. And now I have two leaders in the room from a valued partner tackle IO for discussion on this amazing transformation we’ve been seeing and how cloud go to market is evolving today. I want to welcome Erin Figer, the VP of cosell. Erin Figer 1:10 Hi Vince, thanks for having me. Vince Menzione 1:11 See you and Sanjay Mehta, Chief Operating Officer at tackle Sanjay Mehta 1:15 he just promoted me. Thank you very much. I love that. I’ll take the promotion. Vince Menzione 1:20 Office. Sorry. So great to have you. You know, we just finished a live event here yesterday. And it was so great to have you both here in Boca Raton. We covered several areas of cloud go to market marketplaces, conversations around co selling. Both of you are experts in this space. And you’ve been around this, this journey for us with us for so long. And I was hoping for a deep dive today really spending some time here on this amazing topic. We we’ve seen a third of a trillion dollars in durable cloud budgets by three hyperscalers just an amazing growth. Five ISPs reached a billion dollars total transactable last year, right just that’s a volume we might see one get to a billion dollars in one year. Vince Menzione 2:11 Sanjay Mehta 2:45 Yeah, if you roll back to like 2015 2016, when this started, getting up and listed in a marketplace was just part of your cloud provider strategy. I don’t want to go to market with AWS or Microsoft login to tile up in the marketplace. And honestly, I just we just didn’t have a lot of plans. They just wanted to get their shingle up and act cool until they’re bored. Hey, we’re a cloud company. We’re a SaaS company. Vince Menzione 3:04 brochure. We’re Sanjay Mehta 3:05 brochure work, right? And, like a lot of partnerships, unfortunately, back then. But now it’s a boardroom conversation around how can I make this the most sales efficient channel and particularly as the market has become a little bit tougher economically. And his cloud transaction fees have come down from all of the major cloud providers. Now CEOs and CFOs are looking at this and saying, I can make my deals go faster. I can tap into budgets that already exist. I can tap into legal agreements that already exists. Yeah. Streamline vendor onboarding. So the conversation has totally changed from Vince Menzione 3:39 lowering the days. Quicker payments. Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s amazing to see how this has evolved. And I believe if Microsoft was on the sidelines up until this past year, right, and they’ve leaned in a big way. We had Jason rook leading the conversation with you and another one of the Microsoft leaders yesterday around the topic, and what partners need to do differently than that they haven’t done before. And CO selling plate pays an even more important role here. And Aaron, you and I have a long history working together. Vince Menzione 4:02 I mean, we share to those who’ve been following along our journey together. You’ve been on the podcast, early guests on the podcast. We did a lot of CO selling workshops back in the day when I first came back out and ultimate partner was was reignited you lead a session on effective co selling and operationalizing. CO selling. And now that we’ve got Marketplace offers in market, that’s the next step, right, we need to get to that we need to get to the buyer. And the best way to get to the buyer is through co selling with the organizations to get there. Right. Tell us how you think about that. Erin Figer 4:37 Yeah, it’s really great to see now that we’ve been at co selling for a while. Initially people took co sellers like, I’m going to connect a seller with a cloud cellar and it’s this like seller to seller coaster motion. So now we’re at this point where people are like know where they’re thinking bigger about cosell and really that when you just aside to co build and bring that solution to market, how are you going to cosell? In your partnership? How are you going to co sow with the people through the marketplace and with the ecosystem that you’re now a part of that you could also be co selling and supporting this solution holistically and bringing that to market. So cosell is getting people are now looking at it much bigger than just this cosell thing I do with two sellers, Vince Menzione 5:32 your CEO, John Yankee talks about like meeting the customer where they buy. And we had Jason rook with you. And then also on the podcast recently talking about this as well that there was an influence strategy, there’s the seven seats at the table, like it’s not just an ISV and a hyper scalar together going to the customer, there are all these other influencers, there might be a channel partner is actually transacting maybe has a relationship with the customer, there might be other ISVs involved security solutions. Yeah, to your point, Erin Figer 6:02 right. And so now you can flip it and say instead of like an ISV, thinking about one customer and CO selling with the cloud provider, they can now say, we meet the buyer, where they’re at? And how does that buyer want to buy through the marketplace, but who are the other players. And now it’s really, I’ve got to make sure I’m co selling with all of those seven people who are influencing that buyer, that I’m also co selling with them. And we’re all collectively working on driving this solution that we know is going to help our customer with their problem. Erin Figer 6:39 And it’s going to drive the clouds metrics that they care about the channel partner that you’re working with metrics, you might have an SI Partner doing your services work for you that ultimately makes your product get used and implemented, which is what the ISP wants. Right? So cosell, you have to think about all those seven players? And when you put that opportunity, and how are you going to connect with all of those different players now that are supporting that opportunity? Or supporting that customer? Vince Menzione 7:10 So you lead the cosell practice? Right? And you work with a lot of these leading organizations leading ISVs on this strategy? How do you do this more effectively? What do you how do you coach them on this? Erin Figer 7:21 Well, we we launched a maturity model, which really helps because we have to figure out where you’re at in your journey, like, are you in the starting off? And like just getting started and establishing the foundation? Are you in building adoption? Are you driving adoption? Or are you scaling adoption? So once we can understand where the partner is in their maturity, then we can look at what is the solution? And how are you trying to go to market with with skilling up your people with your processes, with implementing technology to support you operationally, your partnership, so there’s many different points that we look at inside of your overall maturity. And then we come in with consultative support and best practices to say, Okay, we’re going to help you go from here to here. Now, based off of where you’re at your solution and how you’re trying to bring that to market Vince Menzione 8:20 have you look across the ecosystem approach. Erin Figer 8:24 So when you are looking at your solution, you’re trying to say, in there in not just your club partnerships, but what are the other partnerships that you are trying to create in your channel, in your channel strategy? And then how are you engaging with them. And yesterday, partner tap was here and one of your sponsors, and we really love partner taps technology, because it enables you as we start to cosell and we identify, say, a use case scenario or specific area that we want to start to share opportunities. Then using a tool like partner tap to say, okay, these are where I have opportunities. But where do we have continued customer alignment around this use case or around the sales region or territory or industry we’re trying to go to market in and they help fill in the that visibility to like, here’s the other accounts that you guys have in common, or could support and bring in inbounds to fill out. Your, your cosell audience, your cosell customer base around that particular solution or use case scenario? Vince Menzione 9:37 Yeah. And Cass was on our panel from CO partner tap was on our panel yesterday for that conversation. So that’s replacing all the spreadsheets that we normally operated on before right. Starting Erin Figer 9:47 to like you, you can actually activate a coastal strategy in your channel. Now. So like we have this coastal strategy with our cloud providers, but now using that At an partner tab, we can actually build a more holistic cosell strategy that enables us to bring in all of our partners around one opportunity love that. We’re Sanjay Mehta 10:12 starting to drink our own champagne a bit at tackle around this. So we just launched our own ecosystem a couple of weeks ago. And the effort behind that stemmed from as an ISV matured through the model Aaron’s talking about their needs became a little bit different when all you needed was a title and a marketplace, you could do it yourself, we could do that for you is pretty simple, right? But as you start to move along, we have ISVs, that might be in one cloud, but they want to be in another cloud. So maybe they’re an Amazon, they want to go to Google. So we’ll bring in a partner like do it to help them specify that application in a different place. Maybe they need reseller services to get to market and the beginning marketplace was going to kill the channel. Now we figured out the channel is actually a huge benefit for going into markets that matter to reach out to a Presidio or WWE and in the AWS world and the Microsoft world, maybe they need go to market resources. So they’ll tap somebody like a transcends. So we’re starting to look at the journey and say, What kind of partners do we need? Because we can’t do it all to slot in the right experts at the right time to really help somebody to accelerate their revenue curve. Vince Menzione 11:06 Yeah, you’re spot on. You mentioned a couple of things. Firstly, you can’t do it alone. We all know that right? Partnerships are important to everybody, even those of us in the technology side of partnerships. And then and then the fact that this journey is evolving, and the role of channel we thought it was going to this is gonna kill the channel. No, it’s invigorating. It’s sparking the ecosystem is sparking the channel. In fact, we’ve had we had people in the room here yesterday from some of the big channel companies that are leaning in on marketplaces and CO selling in a bigger way. And Erin Figer 11:34 now we have to include them in that cosell conversation. So how are you going to connect with them? And get everybody collectively working around that same use case or that same customer in that code in the spirit of CO selling? Vince Menzione 11:48 And I, you know, I like to use the term like we’re passing each other in the hallway, right? We’re all calling on that same client, but maybe we’re not showing up at the same time. Yeah. So this brings it all together. So we know oh, by the way, I’m also working on that account, but I’m trying to sell this into that account. And that’s where that’s where you’re effectively helping them get to, yeah, their whole influence strategy around that client. Sanjay Mehta 12:09 We’re trying to be we have hundreds of customers. So we’re thankful that so we try to be the voice of the ISV. Back to the cloud. So we’ve got awesome, not just go to market relationships with the clouds, but more importantly, probably product and service relationships. So you can see in marketplaces, we’re going from single software vendors selling a single software title on a single deal to a single customer. And that’s great, but it’s not where we need to be like, ideally, a customer wants to buy a solution that has multiple things from multiple ISVs, probably wrapped with some services that potentially come from a channel and might need to buy it with credit terms. Sanjay Mehta 12:46 Vince Menzione 13:15 Yeah, you know, we had Jay McBain in the room yesterday as well talking about the channel tech stack, and you’re part of that channel tech stack. But it’s there they are on islands for a reason. Because they’re not interconnected today, right? We need to get better, that better connection point those better connection points around all these technology offerings to your point, maybe 24 months from now we’ll be where we need to be nirvana. Maybe it’ll be you’ve been working with some of the largest ISPs. I want to I want to go back on this moment. And this kind of this. Really the evolution of where we are moving from the brochure brochure where to where we are today $100 billion potential by 2026 is tackles call. Yeah. Whether it’s whether whether we get there exactly or not probably doesn’t matter. It’s just that this is a huge opportunity. What are you seeing you work with some of the biggest and the best ISVs that are out there doing this? Sanjay Mehta 14:02 Yeah, it’s interesting, like the the first pick a number 3000 ISVs. The Marketplace were mostly infrastructure vendors. What we’re seeing now is more and more business application providers, Salesforce announced late last year, that they’re teamed up with AWS to go through the marketplace. We do a lot of work with zoominfo. So another great business application going through the marketplace. So we’re seeing that the next horizon we think is very likely vertical industry applications interesting. Little more traditional, those industries move a little slower. Sometimes they sell 10 year deals to utility companies. So just the evolution of that’s going to take a little bit of time. You hear about data marketplaces and ml marketplaces, I think we’re really going to see a proliferation of the types of things you can buy through these marketplaces, which is going to be a big change. Sanjay Mehta 14:58 We’ve seen deal sizes go up so there a lot of myths around these things like it’s only really startups selling to small customers. Not true, right? It’s so the biggest companies, also the biggest companies in the world, and also the biggest buyers in the world and all around the planet, right marketplace is not a US phenomenon anymore. It’s a globe Well phenomenon the, the best ISVs in terms of performance are going 50% In the US, maybe 25% or so in Europe, another 25% in a and Zed and in a pack. So we’re seeing that we’re seeing bigger deals, like in the early days, it was 20,000 or transactions $40,000 transactions. Now we’re seeing 100 million our transactions. So he’s the type of business that’s going through is changing. So I think just the validation, even though it’s early, we think only about 2% of global b2b commerce went through these channels last year, we think $100 billion, might be under called in 2026, because we’ve seen massive acceleration and marketplace throughput. But the validation of this is a channel that’s here to stay and to grow, I think is really firmly validated. And now you’re seeing more and more vendors jump on. Vince Menzione 15:42 Yeah. It’s astounding to see the growth and how quickly it’s Yeah. Erin Figer 15:46 And I think, I think also like, yesterday, I think it was in the Transcend event session where Ashley was talking about, you have to also look at your customers. And again, going back to like, where are the customers buying? And sometimes those customers aren’t buying yet in the marketplace, like regulatory industries might have challenges. The educational institutions, nonprofits, like are they really buying in the marketplaces yet, but I think that, as we as the marketplace evolves, and addresses some of these challenges that has caused these industries to have such specific buying mechanisms, that the marketplace could become a more universal buying mechanism to then bring, like, if we want to get to the all of that b2b software sales to the marketplace, we’ve got to unlock these other traditional buying mechanisms, contracts and well. That’s impossible and, and universal in the marketplace. I think that’s really the opportunity is when we can evolve our marketplace to be able to do that for us and take care of that. Then the rest of this, this customer base will start to come there. And we’ll start to see more of b2b sales go through the marketplace. Vince Menzione 17:07 We’re thrilled to announce our partnership within partner software, the world’s leading provider of partner management technologies, serving over 4 million partners globally, in partner excels in delivering cutting edge solutions for partner relationship management, and partner marketing automation. Their robust platform offers essential tools like program compliance tracking, customizable partner journeys, and comprehensive business planning. These features Empower partner teams to swiftly transition from program design to achieving maximum value in partner is dedicated to supporting partner ecosystems everywhere and continues to innovate with new modules like analytic studio designed to help track and maximize the ROI of your partner program for more information visit in partner.com. Vince Menzione 17:59 Sanjay Mehta 18:31 Yeah, so we announced in December that from the founding of the company until December last year, we saw $5 billion go through our platform. And the vast majority of that was really in the last two or three years. From December last year to today we’ve seen almost another $5 billion. So crazy, the rate of growth is really astronomical just Erin Figer 18:49 six months. And just as Sanjay Mehta 18:52 we take that data as well as third party data, we source demographic data infographic, data, technographic data, and we compile that together, use some ml on top of it to indicate where a customer is most likely to buy. The most likely they’re buying Amazon or Google or Microsoft, is it high as a medium is low? The reality is most big enterprise companies bind multiple places because they, they might do that just to diversify their suppliers. They might do that because they grew through acquisition. But for a bunch of Vince Menzione 19:19 reasons. The biggest part is my collaboration platforms absolutely lying. And our stitching solution runs better here than there. That’s right. Sanjay Mehta 19:27 So we’re seeing a lot of that, but we take that data to start to help our customers get a little more educated on where they’re most likely to succeed. And it’s hugely important as you enable your Salesforce right? If you just go to a Salesforce and say, there’s this new way to sell, it’s called Cloud or go to market. And you’re talking to a sales team that’s done the same thing for 20 years and beat their number. They’re not that likely to change unless you give him a good reason. So we’re trying to use data to really power the story. And then our customers and our customers do they push the hell out of our customers like what else can you do with the data so today, it’s almost a little bit more reactive. Sanjay Mehta 20:02 Sanjay Mehta 20:40 Oh, I have six sense data, that showing me some buyer behavior on my website, and the intent and what they plan on doing. And we can say, You know what, we can pair that up with cloud data. So now when you do an Account Based Marketing Campaign, to that buyer, you can actually speak the language of the cloud that they’re in. We saw Reb ops leaders team up with sales leaders to say when I do territory design, I can now look at the density of my buyers by cloud, and start to think like, do I go Northwest southwest, or I say like, this is my Google region, this is my Amazon region. This is, you know, my particular use case region. So our customers are trying to do really amazing things with the data, it’s going to, it’s going to push us really hard to continue to drive that innovation edge. But how Vince Menzione 21:15 are they consuming the data? I mean, I know you do a lot of work with individually with clients on the CO selling methodology, the operationalizing. How are other clients that taking advantage of the data? Sanjay Mehta 21:25 Yeah, what we started our journey with the alliances persona, because they own the cloud relationship. But what we found is as revenue goes from like, zero to 2%, to 5%, so around 5%, and certainly by 10%, the CRL in the CFR like, what is that thing? And it’s arguable that will be your single biggest channel on the planet that operates consistently, right? You no longer need all these distributors, and all these channels and operate in different ways. Like, it’s one way to do business, which is hugely powerful. So during that transition that was here, I was like, I don’t need my people logging into tackle, right. And I don’t want to just continue to expand my deal desk. Sanjay Mehta 22:01 Like directly for every additional deal, or 10 deals I do I need to add another one hour of, of human capital. So they said, Can you pump this stuff into my CRM system. And for the vast majority of our customers that Salesforce sometimes it’s dynamics or HubSpot, or something, but the vast majority of the ISV business runs in Salesforce. So we’re now taking all of this data, and we’re pumping it in an account level. So in the tool the seller is living in, they can say this is the profile of my buyer. So you’re integrating into Salesforce directly to Salesforce, and then you can initiate your coastal activity and initiate your private rock private offer activity, all within Salesforce. So you don’t need to leave the digital tech stack that you already know love Vince Menzione 22:33 propensity to buy, you can look at under underspend commitments, all of those user Erin Figer 22:39 scenarios you just walked through, like your marketing team can now engage in this content and start to pull it into their campaigns as they start to build out the audiences that they want to reach for their campaigns using Salesforce, they’ll have that as a data point to help them. The great thing too about the data, and how you can engage with it is it if you think about our maturity model, in every phase of that maturity model, you can be engaging in our data to help you it just shows up a little differently in like establishing the foundation, it’s giving you that compass, like how do I get started, which customers and where and, and it gives you more of a validation of like these customers with this cloud provider around this solution. And as you move into establishing the foundation, it becomes a tool to really support all of the enablement effort you’re doing. I’m trying to get your sellers educated on this solution and how we’re trying to co sell and go to market with our cloud partnership. So that data now supports my enablement effort. It really helps the seller enablement get sticky and get engagement out of my sellers. So that when I go to driving adoption, and scaling adoption, I now start to just use this data in building my automation to say when things look like this, and has this data set there, and the data looks like this, automatically do these things. Vince Menzione 24:03 Nice. That’s fantastic. What a fantastic value you’re providing. Yeah. Erin Figer 24:06 And that’s data driven. Yeah. Right. Vince Menzione 24:09 So we covered a lot of ground yesterday at our event. And I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted. Erin Figer 24:17 It was a busy day. It was Vince Menzione 24:18 a busy day. Maybe it’s just some highlights from each of you on your sessions. Maybe just a couple of points for those who are weren’t maybe didn’t watch the whole seven and a half hours and are just listening to the podcast driving their cars today to wheeling around or watching us on YouTube. And I find that people like want to why they want that they want the salient points quick, right, the Tick Tock moment. Sanjay over to you like what was the essence of your session? What would you what would you ask our partners to go learn and go do differently? Sanjay Mehta 24:46 I’d say jump on board. Like the road is now paved, which is nice. It’s not Oban people had a drive on it and a lot of people were leaning in the community to help lift everybody else up. So if you’re not in it’s not too late. Like they’re really is 98% of the market still ahead of us? The power of the ecosystem, hugely important, a data driven approach, hugely important. You don’t have to leave your channel behind. In fact, embrace it, bring him along for the ride. Absolutely. So those are probably the top three or four things that we touched on. Vince Menzione 25:16 And like you said, it’s a massive opportunity, because it’s really only what the top two 5% of ISVs that are really consuming at scale. Yeah, Sanjay Mehta 25:23 maybe 10% of the ISVs are driving 80% of the business pretty typical stuff, right. And if you think about the overall b2b software market until the really big players show up, and gravity is hard, right, like you said it earlier, like Mac was the year of the marketplace for Microsoft. They’ve got the most sellers, tons of ISPs a global channel, but 90,000 strong or something. But all that gravity also makes the barge a little slower to turn, but when it turns, it’s gonna be really, really powerful. It’s a big battleship and a narrow river. Yeah, absolutely. So I think you’re gonna see as those as those things open up for more ISVs. And as the big ISVs join, you’ll see that acceleration from 2% of b2b to 10 to 20, pretty fast so and your customers more and more are going to drag you that way. So you can either get out ahead of it, and be strategic, and make it part of your rhythm. Or you can respond when your customer is late. And we see it all the time. Like an ISV selling to a buyer, the buyer is like I need to buy through that through the marketplace, then we get the call to say can we be listed in three days? Because, you know, June 27, and my quarter is almost over. So we help as much as we can. It’d be nicer to help with a little bit more time. Vince Menzione 26:28 Yeah. Well, that’s always the Yeah, hurry up. How about on the cosell side? You had an incredible panel yesterday. I mean, like, Wow, what a lot of power in the room if you haven’t, if you want if you haven’t watched that session on our on our YouTube channel. Erin Figer 26:41 Yeah. Operationalizing cosell, I mean, the session was spent a lot around partner center and kind of demystifying partner center. But if you if you take that topic operationalizing cosell to really operationalize QSL, effectively, you have to take a step back and say, what is what is my product? How does that impact consumption or utilization of the cloud provider? How do I engage my channel? And how does it help drive the things that my channel partners care about? to then say, Okay, now, how do I align this partnership to my overall company strategy. And then once you understand the strategy part of that, then you can say, Okay, here’s how we’re going to go operationalize that. But just to go in and operationalize and say I’m going to connect, I’m going to build this API, or I’m gonna connect this widget, and I’m going to start passing all this data, it just creates a lot of noise with not a lot of value and outcomes from that, or it takes you a lot longer to get to that value and outcome. Erin Figer 27:39 If you go slow to go fast, and take a minute to say, Okay, what’s our strategy? How does this solution really drive the thing? The metrics that matter for all the players involved in how do I start to cosell with them, then operationalizing, your cosell strategy will happen quicker. And the data that you’re using will be more meaningful, and you’ll get those outcomes and you’ll reach that revenue faster. Vince Menzione 28:18 I was thinking about the flywheel. Yeah, right? Totally. It’s all about the flywheel start out small, meaningful, go slow to go fast, go slow to go fast. And then that flywheel goes faster and faster. Before Sanjay Mehta 28:29 cannon balls. That’s my favorite Jim Collins. Vince Menzione 28:33 Well, I can’t believe we’re at the halfway point of this calendar year. Right. Microsoft’s 2024. I flail. Like I was just wishing you a happy new year, the other day, it seemed like on text, any last words of guidance for all of those watching, listening today on how to optimize for their success moving forward for the second half of the calendar year, first half of Microsoft, Cisco, and we care about the other two as well. But what would you say to them now? Erin Figer 28:58 I think in our theme yesterday, we talked about how do you get ready, be ready? And then how do you stay ready, and it’s that like, stay ready, stay ready. It’s not a one and done this entire go to market strategy is not like I’m going to create this go to market strategy. It’s beautiful. And then I’m going to put it on a shelf and never touch it. Again, it is always evolving. And you have to be ready and be ready to constantly evolve and change and stay current and adapt right with where the market is going with how buyers are buying and who is surrounding your customer and how you’re reaching them and CO selling with them to support the overall solution that’s going to solve that customers Vince Menzione 29:47 combined to me once you know once you build the plan, you have to apply maniacal focus to it you do maniacal focus and then you pivot. You pivot because things are gonna continue to change. Right. Erin Figer 29:58 Always maniacal focus always on There’s always now called Focus. You’re constantly pivoting and just keep learning growth mindset. keep learning, keep testing out possible theories. And just keep evolving. Vince Menzione 30:11 I love it. I love it. Yeah. So good. Sanjay Mehta 30:14 Yeah. So I’d say when, before coming to tackle, I was in a cybersecurity company and actually hired Aaron’s company to help me figure out cosell. And one of the things I liked was this concept they introduced called vocalizing your wins, which was all about advertising your six event success back in your own organization, your partner, your partner organization, I changed that this year events inside of the company, and I call it be a Kardashian be a Kardashian, I encourage all ISVs to be a Kardashian. And behind that it is all about ruthless self promotion. The market is crowded, right, and it’s noisy, and it’s hard. And it’s tough. And it’s a terrible time to be in software in the history of software, I still think it’s an awesome time to be in software, it’s an awesome time in tech. Sanjay Mehta 30:52 And so you gotta get your word out there. And you have to do it often. And you need to use it to retain wide and your relationships so people know what you’re doing and what you’re driving. And people automatically think, like, only about a customer success story. But the other thing to think about is how did that help the cloud provider? What did they not have to do? Because you did it better or faster? Or to compliment them? So I’m telling everybody be a Kardashian, it might be my new year’s resolution in 2025. If this goes well, those are my words. Add to that Erin Figer 31:19 for a minute. I mean, you can’t top a Kardashian. Yeah, but I think it’s it’s twofold, right. So we spent a lot of time yesterday talking about how to show up correctly in the tools, your you need to make sure that you are showing up correctly in the systems that your partners are in and your cloud providers are using. So there’s the data side of it and making sure you show up correctly and those tools, plus the Kardashian philosophy that you have of like making sure you vocalize your wins and vocalize your success, because that’s then going to drive them to go look inside their tools. If you’re doing the tooling correctly, and you’re showing up correctly in their systems, the two of those things is really what will boost your brand and make you rise above all the other partners in the ecosystem that are fighting for that attention. And you Vince Menzione 32:11 might need some help along the way. We had Ashley Vox that lead that session on pet with the pinnacle partners, some three very strong award winning partners. And she talked about that too. Like you need to build an awesome story that you have to deliver around why you’re better and different. And why you deserve the success. And in her case, the award winning partnership, yeah. Erin Figer 32:29 And then make sure you’re showing up in the system. And then make sure that you take that awesome story. And you continue to show like how that awesome story came to life in these customers, your success that you’re having. So we had this differentiator and powerful story we showed up correctly and the tools and now we’re vocalizing all those wins to validate that this thing was really awesome. Sanjay Mehta 32:49 Just brought it together. You’re gonna you’re gonna say get on the scoreboard right get on their cloud provider scoreboard. I’m gonna get you to dance on the Jumbotron. Erin Figer 32:58 Oh yes Vince Menzione 33:01 this has been so much fun. So great to see you both. So great to see you my friend. Great to see you, buddy. So much. Great to have you on Ultimate Partner. Yeah, it’d be bad for your sponsorship for your friendship. And just so great to have you both here. Thanks so much. Thank you got some slick you. Thank you for following along. And I’m gonna get some sleep tonight because it’s been a long couple of days here in Boca Raton. Welcome to The Ultimate Partner. Vince Menzione 33:24 | |||
| 228 - Unlocking Multi-Partner Growth with Microsoft Marketplace feat Jason Rook | 23 Jul 2024 | 00:42:34 | |
Microsoft’s Jason Rook joins Ultimate Partner
Jason Rook is an accomplished channel and sales leader with a wealth of experience in cloud computing. As the senior director of Product Marketing and commercial Marketplace Channel Sales at Microsoft, he leads strategy to help Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) build and sell applications through channel partners. Before Microsoft, Jason was the Global Modernization Program Lead – Systems Integrators at Amazon Web Services (AWS), where he grew revenue and created innovative service offerings with AWS consulting partners. He also served as Business Development Manager – Global ISV Modernization at AWS, enhancing customer service through agility and innovation. Jason has contributed significantly as a Microsoft Partner Advisory Board – Inspire member, providing feedback on Microsoft’s partner strategy and events. He was also the Senior Vice President of Business Development at 10th Magnitude, now Cognizant Microsoft Business Group, driving revenue growth and earning recognition as a 4x Microsoft Worldwide Partner of the Year. With over two decades of experience and a proven track record of driving growth and innovation, Jason Rook remains a leading force in cloud computing and partner ecosystems. What You’ll Learn From This Episode 0:02 – Partner Growth and Success in the Cloud Computing Industry 3:59 – Azure Marketplace Growth and Partner Support 9:05 – Marketplace opportunities for ISVs and Channel Partners 13:35 – Microsoft Partnerships and Marketplace Deals 18:11 – Partner Relationships and Opportunities in the tech industry 21:58 – AI Opportunities in Microsoft’s Marketplace 28:08 – Leveraging Marketplace Transactions to Build Better Microsoft Relationships 33:41 – Successful Partnerships and Key Strategies 37:45 – Microsoft Partnerships and Marketplace Opportunities Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from one of the industry’s leading experts on how to navigate and succeed in the Microsoft commercial marketplace. Whether you’re a software publisher, channel partner, or just interested in the tech industry, this episode is packed with actionable insights. https://youtu.be/fpIFOpfGrhELISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP For more insights and detailed discussions, tune in to the full episode of The Ultimate Partner. Subscribe to stay updated with the latest trends and strategies in the world of technology partnerships. TranscriptKeywords: Microsoft commercial marketplace, Azure Marketplace, ISVs, channel partners, cloud computing, AI opportunities, Microsoft relationships, tech industry, partner growth, marketplace deals Transcript (Generated by Otter A.I. – Please Excuse Any Typos) Microsoft’s purpose is in service of your purpose. And again, 2024 is the year that partners come out as the leading edge of the spear on finding this buyer intent you Vince Menzione 0:13 show up to every meeting and demonstrate why you are relevant every Sharon Schoenborn 0:18 day, I have to force myself to make sure that I’m taking one step ahead in terms of my own learning Vince Menzione 0:23 that flywheel success is where you will build momentum. And that momentum will continue. And then you feed into the other systems to say, this is what we did. This is how we did it together. Welcome back to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince BenZion, your host, and I’m on a mission to empower every individual organization and partner to achieve their greatest results through successful partnering. Much of the discussion we’re having is around the tectonic shifts, this decade of the ecosystem, the increasing dominance of the three hyperscalers the changing buying behavior, and this marketplace Moment. Today, I’m going to double down with a friend who’s leading the charge at Microsoft around marketplaces, and Channel Sales ecosystem led growth. Jason rook Jason, welcome to the podcast expense. Jason Rook 1:12 Thanks for having me. It’s good to be here. Great Vince Menzione 1:15 to have you in Boca. So a little side note for people I’ve been listening for seven and a half years, Jason was episode 13. Like one of the very first podcast we did. We were back, I was back in the like the home office or I was maybe a second bedroom of the third bedroom at the time, and recording on zoom in those days and had you on. You had been in a row we’ll talk about I want you to talk about your career. But you had been in a role at Microsoft. And then you had left and you joined a fast startup, an organization that was really growing around Azure. That was like a big thing back in the day. We’re just starting to launch into the cloud in a big way. Jason Rook 1:52 Yes. And we that first conversation was all about kind of that that growth, right. And at that point, people still didn’t really know what Azure was in some cases. Yeah. So that was fun. Vince Menzione 2:01 Yeah. We got to meet we got to work together in the same organization at Microsoft on the US partner team has when I brought my public sector team over to us partner became part of the leadership team. And you were running this high growth group you had, in fact, you had been invested in I believe, from the Azure team. Yeah. This was at the point where we were kind of almost like the black belt type approach. We’re, we’re doing this fast start into Azure into cloud. And we didn’t have a lot of partners at the time that were dead, understood cloud and understood Azure. And you were late leading the charge. Yeah, Jason Rook 2:33 you think about it. We had, we had no partners at that point, right? Because it was this point in time where everyone was confused in the initial reaction was let’s go get the biggest partners, the more traditional Microsoft partners. That’s right. And and they weren’t on board. No, it was a well, and so that team, that team, what we discovered, you know, the phrase that someone coined, we don’t know who it was, but the board in the cloud, or the cloud, I know. Yep. And that that partner, you know, that was what accelerated the Azure growth. And, you know, some of those partners. lucky enough to be a part of that some of those partners just had rocketship exits. It was it was a lot of fun. Now you look around and it I always kind of joke. It’s kind of like SharePoint at one point. Nobody did SharePoint, and then everybody’s a SharePoint partner. And now everybody’s an Azure part. Yeah, right. So Vince Menzione 3:22 and at that point, we were trying to help organizations understand from the best of the best, you had left Microsoft, you had gone to an organization that was really considered the best of the best in class, and was on that rocket ship. You were part of that rocket ship. And tell us a little bit more about that journey and how you have led here. Jason Rook 3:40 Oh, wow. Yeah, so that was, it was a lot of fun. That rocket ship was a rocket ship. And it was at a time when, you know, I think it was interesting, because we had customers that a little further down the cloud path, because, you know, there’s some other competitors that were kind of leading the way and Microsoft was catching up. And, and we had just this ecosystem of partners. And the story was interesting, because Microsoft’s product was more app dev focused, you remember, we made this pivotal moment when would Azure became kind of an infrastructure platform, and then everybody got on board, but in those in those early days, it was really about bringing the expertise to the table along hand in hand with the Microsoft account teams to close you know, in those days, what were mega Azure deals today those those titles or monthly payment but if those times, right, those Azure deals were really significant. That’s what kind of crossed the chasm for Azure. Vince Menzione 4:38 I mentioned to you yesterday at our van or executive summit that like a million dollar quota for Azure was considered that was like the that was like the business quota for public sector when when it first came Jason Rook 4:50 out. Yeah, that’s the company that I joined to the bank to they were involved in one of the first Azure deals and it was like a 250k deals huge and it was on Herta right It was, I think you remember at Lincoln Square, we had these big poster boards and like the top as your board of the cloud party, so people wouldn’t know what a partner looked like. And here’s the part of it closest to our TK deal. That’s like mind blowing. Vince Menzione 5:11 I remember those battles was in the office back. So you came back to Microsoft almost two years ago. Tell us more about that. Yeah. So Jason Rook 5:19 well, you know, if you think about the work we were doing at 10th magnitude, and I kind of started story in in roughly 2019, there were two things going on at TIFF, maybe two that were pseudo marketplace related. So the first of which is that, you know, our bread and butter was really helping customers get to cloud and one of the sweet spots for us were ISVs, you had ISVs, that were either startups or ISVs, that had a real legacy on prem infrastructure architecture. And we would go in and help them get to cloud, right? Cloud shift back in the day model, lift and shift in the ISP space, it was more apt of DevOps focus, more redesign, but we were doing quite a bit of lift and shift, as well. And we noticed as we worked with some of those that some of those ISVs were like, even in the M 12. portfolio, and they started to tell us, hey, we want to transact in cloud marketplaces. And Microsoft started to push us that direction. We want to do that in one of those 12 ISVs. If you don’t know him, 12 is the Microsoft VC fund. Right? I was gonna ask you that. Yeah. So one of those ISVs we actually help them get their app into marketplace. And we thought, wow, there’s a business here for us. Yeah. But we were equipped to help people with the publish aspect. So we started to strike up a relationship with all people tackle IO, right? We have, we’re having a conversation with John the team there. And as well with the Azure Marketplace team, all the way back in 2019. About Hey, could we be kind of the front end of this is V motion, right to get the ISV to cloud and knowing that one of the exit paths for that ISP was to get to Cloud Marketplace, and that’s where tackle would pick them up and run. So that was the one big thing. Jason Rook 7:34 The other thing that was really interesting is the ISPs that we worked with, were really pressing us on will you sell our stock, and back then it was hashey Corp. And Jeff software is really no longer around the same scenario, New Relic, those ISVs were coming in saying, Hey, you guys do a great job. But design implementation support, yeah, but the whole relationship gets really rocky when we have to bring in another reseller to sell Yes. And so if you’ve ever been around a pure play pro serve, organization, going from Pro surf to I’m gonna sell software is an incredibly heavy left very, it’s heavy, and you know, different motions. If you’re in a high growth organization like that there’s, you know, a list of 10 things, you’re gonna spend capital on selling software, very bottom right. And so we started to, we started to see, hey, in our CSP business, and what a lot of people don’t know is, even back in 2019, you could sell ISV apps through marketplace on CSP contracts, which blows some people’s mind, right? Jason Rook 8:05 But we were doing it and we would tell the customer, hey, you’re gonna buy some Azure from us, you want some SendGrid? We’ll add that to your you know, we’ll add that to your to your CSP bill. And we started to think this is the path for how we’re going to sell software in the future. Interesting. Yeah. So you know, COVID hits to the bank, two exits, we kind of you know, the world changed a little bit. I was at another hyperscalers doing some really interesting things. And research, Project research, research. Yeah, it was, it was an awesome experience. I really, really was. But a friend of mine connected me with Yvonne, who did your show a couple episodes ago. And Anthony Joseph, who keynoted for us in Dallas, amazingly blue repeat that. Yes. Yeah. So I was having conversations. And Anthony’s message was, hey, you know, this marketplace thing. And Microsoft’s being kind of rebooted, a real shot in the arm, and it’s going to have some explosive growth. But if you look at the big puzzle of marketplace, there’s a puzzle piece missing. And that’s channel partner. So come over here and help us figure out that puzzle piece. So that’s what I’m doing now is working on how we the channel partner, and we use channel partner, broadly, right? Think of it as non ISV. How do we get the non ISV partner and those 400,000 partners go? So ISV apps? Vince Menzione 9:05 So I’m just going to say not? Because you’re sitting here, I think it’s one of the most important roles in Microsoft, because we talk about the mid market, huge opportunity in the mid market. We talk about the Marketplace moment. And it’s really driven not because of Microsoft, Amazon or Google so much as the changing and buying behavior. The older things that are happening, right the dominance of the hyper scalars, the cloud commitments, the role of marketplaces, the decision making process changing and the ability to consume against that. But it’s right now it’s just a it’s it’s just a one to one between an ISV or an SI and on Microsoft, Amazon or Google, right. We we forget about this buying process and we forget about the influence strategy that’s happening. What the customer is really doing is they’re not directly buying from these ISVs necessarily. They’re buying through their trusted relationships, their existing agree Minutes, the people that have been surrounding their organizations for years and years and years, these trusted IDs, and they’re not necessarily somebody at the ISP. Yeah. If Jason Rook 10:09 you look, you think about every analyst slide, you know, we talked about that a little bit yesterday, the numbers are big no matter who does the slide, right? That’s right. But that ISV marketplace opportunity number, it’s big. But what you don’t see on this slide is, the channels are part of that, right? And the channel parts not going to go away, they’re not going away. None of these top 100 300 ISVs are all going to say, we’re out of the channel business, right? Nobody’s gonna say, Well, I’m gonna replace my channel and build an entire sales force to go do this, right, the GMO is gonna have value. And that’s, that’s not going away, it’s probably even gonna get bigger in the marketplace, Vince Menzione 10:42 right? The big guys aren’t gonna rip and replace the small ISVs. They need scale. So they need the partners and that’s figured out so you know, you you hosted a session yesterday, you Greg gold camp, and Sanjay Mehta from tackle on stage talking about the staggering growth of cloud marketplaces. I was hoping we could dive in a little bit here and talk more about your session. Jason Rook 11:04 But my session yesterday, yeah. So first of all, it was just a fun conversation, the way we approach that, right? We just kind of got together as a group of folks on the phone and said, Okay, what do you hear? And what do you hear it and then we kind of broke it out into topics, I thought the flow was really good. But the the gist of the session was, you know, these are the top things that we hear from execs, whether it’s a customer exec ISV, or partner exec, and it started all the way with, you know, we get in the room, and some people will say, is marketplace for real, right, like, Yeah, where are we at on the on the hypo meter? And so we talked about Yes, Mark, please. Absolutely. For real, you can see it in the numbers that we talked about. Okay, it’s for real, but what is it right, and we still spend a lot of time on that. And then we talked about once you’re kind of you believe it’s for real? And you know what it is, then what do you do about it? And that was that’s where the conversation gets really interesting. Vince Menzione 11:59 So what are you doing to accelerate and capture this opportunity? Jason Rook 12:03 So me in particular, in the role that I’m serving today, I think the focus is on this channel partner sales model. And the way that we kind of think about marketplace, we think about marketplaces a product. And within marketplace, there’s in within that product, there’s a number of features, and they’re really kind of two core features that enable a non ISV channel partner, we’ll call them a channel partner to go sell marketplace or an ISV after marketplace. And the one is the CSP notion. I mentioned that that’s been around for a long time. Vince Menzione 12:34 I remember when we when we instituted Yeah, CSP. Yep. Jason Rook 12:37 And the ability to attach that third party app has been there only recently. And why say recently, two and a half years ago, February 2022, we launched the private offer functionality with SMA to do a custom deal. And you know, partner can earn margin, the customer can pay below list price, all those types of things. And then, in July last July, we launched what we call multi party private offers, to US customers only. And I’m sure we’re going to talk a little bit about that expansion today. But it that functionality allows any Microsoft partner to sell an ISVs application through marketplace into an enterprise customer, which is where it gets really interesting because the enterprise space, we have customers that have cloud consumption committed, right, and they can use those commitments to purchase ISV apps. So when I say any partner it really, like we designed that feature with an incredibly low bar. Yeah. Because we want everybody to participate in this motion. Right? When I say all you need is a Microsoft AI cloud partner program ID formerly known as an NPN. ID, which you can get one of those. I have one Yeah, you have one of those. to transact the deal today. We should do it. Let’s go decrement somebody’s Mac. Yeah. Vince Menzione 13:43 Well, what’s important here too, is that it means that Microsoft’s going to do the direct billing to the customer. Yes, Jason Rook 13:47 yeah. Yeah. So you don’t have to collect Microsoft’s gonna do the collections in Microsoft’s gonna pay you on defined terms. I mean, Vince Menzione 13:54 and they’re gonna pay you on time on time, if that’s the Jason Rook 13:57 like, that’s not new, right? Anybody who’s a Microsoft partner, one of the reasons you’d love to be a part of Biff or Sif or any of those programs is, you know, while there’s lots of hurdles, and lots of work, you know, the checks gonna come on time, right? Vince Menzione 14:08 Yeah. And it might come early with a discount. Yeah, nothing. We know any of that. So one of the concerns I hear from partners is that the marketplace opportunity is clear for ISVs, but maybe not so clear for the SI world. Yeah, Jason Rook 14:23 that that’s true. I’d say it’s true. Everywhere. Very true in the Microsoft ecosystem that can be high. Is that the case? Well, I think there are a couple of things. Especially the Microsoft ecosystem, the traditional Microsoft partner, the one that you’ve you’ve had a lot of them on your show. Yeah, don’t sell software. Right, right. So there’s an investment they’re gonna need to make Now earlier, I said the the bar is lower with marketplace, but you still have to invest, right? You still have to build that muscle in the strength to go do that. And so a lot of those partners are saying hey, you It’s not clear to me that that’s worth it for me and what I need to go do to be able to transact software, right. So I think there’s part of that. There’s also some confusion around, hey, I’m a partner, and I want to sell my professional services and an ISP app, right. And so that’s not necessarily functionality that’s available yet. That’s a feature that we’re working on, we’re actually in private preview to allow that systems integrator to sell their, you know, $100,000, Azure migration, along with, you know, a million dollars in New Relic or whatever the ISV product happens to be, which is what the customer wants, right? The customer wants one stop shopping, they want it super easy. The partner wants friction free, easy transactions without a lot of Microsoft tax on top of Vince Menzione 15:46 those, right? And when does that feature and functionality come? So we’re private Jason Rook 15:49 preview for that right now for the US, Canada and UK. And so will at some point, we’ll launch into general availability, and then that that will follow kind of the MPO expansion across the globe as we get to that point. So Vince Menzione 16:02 as you you’ve been rolling out this MPO program, I think, since the start of the fiscal year, maybe a little bit before then. Right. We, for general availability started the fiscal year started the school year, what have you learned along the way? A Jason Rook 16:14 couple things. I think one of the things that I’ve been, we kind of expected this, but I’ve been shocked at how, how lopsided the managed versus unmanaged is. And I think interest I should clear that Yeah, yeah, in in the, in the Microsoft world, you have all kinds of partners, everybody can participate. But there are those partners that are managed, right. So they’ve got an FTE of some type or vendor of some type that looks after them within the Microsoft space. And normally, those are the ones that drive significant amount of revenue. They’re participating in all the programs, that’s pilots, CSP, its solution, assessments, whatever it happens to be, they’re participating in all those things. Those are not the partners that are driving the majority of the MPO deals. It’s the Microsoft partner, who is a reseller of some other type of software as well. And I always kind of framed it up, hey, it’s the it’s the Microsoft partner, you know, back in the day, when we were kind of getting started is that partner that was they were the partner in town, and then they build a Cisco business, or then they build a VMware business, then all of a sudden, they’re no longer a thought partner in town, and somebody swooped in and took that spot. Now what’s happening is we need that partner to come sell Cisco, or VMware or Red Hat, or any of those products. And they’re swooping in to enterprise customers, because they’re experts at that sale. They’re experts at that product deployment and that customer in that they know that customer that inside and out yeah, in their swooping in and selling these deals. And now the account teams are like, wait, I, where did you come from, right? Like we’ve rolled through five reps since the last time we entered interacted with you. And those partners are selling marketplace deals, and they’re not small. They’re huge marketplace deals. And all of a sudden, they’re on the radar. Again, I think we knew that would happen just because of the nature of marketplace. But the pace at which it’s happened. And you know, the the wind wires that we see and those types of things are pretty staggering. Vince Menzione 18:11 And are they bigger partners are smaller, smaller parts smaller. So this goes back to the trusted relationship piece, right? The seven seats at the table, these are the organizations that you as a customer, and you might have a Big Mac agreement with Microsoft. Yeah. And yet you trust this local relationship to Jason Rook 18:26 win because you trust that local relationship because they’re experts in titanium or VMware or whatever that happens to be right. Now, granted, the big guys are doing well. But it’s staggering how good the little guys are doing. It’s It’s really It’s refreshing to see right? Because we’ve got this 400,000 partner ecosystem you often wonder like, hey, where does everybody play? Yeah, and people are finding a new path. We Vince Menzione 18:51 are thrilled to announce our partnership within partner software, the world’s leading provider of partner management technologies, serving over 4 million partners globally, in partner excels in delivering cutting edge solutions for partner relationship management, and partner marketing automation. Their robust platform offers essential tools like program compliance tracking customizable partner journeys and comprehensive business planning. These features Empower partner teams to swiftly transition from program design to achieving maximum value in partner is dedicated to supporting partner ecosystems everywhere and continues to innovate with new modules like analytic studio designed to help track and maximize the ROI of your partner program. For more information visit in partner.com. Vince Menzione 19:47 I think that’s fascinating about this and I don’t want to digress is that we Microsoft had this concentration at one point when I was there around these large account resellers and then became LSPs. And it was a concentration of All of the revenue up to a few. And what you’re saying is it’s spreading out, it’s thinning out along along the long tail a little bit. Maybe not quite the longtail, but a little further down to smaller. Well, Jason Rook 20:11 specific to marketplace. Yeah. This market marketplace. Yeah, there’s just because there are things that other partners can do very, very well, that now drive and marketplace Sell Sale, which then drives Azure. Right. And it’s in, that’s a really unique opportunity at this point in time. And I mentioned like, we set that bar very low to be able to participate, because we wanted to see that happen. I think it’s an interesting you think about Microsoft, right? The waves of opportunity, right? There was the, you know, I’m Vince Menzione 20:45 gonna bring this up with you. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I Jason Rook 20:48 was looking up, you know, I kind of came at the wave of which was, you know, the windows 2000 AD, the mail wars, right, the notes versus exchange, that was a wave. And then there was the dotnet days, and then SharePoint and Azure. I think there’s a window right now for partners to step into this marketplace motion. It’s not going to be a wave, like some of the other waves we’re probably going to talk about today. But it is it’s a window of opportunity to kind of reinvigorate your Microsoft relationship and reinsert yourself into some of those things that you may have wanted, like deep relationships with account teams, the ability to sell with and across Microsoft. Yeah, Vince Menzione 21:23 yep. So new opportunity areas to engage with Microsoft sell selling teams. Yep. Being first being first in an area. So same way that your other organization was with Azure. Yep. Yeah. You mentioned you alluded to Geo expansion. You talked a little bit about moving from the US market into the UK, Canada. Yep. Tell us more about that. So Jason Rook 21:44 we don’t disclose a lot about the geo expansion. And I think the reason why, and you can kind of look at how other hyper scalars have rolled theirs out, as well as that. It’s not a technical lift. It’s a lot of tax and regulatory. Right. Yeah. So there’s just on commerce engine below. Yeah, absolutely. So there’s ongoing conversations, but we do know that we are on track to launch in Canada and UK that previous one really well. So in the summer timeframe that will go live there. And then we’ll start to look at what the next geographies are. After that. It’s obvious if you think about where we want to go, it’s we want to go everywhere, right. But there are definitely markets that are larger, that are a lot of opportunity. There’s definitely some of those markets are also highly complex regulatory perspective. Right. So as I think the plan, you know, we’ve done a much better job over the last two years of kind of putting this roadmap out. The next probably roadmap, you know, it’s always the Inspire timeframe, which I know, we can’t say inspire timeframe anymore, because that’s kind of gone. But Vince Menzione 22:43 it’s July 1, beginning of the fiscal year Microsoft, and inspires usually mid July. Right. So Jason Rook 22:48 normally, we say inspire timeframe. But uh, you know, we’ll probably get more updates on that in that July timeframe. The Vince Menzione 22:54 July timeframe, we’re gonna call it from now on, right, it’s, it’s changing. So you alluded to something else earlier, too. And, you know, it’s like the elephant in the room. We can’t have a discussion any longer without talking about AI is huge AI opportunity. Right. Jay was with us yesterday $158 billion channel opportunity by 2028. Probably under call that he once said to me that he thought it was a hype moment around AI. He has since said that sentiment has changed. And he’s he’s pulled back from that hype moment and saying that this really is the moment for AI. Jason Rook 23:27 I mean, obviously at Microsoft, we think it is. I think, you know, if I think channel, right? I mean, that’s what this conversation is all about, I think, what would be interesting to as to figure out as to see who figures out the AI opportunity and what it looks like, right? So I don’t sit on as many as virus reports. I used to now that I’m at Microsoft, but I do spend some time with a dynamics partner. And one of the pieces of feedback that they’ve given me is that, hey, we go in and we do these copilot presentations. And we turn it all on and we leave and then we come back to start to prospect and the customers like great, we got copilot. We’re copilot everywhere. We’re done. Thanks for showing us right. And so their concern was, hey, is this AI motion going to really kind of cut into our opportunity? Yeah. And what they’ve started to do is kind of dust off some of the old things. They were you know, like most partners, they were exchange shop and office 365, SharePoint, Azure dynamics, they started to go back and kind of dust off some of that SharePoint playbook and say, Okay, we’re gonna go run around all the business departments. And now that you’ve got AI, let us show you how we can do like Intelligent Automation. Let me let me show you how we can build internal apps. So I think there’s a path there where people are going to pick up some of that muscle. I think there’s, I think, you know, app dev and AI might be easier. I know. Yesterday, we had a session to talk about All right, we talked about all the co pilot toolset, yes, the studio. But there’s going to be kind of a resurrection of those guys that go in right Apps customers. I think there are going to be that’s going to be some super cool work that’ll happen. If people go straight to the hey, we’re gonna get to build a data governance packet or practice. I didn’t know, you know, it took me two, we went down that path with data, right? We hired a bunch of data scientists. And what we found out is that customers wanted to do their own data work, right? Yeah, I’m not gonna let some partner come in here and tell me what my data means. But usually they don’t they They’re a mess with their data. They’re a mess. So there’s probably some some governance in the arc and some guidance there. But I don’t know. Well, time will tell. But if I were building an AI partner today, boy, it would be a little more apt heavy. And I’d be building that tool set. Vince Menzione 25:36 I want to ask you another question about AI. And I remember having this conversation with somebody who was on the global blackbelt. Team. Yeah. When copilot first came out, and it was we were getting calls from every CEO saying come in here. And it was the first time maybe in years that Microsoft was getting that level of attention. Right? AWS had basically had the data state, they had most of the, because they had the eyes dominance, right. And that kind of shifted with AI. So that was the other thing. We’re not just the technology, but I think the the buying behavior and the customer persona changed for Microsoft and for Microsoft sellers. How do you think that’s impacting the marketplace, business and business opportunity? As you said? Jason Rook 26:19 That’s a really interesting question. I can only speak to what I see. There’s a couple things that I see. Luckily, I’ve been to bonds org and I know Yeah, had you been an ISP success? The excitement, from ISV success participants about building AI into their apps interesting is off the charts. Like it is really, that’s, that team’s a really exciting place to be right now. Because you’re having to, with every ISV, you talk to you, you’re having that conversation about AI, and they’re in there, and but they’re asking for a lot of things like, hey, help me do this, I want to build AI into my app. I think that’s really interesting. The thing that I also see in my seat, is, for some reason, I get routed a lot of systems integrators, who are now hey, we’re going to become a software provider, right? And AI is going to be what drives that, right. And that’s a, that’s a heavy lift to build to take a systems integrator and then go spin out a software piece, Vince Menzione 27:15 right? I’ve seen it done before, but it is a heavy lift, it is a heavy Jason Rook 27:19 lift. And most of those, you know, historically, most of those become practice offerings, right. So they’re not in their services, 20% software. And that’s not that doesn’t work well in a marketplace construct today. But I think that there’s a number of those types of partners that are going to shift and they’re going to become multifaceted in that way, they’re going to sell software, probably under a different banner, right? Because they’re going to try to sell through marketplace through channels, those types of things. They don’t want the friction of hey, you know, I’m ABC S, or you know, Si, and now I have ABS, ABC si app that I want to sell, and I want you to go sell my app for me, they’re going to spin those out. But I think it’s really exciting to see that component. And that’s like this really interesting integration between AI and marketplace, beyond all the other cool stuff that we’ll be able to do with AI in the in the storefront experience, right. But if you think about building a business, or building a better product, it’s a super exciting time. Vince Menzione 28:13 Yeah, it’s very exciting. So for our listeners and viewers watching us today, then maybe haven’t taken the leap. And yet, right maybe they’re an SI, maybe their channel partner, you’d like to call them selling partners, right? The ones you work with Jason Rook 28:25 bounced that term around, right? Because it’s really what is the how does the ISP refer to them? Right? And when we sit have these conversations, the distance we’ll call them vendors, or resellers and vendors, and we kind of tried to map to what is the broader ecosystem look, but you know, if you think about it, the non ISV that wants to sell an ISV app. Vince Menzione 28:45 Yeah. What do you say to them now? To get them on board? Jason Rook 28:48 The channel partners? Yeah, um, depends on there’s a lot about persona, right? Because if you think about that ecosystem is huge. It’s every day from the distributor to the VAR to the all flavor si local, regional national to the niche player to the 1000s of MSPs. You know, the top end, if you think about kind of the distributor in the large reseller, it’s so easy way to expand your Minecart. Yeah. It’s some ways to tell you’re getting this pressure from the ISP or depending what’s the vendor, they’re telling you, hey, I want to go to marketplace I mean, marketplace. When a ISP moves to a marketplace driven sales motion, it drives a lot of cost out of their business, right? So they’re getting that pressure there. So hey, some of its Hey, not carrot more stick, and they’re getting that from us in the US the hyperscalers. And the ISPs. You know, in some cases, it’s Hey, you can now participate in another revenue generator for you. Now granted, sometimes your perception might be you’re taking away my top line revenue and just leaving me with the mark. Yeah, that’s always been an issue. Yeah. And that’s going to continue to be an issue and I think there are some that are evolving pretty quickly to figure that out. But in some of these some partners that haven’t historically been a part of the software transaction, that’s new money to them. I think the other way that we kind of position it is also a little bit of if you’re not doing it, somebody else is going to do it. And we see that in some of the, you know, some of the mega deals, or I should say, large marketplace deals. The channel partner that sold the deal was not necessarily like the incumbent, right. And the story always still is, you don’t want to be that systems integrator. That’s in doing a lot of great systems integration work, right, Vince Menzione 30:36 your digital partner of record back in the day and Microsoft terminology, but you were the incumbent, I guess, is what I would say, right? Jason Rook 30:43 You don’t want to be you don’t want to own the Azure piece and all the design development, and then you get the 11th hour and the customers like, oh, I also need this additional firewall to run on top of Windows Firewall. And I also need this data tool from that app. And I need this tool from New Relic and blah, blah, blah, and now I need to go aggregate those, and I’m gonna go pull those from somebody who is a reseller. When you’re that systems integrator, you’re like, wow, I could just set all that up and marketplace for you right now and maintain account control. Yeah, I think that’s a big piece as well. And then the other piece that I think you just hear all the time, it’s gonna be the path your as much support, you’re always looking for the path to how do you build that crisp relationship with the people that carry the bat? Right. And I think this is going to be that path. Vince Menzione 31:22 What do you see from the best? You know, you mentioned that account control, that partner has the account control, but what else do you see from the best of the best that you work with? Implementing this MPO? Jason Rook 31:33 So I would say there’s a couple things. On the high end, the larger partners, the ones that are starting to shift their go to market strategy, and their comp plans comp plans. Yeah. So when there’s hard drives behavior comp drives behavior, so when they make a marketplace transaction equal to an off marketplace transaction, and in some rare cases, already, a marketplace transaction more lucrative for the seller than an off marketplace transaction. That’s a huge best practice. Then I think there’s a next click down, we’re seeing something really interesting with a handful of partners. Again, we’re only in the US today. So I will tell you the what’s going on in the UK with the private preview, like there’s partners over there. Soft cat bites, compu Sen, a lot of UK names that you might have just know, they’re already doing marketing events, right? They’re like, we’re not even GA yet. They’re already out there. Right? So there’s a lot of that. But in the in the US, there’s a couple of partners that kind of are those larger reseller space. And what they’re doing that’s really interesting, is they’re going around, and they’re educating Microsoft account teams on marketplace. And if you think about, if you think of it, I love this because it took me through we did that all the time. Azure, yeah, we would go do these Lunch and Learns not with customer, but with Microsoft account teams to teach them about Azure. Like, I can’t tell you how many times I went and taught somebody what DevOps was right, and how that led to an Azure sale. And there’s a handful of these resellers that are starting to do that with marketplace. What’s really interesting is that they come in and say, Hey, in reality, we’ve been doing marketplace in this motion for four years, guys, like we know the marketplace motion, you don’t. And let us show you how a marketplace sale takes place. And we’ll just we’ll we’ll swap in the right hyper scalar for this conversation. And I think those partners are having a lot of success. And they’re using marketplaces, this wedge to build better Microsoft relationships, right? And then when they leave that account team or that eight year that’s do they, they don’t think of that as a marketplace conversation like oh, this partner does marketplace, but they also have an AI practice. They also have an Azure practice those types of things. So I think that’s one of the things I would Vince Menzione 33:41 say it’s comes down to the fundamentals, the foundation of what makes a successful partner, you did it attend Matt Intuit, you mentioned this, and then it’s about building that brand. And that story of being known for that one thing. And being that trusted adviser to an account seller who’s trying to make quota as 100, maybe a couple 100 partners calling on him every day, if you’re the quickest path to them making their number and maybe helping them get to where they need to go to maybe a red jacket as we still refer to it. Yep. And today. Yeah, I mean, that’s the path to success. And then you become known for that one thing, you become the partner, the ego to partner, right. It’s very, it’s fascinating that you brought that up. Jason Rook 34:21 Yeah, there’s a handful of ISVs that were early in the US preview that had some of the early deals that we already know, they’re they have the early deals in the UK preview, right, like they’ve repeated, they rinsed and repeated that motion. And it’s, it’s pretty smart. Vince Menzione 34:39 So got a couple of other questions. I want to ask you about multi party offers in marketplace, but I want to I want to flip into a personal question. I love asking each of my guests. So Jason, you’re hosting a dinner party, anywhere in the country, maybe anywhere in the world. In fact, since you’re gonna be doing a little bit of a roadshow, you might pick someplace else You can invite any guest. Three guests, in fact, from the present or the past of this amazing dinner party, whom would you invite and why? Jason Rook 35:09 So here’s the problem with being episode 3230 something right now, I’ve seen this show so many times. I think the challenge is you don’t want to answer this question. You don’t want to take somebody else’s answer. Right. But I will, Vince Menzione 35:23 though Elon Musk’s. You know, Bill Gates, has Jason Rook 35:27 been a couple interesting. You’ve had a couple of guests that have like, pulled some themes together. I mentioned Jay like Jada, this got Canadian come comedians, right. Yeah. So I’ll do the kind of a similar theme, I think. Vince Menzione 35:40 Heroes of Ohio, Heroes of Ohio. Jason Rook 35:43 So let’s theme this one out. So the first one would be Thomas Edison. So New Jersey, come on, yo, he was born in Milan, Ohio. I did not every kid in northern Ohio that you at one point third or fourth grade, you go through his boyhood home, right. So love that. Yeah. So so there’s like the split this time in Milan, Ohio that everybody gets. So that would be one. The other. The next one is kind of another inventor, kind of interesting guy. When I was in elementary school, I had to do this book report on famous Bo Vermeil. And I picked Eddie Rickenbacker. And if you’ve ever know there’s an airport in Ohio, named after him, and he was a World War One fighter pilot, he was interesting guy, racecar driver. He’s the guy that kind of he’s, I guess, coined with he was the founder of the soapbox derby. But when I was doing that research, when I was looking at what I found this article about Edie Reichenbach or we’d go hang out and smoke cigars with the Wright brothers. And so think about like, stories that he could tell like, Hey, we’ve got some plywood and some wax paper. Let’s, let’s see if we can take that airborne, right. So I think that would be really interesting. And then the third is like the patron saint of Ohio, which would be Woody Hayes. So obviously, the greatest football coach in history, for at least most of us, but the interesting thing about him as well. And I know you’ve been through a lot of like the Microsoft exec training the bench program that you always have to pick up on your mission statement, that type of thing. And I, mine has always been you win with people, right? And I didn’t make that up. I kind of stole it from the title Woody Hayes his book, right? And so I love he wrote a book. And that was always his big thing is you win with people. So I think that would be fascinating. He was quite the character as well. So if you think about those three guys, and Woody Hayes kind of leading the conversation, that would be a great dinner party, Vince Menzione 37:27 I still want to ask, I’m gonna come along and bring dessert if you don’t mind. But I want to talk to Thomas Edison about how why he went when it good. Why did he come to New Jersey, then Jason Rook 37:36 it will, he also did a lot of his work in the state of North wood, which would be a really interesting conversation between him and Woody Hayes. Vince Menzione 37:41 I love it. I love it. It was a fascinating list. All right. So we are at the we’re at that point, right, the new beginning of the new fiscal year for Microsoft, lots of great excitement, lots of great energy about ready to happen. What advice would you have for our viewers and listeners here today on how to achieve their greatest results, how to optimize for success in this new fiscal year with Microsoft? Jason Rook 38:05 So kind of parting thoughts going into the Microsoft’s next fiscal year, marketplace related or in general? Vince Menzione 38:12 We can go marketplace. That’s what we’re Yeah, that’s what we’re here for. Right. Jason Rook 38:16 So I think, from a marketplace perspective, I think the vast majority of Microsoft partners still need to lean in and get educated. Yeah. Because it’s not for everyone, right? And no, no, there’s not one Microsoft motion that everybody jumps on, everybody’s gonna jump on AI but in their own flavor, right. I think you need to understand where the marketplace fits for you and your business. Whether you you know, if you don’t sell software today, you need to understand like, hey, if I get in a situation where I needed to sell software, am I going to be able to do this motion with Microsoft? If you’re a CSP? I think we use we yesterday you spent yet a whole session kind of talking about like the momentum and SMC. If you’re a CSP partner. You definitely need to understand the I should make sure I’m clear on so it CSP so CSP is a really fun term it myself, right. So if you’re a customer, you can buy Microsoft, you don’t buy directly Microsoft buying a cloud solution provider contract was sold to you by a cloud solution provider who can be a direct cloud solution provider or an indirect cloud solution provider who sells the indirect cloud service provider resellers. Right? Vince Menzione 39:23 So if you’re in that mix, people say it’s so complex Yeah, to work with Microsoft. But if Jason Rook 39:27 you’re in that mix in you know what CSP is, you should understand the marketplace. Yes model because if you think about that, the opportunity in SMC SMC customers can be SMB. They can be larger upper upper upper enterprise customers, they can buy direct on an enterprise contract, the MPO that could buy off a CSP contract CSP, right and I think those partners are going to need to really lean in and provide some value and coach those customers Along the right path. Yeah, yep. Vince Menzione 40:02 And they have an opportunity to make more money selling an ISV solution on top of the other services that are providing. Absolutely. Yeah. I Jason Rook 40:07 mean, it’s the other thing is you don’t want to leave any money on the table. Right. So I think that the partners that figure that out in that space will be really critical. The other thing is that there’s I think, if you’re one of those partners who you kind of been on the fray, right. You’ve always been in the program, but not in the program type thing. But you’ve got a really strong relationship with an ISV, who sells a lot through marketplace. Usually net, right, the opportunity might be coming for you, right? That’s an important piece. Yeah, yep. Yeah. And Vince Menzione 40:38 stay, you know, we we we use ultimate partner in the events we do to really educate people on what’s been happening, right. They’re a third of a trillion dollars in cloud budgets, right this marketplace moment. Satya said 80% growth in 100 million dollar cloud commitments just in quarter to quarter growth. So if you’re not looking at this as a huge opportunity, or you’re missing, you need to lean in. Jason, I want to thank you for being here. So great to have you in the studio. Glad you finally got 13 to now what a change has been, I want to thank all of our followers, listeners, supporters of Ultimate Partner and for listening tuning in, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you follow along, we’ll be able to get more incredible guests like Jason to come join us. Thank you for your support. Thank you for listening to The Ultimate Partner. Thanks for listening to this episode of Ultimate Partner. Hopefully, this episode and all the episodes we’ve recorded are helping you better align your partner strategy to achieve your greatest results. So I want to ask you something. Have you implemented everything you’ve been learning? And are you now achieving the growth and revenue objectives that you hope to achieve? If not, it’s time to take action now. Join ultimate partner experience. We’re building the community I’ve always dreamed about. With up x you get access to exclusive Industry Insights, unparalleled networking opportunities, tons of educational resources, and support from a community that shares your goals. Join us now visit our website, the ultimate partner.com and sign up today. | |||
| 227 – Trunal Bhanse Tells Us How to Close More Deals with Co-Sell | 15 Jul 2024 | 00:55:27 | |
Trunal Bhanse, Co-Founder & CEO at Clazar, joins the Ultimate Partner.
On this episode of Ultimate Partner, we dive into the intricate world of cloud marketplaces and AI with our esteemed guest, Trunal Bhanse, Co-Founder and CEO of Clazar. Trunal’s journey from engineering leader to innovator in the marketplace ecosystem is nothing short of inspiring. Whether you’re a tech alliance leader, ecosystem leader, or an entrepreneur, this episode promises invaluable insights into how Clazar is shaping the future of marketplaces, co-selling and market dynamics. The Dominance of HyperscalersTrunal and Vince kick off the conversation by discussing the substantial impact of the three hyperscalers—AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. With over a third of a trillion dollars in durable cloud budgets, these giants are driving significant growth and innovation in cloud technologies. As Trunal notes, the technology and support provided by hyperscalers have evolved dramatically, offering robust APIs and comprehensive documentation that empower businesses to leverage cloud marketplaces effectively. Evolution and Impact of MarketplacesThe transformation of cloud marketplaces is a central theme in this episode. Trunal shares his experiences from Yahoo, LinkedIn, Airbnb, and Confluent, illustrating the rapid advancements in marketplace technology. These platforms have shifted from rudimentary beginnings to sophisticated systems that are now crucial channels for software sales and procurement. The Role of AI in Modernizing Software SalesArtificial intelligence is revolutionizing the SaaS ecosystem. Trunal emphasizes how AI is not only enhancing product capabilities but also streamlining operational efficiencies, reducing the time required to bring new products to market. This dual impact of AI is creating more opportunities for innovative and differentiated products in the marketplace. The Three-Body Problem AnalogyOne of the most compelling parts of the episode is Trunal’s “three-body problem” analogy. He explains how the constant interaction between hyperscalers, Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), and evolving market conditions necessitates continuous adaptation. This analogy provides a nuanced understanding of the complexities and dynamic nature of the cloud marketplace ecosystem. The Vision Behind ClazarClazar was founded with the mission to modernize software sales. Trunal and his co-founder, leveraging their extensive experience, aim to create a platform where every software seller can efficiently buy and sell products. Their vision is to drive the next phase of marketplace evolution, ensuring that technology adoption continues to accelerate. 10 Things You Will Learn Listening to the Episode
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TranscriptGenerated by Adobe AI – please excuse any typos and incorrect text. 00;00;00;00 – 00;00;05;06 00;00;05;06 – 00;00;10;21 00;00;10;23 – 00;00;27;19 00;00;27;19 – 00;00;31;22 00;00;31;23 – 00;00;54;03 00;00;54;05 – 00;01;24;07 00;01;24;10 – 00;01;37;08 00;01;37;10 – 00;01;39;19 00;01;39;20 – 00;01;48;14 00;01;48;14 – 00;01;54;09 00;01;54;09 – 00;01;57;11 00;01;57;11 – 00;02;01;12 00;02;01;13 – 00;02;23;10 00;02;23;12 – 00;02;43;29 00;02;44;03 – 00;02;50;27 00;02;50;27 – 00;02;53;19 00;02;53;20 – 00;03;11;29 00;03;12;00 – 00;03;19;20 00;03;19;21 – 00;03;44;10 00;03;44;10 – 00;04;13;22 00;04;13;28 – 00;04;32;20 00;04;32;27 – 00;04;49;01 00;04;49;08 – 00;05;07;19 00;05;07;22 – 00;05;26;23 00;05;27;00 – 00;05;50;08 00;05;50;10 – 00;06;19;11 00;06;19;13 – 00;06;31;13 00;06;31;15 – 00;06;53;07 00;06;53;09 – 00;07;18;26 00;07;18;26 – 00;07;36;22 00;07;36;24 – 00;07;40;12 00;07;40;15 – 00;08;11;11 00;08;11;15 – 00;08;40;22 00;08;40;22 – 00;09;00;21 00;09;00;21 – 00;09;19;25 00;09;19;25 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00;52;13;25 – 00;52;19;05 00;52;19;12 – 00;52;38;26 00;52;38;26 – 00;52;59;11 00;52;59;14 – 00;53;23;26 00;53;23;29 – 00;53;44;08 00;53;44;11 – 00;53;47;03 00;53;47;03 – 00;53;56;29 00;53;56;29 – 00;54;04;14 00;54;04;16 – 00;54;17;15 00;54;17;15 – 00;54;35;07 00;54;35;10 – 00;54;35;22 00;54;35;25 – 00;54;43;28 00;54;43;28 – 00;55;06;01 00;55;06;03 – 00;55;38;02 | |||
| 226 - Unlocking Cloud Excellence: Pinnacle Partner Insights and the Future of AI | 08 Jul 2024 | 00:28:59 | |
Laurent Mechain, Vice President of Strategic Alliances at Elastic, joins the Ultimate Partner.
With an impressive background in cloud technology and strategic alliances, Laurent Mechain brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the role of VP of Strategic Alliances at Elastic. Laurent has played a crucial role in driving the company’s success in the highly competitive cloud industry, rising to Pinnacle Partner Status with all three Hyperscalers.. The Journey of Laurent MechainLaurent Mechain, originally from France, has spent almost 20 years in the U.S. After 17 years at Microsoft and a significant stint at AWS, he joined Elastic four years ago. Today, Laurent leads Elastic’s Strategic Alliances team, focusing on partnerships with hyperscalers. His journey in cloud computing and his role at Elastic provide a unique perspective on the industry’s evolution. Elastic’s Mission: Empowering Through DataElastic is a company that enables organizations to find answers with data at speed and scale. They focus on making the most of all data, using the power of search, AI, and analytics. Elastic offers out-of-the-box solutions for observability and security and a customizable search platform. Their mission is to help customers extract real-time insights from their data, enhancing operational efficiency and security. Evolution of Search: From Keywords to RelevanceTraditional keyword search is no longer sufficient in today’s data-driven world. Laurent explains the shift towards semantic search, which connects context to provide more relevant and accurate results. This evolution emphasizes relevance over mere keyword matching, enabling users to get higher-quality answers to their queries. Elastic’s search technology leverages AI to enhance this relevance, making it a powerful tool for businesses. Recognized Excellence: Awards and PartnershipsElastic’s success is highlighted by its recognition as a partner of the year by all three hyperscalers: Microsoft, Google, and AWS. This distinction underscores Elastic’s integrations’ quality and ability to create unique, market-leading solutions. Laurent attributes their success to three key factors: building strong integrations, effective go-to-market strategies, and robust customer engagement. The Power of Data: Driving Business TransformationData is at the heart of modern business transformation. Laurent shares insights on how data drives customer experiences, operational resilience, and security. With the exponential growth of data, businesses need advanced tools to make sense of it. Elastic’s platform, combining search and AI, is designed to extract valuable insights from vast amounts of data, helping businesses stay competitive and innovative. Innovation at Elastic: Leading the AI RevolutionElastic is at the forefront of integrating AI into its search capabilities. They were early adopters of machine learning and have seamlessly integrated large, publicly trained models with private enterprise data. This combination ensures that data remains secure while leveraging the power of AI to provide insightful results. Laurent highlights Elastic’s continuous innovation, including new technologies like the Elasticsearch relevance engine and AI-powered search assistance. Marketplace Strategy: Meeting Customers Where They AreElastic’s marketplace-first initiative has significantly boosted its cloud business. They have seen tremendous growth by ensuring customers can buy, deploy, and manage Elastic solutions through cloud marketplaces. Laurent shares that in 2021, less than 10% of their cloud business was transacted via marketplaces. By the last quarter, this figure had jumped to 47%, showcasing their successful strategy in aligning with customer purchasing preferences. Looking Ahead: Embracing Future OpportunitiesAs data continues to grow and AI technology advances, Elastic is poised to remain a leader in the cloud industry. Laurent’s insights into the evolving landscape highlight the importance of innovation, strategic partnerships, and a customer-centric approach. Elastic’s commitment to empowering organizations through data and AI will undoubtedly drive their continued success in the future. Conclusion: Lessons from a Cloud PioneerLaurent Machan’s journey and Elastic’s achievements offer valuable lessons for any business aiming to excel in the cloud industry. Organizations can unlock new opportunities and drive significant growth by focusing on innovation, building strong partnerships, and leveraging data and AI. Stay tuned to The Ultimate Partner for more insights from industry leaders shaping the future of technology. Tune in to this episode to learn more about Laurent Mechain’s vision for Elastic and how the company is shaping the future of cloud technology and search. https://youtu.be/rAatXdKpInMLISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP What You’ll Learn
“Relevance in search is about connecting contexts to bring quality answers to complex queries.” “Elastic’s mission is to enable real-time data insights, helping customers make the most of their data.” “Success in the cloud marketplace is driven by strong integrations, collaborative go-to-market strategies, and effective sales execution.” Transcript – Created by Adobe AI 00;00;00;00 – 00;00;31;29 00;00;32;02 – 00;00;33;18 00;00;33;25 – 00;00;35;12 00;00;35;13 – 00;00;39;28 00;00;39;28 – 00;00;45;06 00;00;45;07 – 00;00;49;21 00;00;49;22 – 00;00;52;09 00;00;52;10 – 00;01;10;02 00;01;10;02 – 00;01;31;27 00;01;31;27 – 00;01;35;04 00;01;35;06 – 00;01;36;14 00;01;36;17 – 00;01;50;03 00;01;50;06 – 00;02;09;09 00;02;09;12 – 00;02;41;00 00;02;41;02 – 00;02;54;28 00;02;55;00 – 00;03;02;01 00;03;02;03 – 00;03;20;28 00;03;20;28 – 00;03;21;15 00;03;21;18 – 00;03;43;20 00;03;43;22 – 00;03;56;02 00;03;56;02 – 00;04;00;27 00;04;00;29 – 00;04;26;08 00;04;26;08 – 00;04;32;19 00;04;32;21 – 00;04;35;01 00;04;35;01 – 00;04;57;02 00;04;57;06 – 00;05;32;26 00;05;32;28 – 00;05;35;09 00;05;35;12 – 00;05;45;01 00;05;45;04 – 00;06;05;07 00;06;05;09 – 00;06;30;26 00;06;30;26 – 00;06;45;11 00;06;45;16 – 00;07;21;01 00;07;21;01 – 00;07;43;16 00;07;43;18 – 00;08;05;19 00;08;05;24 – 00;08;32;10 00;08;32;12 – 00;08;54;20 00;08;54;20 – 00;09;23;16 00;09;23;18 – 00;09;40;04 00;09;40;06 – 00;09;59;29 00;10;00;02 – 00;10;10;14 00;10;10;15 – 00;10;31;04 00;10;31;05 – 00;10;32;18 00;10;32;20 – 00;10;51;26 00;10;51;26 – 00;10;55;03 00;10;55;05 – 00;10;56;03 00;10;56;03 – 00;10;58;07 00;10;58;07 – 00;11;24;15 00;11;24;17 – 00;11;42;27 00;11;42;27 – 00;12;11;14 00;12;11;14 – 00;12;33;17 00;12;33;19 – 00;12;59;14 00;12;59;17 – 00;13;15;24 00;13;15;24 – 00;13;19;22 00;13;19;27 – 00;13;38;12 00;13;38;12 – 00;14;03;04 00;14;03;04 – 00;14;17;16 00;14;17;17 – 00;14;24;16 00;14;24;23 – 00;14;29;27 00;14;30;00 – 00;14;30;23 00;14;30;26 – 00;14;52;06 00;14;52;06 – 00;14;57;22 00;14;57;22 – 00;15;00;06 00;15;00;08 – 00;15;23;24 00;15;23;26 – 00;15;28;16 00;15;28;16 – 00;15;48;05 00;15;48;10 – 00;15;53;17 00;15;53;17 – 00;16;12;24 00;16;12;24 – 00;16;31;20 00;16;31;22 – 00;16;52;27 00;16;53;02 – 00;17;13;01 00;17;13;03 – 00;17;28;11 00;17;28;11 – 00;17;52;29 00;17;53;02 – 00;18;11;16 00;18;11;18 – 00;18;28;17 00;18;28;23 – 00;18;29;17 00;18;29;17 – 00;18;38;24 00;18;38;27 – 00;18;53;14 00;18;53;14 – 00;18;56;20 00;18;56;20 – 00;19;09;12 00;19;09;14 – 00;19;09;19 00;19;09;19 – 00;19;10;17 00;19;10;19 – 00;19;16;01 00;19;16;02 – 00;19;34;06 00;19;34;08 – 00;19;55;05 00;19;55;08 – 00;20;09;21 00;20;09;24 – 00;20;24;00 00;20;24;01 – 00;20;32;23 00;20;32;23 – 00;20;33;08 00;20;33;08 – 00;20;52;23 00;20;52;25 – 00;21;22;00 00;21;22;03 – 00;21;34;16 00;21;34;16 – 00;21;35;05 00;21;35;05 – 00;21;57;20 00;21;57;23 – 00;22;24;12 00;22;24;15 – 00;22;43;08 00;22;43;08 – 00;22;44;23 00;22;44;23 – 00;22;46;24 00;22;46;24 – 00;22;47;14 00;22;47;16 – 00;23;02;28 00;23;03;00 – 00;23;05;19 00;23;05;19 – 00;23;06;06 00;23;06;08 – 00;23;06;19 00;23;06;19 – 00;23;11;10 00;23;11;10 – 00;23;15;28 00;23;15;28 – 00;23;28;17 00;23;28;17 – 00;23;29;13 00;23;29;15 – 00;23;46;12
00;23;46;14 – 00;24;04;03 00;24;04;06 – 00;24;25;27 00;24;25;27 – 00;24;45;14 00;24;45;16 – 00;25;07;24 00;25;07;25 – 00;25;24;16 00;25;24;18 – 00;25;32;06 00;25;32;10 – 00;25;33;20 00;25;33;22 – 00;25;38;21 00;25;38;23 – 00;25;51;19 00;25;51;22 – 00;26;08;05 00;26;08;07 – 00;26;28;06 00;26;28;07 – 00;26;53;14 00;26;53;16 – 00;27;08;28 00;27;08;28 – 00;27;12;28 00;27;13;01 – 00;27;14;22 00;27;14;24 – 00;27;39;23 00;27;39;25 – 00;28;01;10 00;28;01;13 – 00;28;30;28 00;28;31;00 – 00;28;46;10 …. | |||
| 244 – Driving Success in Google Cloud’s Marketplace: Insights from CDW | 13 Nov 2024 | 00:05:19 | |
Dustin Nelson, Sales Director at CDW, Joins Ultimate Partner®
I’m thrilled to share my interview with Dustin Nelson, Sales Director at CDW, recorded live at Google Cloud’s Marketplace Exchange! Dustin dives into how CDW has embraced the marketplace model to meet customers’ evolving needs in today’s SaaS-driven world, where cloud marketplaces are transforming how organizations buy, manage, and scale solutions. Dustin shares CDW’s journey of building a dedicated team to support Google Cloud Marketplace transactions, which has led to impressive growth: over $400 million in marketplace business and 500 transactions this year alone. With customers now at the center, Dustin emphasizes that open collaboration between Google, ISVs, and partners like CDW is crucial for delivering enhanced value and transaction flexibility. For organizations planning their 2025 marketplace strategy, Dustin advises embracing collaboration and focusing on customer-centric approaches to stay ahead in this fast-evolving ecosystem. Tune into this Ultimate Partner episode to hear how CDW is sparking the marketplace ecosystem! https://youtu.be/jFiAlNgVCgQ?si=zGoWBCZsKPr8wSB3LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Ultimate Partner ExperienceEver wonder what you could achieve with the right partners? Dive into the Ultimate Partner Experience Community (UPX) and discover a world of possibilities! Exclusive ContentGain access to cutting-edge content and events crafted by partnership professionals. Stay ahead with strategies, trends, and in-depth interviews with the industry leaders in partnerships. Access to a Like-Minded CommunityOur next event is just around the corner and everyone is welcome. Although the event is open to the public, we want to give a special privilege to our members. Which means the Q&A session is exclusive to members only. It’s bound to be an exciting event and we look forward to seeing you all there! Make Connections That Matter!Dive right in and send a direct message to any member of UPX community! You are not just joining a group, but unlocking an open and vibrant network of professionals waiting to connect with you. Seize this golden opportunity to expand your horizons, fuel your career growth and discover exhilarating business prospects. The world is your oyster at UPX, let’s explore it together! Come Join UsI’m thrilled to welcome you to this journey. Let’s navigate, thrive, and redefine success in the tech partnership landscape together. Come Sign Up LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Now on YouTube | |||
| 225 - Empowering Partners for FY25 Success: Exclusive Interview with Microsoft's Nicole Dezen | 24 Jun 2024 | 00:25:57 | |
Nicole Dezen, Chief Partner Officer and CVP of Microsoft Global Partner Solutions, joins the Ultimate Partner.
In the latest Ultimate Partner episode, host Vince Menzione flew to Redmond, Washington. He sat down with Nicole Dezen, Microsoft’s Chief Partner Officer, to discuss Microsoft’s plans for its new fiscal year 25 and the evolving landscape of technology, security, and the partner ecosystem. This engaging conversation delves into the transformative power of AI, the critical importance of cybersecurity, and the collaborative efforts of Microsoft and its partners to drive innovation and safeguard the digital world. The Transformative Power of AI Nicole Dezen kicks off the conversation by emphasizing the revolutionary impact of AI on various industries. She highlights how AI is not just a technological advancement but a catalyst for profound change, enhancing productivity, and fostering innovation. Nicole explains how Microsoft is at the forefront of integrating AI into its products and services, ensuring that they provide smarter, more efficient solutions for their customers. This commitment to AI is part of Microsoft’s broader strategy to stay ahead in an increasingly competitive tech landscape. Cybersecurity: A Priority Zero In today’s digital world, cybersecurity is paramount, and Nicole stresses its importance by describing it as “priority zero” at Microsoft. She delves into the company’s proactive approach to addressing security threats, highlighting initiatives like the Secure Future Initiative (SFI). This program is designed to strengthen cybersecurity across Microsoft’s products and infrastructure, ensuring that both the company and its customers are protected against evolving cyber threats. The Role of Partnerships A significant portion of the conversation is dedicated to the crucial role of Microsoft’s partners. Nicole underscores how partnerships are central to Microsoft’s strategy, allowing the company to address a diverse range of customer needs effectively. She talks about the collaborative efforts and mutual trust that underpin these partnerships, emphasizing that Microsoft’s success is deeply intertwined with the success of its partners. Geopolitical and Technological Challenges Vince and Nicole explore the broader geopolitical and technological challenges that influence Microsoft’s strategies. The discussion covers how global changes and technological advancements shape the company’s approach to business. Nicole highlights the importance of being agile and responsive to these external factors, ensuring that Microsoft remains a leader in the tech industry. Commitment to Innovation Innovation is a recurring theme in the episode, with Nicole sharing insights into Microsoft’s culture of continuous improvement. She explains how the company fosters a customer-centric approach, constantly developing cutting-edge technologies to meet the ever-evolving needs of its users. This commitment to innovation is key to Microsoft’s ability to stay relevant and competitive in the fast-paced tech world. Addressing Heightened Cybersecurity Threats Nicole provides a detailed look at how Microsoft is tackling the increased scale and sophistication of cyber attacks. She describes the company’s comprehensive strategy, which involves bringing together various teams and resources to combat these threats effectively. This unified approach is crucial in ensuring that Microsoft can provide robust security solutions to its customers. Integrating AI into Microsoft Products The integration of AI into Microsoft’s products and services is another highlight of the episode. Nicole discusses how AI is being woven into the fabric of Microsoft’s offerings, enhancing their functionality and making them more intuitive for users. This integration is part of a broader vision to make AI accessible and beneficial for everyone, driving forward the digital transformation. Fostering a Culture of Trust and Collaboration Finally, Nicole touches on the importance of trust and collaboration within the partner ecosystem. She explains how these values are foundational to Microsoft’s partnerships, enabling the company to work closely with its partners to deliver exceptional value to customers. This culture of trust and collaboration is a key driver of Microsoft’s ongoing success. This episode of “Ultimate Partner” provides a deep dive into the current technological landscape and Microsoft’s role in navigating it. Nicole Dezen’s insights offer valuable perspectives for anyone interested in the intersection of technology, security, and partnerships. Her expertise and vision highlight how Microsoft and its partners are shaping the future of digital transformation, making this episode a must-listen for tech enthusiasts and professionals alike. 10 Things You Will Learn:
5 Memorable Quotes from Nicole Dezen:
This episode of “Ultimate Partner” provides a deep dive into the current technological landscape and Microsoft’s role in navigating it. Nicole Dezen’s insights offer valuable perspectives for anyone interested in the intersection of technology, security, and partnerships. Don’t miss this enlightening conversation to understand how Microsoft and its partners are shaping the future of digital transformation. Transcript – Created by Adobe AI 00:00:00:06 – 00:00:12:27 00:00:13:00 – 00:00:29:26 00:00:29:26 – 00:00:33:25 00:00:33:28 – 00:00:53:27 00:00:54:00 – 00:01:18:19 00:01:18:21 – 00:01:20:27 00:01:21:00 – 00:01:25:23 00:01:25:26 – 00:01:30:19 00:01:30:19 – 00:01:31:19 00:01:31:20 – 00:01:51:22 00:01:51:24 – 00:02:14:17 00:02:14:24 – 00:02:23:03 00:02:23:10 – 00:02:44:19 00:02:44:19 – 00:02:53:08 00:02:53:11 – 00:03:01:20 00:03:01:21 – 00:03:02:26 00:03:02:29 – 00:03:27:18 00:03:27:20 – 00:04:06:22 00:04:06:24 – 00:04:25:08 00:04:25:08 – 00:04:45:23 00:04:45:25 – 00:05:07:23 00:05:07:25 – 00:05:37:09 00:05:37:12 – 00:05:38:06 00:05:38:11 – 00:05:39:04 00:05:39:06 – 00:06:06:06 00:06:06:09 – 00:06:28:26 00:06:28:28 – 00:06:50:29 00:06:50:29 – 00:07:17:29 00:07:18:02 – 00:07:25:14 00:07:25:16 – 00:08:12:08 00:08:12:11 – 00:08:22:29 00:08:23:01 – 00:08:51:00 00:08:51:02 – 00:09:06:10 00:09:06:13 – 00:09:28:27 00:09:29:00 – 00:09:57:06 00:09:57:07 – 00:10:17:17 00:10:17:22 – 00:10:20:13 00:10:20:13 – 00:10:51:09 00:10:51:11 – 00:10:54:17 00:10:54:18 – 00:11:15:25 00:11:15:25 – 00:11:27:27 00:11:27:28 – 00:11:56:08 00:11:56:11 – 00:12:30:29 00:12:31:02 – 00:12:40:05 00:12:40:11 – 00:13:12:26 00:13:12:28 – 00:13:42:11 00:13:42:11 – 00:14:12:14 00:14:12:14 – 00:14:20:01 00:14:20:04 – 00:14:38:11 00:14:38:18 – 00:14:56:27 00:14:56:27 – 00:15:08:23 00:15:08:26 – 00:15:27:27 00:15:27:27 – 00:15:37:23 00:15:37:25 – 00:15:38:13 00:15:38:17 – 00:15:39:27 00:15:39:28 – 00:15:43:03 00:15:43:05 – 00:16:07:22 00:16:07:25 – 00:16:36:01 00:16:36:02 – 00:17:00:10 00:17:00:17 – 00:17:32:13 00:17:32:16 – 00:17:50:05 00:17:50:06 – 00:18:06:09 00:18:06:11 – 00:18:39:05 00:18:39:07 – 00:19:05:11 00:19:05:13 – 00:19:31:15 00:19:31:20 – 00:19:32:15 00:19:32:18 – 00:19:53:20 00:19:53:20 – 00:19:55:06 00:19:55:06 – 00:20:20:20 00:20:20:20 – 00:20:50:09 00:20:50:12 – 00:20:58:00 00:20:58:02 – 00:21:15:22 00:21:15:22 – 00:21:21:25 00:21:21:28 – 00:21:43:02 00:21:43:02 – 00:22:15:06 00:22:15:08 – 00:22:26:27 00:22:26:27 – 00:22:32:24 00:22:32:27 – 00:22:41:21 00:22:41:21 – 00:22:46:22 00:22:46:22 – 00:23:10:01 00:23:10:03 – 00:23:24:14 00:23:24:17 – 00:23:45:07 00:23:45:10 – 00:24:02:26 00:24:03:03 – 00:24:06:24 00:24:06:24 – 00:24:27:05 00:24:27:08 – 00:24:49:16 00:24:49:18 – 00:25:16:12 00:25:16:14 – 00:25:46:12 00:25:46:14 – 00:25:49:06 …. | |||
| 224 - How Transcends Marketing Drives Success with Microsoft Partnerships | 18 Jun 2024 | 00:29:02 | |
Ashleigh Vogstad, CEO of Transcends Joins Ultimate Partner
With a background rich in entrepreneurship and a mission-driven approach, Ashleigh Vogstad has carved out a unique space in the marketing landscape within the Microsoft ecosystem. About Ashleigh and TranscendsAshleigh’s journey to becoming a renowned entrepreneur is nothing short of inspiring. Her early entrepreneurial spirit and impactful volunteer work set the stage for her current success. Transcends, the marketing agency she founded, is dedicated to helping 1 billion people feel more connected. The agency thrives on core values like continuous learning, digital freedom, and conscious connection. Microsoft Partnership and AchievementsTranscends started strong with Microsoft New Zealand as its first client. The agency has a proven track record of ensuring its clients either win or become finalists in award submissions. This success is built on key strategies, including developing Power BI custom visuals that have seen significant engagement and opt-ins. Award-Winning Strategies and StorytellingAshleigh emphasizes the importance of having a compelling “big idea” and leveraging emotional storytelling to make a mark. An example is the touching story of a hospice maintaining care during COVID-19 using modern endpoint management, which highlighted innovation and empathy. Additionally, meticulous attention to metrics and data hygiene is crucial in validating and amplifying these success stories. The Role of TeamworkAccording to Ashleigh, successful partnerships require multidisciplinary teams that bring various organizational roles together. Transcends excels at conducting in-depth internal interviews to uncover valuable data and emotional stories that resonate deeply with their clients’ audiences. Comprehensive Content CreationTranscends is adept at producing diverse multimedia content, including videos, white papers, and PDFs, all designed to support their compelling storytelling and award submissions. This holistic approach ensures that their clients’ narratives are well-rounded and impactful. https://youtu.be/B-zQkKgRuh4 LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP What You’ll Learn
Transcript – Created by Adobe AI 00;00;00;06 – 00;00;09;09 00;00;09;12 – 00;00;26;08 00;00;26;08 – 00;00;30;08 00;00;30;11 – 00;00;52;11 00;00;52;14 – 00;01;15;09 00;01;15;11 – 00;01;23;22 00;01;23;22 – 00;01;25;06 00;01;25;07 – 00;01;37;25 00;01;37;29 – 00;01;38;26 00;01;39;08 – 00;01;59;19 00;01;59;22 – 00;02;18;00 00;02;18;01 – 00;02;19;28 00;02;20;01 – 00;02;43;12 00;02;43;14 – 00;02;45;23 00;02;45;26 – 00;02;47;16 00;02;47;19 – 00;03;14;19 00;03;14;20 – 00;03;24;01 00;03;24;02 – 00;03;24;26 00;03;24;26 – 00;03;39;02 00;03;39;04 – 00;03;40;29 00;03;41;01 – 00;03;46;00 00;03;46;02 – 00;03;51;01 00;03;51;03 – 00;04;16;09 00;04;16;11 – 00;04;16;29 00;04;17;02 – 00;04;27;00 00;04;27;02 – 00;04;31;04 00;04;31;04 – 00;04;32;05 00;04;32;05 – 00;04;36;23 00;04;36;25 – 00;04;40;06 00;04;40;10 – 00;04;41;02 00;04;41;03 – 00;04;57;23 00;04;57;26 – 00;04;59;03 00;04;59;05 – 00;05;26;21 00;05;26;23 – 00;05;42;08 00;05;42;10 – 00;05;48;21 00;05;48;23 – 00;05;50;20 00;05;50;23 – 00;05;58;26 00;05;58;28 – 00;06;21;28 00;06;21;29 – 00;06;28;05 00;06;28;06 – 00;06;29;11 00;06;29;11 – 00;06;29;29 00;06;30;02 – 00;06;42;19 00;06;42;19 – 00;07;07;03 00;07;07;04 – 00;07;15;29 00;07;16;01 – 00;07;44;12 00;07;44;19 – 00;08;14;02 00;08;14;05 – 00;08;33;01 00;08;33;01 – 00;09;05;05 00;09;05;08 – 00;09;22;27 00;09;22;27 – 00;09;25;25 00;09;25;27 – 00;09;44;11 00;09;44;14 – 00;09;45;13 00;09;45;13 – 00;09;51;20 00;09;51;20 – 00;09;56;09 00;09;56;13 – 00;09;57;09 00;09;57;12 – 00;09;59;05 00;09;59;07 – 00;10;02;13 00;10;02;13 – 00;10;11;04 00;10;11;11 – 00;10;32;14 00;10;32;14 – 00;10;33;10 00;10;33;10 – 00;10;54;10 00;10;54;12 – 00;11;30;08 00;11;30;10 – 00;11;41;10 00;11;41;10 – 00;11;43;04 00;11;43;08 – 00;12;01;27 00;12;01;28 – 00;12;20;08 00;12;20;10 – 00;12;32;14 00;12;32;16 – 00;12;55;02 00;12;55;02 – 00;13;20;03 00;13;20;09 – 00;13;42;12 00;13;42;12 – 00;13;47;14 00;13;47;16 – 00;14;18;12 00;14;18;12 – 00;14;27;24 00;14;27;24 – 00;14;32;00 00;14;32;02 – 00;14;49;11 00;14;49;14 – 00;14;57;05 00;14;57;10 – 00;14;58;28 00;14;59;01 – 00;15;23;00 00;15;23;02 – 00;15;52;00 00;15;52;00 – 00;16;10;12 00;16;10;19 – 00;16;11;15 00;16;11;15 – 00;16;40;15 00;16;40;17 – 00;16;46;13 00;16;46;14 – 00;16;50;11 00;16;50;13 – 00;16;52;06 00;16;52;09 – 00;17;22;01 00;17;22;04 – 00;17;27;22 00;17;27;24 – 00;17;32;12 00;17;32;15 – 00;17;34;02 00;17;34;04 – 00;17;53;25 00;17;53;28 – 00;17;54;24 00;17;54;26 – 00;18;34;14 00;18;34;20 – 00;19;01;21 00;19;01;21 – 00;19;26;04 00;19;26;04 – 00;19;27;12 00;19;27;12 – 00;19;35;24 00;19;35;27 – 00;19;45;05 00;19;45;07 – 00;20;10;10 00;20;10;10 – 00;20;43;05 00;20;43;08 – 00;20;48;05 00;20;48;05 – 00;20;50;17 00;20;50;19 – 00;21;08;20 00;21;08;20 – 00;21;41;27 00;21;41;29 – 00;22;10;07 00;22;10;08 – 00;22;34;18 00;22;34;24 – 00;23;06;23 00;23;06;25 – 00;23;29;23 00;23;29;26 – 00;23;34;16 00;23;34;19 – 00;23;37;09 00;23;37;11 – 00;24;03;20 00;24;03;23 – 00;24;35;03 00;24;35;09 – 00;24;54;13 00;24;54;14 – 00;24;58;28 00;24;59;02 – 00;25;00;27 00;25;00;29 – 00;25;04;28 00;25;05;01 – 00;25;08;20 00;25;08;20 – 00;25;10;16 00;25;10;19 – 00;25;24;10 00;25;24;12 – 00;25;43;14 00;25;43;14 – 00;26;00;29 00;26;01;01 – 00;26;02;26 00;26;02;28 – 00;26;05;00 00;26;05;03 – 00;26;28;03 00;26;28;05 – 00;26;41;27 00;26;41;27 – 00;26;44;23 00;26;44;25 – 00;26;54;21 00;26;54;23 – 00;27;13;07 00;27;13;09 – 00;27;17;02 00;27;17;04 – 00;27;18;07 00;27;18;07 – 00;27;40;18 00;27;40;20 – 00;28;13;25 00;28;13;27 – 00;28;43;04 00;28;43;07 – 00;28;56;24 …. | |||
| 223 - Unlocking Cloud Success with Dux Raymond Sy, AvePoint's Chief Brand Officer | 11 Jun 2024 | ||
Dux Raymond Sy, Chief Brand Officer at AvePoint, joins Ultimate Partner®
With over 20 years of business, marketing, and technology experience, Dux has driven organizational transformations worldwide with his ability to simplify complex ideas and deliver relevant solutions. He is recognized by Microsoft as Regional Director (RD) and Most Valuable Professional (MVP), as well as the author of LinkedIn Learning course How to Build Your Personal Brand, book SharePoint for Project Management, and numerous whitepapers and articles. In today’s episode, we are excited to welcome a leader who stands at the forefront of technological advancements, Dux Raymond Sy. AvePoint is a global leader in data management and security solutions in the cloud, collaborating closely with hyperscalers and integrating AI into their offerings. Dux will discuss how AvePoint is driving change and helping partners achieve their greatest success through cutting-edge solutions and strategic partnerships. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q_wFKkp05M LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APPWhat You’ll Learn
Quotes “AI has democratized technology, making it accessible just like the World Wide Web did for the internet.” Transcript – Created by Adobe AI 00;00;00;04 – 00;00;08;21 00;00;08;21 – 00;00;12;00 00;00;12;03 – 00;00;39;12 00;00;39;15 – 00;01;05;27 00;01;06;00 – 00;01;07;23 00;01;07;29 – 00;01;12;24 00;01;12;26 – 00;01;16;00 00;01;16;01 – 00;01;17;12 00;01;17;15 – 00;01;23;25 00;01;23;26 – 00;01;31;16 00;01;31;16 – 00;01;32;22 00;01;32;23 – 00;01;34;23 00;01;34;24 – 00;01;58;15 00;01;58;17 – 00;02;04;29 00;02;05;02 – 00;02;06;18 00;02;06;19 – 00;02;08;00 00;02;08;03 – 00;02;20;14 00;02;20;18 – 00;02;21;09 00;02;21;12 – 00;02;46;09 00;02;46;10 – 00;02;49;09 00;02;49;12 – 00;03;13;10 00;03;13;10 – 00;03;13;29 00;03;13;29 – 00;03;16;28 00;03;17;01 – 00;03;34;22 00;03;34;24 – 00;03;55;12 00;03;55;12 – 00;03;59;07 00;03;59;07 – 00;03;59;13 00;03;59;13 – 00;04;06;29 00;04;07;05 – 00;04;13;13 00;04;13;20 – 00;04;28;04 00;04;28;06 – 00;04;48;03 00;04;48;03 – 00;04;59;18 00;04;59;18 – 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| 222 – AI Innovation and Cloud Marketplaces with John Jahnke – CEO at Tackle | 05 Jun 2024 | 00:34:35 | |
John Jahnke joins Ultimate Partner®
I’m excited to welcome my next guest to Ultimate Partner, John Jahnke – CEO at Tackle.io, a Cloud Go To Market Platform that enables software companies to sell via the cloud. As the CEO of Tackle, John has been instrumental in helping Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) streamline their business operations by leveraging cloud marketplaces. Since its inception in 2016, Tackle has been at the forefront of this transformation, creating a new category of software that simplifies the process for ISVs to list and sell their products in the cloud. In this episode, John and I discuss the rapid evolution of cloud go-to-market strategies, the role of hyperscalers, and the future of AI in the industry. Let’s dive into the world of cloud marketplaces with John as he shares insights on the challenges and opportunities within this space. We explore the strategic decisions made by top software companies, the impact of economic conditions on cloud adoption, and the significant role AI plays in shaping the future. John also discusses the importance of aligning marketing and sales strategies with cloud channels and the transformative potential of AI-driven solutions. https://youtu.be/hUV6uhbbUzE LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APPWhat You’ll Learn 1. The current landscape of cloud marketplaces and their rapid growth trajectory. (05:52) 2. The strategic importance of integrating cloud marketplaces into business operations. (11:00) 3. The evolving role of hyperscalers like AWS, Microsoft, and Google in the marketplace ecosystem. (16:32) 4. How economic conditions and AI advancements are influencing cloud adoption. (24:07) 5. The benefits of cloud marketplaces for CFOs, including improved financial metrics like days sales outstanding (DSO). (31:37) 6. Predictions for the future growth of cloud marketplaces and their impact on the software industry. (34:07) 7. The challenges and strategies for ISVs to succeed in the cloud marketplace environment. (39:52) 8. Insights into the role of data and AI in driving marketplace consumption and innovation. (43:25) 9. The importance of strategic partnerships and the evolving dynamics between ISVs and their channels. (47:10) 10. Advice for navigating the current macroeconomic environment and leveraging cloud marketplaces for growth. (50:31) Quotes – “If you’re not built with AI, someone will build to replace you.” Join us as we delve into these topics and more with John, uncovering the insights and strategies that can help your business thrive in the ever-evolving world of cloud marketplaces and AI-driven innovation. Transcript – Created by Adobe AI 00;00;00;00 – 00;00;05;17 Vince it seems that every CEO is calling the hyperscalers into the room and saying, how do we take advantage of AI? 00;00;05;17 – 00;00;09;22 00;00;09;22 – 00;00;12;11 00;00;12;11 – 00;00;22;06 Vince Welcome back to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Mensa on your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. 00;00;22;08 – 00;00;37;03 Vince You know, we’ve been chronicling this time of massive change and transformation, what we’ve been calling the tectonic shifts we’ve been following along the massive role of the hyperscalers and the role of marketplaces. In fact, we’ve had each of the hyperscalers on recently 00;00;37;03 – 00;00;52;19 Vince And now we turn our attention to the software fueling this cloud go to market transformation tackle. I created the category and recently partnered with us here in the studio for a live in person event, Ultimate Partner Executive Summit. 00;00;52;22 – 00;00;58;05 00;00;58;05 – 00;01;00;14 Vince John, welcome to the podcast. 00;01;00;14 – 00;01;03;01 00;01;03;01 – 00;01;05;20 00;01;05;20 – 00;01;05;28 John 00;01;05;28 – 00;01;08;06 Vince 00;01;08;07 – 00;01;10;29 John Last time with hoodie on. Yeah, that’s. I’m dressed up. 00;01;11;02 – 00;01;12;15 00;01;12;16 – 00;01;13;17 John 00;01;13;19 – 00;01;28;22 Vince No. Hey, we’re here in the studio live for our viewers. mostly on YouTube and also for our listeners. So great to have you back on the podcast. You know, it’s been just a year now. Episode 185. It’s probably one of my favorite podcasts episodes. 00;01;28;23 – 00;01;29;29 John 00;01;30;01 – 00;01;51;14 Vince no, I we did a you know, it was a great deep dive on this whole marketplace moment, right? We’ve been I’ve been talking about these tectonic shifts. We’ve been seeing. you’ve been chronicling cloud go to market. In fact, I think you pretty much invented that term. Right. Or coined that term. we’ve been talking about the work that tackle has been doing really at the forefront, right, since 2016. 00;01;51;16 – 00;02;05;25 Vince basically creating a new category of software and maybe, maybe we’ll get start there a little bit by maybe a little bit of a description for people that didn’t watch episode 185, a little bit more about your vision for tackle and your trajectory now. 00;02;05;26 – 00;02;25;01 John Sure. Yeah. So I mean, when we started tackle, we were trying to help ISVs list to launch their businesses in the cloud marketplaces, and we thought that should be a business decision and not a product, an engineering problem. And what’s happened over the last eight years is, you know, people have started to make cloud a default substrate for the way that they sell. 00;02;25;01 – 00;02;43;03 John And this is not just for startups. It’s for the largest software companies in the world. And that comes with a lot of complexity. It’s not just about listing like listing is the starting line. It’s really about how do you integrate that into your core systems. How do you get sellers taking advantage of that? How do you get your sellers and cloud sellers working together? 00;02;43;04 – 00;02;55;16 John How do you use data to inform how to align your marketing and sales funnel to this new channel? So it’s been really exciting to innovate around that. On behalf of the ISV ecosystem and bring it to life not only in tackle but inside of Salesforce. 00;02;55;16 – 00;02;56;08 Vince 00;02;56;10 – 00;03;00;23 00;03;00;25 – 00;03;27;09 Vince And, you know, you know, fast forward from 2016 to today, right? And we we talked about this a little bit when you were on the podcast last year. But Canalys called 45 billion by the end of 2026. And then they pulled it back to 2025. And then you came out later that year, I think was after you on the podcast and tackle predicted that $100 billion in transactions would occur by 2026. 00;03;27;12 – 00;03;29;27 00;03;29;27 – 00;03;56;00 John I have all the data is pointing to that same direction. The growth rates continue to accelerate. And what we’re seeing, you know, there were some really exciting launches in Q4 of last year where you saw companies like ServiceNow make a commitment to cloud, go to market and workday make a commitment, and Salesforce make a commitment. And when these companies are engaging, they’re not thinking about like, I need to do a deal or I need to enable this transactional vehicle. 00;03;56;00 – 00;04;14;20 John They’re thinking strategically and they come with really big dollars. And when you talk to buyers, I was on with the CIO today. He was just talking about how they further are trying to understand how to take advantage of their cloud commitments. So these are strategic conversations. It’s not it’s no longer happening at a departmental level. It’s happening at the C-suite. 00;04;14;23 – 00;04;19;07 00;04;19;07 – 00;04;36;26 Vince Yeah. And, you know, for people who haven’t been following along this conversation. Right. And we’ve been tracking it, you’ve been tracking it a third of $1 trillion in durable cloud budgets amongst the three hyperscalers. I think that’s astounding. And, you know, we’ve been talking about the fact that and I know we’ll talk a little bit more about this as well. 00;04;36;26 – 00;05;00;02 Vince Is that the decision making process is no longer happening in the line of business. It’s really happening at the board level. Right? The, the, the CEO, the CFO and the board are making these commitments. These are tremendous commitments. I think Microsoft said that they saw an 80% increase of commitments over $100 million or more just last quarter. Yeah, quarter to quarter growth. 00;05;00;09 – 00;05;11;11 Vince So what I mean, I think that’s exactly what you’re saying here in terms of people are now recognizing that this is now a new avenue, a new a new revenue, a stream of opportunity for them where they want to go after budget. 00;05;11;13 – 00;05;44;29 John And we see, I mean, we see the CFO when the CFO took ownership of the cloud budget, that was a big change that happened a couple of years ago as these commitments started to grow and as it became a top five budget level line item. And now that the CFOs are understanding this benefit of, oh, I can correlate my cloud budget with my software budget, merge those two things together, and in order to get better economic leverage, I had a conversation with the CFO today and we talked about days sales outstanding like how collections change when you use marketplaces and crystal. 00;05;45;06 – 00;05;51;23 John And he was fascinated to hear like, high quality cloud, go to market. Customers see collections like DSO under 30 days. 00;05;51;23 – 00;05;52;27 Vince 00;05;52;27 – 00;06;03;00 John Environment, especially as more people don’t pay their bills on time, because of macroeconomic conditions. I mean, not DSL benefit is a new emerging benefit we’re seeing. 00;06;03;00 – 00;06;23;07 Vince Yeah, it’s it’s incredible. And you look at it and it’s also changing the dynamic between the ISV partners and their channel channels and the role of distributor. And this whole process will probably we’ll spend a little bit of time here. But I want to go back to this like we talked about like we’re seeing we’re seeing it accelerate like that I believe is what you’re saying. 00;06;23;07 – 00;06;39;08 Vince Right. We’re seeing acceleration. What are you seeing from each of the three. And not to put you on the spot here because I know we all we both work with all three and we both seen the trajectory. Yep. We all will say that AWS had an early start, right? They’ve been, you know, front footed on on some of this. 00;06;39;08 – 00;06;46;04 Vince And the other two have kind of followed suit. What are you seeing from each three. And is it different or is it just a different stage. 00;06;46;06 – 00;07;04;08 John They’re all at different stages. And I mean they’re all trying to play to their strengths. Yeah. Which I think is the right thing. Like Microsoft born a channel company has for a long time thought about how channel fits in with this program and trying to get their field organization aligned and their buyers aligned. But there’s a lot happening there. 00;07;04;10 – 00;07;20;27 John AWS has been the innovator, I mean, pioneered a lot of new concepts, created the idea private offers. And, you know, we continue to see them like look for some new and innovative ways to spread the reach. I think a lot happening around how to make product led purchasing even easier in the cloud and coming. 00;07;20;27 – 00;07;23;06 00;07;23;06 – 00;07;39;29 John Yeah. The history there is is different and unique. And Google from an AI standpoint it’s had a huge I mean I was at Google next. And the focus around AI and Google’s role in AI and just how they can complement those next gen AI driven companies and put cloud go to market. Central to that. 00;07;40;04 – 00;07;45;25 Vince We were both together at Google Next and AI. There was, high energy in that at that conference. 00;07;45;26 – 00;07;59;22 John I would say it was I mean, compared to the days of the past, where I think Google Next had more of a consumer field, this year felt like the year of enterprise for Google. Next. Yeah. there was a different just a different level of customer there than days in the past. 00;07;59;22 – 00;08;03;13 00;09;00;23 – 00;09;04;00 00;09;04;02 – 00;09;11;10 John Yeah. I mean I think the macro economic environment is still uncertain, even though the Dow crossed the highest point in history. 00;09;11;15 – 00;09;11;26 Vince 00;09;11;26 – 00;09;38;22 John May I mean, it’s interest rate environment. Everybody thought interest rates would go down maybe by middle of the year. That doesn’t seem to be happening. it’s an election year. There’s a lot of uncertainty around the election year. And, I don’t know if you follow Yaman Ball from altimeter. He publishes his clouded judgment report. And, you know, he talked about how, workday saw, a slowdown in sales cycles due to increased scrutiny. 00;09;38;22 – 00;09;58;27 John Yeah. There’s all kinds of examples in this report just around increased scrutiny. And I think people are still behaving with caution, like just erring on the side of caution. And I think we’ll see the rest of this year. And, there’s definitely strength in enterprise. I think, you know, the big companies are like like often happens in an economic downturn. 00;09;58;27 – 00;10;20;20 John The big companies take a chance to double down for the future. And I think that continues to happen. I is no doubt fueling consumptions. I think the feedback around the clouds is they’re returning to more statistically normal growth patterns. but as an ISV, you know, everyone’s trying to operate to these new benchmark rules. How do you operate? 00;10;20;24 – 00;10;32;14 John It’s no longer growth at all cost. It’s I have to operate to rule of 40. I have to absolute efficiency as fast as possible. And you mean that that causes, you know, companies that need to operate in different ways? 00;10;32;14 – 00;10;38;22 Vince Well, you said it. We’re still seeing these economic headwinds. I mean, did we have a recession last year and maybe we didn’t call it one? 00;10;38;25 – 00;11;03;13 John I mean, I think the software economy had a recession. Maybe the macroeconomic environment, as the Covid spending patterns changed back towards more traditional spending patterns. I mean, software was just on a tear all through 2021, 22. And I think, you know, no one maybe calls it a software recession. But there was there was, a reckoning that happened in that landscape. 00;11;03;13 – 00;11;04;19 00;11;04;19 – 00;11;24;24 Vince Yeah. And I think you mentioned I was certainly seeing, you know, Canalys says there’s $158 billion opportunity in the short term for the ecosystem around AI. And I don’t think that, that’s hype, really. I think I think that we’re starting to see that it seems that every CEO is calling the hyperscalers into the room and saying, how do we take advantage of AI? 00;11;24;25 – 00;11;25;03 Vince Yeah. 00;11;25;07 – 00;11;36;15 John Right. Yeah. I mean, I think if if you’re not built with AI, someone will build to replace you. So it it becomes a default component in every software product that’s out there. 00;11;36;15 – 00;11;37;11 Vince 00;11;37;13 – 00;11;46;21 John Which, which will drive more consumption. I mean, ultimately it’s it’s data driven. And the data gravity that AI creates will increase consumption. 00;11;46;23 – 00;12;03;16 Vince So you got to be here in the studio. We had our our live event not too long ago, our executive summit. And you and I talked at that event about some of the trends that we’re seeing and what we can expect in the next 12 months. So let’s talk about that channel. You mentioned Microsoft being a leader. 00;12;03;16 – 00;12;23;18 Vince You know, having this in fact, to happen in Boca Raton, I always refer to Boca Raton because Bill gates came down here 43 years ago, met with IBM and licensed software, and that changed. That changed the dynamic in terms of how technology organizations went to market. And it created this entire or started and sparked this entire ecosystem that we see today. 00;12;23;20 – 00;12;36;09 Vince you think about the builders, you think about the ISV, you start to think about the resellers, like the seed stages of the world that evolved from that, that moment in time. But how is the marketplace is impacting the channel? 00;12;36;11 – 00;13;06;29 John I mean, five years ago, people thought marketplace would disrupt the channel. And I think that’s proven not to be true now. It’s maybe challenged the channel to think differently about their value equation. But we’re seeing more acceleration with ISVs and channel in cloud go to market than ever before. And I think you’re seeing more of the large sellers say, I want to pull the channel in more closely, especially as they try to figure out, I had a customer say, I how how can we get resources off our balance sheet to help us scale? 00;13;06;29 – 00;13;18;26 John And that’s what the channel has an opportunity to do. So in this economic climate, I think channel rises in prominence from an ISV standpoint, which will help further accelerate how channel and cloud work together. 00;13;18;28 – 00;13;39;15 Vince You’ve used the term meeting buyers where they buy, I believe, as a term. Yep. I’ve heard you say before. And that reminds me of that, right. Because the relationships are not necessarily with the ISV level. They might be down the road with, with a reseller or a systems integrator someone else owns or influences that decision process in the line of business. 00;13;39;18 – 00;13;53;04 Vince How do we streamline that? How do we make that more effective? Because I do feel like there’s still some resistance and, I’ll say I won’t say obstacles per se. It seems that some some are doing better than others in this multi-party world. 00;13;53;07 – 00;14;18;02 John Yeah, I think I think multi-party is still the early days. And I think it’s how do you define multi-party? Like I think about multi-party relative to integrating ISV componentry together to build a solution. And is that a solution bundle that gets purchased through the cloud, or is that something a channel partner puts together and uses cloud go to market as a transaction vehicle. 00;14;18;02 – 00;14;41;09 John And I think this is still a space where not all of the capabilities are available to make that happen in a really seamless way, but a couple things are just guaranteed to be true. There will be more software in the future. Like I agree, the quantity of software will continue to grow at a massive rate. The number of titles people will use, builders will use more embedded components to build. 00;14;41;15 – 00;15;08;26 John So that’s going to drive this need for multi-party solutions. And I think, you know, every ISV also has an AI, an ecosystem that they are trying to figure out. How do I allow my user to get access to things that make my products better in combination, like how how do those multi-party transactions happen? And we used to see people say, I want to go build a marketplace because I have these ten partners I work with, and I just want to enable my buyer to buy from one of those partners seamlessly. 00;15;09;00 – 00;15;10;14 00;15;10;21 – 00;15;11;05 Vince 00;15;11;05 – 00;15;28;13 John It’s not easy. It requires a massive investment. It requires understanding the incentive of the buyer, the incentive of the platform, the incentive of the seller being able to invest across that landscape. So I actually think, like multi-party in some ways could disrupt this idea that ISVs need to build their own marketplace. 00;15;28;13 – 00;15;29;04 Vince 00;15;29;06 – 00;15;32;21 00;15;32;24 – 00;15;49;10 Vince Well, you talked about more software out there. I was thinking about the fact that you invested in a co selling software platform. Just a little bit less than two years ago. I think that that has an opportunity to germinate and evolve as well, because in order to stitch this all together, I don’t feel like the tools all exist today. 00;15;49;12 – 00;15;50;00 Vince 00;15;50;03 – 00;16;08;24 John Yes, I yes, there are the great news. The tools continue to get more integrated together as the workflows become closer. And I think marketplace and Cosell are a great example. They’re really two sides of the same coin. Yes, they’re two parts of the same workflows. So to separate them doesn’t make. 00;16;08;24 – 00;16;09;19 Vince 00;16;09;20 – 00;16;32;20 John A usage scale standpoint. So I think we continue to see and I think there’s this whole next generation digital selling tech stack emerging at at all the layers. When you think about, you know, marketing and sales and partner and how all those systems operate together, you know, marketplace. And Cosell used to be a partner thing. Now they’re a company thing. 00;16;32;20 – 00;16;46;00 John So that causes you to think about different personas and the way they’re used. It’s not just the alliance leader, it’s the alliance leader. In partnership with the Rev Ops leader partnership with the sales leader, partnership with the marketing leader. It’s so the complexity continues to grow. 00;16;46;02 – 00;17;10;09 Vince I love what you’re saying here because we talk about complexity. Complexity. We talk about going across the seats at the table and this effective cross-selling that you you just described it, I believe. But what aren’t organizations getting right here in terms of effective cross-selling? Because I, I do think that it’s multi organizational. Yeah. there’s an influence strategy across your internal organization as well as your external partners. 00;17;10;11 – 00;17;11;19 Vince 00;17;11;21 – 00;17;30;01 John I mean, most people who struggle to sell haven’t nailed the story. What’s the better together story. Yeah. And then they haven’t figured out how to bring that better together story to partners in a compelling way. And I think a lot of people go with quantity versus quality. I’m just going to register all my deals and we’ll see what happens. 00;17;30;01 – 00;17;31;01 Vince 00;17;31;07 – 00;17;37;28 John When you think about it from the cloud provider perspective, they have thousands of ISV doing that and they just bury their people in unqualified. 00;17;37;28 – 00;17;40;25 00;17;40;25 – 00;18;03;03 John If you reverse that and say, I’m going to have my Cosell quality be pristine. So when, cloud seller gets a, Cosell registration for my company, there’s a brand that’s like, that’s a real deal. Yeah, that’s something I should engage with. And and I think, you know, again, more software, more selling, more noise. You have to tell a better story to rise above the noise. 00;18;03;08 – 00;18;17;04 Vince So let’s talk about the CRO. I maybe it’s my myopic view based on where I came from and what I’ve seen so far, but I find that many of them still don’t get it. Are you seeing a change? Here is what I think I heard you say recently. Yeah. 00;18;17;11 – 00;18;37;23 John I mean, we, our CRO and I did a podcast with Revenue Builders, which is John McMahon, who’s the he’s he’s, old CRO, a PTC sits on the board of Snowflake and Sumo Logic and all these amazing companies. And I think that’s a signal like the voice of the CRO is engaging to understand how advantage of cloud in this motion. 00;18;37;26 – 00;19;06;18 John And another phenomenon we see is crows go from company A that had a successful cloud go to market motion to company B that doesn’t. And they’re immediately like how come this isn’t working? Yeah we I it worked for me in the past. I needed to work today and when cloud becomes 20% of revenue, which is kind of the common target in a lot of these focused ISV us today, it’s a really material channel, probably the largest channel in the company, global scale, global reach, global budget. 00;19;06;23 – 00;19;16;16 John So the crows like that’s a piece of my winning formula I need it. So I think, just as a dollars increase it becomes more strategically relevant. 00;19;16;21 – 00;19;24;17 00;19;24;19 – 00;19;36;23 John It changes by category. Like in the if you think about where cloud go to market really rose. It rose in the cloud for technical categories. So DevOps security. 00;19;37;00 – 00;19;37;10 Vince 00;19;37;10 – 00;19;55;28 John And storage like yeah very classic cloud for categories at that stage. If if you do not understand this you’re a laggard. Like I think those companies are very mature in their understanding. And then they’re just trying to decide how big a piece of this puzzle is it for me? Okay, I think I describe it as the vintage ISV. 00;19;56;05 – 00;20;05;23 John ISV is being born today billed to be multi-cloud from, how their platforms operate, as well as how they could be purchased. 00;20;05;23 – 00;20;07;11 00;20;07;11 – 00;20;22;17 John Born in the cloud. They were born in an era where cloud go to market, meeting their buyers, where they want to buy. It was table stakes five years ago. That wasn’t the case. Oftentimes you were born on one, maybe had a complementary product usage story on the other. but that’s actually a harder system to run. 00;20;22;17 – 00;20;27;27 Vince You could have been born on prem, in fact. Two, there are many that were born on Prem and then shifted to the cloud over that period of time. 00;20;27;27 – 00;20;43;07 John So there’s, I, I, I think the vintage, the vintage, the new vintage ISVs are engaging differently and then that will drive everyone else to figure out how do I integrate this into my system even more meaningfully? 00;20;43;09 – 00;20;58;16 Vince So marketplaces and multi-party offers are taking off in a big way, and they certainly have. For the last last year, five ISVs reached the billion dollar mark. It wasn’t over one year was over a period of time. We’re going to see more of that this year. Predictions on numbers. 00;20;58;18 – 00;21;16;28 John I mean we I called in cloud go to market XP which is event. We do. It has a lot of ISV is just sharing success stories. I, I’m questioning is this the year or the billion dollar ISV in one year? Yeah. I think that may still be aspirational, but, if it’s not this year, it’ll be next year. 00;21;17;00 – 00;21;25;23 John So, and as, as some of those big guys engage in different ways, I mean, they’re bringing very large books of business to the table. 00;21;25;23 – 00;21;38;21 Vince So and they get it, they get it, and they’ve, they’ve learned how to harvest, I’ll say, the opportunities working, cross-selling. Yeah. With the hyperscalers, at least we’ve uncovered that in some of the conversations we’ve had with some of the hyperscalers. 00;21;38;21 – 00;22;34;15 00;22;34;15 – 00;22;41;26 Vince So let’s talk about that big event you held in May. You, you uncovered, I’ll call it a secret sauce or secret weapon, if you will. 00;22;41;28 – 00;22;58;00 Vince you describe the organization as a data company, which I think was a little bit of a shift. Yeah. but it’s it makes perfect sense. Right? You have been at the leading edge of this, tip of the spear, and you’ve been accumulating all this data. Let’s talk more about that. 00;22;58;03 – 00;23;14;28 John Yeah, it’s it’s really interesting. We built originally, I remember, you know, HashiCorp was our early tackle customer and they were having some success with cloud go to market. And we’re like hey, would you give us access to your pipeline in order to help you figure out the best deals to take on a cloud go to market journey? And they’re like, why would we? 00;23;14;29 – 00;23;35;12 John Why would we ever do that? And I remember that moment being like, how do we get them to say yes? Like, because that seems like the compelling opportunity to unblock transactions, right? And we work to build towards that use case. How do you give sellers the data? They need to be able to understand how to map an opportunity to a cloud or even. 00;23;35;12 – 00;23;35;29 Vince Move. 00;23;36;05 – 00;23;56;27 John Cloud, go to market up the funnel. So we built a solution that was really designed around empowering a seller, and that’s driven by a combination of data we’ve seen through the clouds, as well as third party data we’ve acquired in order to train a model that could make those predictions. But what’s happened over time is our customers continue to use this data in new and powerful ways. 00;23;56;27 – 00;24;16;17 John We didn’t expect, and this is, you know, this data is becoming the foundation of tackles AI strategy. And it’s really the business use cases. And the first use case, to me, the one I’m fascinated with most lately is planning, like how do you do territory planning if you’re going to hire a new rep, how do you give that rep a cloud dense territory? 00;24;16;20 – 00;24;46;20 John How do you make decisions about your ICP with cloud in mind? Relative to your business strategy? Marketing’s another fascinating one. How do you align account based marketing programs to the cloud? If there’s a sixth sense buyer intent signal, that’s high, meaning a company’s in market for your technology, can you marry that with a high propensity to buy in Microsoft or Google and say, hey, this is a hot lead for us, I’m going to promote this out of the marketing campaign and get it in the hands of a seller. 00;24;46;27 – 00;24;47;26 John 00;24;47;29 – 00;24;54;26 Vince And maybe a commitment that’s under spent right now. Right? They haven’t met their commitments yet. And they’re looking they’re looking for opportunities to leverage that. Yeah. 00;24;54;26 – 00;25;04;28 John Propensity to coast is another area. So we have like 12 different use cases around data that we continue to see. And and the thing that I love, it’s it’s our customers who are pioneering. 00;25;05;00 – 00;25;05;13 Vince 00;25;05;13 – 00;25;13;27 John Ways of working and coming to us and saying, hey, we use the data in this new and interesting way. and then we can just continue to evolve how we productize that. 00;25;13;29 – 00;25;32;05 Vince Let’s talk a little bit more about I want to dive a little bit more on the multi-party piece because, you know, we had Jason Rook also presented at the event, and we talked about what Microsoft is doing. What do organizations like Microsoft need to do better, differently now to accelerate that multi-party success that they’re not? Maybe they’re not doing it yet. 00;25;32;05 – 00;25;59;09 John I mean, I think it comes back to that point around buyers like buyer behavior drives change. And when buyers are requesting to buy in this way from all different parties involved, requesting to the channel, requesting to the ISVs, that starts to to drive the behavior change. And I know, all of the clouds are trying to figure out how to evolve the buyer landscape in this way. 00;25;59;09 – 00;26;15;15 John I mean, it’s good for the cloud provider drives core service consumption. It drives stickiness by combining products together. but I do think, like everything they can do to focus on evolving the buyer behavior will drive the sellers in the channel to continue to engage more. 00;26;15;18 – 00;26;40;19 Vince And you mentioned incentives as well. I think you know, you have to think about the incentives along the chain, right? I look at this and effectively, some of the hyperscalers don’t necessarily incent the entire chain. The channel chain from ISV is all the way through to the customer. And then also those organizations, those channel organizations, there may not be the right level of incentives across to, to, to shift, to shift the behavior the right way from the seller side. 00;26;40;19 – 00;26;59;21 John I think the channel partners and where we’re seeing this in the data, there are channel partners leaning in who see the movement and they haven’t fully figured it out. They don’t fully understand incentives, but they’re like, this is where the puck’s going. I need to go skate. They’re they’re the ones who are going to win at scale. 00;26;59;24 – 00;27;08;12 Vince we know some of them actually listen to and watch this podcast. So, I know they pay attention because they want they want to learn how to take their organizations to that level. Yeah. 00;27;08;15 – 00;27;19;04 John And we I mean, we see that as another data use case where channel partners are coming to us and saying, how can we use cloud by our content data to inform how we focus our resources? What ISV should we focus on? 00;27;19;08 – 00;27;23;09 00;27;23;12 – 00;27;32;11 John Who has a propensity to buy, which means they might be a great migration opportunity. Like there’s there’s a lot of different ways. So the channels interesting data use case. 00;27;32;11 – 00;27;54;28 Vince What about international? you know, multi-party is moving across. You know, certainly we had Microsoft here in the studio with for their event. They talked about how they finally moved out to just us. Some of it’s just the commercial engines that support marketplace aren’t as robust. What are you seeing on the international front? What’s the what’s the the the weighting, so to speak, between us and the other. 00;27;54;28 – 00;28;21;04 John I don’t have a great data stat on the weighting between it, but we’re definitely seeing, acceleration in international as well as, like, capable cities to unlock international buying patterns, currency, different currency, different language. so the internationalization of marketplace, I think we’ll drive more. I do think it comes back to the buyers. Buyer behavior internationally is typically a little behind the US. 00;28;21;04 – 00;28;30;04 know, this has been happening here for the last three years. And the rest of the markets are definitely catching up. 00;28;30;06 – 00;28;35;12 Vince So where’s tackle investing now. What’s the next 12 months look like for you in the organization. 00;28;35;16 – 00;28;59;09 John Yeah I mean really just investing in helping our customers be successful. Investing heavily in this AI strategy and how we continue to leverage data to help people better align their marketing and sales funnel to clouds. Salesforce is a big investment area for us, just as our customers want to manifest this experience inside of Salesforce for multiple personas Alliance, persona, Rev Ops, persona, Sales Rep. 00;28;59;12 – 00;29;06;03 Vince Persona and then we we. That integration is huge. It is huge because it’s the platform of choice for almost everyone, right? 00;29;06;03 – 00;29;25;10 John Channel channels and investment area for us. And then even even, you know, some of those concepts around ecosystem and how the ecosystem multi party how those start to play out. So it’s a lot of investment areas. We are constantly experimenting and always looking for friction, from our customers in order to attack and solve. 00;29;25;17 – 00;29;44;12 Vince So for the thousands of folks that are either watching or listening to us today and we’re I can’t believe we’re in the second half of 2024, I was just wishing you Happy New Year just a few days ago. What do they need to do differently or need to think about to optimize their business success for the remainder of this year? 00;29;44;17 – 00;30;03;23 John I think I mean, the number one thing when I when we engage with the new ISV today, we start with a data driven approach. Three years ago, ISV launched first and then figured out how to go find a deal after. Yeah, I think everyone who launched three years ago should go back to that ICP and say, how do I look at my company ICP? 00;30;03;23 – 00;30;23;12 John How do I look at our territories? How do I understand cloud propensity inside of territory to focus our resources? I think that’s a key way to go from 5 to 20% of revenue, that people who are launching today are launching faster. The the slope of the curve is steeper because they take a more intentional data driven approach. So that would. 00;30;23;12 – 00;30;31;27 Vince Be and what do you see from the best? What do they do? Do they focus in on one territory, one industry? Do they start small and then and then get the flywheel established? 00;30;31;27 – 00;30;48;07 John I it it depends on the ISV maturity. I we’re seeing a lot of renewal motion focus where a couple of and I think the economics Jay talked about this when the fees around marketplace change to 3% how that would change the way people thought about the economics. 00;30;48;07 – 00;30;49;10 Vince 00;30;49;10 – 00;31;11;19 John I think that makes renewal, if you can see like renewals are under pressure, everyone’s budgets, pressure. And if you can say, hey, I can save a renewal by aligning it to the cloud budget, that’s really powerful. So we see more focus on renewals than we saw in the past. It used to just all be about net new. And then I think sub segmenting down your territories to where there’s high cloud buyer intent. 00;31;11;19 – 00;31;29;24 have mega ATP. There’s actually a lot of success in the mid-market right now. We’re seeing transaction size come down, which implies the cloud budgets are moving down market, which means people are transacting both from a product led way as well as a mid-market perspective. 00;31;29;24 – 00;31;31;24 John 00;31;31;27 – 00;31;51;05 Vince You brought up two points. and I’m going to amplify with you on is one is that the renewals didn’t always sit in the same bucket or wasn’t as focused in from the cloud. Go to market perspective. Right? It was it was new deals. It was net new. Yeah. And so usually it’s a different team. it might be under the CRO might be in a different part of the organization. 00;31;51;05 – 00;32;13;18 Vince So just the fact that they’re starting to do that now that’s a big that’s a big leap. And then this mid-market, you know, we had leaders from Microsoft at the event talking about this mid-market opportunity. Microsoft’s finally getting to liberate AWS was already there with cloud commitments, but Microsoft was later to the dance and getting, you know, they have a $75 billion business in the mid and down market. 00;32;13;25 – 00;32;16;19 Vince And to your point there, this huge opportunities for partners. 00;32;16;21 – 00;32;38;25 John I think huge and I mean for for sellers they can sell more. They can sell faster for buyers they can transact easier. Yeah. Streamlined contracts like G&A teams are under pressure and people aren’t hiring people in procurement and legal process contracts. So if you can eliminate paperwork from a buyer standpoint, that’s a benefit. 00;32;38;25 – 00;32;55;22 Vince So, so so many benefits. Yeah. It’s like it’s like, why would why wouldn’t I do this at this point. Right. But again, it’s change. And change doesn’t happen overnight. Yeah. Yep. Well it has been so great to have you here in person. Yeah. Great to be here. Excited to have you. And being at our event and now being here in the studio with us, John. 00;32;55;22 – 00;32;58;23 00;32;58;23 – 00;33;00;14 00;33;00;15 – 00;33;16;23 Vince Thank you. And thank you to our listeners and viewers for joining The Ultimate Partner. If you haven’t done so already, please subscribe on your favorite channel and go to our new YouTube channel and subscribe there as well. Thank you for joining and following and listening to The Ultimate Partner. | |||
| 221 – Crack the Code on Microsoft’s MCEM to Unlock Co-Selling Success | 19 May 2024 | 00:40:34 | |
Elliotte Dunlap’s Top Rated Ultimate Partner LIVE Session is now on Ultimate Partner.
In November 2023, over 300 Microsoft partners, leaders, experts from Microsoft, and ambassadors assembled for an incredible two days in Dallas, Texas. Today, we bring you back to another astonishing session led by Elliotte Dunlap, a Microsoft Partnership Leader. In this recorded session, Elliotte demystifies and decodes Microsoft’s Sales Engagement Methodology (MCEM) for this partner audience to help them best align for effective co-selling with Microsoft. Listen today to Crack the Code on Microsoft’s MCEM to Unlock Co-Selling Success. The Microsoft Customer Experience Model (MCEM) is a framework designed by Microsoft to help organizations optimize their customer engagement and experience strategies. MCEM provides a structured approach to understanding, managing, and improving the customer journey through various stages, from awareness and consideration to purchase and post-purchase interactions. LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Watch on YouTube Announcing Ultimate Partner Executive Summit LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Now on YouTube | |||
| 220 – Unveiling Microsoft’s Strategic Vision for Growth and AI Partnerships | 08 May 2024 | ||
Kevin Peesker’s Ultimate Partner LIVE Session now on Ultimate Partner®
Today, we have a very exclusive interview. In November of 2023, over 300 Microsoft partners, leaders, experts, from Microsoft, and ambassadors all assembled in Dallas, Texas, for an incredible two days. Today, we bring you back to this incredible session with Kevin Peesker, President of Worldwide SMC & Digital at Microsoft, where he takes us on a journey through technology and the advent of AI. We also deep dive into why this SMC business of over $60 billion within Microsoft is your rich “acre of diamonds” as a partner to grow your business in the coming years! What You’ll LearnVince Menzione and Kevin Peesker discussed Microsoft’s strategy for growth and partnership, emphasizing the importance of understanding the customer’s purpose and aligning with them to empower them through technology. Peesker highlighted Microsoft’s $60 billion business globally and its interconnected strategy with partners. At the same time, Menzione invited Peesker to ask questions and opened the floor for Q&A. Peesker also discussed the potential of AI to drive positive change in society while acknowledging the need for careful consideration and responsible implementation. Finally, speakers discussed the rapid advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its potential to revolutionize various industries, focusing on leveraging AI to augment human capabilities and drive innovation within organizations. Key Points Microsoft’s $60B business strategy and AI impact with partners.
Ever wonder what you could achieve with the right partners? Dive into the Ultimate Partner Experience Community (UPX) and discover a world of possibilities! Don’t miss out on 50% off for your first year using code EARLYBIRD at checkout. Exclusive ContentGain access to cutting-edge content and events crafted by partnership professionals. Stay ahead with strategies, trends, and in-depth interviews with the industry leaders in partnerships. Access to a Like-Minded CommunityOur next event is just around the corner and everyone is welcome. Although the event is open to the public, we want to give a special privilege to our members. Which means the Q&A session is exclusive to members only. It’s bound to be an exciting event and we look forward to seeing you all there! Make Connections That Matter!Dive right in and send a direct message to any member of UPX community! You are not just joining a group, but unlocking an open and vibrant network of professionals waiting to connect with you. Seize this golden opportunity to expand your horizons, fuel your career growth and discover exhilarating business prospects. The world is your oyster at UPX, let’s explore it together! Come Join UsI’m thrilled to welcome you to this journey. Let’s navigate, thrive, and redefine success in the tech partnership landscape together. Come Sign Up LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Now on YouTube | |||
| 219 – Why Partnerships Fail and How to Fix Them! | 30 Apr 2024 | ||
Janet Schijns joins Ultimate Partner®.
I’m excited to welcome my next guest to Ultimate Partner. Janet Schijns is a go-to-market and profitable growth expert, board member, ecosystem growth expert, and megacosm guru. As CEO of JS Group, a transformative market consulting firm, Janet is a visionary of the channel ecosystem; she is in charge of developing GTM plans and numerous 5-star, award-winning channel programs. Her approach is to manage challenges with a razor-sharp problem-solving skill set that delivers. Janet has the “street cred” and experience to close deals in business and operating models, sales channels, partner development, product innovation, digital transformation, robotics and automation, and ecosystem management. In this episode, Janet and I deep dive into why partnerships fail & how to fix them. Let’s dive into the world of channels and ecosystems with Janet as she shares her expertise on the challenges executive-level managers encounter in channel strategy, marketplace predictions, the role of generative AI, market action planning, and fail-first strategy. She also discusses how to address the lack of women in partnerships, protect women from abuse through financial independence, and more. What You’ll Learn
“Your strategy for partnering is not about routes to market. It’s about the commercialization of innovation.” “A good partner should be a part of your team.” “You’re gonna see a world where it’s not always the best solution that wins. It’s often the person that dealt with risk best.” LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Watch on YouTube Announcing Ultimate Partner ExperienceEver wonder what you could achieve with the right partners? Dive into the Ultimate Partner Experience Community (UPX) and discover a world of possibilities! Don’t miss out on 50% off for your first year using code EARLYBIRD at checkout. Exclusive ContentGain access to cutting-edge content and events crafted by partnership professionals. Stay ahead with strategies, trends, and in-depth interviews with the industry leaders in partnerships. Access to a Like-Minded CommunityOur next event is just around the corner and everyone is welcome. Although the event is open to the public, we want to give a special privilege to our members. Which means the Q&A session is exclusive to members only. It’s bound to be an exciting event and we look forward to seeing you all there! Make Connections That Matter!Dive right in and send a direct message to any member of UPX community! You are not just joining a group, but unlocking an open and vibrant network of professionals waiting to connect with you. Seize this golden opportunity to expand your horizons, fuel your career growth and discover exhilarating business prospects. The world is your oyster at UPX, let’s explore it together! Come Join UsI’m thrilled to welcome you to this journey. Let’s navigate, thrive, and redefine success in the tech partnership landscape together. Come Sign Up LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Now on YouTube Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Many Typos Summary KeywordsSpeaker 1 Microsoft’s purpose is in service of your purpose. And again, 2024 is the year that partners come out as the leading edge of the spear. And on finding this buyer intent Vince Menzione you show up to every meeting and demonstrate why you are relevant every Janet Schijns day, I have to force myself to make sure that I’m taking one step ahead in terms of my own learning that flywheel Vince Menzione success is where you will build momentum. And that momentum will continue and then you feed into the other systems to say, this is what we did. This is how we did it together. Welcome to or welcome back to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Manzi on your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. Today, I have a special guest here in the room. Janet shines, the founder and CEO of JSG and a leader in chattels ecosystems, and as she refers to it, mega chasms. We have an engaging conversation on all the topics you would expect us to talk about today, the role of the CPOE marketplaces, the resistance we’re seeing to partnership leadership within the organization, such an incredible leader. Such an amazing conversation. Janet, welcome to the new studio. Unknown Speaker Gorgeous. Thanks for having me. It’s amazing. Vince Menzione I am so excited to welcome you back. And we’re here in Florida, right. Unknown Speaker So perfect. The channel mob channel mob Vince Menzione is here. Look at this, we’re already gathered. Great to see everyone Jay kicked us off earlier this year, as only he can as only we he can. Michelle has been in this while Michelle hasn’t been in the studio. Michelle has been on the podcast, we’re gonna get her in the studio. And it’s been so much fun. So I’m so excited. You could join us today. Unknown Speaker Happy to be here. Thanks for having me Vince Menzione on. I’m so excited. As I said, I’m so excited. You are an icon in this world of channels and ecosystems. We’ve gotten to know each other well over the last couple of years have. And it’s a topic that we both care deeply about. We talk about often we both spoken at events, we’re going to be together actually, when this airs, we will have been together the same week, right next week. And I wanted to have you here because we’re at this precipice of time, and things are rapidly transforming. A lot of topics we’re talking about, we’re both talking about. And so we want to have you here in the studio. But first, there are apparently one or two people that are in our audience that don’t know Janet shine. So I was hoping maybe you could spend a couple of moments for those one or two people telling us a little bit about you, your company and your mission. Sure, Janet Schijns I’ll face them. How’s that has? For those of you who don’t know me, or maybe who do but want a reminder of like, what’s Janet up to these days, I’m Janet shines, I lead our amazing team at jSj. And we are going to market consultancy. So I’m going to start there and talk about what we do now. And then I’ll tell you a little bit of background about why you can trust me that I know my stuff. So we JSG have three practice areas. The first is a planning and research practice area. So we have I think the world’s best channel research team, we kind of as well bias bias. That’s where Jay and I get along so well, because our research team kind of picks up where Canalis and IDC And Gartner others would leave off right. So you see this great trend marketplaces, you hear events, talk about it so compelling and convincing. And then you say, what should my company do about it? I need some research done on what’s happening in my space in my verticals in my areas. And that’s where our research team comes in and does bespoke research. The second area, we have a sales and marketing, activation and enablement all channel all the time, because our mission statement at JSG is save the channel. Trying to save the channel. We did about 5 billion in funnel last year. Wow. That’s amazing. Not too shabby on behalf of partners. And then finally we have our channel Consulting Group, which is where you and I thankfully get to work together. Yes, yes. And that’s where we help companies either redesign their channel program or come up with their channel program. And now in a world where CO selling and marketplaces and everything is so big, we’re doing that. So why do we have the right to JSG to have those opinions and do that work? It’s because we are the folks who put on the fields or channel experts. We’ve all been channel chiefs. I was channel chief at Verizon, I was CMO at Office Depot. I was channel chief and CCO at Motorola. I’m joined by a huge group of people I won’t name them all who are with us who have done the same thing. They’ve been the CMO on the channel. They’ve been the channel chief in the channel. They’ve been out there they’ve they’ve won the wars they’ve they’ve gotten on the street. And that I think is the secret to our success is we go out and do battle with our clients. I love that anybody can be a PowerPoint, right? And our PowerPoints are beautiful my saying they’re not but we really know how to get things activated and get things going and we love to get out on the street and do the fight. Well. Vince Menzione That’s why it’s so important to have you here today because we talk happy talk sometimes about channel and partnerships. But the truth of the matter is it isn’t always easy to not and organised Asians still struggle here. Like I have phone calls. And I have DMS from people, it seems like every day I get a new one. Like I’m building a practice, we’ve been at it for seven years, something’s wrong, or leadership or leadership still doesn’t get it. Right. The last push Janet Schijns through on Costa channel again, again, yeah, I get those same texts, and it’s changing so quick. It is it is. So that’s part of it. Part of it is even the old dog channel leaders are having to learn some new tricks. And so you and I get a lot of calls because Vince Menzione of Yeah, and we were going to talk more about that as well. Some of the new tricks that they’re learning. Yeah, so some of those new learning. But why do you think organizations still struggle here? What would you say is the main reason? And we could I mean, you’re face to face at the board level? You’re talking to the C suite? Right? You’re with the channel chief, or the chief partner, officer, whatever the title is these days? Yeah. Why do you think that they’re still struggling? Increasingly, Janet Schijns it’s interesting. Increasingly, we’re being pulled in by the board or the C suite and not the channel leader. Yeah. Because so much is changing, right? Because so much is evolving, and they’re not sure what’s supposed to happen. And I think the reason why, so often there’s a little bit of a gap, I’m not gonna say disconnected, I don’t think it’s a disconnect. I think if you speak to the C suite, they understand particularly if they do 75% of their sales through the channel, that the channel is important to them. The disconnect comes from the fact that the channel chief has long been and excuse me, to our audience listening at home, the shit umbrella for the channel. Yes. So their job has been to hold the umbrella up. And no matter what the CFO said, no matter what the sales leader said their job was to protect the partners. Yes, right. So you hold that up, I did that I hit a very sore and defend and protect and defend, protect. And don’t let that hit the partners. Because let that noise hit the partners, they’re going to slow down and stop selling. The problem, though, is that umbrella also keeps the feedback from the partners getting up to the management. And so I think what happened in in protecting the partners, they actually over protected leadership. And so we just finished a survey, Dr. Ashton Silva, who’s the head of our research survey just did a CRO survey, interesting of firms that had channel leaders, and the channel leaders all said that the change in the channel was significant. That was the most common answer significant change in the channel, the CRO said some Vince Menzione change. Interesting that what they mean by significant significant changes in Janet Schijns routes to market and partners and how we’re going to go to market and how we’re going to partner right, as we dug down in the survey in our channel survey, which comes out later this year. The CROs while they saw some change, mind you some change, they did not see that overwhelming level of change. And again, I think it’s because that umbrella now is so lodged in place. They’re not getting that Vince Menzione feedback to transparency, isn’t there, no channel backup to this? It’s just not getting to the C suite. Yeah. Is it a translation issue as well, from the chief partner officer or the channel chief up to the C suite or maybe a lack of trust or protect Janet Schijns me games all the time as the channel leader, which a lot of folks in the traditional business have had to do thankfully, in some of the SAS businesses has been more transparent. But when you have to play that protect me game, it gets to the point where the channel chief is kind of covering their butt for the issues too, right. So I think it’s partially transparency. I think the other part is the C suite only specializes in channel during ops reviews. That’s right, and board meetings and earnings calls and they don’t specialize in the channel the rest of the time. And so what we’ve seen and I know I’ve shared this stat with you, but not probably with your viewers, what we’ve seen is in five years, we’ve went from 51% of the time a customer spends in a b2b tech purchase, being with a salesperson to only 14% of the time they spend with the salesperson. So is this motion that we used to have where if you added more sellers, both partners or direct sellers, you would get more sales? This was a common right has been something that that’s how everybody’s looked at the channel. Just more salespeople, we heard this right feet on the street reach. Yeah, you’re extending your coverage, right. We’ve all heard this reason for having the channel, right. Because they’re a sales channel. Well, now you’ve got a Microsoft who’s adding what 90% of their partners are adding aren’t transacting, that’s what we’re seeing this across the space it’s about influence and advocacy and and so when that starts to happen, it’s very difficult if you’ve been reluctantly in your C suite partnering in the first place. Now to let these people do even more and believe me, they are referred to for those who are in the channel listening is these people. A lot of C suite leaders Vince Menzione CFOs particularly love that’s Yeah, hello to all our friends Unknown Speaker out there, the Vince Menzione CFO, we’re gonna dive into the chief partner Officer role. So I don’t want to I because I think that we, what you’re uncovering here is it’s important. I think that we should probably, let’s go there. Let’s go there first, let’s go there first. Okay. I had Greg Serafin here just a few weeks ago from why chief partner officer. Yep. Different role, different role different set different set of skills? Yeah. We spent almost an hour and a half in the studio here. He gave us a masterclass and what he did he why taking them from a billion to about eight or 9 billion, he’s retiring. And so I think about that Chief partner officer, right, that role, I think the role that the nomenclature around the role is being overused and overhype, personally, Unknown Speaker when everybody becomes a CPO no one’s a CPA, no, Vince Menzione but no one’s a CEO. But I do think that there’s a new set of skills, a very different set of a different set of skills. And I look at a person like Greg is an example of that, honestly, who comes from comes from a financial acumen, right? Where the channel chief is somebody who maybe grew up in the channel maybe was at a vendor like a Microsoft or an HP or a Cisco experience sales experience, mostly. And the translation back to the C suite isn’t as fluid transparent, or as the conversations that are being had are not being understood the way they need to because they’re not in the language at the Janet Schijns time it skills. Yeah, wait, and we’ll talk on that the other half of the time, it’s just the culture of the company, right? The channel chief has kind of been this. I don’t really know what he does. But he does a lot. There’s very few. She’s I don’t really know when she’s out. We’ll talk about that. But they’ve kind of been cloaked in this little bit of secrecy. Right? There’s a lot of hugs, there’s a lot of mugs, there’s a lot of events, and they’re doing a lot of things, and they bring in sales, and the company says, hey, that’s good. And we’ll talk to you again and give you a hard time next month or next quarter. But this skill set has not been invested in no. So despite the fact that there’s so much change in the channel, and that the channel leaders see that what you see is still very traditional training, when we go in and do our partner expert training for teams. And that is really around how do you partner not just resell or give Vince Menzione me that word again? Partner, expert, partner, expert. Interesting. So Janet Schijns how do you partner? Right? What are the tenants of partnering? It’s interesting how confusing that is for some traditional channel organizations, because then they start to say things like, no, no, our product team handles that stuff. Oh, we have an alliances organization. And it’s in the Strategy Group. Exactly. We have a program group. And this is an interesting new trend that I’m seeing at variety of companies, including Verizon as an example where the program team for partnering now reports to the CFO, interesting in an attempt I can only believe to control money. So like a shadow organization for the partner organization. Well, it’s the actual program team. And they’re not the only vendor I’m seeing doing okay, starting to move that partner program your traditional triangles over lack Vince Menzione of trust in the channel chief thing, holding the dollars because we’ve Janet Schijns seen it in the past in marketing. We’ve seen it in the past in the channel, and we’ve seen it in sales, we’ve seen the CRO habit. Now all of a sudden, I’m starting to see a trend of it moving that or just the program. Yeah, moving to either some level of compliance. And we’ve seen some bad stuff happening. So I understand why or finance. And the reason I point this out is because partnering is now become something that’s all hands on the field. Yeah, it’s not just that used to be pretty simple, right? You want a partner, see the channel chief? They’re over there. Yeah. Now they have the partner program, right? They have a bunch of organizations, they run almost like a different company. They’re bolted on, they’re bolted on. They’re kind of this good thing that then we started having companies say we’re going to be 100% channel, they still don’t mean that. Now, they mean, they’re going to put sales through the channel on their paper. That’s right. And then we have companies like Microsoft, like E and y, like AvePoint, which I’m honored to sit on the board for who look at partnering as systemic across the organization, lipstick approach, holistic approach, it’s embedded. It’s not a separate thing. Right? Although they have a program and they have all the elements. It’s part of everybody’s job to partner and that’s the world we’re moving towards. And that’s where the skill for that CPOE that ability to reach cross organization. Greg has that skill, that ability to understand that there’s a bigger game than signing the PIO today. I was talking with Infosys. I’ll use them as an example. They’re genius at partnering. And they’re doing $7 billion deals with 37 partners in them. Wow. So you start thinking about the scope of partnering right? And in the past, you would have said, Oh, good, they’re gonna do the install and config and management. That’s not the case anymore. Right? These are really complex situations. And so the partnering, I actually think the next CEOs will come from the CPO well because partnering is so embedded now in what the go to market motion for every company needs to be well Vince Menzione I wanted to that was a big gonna be the next conversation point with you. So when Jay was here, and you were both at that same event in Miami, Janet Schijns we were and it was cold and windy in our in our state represented wasn’t it wasn’t Vince Menzione our typical Miami weather, but it was my birthday. Unknown Speaker I know it was it Vince Menzione was awesome. It was awesome. But Jay talked about The fact that every CEO needs to be a partner leader. That was his talk. And when he came here in the studio, and if you haven’t, if you haven’t watched or listened to that episodes, great episode as well, and we talked about this, why do you believe that CEO needs to be a partner leader? Well, Janet Schijns because I think I want the audience to think about 10 years ago, when we started saying every company is a tech company. Yeah, right. Car companies stopped being car companies, they started being tech companies, right. Tesla was iPhone companies were everybody’s a tech company. And that’s become true, right? Every company is primarily led by tech COVID, sped that up, or a platform company or a platform company? Within being a tech company? That’s right. But it was like, hey, everybody’s tech company. Now everybody’s a partnering company. So that’s the next evolution. We’re only at the tip of that evolution. Yeah. Right. So we’re not somewhere where it’s advanced yet. Yeah. And so what’s happening, Vince Menzione by the way, new jobs, new opportunities for those of us who are in the tech world extra venture outside of traditional, Janet Schijns gosh, we’ve been on compensated, you know, with Lynn and healthcare and others. And everybody’s partnering. Now, what’s interesting about that is some companies and I’m talking about you have been talking about, they’ve just named their channel, Chief CPOE. Because you’re supposed to have a CPOE. Much like what happened initially, when everybody became a tech company, they named CTOs. That’s right. And many times the CTO was just their CIO with a fancy new branding. And in fact, you saw a lot of people do CIO CTO 10 years before that, we saw the same thing with CISOs. Right? Originally, the seaso was just some guy who knew about security. Right? Then it Vince Menzione became Bob closet. Janet Schijns Bob manages our McAfee licenses, right? Okay, let’s make him Susa. That’s, and then it became a career of profession and a very difficult one. And the same was CTO. And now the think the same was CPOE. So we’re probably in year two of this trend, and it’s a 10 year get to maximize capacity ability. And so I think what you’re going to see is a lot of failures in the current CPUs the same way we saw when CMOS started this Yes, right, CMOs started, the average tenure was a year, right? Because everybody thought, I know what we need to cmo marketing, we’ll just get somebody, somebody who’s good at Marketo. Right, exactly. Like this is that who’s good at arts and crafts, they’ll be good at this, too. It’s not so much. And so we’re seeing the same thing that with the CPO and the skills are very different, right? The channel chief is about sales about partner management. Right? And it’s down. I’m managing you, Mr. Partner, Mrs. Partner. That’s right. The CPO is about managing up sideways down in circles saying how do we put something together that’s so exquisite for our customers through our partnerships with both our customers and our providers and our partners that we can’t be beat we can’t be replicated, and then turn that into a partnering platform, if you will, I think the two end up kind of Yeah, smudging together and make something that is that I can’t can’t think of another word. I said it already. But I’ll say it again exquisite for our customers. And we’re very early days in the very Vince Menzione early days. And we talked about Microsoft being prescient and being a harbinger of things. Microsoft has been good at doing this internally. Some of that is organizational. We’ll talk a little bit more about that. But some of it I talk about things like mindset, commitment, trust and execution is four areas when we talk about this CPO role, that I think we need a lot of work here, we need a lot of work. If you’re part of the movement, you know, I have a very strong point of view. I’ve sat on both sides of the table for over 30 years now. I build growth through partnerships and PC, internet, cloud, mobile AI, marketplaces and more. I’ve also seen the demise of organizations that are resistant to change part of the communities special interest groups and associations. And I don’t see one place that mirrors the ecosystem and brings it all together. You see, I see a vibrant world where hyperscalers builders ISV sellers, s eyes MSPs and other partners come together to spark the ecosystems growth. I’ve talked to many of you. And what I continually hear is it’s noisy. I don’t know whom to listen to and where to go. There’s a massive opportunity, but I’m not sure how to get there. Well, you’ve been heard. We’re getting ready to open the doors early at a pilot this new experience. We want this to be your place with your feedback and participation. If you’re a builder and innovator or leader, visit our website. Go back to Greg and Greg you’re getting a lot of kudos here today. But I think about the ability that info we talked about the influence strategy and the ability to be credible to have trust right with that leader, that partner leader All right, it cannot be the person who was the channel chief last week now just changing their title Well, Janet Schijns and that’s we’re seeing that right we’re seeing people say hey, let’s do that and what I’m trying to explain, explain or hell of the C suite and the board, I sit on several boards, right? And having that conversation being asked to present to other boards being sp, an advisor to a board on this topic is it’s not about routes to market. That’s right. That’s been trimmed up not to say you’re not going to have routes to market, right? Of course you are. But your strategy for partnering is not about routes, routes to market. It’s about commercialization of innovation. Yes. How will you commercialize innovation amongst your ecosystem? And that starts with a trust ecosystem. So who will you treat as a partner? And this gets them every time as well? And as poorly as you treat your own employees? Wow. Because a good partner should be a part of your team. Vince Menzione Yeah. What are what’s the answer you get when you ask that question? We Janet Schijns can’t do that, then you’re not ready. You’re not ready. You’re not ready. Right? Right. So how do you make that happen? How do you make it so that your partners, I want people to be confused about who works for which? Yes, Vince Menzione yes, this is right. This is the joint value proposition Janet Schijns through integration, right. And it’s multiple parties. And so what we’re seeing now is some heroes, we’re starting to see the Alliance manager. Yeah, who has long been tasked with this. Yeah, webbed, weird fuzzy roll, fuzzy roll, press releases and product releases and make trying to manage one of your biggest customers slash partners slash developer slash slash, they’re starting to rise up as heroes because this kind of nebulous territory has been something that they’ve broken their teeth on, right. And they do have a little more ability to work in the gray zone. And that’s the key the channel chief a lot of times and some of them will retrain, some of them will retrain and be fine. Right. I have no doubt to that. There’s always the exceptions. But the rule is, the channel chiefs have been in a black and white arena for a long time. And a Vince Menzione lot of it is the vendor partner role or vendor? Correct, which is more one sided? Correct. Janet Schijns And I am not so that the audience hears me not saying that the channel chief role goes immediately away tomorrow overnight, because that was the primary function, right is a primary function. It’s like, it would be like saying your direct sales leaders role is going to go away. Of course, that’s not going to go away. So any significant route to market that you have is still going to have a sales leader. That’s right. Right. That makes sense. It’s the layer above that. It’s the understanding that you could be in a sale. Yeah, right. And there could be 37. As I mentioned, earlier partners. That’s right. And so in that scenario, you don’t get to be in charge. And this is the hardest conversation I have, because the the C suite is so used to we’re going to let the channel sell that product. We’re going to give the channel this discount or give the channel this commission, we’re going to block the channel always my least favorite discussion from key accounts because we own them. news alert, no one owns an account what the Odyssey hear that? But those tenants, that’s right, right. They don’t work in a partner world. Vince Menzione And this is where my sales world, this is where the shift in mindset has. Janet Schijns And it’s very hard because then and especially my friends in the European markets right there. They don’t like stories, Americans like stories. We’re storytellers. They want like metrics and measurements and like, how am I supposed to measure that? And what I say to them is, look, I read your last 10 press releases where you made an announcement with whoever right name, your mega mega chasm is my term mega chasm, right? Rename your Mega chasm of partners, because I do believe it’s going to be a mega causal ecosystem, it’s going to be a microcosm. It’s, this is where we’re going. We Vince Menzione went, talking, you Janet Schijns know, system megakat. So you’re gonna go with a mega Kazam strategy. And your metrics already are messed up because I took your last 10 press releases. And then I went and talked to your head of sales. And I said, they allows 10 things. Well, with IBM, we’re doing this we’re doing this with Microsoft. Right all over the news. How many sales did you make? Not very many. And so you’ve been doing these press releases, you have been in effect partnering, you haven’t figured out how to commercialize that. That’s right. And that’s Vince Menzione where the alliance leader, the chief revenue officer, the CFO, this is where everybody, so this is that whole influence strategy, corralling that whole group together. And if you really Janet Schijns want to see everybody’s eyes roll, then you start to talk about, okay, so advocates who might be your advocates, who else is there who else you should partner with? Some of them are very unnatural. They’re not who you would naturally think, and who are your detractors, and they’re like, detractors, what do you mean? So I was just at CCA cloud communication Alliance, great event, by the way, and I was talking with a group of CEOs and CROs, and I brought this up and they were like, detractors, what do you mean? And I said, Okay, you all do stuff that’s ating collaboration and communication. Do you not think the CISOs a detractor for you sometimes or whoever their security consultant is a detractor for them making progress? That’s right. Oh, yeah. And how about the website guy whoever’s running their website and ecommerce Do you not think the website ecommerce provider is not a detractor for your service? You’re saying we could put chat bots in they have their own approach to it. Your Call Center application your seek has application fails Do you really think they like you and they just did a web campaign and they’re are getting judged on ROI. You have to trap natural detractors as partnering is not just about the positivity. That’s right, right. It’s also about the negativity and how do you manage the negativity? How do you lower the noise and the friction in the system? And that’s why I think they will be the next CEO because as every company becomes a partnering company, every company starts to learn to manage the mega caused them, the person who won, they’re going to be the most hotly pursued CEO ever. I Vince Menzione agree. I agree. And the CROs of the past, which are the ones that were not channel friendly or partnership friendly. I think they’re they’re going to be a dinosaur at some point. Why do you think they’re in the past? Because they don’t understand partnering? Oh, I Unknown Speaker thought you meant they work on already? No, no, Vince Menzione no, they’re still there. Unfortunately, they’re the biggest contract amount Unknown Speaker of them. Yes. That don’t know channel Vince Menzione because five or six years ago, they were successful at XYZ company. They took a SaaS offering, and they got it to, you know, X number. Right Janet Schijns and said, This is the sweetheart Yeah, this is who I need is my CRO. And then they went into a company that was 90% or 80. Security 91.5% channel? Yeah, involved, right? They went into a company like that. And then everybody’s questioning why are they struggling with partnering? But again, back to my original point, when we do our partner expert training, what we learn is most people have no formal training and partnering. No, they have formal training and Channel Sales being a cam, right? There’s cam training, right? This is not partnering training, right. That’s like saying you I don’t know you did. I’m trying to think of like one of those, like Zig Ziglar selling classes. Yeah, direct selling or prom hop. Back in the day, that sales training. Yeah. Right. And so they had a channel sales training, but they don’t have partnering. Vince Menzione They don’t have partnering train. Yeah, yeah. It needs to be a discipline at the university level. Janet Schijns Yeah. So interesting. You say that I’ve been having some conversations at the university level with the team at Wharton, because I did some executive MBA there. So about that about how do you have a partnering executive program like a graduate certificate program for partnering? Do I think it’s a whole undergrad at some point? Sure. But for right now, it would be good to have an executive management executive MBA program for these folks that need to be reached and you Vince Menzione pull in the multi disciplines, right? You pull in it pull in finance, marketing events, I’m happy to. Janet Schijns Right, exactly, you call in experts. And that’s what they do. I took the board training from Wharton, which is fabulous as an aside for anybody considering getting on board. And that’s what they do. They bring experts in and they explain to you what it’s really like. And we knew we need a lot of education. Yeah. Vince Menzione So we can riff all day all day. Let’s talk about mindset execution, executive commitment, because that’s this all ties into this. That’s the toughest one, but there’s a topic you were going to talk about together. I’ve been talking about quite a bit like the whole marketplace conversation, right? We’ve been talking about the tectonic shifts, what we’ve been seeing it the, again, the CEO, becoming the new CIO, and how that’s impacting these cloud decisions, right? You come out of the telco world of Vodafone, just signed a was it a billion and a half dollar commitment with Microsoft. Yes, they did. I know the person who executed Janet Schijns and they’re all doing that they’re all doing. This is happening. Yeah. So Vince Menzione now I’m in the line of business. And I’ve got this huge cloud commitment and a company and I’m talking to an ISV or a security company or somebody MSP, whatever, whatever the role is, um, I want to, I want to cobble it together, we’re talking about the whole marketplace concept here, right. And then last year, and Jay talked about this in our conversation, or five organizations got to a billion dollars or more with AWS, which made it AWS with the fifth largest distributor, Unknown Speaker I think it did. Yeah. And I think they’re on their way to fourth this year. Yeah. Vince Menzione So that changes, that changes things. But ervice, if you’re in distribution, you’re nervous. And somebody asked me yesterday, I won’t mention the name of the company. But it was somebody asking me for advice from one of the large hyperscalers was about what happens to distribution for us. What do we think about with distribution? So we can go in a lot of different directions, a Janet Schijns lot of different directions. And I think, yeah, the key to me was marketplaces is they’re not a panacea, right. You can’t just say, Hey, we’re gonna go on the Amazon marketplace or the Microsoft market and be done. Because you’ve got healthcare companies that have very specific requirements is you have highly regulated industries like utilities and telcos telcos right. And so I am seeing that not only are the hyper scalar marketplaces coming up, but so are the specialized marketplaces coming up. So you’re starting to see the centers and McKesson and other in healthcare, right kind of rising up, you see workday and Salesforce and others. And so I think there’s going to be almost to go back to our channel experience, almost like a triangle of marketplaces, right, that says, okay, at the top, you’re gonna have your hyper scalars for Pacific broad based marketplace, and then you’re going to have specialized marketplace and then hyper specialized marketplace Vince Menzione ties that caused them to if you think about it, because you have the hyper scalars and then you have the Galaxy solar system, Janet Schijns and it kind of comes into this mega chasm and so instead of being a triangle, It’ll kind of be a big circle right to kind of Yeah, just to gather, but what we see is that the folks that are ignoring that trend, and we do see it right, and I’m sure you see it too. I do, Hey, that’s not going to be us. That’s Vince Menzione it is a lot of the large ISPs still, by the way, because they don’t want to disrupt their channels of distribution. They’re just that and the 31,000 partners downstream. And the longtail what I would say Janet Schijns is, I’m gonna say it to the audience. It’s an an to strategy. It’s not an or Yeah, right. So it’s an ad strategy. It’s, I have a traditional channel, I have a traditional distribution, let’s face it, right? Breads, just bread with a toaster can’t be toast. So there’s hardware, there’s going to be hardware, right? That’s just reality. But there’s also going to be marketplaces and your customers like buying from them. And so we’re seeing more and more I think what I saw last week, I think it was from tackle and light, it might have been somebody else was 21% of the deals were being done by a partner. Yeah, Vince Menzione it could have been, I don’t know, tackle research, but on the platform, and Microsoft Janet Schijns is empowering that. So we’re gonna see in an strategy here. Absolutely, Vince Menzione absolutely. So lots of numbers coming out with regards to marketplace, right, our good friend Jay and the Canalis. Organization said 45 billion by the end of 2025. They said that they’ve under called it tackle who you just mentioned, right? He’s actually going to be here for our event in here on May 30. In fact, a little plug for our May 30. They’re saying 100 billion by the end of 2026. I’ve seen that number too. So where are we in a hype phase? Because I’ve been talking about the Marketplace moment, and I’ll be self inflicted maybe that I’m helping to create some of the hype speaking on stage at the at the channel partners event in some other places about this that everyone needs to get on board. But is it a hype phase? Janet Schijns There are certainly going to be winners and losers, right? So you might pick wrong in a marketplace, you might pick the wrong strategy, but it’s not a hype. It’s just early adopter phase. Right? And, and I know for some people listening, they’re like, we’ve been on a marketplace for five years. It’s not early adopter, it still is pretty early in the adoption early adoption cycle. And so who’s going to win and who’s going to lose? And I think we all can say Microsoft’s definitely going to win at the hyperscale or Amazon and Google, right, they’ve got so much investment. That’s right. And the other thing that we’re many times failing to realize is that with Gen AI, there’s almost this big bang moment coming, where Gen AI uses so much compute power, quantum computing leaps on top of that, and all of a sudden, the most precious thing in the world to every company becomes power. Yeah, because you got to power those data centers. compute power. And so what we’re seeing is Amazon now the number one provider of alternate energy, right, Microsoft talking about power there, Vince Menzione they’re putting their data centers near power, and your hydro seems Janet Schijns trillion dollar trillion dollar contracts for power struggle hyperscalers happening in the coming years. And what will happen is they will eat up the power. Yep. So even if you’re a specialized marketplace, you will end up in a hyper scalar marketplace, just from a consumption of power standpoint, because there will be no power left. Vince Menzione And layer on top of that, like Microsoft last year, $32 billion in cloud build out, right? They’re spending each of the hyperscalers is spending an inordinate amount of their investment dollars on chips right now. That’s right. That’s why the video stock is where it Janet Schijns is right? They’re buying up processing capacity, the the Achilles heel is power. So they’re buying up power, second, Achilles heels, chips break, as we saw what happened during COVID, absolutely got Intel building a monolithic chip manufacturer in Ohio, that will still only do about two or 3% of the chips that are needed. We need Vince Menzione a lot more chip capacity here in the US. What’s happening in the in China and Taiwan right now is still still Janet Schijns very far in parallel, right? And so I think you’re going to see a world where it’s not always the best solution that wins. It’s often the person that dealt with risk best. And in fact, when we go in and do our market, action planning, practice, shameless plug, it’s a great program. Our market action planning actually starts with failure, first failure. So what would be the things that would make you fail? How would you fail? How would your biggest competitor kill you? What would happen what and by the way, it’s a depressing strategy that I’m not saying it’s Vince Menzione another way that military organizations go through this strategy exercise, right? You fail Janet Schijns first. Right? So so we do fail first, and it opens up you watch the aperture and people’s brains open up around partnering particularly right and in the marketplace world around how they’re going to handle partnering in a marketplace driven Customer Self Serve world and they start to realize that their failure points are very different than their failure points would have been First Channel Sales. Yeah, right. Channel Sales was Oh, there’s another vendor comes in the partner likes their program better they pay more right. Those were the failure conversations. Now the failure conversations are somebody thinks an exclusive partnership with somebody else and we don’t have access anymore. That’s right. And our customers turn because all their money unless you remember, that’s how the marketplace works. Cio puts money into it throughout a commitment credits, whatever that specific marketplace calls it and you then get forced into that funnel. That’s right. And so when we do our failure planning, a lot of times, that’s how marketplaces then becomes in their plan. So when we do the optimistic planning, and by the way, everybody listening, you raise to a crisis, you walk to an opportunity, it’s human nature. So when we talk about opportunity, it’s always how do we grow? 30%? How do we grow? 100%? How do we get what why do we do this, you start talking about failure, all of a sudden, is Oh, shoot. And all of a sudden, it’s our contingency plan, right? So during the optimistic portion, marketplace was down low and a top 10 For a lot of the boards and CEOs. When you start talking failure avoidance marketplaces pops up, yeah, way up into the top five, top three, top two from any org. And this Vince Menzione makes the alliance leader more relevant to the conversation, because they’ve had the relationships with the Microsoft, Amazon’s Janet Schijns got the little tentacles in there. They know where the knock on what doors Vince Menzione and then the conversation about placing your bets across all three. All right, and on all three sets of Rails correct. Janet Schijns And then we start having the conversation about how the operate, what’s your operating model in? That’s right. And Vince Menzione that’s the piece where I feel that most ISVs at least struggle Janet Schijns struggle. And the first thing I always tell an HR loves me for this one. The first thing I always tell them is you got to get away from thinking of your operating model, like an org chart. Yep. And want you to think of it like a deck of cards. And you can play any number of games with a deck of cards, right? You can play Rummy, you can play solitaire, you can play whatever you want, right? But it’s a deck of cards. And in a deck of cards, you got to have kings and queens and aces and right, but you can play a different game with that. So it’s less about organization structure and more about the plays you’re trying to make, like that deck a car, right? And it really changes how people start thinking because they’re like, oh, that changes who my aces are, right? That changes to this partnering strategy changes here today, your ACE is our CEO, CFO, C CIO, CIO, CMO. Right? You got your Isa. That’s right. That’s right. But they’re not your aces anymore. So now how do you manage an org chart when your ACE is the Alliance manager who’s been there for 20 years and knows where everybody is buried at the biggest hyper scalar? So that’s, it’s really becoming an interesting full bodied conversation around operating model. We do our market action planning days. Do Vince Menzione you wind up with a new org? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s yeah, you Janet Schijns wind up with a new org, or at least a shadow org strategy, because operating model and that’s where I love everyone. But that’s where a lot of companies start with org model. And then they try to push operating model into a just start in the market action planning. We start Vince Menzione with like stuffing, like stuffing people or process into right. Janet Schijns And so I think that world of partnering is going to get away from that command and control finally, in corporate Yeah, Vince Menzione how do you stitch so the conversation? It’s very interesting. And then how do you change your compensation models? Right? Because one of the things I see from block from a blocker perspective, when you look at the existing organization, again, I like the panel, like we have to get to the rallying cry around the market place. Absolutely. But today, I have an alliance team that’s bolted on over here or sits here. I have the channel team we like to use the term bolted over here revenue, right? Janet Schijns Kind of program team somewhere program marketing, maybe Vince Menzione finding you’re not on the same comp plan. They don’t have the same OKRs they’re not they’re not aligned the right way. Right. So they have to you have to change the composition. Janet Schijns Right? You have to change the comp I tell people like parenting. Yeah, got to decide what’s important first, right? Don’t don’t focus on anything else. Just focus on what’s important. What Vince Menzione matters. Don’t Janet Schijns do drugs and get an education right, then get a job. Those are the three important things your rooms messy, I don’t care. Yeah. And so this is same thing for corporations. They’ve spread so thin what their metrics are. Everybody has 10 different metrics. You look at most people’s comp plans, you’re like, I don’t think they have any idea what they’re doing to your stock price. Like, let’s be honest, let’s just be transparent here and say that the person in Channel Sales, your organization, probably not having a massive impact today on your stock price. Not today, right? Maybe in aggregate over time. Sure. But so what we’re encouraging people to do is to actually dumb down the metrics. Yeah, make sense? Make it simple, make it simple, what are the three big things that are going to that are going to drive the organization forward get rid of the noise in the past, it used to be like earnings per share, and then it was margin or some level of which right and a comp. That’s the other thing I love and it was a comp against others, right? It’s always a comp. And now we’re starting to encourage people that you can’t look at your company the industry you’re in you have to look at part of your comp has to be where they are in partnering. Yeah, so I think we’ll see Microsoft added as a comp for a lot of folks and some of their metrics. Vince Menzione Okay, very interesting to see what they do. I would love this is a fun conversation. We’re gonna have you back here Janet Schijns very like I know it’s very very it’s like a mind meld. Vince Menzione It’s a mind mountain or Star Wars person’s mind no, we’re gonna bring our two d two or one of the one of your friends with us Janet Schijns next time. But yeah, it’s it. The world is changing a lot. You’ve got to challenge that you don’t need a faster horse. Yeah. So you need a car? Yes. Right? So Right. And so you have to challenge everything in that scenario. Vince Menzione It’s important to me that the supplements that I take are of the highest quality. And that’s why for over seven years now, I’ve been drinking age one. Unlike many supplement brands, and believe me, I’ve tried many of them ag one is consistently looking for ways to do things better and 52 iterations of their formula and counting their team is always finding ways to make ag one even better quality for ag one isn’t just a buzzword. It’s a commitment backed by expert led scientific research, high quality ingredients, industry, leading manufacturing and rigorous testing. At every step of the process, ag one goes above and beyond industry standards, I know I can trust what’s in every scoop of ag one. Because the team relies on expert lead scientific research, sourcing ingredients for potency and efficacy. Taking care of my health shouldn’t be complicated. And that’s why I rely on ag one because it simplifies this by covering all of my nutritional bases and setting me up for success every single day. Ag ones ingredients are heavily researched for efficacy and quality. And I love that every scoop also includes important prebiotics, probiotics and digestive enzymes for my gut health. So if you want to replace your multivitamin, and more like I have, start with ag one, try ag one and get a one year supply of vitamin d3. And five free travel packs. With your first subscription, go to drink ag one.com, forward slash Vince M. That’s drink ag one.com forward slash Vin Sam, check them out. Let’s talk about a topic we are both passionate about. Sure. And it’s women in tech women in the ecosystem. I’ve been very deliberate here about featuring women in this world such Janet Schijns an amazing advocate for all of us. You’re very kind. But Vince Menzione I have also been very deliberate because I feel that all voices need to be heard. Yes, I agree. And yeah, we’re moving out of the bro culture of this tech world that unfortunately, when you go to some of these conferences, yeah, Janet Schijns I was gonna say a lot of the conference’s I go to the the the bro code is still code is still there. Yeah, Vince Menzione let’s talk about that for a second. Because I do feel like we were at dinner the other night and was asked about women in technology. And I the observation from the person who wasn’t in it was that there are Hey, there’s a lot of women in tech. And I sit there in mostly traditional roles. They are there and head of HR Head of Diversity, CMO, legal Janet Schijns finance marketing. Yeah. And then we saw them impacted the most by layoffs. Yes, those roles are the easiest to replace with AI as well. Vince Menzione So let’s talk about our world. Yeah. Why don’t we see more women leaders in this industry be a C suite role. So at the C suite, why don’t we have more women leaders, running the partnerships, alliances, channels, and ecosystems microcosms and making columns? Janet Schijns Yeah. So to start, and I know, you know, this, I launched advancing Leadership Network with Kathleen Martin joined our team earlier this year to help mid level management, females go to the next level. That’s where the break is, right? The break happens in the mid level management. It’s a manager or director. It’s Vince Menzione like a glass ceiling, I use that term glass ceiling, but it does feel like there’s a Janet Schijns ceiling. Yeah. And you’re held, you’re held down. My family also took a significant portion of assets and created a for profit, one, one, and we are sponsoring and giving scholarships to women. A significant portion of our wealth and my husband and I said if my I gotta put my money where my mouth is free, and so let’s start a foundation that’s going to help women get to find it. And to me, it’s about financial independence. Yes, yes, it’s good for the industry. It’s good for everybody. But when women succeed, and women become leaders, they become financially independent. women that are financially independent, are nine times less likely to be abused, and I’m a survivor of abuse. And so I know how important it is to be able to get out. And so we’re really dedicated on helping women get ahead, not just because it’s good for the industry, but because it’s good for women and their families when they’re in danger. I didn’t know that. Yes, yeah. Yeah. In my past, long in my past, my past, we can happen to me, it can happen to anyone. Yeah, please, if it’s happening to you, please text me Call me or text or call Vince and we’ll get you help, please. So one of the things that we’ve seen is why women don’t get ahead is is also partially sadly, why they are more likely to be victims of abuse, why they’re more likely to be not financially independent. Women are the care providers. They have the children they have the parents, they have they’re sandwiched in between this, and the channel traditionally has been a heavy travel. Yes, very much. So the higher you get in the organization, the more you have to travel nationally, if not International, all the events, right to an endless plethora. have events all the late Vince Menzione nights out at the bar late nights at the bars. Janet Schijns And I hate to say it with your tush being squeezed and people coming onto you because they’re drunk. Yeah. And so it gets lovely. It’s uncomfortable, and it doesn’t match up with unfortunately, still the primary role, which is care providers. Now there’s some families where that’s not true where everybody’s pulled together where they help but look at them as beans, right, they’re definitely, they’re definitely breaking that norm. They’re both equally responsible for these kids, they get a lot of community help. And plus Vince Menzione COVID has made it so we’re just talking about to start to vary the time, right, Janet Schijns and then events started coming back. And so I think the number one reason has been that women were felt excluded, because it was all guys, then they were excluded, because it just didn’t fit in to the average, being very transparent. I’m a mom, the average moms journey to travel to 117 events a year. And then third, the financial rewards really weren’t as good for women, women typically got less money for the role, they typically more promoted slower were comped lower. And so in the past, women didn’t choose channel. So as they started to rise up, they either moved over and became the channel program lead, they moved over then again to marketing, as they were in the marketing or sorry, moved into marketing, they may partner marketing, partner marketing, then maybe they became a field marketer, then maybe they became CMO. Vince Menzione Yeah, I’ve seen that path Janet Schijns to CMO. Right, that path took talented women out of the channel. And it’s a shame because now we’re in a mode of partnering. Yeah. And from a EQ standpoint, women are Vince Menzione much better here. Right? Women are better Janet Schijns at sorry, part of the soft skills, right of the being able to bend not break and compromise not cannot conquer us, right? And so we’re seeing this, oh, goodness, right, we have this huge gap of women who actually have the skill to do the job, but haven’t had the experience doing the jobs. So what Vince Menzione can we do? I mean, we’ve got our viewers and listeners and people that watch us on LinkedIn, YouTube and other channels. What can we do differently? Well, Janet Schijns first thing is mentor somebody, right? If you can, if you’re experienced, if you are a channel leader, if you’re a partner leader, if you’re an ecosystem leader, pick a female and mentor them. You’re amazing at this, if so many women under your wing and help. The second thing is be their sponsor, when ideas for roles are different than mentors, different than mentor right mentor means I’m going to provide you a structured help sponsor means Hey, we need a new partner at least. And you advocate and say, Hey, Jenny, would be great for that role. Right? Here’s why I think she’d be great for that role. Here’s why I think you need to do this. And don’t be afraid to push it. Vince Menzione And you’re in the boardroom. So that’s that’s where those conversations are they do should happen. Janet Schijns Oh, they do. Yeah. And I put my foot down all the time. And we’ve actually now really we we do have to was I mentioned save the channel is our tagline. And so we won’t work with anybody on a channel project where it’s going to hurt the channel, right? If it’s going to really negatively impact the channel, we will not take that contract. That’s always a surprise to people. But I am not destroying the partners that actually are the lifeblood of the business. There’s a way to do projects and change your channel strategies and ecosystem and partnering strategies without hurting your partners. So if companies aren’t open to that, I’m not for you. They off 99 times out of 100 they come back and go we were wrong. Shouldn’t went that way. You were right, let’s let’s go back to the table and do it the right way. But we also now are saying, Look, if there’s no women at the table, there’s no diversity. No people of color. We don’t really want to work with you. Yeah, good for you. And so that has really changed some conversations, I get a lot of calls now. Transparency, I also get a lot of calls that people think I have a can of women that I can just like, open up and pick one out. Here you go. She’s already for you. She’s just been waiting in the can for you to call Vince Menzione and start a recruiting business. They’re just I guess I could Yeah, but it doesn’t work Janet Schijns that way, right? You’re gonna male or female, you’re gonna have to invest in the person having the partnering skills for Scorpio, you need to have a bench. And I would almost argue that the person who wasn’t the channel chief is a better candidate. Yeah. And so since most of the channels use are male, find the other person who was good at partnering and got sidelines maybe a little bit right, and maybe they’re your next CPO and you can do some kind of to in the box or CO management scenario to help them get the experimenter Vince Menzione advocate look for talent. Look, I think about the baseball team right you got to have the you got to have the farm team. Yeah, there was a bit Janet Schijns I don’t remember who wrote the book but there was a book about you just just hire people and then find them the role find them the role hire great people hire great people then fire them. Right and so I keep a collection, I do have a little database I keep of women that I’ve seen skills, I put the skills in, we’ve turned it into a database so I can input what somebody’s looking for and say I think this person is primarily ready for that. Yeah, yeah. Vince Menzione We’re gonna run out of time we are. So we are almost To the midpoint of 2024. Reading, I can’t believe it like it was just New Year’s Eve here, Janet Schijns like, Florida. Sure. Happy New Year, seven seconds. Exactly, Vince Menzione exactly. What are you seeing? How should we each prepare? What should we be doing differently going into the second half of this year? What great advice or strategy? You request? Janet Schijns Yeah. We had a silent recession in 23. Yeah, I’m talking to you. Right. You all know it’s true. We just didn’t talk about it. And there’s economic Vince Menzione headwinds 470,000 people laid off last year. Right. Right. Janet Schijns And we’re I think, and if you’ve watched layoffs, I do. I think we’re over 100,000 Already this year in the tech space in the startup space not over. It’s not over fact that big ones are just starting right Tesla yesterday, right. So I think the economic uncertainty continues at least through 25. I don’t care what the pundits say, right? You’re gonna see a pop because of the election, get ready. If you need to get a mortgage get ready. Because you’ll have a little window right before November where things will come down. The interest rates will come down. Exactly right. So just personal advice, get ready, Vince Menzione refinance, if you’re at Janet Schijns a time worried about October, but on top of that, we’re gonna see tack continue to grow. Yes, it’s just where it’s growing. And where it’s declining, right, we’re gonna see generative AI really swap out finance teams, core, repetitive tasks, teams, contact centers, so we’re going to hear these big numbers 30% laid off 25% laid off, right? But it’s going to be in those routine tasks easy to replace to the machine area. Yes. And any partner who’s not involved in generative AI not using generators and understand it will be making a huge mistake, huge mistake basically signing their termination papers. Yeah, we’re gonna see marketplaces continue to rise. The biggest reason is because it lets you compare and contrast offers. That’s right, and manage costs, manage costs, and in the current financial aid streamlines the process finally, process, manage costs, this is a good thing. The third thing we’re going to see and we continue to see, marketing is leading the way in sales. Yeah, the firm’s that get it and we just finished a study on this, the top growth firms in our industry, invested more in marketing and got more leads for marketing than the bottom growth companies who were still trying to push the sales mantle right, hire more salespeople, hire more salespeople, this is a failing play. It is a failing, you could in fact, and we have the data to prove it, let go of half of your sales team spent half of that money. So you’re still saving money on marketing, and double your sales. Absolutely. This is the world we’re moving into self serve world where you don’t learn on their own and marketing as who helps us we’re gonna see this huge pump of marketing. And then we’re going to begin to see the pushback on partnering. Yeah, so right before you push through any innovation, you’re gonna get the resistance, you get the resistance, right. That’s how you know you’re there. Yeah, right. A little. Like when there’s no resistance. You’re not there yet. We’re gonna see. I think it’s going to be early. We’re birthing. We’re birthing and the 24 beginning of 25 You’re gonna see some massive pushback on partnering. Yeah, right. A little like, No, right? No, and then it’s going to pump through and it’s going to be just crazy. So if you’re not partner enabled, get there. Yeah. Vince Menzione I love it. Janet, you are so so good to have you. Oh, Unknown Speaker thank you for having me. Well, we’re Vince Menzione gonna do this again. Yeah, so we’re gonna get you back here in the studio with you. Janet shines. If you don’t know her, you need to know her JSG or the JSW group is it was formerly known incredible. organization.com like to CRM is an amazing friend. And so so good to have you here. Bear Janet Schijns with you. I love what you’re doing. Thank you hear everything you’re doing to champion and save the channel. Vince Menzione Thank you, and you’re a mutual admire as well. Really appreciate you. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of ultimate guide to partner, online and Ultimate Partner.com. If you liked this episode, I’d be thrilled if you left us up to a five star review on either Apple or Spotify. This helps us to continue to feature amazing guests. Also, please check out subscribe to our new YouTube channel, ultimate Bart? We’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Guide to partners Transcribed by https://otter.ai | |||
| 218 – Let Us Be Your Guide to Ultimate Partner Success! | 23 Apr 2024 | ||
Our First Ultimate Partner® Solocast in Years!
This is my first solocast in the new Boca Raton Studio. Come listen as I share a synopsis of the first four months of 2024. Throughout the episode, I will dive deep into working with the top hyperscalers like Microsoft, the importance of marketplaces and co-selling, rapid changes after the global pandemic, and how we have voted the business, including the highly successful previous Ultimate Partner LIVE event. You will also get a glimpse of what’s ahead, including in the next live event we plan to host on May 30th, 2024. What You’ll Learn
Ever wonder what you could achieve with the right partners by your side? Dive into the Ultimate Partner Experience Community (UPX) and discover a world brimming with possibilities! Don’t miss out on 50% off for your first year using code EARLYBIRD at checkout. Exclusive ContentGain access to cutting-edge content and events crafted by partnership professionals. Stay ahead with strategies, trends, and in-depth interviews with the industry leaders in partnerships. Access to a Like-Minded CommunityOur next event is just around the corner and everyone is welcome. Although the event is open to the public, we want to give a special privilege to our members. Which means the Q&A session is exclusive to members only. It’s bound to be an exciting event and we look forward to seeing you all there! Make Connections That Matter!Dive right in and send a direct message to any member of UPX community! You are not just joining a group, but unlocking an open and vibrant network of professionals waiting to connect with you. Seize this golden opportunity to expand your horizons, fuel your career growth and discover exhilarating business prospects. The world is your oyster at UPX, let’s explore it together! Come Join UsI’m thrilled to welcome you to this journey. Let’s navigate, thrive, and redefine success in the tech partnership landscape together. Come Sign Up LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Now on YouTube Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Many Typos Summary KeywordsUltimate, Partner, Experience, Marketplace, Hyperscaler, Ecosystem, Transformation, Leadership, Partnering, Strategy. Vince Menzione Welcome to or welcome back to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzione, your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. In fact, we’ve been using the term ultimate partner to help you become the ultimate partner. I’m here live in our beautiful studios in Boca Raton, Florida. If you’ve watched and listened to the last several episodes, you’ve seen us here, where we’ve interviewed so many amazing leaders, and we continue to bring incredible content and leaders to you to help you achieve your greatest results. Well, today we’re at episode 218. And you know, I was thinking about this, we haven’t done a solo cast in quite some time, maybe even 100 episodes. And I wanted to have this time with you to share a little bit more about what we’ve been up to a little bit of a recap of all the amazing leaders, we’ve had just this past few months on Ultimate Partner and to share some things that are going on within ultimate partner and ultimate partner experience. But I wanted to recap and bring it back to a period of time. You know, seven years ago, I left Microsoft. And when I left Microsoft, I had recognized while I was there, and I recognized when I left, that so many organizations struggled to get it right working with the tech giant. In fact, they still do. I saw what leaders did what organizations did to achieve their greatest results. And I wanted to share those principles with you. And those principles have evolved into seven principles of effective partnering. And through the podcast we’ve highlighted, we’ve spotlighted so many of the incredible leaders and what they’ve done, we brought leaders from Microsoft, Amazon and Google and other tech giants to the platform to talk about the Art and Science of Successful partnering. And we’ve also brought spotlights to help you achieve specific results across the various principles of successful partnering. And hopefully, I’ve been a good steward to you. Last week, you rewarded us with high Apple ratings, we were in the top 110 podcasts in the tech business tech sector. And so I really want to thank you for your continued support of Ultimate Partner. You know, I’ve been talking about this time of rapid transformation since we started the podcast. And we’ve seen that transformation, accelerate. In fact, during COVID We really accelerated transformation. Satya Nadella during that period of time talked about seven years of transformation, and seven months, we’ll never go back to where we were before 2020, our lives have rapidly changed during that time. And in fact, they continue to change rapidly, just in the last year or so right? I mean, we’ve seen the shifts, I look at it from the hyper scalar lens. Last year alone, Microsoft invested $32 billion in cloud infrastructure build out, we’ve seen over $340 billion in durable cloud budgets amongst the three hyper scalars. And now you layer in AI. And you see even more dominance across those three hyper scalars. And so no longer is this just a conversation about partnering and building a channel or an ecosystem. It’s really about how do I partner the most effectively with these three mega organizations, these hyperscalers and you might often often include Oracle is the fourth hyper scalar. So this is a time like no other. And we’ve been chronicling this rapid transformation. And in fact, layering on top of that, with these other tectonic shifts, we have two wars going on right now. So we’ve seen a lot of turbulence in our lives in our society. We had over 470,000 tech professionals laid off last year alone. And organizations are all saying we’re going to do more with less the tech giants are saying we’re gonna all do more with less, which means that you need to go do it alone. You need to figure out and decode what your approach should be what the success factors that will be to help you achieve your greatest results. And this dominance across the hyperscalers means that you need to have an effective cloud go to market strategy with each of them. And then you need to take that strategy down market through your ecosystem to your customers. You see my good friend Jay McBain, who was in the studio with me not too long ago, talked about the seven or eight seats at the table, the customers are making the decision. They’re deciding which vendors they’re going to go with. And in fact, the decisions are being made upstream at the board level, the CEO is now becoming the CIO. They’re making the decision about cloud platforms. And then in the lines of business decisions are being made. And the customers are pulling and stitching together, the solutions that will drive the effectiveness of their organizations. They’re cobbling together multiple solutions. They’re not just relying on one systems integrator, one throat to choke, these durable cloud budgets and these decision processes are gonna continue to expand. And we’ve seen through this the dominance of marketplaces that we weren’t even talking about marketplaces three or four years ago, we’ve seen marketplaces become the thing. And I’ve talked about through the podcast the marketplace moment, where we’ve seen the dominance now amongst the hyper scalars. My goal through all of this is to be your guide through the turbulence, this, this time of rapid change and transformation. I like to talk about the Jupiter lighthouse in my hometown of Jupiter, Florida. This is the oldest structure in Palm Beach County was built in 1865. And in fact, it has guided sailors through turbulent waters through the choppy waters of the Jupiter inlet through many years. And I like to harken back to that, because I feel that in many respects, we’re trying to be a guide for you to help you through the choppy waters. We started this podcast with humble beginnings back in a spare bedroom seven years ago. And last year, we recognized the opportunity to help you to help to become a strong voice in this hyper scalar or cloud go to market movement. we pivoted the business we’ve invested in the podcast. You can see this beautiful studio here in Boca and I’m going to talk more about this beautiful facility that Mike Jones and the media zones team has made available to us for not only the podcast, but also for events. We hosted a couple of successful events. Last year, we hosted a digital companion event around the Microsoft inspire conference where we bought Microsoft, many leaders from Microsoft and experts in to help you achieve your greatest results. We had four fireside chats, we had spotlight sessions with partners that had gotten it right. And we had other leaders in a discourse around topics like ecosystem and marketplace, and how to effectively drive co selling methodology and go to market strategies. Such an incredible event. All that content, by the way is recorded and available. And I’ll talk to you more about that in a moment. But we also then recognize and people came to us after that event and said you did such a great digital event. Can you bring us a live event we’re dying to get back in person again. Microsoft did not do a live inspire conference last year. And so in 12 weeks, we built and hosted ultimate partner live in Dallas, Texas, we had over 300 leaders come into the room. And if you included the Microsoft leaders that participate over 500 people came to Las Colinas. I mean, our opening reception was astounding. And I still get feedback when I speak to people that were there live. And I hadn’t seen since that that was in fact one of the best conferences they ever attended. And so we’re hoping to replicate that we’re going to have some announcements later this month and later regarding what we’re doing next, with a live experience. If you’re part of the movement, you know, I have a very strong point of view. I’ve sat on both sides of the table for over 30 years now. I build growth through partnerships and PC, internet, cloud, mobile AI, marketplaces and more. I’ve also seen the demise of organizations that are resistant to change part of the communities special interest groups and associations. And I don’t see one place that mirrors the ecosystem and brings it all together. You see, I see a vibrant world where hyperscalers builders, ISP sellers as size MSPs and other partners come together to spark the ecosystems growth. I’ve talked to many of you and what I continually hear is it’s noisy. I don’t know whom to listen to and where to go. There’s a massive opportunity, but I’m not sure how to get there. Well, you’ve been heard. We’re getting ready to open the doors early at a pilot this new experience. We want this to be your place with your feedback and purchase As a patient, if you’re a builder, and innovator or leader, visit our website. We also made a commitment to you, as our viewers and listeners, that we would be on this mission to help each of you partners, leaders and organizations achieve more through this platform. And we are committed to that, in fact, I have made a commitment that I will spend the next 10 years to help us get to that level of achieving our greatest results. You see, I won’t be done until partnership is integrated into the C suite in every organization. I’m fully committed to this because I’ve lived it through each of my transformations, starting from my early days, carrying a bag to being a VP of sales, as a startup, to doing a turnaround where I embedded a partner strategy into driving the success of that organization. And having Golden Gate capital sell us for five acts in 26 months, to my nine years at Microsoft, where I led the ecosystem for public sector across federal government, state local education and health health care. We were the first Industries at Microsoft. And now my time since and the time that I’ve seen working with organizations and participating in with the with those organizations to help drive those results. You see, I still think that we are not fully where we need to be I still see Alliance organizations that are fully dis engaged from the selling process. I see channel organizations that are bolted on that are a function of themselves and a channel to market versus this integrated ecosystem approach. And so I we won’t be done and so we help organizations have a holistic approach so that every organization is driving their most effective partnering strategy. I want to talk about the podcast so far this year. It has been an incredible few months since we started the new year. Michelle Regua, McBain started us off, she kicked off the year. She’s the channel chief at SonicWALL and a great friend and such a passionate and smart leader on channels and ecosystem strategy. We then went on site at Microsoft Studios. And I was blessed to have Microsoft host me for four incredible sessions at Microsoft Studios with the team at run studios there and we had Sharon shone born Microsoft’s SMC leader for the Americas. Sharon is one of the most incredible leaders I have ever met. I am so impressed with her leadership skills, how she knows her business, how she is intimate with customers, her leaders such an incredible organization, and most importantly, with partners, she gets it. The SMC business at Microsoft is a $75 billion juggernaut. They’re planning to grow to $100 billion. And they know that partners are the way that they’re going to get there. And we have been exposing this acre of diamonds through the work. Sharon’s interview the interviews I’ve done with her leader, Kevin peacemaker, and more of the SMC leadership that we’re going to bring to ultimate partner and the Ultimate Partner such incredible opportunities for you as partners and as leaders to take advantage of this amazing acre of diamonds. Heather Dagens, who is the Chief Marketing Officer, also a great friend joined us as well in that studio, and we talked about the excitement from the Americas partner organization, and Nina Harding, who has been a guest on the podcast leading that charge there. As Microsoft is driving. roughly 50% of Microsoft’s revenue runs through this America’s partner business and their incredible investments on partners. Heather has an amazing passion around partners from her experiences 30 years experience working at Microsoft now. And she just celebrated her 30th anniversary. And then we had Microsoft revealed its plans with us we were there at the announcement of CSP being available, the copilot being available for all customers of all sizes down to the SMB, and that CSPs would now have the ability to sell copilot into their customers. So that was a great time and a great announcement. And then you have on mench, one of the leaders in the marketplace organization she works for Anthony Joseph who joined us in Dallas. And Yvonne is deep. She has been on the marketplace journey leading the effort at Microsoft for several years now. And we were able to do a deep dive into the business and the investments available for partners that I believe we exposed for met for many of you for the very first time with her ISV Success Program and her Marketplace offers so if you haven’t listened to those episodes, you need to go back there are so many great nuggets masterclass. if you will, to how you can achieve your greatest results. And then we went on the road we went on site Ultimate Partner went on site to Scottsdale Arizona. We were blessed to be welcomed by the Insight team. Inside is one of Microsoft’s top award winning partners. And I had the chance to bring together two incredible award winning partners and leaders. You see, I got the chance to interview again, two friends and two great leaders, D Berger, who’s the president of insight, North America, who actually orchestrated the acquisition and merger of SADA Systems and Tony Savoy Ian has been a great friend for over 12 years now. He’s the CEO and founder of SATA SATA. I’ve chronicled his amazing journey, his passion, his leadership around partnerships, and how we took SATA from this very small organization, to top award winning partner and in fact, they were recognized just last week at the Google Next event for the seventh consecutive year as an award winning partner with Google. And insight is taken, Google saw award winning partner and they merged it with their award winning partner on the Microsoft side. And now what talk about what an incredible organization they are becoming now best in class. They’ve actually redefine themselves as a solution partner, and bringing together ISVs solutions, stitching it all together for their many customers. And so we had an incredible conversation there about what they’re doing that unique differentiated. And I hope you have a chance to listen to that episode. And then we opened up the studio here in Boca like what a great time to be here in this. I hope each of you get to come here at some point in time and work with us with our good friends. Mike Jones, who’s on the other side of the camera here in the control room, who has been helping us along and media zones. They built this incredible studio here. They’ve been welcoming us here into the studio, Jay McBain who all of you or many of you know, because I talk about him all the time, if you haven’t seen him on our podcast or listen to him before. Jay is an expert in ecosystems and partners and channels. At Canalis. He speaks at more conferences and has so much energy around this topic. He joined us in Boca and talked about why every CEO needs to be a partner ecosystem leader. And we covered off on that was a great episode. I then had I decided to go off track because we always talk about partnering. But partners, I see this with all the organizations I work with. They’re just not really as effective marketers as they can be. And many of them really need to get better at their LinkedIn strategy. And so I had Brandon Lee, who’s a leader in this space, I’ll call him a LinkedIn selling expert. He came here to book as well. And he gave us a lot of great advice on how to better leverage LinkedIn. This is your always on conference at LinkedIn and how to do it the right way, how to show up the right way in LinkedIn, great episode, great learnings for each of us on this topic. And then we bought the other hyperscalers in the room. You know, I’ve been a very strong proponent of Microsoft as a Microsoft executive. Some people have even said, you know, you’re the Microsoft guy, or the Microsoft person. And so I have also tried to be a little bit more deliberate and balanced by offering some of the others Google and Amazon, the chance to have their voice to tell their story. And to help each of us because many organizations are multi cloud, they customers have multi cloud strategies, and partners need to understand how to work with the other tech giants. So we had both Chelsea Bertolucci from Google, she is an amazing leader. She’s on a fast track. Wow. If you haven’t had a chance to listen or see that episode with Chelsea, you need to Chelsea did an incredible job discussing and they had built a muscle around co selling because I believe this is something to that all organizations need to get right. Like how do I take my strategy, my alliance and channel glide cloud strategy to the sellers? How do I effectively stitch that together, and Chelsey took us through how her organization is aligned to help partners be more successful with Google Cloud. I then had Josh Green from AWS. Wow. Josh is also an incredible leader. I’ll call him the marketplace concierge. He’s been the person at AWS that has really helped these organizations. These top ISVs get to over a billion dollars or more with AWS in the last year. And in fact, Josh joined us and took us through the exercise what he does differently, his principles, in fact, for driving successful results for ISVs and so Josh was just an incredible guests. And then we had two other amazing episodes, probably two of my favorite episodes, we had the CEO of integral. Dexter Hardy, a good friend, an incredible company driving hundreds of millions of hours of Azure consumption through their marketplace offers and what an incredible story as a black leader, driving, he’s part of the black partner movement, the black partner growth initiative at Microsoft. And he’s just an incredible role model to so many. He’s impacting so many lives in positive ways. And he’s become a good friend of mine. I love Dexter, what a great episode. What a great time with Dexter here in the studio. And then Greg Serafin, the chief partner officer at EY, Ernst and Young. This was probably our most dense and detailed episode of the year. In fact, it is truly a masterclass. If you’re looking to build your business. As a chief partner, officer, chief ecosystem officer, you need to listen to what Greg has to say, and how he transformed e wise business from under a billion to close to $9 billion through partners and through a partner strategy. And in fact, the episode was over an hour and a half, we released about an hour of the episode publicly in the free domain. But we kept 20 minutes of that interview, and it’s only available to members of our community. I’m going to talk more about this community in a moment. If you haven’t signed up now now’s your chance. I’ve been tickling each of you about what we’re doing. And in fact, how we’re driving this change and transformation. All of this content that you see has been free. We have been providing 1000s 10s of 1000s of hours of my time, and a free content. Through Ultimate Partner, we’ve got an incredible catalog available. And I want each of you to take advantage of it. There’s so much content, so many great learnings. A lot of it is evergreen, and it’s available to you, if you go to Ultimate Partner, or the ultimate partner to our website, you can actually search by by guest, you can search by topic, you can search by company. And you can see all of the content is available. It’s evergreen available. It’s also on Apple, and Google and Spotify. And now it’s all available on YouTube. Even the only audible or audio only episodes are available on YouTube, as well as what we’re doing now in the studio with this rich live digital content. As I mentioned, we’ve been on this journey for the last couple of years pivoting ultimate partner to be more. We’ve wanted the podcast to be the most highly differentiated podcast, I feel that it’s gotten crowded and noisy. And we were one of the first out there, we’ve been one of the OGS in this partnership world. And we feel that the level of content, the leaders we bring are highly differentiated. Like you need to be invited to come The Ultimate Partner. It’s not open for everyone. And we do that deliberately because we want to ensure that we’re bringing the top leaders in the industry to you that leaders that are coming to this platform need to be listened to their voices need to be heard. They’re sharing something of very high value. And we continue to provide that for free for each of you. But we also feel that that’s been like a one way and we want to create a dialogue. And that’s why last year we did the to digital events, it was a way to bring people together to have this two way dialogue. We want that two way dialogue to always be on. So we decided after we did the live event in Dallas, that we would build a community. Now I have to tell you at first I didn’t want to build a community, I felt that it was a lot of work. And it is a lot of work. And in fact, it requires us to be on all the time, not just like on once in a while. But we also felt strongly that nobody else was providing this voice around hyperscale or led growth around cloud go to market and ecosystem led growth. And we wanted to be there we wanted to create the community where you could come to and have a dialogue with other leaders, with other partners, with leaders in the industry from the hyperscalers like Microsoft, and from vendors, in fact, that we’re also providing unique information and ways to help you be the most successful. And so we created what we were originally calling ultimate partner experience because we wanted it to be a unique experience for each of us for each of you. And we’re shortening the name now to you px. So you px ultimate partner experience we believe will be that community. We want to create a big 10 I’ve said this to others. We We want to create a big tent because we haven’t seen what we looked for when I left Microsoft. I didn’t see the community I was looking for. I joined other communities I participated. I spoke at many events. But up next, we want to be that voice. We have created a unique platform, this platform is loaded with content. In fact, maybe even has too much content. We have hundreds of hours of content, we have all of the podcasts, you can go back to Episode One of Ultimate Partner and run through to this episode 218 and see all the rich content there. I’m so excited to continue our partnership with ag one. Many of you know I’ve made taking a green drink supplement part of my health ritual for over 21 years now. And it has made all the difference to my health and well being about six years ago, athletic greens and now their product ag one became my go to supplement. Ag one is the first thing I take every morning to power my day. It covers all of my nutritional bases, supports my gut health gives a boost to my immunity and energy levels. If you want to take ownership of your health, try ag one and get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to drink ag one.com forward slash Vinson that’s drink ag one.com forward slash vents and check them out. We also took all of the content from the events we did last year. So the 13 or 14 hours, we created a studio environment for that live event. It’s all up there beautifully curated 13 hours 16 sessions. If you’re new to mark to Microsoft and working with Microsoft, like if you just watch that event, or you just watched the sessions from that event, you’re going to learn as much as you need to know to partner with Microsoft from that session. We also have the several hours from the digital event in there as well. We’re partnering with other communities, I want this to be a big 10 I mentioned this, I don’t see competitors. I see us all working together. I believe that our competition is not each other. In this world of partnerships. I believe the competition is getting to the C suite. It is changing the mindset. It is changing the executive commitment of the C suite to drive partnering as being a core function, or across each of the functions of the organization. From product to customer revenue to revenue, to customer support, to marketing, to finance, every function within the company, every function within the C suite partner needs the DB embedded into each of those functions. And that’s why leaders like Greg Serafin standout, they’re not channel chiefs. They are seasoned professionals that understand how to influence across each area of the business. And that’s why that episode is so important. But our goal is to help influence that we want every organization and we believe that our audience is the ecosystem. I call it the ecosystem that Bill Gates spawned. When he went to Boca Raton when he came down here in 1981. He met with IBM, who was leading its PC division back then, here in Boca Raton, they didn’t have an operating system. He could have sold them MS DOS, instead, he licensed MS DOS, and that sparked a movement that sparked a change ISVs independent software vendors actually became a thing, Microsoft became one of the largest the largest builders became a thing because they licensed the components of the computer. So Michael Dell started making computers in his dorm room. Compaq was the fastest company to a billion. resellers like CW started sending magazines to your home into your office to sell you components and PCs and software and reselling and VARs value added resellers became a thing. This ecosystem grew and grew and grew to well over a half a million organizations. If I just use Microsoft’s numbers, it’s a half a million, but it’s more than that, in fact, and it’s the same ecosystem that each of the hyper scalars cares about that I talked about earlier, this dominance of hyper scalars they really are the rails that all of us are riding on that all of us need to understand and understand how to attribute with, to work with to co sell with or at least know that they exist and that’s the world that we operate from. We operate from that hyper scalar lens. We don’t think that any other events company, any other media company, and certainly that any other community He is laser focused on this. And that’s why UPS exists. And it’s why we want you to be part of this with us. So today I have a big announcement. Not only do I want you to join up X and come on board, we’re offering 50% off, by the way, believe we’re going to keep that 50% off offer for your first year subscription. We’re going to keep that open for a period of time. But I have another big announcement you see here in Boca Raton in this studio, which by the way, is a 4200 square foot facility. This is an incredible facility like I can’t show you at all right now. But we’re going to we’re going to provide links to Media Zone and to so you can see this incredible facility that they built, we’re going to host an event, we’re going to host a very small event because it can only seat 40 people. But we’ve been working with Media Zone. And with our incredible team at ultimate partner and the events team that urban that we’ve been working with at our previous event to bring a small curated group of executives here in person on May 30th. That’s Thursday, May 30. in Boca Raton, we’re going to all we’re going to offer up a few select seats to individuals to join us. But let me tell you who is going to be in the room, Microsoft is come on board as one of the title sponsors, Microsoft is going to be in the room in a big way. We’re going to have leaders across the three priorities of Microsoft, we’re going to have the marketplace organization, Jason rook will be here, leading the charge talking about the Marketplace moment. And what Microsoft is doing differentiated to drive incredible results with partners. Tackle is also going to be here, tackle is going to be the other top sponsor of this event. And tackle, as many of you may know, is a leader in this marketplace movement they’ve been talking about and building software marketplaces since 2016. And John Yankee and other leaders from tackle will be here as well, talking about ecosystem led growth talking about marketplaces. We’ll also have other executives from Microsoft, on the AI front, on what ISPs need to do differently on the cloud. And then we’re going to have a leader from Sharon shone borns organization, and from Kevin peacekeepers organization on SMC to continue to have that dialogue around this acre of diamonds, they will all be here in person, and we will have this executive Summit. But not only will this event be for the 40 people in the room, it will also be for you, we are going to live stream the entire event. We’re going to do a one day live stream, open to all. But we are going to we’re going to hold back some of the content specifically or at least the ability to chat with our UPS community. Also in the room will be our UPS ambassadors, we’re going to bring some of the experts what I like to call the ultimate partner Dream Team. These are people that know how to get it right, that have worked with some of the top ISVs and s eyes and partners in the universe to help them achieve the greatest results. So they’re going to lead a panel discussion. And we’re also going to have some award winning partners in the room. Some of them like integral Dexter will be here. We’ll also have leaders from other award winning Microsoft partners, there’ll be participating in a panel discussion about how they have achieved their greatest results and been award winning partners. So if you haven’t joined our community yet, we hope you join us soon. So we’re going to bring this event to you live. And we’re so excited to stream this event to you on May 30. If you haven’t joined our community, now’s the time, we hope to build this community to 10,000, at least 10,000. We think that each of us need to be here. I’m a little bit biased as the leader and CEO of ultimate partner. But I want this to be your community. Each of our ambassadors are hosting incredible sessions. I’m going to be hosting monthly asked me anything starting here soon, this coming week. So we hope you come join us. We hope you bring your questions into the room. We want you to participate. We want you to build the muscle that you don’t necessarily have today. And if you have the muscle, we want you to be able to share with others. We think that there’s a huge opportunity for experience sharing, for growing together to help each of us achieve our greatest results. So only a handful of people will have will be here. We’ll be able to be here live. But we are also going to hold a raffle. And I haven’t even shared this with the team now right I’m going to give away a ticket To the event to one of the next people, we’re going to, we’re going to take anybody that signs up for ultimate partner experience. Well, you will be put into a raffle we will pick a name from that and award you with a free pass to come be here with all of those leaders in person. At this event this this executive summit, the ultimate partner executive summit on May 30. I also want to recognize some of the sponsors that have come here early with us. We also have media zones, I mentioned them there, they provided this amazing studio to us. If you don’t know media zones, you need to go to their website, learn more about them. I’m blessed to also have him partner coming on board as a sponsor of Ultimate Partner. And this event and an in partner will be in the room transcends marketing, Ashley Vox that has been an amazing partner leader. She has been a great friend, as well transcends is a sponsor of this event. And integral I’ve mentioned Dexter several times integral is also sponsoring the event, we will also announce some of our other sponsors, some of those in the coming days, we’re excited for this, we’re we’re hoping to build something that’s unique that’s never been built before. I’ve talked about my love of the work of Walt Disney, and what he built was highly differentiated and unique. And I’ve talked about Disneyland and Disney World and just his passion and vision. And we have a passion and vision at ultimate partner. And we think that what we’re doing is unique. We think in our own way, that it’s a unique experience and harkens back to a time like no other in the work that he did. But hopefully we’re going to create that experience for each of us for each of you. We want you to become the ultimate partner, I want to thank you for listening, I want to thank each of you for viewing, listening to over 200 amazing guests, these leaders each of them, they strike my heart. I mean, I have had so many conversations with people that have just, I’ve learned so much from each of you, I’ve learned so much from each of them. People that have lifted their voices that have shared their truck trials or tribulations, how they’ve overcome obstacles, how they have come to achieve their greatest results in their lives, how they’ve achieved more. And I really want I really have a passion around this want each of us to achieve more. I want to thank you for your support, I want to thank you for listening. And I want to help bring this collective voice together to help each of us achieve more. As I said earlier, we won’t stop I’ve dedicating the next 10 years and that’s a huge commitment of time and energy. You see, I believe that it’s so important. I have the scars. As a partner leader, I have the scars of seeing how organizations just haven’t gotten a right have not had the right mindset have not made the right executive commitment, have not put in place the principles to achieve more to achieve their greatest results. And hopefully through this journey we will go through together we will get every one of the organizations that we know to this next level of partnering you see it’s partnering, its ecosystem lead growth. It’s not channeling channel is one way to describe what we do. But it’s really around the art and science of effective partnering. And that’s why we hope to continue to be your Ultimate Partner. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. I want to thank you, Vince BenZion, and my mission is to help each of you achieve your greatest results. Thank you for your time. Thank you for listening. Thank you for participating in the dialogue and the discourse on LinkedIn and other channels. And I want to thank each of you for supporting for listening and subscribing to The Ultimate Partner. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of ultimate guide to partner online and Ultimate Partner.com. If you liked this episode, I’d be thrilled if you left us up to a five star review on either Apple or Spotify. This helps us to continue to feed your amazing guests. Also, please check out subscribe to our new YouTube channel, ultimate Bart? We’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Guide to partner Transcribed by https://otter.ai | |||
| 217 – Decoding AWS Marketplace Success: How Partners Achieved Billions Last Year. | 15 Apr 2024 | 00:37:45 | |
Josh Greene Joins Ultimate Partner®
We are excited to launch our first AWS episode in years. Join us as we delve into marketplace development and partnership success at AWS with our special guest, Josh Greene. Josh is responsible for Marketplace Success at AWS and brings over 20 years of experience in startups, channel partners, and ISVs to this role. In this episode, Josh brings valuable insights into driving revenue generation, strategic partnerships, and global expansion, decoding AWS Marketplace Success, and how partners achieved billions last year. Josh shares his expertise as the Sr. Manager of Global Seller Innovation/MP Development at AWS. Discover how AWS and partners leverage cloud commitments for partner success, the strategies behind AWS Marketplace growth, and the pivotal role of partner engineering in streamlining the sales process. Tune in to learn the importance of collaboration, innovation, and customer obsession in achieving success with AWS Marketplace. Don’t miss out on actionable insights to scale your business and drive innovation with AWS. What You’ll Learn
Ever wonder what you could achieve with the right partners by your side? Dive into the Ultimate Partner Experience Community (UPX) and discover a world brimming with possibilities! Don’t miss out on 50% off for your first year using code EARLYBIRD at checkout. Exclusive ContentGain access to cutting-edge content and events crafted by partnership professionals. Stay ahead with strategies, trends, and in-depth interviews with the industry leaders in partnerships. Access to a Like-Minded CommunityOur next event is just around the corner and everyone is welcome. Although the event is open to the public, we want to give a special privilege to our members. Which means the Q&A session is exclusive to members only. It’s bound to be an exciting event and we look forward to seeing you all there! Make Connections That Matter!Dive right in and send a direct message to any member of UPX community! You are not just joining a group, but unlocking an open and vibrant network of professionals waiting to connect with you. Seize this golden opportunity to expand your horizons, fuel your career growth and discover exhilarating business prospects. The world is your oyster at UPX, let’s explore it together! Come Join UsI’m thrilled to welcome you to this journey. Let’s navigate, thrive, and redefine success in the tech partnership landscape together. Come Sign Up LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Now on YouTube Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Many Typos Summary Keywords Summary Keywordsaws, partners, marketplace, organisations, work, customer, cloud, isps, programme, team, terms, conversation, budget, successful, partnering, sellers, dinner party, snowflake, success, years Vince Menzione 0:02 Microsoft’s purpose is in service of your purpose. And again, 2024 is the year that partners come out as the leading edge of the spear. And on finding this player intent. You show up to every meeting and demonstrate why you are relevant everyday, I have to force myself to make sure that I’m taking one step ahead in terms of my own learning that flywheel Vince Menzione 0:23 success is where you will build momentum. And that momentum will continue and then you feed into the other systems to say, this is what we did. This is how we did it together. Welcome back to Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzione. Owner and my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. And today, I’m excited to welcome back AWS back in the house for compelling conversation with Josh Green, the Senior Manager of marketplace development at AWS. Such a great conversation with Josh about the success he’s had enrolled the last four and a half years driving this marketplace strategy at AWS. The work he’s done with some of the biggest ISV marketplace organisations like CrowdStrike, and snowflake, and his best practices that he’ll share for successful marketplace development and deployment. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed welcoming Josh Green. Josh, welcome to the podcast. Josh Greene 1:26 Thanks for having me. I’m thrilled to be here. Vince Menzione 1:28 I am so excited to have you. And AWS back in the house. It’s been quite some time, since we’ve had an AWS episode. And you and I got to meet actually last year at the catalyst event back in August seems like 100 years ago, right? It was it like six months or so not even. You’re the Senior Manager of marketplace development at AWS. And I am so excited to welcome you today to ultimate guide to partner. Well, ever since we Josh Greene 1:54 first met and I started seeing what you’ve been doing. I’ve been excited to speak more with you and share some of the insights but I’m really happy to be here today. Vince Menzione 2:03 So a excited to have AWS back in the house. Second, one of my favourite topics right now is about marketplace. So I’ve been referred to this as the marketplace moment. So but for our listeners and viewers that may not know you and your role and mission at AWS, Josh Greene 2:20 can you tell us a little bit more? Sure? Well, I’ve been in in sales and business development channels for 25 years here at AWS. I’ve been on staff for four and a half years. And I started as an IC, actually, and I’ll tell you a little bit more about that. But I’ve built a team, and the team focuses on partners, and how to help them be successful by leveraging the AWS Marketplace. And you know, in my travels over the 25 years, and certainly the four and a half years here, I know the same thing is true, every partner wants to figure out how to grow and how to be more efficient. So that’s been our mantra since day one. And Vince Menzione 2:57 so Thomas, tell us a little bit more about that role on the marketplace development side. Sure, well, we Josh Greene 3:03 have a diverse set of partners in in our community, I specifically work with ISV partners. And for example, when I started, I worked with 10 of the most leaned in AWS Marketplace sellers, which are ISPs think snowflakes, Blanc, crowd CrowdStrike, etc. And the goal was to learn from them and develop a set of best practices about what’s working, and how to help them accelerate growth, but also see value back. And our starting point for that was always working with the partnership leader or the alliance leader that had the AWS Alliance. And then since that time, I now have a team. And there’s actually we’ve spawned different teams in different regions that have the same charter, how to help them adopt best practices to unlock value. And it’s a really fun job because we get to hire from a bunch of different backgrounds and no day is ever the same week we work with operations, finance, sales, marketing product, etc. So it’s a really diverse, you know, role in team. But we’re having a lot of fun and there’s a lot of work to be done cities Vince Menzione 4:05 see the job is maybe coming in as like a SWAT team and helping the organisation better align and maybe operationalize their marketplace strategy. Josh Greene 4:14 Yeah, so I mean, if you listen to a keynotes from Aruba, Borno, let’s say at reinvent 2023, you’ll hear you know, automation and scale, of course, you’ll hear generative AI and a number of other topics. But in order for us to be successful, we need to create automation that helps streamline Yeah, and reduce inefficient processes and replace them with efficient ones. So in terms of a SWAT team, yeah, I was a SWAT team of one when I started and, and now we have a group of people that are doing that activity, and it’s never to be something that is there for good. It’s always how do we innovate ourselves out of this job to create automation so that we can go tackle another another opportunity Vince Menzione 4:59 in You mentioned some ISPs. And we’re going to double click on those ISPs in a moment here. But it seems like your team has done pretty darn successful there. Josh Greene 5:06 Well, it’s I mean, we’re one team among many, it takes a village. So we’ve and it, there are teams, there are developers and engineers, there are partner development managers, there are customer advisory where we have a lot of different roles. My team just happens to sit directly partner facing and tends to be on the cutting edge with those partners that are leading in the most. And that’s where, frankly, that’s where we learn the most from the partners that are the most taxing, and I guess taxi equals opportunity. And, and so we’re we’re part of a really robust community here. Vince Menzione 5:39 So we’ve been talking about I’ve been calling it the marketplace moment, right? Because several things have happened. I’ve been discussing the tectonic shifts, we’ve been seeing where it’s been going on since even before COVID, the transformation, the change in buying patterns of behaviours, the millennials becoming the decision makers, the decisions being made in the lines of business, and buying happening now with clicks, right, where people don’t even want to talk with the salesperson, I tap my phone three times, and a box shows up in several, several hours. So our world has changed from that perspective. And now I think, you know, we we’ve been talking, I’ve been talking about CO selling for many years, and a lot of times organisations will say, Why do I need to do cosell? Like, I’m not getting any value from my hyper scalar partner? Like, why should I go do that. But I want to latch on to this durable cloud budget conversation, it seems that the realisation if you will, right, that AWS has a tremendous, or a captive relationship with the executive suite, within these organisations, enterprises, public sector agencies in the light, that there’s this huge durable budget available. And you know, recent estimates are that they’re over $340 billion and durable cloud budgets amongst the three hyperscalers. And then take layer on top of that kind of the ease of partnering with other organisations. We’re seeing, we’re seeing so much of a pattern now. And we’ll talk a little bit more about the success that your organisation has that. But this realisation that marketplace, is really a pathway to greater success, a working with hyperscale, like AWS, but also partnering amongst other organisations, building multi party offers and approaches to the customer to surround the customer. I’d love your perspective on this. This as well, I’m going marketplace moment. Yeah, I Josh Greene 7:36 feel really, really fortunate. So I, I had been looking for an opportunity, and had tried to do this with a prior employer to the old term was cloud services broker. But that was really the first coming in my opinion of what we became this Cloud Marketplace. And we tried and failed. And the reason why I was attracted to AWS was having tried and failed before at a startup at a you know, another company is I thought, if anyone is going to figure this out, in my opinion, it’s AWS, because of what you just, you know, some of the elements that that desire to disrupt, to be infinitely customer obsessed, but also with this tailwind of customers that are putting their trust in AWS and making these commitments. So I don’t know if I would use the word, you know, captive audience, I would say an audience that’s been around with with our with our customers, but that’s been a tremendous tailwind and and turning that into, like, what does that meant for marketplace, it’s been huge. It’s been an opportunity where one of the first fundamental pillars, you know, of our value proposition was that and how to leverage cloud commitments to help our partners be successful. But you know, our value proposition is really, you know, expanded past that. And one little story about this is I was really challenged with how to convey this message to the executive team at one of our ISPs or to the board to convince them a while why to take this leap. This is going back now for years. And one of our business partners told me said, Hey, I explained it to them this way. And you should try it too, is there’s a there’s a, the cloud committed spend budget is a tremendous amount has tremendous gravity, and it, it’s pulling dollars into it. And either as an organisation, we can fight this gravity, or we can benefit from this gravity. And what I thought was particularly interesting about that example was in some of the best examples of where I’ve seen us go from nothing to something very material is that’s independent of whether we might have an AWS service that could be competitive without offer. So some of our most successful partners that we work with may have a product or a service that’s actually competitive to one of our own, you know, take MongoDB or snowflake, they’re phenomenally successful with marketplace and have made that decision that the the opportunity to tap into that That cloud committed spend and marketplace as a mechanism to reach customers and CO selling as part of that, as you mentioned, it is too powerful. And we’ve gotten a lot better with it over time. So those are the way I think about it is this has been a huge advantage for us. And you know, and we’ve gotten a lot better at partnering. Vince Menzione 10:18 I love the term gravity in this conversation as well. Do you think it depicts it properly as you think about AI? Right? Because I do think there’s a tremendous amount of gravity. And you know, you and I were in an event that was very partner centric. But really, organisations need to backup and take a look at the bigger picture, right, and the gravity amongst the three hyper scalars AWS being the most prominent and the largest across those, those hyper scalars in terms of AI as it means it means that you’re having the conversations at the C suite level, not necessarily in the line of business. But you’re you’re negotiating at that CFO level, the organisation, is that right? Josh Greene 10:54 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s, it’s a CFO, it’s a company level decision that’s happening depending upon where an organisation wants to invest in the cloud. And I think it’s not just one thing. So we talked about, you know, cloud commitment, a lot of these pieces have to come together. So the marketplace had to mature in terms of feature sets, the partner programmes you were mentioned in August, and the partnership leadership summit, I remember I ran into someone that we both know, Dorothy Copeland, who I reached out to, I want to say 14 years ago, when I was with Softchoice, where I was for 13 years, and tried to engage with Dorothy, who was just building a partner programme at AWS at that time. And I remember and Melville we like we had a laugh about this be a little miffed that AWS didn’t have time for me. And when I ran into Dorothy just last August, she said, Well, we actually didn’t have a programme at that time. So it wasn’t like I didn’t want to work with you. I just didn’t have a mechanism to do it. That was in 2011. Let’s see 2011. And look at us now. So it’s really just in the last, you know, whatever, 13 years, it’s come in incredible distance. And that’s, that’s another thing that we’ve benefited from. Vince Menzione 12:05 How about this ease of partnering, right? I think about surrounding the customer and we were talking about Jay McBain a little bit earlier, Jay McBain comes up and just about every conversation these days, but yeah, he likes to talk about the seats at the table. And I like to think about it from the customer centric perspective, the customer isn’t just buying a cloud, it’s not just buying a security solution. It’s maybe solving a business need or requirement. And that requires maybe several different organisations coming together to solve for that. And what I see happening with marketplace we used to talk about when I was in Microsoft back in my day there, we used to talk about this thing called partnering to partner. And we we get two organisations together and try and go sell something or solve a solution for a solution need for a customer. It seems to me that marketplace automates that process, in many respects. Would you agree? Well, I Josh Greene 12:56 think I think it can automate it. It can, let’s say it’s kind of lubricate that process in terms of how it like for a variety of reasons. You mentioned that there might be a cloud spend commit, you know, in place, well, that means that there may actually be a in in place identified economic buyer, that a third party who’s trying to sell a solution, you know, doesn’t have visibility or access into Yeah, I’d say the development and the growth of our channel business via the CPO programme that we have to embrace a channel partner. There’s a lot of work that’s being done with the GSI, you know, on that as well. So I think Jay said something like there’s eight seats around the table at any specific deal. I don’t I don’t know the exact number was, but I think we we can be a kind of strain that runs through through all of them. And it every situation is different. Every you know, customer scenario is different in terms of who has influence and who’s driving that opportunity. But Marketplace is a bit of a commerce engine underpinning that is is a concept that we’re aware of and trying to extend. Vince Menzione 14:04 Yeah, I would agree with you there and the lubricant of that, helping that helping bring your stitch. I like to use the term stitching it all together. Josh Greene 14:12 Did you better I like stitch you better. Vince Menzione 14:14 So after your last earnings report, and congratulations on a successful quarter, another successful quarter was estimated that AWS had roughly $155 billion in DrupalCon budgets. And and that the tribulation of that, you know, having the largest share is what I would say. But also AWS may be coming from the retail side of things was early in terms of a marketplace strategy seems like the other two were maybe further further behind on that. What would you say about first Josh Greene 14:44 of all, there are others that are far more qualified than I am to talk about, you know, our earnings in the growth of the cloud committed budget, but what I can tell you is in my observation coming in versus an outsider four and a half years ago was it takes some acclimatised zing to AWS culture, and AWS culture is rooted in Amazon culture. And so that notion of, we have leadership principles, and you hear people talk about them, but they are very much alive and well. And the first one that rules them all, is customer obsession. So if you are, if you are someone who is customer obsessed, and you’re understanding what a customer’s problems are, and you’re seeking to solve them, the byproduct of that is they you are in trust of another leadership principle. And they reward you with a commitment. And that’s a that becomes a durable cloud commitment. But that’s based on trust. So I think the Amazon culture certainly influenced this dramatically, as well as what worked in the, in the Amazon marketplace. And what’s working over here, how much third party versus how much first party services are being sold, and how big is the mark is the opportunity for free the market opportunity for each of those things as it pertains to third party software, or data or services, etc. So I think, you know, the fact that AWS was imbued with a lot of people that had Amazon culture and brought that over, it’s still very much alive and well, and something we talked about all the time. Vince Menzione 16:13 If you’re part of the movement, you know, I have a very strong point of view. I’ve sat on both sides of the table for over 30 years now. I built growth through partnerships and PC, internet, cloud, mobile AI, marketplaces, and more. I’ve also seen the demise of organisations that are resistant to change part of the communities special interest groups and associations. And I don’t see one place that mirrors the ecosystem and brings it all together. You see, I see a vibrant world where hyperscalers, builders ISV, sellers, s eyes MSPs and other partners come together to spark the ecosystems growth. I’ve talked to many of you. And what I continually hear is, it’s noisy, I don’t know whom to listen to, and where to go. There’s a massive opportunity, but I’m not sure how to get there. Well, you’ve been heard, we’re getting ready to open the doors early at a pilot this new experience. We want this to be your place with your feedback and participation. If you’re a builder and innovator or a leader, visit our website. Again, that market leadership, and in fact 2023 was probably a seminal point for marketplaces, I would say right, we went into the year with some predictions, I was hearing predictions at the beginning of 2023. By Canalis, that by 2025, by the end of 2025, we’d see $45 billion flow through marketplaces. Jamie Baynes specifically said that they under call that number exact and he expects that number to be reached by the end of this year. And about 80% of that is going to flow through the three hyperscalers. But the the total aggregator of marketplaces it’s 45. It’s also was a big year for you mentioned some names in particular. But some of the organisations that you worked with reached a billion dollars with AWS and marketplace transactions, right. CrowdStrike and snowflake are among those organisations. What can you say there about where this is all headed? Josh Greene 18:25 Well, I, I still think we’re so early on. So whereas it’s important to look at a milestone and yeah, like crowd strikes of reaching a billion dollars, and to enjoy that for a moment. But also, they’re they’re such a massive Tam, for what we’re doing in so much untapped ground out there that acknowledge that moment is, is interesting, but there’s so much more to be done. And I just think those milestones are exciting and more partners, seeing the value of marketplace and wanting to lean and make this successful, encourages the whole community to move faster together. And that means that buyers are becoming more savvy and learning how to leverage this, it means that sellers ISPs are and as well as channel partners and GSIs are seeing this as well. And there’s in there’s other there’s data providers, etc, that are participating. So, to me, you look at it and you say okay, infrastructure ISDS we’re the first that that might have been born in the cloud. We’re the first to really embrace this. Think about what how much more potential there is outside of that. So in my kind of newish rebate, I get to work with some other partners like Salesforce and ServiceNow. So the recent announcements of them getting listed in working with marketplace are really exciting. And those are kind of what we would call you know, business application providers. And then the next frontier will be the industry vertical partners that we have. So there’s always something else and so when I hear the estimates, I get really excited about it as You buy team in terms of okay, but one one day at a time, this is a marathon, and I have we, we need to, we need to take this, this opportunity and maximise it every day. Vince Menzione 20:09 So I’d love to double click here for a moment, right? You help some of these organisations will come fled fledglings at the time, right, go to this big number. What did you see when you work with those organisations? What were the attributes that you saw, that made them accelerate more rapidly than maybe other organisations? Sure. Josh Greene 20:33 Well, that there was certainly the existence of a strong partnership with AWS already. And actually, someone that I work with very closely your name’s Jen Valverde built a framework that we call characteristics of a successful seller. And this framework helped us identify what were the best partners doing that could be repeated and taught to other partners. And as it pertains to, you know, CrowdStrike, and snowflake, they saw and recognised that their buyers were also AWS customers. And therefore, they early on identified that, you know, I remember working with one of the folks at CrowdStrike, who said, like, we have a, we have a play called Path to budget that I run, which is how I teach my sellers, how and why to engage with marketplace in AWS to go access that cloud committed spin budget. So in that example, CrowdStrike had a great relationship with AWS and still do, and they had an empowered activated leader, and Jessica Alexander, who really drove that internally. So without him and empowered change agent, nothing’s going to happen. And I think, you know, in partnership leaders, we talk about this, a lot of I know, part of your role is to elevate the the chief partner officer up there with the CMO and the CRO, etc. If, if they don’t, if they can’t build that kind of clout, and don’t have those relationships, this won’t get in this won’t go anywhere. So convincing sales leadership to buy in, it takes some effort. And you have to be really thoughtful about where you go first, curating the scenario or where we’re going to engage. So you can build some momentum. Sure, you can demonstrate results. And then you get you get it you build momentum from there. So Vince Menzione 22:22 path and budget. And was this person at the C suite level? Was it a CRO level, Josh Greene 22:27 individual, no, a senior director, a senior director, but but how to say, but understood also where the roadmap needed to go for CrowdStrike to help embrace and protect cloud workloads. So this was these things came together really, really nicely. And that said, there was also some deep marketplace expertise on that team, and a willingness to, to experiment, that the status quo may not be what they what they wanted, in order to continue to propel their success. Vince Menzione 23:02 So what do you see because I still see some resistance in some quarters on from ISVs. On marketplace, right? Especially those who have very strong traditional channels. What do you see from those who resist the change? What are you seeing from them? Josh Greene 23:17 Well, I think, to some extent, we have a little bit of a luxury to have working with my team does of working with the ones that have raised their hand or are on the on the fence or want to learn about how to make this be successful. But as evidenced by the recent announcements, you know, we there are a lot of the hardware partners that are newer to marketplace we’ve been working on for a long time. This doesn’t happen overnight. And certainly the larger the organisation, sometimes the more difficult it is. That’s not always true. But I think if you look at compelling events, and you’ve mentioned this in some of your other podcasts in terms of things that are compelling, that are changing the way that business gets done, you know, marketplace is definitely one of those generative AI is definitely one of those. And we’re in an area where those two things can come together. And if if, if there are leaders in place, that aren’t willing to read the tea leaves and look at what the data suggests, I would be a bit concerned. And I think there’s a lot of pressure that happens to from the board to say, you know, what is our marketplace strategy? What is our AWS strategy where perhaps that conversation wasn’t as prevalent, you know, four or five years ago. Vince Menzione 24:33 I’m so excited to continue our partnership with ag one. Many of you know I’ve made taking a green drink supplement part of my health ritual for over 21 years now. And it has made all the difference to my health and well being about six years ago, athletic greens and now their product ag one became my go to supplement. Ag one is the first thing I take every morning to power my day. It covers All of my nutritional bases, supports my gut health gives a boost in my immunity and energy levels. If you want to take ownership of your health, try ag one and get a free one year supply of vitamin D, and five free travel packs with your first purchase, go to drink a G one.com, forward slash Vince n, that’s drink a G one.com. Forward slash Vince and check them out. So it’s getting driven at the board level. These are board level conversations now as opposed to maybe three, four years ago and you started off in this journey? Josh Greene 25:34 Well, I think it depends because you know, this, this is your dramatic change. So depending upon the size of the organisation, depending on where they are, if they’re a public company, private company, we work with a lot of, you know, startups as well that are kind of that are coming up. And they’re they’re, like I said there, they can be a bit more agile that way. But it’s a big bet. And what we’ve learned in 2022, and 2023, was, when I started off, I talked about what every partner wants is to grow and become more efficient. I think we shifted towards the efficiency conversation over the last couple years where it was this grow at all costs, you know, notion before. So I think I think our value proposition on path to budget and other things like that have really come to light given this. So there was some some consternation that will slow down in spending lead to a slowdown in marketplace. And actually, the reverse is true, I think we’ve seen an acceleration as a result of it. So I would not necessarily have forecasted that. But when our partners started saying, we need a more efficient way to go to market, we want to experiment and try with AWS and marketplace. That was really exciting. And that’s the thing, there’s inefficiency in the CO selling methodology or the process. Right. Would you agree there? Yeah, I think so. And well, absolutely. I agree. It streamlines so much. Right. You remember the old days of CO selling, you know, you have a piece of paper, you have a piece of paper, we’d upload all the information, you figured out that we co sell something together as opposed to this much more streamlined digital approach to the process. Well, it’s been it’s been clunky ever since, you know, account mapping days, way back when. And I participated. Yeah, the spreadsheets, the the, we sculpt the hug and chug where you get together with another sales rep. And you compare notes it was it was wildly inefficient. And I say one of the things that’s been prioritised by the partner engineering team has been the investment in automation and tools to streamline that process. So there are tools that we have offered that are going to first party services to facilitate that. But what’s also really exciting is that and this goes to your notion of, you know, the reliance on partners is there’s a whole community of partners now that do just that. And I can name a bunch of that. But the fact that there’s a whole this, this whole network of partners that exist that didn’t before that are really driving this increasing scale, and they innovate really fast is exciting. And that’s, to me, the hallmark of a healthy of a healthy community is that these third parties are really influential. And so we need to make sure that we we we work closely with them and support them. Vince Menzione 28:15 I totally agree. And we’re I think we both know some of those organisations. Josh Greene 28:19 Yes, we do. We work with them all the time. So what about our Vince Menzione 28:23 audience? If they want to engage with they want to optimise their success working with you in AWS? What do they need to go do differently or think about this year? 2024? Josh Greene 28:35 I think I remember, John Kotter was a was a leading change expert. And maybe like 20 years ago, I read his book leading change. And he had an eight step model. But the first element, I always remember the first three that are like creating urgency, you know, building a coalition, and creating establishing a strategic vision. And I come back to this, you know, 15 years later, but if there’s no urgency, nothing’s going to happen. If you don’t have the right Coalition, which probably involves product marketing, sales operations, and the partner teams working together, perhaps others like this is you’re going to flame out. And if you don’t have a vision about what you’re trying to deliver, like it, like we just talked about, gone are the let’s experiment with everything and you know, of three years ago, we we need to know or try to estimate what the light is at the end of the tunnel or the pot of gold, whatever you want to call it. But if you don’t do those three things, you’re going to be in trouble. And that I would say, and similarly we’ve developed tools like that framework I was talking about to say, we’ve got a step by step process that you can use that won’t ensure success, but will improve your probability of success and at a minimum will help you avoid the pitfalls that you know others might have fell Have you know before, which is which doesn’t do Good Friday one? Vince Menzione 30:03 Can you double click with me on that those those steps those tools for success? Sure. Josh Greene 30:08 So in our what we call the if we’re talking about the framework, I mean, the first one is, you know, you have to create. So after you’ve established a vision, and you have a coalition, you have to list in marketplace, what your customers want to buy, want to buy in the way that they want to buy it. And that’s in a in a b2b scenario, and the way that your sales teams are selling it today. So I guess what launching that brand net new product on marketplace is not something that I would advise to most ISPs out there. And certainly, partners like CrowdStrike, and snowflake, haven’t followed that that model is so because I’m trying to remove as many variables as I can in that process, because I’m trying to win the hearts and minds not just of customers, but of the sellers in the ISP organisation, if they don’t, if they don’t see value in this, and it’s, it’s going to happen some other way, or it’s not going to be recognised their quota or whatever else. We’ve all been through this, like, they’ll never do it. And I understand why it was a seller for you know, you know, 10 years. So I think that’s the first one and then, you know, do we have an empowered change agent identifying the right, you know, leadership buy in is wildly successful? Are you participating in the relevant partner programmes? Are you are you in the APN? Are you part of the accelerate programme? Are you participating in the workload migration programme, but we saw a correlation partners that were investing in things like programme participation and competencies did better. And it makes sense, this framework isn’t, you know, rocket science here, but the more they’re invested, the better off that will do. So that those are some of the other steps that are that are in the framework. And by the way, we’re happy to share this framework with with anybody that asks for it, it’s out. But I appreciate that we Vince Menzione 31:58 might ask for a link to that. Or maybe you share it with them. shownotes would be wonderful this year that Josh, so really great learnings here from you. I really appreciate having you on today. I have a favourite question though. I asked almost every guest, it is a favourite. you’re hosting a dinner party. And you can invite any three guests from the present, or the past. In fact, one guest said the future they gave me guests in the future. Who would you invite to this dinner party? And we could also discuss where we’re going to have this dinner party? Do you have a favourite location? When would you invite and why? Oh, Josh Greene 32:35 this question i. So this, this would be a minor all in the past. And that reflects that I’m a history buff. And by the way, I will I will disclose that they they might be aspirational, that they’d want to have dinner with me. But since it’s my dinner party, and I get to invite them, I’m gonna have at it. I read a book a long time ago about John Adams, the second president, and I just, he would be at the table with me. And the reason why is, you know, I just think about the impact of what our founding fathers did, not just on the US, but the diplomacy, how they navigated a crazy scenario, and just the lasting impact of that would just be fascinating. So I’m, I’m fascinated with that that time period. And is just that notion of building something new. I love building things. And am I read that book, I’d really like to meet that would have been amazing. The other two, I, I might, I’d say MLK Jr. would be an inspirational person for me to be I passion and energy. You can tell hopefully, by the way I talk about, you know, our business, I’m a passionate person. And I think that notion of overcoming, I think I read that that MLK Jr. was arrested 29 times, and the determination and perseverance. And frankly, what I think we need a little bit more of these days is something that I that I truly admire. And my wife would laugh at the third one, and it’s it’s not Taylor Swift, but I would say I haven’t necessarily committed enough to service. And in terms of someone who could inspire me to do that, in my career moving forward, I would say Mother Teresa is welcome to this dinner party to set a good example for everyone about what we what we can do and what we can achieve. And I think it’d be a really interesting conversation at that dinner table. Vince Menzione 34:27 What a cool and eclectic list, right? I mean, John Adams, I’m always I’m fascinated with the Founding Fathers and how they brought together they went to Philadelphia that started off with a correspondence, right and then they started congregating in Philadelphia around a common purpose, which is amazing. MLK, Martin Luther King. The I Have a Dream speech brings tears to my eyes every time I watch it. So huge fan as well. And then Mother Teresa. Wow. I might have to maybe I can come bring up a beverage or reserve, what do you think? Can I do, John, you’re more than welcome. I Josh Greene 35:02 think I would rely on others to help, you know, guide that conversation. I think I’d be the observer just just watching and absorbing this and hopefully being more inspired. But I think we would we would do well with some dinner parties with with those three, any Vince Menzione 35:21 special location? Josh Greene 35:22 That’s a good question. It feels like it would be appropriate to do it in. In the Northeast on the West Coast, you know, person so I don’t I don’t love the cold weather. But maybe it maybe maybe you mentioned Philadelphia, maybe that’s the place to do it. Vince Menzione 35:38 Yeah. I’d love it. I love it. I used to live in the Philadelphia area, I could recommend some great restaurants if we want to host it there. So Josh, you you’ve been a lot of it’s been you’ve been a great guest. You’ve been a lot of fun to spend some time with today. I really love what you’re doing. So happy that you chose to come to Ultimate Partner to talk about our favourite topic and look forward to maybe having you again in the future. Maybe you could be a five time or like Jay McBain and some of our other guests. So, but for our listeners, this audience of listeners and viewers now what can they do differently? If they want to reach out to you if they if they haven’t built their strategy yet? Is there a way for them to reach out to you? Yeah, well, I Josh Greene 36:22 It’s I get reached out to on LinkedIn quite a bit. I’d say there’s a every AWS partner. Most AWS partners have some type of a named resource to get engaged with, that’s really the gateway and they’re the true quarterbacks that leverage this. So my content you know, I’m in partnership leaders. That’s one way to reach me, I’m on LinkedIn is another way to reach feet or through the partner development management organisation is another way to reach be and not just me, but the team that I have the privilege of leading and then the content that we all collectively participated in building because that’s to me that’s that’s what it’s about. Appreciate your time today, Josh, Vince Menzione 37:02 thanks for joining ultimate guide Department. Josh Greene 37:04 Thank you for having me. Really enjoyed it. Vince Menzione 37:11 Thanks so much for listening to this episode of ultimate guide to partner, online and Ultimate Partner.com. If you liked this episode, I’d be thrilled if you left us up to a five star review on either Apple or Spotify. This helps us to continue to feed your amazing guests. Also, please check out subscribe to our new YouTube channel, ultimate Bart? We’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Partner | |||
| 216 – From Startup to Success: Unlocking Cloud Marketplace Growth Strategies | 08 Apr 2024 | 00:44:14 | |
Dexter Hardy Joins Ultimate Partner®
Dexter Hardy, President and Chief Technology Officer of Integral, a company that brings over two decades of IT expertise to helping companies massively shift to Microsoft Azure. Last year alone, Ntegral’s over 300 Marketplace offerings drove over 100 million hours of Microsoft Azure consumption. In this Ultimate Partner episode, he shares his journey from SI to ISV success, unlocking his cloud marketplace growth strategies. From cloud migration to fostering partnerships in the tech industry, Dexter delves into key topics, including productization, brand building, and community focus for startups, with a focus on leadership, innovation, and adapting to technological shifts. In this Ultimate Partner episode, Dexter shares invaluable insights on mastering marketplaces, nurturing personal growth, and orchestrating successful partnerships. This episode is packed with actionable strategies for business growth and navigating the ever-evolving tech landscape. Don’t miss it. What You’ll Learn
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You are not just joining a group, but unlocking an open and vibrant network of professionals waiting to connect with you. Seize this golden opportunity to expand your horizons, fuel your career growth and discover exhilarating business prospects. The world is your oyster at UPX, let’s explore it together! Come Join UsI’m thrilled to welcome you to this journey. Let’s navigate, thrive, and redefine success in the tech partnership landscape together. Come Sign Up LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Now on YouTube Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Many Typos Summary Keywordsorganisation, focus, marketplace, cloud, microsoft, partner, azure, solution, customers, adding, create, build, part, companies, talk, year, isp, centre, product, isv Vince Menzione 0:02 Microsoft’s purpose is in service of your purpose. And again, 2024 is the year that partners come out as the leading edge of the spear. And I’m finding this buyer intent you show up to every meeting and demonstrate why you are relevant every day, I have to force myself to make sure that I’m taking one step ahead in terms of my own learning that flywheel success is where you will build momentum. And that momentum will continue and then you feed into the other systems to say, this is what we did. This is how we did it together. Welcome to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince BenZion, your host, and my mission is to empower every individual partner in organisation to achieve their greatest results through successful partnering. Today, we have a special guest here in the studio. He’s an individual and entrepreneur that I’ve gotten to know well over the last few months since he joined us in Dallas at our live event. Dexter Hardy is the President and CTO of integral Pinnacle Award winning Microsoft ISV. Dexter, welcome to the podcast. It’s great to be here. Vince, I am so excited to have you here in the studio in Boca Raton. So glad you could join us today for our viewers and our listeners. And we got to know each other at our event, our live event in November in Dallas, Texas. And I was excited to have you here because you’re an amazing organisation on a journey here. And I was hoping to have you share with our listeners, all the great things that are happening and integral and the work that you do. I invite you here specifically because we talk about marketplaces in this marketplace moment and how organisations need to adapt to the change. And your organisation has been a marketplace first ISV from day one. In fact, I was hoping you could share with us first your value and how you got here. Yeah, so I’d have to back up a little bit to say that for 20 years prior to our pivot, we were a small si focusing on app development, data centre moves, you know, supporting organisations across the full spectrum COVID happened and that was the you know, the tip of the spear for us for pivoting. It forced us to rethink what we do we call it consulting to Dotto, how do you do more with less really embodying in embodying that as an organisation. And so we took the IP that we were really good at with our customers created an accelerator in the Azure Marketplace, we released our first solution 2021. And the rest is history as they say. So you start out as a services organisation, you create a product, you create a marketplace solution. And you have a category and perhaps you’re a category of one. And I’ve heard you use the term infrastructure as code as a service. And I’m not technical. So I was hoping for our listeners and our viewers. In fact, you could take us through what that is, and why it’s so compelling to our marketplace right now. Okay, so I’ll start with a non technical explanation of infrastructures, code of service. So whenever you’re trying to do anything in maths, you want to have an assembly line process. So if it’s building a house, or a chocolate factory, Henry Ford, Henry Ford, you want to build the first car? Right? The first one, you build that prototype? Yeah, you know, there’s a lot of things that change you can, you need to build special materials. But if you’re trying to put them out in mass, you need a repeatable process that can guarantee at the end of a certain process, you have an outcome. Yep. infrastructure as code as a service focuses on the outcome of what happens in the cloud. So infrastructure is code. So I’m gonna getting a little more technical as we go into this infrastructure is code is you’ll look at Ansible. You’ll look at TerraForm, Microsoft has ARM templates, AWS uses cloud formation. But those are all technologies in and of themselves, that people are, you know, a mile deep in and you have to really understand, we’re saying, Don’t worry about that. Focus on the outcome. Our platform will get you there through if you can fill out a webform you can deploy to the cloud. And I love the example you use with me when we first met you know, we talked about a specific ISP, a very significant security ISP will go nameless at this point, because we haven’t asked for their permission to use their name. This organisation was running exclusively on AWS is cloud. They knew they needed to get over to Microsoft. In fact, they signed an agreement and started a co selling strategy. They were building out a marketplace offering and they weren’t there yet. And it was difficult for them to get from point A to point B, correct. And they found you Dexter Hardy 4:58 and they they click It was a quick and by type of situation for them. And since they have moved all those, they’ve migrated all of that technology over to Azure. And now they’re consuming an incredible amount, we will throw in a real dollars at it, but it’s an incredible amount of Azure based on the work they did with INTEGRO. Absolutely. And so you know, when you look at this, we call it a cloud lift and shift, right? Yep. So if you’re on AWS, a lot of vendors will start with Amazon’s version of Linux, Amazon Linux, no harm, no foul, until you’re ready to leave. And now you’re like, Okay, we got to rewrite we have there’s hooks here. There’s a there’s a huge it only runs on Amazon. Well, I did all around him. Yeah. And so, you know, they were looking at having to have their team go in, reverse it, you know, kind of look at the architecture and had to we rewrite this entire thing. And we were like, No, we ported Amazon Linux to Azure, we show you, we’ll show you how to integrate that into your current CI CD pipeline. And you can run it and test it. So instead of taking, you know, 18 months, they are able to do it in a couple of months, right. So you it cuts your time to market Vince Menzione 6:21 to a third less than half. It ensures. And again, we focus on the outcome. Like nobody cares about tech. I mean, I’m in tech, but nobody knows about the intricacies or want to get get right mile deep in it, right. They really want they’re focused on if you’re in healthcare, you want to focus on servicing your customers, you don’t want to find out like, how do we become really good IT companies. So, so you’re a digital first digital only today, but that’s going to change. We’ll talk a little bit more about that. Yep. So you have deployed all of these marketplace solutions to help organisations get various permutations of what they’re doing, and maybe one cloud or on prem or in a datacenter environment to Azure, is that the way I understand it, absolutely. Take us through that ideal customer for you, for us. So the ideal customer, so I will say there’s two paths, right, or three paths. One, you’re doing a cloud lifting shift, like our security friend who wanted to move from AWS to Azure, right? That’s one path, then if you have a data centre, you have your data centre, you’re like, hey, we need to move off of this legacy equipment into the cloud. That’s a second very path. And then the third path is if you just want to innovate in the cloud, right? You don’t want to spend a whole bunch of money on hiring Azure specialists to spin up your stuff, you can start with our solutions, that’ll get you 80% of the way. And now you innovate on top of that. So I would break it out into those three. Yeah. And I think about things like Kubernetes, as well, where somebody’s maybe already in the cloud. And now they’re looking at containerization as a next step in their, their transformational journey. Absolutely. And so we really want to make sure that what we do is we meet their customers where they are. So if you’re in a data centre, and you have VMs, running, you can spin up that same equivalent VM in the cloud. So now your team that upskilling that would have been required before. It’s really not there, because they’re dealing with like for like, it’s just a data centre in the cloud, right, as opposed to a data centre that they physically go to or whatever they were used to before. You know, we have been calling this year the marketplace moment, right? We were at our event, we had several executives, Anthony Joseph from Microsoft spoke. And it’s interesting to me the perspective because there are a lot of ISPs in the room that are still earlier in their journey, right? They started off on a different level or path. You you started marketplace, first marketplace only, in fact, as your as your approach. You don’t just have one solution. You have many solutions, right? But it serves the market that you’re trying to serve the markets that you’re trying to serve. Yep. Let’s talk about the marketplace. And also you’ve been featured ISP success we had Yvonne mentioned on the podcast, just recently. You have been spotlighted in that organisation. Talk to me about what your point of view is on this marketplace moment. So the marketplace moment is real. So if you are not Dexter Hardy 9:32 in the marketplace, you’re going to get left behind. I would say think of it in terms of we talked about cars. Yes, Ford earlier. There’s a lot of blacksmiths that were still like, you know what, I’m gonna, I’m gonna keep this. I’m gonna keep this talent and I’m gonna work on it and then nobody needed horseshoes. No, no, no, I think the marketplace is a is a pivotal moment like that, in that companies will be able to skate at a at a pace that they were were not able to do before they’ll be able to add value. Globally, like I said, when we started, we were a regional consultancy, supporting maybe three to four different states around the metro Atlanta area. Now we have customers in over 100 countries. Yeah. So you know that, that changes the playing field. He changes your reach her Sure, absolutely. And it changes the trajectory of your company. And I’ll share I know, I know, some numbers, but I think you said somewhere in the neighbourhood of 19,000 customers now. Absolutely. So you go from a handful, a small amount of customers. And now you have 19,000 customers in 120 countries, how many countries the number changes, there’s only a I think there’s like 187, the last time I checked now the reason I looked at that number is because we were we were getting close. I’m like how many countries is there? So last time I checked, we were a little bit over 150 ish. But you know, and this has all been in over a fairly short period of time since 2001. That was March 2021 2021, which, you know, has been through we talked about these tectonic shifts, how COVID accelerated things. Vince Menzione 11:24 If you’re part of the movement, you know, I have a very strong point of view, I sat on both sides of the table for over 30 years now. I build growth through partnerships and PC, internet, cloud, mobile AI, marketplaces, and more. I’ve also seen the demise of organisations that are resistant to change part of the communities special interest groups and associations. And I don’t see one place that mirrors the ecosystem and brings it all together. You see, I see a vibrant world where hyperscalers, builders ISV, sellers, s eyes MSPs and other partners come together to spark the ecosystems growth. I’ve talked to many of you. And what I continually hear is, it’s noisy, I don’t know whom to listen to, and where to go. There’s a massive opportunity, but I’m not sure how to get there. Well, you’ve been heard, we’re getting ready to open the doors early at a pilot this new experience. We want this to be your place with your feedback and participation. If you’re a builder, and innovator or leader, visit our website. If you have been, we talked about being featured as a Microsoft partner, have you also been part of you’ve gotten to know a lot of the people in the partnerships world at Microsoft and outside of Microsoft. You’ve also participated in countless sell, say, accelerators and training. What was the biggest challenge you needed to overcome? And what was the one piece of wisdom you share with other Microsoft partners looking to achieve what you achieved? Okay, so I will start with the accelerators, the very first thing they say is what is your superpower? Yes. And so, you know, coming from a world where you’re an SI you don’t you’re doing a lot of different things. But what is the one thing that you would say, I’ll stand up against anybody in the world. And that’s our, that’s our, that’s our go to what you do differently, better, Dexter Hardy 13:29 faster, stronger, better than anyone in the world. So we focus. So being in those accelerator programmes being a part of that executive coaching. And then thinking about it in terms of a billion dollar organisation like Microsoft, how can you add value, right? So you can’t come to Microsoft and say, We can do everything, they’re gonna look at you and say, That’s impossible. We, the scale that we were talking about is, you can’t do that as small organisation. However, if you put that in the hyperscalers Cloud Marketplace, turn on a digital first motion. Now you’re adding value at the scale of Microsoft, right? Because there are, I don’t remember the final numbers where there’s like 4 million or more active users in the Azure Marketplace. Yeah, somewhere in that number. Yeah. And so now you’ve, if you’re adding value at that scale, just do this the law of large numbers if you’re focusing on 10% of those 40,000 customers, that are now transacting with you, and again, we’re just starting to scratch the surface we have 19,000 We still have a lot to go but I think that’s where if I were a small organisation, I would focus on what is your superpower, understand, what is your key differentiator and then amplified Vince Menzione 15:00 that. And then what you’ll do is what we’re able to do now is now you can actually go in and start back, adding on those additional services if you want to, because you’re the tip of the spear isn’t, hey, let’s go through the sound, let’s go in and talk to the customer, let’s understand where you are, you know, and there’s all these different motions you have to go through. Now our customers are in the marketplace, we see the value. So digital transaction and they’re moving. In your help, you’re creating value, you’re doing that value creation is what I would say your organisation does differently. Absolutely. So let’s talk about that. Like, what do you think you do differently? Like, what are the things that you were challenged with? And what did you apply? What were the principles you applied to get to get to where you are today? Dexter Hardy 15:49 So the biggest challenge that I was faced with is figuring out how to productize that IP, because that’s going to be your biggest challenge as a company who’s implementing? Like, how do you come up with the process to create the factory? Yes? How do you do that? So for, for me, it was a scenario of just pick one, like you have to pick a area to go. So again, around the focus, pick an area that you’ve added the most value in as an organisation, and then productize, that one, in the process of creating that product, you’re going to you’re going to learn about the marketplace, you’re going to learn about your internal process, you’ll see what the value is, but then go ahead and put it in the marketplace. Don’t do analysis paralysis, because the market place will tell you if it’s valuable. Right. Right. We put our solutions out there when we first pivoted our website had nothing about our products. But you know what? Because we put it in the marketplace and the product added value people downloaded it anyway, found it. People found it. What was that first solution? The first solution was actually SQL server running on Linux SQL Server on Linux. Interesting. And that was that was that was popular, I guess, for lack of a better term. Yeah. So people were because when Microsoft moved away from the windows, and it was core windows, but it still was running a little more cycles than a lot of companies wanted. They had there had other resources running on Linux. So they were like, Okay, our teams, can we move our have this SQL server running on Linux? And so that was our first product. We actually created a container out of it. And we had some pretty big name, petroleum companies and other financial institutions that, you know, vetted out and like, Okay, this is, this is the right thing. So you help them optimise performance of SQL Server. Yeah, moving into Linux, and then moving in into a container approach, right? That was the biggest. Vince Menzione 18:13 So I want to do a deep dive here we met, because you were part of the black partner growth initiative. And Microsoft for male Mitchell introduced us, in fact, another good friend of both of ours, yep. As a black entrepreneur and CEO. At that, I want to dive here on like, challenges that might be you faced in the business, and in creating a company and brand. Okay. So Dexter Hardy 18:38 I would say it’s going to be across the board, regardless of race or ethnicity. Focus on value first, you first, the fact that you have the bat, I’m a black owner, that’s an additional attribute to how we think about what we do as a company. But the first thing is, are we adding value? And so that’s at the premises of everything that we do whenever we create a solution. The second piece is the challenge. Well, it’s brand building. And so what I would recommend to a lot of companies, a lot of the people that we supported in our MSI role were marketing agencies. And so if you look at 10, if you look at the top 10 companies, most marketing companies want to work with two through 10, not one through 10. Because you can show how you’re improving in any of those other positions. If you’re number one, the only thing that you can see is down if you go down, alright, so So I would say, and in that you have to build a community, you have to build a network and they call it a groundswell approach. So we focused on the groundswell approach we focused on DevOps, we focus on the people that were like us, they would resonate with our message, they would understand the problem, we would they would, that they were faced with and challenge. And so by staying focused on that, staying focused on building that community, that is the thing that gives you the ability to now build your brand, because it’is genuine, right? You, you understand the challenges they face with the things that they were doing on a day to day basis. Vince Menzione 20:29 You and I we first met had a car very early in our conversations, you talked about generational leadership. And perhaps and maybe this is where the whole black end entrepreneur and CEO piece comes in. I have a sense about I’d love to learn more about your personal mission, professional mission, personal mission, and where you hope to take the world. Dexter Hardy 20:52 Okay, so I’ll go back to statement. A leader is someone who creates leaders that builds other leaders. So if you look at the lineage around that, if it just ends with you, were you really a leader? Yeah. Right. But if you’ve created again, creating that process of now you’re instilling in someone else, if you’re a leader, then you’re going to push it three generations down, or three. That’s what creates a legacy. That’s what creates something that’s going to last a lifetime. Or several, right, because it’s no longer resting with you, you’re investing in someone else. You’re seeing, you know, their human, the human traits, and you’re, you’re helping them become the best version of themselves. So Vince Menzione 21:44 where are you taking integral? And how do you bring that mission? And this generational leadership to fruition? Okay, so, Dexter Hardy 21:55 first and foremost, we focus on community building. So we’re an ally of women and cloud, we’re part of bcpa. And we’re plugged into our local community. So first and foremost, staying a part of the community is key. For me. The second piece is we actually invest in giving scholarships and or internships, to help people learn technology and understand, you know, a lot of people if you can’t, if you’ve never seen a person do it, then you don’t know that it’s possible. So the more people that we can create that are women, minorities, that are in tech and being successful, now you’re inspiring someone else to do those types of things. And so where I see that that’s, that’s building on top of that community that’s building that legacy. But then the third piece of that is, Well, where did it take integral? I think, by building that community continuing to build on that groundswell. It only elevates us as an organisation, because now it’s no longer we’re trying to sell you on, we’re good. No, we’re genuinely wanting to see everyone in a better place. The second piece is we’re adding value, because we understand your issue. So now it’s, again, you’re not choosing us because, hey, this is the latest, greatest thing that’s out there. It is pretty cool. But it’s really to address the issue that you’re faced with on a day to day. So you’re Vince Menzione 23:30 a category of one today, you’re doing something that I don’t think any other organisation is doing with these solutions. You’re driving through the marketplace. You’ve got 819 1000. Now, customers, you’re driving, can we use real numbers here to talk about Azure consumption? Hundreds 100 million hours of Azure consumption? Yeah, so was astounding. Yeah. So we, Dexter Hardy 23:54 through December of last year, we actually had customers consuming about 100 million Azure consumption hours crazy. And this first quarter, we’re on target to be within the next six months, they’re going to do 100 million in six months, our goal on Vince Menzione 24:10 the path to be 200 million this year. So what I’m thinking maybe possibly, Dexter Hardy 24:14 well, we’re actually trending a beat to be around three to 400 million by the end Vince Menzione 24:20 of this year. So what does success look like with that? Like, where do you go from here? Dexter Hardy 24:25 So success looks like, again, just being coming from a no name brand, to actually not having to introduce yourself in the room anymore. Right? So we’ve, we’re kind of doing that within our own right within the market within the DevOps community. Now, the second piece is, well, customers, so we’re still going to stay customer focus. How do we enable you to innovate in your own field? Right, what does that look like? So that looks like our automation of our product. Right? So now you can spin this up in the cloud. Well, now you’re not spending six to nine months doing that plus another 12 months training someone, and then the technology is Oh, no, you’re starting, you know, a month earlier, six months earlier, 12 months early, and now you can focus on the innovation in your specific industry, you’re not thinking about technology problems, per se, you’re actually solving problems within your own vertical. Vince Menzione 25:37 So let’s jump into that future state. What does that look like for integral? You’re you’re taking on us on a path here, I believe, right? We’re, we’re looking at about it’s a click, click by click Try by basically today. And now you you’re saying we’re, you’re also going to help those organisations accelerate their path or their growth? Yep. What does that look like? And what are you going to be offering? Dexter Hardy 25:58 So the way we looked at that is tip of the spear. You see the value? Second thing is we’ve introduced what we call our concierge cloud. Cloud. Yeah, so concierge cloud is, you mentioned, we have about 300 solutions, that solutions that continues to grow, because we’re always, you know, things change, people are updating things so that content continues to grow. But in concierge cloud, instead of having to do each is or pay as you go, we’re saying, Hey, you get as a annual subscription, you get access to everything in the library. Plus, we give you an A technical architect to kind of help you understand how to both maximise your spin in the cloud, how to maximise your lift and shift, whatever those things are. And then we add some additional, like customer success, you know, just making sure handholding. So it goes from, hey, this transactional based relationship to a more back to what we did before more consulting consulting advisory. Vince Menzione 27:05 And we talked about these 18,000 or 19,000 customers? Where does this apply? Give me a scenario give me a customer scenario, like applied to like, I know, we were just talking with one of the big, large global s eyes here just a little bit before we started our conversation. Give me an example that might apply there. Dexter Hardy 27:23 Yeah. So if you’re a global Si, right, the the top three things that you’re going to be faced with is being competitive in price, right? upskilling your resources, right, you can’t have a bench because now you’re into your bra, and then product product profitability, or, in this instance, your consulting profitability. So what did you say you’re going to do? Can you actually do it for the amount that’s on that? So? Right. And so again, focusing on that outcome, our solution gives you one, the upskilling component, I’ll focus on one at a time upskilling component. So instead of now having to go in spin, you know, months training, and then getting their feet wet on whatever the new technology is, they can actually get the outcome completed. And then learn at a small edit at a at their own pace, as to like if you’re moving to Azure, you deployed in Azure. And now you can learn the nuances of Azure without impacting the delivery time on the project. Vince Menzione 28:31 So maybe I take one workload, and I move it to Azure. And I’ve learned from him what to learn from that. And then I moved the next workload is that is that sort of the example you’re setting here? So Dexter Hardy 28:41 So the example is, it’s that, but is that on steroids, because again, if you’re an SI, you’re doing multiple workloads, and we have 300 solutions. So you can pick and choose if it’s databases, if it’s, you know, other web applications, containers, Kubernetes, those things become, you can, you can focus on one if you want, and then get that you gain the benefit of you could actually reduce the amount of people on your team that is required in order to deliver the same quality. Right? So and that’s where that IP, that’s where our thought was put into the product of, you know, as a technical architect, you’re sitting there, you’re trying to figure out, well, you know, here’s the best practices for the deployment. Well, because that’s baked into the solution. Now. That’s time that you get back. Right? Time is time dollars. time equals money. So Vince Menzione 29:40 you’re Yeah, so you’re accelerating my like, time to creation, correct. I value cycle. I’m so excited to continue our partnership with ag one. Many of you know I’ve made taking a green drink supplement part of my health ritual for over 21 years now. And it has made all the difference to my health and well being about six years ago, athletic greens and now their product ag one became my go to supplement. Ag one is the first thing I take every morning to power my day. It covers all of my nutritional bases, supports my gut health gives a boost to my immunity and energy levels. If you want to take ownership of your health, try ag one and get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to drink ag one.com forward slash Vinson. That’s drink 80 one.com. Forward slash Vinson, check them out. So Dexter, you strike me as someone deeply centred and purposeful. In fact, I recall, maybe it was a conversation we had about meditation, Freedom very centred as a person where you’re always this way, we always this deliberate? And how did you get to this point or path in Dexter Hardy 30:59 your career. So I’ve always taken the time to either reflect, or pray or meditate. Throughout life, I think one of the things another benefit of COVID, the world was still, so you had time to rest in your thoughts, you had time to reflect on what’s important to you to revisit what your core values our proposition is, and then don’t let your resume be your eulogy. Right? I had a lot of you know, a lot of people were no longer with us because of that. So how do you how do you, you know, like I said, that caused me to reflect on all of those things. So definitely, I’m more mindful of, you know, what I invest my time in, around who you allow to be in your space, because that changes, you know, if if you, they always say if you smile at the world, the world smiles back. And so really just focus on being purposeful and intent about being kind being, you know, being nice being that person that no matter what the circumstances, you’re going to do the right thing. And then, you know, again, at the end of the day, I sleep well at night, you know, there’s peace of mind, you know, that you’re adding or trying to make the world a better place. And so that’s what I focus on. Vince Menzione 32:25 Is that your personal mission? What is your personal philosophy or mission? Dexter Hardy 32:30 My personal philosophy of position is just be 1% better every day. 1% better every day, everyone, you know, you can go out whether it’s workout, whether it’s, you know, meditation, whether it’s, you know, whatever the thing is, instead of trying to go and create these really outlandish goals, just say, I can, I’m gonna do 1% better today, it’s the compounding effect that will add and propel you past everyone Vince Menzione 32:59 else. So my son myself tomorrow was 1% Better than myself today. Correct. I love that. I love that. And then getting 365 days later, we’re, we’re that’s how you get to a trajectory we talked about? Absolutely. And what about for INTEGRO? Right, where are we going? What’s the path for integrity? We talked about, we talked about these new services, but what is your ultimate outcome for the organisation? Dexter Hardy 33:23 So the ultimate outcome for the organisation? You know, I have to think about the end began with the end in mind, right? You know, because we’re scaling at the rate that we’re going, you know, definitely think about acquisition and or, you know, becoming part of another organisation. These the, the other pieces, do we acquire other organisations because, again, we’re, we’re growing at a exponential rate. And, you know, just looking at that value, how do you unlock that value? Obviously, it’s a, an acquisition, or you acquire, or, you know, those are the two things that we’re we’re looking at. Vince Menzione 34:05 So there’s a lot of viewers and listeners to this podcast, Ultimate Partner that are looking to get to the path that you’re at right now. What would be the secret sauce, or the one piece of advice you would give them on how to what they need to go do better or Dexter Hardy 34:21 differently? Master the marketplace? So master, Vince Menzione 34:25 so talk about that with us? Take us through Dexter Hardy 34:27 it. So find again, once you have identified it, get a solution in the marketplace. That will give you that recurring revenue model that will give you the ability to do things differently. If you are traditional si and you’re going from south to sow, doing work, that’s great. Until you don’t get that next that’s right engagement. However, if you’re adding value through the market Lace, that becomes a transactional model that as long as they’re using it, you’re making revenue. So now you’re not forced to sell that next deal, you can actually think about, well, how can we add more value here? Nice, you know, for our key customers, you know, again, the concierge cloud, that’s how that came out. It’s like, well, you guys are using this, you know, we have all these other things that you can use, instead of making all these payments, we give you a discount on, you know, getting the entire library. And so that becomes an annual subscription. Right? Vince Menzione 35:35 I love what you have to say here for a lot of organisations that are still trying to figure out the marketplace, master the marketplace. So I have a favourite question. When I asked almost every guest, because it’s just like, I love the way it unpack sometimes. But you’re hosting a dinner party. And you can host this dinner party in anywhere in the world, we could talk about locations as well here. You can invite any three guests from the present, or the past to this amazing dinner party party that you’re going to host I’m sure because you seem like an incredible host. Thanks. Whom would you invite? Dexter Hardy 36:09 And why? So only three? Let’s see, I would do Barack Obama, Barack Obama. I would do Nelson Mandela, nice Nelson Mandela. And I would do my great grandparents. Into the reasons about them. The reason that I say that is, I grew up in the South. And if you go back that time frame, yep. They were on the cusp of slavery, Jim Crow laws, there was a huge talk about a glass ceiling. It was it was more than a glass ceiling. Yeah. And just to let them see what their prayers, what their hard work, what their foresight to kind of plant the seeds to their generation and kids. What that actually created would be, you know, there’s, there’s, that’s why I want them to know that that effort that love that care that they put into their offspring, what was able to be achieved by that? Vince Menzione 37:21 So the two fascinating leaders, obviously, Nelson Mandela in prison for 27 years, walks away from it, and ends apartheid in South Africa. And does it peacefully. Right. It was this incredible time. And then Brock Obama first black president, yeah. Any questions for them? Like? What would like how would you spark this conversation up with your great grandparents? Dexter Hardy 37:46 So with my great grandparents, the question, you know, this conversation would be, can you believe this? Like you like literally, it’s like, you see what you did you see what you were able to sharecroppers or whatever they Vince Menzione 38:01 were back in those days, you Dexter Hardy 38:02 see what you were able to create? Yeah. And again, what we’re talking about right now was not even marketplace, selling to globally, none of those things were even on the table. So you know, that’s one for me, that would be a really resounding yes. Vince Menzione 38:19 What do you think they’d say to their great grandson? Dexter Hardy 38:23 Good job, baby. That’s my parents, my grandparents, they always everything was Baby’s like, you know, supporting you always there to kind of be there, backing you. And so the there I could Vince Menzione 38:39 see them saying that that will be your very nurturing individual. I’ve gotten to know you better over the last several months. And I’d say that that trait lives on in your family. Dexter Hardy 38:46 Oh, for sure. Yeah, I haven’t operational. I have three young kings, I call them nice. And so I always tell them, I love them. There’s I say, you know, I serve the right to be upset if you do something, but always know that you’re gonna come you’re it’s a safe, it’s a safe landing space. And I think that builds trust. It helps them build character, because again, you’re going to be in scenarios where you’re upset with someone, it’s part of life. But that’s not the end state. That’s just a moment in time. Right? So a person isn’t just one bad thing or two good things, right. It’s the sum of all your experiences. And so that’s what I like to teach my kids. So Vince Menzione 39:37 this is the Ultimate Partner. Yep. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk to you about partnerships. What do you see from the best partnerships and when you see partnerships fail? What you wish you had told those individuals or partners I wish they would say Dexter Hardy 39:54 so. Stay genuine. When you see partnerships fail, it’s usually there was a mal alignment or misalignment in what the outcome was supposed to be. Right? Is, as they say, if you are a partner, it is a mutual scenario, if at some point it becomes a non mutual scenario, so I’m I win, you lose, right? If it becomes adversarial, that’s where you start seeing a lot of the decay. And really, it really kills community. So what I would say to most people is stay genuine, stay true to your initial mission. Don’t let money be the reason for what you’re doing. Have a passion around it. And I would be one of the examples like, do what you love, the money will come. Right. And so you know, I would say stay focus on that. Because again, that value that relationship, knowing that somebody else has your back. You can’t you can’t put $1 amount on that. You seem to love what you do. Absolutely love. Yeah, it comes across really loud and clear. Vince Menzione 41:15 So we have these many Microsoft viewers and listeners with us in the room, what message do you want to share with them on how they can optimise their success this year? Dexter Hardy 41:29 Yeah, so there are several programmes. If you are a Microsoft partner, I would focus on the ISV success programme. The BP gi programme is a great organisation. And again, it’s got to go back to it’s going to sound like a broken record, get involved in the community. Those are communities Yes, join the Microsoft Partner programme if your Microsoft Partner come Vince Menzione 41:54 to ultimate partner experience, Dexter Hardy 41:56 to the ultimate partner experience. Because again, I love what you guys are doing here in with the ultimate partner, it’s not just we have a whole bunch of content, we’re just gonna throw it to you know, you’re being very curious curated information. It’s the secret sauce to like how to navigate quickly through, you know, a big organisation. And so when you’re starting out, or you’re just trying to figure figure what path through, it could be, you know, like drinking from a firehose, I mean, you’re just overwhelmed with all the information. But your organisation definitely does a good job of like, here are the salient points for where you are right now. And this is what you need to Vince Menzione 42:39 do. And I didn’t ask you to say that or pay you to say that, so I appreciate that. Thank you. Dexter Hardy 42:44 Oh, no, that’s like I said, it’s being genuine. I mean, it’s, that’s what you do. Vince Menzione 42:49 It’s been so much fun having you here today. I appreciate you making the trip down here to Boca from Atlanta. And we need to do this again. Hopefully, you’ll be back in the room with us again soon. Awesome. We have an upcoming event in May, little plug there for our partners watching listening. May 30. We’re going to do something here. You’re going to be here in the room with some experts from Microsoft, some other leaders in the industry. So I’m excited to have you back here in Boca not too long a period of time. So some of you awesome really looking forward to so excited to have you today. Thank you so much for being an incredible are an ultimate guest on ultimate partner. Dexter Hardy 43:26 I’m trying to become the ultimate party. Vince Menzione 43:29 I think you’re already there. I think you are what do you think bugs, the ultimate partner. All right. Thank you, sir. Dexter Hardy 43:35 Thanks so much. Vince Menzione 43:36 Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of ultimate guide to partner, online and Ultimate Partner.com. If you liked this episode, I’d be thrilled if you left us up to a five star review on either Apple or Spotify. This helps us to continue to feed your amazing guests. Also, please check out subscribe to our new YouTube channel, ultimate Bart? We’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Guide to partner | |||
| 243 – Customer-Centric Strategies in Google Cloud Marketplace: Insight from Datadog | 12 Nov 2024 | 00:07:57 | |
Jarrod Buckley, VP of Channels and Alliances, Joins Ultimate Partner®
I am excited to bring you insights from my conversation with Jarrod Buckley, VP of Channels and Alliances at Datadog, live from Google Cloud’s Marketplace Exchange! Datadog, a leader in cloud application monitoring and security, is transforming how customers manage their cloud environments through a single, unified platform. In this episode, Jarrod shares how Datadog leverages Google Cloud Marketplace to simplify customer procurement and drive larger, faster deals. He highlights Datadog’s recent innovations, including empowering channel partners to sell Datadog through Google Cloud Marketplace and the ecosystem approach that places customer needs at the center of co-selling strategies. As marketplace adoption grows, Datadog is scaling across geographies, with systems and human teams aligning to ensure seamless co-selling at scale. For anyone looking to optimize their marketplace strategy, Jarrod offers valuable advice for planning and aligning incentives as we head into 2025. Catch this episode of The Ultimate Partner for insights into how Datadog leads the charge in marketplace-driven cloud success! https://youtu.be/12dgcqk7a7M?si=WhX-eX9hNRvsfPn7LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Ultimate Partner ExperienceEver wonder what you could achieve with the right partners? Dive into the Ultimate Partner Experience Community (UPX) and discover a world of possibilities! Exclusive ContentGain access to cutting-edge content and events crafted by partnership professionals. Stay ahead with strategies, trends, and in-depth interviews with the industry leaders in partnerships. Access to a Like-Minded CommunityOur next event is just around the corner and everyone is welcome. Although the event is open to the public, we want to give a special privilege to our members. Which means the Q&A session is exclusive to members only. It’s bound to be an exciting event and we look forward to seeing you all there! Make Connections That Matter!Dive right in and send a direct message to any member of UPX community! You are not just joining a group, but unlocking an open and vibrant network of professionals waiting to connect with you. Seize this golden opportunity to expand your horizons, fuel your career growth and discover exhilarating business prospects. The world is your oyster at UPX, let’s explore it together! Come Join UsI’m thrilled to welcome you to this journey. Let’s navigate, thrive, and redefine success in the tech partnership landscape together. Come Sign Up LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Now on YouTube | |||
| 215 – Co-Sell Secrets Exposed: How Google Drives Growth with Partners | 01 Apr 2024 | ||
Chelsea Berlucchi Joins Ultimate Partner®
Effective co-selling, its where the rubber meets the road on the path to successful partnering. In this episode of Ultimate Partner, we delve into the intricate world of co-selling strategies alongside Chelsea Berlucchi, Head of Google Subregional Co-Sell, North America, a trailblazing leader spearheading revenue acceleration and partner expansion throughout North America. In this episode, you will embark on a journey as Chelsea drives priceless insights into harmonizing company growth initiatives with customer objectives, ensuring flawless integration and delivery. You will gain unparalleled expertise from Chelsea Berlucchi as she imparts actionable tips and recounts real-world experiences aimed at optimizing co-selling opportunities. Don’t miss out on this chance to enhance your partner collaborations working with Google Cloud and maintain a competitive edge in the ever-evolving tech landscape. What You’ll Learn
Ever wonder what you could achieve with the right partners by your side? Dive into the Ultimate Partner Experience Community (UPX) and discover a world brimming with possibilities! Don’t miss out on 50% off for your first year using code EARLYBIRD at checkout. Exclusive ContentGain access to cutting-edge content and events crafted by partnership professionals. Stay ahead with strategies, trends, and in-depth interviews with the industry leaders in partnerships. Access to a Like-Minded CommunityOur next event is just around the corner and everyone is welcome. Although the event is open to the public, we want to give a special privilege to our members. Which means the Q&A session is exclusive to members only. It’s bound to be an exciting event and we look forward to seeing you all there! Make Connections That Matter!Dive right in and send a direct message to any member of UPX community! You are not just joining a group, but unlocking an open and vibrant network of professionals waiting to connect with you. Seize this golden opportunity to expand your horizons, fuel your career growth and discover exhilarating business prospects. The world is your oyster at UPX, let’s explore it together! Come Join UsI’m thrilled to welcome you to this journey. Let’s navigate, thrive, and redefine success in the tech partnership landscape together. Come Sign Up LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Now on YouTube Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Many TyposSummary Keywords partner, google cloud, customer, organisation, marketplace, cosell, partner ecosystem, team, year, working, cisco, google, led, talk, solution, called, isv, product, build, chelsea Vince Menzione 0:02 Microsoft’s purpose is in service of your purpose. And again, 2024 is the year that partners come out as the leading edge of the spear. And on finding this buyer intent you show up to every meeting and demonstrate why you are relevant every day, I have to force myself to make sure that I’m taking one step ahead in terms of my own learning that flywheel success is where you will build momentum. And that momentum will continue and then you feed into the other systems to say, this is what we did. This is how we did it together. Chelsea burr Lucci leads the CO selling function for Google Cloud North America region. And I’m so excited to have her join us as she describes the role of CO selling the importance of the CO selling function, and how organisations like yours can more effectively co sell with Google Cloud. Chelsea, welcome to the podcast. absolutely happy to be here. So we’ve been talking a little bit about your role and how it’s evolved. And I was hoping you could spend some time with our listeners, you’re in a space that I just truly love and work with these partners on, which is on CO selling, and I was hoping you could deep dive for our listeners and viewers about your role and the mission of your organisation at Google. Yeah, absolutely. So as you said, my team does cosell. So right now I’m leading a team. But we call that I’m the head of the our sub regional cosell team for North America. And you and I did get to meet last year, we get to meet at the ISP forum in New York. So hopefully, we get to see you again this summer. Last year, I was really working closely with our ISVs. And I still work very closely with them. A lot of folks in in the ISP organisation do what’s called an ISV specialists role, or they’re what we would name also a partner development manager where they cover a specific ISV. In terms of my team, and my role we do it’s called co sell. So we’re really this team that’s at the front edge. We are working with customers, we’re working with sellers to set a strategy around adopting the partner ecosystem to drive forward. Now I did that last year was hired into that role in April 2022, we had this small but mighty team, which was fabulous. And we really aligned to each of our sub regions in our industries to say, hey, look, we have this opportunity to grow your business and grow your customers business by using our independent software vendors or ISPs and their third party products that run in Google Cloud. Now, this this year, at the beginning of the year, I was asked to take on more of an Extended Scope in my role, which has been very interesting and challenging. All the things at this point. Yeah. And that means that beyond ISC, my team also covers services now. So I’ve taken on a new team of individuals that had been at Google, but really, instead of covering just ice, we are covering that entire partner ecosystem. So again, when a customer comes to us, or when we’re working with our sales organisation, we can say, Hey, what is your strategy to execute this year? And what is that strategy inclusive of the partner ecosystem, we get really good to be the advocates for for our partners and coach our sellers on how to grow sell with with partners along the way. So that’s really the evolution of my role. Since you you saw me last. So things have certainly changed. I would say we’re doing some of the similar motions, just driving more rigour around that whole crew self process here. It’s part of our mission in general. So the partner ecosystem has is really standardise on what that looks like. And as you can imagine, you know, it’s really to work with our partner ecosystem, to make sure our customers are adopting Google Cloud technologies. And although that can be interpreted up and down and how you go after that mission in a couple of different ways, it really helps all different parts and pieces of our partner ecosystem within North America and Google Cloud to drive towards that one thing is really supporting our customers the right way, as they’re trying to adopt more Google Cloud as they’re trying to join a straight with us. Yeah, such an important function. In fact, and I wanted to spotlight on this because a lot of organisations at the hyperscale level, there’s this division of labour, right? So if I’m an ISV, I might have a partner development person or whether whatever the role is called, and they’re really focused in on the business development of that organisation, technological development, maybe the overall arching business strategy. But often what’s missed is this effective co selling piece and I was hoping you just described it, actually. But people don’t always understand what co selling means. Right? So I was hoping we can kind of double click on what is effective co selling and what isn’t it from your perspective? Now this is a great question because I think Chelsea Berlucchi 5:00 selling ads is a new word to your term, right? We’re hearing it a lot in technology companies, we’re hearing a lot in sales organisations. And we’re starting to see more and more individuals adopt this as even in title and what their their jobs are really entailed to. And so it being that more modern term and its baseline, the simple answer here is CO selling is really when two or more organisations come together to sell a complementary solution to a customer that they’ve identify. And we see this where, for an example, again, we’ve talked about ISVs, which is part of the organisation that I support. And that’s our independent software vendors. These are organisations that have said, Hey, we want to go to market with Google Cloud, so much so that we’re going to invest in their technology, we’re going to run applications in Google Cloud. And we’re going to list our product in the Google Cloud Marketplace. And now on the other side of that Google Cloud has also made this neutral investment by way of adding resources and tools and things that these companies can leverage people really to support that motion, and a cosell team. And so we’re invested in saying, hey, look, ISV thinks we’re going to market with us. And here’s how we’re going to jointly do that. Let’s take a look at the customer with that customer needs, and what solution we can provide to them. It when it comes to things like ISV and CO selling, we’re talking a lot about solution and completeness or out of box solutions that you may have, again, that are running on Google Cloud. On the other side of that, as I said, you know, my team also covers services partners. And that can be our systems integrators that have these fabulous solutions or services that are driving Google Cloud, maybe we have customers that are looking to adopt our technologies and set up a landing zone, they haven’t really started with Google Cloud, or they’ve identified a larger workload I did, it’s in a migration. And they want to provide those services too. So along those ways, it’s working together with these organisations and figuring out how we can provide that end solution or end service to the customer. By co selling together. That’s a you know, again, the highlight of of what co selling is and how we interpret it here at Google Cloud and how we actually go to market with a motion like that. What it isn’t, is, you know, what we’re probably more familiar with, if you’ve grown up in technology, or any sort of organisation where maybe you’re an OEM, or even a hyper scalar, or an independent software vendor, and you typically have what’s called a reseller. And this would be an organisation that is decided to say, hey, we want to take your product or your service, and we want to resell it to an end customer, a lot of times, that’s a, you know, a mutually agreed upon commercial contract, they get a certain amount of money for each of the sales, and then they can go directly to the customer and resell your product with CO selling, it really comes to that baseline word that we love here. And that’s partnership, right, we get to both be invested in the process, and support each other through it. And really, the customer comes out on top here, which is great, because we really stopped to pause to learn and understand what a customer needs through this journey to Vince Menzione 8:16 Yeah, I think what you had to say here is really relevant to the conversation we’ve been having about how it used to be a push right to the customer. Now the customer is dictating the route, right? They’re saying, I want to buy from Google, I want to buy, I might want to stitch together two solutions, I might want to take an SI solution and an ISV solution. And I want to I want to burn down against my agreement with Google to do so. And their help. And you’re working with them to effectively coordinate between the multiple parties, multiple partners involved? Absolutely, we are. And I think you know, we’ve talked about this in the past, but we see an organisation really evolve what they want to offer to a customer and they take a step back, and they say, Okay, I have this great partnership with Google Cloud, which is, you know, formidable. hyperscale are in the industry right now. And that’s, that’s great. But oftentimes, you need to think more about that. Because as you have these conversations with a customer, they’re going to want more than one thing. They’re looking at big picture. And that means more products, more solutions, more services. So we even say to our partners, whether it be a service partner, a sell partner, or build partner, what we call our ISVs is take a look at also our Google Cloud ecosystem, where can you make further relationships and partnerships, to then advance your opportunities in what you’re providing to a customer to? So we don’t we’re certainly at that, at the centre of that in that partnership. But we also have again, this fast partner ecosystem of 1000s of partners where everyone can start to work together to piece together what a customer is really looking for. Chelsea Berlucchi 9:53 Yeah, I think this area is so misunderstood by many organisations right where they they miss they missed the whole point. hero’s journey in the process, how you’re getting there. And I think you’re covering that specifically and maximising your relationship working with Google, and then working within their own ecosystem to maximise the results they’re trying to solve for. I’d like to double click on you, though, on your career journey, right? Because, you know, this is you’ve had an amazing career journey, Google, an amazing career journey in general. And I was hoping maybe you can spend a moment with our listeners and viewers here on how you got to this spot in your career. Chelsea? Yeah, of course. So a little history on Chelsea. I. So I’ve been at Google now for six years, but I’ll back it up. So prior to Google, I was at Cisco for 10 years. And that’s where I started my career. I started right out of college, I actually got my offer letter in my email on my drive home from Thanksgiving break for Thanksgiving break senior year in college, which is pretty exciting. So it makes for a really great rest of the senior year, of course, to be able to sign on the dotted line and know that, you know, you’re pretty much taken care of once you graduate at that point. But so I started just a couple of months again, after I graduated from college at Cisco, in what was called their Cisco sales associates programme. And you’ve probably heard of it a lot of other organisations have these programmes where they take in new grads from college or maybe graduate school. And they teach them the ins and outs of the organisation that technology soft skills that they need to be launched into the field as a seller. So I did that in North Carolina for nine months. And then I moved straight out to Boston, I packed my car with most of my belongings, some still, I probably left at my parents house at that point, and got a place in Boston and town that I actually never been to and took an outside sales role with Cisco, in that, I would say provided so much of foundation of one my career for for my entire journey, but also this role that I’m in today, I really gained my sales chops, I would say bear and a lot of bumps and bruises. But also, because I’m a very competitive person, it was something that I was excited to do. So I was at Cisco for 10 years. And you really learn when not only to you know how to truly qualify a customer how to work with customers. But Cisco does, you know, you can check me on this 95 plus percent of their business through a value added reseller to partners. And so they also have this really strong partner ecosystem that is really seen as a gold standard in a lot of industries. And one of the first lessons you also learn at Cisco is how do you actually partner, and those that do it successfully are going to learn how to scale their business the right way, but also, again, at the root of all of this is meet with their customer needs. So I built that, as I said, that foundation for 10 years, and it was going to meetings with partners, it’s leaving a meeting, calling a partner, and updating them on the status of the meeting. It’s putting together strategy with partners, and they become some of your best friends. One of them. I’m excited to see at Google Cloud Next soon, he and I have started our careers really together and kind of grown up in the business. So it’s been interesting to see a lot of the things that he’s done. He’s still at a partner, which you know, I value a lot. And I remember one one time, we’re going out to meetings in Vermont, we are carpooling together, and we planned how he was going to propose to his wife. So you really get closer to your partners if you’re doing it the right way. Yeah, they have, you know, beautiful family now. And it’s been incredibly successful. But it that built that foundation. And then after 10 years at Gu at Cisco Sorry, I was really thinking, this is the point in which I need to look at, hey, do I want to stay at Cisco? Or do I want to explore other opportunities, and at that point, it was everything you heard about was cloud cloud, cloud cloud. And I thought, Okay, I have this backdrop of really, technology sales, and even what’s in the data centre. But let’s see what this evolutionist is about, right. And so I got a role at Google. That was also indirect sales. I wanted to go into people leadership, but I’m also a firm believer of working for someone that has done your job before is a lot better of experience than someone that hasn’t. And whether that means you’re a manager and you have maybe an open wreck on your team and you are backfilling yourself. So you learn what it’s like to sit in your team shoes, or, you know, if you’re actually going for a position you’ve, you’ve at least done it for a little while. So I learned the Google way of selling what the technology was like what the customers were really worried about how to make them comfortable and confident with what we had. But then also my first week on the job was meeting what we then called our partner sales managers, which is A team that I lead now. And the PSM at the time, was incredibly helpful. He had the same kind of background that I did were knows how to partner and why partners are there to scale your business, but also make you and the customer successful. So it was great to build out a different strategy. As I progressed at, at Google, I really got in deeper with our ISP organisation. And I started to do a lot more business with our ISPs, this was actually a new function. For me to learn. We didn’t we didn’t do this at Cisco. So knowing that another organisation was running on top of Google Cloud, and by the way it could sell it and we incentivize our sellers to do so was pretty cool. So I got close with several of our partners, and I got to learn a lot more about my customers business, because I wasn’t just talking to them about what Google Cloud could provide. I was asking them broader questions. And instead of thinking, Oh, I can’t do that at Google. I was I was starting to think, let me see who of our partners can can do is to provide it. So it got me in a lot more conversations. And it made me understand that this really made you one of these invaluable assets to your customer to so I became more passionate about it. And luckily for me, they decided to invest in the IOC organisation that grew it. And I received the role that I got in April 2022, leading the cosell team fries team. So that’s really that’s my journey of, you know, being both at at Cisco and Google. I’m what I would think as an elder millennial, so I should probably have more hops in my career at this point. But I don’t because I’ve really been happy with the organization’s I’ve been with, and I hope I get to stay at Google longer to Vince Menzione 16:51 see, if you’re part of the movement, you know, I have a very strong point of view. I’ve sat on both sides of the table for over 30 years now. I build growth through partnerships and PC, internet, cloud, mobile AI, marketplaces, and more. I’ve also seen the demise of organisations that are resistant to change, and part of the communities special interest groups and associations. And I don’t see one place that mirrors the ecosystem and brings it all together. You see, I see a vibrant world where hyperscalers, builders ISV, sellers, S size MSPs, and other partners come together to spark the ecosystems growth. I’ve talked to many of you. And what I continually hear is, it’s noisy, I don’t know whom to listen to, and where to go. There is a massive opportunity, but I’m not sure how to get there. Well, you’ve been heard, we’re getting ready to open the doors early in a pilot this new experience. We want this to be your place with your feedback and participation. If you’re a builder, and innovator or leader, visit our website. As well, what I hear loud and clear is you’ve gone deep, right? You worked in an organisation it was very partner centric, a little bit more channel centric, that’s called the old school way of doing things. And then co selling Google like you were doing your field salary. So you got you got street cred, in my opinion. And then you’ve now you’ve integrated into this partner organisation, which by the way, we’ve had Jim Anderson, as you know, we’ve had his leadership team talking about precision partnering, where exactly does your function sit in that partner organisation? And what does it look like today? Chelsea Berlucchi 18:32 That’s a great question. So this is something that, you know, moving the mystery around, how do I work with Google? Where do people sit is something that we get asked a lot to? It’s a one, it’s a great question, and, and people need to understand what that looks like. We actually had a pretty cool event at the beginning of the year called partner kickstart, where we invited our partners to several different locations around North America. And they got to sit with our sales teams, and then learn about the initiatives for this fiscal year, which was, which was great to get everyone on the same page, but also just build momentum for the year and get started on the right foot. And through the sessions each of us shared with this partner ecosystem looks like and so typically, when I have this question, I share a slide. So if people see me you can always ask me for it, but I’ll try to paint a picture here for you. Imagine please do Yeah. So imagine two pieces of the organisation that Jim Ron’s which is the North America partner ecosystem. On one side, we have this partner segment focused and you’ve had plenty of these leaders on we have our cell and service portion which is led by Shelby Johnston. We have our solution Si, which is led by Rebecca Potts, our GSI team that’s led by Gina Frederick Angelina who’s new you should have on and then of course, our ISV team, which is led by Scott Barson. Now within each of their teams they have we’ve you know that term we’ve said before as the partner development managers are eyes The specialists. And these are folks that are specifically chartered with covering in one to few partners to make sure that they’re building out a go to market strategy that can be launched at the north north american level. And they’re really looking to execute alongside these partners too, which is great. So intense precision partnering, as you said, with these particular partners to make sure we’re being very intentional in our go to market motions. Now, that’s one side that’s partner segment. On the other side, we have our customer segment focus, and this is where I sit. So this is where we have the enterprise cosell team, which is my team. We have our strategic accounts and industries cosell team, which is led by James Hardy, who is new to Jim’s team to James and I really work closely because our teams do the same thing, just covering different sets of accounts. And so we get to collaborate and share a lot of notes, which is great. Now, we have another new portion to the customer segment focus, and that is mid market enterprise. This is led by Lainey marks, who is you know, just absolutely tough. She is competitive. And she’s going after this business of mid market enterprise. And this is new, because we have taken a set of customers that sit what we call this mid market enterprise. And we have decided we want to be completely partner facing with them, which is great. So she has a team of sellers that are their go to market is always with and through a partner, which is great. And then finally Vince Menzione 21:31 makes a lot of sense, by the way, because the mid market has been underserved in general from a partner perspective, right? Yes, Chelsea Berlucchi 21:37 yeah, agreed. And it and there’s so much opportunity there, I think. And we see a lot of these, these customers too, that have either it’s a niche product, or the solution they’re offering, or the way they’re built, the organisation should be reliant on working with a partner or building out their own ecosystem, too. So I’m glad that she’s chartered that this year, she’s doing a phenomenal job. The last piece of our customer focused teams is the candidate ecosystem, which is led by Meghan Tanner, whom again, is there another force that you should have on the call to so all of these folks are working together, either we’re out there with the customers and the sellers making sure we know how to co sell, we are working directly with customers, we’re building up these partners and what the business they’re doing with Google Cloud, but also the business that they’re representing out there in the field. And our underlying teams here, of course, partner engineering. And then we also have a Gen AI Centre of Excellence where we are keenly focused on driving innovation through generative AI and cloud AI. Vince Menzione 22:38 Okay, so that’s a pretty massive organisation. It’s a long as a lot of ground to cover. I’m a partner, I’m trying to figure out, like, where do I start? Like, who do I work with? Can you help us there? Chelsea Berlucchi 22:48 Yeah, absolutely. And that’s it? That’s a great question, I will make this very simple. If you are a partner in meaning you have gone to our partner advantage portal, you’ve registered, you’ve gotten the right certifications, pass the test, urine, you know, you should always still be working first with your account team. And that sounds a little weird, but I will say is that this could be your initial go to, and really, that Launchpad into further into the partner ecosystem, you would have an accounting that has this investment, initial interest in how successful you are in the Google Cloud ecosystem. And they can also talk to their peers to make sure you’re getting the right love to start with. Beyond that, as we see partners really develop what they have and their relationship with Google Cloud, we do ask that they then digging deeper to this partner advantage portal, which is going to provide them with a lot of training and access to information on how to build out a good market, but also gives them a platform to then log opportunity share that information. So we can see, oh, this is a very relevant partner that making an impact. Let’s support them more in that sense, too. So I would say start with those two. But then, as you as you progress within the Google Cloud ecosystem, we have folks like partner advisors that help you and partner and development managers or ISP specialists. And then of course, you know, that large team that I shared with you as well, that it’s standing there with with North America. And by the way, that’s just one part of our ecosystem. We have a global team too. Vince Menzione 24:20 So I know you present to partners quite a bit on these topics and how to help them be more successful. And I got a peek at some of your presentation materials before we have this conversation. Can you talk about this? And I believe very much in how you show up. Right? How do you stand out? How do you differentiate yourself as a partner, right, because now I’m a partner and there’s all these other partners that are trying to you know, they’re tugging on the teams to cosell together. And I like to talk about being a shiny quarter and a bucket full of shiny terms I use, like, how do you show up differently uniquely? How do I build an effective co selling strategy that will resonate with your sellers? and your customers, Chelsea? Chelsea Berlucchi 25:01 Yeah. So another great question that we do get frequently, we see people that come into the ecosystem they want to launch, they want to launch the right way. And so I do think it’s good to level set, right? It’s good to understand what you’re offering, how do we position it with the field so that you do get the right amount of scale resources, as well as intention that you may need to be successful with us too. So I think you hit on one key point that I’m just going to underscore right now is around a differentiated value proposition. And so in some cases, if we’re talking about an ISV, or an independent software vendor, offering up that technical, technically differentiated solution is a, you know, key importance. And I think any company out there that has built a product, they probably did it because they saw a gap in the market, or a new market that they wanted to build out. So that can be a little bit easier for these partners. One thing we also like to say is take that solution and how you’re differentiated, but then tie it back to Google Cloud, too. So how does it actually work well, with Google Cloud first party, and that will one help our sellers understand, Oh, these two work together, this is why they make sense. This is why it makes sense to our customers, and really helps them resonate with that actual solution. Now, on the other side of that, if your services or sell partner, maybe a little little more difficult, so you do want to then have a bit of a story. And I would actually tell everyone this and in that if you have that 30 minutes with the seller, we’re really pushing our customers to say yes, you may have your five minute pitch, which is great, I love a five minute pitch, you’ve boiled down to a shark tank type of thing. And we know really what we’re gonna get out of that conversation. But what I’m shifting folks to do this year is to share a win story, because I do think those can win a win story, tell me how you worked with a customer to win an opportunity and win over that customer to hopefully be a referenceable customer for you, because that’s really gold standard, right? Not only do they enjoy the process of working with you, they enjoyed it so much that they’re willing to be a reference for other customers, and even maybe talk to your sales team or other sellers to to understand why. And so I’m pushing goats to do that five minute pitch, but also a five minute win story of how and why a customer would adopt your solution, your service, your technology, I do think that those things will go a long way. And we do internal win stories, or we call win wires as well really sharing, hey, we’ve just started to work with this customer. They decided to move forward with Google Cloud and this technology or this partner. And here’s really what that cosell process looked like. So I would say get you know, get organised with those kind of the the basics and the foundation there. But beyond that, there’s always loads of content that people want to share with us. It’s, you know, could be an extensive pitch deck. It could be a list of qualifying questions, it could be architectures to review. It could be a Rolodex of people at the organisation to cosell with ourselves and all that’s fine. But I also do say, Hey, what is what is it good kind of walk away to pager. So you’re gonna have your, your, you know, five minute pitch, you may have your wind story, and then give us that battle card of information to get us to launch within the field teams. I think all those things, you know, we’ll get started. And then of course, you evolve from there. But you know, it can look look different for everyone as well. I just got a note from a manager yesterday morning saying hey, I just want to give props to an ISV that showed up so well with my team. And what his eyes we did was they they reached out to the manager, they asked for an account list, they went back and did their homework, they did account mapping, they said here’s where we are, here’s where we’re working with these customers, here’s maybe where we need help. And then they recorded themselves giving a 10 minute or less overview of how they were going to address this particular managers team. And really a little bit about their solution to in that sort of preparation and for thought that took probably you know 30 minutes to an hour on the partner side. Set them up for success with this manager and then their team and so that one interaction would lead to really a door opening at a probably 100 customers which is pretty cool. So I think Little things like that go a long way. Vince Menzione 29:33 I’m so excited to continue our partnership with ag one. Many of you know I’ve made taking a green drink supplement part of my health ritual for over 21 years now. And it has made all the difference to my health and well being about six years ago. Athletic Greens and now their product ag one became my go to supplement. Ag one is the first thing I take every morning to power my day. It covers all Have my nutritional basis supports my gut health gives a boost to my immunity and energy levels. If you want to take ownership of your health, try ag one and get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase, go to drink 80 one.com forward slash Vinson that’s drink ag one.com forward slash Vinson, check them out. I think what you said to like getting, you know, you called about the five the elevator pitch the brand story, and then the customer account story, right? Like, what what did you do differently better in that account, I think, taking a seller through that process, so they could personalise it and say, Okay, this is how this partner can work with me more effectively. And then getting to the what’s in it for me, resonating with like, this is how you can win, we can win together by again, exposing the account list saying, Hey, these are the accounts will rehab relevance. This is the whitespace opportunities we can go after together and coming to the table prepared like that. Just it’s so important. I think doing that is the best way to differentiate yourself in the market, would you say? I Chelsea Berlucchi 31:13 absolutely think Sony can get it goes back to basics, which I think people forget about a lot. And I will say from my jump from Cisco to Google, I had to go back to basics, right? It was coming from a company that was number one in a lot of markets to a company that was not. And you as I said, you get I got more bumps and bruises along the way, but really taught me to go back and say, you’ve got to prove yourself. And that means you start at layer one there. And really going back to basics will help. And I think doing that little bit of work again, goes a long way for sure. Vince Menzione 31:50 So let’s talk about marketplaces. I mean, we could probably spend the entire conversation here on marketplaces. It’s I’ve been calling this the marketplace moment. I mean, it’s it’s astounding to see the uptake just in a very short period of time over the last couple of years now. The durable cloud budgets, right customers are making buying decisions at the executive level with Google. They’re making large commitments. And this opportunity to show up differently and transact differently. We talked about millennial generation, Gen Z, also not wanting, like doing things digitally, our lives have changed since COVID. Right? How do in marketplaces are being a bigger thing that GCP? Right, I think that this is becoming a better vehicle, a way to bring multiple partners together? How do I initiate a conversation about GCP marketplace with a customer? Yeah, Chelsea Berlucchi 32:42 so I think this is another one that that we do get frequently, right. So we have ISVs, that, again, have built products that run on Google Cloud. And they’re available to purchase in our Google Cloud Marketplace, which is in our billing console. It’s in our Google Cloud Console, which is really where our customers go to build out projects with Google Cloud products. But it’s very easy for them to then click over to the marketplace and say, hey, look, I need solution completeness, or I want something that’s out of the box. And I’ve got a tonne of solutions to pull from there. And we do have an extensive marketplace. It’s been building and growing. And you did have Scott Arneson on last year, who’s who’s my boss. And he’s now you know, over his year at Google send an incredible job with really applying a lot of rigour in organisation to how we go to market, how we show up with our partners, but also with our customers. And in that he has an individual that’s also on his team named Pete Henderson, who is if you’re talking about marketplace, you got to get him on P is our marketplace go to market lead. So what Pete does is really straddles that line between go into market where he’s meeting with customers on a daily basis around the marketplace. And sometimes these are very strategic, sometimes they’re difficult conversations. And he takes back any feedback around features and functionality and make sure it gets to our marketplace global team to say, hey, can we start to make enhancements here. And, you know, I love working with Pete. He’s really one of my partners in crime here. And one thing we talk about often is this conversation of how to initiate the talk with with your customer around Google Cloud Marketplace, or marketplace in general. And we really tried to break it out in a couple of different ways. You’re going to have a first time user of the marketplace. And in that case, I always coach our sellers to say, if you’re having one a first time call or reset call with your customer, or just a general weekly update, you know, open up the Google Cloud Console, give them a quick tour and bring them over to the marketplace and share the show with them. Hey, where it is why our teams, our customers use it right and why it’s beneficial to them, and have them ask them questions, but then bring in bring in the Google Cloud team or your are, you know the Google app marketplace team to again help you have those conversations as well. Also the cosell team there. But that’s one is getting getting a feel for where they are. Had they used a marketplace in the past. If it wasn’t Google Cloud, great, that tells me they’re open to the process that tells him that procurement understands how to work with they understand it, yes, they understand it. So I don’t mind that I actually, I really like it because then we’re not really trying to convince them to use the marketplace, we’re just, you know, really giving the information on hey, we have a marketplace, here’s why you should be using it. If you’re also working with Google Cloud. Or even if you’re not, if you have partners that are listed in the marketplace, here’s why it’s also valuable to you and to them. And then that’s one place, it’s a very simple, straightforward conversation on the other side of that, if you have a customer that has used the marketplace before, but maybe they haven’t done what’s called a private offer, where they’re negotiating directly with an ISV. And that offer then comes through the marketplace for them to click to accept. And it’s maybe a more bespoke offer really tailored to their needs. They’ve done something maybe more like a click to subscribe, which is also totally okay. Or maybe they’ve done a trial they tested around, but nothing really substantial yet, with Google Cloud Marketplace, and you want to get them more comfortable and confident. This is maybe a little more of a sit down. It’s one, hey, we’ve noticed you’ve been using the Google Cloud Marketplace. Can you tell me a little bit more about what you’ve been testing? How’s that going? Do you know? How do you like the billing integration? And what else could you be using it for? And then the larger conversation is maybe with procurement to to help them understand, hey, look, here’s why it’s valuable to our procurement teams. Here’s why it’s helpful for you on the financial side of things, if you have a Google Cloud commit to in show remove, as we said, that mystery of the what and the why of the marketplace to get them comfortable. And then I always say handhold handhold through that first purchase. So if you’re a partner, having this conversation around that Google Cloud Marketplace, bring the cosell team in, bring that your sales counterpart at Google Cloud, to have the conversation to and be there and be ready when the customer does make that first purchase, we want to make sure it goes smoothly, and that they come back and then they reroute all purchases through the marketplace. So that’s what I mean by hand holding them and making sure they have a really, really good experience the first first time or second time or third time or 20th time. Vince Menzione 37:33 Do you ever have partners asked for propensity data? So do they ever come to you and say, who are customers who are either underspend on their cloud commitments, or might have a higher propensity to buy through marketplace? Chelsea Berlucchi 37:46 You know, we do pretty confidential. Obviously, we can’t, we can’t share out, you know, hey, look, here’s a list of our committed customers, these are customers that have really trusted us and put together a financial agreement. But what we like to do is it’s really give them the tools and resources to say, hey, look, you know, we do have some, some mutual conversations going on, or customers that are, you know, we’re also working on projects together, can you tell us how you may be working with them to so this, this goes back to that CO selling one on one of the give and take, right? If you’re gonna come and say, Hey, can you tell us where all of your businesses we’re gonna, you know, probably not do that. But we’d like to understand, hey, look, what kind of conversations are you also having, and I love that I love when two sellers get together, right, and they start talking about a mutual customer. And that way, they can really, one, become more confident working with each other. And as you probably know, if you’ve been in sales in the past, when you have someone that’s also in the trenches, maybe another company, then you build trust. And then you also really, the conversation evolved so much better to so we definitely, you know, have a give and take and make sure that we’re both doing neutral sharing, but again, of course, within within the realm of what we’re allowed to do there. Yeah, Vince Menzione 39:05 no, I understood. So let’s take us through. So we built our brand story. We’ve talked about when wires or successes that we’ve had together, help help illustrate the solution. We’ve gotten some success together working with the teams, we might have introduced marketplaces, we’ve gotten that flywheel going, now that we’ve gotten our flywheel going for a period of time, what else can we do to drive more effective co selling as a more mature partner now working with you and your organisation? Yeah, so Chelsea Berlucchi 39:34 I love this question. When I get this from partners, because it really tells me they’re looking to continue to invest and grow their relationship with Google Cloud, right? And they’re looking for coaching. They’re looking for feedback, whatever it may be. So we always get to one go to an idea board to and say, Hey, let’s figure out where you are and where do you want to be get to be a little creative, but I give folks a bit of a roadmap In where I see, you know, hey, here’s some of our really what we may call gold standard, or these partners that are have been really successful. And we also look at those that maybe are just starting out. And so what we first see is okay, the customers or partners decided to invest in Google Cloud, they’re building out a go to market with us and become a partner. Ideally, we’d like that partner to then assign someone the Google Cloud relationship, meaning do you as a partner have someone that owns who will cloud in terms of alliances in terms of a channel there, and that means they’re, they’re dedicated enough, they’re invested enough to know it’s a core part of their business to even hire someone or a team of someone’s to manage that relationship? And so we say that’s, that’s first checkmark, okay, Alliance is great, because we also have that too. The second one is okay, we see alliances and may start to immediately engage with maybe their counterpart at Google Cloud or sales directly. And I think those engagements are good, but they can only go so far, as you know, we just talked about this, where we really see things start to develop and grow, is when an organisation can get their sales team to talk to our sales team as well. And that means maybe they didn’t aligned on incentives, they’ve really said, Hey, sellers, at our partner, this is how you know, we’re going to pay you if you’re, you know, you work and you sell Google Cloud or with our through the the marketplace, right, or whatever else it may be, but if they have some sort of interest in working with Google Cloud sellers, and we get both of those grip groups working together, that creates a lot of this, this good gossip, a lot of champions internally, and we see more scale there, those two can be pretty easy to check off. And the third one we really anchor on is, again, another point we’ve talked about is expanding a partnership within Google clouds partner ecosystem. So say, if you’re an ISV, I find that a lot of them have said, Okay, we’re just going to work with the hyper scalar, right, and we’re going to launch in the marketplace. And that’s it. But they haven’t really adopted a resale strategy. They haven’t adopted a services strategy. And so at some point along the sales cycle, they may be a little stuck, maybe that’s in the prospecting stage, maybe it’s in the final stage of implementation, but there’s maybe a backlog or an area where they could really adopt business faster. And that means, hey, look, you’re already part of this ecosystem, why not lean in further, and find more partners that can really help you along the way? Again, maybe it’s implementing services, or reselling. And this can go into different ways, right? You’re a sell partner of ours, and your customer keeps asking for a particular solution that you don’t have in your book of business. Maybe Google Cloud does, or our marketplace does, go strike up these relationships with those partners too. And then you know, that third one is really services partners, which can say, hey, they may want to offer a solution completeness, or they know I’m going to implement x, and then my customer is automatically going to go search for y product, and to really add on or see, Hey, how is this other product actually running or working. And so you can really think about your business like that from the customer’s perspective is always really helpful, and then build out what that cosell strategy looks like. So I say, these are three buckets that are pretty distinct, and get a little more strategic as you go along. And then underlying that is really just this innovation, right? We talked about Jim AI, but that can be inclusive of other products. And that is taking that customer feedback to say, what are they really challenging you to do to maybe add to your product? Or what is the market really saying in terms of, hey, we like what you have to offer. But this is where things are headed. And using Google Cloud in the force of our engineering to really help you evolve your products and maybe even revolutionise them at some point to can can help you further along in that cosell process. Yeah, Vince Menzione 44:06 I love it. I love it. And Google Next is next week, like, I’m excited to be coming out to Vegas. Although I’m not always excited to come to Vegas. I am excited to come to Google next next week. I know you’ll be there. What’s in store for those listening and viewing today? Like what can they expect? And where should they go? What are the best sessions that they should attend? Chelsea Berlucchi 44:26 Yeah, that’s another good one. So I think I’m excited to you know, likewise, not so excited about Vegas. But I think well, you’re I’m excited about is Google Cloud Next. And it feels like we just had it because you did. But that’s part of why I’m excited because we get to take all the momentum that we had last year and we get to have it at the beginning of the year this year. And now even though the time in which we just had it out in San Francisco is much shorter. Now. There have been so many advancements and announcements, certainly around cloud AI in general. of AI that I think people are going to be excited to hear and see more about. So you know, obviously tune in to that keynote, get your seat there to make sure you hear what is the latest and greatest. Also, this is a partner podcast. So we have a specific area Partner Summit area for our partners to come and join us. My favourite thing from last year was the expo hall. So we have our partners that have set up booths. And we’ve these are sponsoring partners, they have assigned seating all around to really demo their products where you can meet with these partners, you can understand their value pitch, and you can really see what’s going on. They have a lot of swag, of course. So if you’ve got, you know, friends or kids at home, and you want to bring them a little souvenir, you can load up on the water bottles and stickers and all the things you really want. Like yeah, yes, yeah. Bring an extra suitcase just for that if you can. No, but yeah, Vince Menzione 45:58 so and also the parties. I know, I heard there’s like 100 partner parties, they’re going to be going Chelsea Berlucchi 46:03 on there too many, I think, yeah, we’ll have to hire a driver for the night to just carry around from from one part party to another. But yeah, so all of that is going on? I think certainly the partner keynote will be interesting. We do partner awards, but we really get to hear from our leaders at Google Cloud that share one the important importance of partnership, and what are we driving together? And of course, you know, that is something that will bring us through the remainder of the year, that sort of momentum and direction is something that we can all really anchor on and build our businesses Vince Menzione 46:37 around. Yeah. So Google Next April 9 10th. And 11th. Yeah, next week, excited to have and to see you in person again, IRL. Likewise, I have one more. Yeah, I have one more question. And it’s a favourite question. I asked all my guests this question. You are hosting a dinner party. And you can invite any three guests from the present? Or the past this amazing dinner party? You could we could even talk about where you’re going to host that dinner party? Whom would you invite Chelsea? And why? Chelsea Berlucchi 47:08 Yes. So I have listened to your podcast in the past, I knew this one was coming to. And so I thought about it a bit. You know, I think what I would like to do so in 2020, tough year for all of us. But unfortunately, I lost both of my grandfather’s within months of each other. So it was tough, obviously, it you know, was a huge, huge gap in our families and, and tough on my parents, of course, and so I would certainly have them there, just to have that, that last meal, because in 2020, you really couldn’t go and visit people right or locked down. And so I think I’m just learning so much, even, you know, after they both passed away about them, and also really the marriages that they had with my grandmother’s too, who are both are bound, thankfully. And so I’m gonna break your rules a little bit. I’m going to give up my seat. And I’m gonna give both of those last two seats to my grandmother so they can have maybe a double date a romantic dinner. I don’t think they’ll be lurking around. But I do think that they would appreciate Vince Menzione 48:11 you joining. You could be she could be the chaperone as well. Okay, I Chelsea Berlucchi 48:16 can I can bring them their meals. I’d probably like that. To them. Yeah, no. So I think I would do that. Yeah, I think you know, it’s funny, I remember seeing you in, in New York. And after we had that big date the forum, we ran into each other, I ran into you and your wife, and you guys were getting to just get out around town and going to see your favourite French bakery and enjoy a bluebird, New York City day. And so I do think, of course, that marriage and partnerships are great, and they both had some some really strong ones. So I’m sure they’d appreciate that one last nail together. Vince Menzione 48:47 Thank you. Thank you. You’ve been an amazing guest. Chelsea, I so enjoyed spending time with you today. I’m so excited to see you next week. And if you haven’t gotten your tickets yet, try to get out to Vegas for this event, or I know it’s gonna also be live streamed as well. So listen, watch. Google Cloud is on a tear, exciting time for our partner community. Chelsea, my favourite subject, co selling, having you on board leading this very important function. Excited to see what’s next for you. And for Google Cloud. Thank Chelsea Berlucchi 49:20 you so much, Vince. It’s been great to be here. And I look forward to seeing you next week. And to all the listeners as well. Hopefully I get to see you at Google Cloud Next. Vince Menzione 49:28 All right. Well, looking forward to seeing all of you at Google Cloud Next. Thank you so much for watching, and listening to The Ultimate Guide to bartering. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of ultimate guide to partner online and Ultimate Partner.com. If you liked this episode, I’d be thrilled if you left us up to a five star review on either Apple or Spotify. This helps us to continue to feed your amazing guests. Also, please check out subscribe add to our new YouTube channel ultimate partner we’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Guide to partner | |||
| 214 – Unleashing $Billions in Growth: Chief Partner Officer Secrets with Greg Sarafin | 25 Mar 2024 | ||
Greg Sarafin Joins Ultimate Partner®
In this episode, Greg Sarafin, Global Managing Partner—Alliance Ecosystem at EY, joins us to explore the pivotal role of the Chief Partner Officers, his career progression, and the dynamics of successful partnership and organizational leadership. Discover how Greg oversees EY’s Alliance Partner Ecosystem, driving substantial growth and impact. He has contributed 40% to EY’s growth over the past six years, creating billions in revenue. With insights from his extensive experience, including leadership roles at IBM and BearingPoint, Greg shares invaluable perspectives on strategic partnerships, technology implementation, and leadership skills essential for C-suite roles. Learn firsthand about the intersection of technology, business, and partnerships as Greg discusses the tech industry’s influence on GDP growth, AI value creation, and business process reengineering. Gain actionable insights into partner operations, cost management, and the profound impact of partnering functions on organizational success. Tune in to uncover the secrets of effective partnering, leadership, and capital allocation in today’s rapidly evolving business landscape. Don’t miss this enlightening conversation with Greg Sarafin, a seasoned leader with a wealth of experience driving impactful partnerships and organizational growth. What You’ll Learn
I am thrilled to welcome you into a world that delivers unparalleled insights, best practices, and essential information to unlock your potential as a partner and propel you towards your most ambitious goals. This is a world crafted for partners like you. Our journey began seven years ago with a podcast. Our vision is to empower partners in the complex world of tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and AWS. Today, Ultimate Partner’s mission is clear and bold, “empower every individual, organization, and partner to achieve more through successful partnering. As an Ultimate Partner Experience Member, you will unlock a growing treasure trove of resources. Dive into recordings of our events, exclusive podcast episodes, and a wealth of unique content, all designed to enhance your Cloud Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy and ecosystem growth. We are in our early days and expect much more to come. 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And on finding this buyer intent you show up to every meeting and demonstrate why you are relevant every day, I have to force myself to make sure that I’m taking one step ahead in terms of my own learning that flywheel success is where you will build momentum. And that momentum will continue and then you feed into the other systems to say, this is what we did. This is how we did it together. Welcome to or welcome back to The Ultimate Guide department, where our mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. I’m Vince menzi on your host, and today we have a really special guest here in our Boca facility. Greg Serafin is the global Managing Partner of alliances and ecosystems at EY, Ernst and Young, a multinational professional services partnership, and a thought leader on the topic of ecosystem and the role of the chief partner officer. Greg, I’m so excited to have you here today. Thanks, Vince. It’s good to be here. I am so excited to welcome you to Ultimate Partner you and I got to spend some time in Dallas, Texas, at our live event. And I so enjoyed your session with and it’s been such an incredible session on the chief partner Officer role. And I wanted to have you in the room because not just that topic, but we have several other topics, we want to talk to your leader at EY, you have been a leader in this movement around ecosystems. And so I’m so excited for this conversation today. But first, for our listeners that don’t know you, I was hoping you could spend a little bit of time on EY. Sure. Your role and the organisation that you lead. Yeah, absolutely. So Greg Sarafin 01:49 I am part of the extended leadership team at EY. And I’ve had the great honour of being on that team for the last seven years. But I was just telling you before the podcast, I actually had my retirement, I’m retiring in June, and I don’t know how they could let you go. I don’t think it’s it’s actually a very hard rule. Right? We, you know, we want to continue the UN I agree with that. Actually, I’m like, you know, you gotta keep letting people advance. Right, exactly what we’re talking about politics before this. Right? Right. I’m still young for politics, I guess, already a time. Exactly, currently. So anyway, you know, ey for those that don’t know, is one of the big four. And all of us have both an audit business, a tax business, and then some set of consulting businesses as well. So we’re very broad in the services that we can bring to clients. And we’re very global, we have a particular place in society in terms of creating transparency of financial results, to give confidence to the public markets, which is a pretty tall task and important thing to do. Absolutely. It gives us a certain brand permission and trust, it gives us the ability to attract a certain level of talent, both out of university, as well as then later in life experienced hires. And so what you find when you get there, and I came there late in life that was 51 years old, when I joined the UI, I was an IBM executive before that, is just you are stung by not just the depth of talent, you know, people that are just world class, you know, in some sort of expertise, but then also world class as you know, relationship handlers or delivery people. And then there’s 380,000 of us around the world 380,000. And it’s huge. I was in attendance. I mean, seriously, it’s like, they’re all top people like, you know, you get goose bumps, you go to an EY meeting anywhere in the world. And there’s a consistent feel of consistent culture, commitment to client commitment to success. It’s unbelievable. Anyway, I want our people in the room I won’t I won’t dwell on about a why too much. But it’s been it’s been great to be part of you why I didn’t go to EY actually to, to be part of the ecosystem movement. Start there. I was at IBM where I also had a really good time and was also very fortunate have had a couple of good roles there. I was running a big part of the financial services business for them in North America. And so and then BearingPoint before that, before their implementation. Yeah, apparently for if we go through my career, we’re gonna be here we won’t No, no, we won’t do that. We will not do that. I sold my first deal. 41 years ago. I love it. I was in college. You are young money. Yeah, young buck away, you’ll you’ll you’ll appreciate this. So I needed to make money to pay tuition and room and board and so like, Well, I’m not gonna do that working at a bar or, you know, minimum wage jobs. It was it was I was at expensive college. Right. So Vince Menzione 04:46 I love this. I sold a Novell NetWare implementation for law firm. Oh my goodness. Right. Isn’t that crazy? That’s when he PCs network them with token ring. I mean, I remember For those days, I remember that was my early days spent two days trying to figure out how to generate the operating system off of three and a half inch floppies. Are those Lucas? Yeah, yeah, remember those things? I do remember those? Oh my lord. Anyway, enough to remember that now I’m just aged myself. Greg Sarafin 05:15 I’ve aged myself as well here. Vince Menzione 05:18 So let’s fast forward again. So yeah, bearing points, IBM and n e n EY. And up until Greg Sarafin 05:29 seven years ago, I was primarily financial services from hiring point forward. And so when two years into my EY tenure, they said, hey, you know, that plan for you to like, maybe run a big piece of financial services for us? We think we have something better for you to do I love every time you hear it’s gonna be better for you. You’re like, is it really better for me? Is it right? For us that it was because I never would have done it on my own. And I didn’t grow up in it. So I but I had always worked with partners. You know, I was at IBM, we did a lot with SAP and a lot with Oracle. Right. And financial services, and a lot of systems integration work with them. And I knew our three are Yeah, exactly. And I knew how to do ecc. I knew how to do sales motions with partners. I knew all that stuff. But from the running the business side, not from the partnering side, yes. Running the partner function side. So and if I’m honest, I’ve said this before publicly. I was like, Oh, my God, my career is over. I’m going to the indirect hell. Vince Menzione 06:40 chemo, how was it was, you know, 10 years ago? Oh, something must have gone wrong with your career. You’re over and alliances now? Yeah, indirect revenue. That’s where we send people who can’t sell Exactly, that’s exactly was Greg Sarafin 06:51 like, oh, everybody’s gonna think I’ve lost my ability to do deals and stuff, right. But in all seriousness, the reason I was asked, it wasn’t honoured actually, to be asked. Because EY had done a lot of work at the board level, and had determined that this was a huge gap for the company. And not just for the company, but for our clients, right, our clients expect, particularly those of us that are in the Big Four, to help them navigate their most difficult journeys, and to orchestrate a set of partners to help them do that. Not to say, well go Good luck working with Microsoft, your old job, or SAP or have ever been like working with them. No, we’re going to bring all that together for you. And we’re going to translate, we’re gonna take you on a business outcome journey. And of course, you can’t get any business outcome of any merit today without what tack? Vince Menzione 07:40 That’s right. And this, and you’re in the transformation business. Right. And then we are, we are celebrated transformation. So you got right at the right time? Greg Sarafin 07:48 We Yes, I did. I did get there at the right time. So we were at the time, you know, this is all public information. We were $33 billion network of firms at the time. And we were doing less than a billion dollars, raise the partner that all the dogs are looking at, you’re looking at it really gonna be like, what was going on there? Exactly. But you know, remember, ey had spun off its consulting business back in the early aughts. And they’ll they built it back. Because we audit a lot of technology companies at EY. A lot of people thought, well, it doesn’t make sense to try to do alliances, because we audit, you know, many, the hyper scalars, Amazon and Google and by the way, I’m glad we do. Yeah. It’s an important role to play. Absolutely. You know, I’m not one of those people that says, Well, you know, audits, something we shouldn’t do, which is absolutely, it’s a privilege to be able to do audits, for sure. We’re very fortunate that we’ve been given that licence. And so what did though is gave me a very short Vince Menzione 08:46 palette to work with. Who was left at hyperscalers. That boy, I just so I, Greg Sarafin 08:51 we have we have Microsoft? Yeah. And the hyperscalers and we have sap in the Europese. We have Dell for the you know, the mega tech OEM platforms. And we have ServiceNow for so if you if you think about it, right. The ones we don’t happen to audit historically turned out to be the category leaders and each of their sandwich the unicorns in many ways, right? Right. Right. So we so it turned out that we had the best of both worlds, we were providing assurance services to some of the most important companies on the planet. But we also still got to work with some of the other most important companies in planning, they happen to be number one in their position. So it actually kind of really worked out well. Vince Menzione 09:33 So tell me about your organisation that we were talking about this a little bit before we started recording the size of the organisation, how are you organised for success? Because you’ve got this massive organisation global organisation, how do you aggregate the function and the team? Greg Sarafin 09:49 Yeah, so first of all, you’re you came from a company that was pretty massive and complicated, too. So I Vince Menzione 09:55 talked about McKenzie with you, McKinsey. Greg Sarafin 09:59 So Yeah, I mean, for those that don’t know, Big Four, because of of regulation are their partnerships. They can’t be corporations, and they Vince Menzione 10:11 is a by country? Greg Sarafin 10:12 Is that how it works? Essentially by country? That’s right. Each country has its own franchise. So you can think of it that way. And then there’s a central entity in our case, ey global that owns EY brand, facilitates the UI network does the shared services for the member firms, but each member firm is still an independent operating entity. Yeah. So when you think about that, from the perspective of you just got a global roll, and you’re supposed to make things happen across 160 member firms? It’s like, how’s that gonna work? It was one of the early things I started to think about, like, how am I going to do that a huge influence strategy. And there’s, there’s a lot of influence, of course, I mean, even in regular top down corporation, you still have got to get people to care enough to allocate their resource to do something for the greater good isn’t necessarily what they’re doing today. Right? There’s always a change management element to any thing that disrupts what people do, in terms of their muscle memories. So there was certainly a lot of change management. But also we thought about it in a very structured way. So I’m, uh, those people that know me and work with me, I’m, I’m very, I’m like an operating partner. Okay. I’m very operational in how I think and engineering background. Exactly. I’m an engineering background. You know, I was telling you before the cast, you know, my, my degree, I had to build a PC from scratch on a wire wrap on a motherboard, you know, the chips and everything right. I had to programme the operating system, the monitor the operating system. I did a Pascal compiler there. I dated myself again. Wow, how it was less than anybody working past? Yeah. Oh, my Lord. So it was one of the top languages when I went to school. It was it was a great it was an education language, right? Yes. And so anyway, so I’m a hardcore engineer. And also, I’m just a connector right i, to me, I see the world about how things connect. Nice. And so that’s, that’s sort of the that’s sort of the way I structure and go after things. And so I joke with people, I went from engineering because, you know, first 20 years of my career, I was doing actual implementations, right? Where there was building Novell networks and infrastructure clients, where they’re doing custom software for them. Right. I had management. Yeah, I did project delivery, certainly. So but always tech related. And then I just said, you know, I can do the same thing and go to market. Very interesting. So I have thought about go to market for 20 years, because that’s I flipped to the go to market side. And I’ve used my engineering thinking, say, how would I engineer the outcome? That would, would be the ideal outcome, working from the client back. So many organisations they worked with, they work, they work their go to market from the inside out, we’ve got all these products and services we need to sell, huh? All right, we got all these clients out here will segment will like, what? Like, okay, that that works. But what if you flipped it? What if you said, Okay, what am I clients need, not necessarily what I have in my toolbox, but what do they need? That is what is in my toolbox actually helps them get to. Okay, now that I’m not, I understand what they actually need. Okay, maybe my toolbox doesn’t have everything they need. But if I think about how I can bring my tools plus the tools of others and orchestrate that outcome for the client, maybe that will get me a higher share of wallet as any given market. And it turns out, that’s been true for 20 years and different roles that I’ve had. And so the end was that mindset, actually, plus a very operational that that’s what we brought to how we thought about partnering. It was It wasn’t sell what you got, or hey, I’ll sell your stuff. You sell my stuff. It was like what a client’s need, what are they trying to get to? And how can what we have and maybe some other people have helped orchestrate that. To create that that value that doesn’t exist anywhere Vince Menzione 14:10 like this is like a symbol I can’t wait to dive in more on this conversation because connector and orchestrator to two verbs that come to mind for me as well. And so I love your back. We’re gonna peel back here on how you how you did this across the Absolutely, yeah. And in fact you’ve been talking about, we had Jay McBain here just download Jay like two weeks ago. And you know, he’s he’s coined this term decade of the ecosystem. Yes, I’m aware. But you’ve been talking about ecosystem I think even longer than Jay is I think someone told me that they saw you speak about ecosystem maybe maybe four or five years ago. In fact, actually Greg Sarafin 14:44 I started posting with the hashtag ecosystem value realised in 2018. Wow. And, and part of that was because I was trying to reposition in a way from Alliance Right, because the lines first of all is well as worse. It has a lot of baggage. Yeah, I don’t like alliances. I don’t like it either. Second of all, it’s not an alliance. It’s a it’s a multi party value creating, creating enterprise. It’s partnership, right. It’s partnerships to create value. Right? You can have an alliance agreement, which is a type of a contract, it’s not, you know, so I rebranded to partner EPA system, six years ago, and then I even wrote an article back in 20, about seven business models, right? Because Because partnering is not just one business model, right? There’s a lot of different ways to partner marketplaces are huge way to partner. And you’re very familiar with that. But then, you know, you also have what we call the symbiotic model, which is the joint go to market cosell motions that the tech companies tend to do with the big S eyes. And you know, I will take you through all seven. But you get the point, right? I do. I do. And so I tried to get away from alliances and more to what it was about, which was, we have this ecosystem of partners that we can orchestrate to create value for our clients. That was what I was trying to reposition it to the outcomes to the outcome, because everybody why when I first came in the role when I would talk to them, it’s like, we don’t sell software. I’m like, Yeah, we’re not asking you to sell software. That’s, that’s not our business model. There are plenty companies that sell software, right, their channel partners to Microsoft, we’re not a channel partner to Microsoft. We are a strategic partner to Microsoft, we create strategic value for our clients that we can’t create alone, nor can Microsoft read alone. But together we can. And so it was that constant repositioning of it and reminding people that look, at the end of the day, what I say doesn’t matter. Ask Your Client, what they want. Look at where your clients are spending money today. They’re spending money predominantly with partners that orchestrate outcomes for them. Yes. That’s what they’re spending the money, right? That’s right. So forget me, I don’t matter. Pay attention to your client over there. That’s that’s who matters. So it’s Vince Menzione 17:01 become a movement, right? I talked to Jay about the decade of the ecosystem and this ecosystem movement. There’s a lot of debate around it. Is it a ecosystem is a multiple ecosystems? How do you think through that? Greg Sarafin 17:12 So I realised about three years and I realised, oh, darn. ecosystem is one of those words where first of all, a lot of people think about the ecosystem of the ocean, right? Or the ecosystem of the desert, because most people when they first heard that word, it was a middle school. Yeah, in science class. It’s just kind of icky biology. Remember, exactly. It’s like a biology where it’s so right away. It’s got some baggage. And then, like you said, you know, some people use the word to mean like an industry ecosystem, like all the participants in the value chain of health care. Yes. Right. Yes. Others use it more like, here’s the set of partners who we work with, specifically. Right? Right. And then there are other variations of us, too. So we call it a partner ecosystem, to say these are our partners, and there’s a bunch of them. And that is a tremendous resource for us to draw upon to figure out new ways of creating value for clients. And Vince Menzione 18:10 I would argue that your ecosystem is a subset of the total ecosystem in tech. Greg Sarafin 18:16 Oh, a very small subset of the ecosystem and tech, its massive. Yeah, Vince Menzione 18:21 I think about I always refer to the Bill Gates moment. And the fact that when he came down here to Boca Raton in 1981, and signed the agreement with IBM, he licenced the software didn’t sell it, right? Remember the old days. So hardware and software were intertwined, it was still sold directly? Yep, sometimes through an agent. But that created this massive movement. And with the work you did with Novell was in a great example, all these other all this other value, got it add to the chain, and we took PCs, and we took everything out, and then ultimately to the cloud. But if you look, to me, it’s like it’s the same ecosystem of all these companies Ultra. This $5 trillion industry that we have Greg Sarafin 18:57 maybe like the technology ecosystem around the world is creating is unlocking GDP growth. I mean, how much of our GDP growth is really because of these tech companies? Vince Menzione 19:06 What would you say this? We have a rough number on it. Greg Sarafin 19:09 I don’t know, I’m not an economist. I don’t have data. But I mean, just, you know, just looking at it, looking at the value our customers are creating for their customers, and thus the their contribution to GDP. Tac is probably more than 50% of the engine of GDP now and most at least, certainly in many markets. And I think it’s growing, especially with the new AI, new ai ai stack and, and we’re just at the beginning of that journey. It’s crazy where that’s going Satya Vince Menzione 19:40 says $4 trillion in value creation through AI. Greg Sarafin 19:45 Yeah, and that’s probably on the low as early definitely. Vince Menzione 19:48 I’m so excited to continue our partnership with ag one. Many of you know I’ve made taking a green drink supplement part of my health ritual for over 21 years now. You It has made all the difference to my health and well being about six years ago, athletic greens and now their product ag one became my go to supplement. Ag one is the first thing I take every morning to power my day. It covers all of my nutritional bases, supports my gut health gives a boost to my immunity and energy levels. If you want to take ownership of your health, try ag one and get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to drink ag one.com forward slash Vinson that’s drink ag one.com forward slash Vinson, check them out. So let’s let’s shift back into UI for a second because I have this maybe it’s a false notion about the big S eyes, the big global s eyes, that they they’re, they’re hired because of that one throat to choke right there, the organisation that comes in, in the I call it almost the old model, but you think about it differently. Yeah, I was hoping you could kinda absolutely share your point of view on it, you Greg Sarafin 21:06 know, so first of all, there is value in what I’ll call a, you know, a base CIT GSI. Right? So maybe you’re not hiring them to help you drive a transformation, the finance function, you just want them to put it in the plumbing and the engine of SAP, right? You want to do your SAP upgrade, because that’s one point on that big project. Like, yeah, exactly. And you know, that they have both the, you know, the talent arbitrage and the expertise to do these projects better than you will, or you’re gonna go out and hire a bunch of people are experts in implementing SAP, and then we’re gonna fire them all now. Exactly. So these, these, these organisations exist for a reason. And the ones that are good at it also realised something a long time ago, which is, most most large technical implementation projects don’t fail because of the people turning the wrenches. They, they fail because the business people, the client don’t do what they said they right do, right? That’s the truth. And so they got very good at, you know, muscling clients to do the right thing. Right, they use change orders and other mechanisms to do it. But so and there’s always been this sort of dance, right. And we certainly participate in that. But we’re unlikely as a big four, to compete against a pure GSI on array per hour. That’s, that’s not a, that’s not a smart thing for us to do. And we plan on going away many, and it’s not a business model, our business model is to start with the finance function and the CFO to say, what is the future of finance in the insurance industry or in the telco industry, or whatever the industry is, so bring that perspective to the CFO to say this is, here’s what here’s the regulatory agenda you may be faced with, here’s what AI is now going to do, like we bring them sort of this is this is where your function needs to go next, right in order to help be stewards of the business to help the business navigate all this change. And for you to do that your current technology platform is not going to get you there, nor your current business processes, or maybe even your functional alignment. So Vince Menzione 23:12 this is the business process reengineering. This is the business. Greg Sarafin 23:15 Yeah, in even the business function reengineering. In some cases, it’s even above process, but processes, certainly part of it. And then there’s the change management to get from your current state your future state. And then part of it to me part of the change management is swapping out the tech. Yeah, yeah, right. And a lot of go, it’s not always, it’s not the last piece, and in many respects, it’s the enabling piece. But if they don’t do the work to change the, if they put in this great new S for HANA implementation, and then they just keep using it the same way they’re using ECC, or three, what did they what did they crave as return on shareholder equity? They didn’t, they didn’t know anything up there. So that’s why we always, like I said, we focus on what’s the outcome you’re trying to get even helping you define what that outcome is? What’s the change journey you need to take help you take that change journey, and part of that is also swapping out the tech. Yeah. So Vince Menzione 24:09 this is where ecosystem comes in for you, right? Because I think ecosystem is a clump of a bunch of companies surrounding a customer, and then pulling through. But in your case, you’re coming in doing business processes, function reengineering. And then you’re saying, Okay, this is the cadre of tools or solutions that you need to in order to drive what we needed the outcome, Greg Sarafin 24:32 and it’s never one thing, it’s never just SAP. You still need the host that SAP somewhere and hyper scalar. And if you’re hosting in a hyper scalar, how can you get some leverage from the tools in their stack, right to bring leverage to the enablement of the functions, right? And then no platform has 100% of the functionality needed for any one function. So do you you bring a black line and for some reason ions in the financial clothes processes? Or do you bring in UiPath for for automating some of the more mundane tasks that are performed by accounting personnel or, or right, so, you you now we still have sales motions, we still partner with SAP, we still ultimately when we, when we take a client on this journey, we’re best served if we’re bringing SAP with us on that journey with the client and any other participants. And it’s where I go to the orchestrator, right? So if we were just a regular GSI, we would be okay, we’ve you know, we’re gonna partner with SCP, we’re gonna attack all these different clients and go through a sales motion to try to win some percentage of them. And then we’re gonna just wrench turn SAP and all these jobs, right? And that’s a bilateral sales motion. And it’s about how you need to implement it, where the best implement it. And here we are. And again, there’s clients that want to consume that way. Sure. But for us, it’s different we what’s the journey? And then who are the partners that we’re bringing, that we work with, to get you there faster, safer, better. But Vince Menzione 26:11 I think I hear in what you’re describing on your approach is more of a mindset change. You talk about orchestrator, you talk about collaboration, as opposed to prime sub roles that you see often in the AI world. Yeah, we Greg Sarafin 26:29 don’t we prime sub is a commercial construct that occasionally a client will insist upon. But our preference is like you have a relationship with your technology vendor way longer than you have a relationship with your SI will page in and out over the course of time, you’re gonna use SAP consistently, every year, year over year, right. So those are, that’s a different type of relationship. So you should have a commercial relationship with SAP and a commercial relationship with EY. But don’t put them on one paper unless you really have to, or need to got it. So we don’t, but we will prime sub if a client insists that we do. And then we also don’t use the word channel. Yeah, you know, channel, tell me why you don’t use it. Because channel is just an alternative cost of sales. Yeah. Transactional as well? Well, it’s more, it’s yes, it is transactional. But at the end of the day, to me, you use channel two to have a more efficient cost of sales, either because it’s a geography you don’t want to build a field sales office in, or it’s a particular segment of the market, that’s too expensive for your field sales to go after, to reach. So to me, it’s generally a surface area play. And instead of in your cost of sales, instead of it being a commission that you pay to your sellers, its margin that you’re sharing with the channel partner. So to me, that is a completely different thing that is that is sale selling through an alternate sales model. We’re creating value right through the orchestration, or the orchestration and the CO investment, because we also will often invest with our partners to create unique assets and tools that accelerate that client’s journey that they can’t get from another combination of partners. So Greg, you’ve been a thought leader in this ecosystem movement, as we refer to it now, like, why is it a strategic imperative? And Vince Menzione 28:27 what would you say to other s eyes or other organisations similar to EY analogous to EY, what they need to go do better differently? Greg Sarafin 28:35 So I’m gonna take it up from the world of tech and SI, because I believe this movement is much bigger than that. I know that because there’s a natural affinity for tech and and consultancies, you partner for four decades now, if you think about it, and that Bill Gates moment, right, exactly. And so and the reason for that is that clients, if they just adopt technology, and they don’t get business value, or value realisation, I think is the word we typically use, right? What was the point of spending the money on technology, so you, you you hire consultants to aid make sure you don’t screw up the implementation, because that’s easy enough to do and never happened? It’s never happens. And then, but more importantly, hopefully, you then adopt it and use it for a business purpose that return shareholder value, client value, employee value, stakeholder value, right, right. You want value creation from having deployed capital on op X to put in this deck. And so there’s been a natural synergy, but there are partnering models all over like every industry has its version of partnering models, they’re just very different by industry. Right? If you look at consumer products, they do a lot of partnerships. They do a lot of cross licencing. They do co branding, right? They do supply chain sharing, or they do a lot of things that are partnering models that are value creative to their end customer But don’t look like the way that we partner between si and tech companies automotive, automotive was massive partner at massive partner yellers tech dealer. Exactly. Now you’re getting to play in my in my, that’s another partnership with Bose stereo Yeah, Brembo brakes, you ever Carosi of BorgWarner transmission? Right? Those are all those were all supply relationships that turned into value relationships, and even co brand relationships in some cases, right? So let’s take it up a level. The reason it’s the decade of ecosystem is because partnering is more capital efficient, in many value vectors, the path to getting to a particular outcome for a client, if you try to do it within the four walls of your company, you probably don’t have enough capital or time to get there, you are speaking my language. So you need to combine your capital. And when I say capital, I mean it broadly. I don’t just mean money, resources, resources, IP, access to customers access to supply, how big is that today, that’s your route to supply is one of the most highly valued data is another highly valuable one, especially with AI, right? So to me, the reason it is the decade of echo system isn’t because what we’re doing in our little world of SI and tech, it is because Tech has taken down the barrier to interoperability between companies. I love that. And AI takes it down even further. You can in cloud and you again, you come from a very famous cloud company, right? How much value did Microsoft cloud on lock, not because people move their workload from a data centre to the cloud, it turns out that might actually be more expensive. The value unlock, is when multiple companies can form these really valuable value propositions, for no cost of interrupting the marketplace is driving it even further, the marketplace creates an accelerant seamless. So to me, the biggest thing that Microsoft is doing economically and its peers is it’s unlocking the ability for companies to pull capital together and new value creation models. And that is why it is the decade of echo system. Because and you’re gonna see this in every industry, we already are seeing it in every industry. And here’s the good news. And I dropped the mic now, if you are listening to this, and you are and you’re like me and events and others who have been banging our heads against the wall, a lot right here. Right, write it, you know, you’re into direct sales, etc. All of a sudden, you’re entering a decade, where your worth, to pharma companies and energy companies and automobiles, you’re there, they need you. Yes, because they need to try to figure out how to do this, because they don’t have what we have, which is experienced doing partner operations, partner governance, partner relationship handling, and go to market motions. So they don’t have any that experience or know, they don’t know. And the people listening to this do. And I’m telling you, more than half of you in 10 years will not be in tech or GSI. Vince Menzione 33:21 Right? We’re gonna help the transformation of the rest of the world. Right. Yeah, I see that as well. I talked to and that is why yesterday about this very same topic. So let’s dive in here. The the talk that you gave in my event was around the CPO which were the chief partner officer new term, by the way, although I think you you’ve been exposing the benefits and the value of this. I think about your organisation, I love the talk you gave. And I also think having been on both sides, having been at the Microsoft and then in the billion dollar ISV where these things don’t necessarily happen as easily. What do you think about when you think about the chief partner Officer role, its value and where it needs to sit in an organisation? Greg Sarafin 34:06 Yeah, so I actually flip it on its side. So I believe that for companies to pull, allocate capital, create new value vectors, and then drive go to market at scale. They need to have a partnering function. Yes, you’re speaking my language. You don’t have a partnering function, you’re not doing that function, not just a bolt on. Thank you a function, not just a bolt on. And in many companies, it’s a bolt on many. And it’s actually a go to market bolt on. That’s just not a value creation bolt on Vince Menzione 34:42 based on where it sits in the organisation right. Greg Sarafin 34:44 So you need a function and that function just like the finance function, or the tax function or the HR function, the supply chain function is an L zero function of the company and and it is a stored of a set of business processes. Yes. Vince Menzione 35:04 It’s a steward of the processes say that, uh processes from hell yes. Take us through them. So, Greg Sarafin 35:11 first of all, as you know, partnering touches every internal every other internal function in the company. That’s right. It can alter rev Rec. It can alter your tax position. It can alter your capital position. For the for the better, hopefully. It changes how you think about marketing and branding. Right now you’re co branding, multi branding. What does that Yeah, right. So Vince Menzione 35:40 so far, you’ve touched the CFOs. Office and the CMOS office. Oh, by Greg Sarafin 35:44 the way, if you’re partnering, you’re creating interoperability. Now you’ve created a nightmare for the CIO. Because the CIO now has got to worry about cybersecurity. Yeah, through all these other threat vectors. That’s right. Right. You’re no longer it’s no longer the it within your organisation is the it across your organisation and the partners that you’re working with? Like and I could go on every day, trust me, we’ve done this every arrow function, we didn’t get Avenue. Oh, my God, you have any avenue? Your go to market? Complete? Your product function? Vince Menzione 36:11 Yes. Greg Sarafin 36:12 Are you engineering a product to be complete? Or you engineering a product to be the digital core? Non back to tech? Right? Yes. Are you? Are you? Are you engineering your product to be the digital core? And then your your partner ecosystem does the last mile around it? Because as that core gets bigger, you know that it goes by the square of the radius, right? So your cost of making that too big? You can’t you don’t have the capital, right? So you can only take that core as far as you want the minimum viable core. And then you want your partner ecosystem to fill in the last mile around it. That is your ideal scenario. So your product strategy has got to be informed by your partner and go to market strategy. Right. So Vince Menzione 36:51 is this the conversation you had at the C suite? at EY? Greg Sarafin 36:55 Not a one. No. It doesn’t work that way. How did it work? On I haven’t even gotten to the intercompany process yet. All right. Let me let me come back to me eager. So, so So yeah, so you, you know, we won’t use this podcast to describe what all these processes are. I’m actually, I’m actually probably going to work. I’ll probably publish some of my thoughts about what these processes are in my dotage, but the point is, there are places you can go today. And you know what it was? You’re an expert in these processes, right? So you’ve got these processes that are intra company processes that affect every other function in the company. Yes, but then you have the inter company processes from hell. We talked about this before the cash, right, your old company and my company are to the largest, most complicated beasts in the world. And you know, let’s say Johnson and AMD go, Hey, guys, we want to do this thing and energy and you know, a lot of like, and it takes them 30 seconds, you know, stroke of the pan, we’re gonna go do this, and then it gets it then who’s to get handed to you, it gets handed the partner organisations, for us to then try to figure out oh, my God, there’s, there’s 12 corporate functions, or, you know, there’s 12 entities within Microsoft and 32 within EY. And then like, Oh, my Lord, you need a calculator to figure it out sometimes. Yeah. Right. So I joke a little bit, but you know, just how hard that is to Vince Menzione 38:23 do. And I call it maniacal focus, right, you get from the kumbaya you get from the vision. Oh, yeah. Like that trickle down to the OKRs. And then you got to get into execution. Yeah. Greg Sarafin 38:32 And the execution this, too. That’s a lot. Right, which is why you only do big motions. Yes, you do that, right. Because, right, because the cost of sales is is too high otherwise, right? And that’s one thing I’ll spend the organisation and multi have directions such right and easily you get, you know, my rule is you with any partner, what are the five motions that matter that are gonna get you to 80% of your value creation revenue, and just focus on those because each motion has a hurdle cost is a very large hurdle cost. And so you can’t spin up 20 of them. Vince Menzione 39:04 So what is your guidance? Other organisations this is a this by the way, this is considered a new role, right? There are it’s you’re saying it’s the at the top level, the L zero level? Greg Sarafin 39:14 Yeah. And it’s considered a it’s like you say every company has some form of partnering today. But it lives in it’s a bolt onto a difference. There’s a channel chief, there’s an alliances leader, there’s multiple alliances strategic supply chain lead. In the case of automotive, there might be a marketing function, that is business development and energy. Yeah, a lot of its jayvees Yes, yes. So and then there’s some there’s some businesses that are I call, you know, partner, partner native like Airbnb and Uber and all those folks, right, that just are there orchestrators, their value orchestrators. And they bring together a bunch of participants to trade and receive value for which they take their piece. Yes. So And do they have partnering functions? I don’t? I don’t know. Are they just partnering entities? Vince Menzione 40:04 Yeah, I think they’re just partnering, partnering, they’re almost like Mark, they’re marketplaces in many respects. So yeah, those those models I would agree with, those are markup, I look at Microsoft, or Amazon’s marketplace, or Google’s marketplace right now, I’d say it’s more analogous to that, Greg Sarafin 40:16 I would agree. So. So partnering is, is that every company, it’s a small p partnering, it’s not big P partnering, right, it’s not an L zero function. And you’re not allowing all the different types of partnering mechanisms, if you just keep small p partnering, and you’re never gonna be able to scale it, if you’re small p partnering, if you really want to scale, you’re gonna have to, you’re gonna have to raise it to an L zero function. And then L zero functions have an officer that are accountable to the board and the CEO for the efficacious execution of that function and contribution to key KPIs of the company. Vince Menzione 40:56 And how do you get there? Like, what is that function? What does that function look like? And what are the attributes of that function? Greg Sarafin 41:02 So that function has a number of layers to it. So there is a governance layer. And the governance is in part a governance into the capital allocation process. So how are we allocating our capital? And let’s not think about capital allocation as just deploying our resources? I call it I had this saying I use I say, you know, companies need to make a pivot from the, the economics of scarcity. The Economics of abundance. Mindset, it is a mindset. It’s very much a mindset. And that mindset can have it can be night and day. Yes. The the impact of which side of that mindset you fall on, because if you’re in the economics of scarcity, it’s like, me, me, me, my, here’s my capital, my people, my resources, I’m going to deploy them as effectively as I can to outmuscle my competition. That’s right. That’s the old mindset is the old mindset. Yeah. Right. Whereas the new mindset is, I have asset value and asset classes. I have all these other entities out there who I can work with who also has asset value in asset classes. And I’ve got customers out here who I’ve permission to help on a particular to a particular outcome. That’s right. Jeff Bezos understood that better than anybody he didn’t. He did. He did. Right. And Satya Nadella and Satya Nadella to the to the great towers of CEOs in history, right. So they understood that. And so both of those companies are masters at delivering the outcomes that we want, either in our personal lives or professional lives, we’re both and not just saying, what are what of my assets am I going to deploy? How am I going to orchestrate a lot of different assets to get you to that outcome? Yes. So right away, you have to govern decisions about capital allocation, about who you partner with and don’t partner with because here’s another one for you. More is not more know. In channel even in channel ation, right? More is dilution. Yeah, less is more. That’s right. Who are you strategics should be very few of those. And then who are your specifics? The ones that your partner is because they have a very specific thing. It’s not strategic as relationship overall, but you still need that asset class. And they’re the most logical provider that asset class. Vince Menzione 43:35 You’re taking us through a masterclass. By the way, just say, if you didn’t know this already, I’m partnering. You’re, you’re touching so many faces. I love this. It’s, Greg Sarafin 43:44 we all live it. But we haven’t elevated it to the relevance to the C suite. Yes. And the decisions get made. And it has to be at the C suite level, Greg Sarafin 43:55 it does basic. ever go back to what I said at the beginning. Don’t listen to what I say. Listen to what clients say. And look at what people buy, again, people in their personal lives, people in their roles as corporate buyers of some service or product. They want the outcome, but Vince Menzione 44:14 it doesn’t sit there now. So how do we overcome it? Greg Sarafin 44:20 So it does sit there in some instances, but I but I agree it’s fewer than fewer than it should be by a longshot. So Vince Menzione 44:27 how do we do that? Greg Sarafin 44:30 Well, I think it starts with First of all, I think it will happen. And this one I think will happen. It was the discussion we just had a few minutes ago, as companies realised, oh my God, I need to have an abundance, economics mindset. And I need to be able to think about capital allocation and value creation broader than just what I have within my four walls. They will realise maybe some faster than others that this is no longer a bolt on as you said earlier right there. is a core competency of the enterprise from decision making, all the way down to execution? And I think you’re seeing the secular trend now. There are there are more chief partner officers named every day Vince Menzione 45:18 through, I just want to make sure that that is where it needs to sit, or is it just in title only, that’s the other Greg Sarafin 45:23 piece I’d like so many chief partner officers are actually chief channel officers, or they are Chief Business Development Officers, or they are whatever they are, right, they are not actually running an L zero function of the company. They’re not in the C suite discussions. And again, I think it will get there. And I think economics will drive it there. Yeah. It’s just can we help ourselves by elevating this conversation? Right. And, and in, frankly, also elevating the understanding of what a partner function does? Because it is the of all the like, now if you ask the average person, they actually understand the difference between FPN A, and you know, basic accounting? No, they probably don’t know. Right? Or indirect tax from direct? No, they don’t. Yeah, for some reason, partnering doesn’t get that break. It’s like, we don’t know what you do. We don’t trust you. Why are you spending all that money? Where’s it going? Right, the least understood function is terrible. It’s just, I feel sorry for everybody listening right now. I feel sorry for myself. That actually, I don’t feel sorry for myself, because, well, how Vince Menzione 46:37 did you get? How did you get from point A to point B, maybe that helps in you know, form, it starts Greg Sarafin 46:42 with measurement. I realised very early on that. Yep. We all know people are belief driven. And so if I’m, if I’m in a system of belief that says, We shouldn’t be partnering, we can’t partner. Partnering doesn’t matter. And if we do partner is too expensive, we’re not getting the value, right? All those negative things. And we’re all familiar with those sorts of attitudes that are companies. So the first thing you need to do is say, Okay, this is why we partner, we owe partner because we’re trying to make money from Microsoft, right? Wanting to partner because we’re trying to make more money for ourselves necessarily. We’re partnering so we’re relevant to our clients. So you start there, right? You keep going guys, look at the market. Look at the secular trends in the market. This is happening. Look at the most valuable companies on the planet, and then go down a layer and say, Why are they most valuable? Why is Microsoft most valuable company on the planet? Because it unlocks capital value creation, Vince Menzione 47:49 growth mindset, Greg Sarafin 47:53 growth mindset. Vince Menzione 47:54 I go back to this there were the bomber days. Scarcity Mindset. Satie comes in the first thing we do is we all get the book Mindset by Carol Dweck. First thing he did really changed the mindset of the organisation. Last year, a masterclass, right, you talked, we talked about valuation, right. We don’t have all the assets, we’re not going to compete in all markets. That’s how we change the mindset. We’re going to partner where we don’t have the right assets, abundance, abundance. And Sam Altman, right, open AI, what did he do? partnered with them? And then last year, he helped. I mean, he, he shepherded the he shepherded through some pretty whether it was a rocky road or turbulent water. It was there was a crazy time there for for a brief moment. Greg Sarafin 48:43 Yes, but look how he calm those waters very quickly on them down. Vince Menzione 48:47 It’s amazing. Greg Sarafin 48:49 I think he liked Elon shine a storm up a little bit again. These these giants of industry, you know how they are sometimes Vince Menzione 48:56 very, very different, characteristically, Greg Sarafin 48:59 although both both tremendous value creators credible, Vince Menzione 49:02 incredible growth. What about the characteristics or attributes? What would you say is the ideal attributes if you could pick them? I mean, we could point to you, potentially. But what do you think for a leader in this role? If I’m the CEO? Who should I lean on? What’s the characteristics and the type of individual that I need to bring on to my C suite? Yeah, in order to be successful in this role? So Greg Sarafin 49:27 I think it has to be someone who has a rather a unicorn ish set of skills, not because they’re inherently that way. They’re just by dumb luck. They ended up that way, frankly. And I just it was dumb luck that I ended up that way, right? What we’re going to need to do going forward is is purposely create people where people have to curate their careers to develop this sort of unicorn or set of skills. It is a university curriculum, you could actually and certainly, you know what to call a career path that ignition, if you want to be a chief partner officer, if you want to be a CFO, you go big four, right. And then at some point, you make partner young, you come over your BS, you know, a controller or FP and a and then you work your way to CFO and like, so you know what that path and you know, the different parts of the finance function that you need to master are pretty well defined. It is and you know what it was, and you know, what all the things you have to master are within the finance function as well, you have all the different things that you need to be to be a CFO, you need to understand all of the underlying components of running finance, right, right. Vince Menzione 50:37 Cmo the same way, right, you have to have all the disciplines of marketing, Greg Sarafin 50:42 any any, any CXO, that has a mature function that’s repeated over and over again, in industry is going to have a very defined path, right? Instead of skills they know they need to develop in order to have the licence to hold the role. The problem is, our roles have lived as the bolt ons. So the skills we’ve developed have been within the box. That’s right, mostly sales or marketing, go to market and sales, a lot of relationship handling and no model. And then it’s a lot of complexity, navigation. Right. So you’re going to need somebody that has that, but then also is good with the capital agenda. Financial chops has financial chops has go to market shops. Yeah. Right. You have to understand how marketing function works exactly. Has product chops. Yes. So it’s a weird technical acumen, you have to understand your product, whether it’s a tech product, or it’s a farmer product, or it’s an automobile, it doesn’t matter. You have to know your product. You have to know how to make good capital decisions. You have to you have to be immensely commercial. If you if you want to do really cool orchestrated deals, you don’t just use a typical bilateral agreements that are, you know, papered over every day, right? You’re creating unique contracting mechanisms, in some cases in order to bring five partners together to do something that’s never been done before. Vince Menzione 52:04 So creativity, orchestration skills, martial skills, are you mentioned being a connector, right part of our conversation, Greg Sarafin 52:11 and you need to be a leader without without crossing your swim lane? Vince Menzione 52:19 Influence strategy? Greg Sarafin 52:20 Yeah, exactly. You need to be an influence leader. Because you don’t run the business units. That’s right. You aren’t a strategy officer of the company. You’re not CEO. You’re not, you’re not the head of sales. You’re not data product, but you need to influence all of them to bring them together to make the right capital allocation strategies, the right product fit strategies, the right go to market strategies, all those so that’s the skill set you need. And then you also need to be good operator, because these functions can be ruinously expensive, because they’re so these processes again, we’re not gonna get into the detail the processes, but when you look at the intercompany, intercompany processes, it’s brutal, absolutely brutal. So what we did in my phone, you Vince Menzione 53:10 have to have the accountability for the financial account, and you need Greg Sarafin 53:13 to report, here’s the cost. Here’s the cost that is related directly to selling cost the sales, the s&s GNA. And then here’s all the other costs, that’s not really s, it’s GA. But if you don’t, if you don’t do it, you don’t get the motion. That’s right. Right. And that is, you know, what we call that partner ops. Now, partner Ops is can be really expensive. So what we did is we said, look, we’re going to change partner ops to a shared service, we’re gonna move it offshore, we’re gonna put a tech stack on it, Microsoft, ServiceNow and UiPath. In our case, we’re going to automate it. And you’re not going to you’re not gonna have people doing these roles you’re gonna have you’re gonna buy services. And then we’ll have teams that serve, you know, in our case, now, about 150 relationships are being served by this, this partner ops centre, that Kelly strap in my partner obsoleted runs for us brilliantly. She’s built this thing over seven years. It’s incredible. Vince Menzione 54:08 And they’re going across all the business partnerships within every partnership Greg Sarafin 54:13 we have from the largest, down to the tiny, longtail ones that are important to somebody for some specific reason, are all supported. And last year, the cost of partner operations was less than 10 basis points. It’s down although revenue that we generated from the partnerships wild as well. And if I guarantee you 11 billion, was it, no, no, no, no, last year eight, and this year, closing in on 10. So like, so, first thing I say is look, I’ve separated cost of sales from indirect cost, indirect costs, were driving it to zero 10 basis points. Any questions? No. Okay, good partner ups. We’re done. Now let’s talk about the cost of sales. Okay, so, and this is the really interesting kind of So in this what I really do want to share with your audience, right, Vince Menzione 55:01 so this is the piece that I want to dive in I know specifically for our community ultimate partner experience community on it’s like, how did you what were the steps you took? Yeah. Okay, Greg Sarafin 55:11 so first thing I did is I said, Look, Vince Menzione 55:16 if you’re part of the movement, you know, I have a very strong point of view. I’ve sat on both sides of the table for over 30 years now. I build growth through partnerships and PC, internet, cloud, mobile AI, marketplaces, and more. I’ve also seen the demise of organisations that are resistant to change. I’m part of the community’s special interest groups and associations. And I don’t see one place that mirrors the ecosystem and brings it all together. You see, I see a vibrant world where hyperscalers, builders ISV, sellers, s eyes MSPs and other partners come together to spark the ecosystems growth. I’ve talked to many of you. And what I continually hear is, it’s noisy, I don’t know whom to listen to, and where to go. There’s a massive opportunity, but I’m not sure how to get there. Well, you’ve been heard, we’re getting ready to open the doors early in a pilot this new experience. We want this to be your place with your feedback and participation. If you’re a builder, and innovator or leader, visit our website. Alright, we’re we’re getting close to time. Although we can go on all day here. I have a favourite question. I love to ask, okay, to my guests. You are hosting a dinner party. And you can cook this dinner party could be anywhere in the world, we were talking about some great locations just before. And you can invite any three guests from the present? Or the past. It’s got this amazing dinner party. We’ve talked about where you’re going to have it next to as well. Okay. Whom would you invite Greg? And why? Greg Sarafin 56:59 That’s a great question. I’ll actually answer it with. I could go back in history, but I’ll pretend it’s not magic, right? If I was going to spend time with three people who, who I think would be fun to be with and also do challenge my thinking and just create a really engaging evening. I would probably I would probably do Bezos. I would do gamebird on the Emperor down. He’s the leader of the IAQ movement. He’s also named Beth Jeff Bezos. And he’s, I heard Lex Friedman interview him recently. And I’m like, Wow, that guy just changed how I think about things. I need to listen to that. And then there was another there was another one that now I gotta go on my phone and look it up because I’m terrible with names. But there’s another one who I also heard on elects. I guess I’m advertising extra now. Sorry. Vince Menzione 58:06 That’s okay. As long as you listen to The Ultimate Partner and Lex Friedman, I do. Greg Sarafin 58:13 The other one, the other guest wrote this unbelievable article in the it was nature. Last year that connects right down to quantum and particle physics, all the way through chemistry to biology to evolution and explains at the quantum physics level. How it is all connected, which no one is like it just is absolutely no one’s ever. I never understood how those things they were always so siloed to me. And here we go. Lee Cronin, Lee Cronin, Lee Cronin Cronin never heard of the person before. It was a three hour three and a half hour podcast. Wow, I listened to it twice. I never do that. Do it twice. And you know what I like? I like people that rewire my, my thinking. And those those two in particular rewire my thinking and Bezos just because his thing I mean, think about thinking, his clarity of thought, when you see him, you know, do a podcast or whatever his clarity of thought his way of seeing through complexity. And then to get people around him to like, it’s absolutely stunning. It’s absolutely so yeah, it would be those three now if he asked me a year from now, it might be different three. I mean, I could name some of these AI experts out there like the like the NYU guy who’s met with goon he’s another one I don’t know about him. Like, there’s so many awesome people out there that can really impact you, and how you think and expand your world and That’s to me. That’s what’s into me. We’re kind of doing this today, right? We’re love this. You and I are riffing off each other. We’re sharing experiences and so forth like this is this is the great thing about humanity to me. Exactly. And this is why we’re people, you know, so I told you I’m retiring from me why? Because I’ve hit the age barrier there. But I’m like, I’m the best version of me I’ve ever been. I’m not done. No. Vince Menzione 1:00:23 I feel like more years, by the way, and I’ve got a similar age. So you know, I’m still I’m still going, I Greg Sarafin 1:00:29 gotta love it. Because you know what? When you when you work, and you are you are gifted, the gift that we have of working with great companies, great people. Like you’re just constantly being fed oxygen. It’s great. I love it. I love it. Vince Menzione 1:00:45 So you’ve just been an awesome guest. I love this deep dive we did today that we will deep dive in with Yeah, we’re gonna we’re gonna have a lot of fun with this. Okay, so any, let’s just because we’re in, we’re at the end of q1 of 2024. Ready, like Xander is blonde, just blowing by any last tips, advice, words of wisdom, you’d be shared so much here today, for our listeners and viewers out there that you would like to share? Greg Sarafin 1:01:14 Yeah, I mean, like, It’s my biggest struggle. And the thing that I always work on is you’ve got to, you do need to take care of yourself professionally, you’ve got to, you got to be at least somewhat politically astute and thoughtful. But to me, if you’re creating value, and you’re not just creating value, but you’re creating new types of value in whatever function you’re in, you’re innovating to new types of value. That to me is I don’t care what you do, you’re going to be successful. And you’re going to enjoy it. Yeah. Joe so important. So so that that, to me, is what I always try to focus on is, it’s not about me, it’s about me, because it’s me, I live in me, but it’s, it’s about the value. And then it’s about bringing your teams and your stakeholders into that value creation. And then, I mean, my best moments are when I’m with my team members, and we’re discussing some idiotic thing that, you know, one of our partners is suggesting we do or as you know, I mean, but then to have that interaction, like we’re having right and just to create new and be innovative and create new ways of dealing with a different type of insanity is to me My favourite thing to do. And I, I have a great team that I do that with every day, and we just have a lot. We have a lot of fun. I love Vince Menzione 1:02:40 hearing that. Bringing him along on the value creation journey. Greg Sarafin 1:02:45 We’re all in. We’re all doing it. We’re all we’re all leading in. Vince Menzione 1:02:48 Greg, I want to thank you again. You’ve been awesome. Just been great to spend time with you. And fun. Yeah, it’s been a lot of fun. And I’ll come back anytime right here. Look at this scenery back here for dip later. Awesome. Thank you for watching and listening The Ultimate Partner with our amazing guest, Greg Serafin. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of ultimate guide to partner online and Ultimate Partner.com. If you liked this episode, I’d be thrilled if you left us up to a five star review on either Apple or Spotify. This helps us to continue to feature amazing guests. Also, please check out subscribe to our new YouTube channel, ultimate Bart? We’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Guide to partners | |||
| 213 – What Do You Need to Know about Modern Partnership Sales Success? | 18 Mar 2024 | ||
Brandon Lee Joins Ultimate Partner®
Welcome to an exciting new episode of the Ultimate Partner. Today, we dive deep into a topic we have not covered, Modern Selling and the Buyer’s Journey, with special guest Brandon Lee, the Founder of Fist Bump and the Co-Host of Mastering Modern Marketing. In this engaging discussion, Brandon shares his experience navigating through the oversaturated world of marketing and sales, shedding light on the importance of creating demand rather than simply capturing existing demand. These insights are complemented by Vince’s perspective on the need for a more cohesive and effective ecosystem for builders, innovators, and leaders in various industries. Join us as we explore the evolving landscape of digital content creation, the changing buying behavior of millennials, and the crucial role of trust in the selling process. Get ready to uncover valuable strategies for leveraging platforms like LinkedIn and revolutionizing marketing and sales approaches in the digital age. What You’ll Learn
I am thrilled to welcome you into a world that delivers unparalleled insights, best practices, and essential information to unlock your potential as a partner and propel you towards your most ambitious goals. This is a world crafted for partners like you. Our journey began seven years ago with a podcast. Our vision is to empower partners in the complex world of tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and AWS. Today, Ultimate Partner’s mission is clear and bold, “empower every individual, organization, and partner to achieve more through successful partnering. As an Ultimate Partner Experience Member, you will unlock a growing treasure trove of resources. Dive into recordings of our events, exclusive podcast episodes, and a wealth of unique content, all designed to enhance your Cloud Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy and ecosystem growth. We are in our early days and expect much more to come. As an innovator, being part of this experience is more than joining a community; it’s about integrating into an ecosystem brimming with innovation and collaboration. Here, shared experiences and insights are your gateway to progress, offering connections with peers and resources to elevate your Cloud GTM strategy. This is your platform to engage, seek support, and contribute to our collective growth. I’m thrilled to welcome you to this journey. Let’s navigate, thrive, and redefine success in the tech partnership landscape together. Come Sign Up LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Now on YouTube Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Many Typos Keywordslinkedin, companies, organisations, people, talk, partner, sellers, podcast, call, email, selling, marketing, conference, customers, sales, mindset, boca raton, work, content, team Brandon Lee [00:00:02] What are you doing to help your customers think about what’s coming in 6 months? Vince Menzione [00:00:05]: Right. Brandon Lee [00:00:06]: How are you helping them think about what the shifts that they should be working on? How are you bringing to them something of value that they really care about? And now it’s even worse that you got sales on one side going, where’s our MQLs? And you got marketing on the other side going, all the MQLs we send you, you guys don’t close. Pull yourself back and really think about why should your customers or your prospects, why would they want Vince Menzione [00:00:32]: to talk to you? Welcome back to the Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzione, your host, and my mission is to empower each leader and organization to achieve their greatest results through successful partnering. We’re coming to you live from our new studios in Boca Raton, Florida in collaboration with MediaZone, And I’m so excited to bring to you not a partner leader necessarily, although he works with partner leaders, but a sales leader on a quest to empower each of us as we are all sellers and his tools and capabilities around modern selling. Brandon Lee is the CEO of FistBump and the co host of Mastering Modern Selling along with my friend and Microsoft super seller, Carson Hetty and Tom Burton. I’m so excited for this conversation as we dive in to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through modern selling. Brandon, welcome to the podcast. Brandon Lee [00:01:26]: Thanks, Vince. I’m excited to be here. I mean, look at this. Who wouldn’t wanna be here? Vince Menzione [00:01:29]: Welcome to South Florida. It’s so good to have you in our new studios here in Boca Raton, Florida. God’s country. Brandon Lee [00:01:38]: You know, I gotta tell you, I was it never dawned on me before. Boca Raton, I know, you know, famous in Florida, but it realized I speak Spanish. And so I went, why would you call something the rat’s mouth? Yeah. So I looked it up. That was very interesting. Vince Menzione [00:01:52]: Yeah. It would literally I I guess a lot of ships. I like the, the pirate ships and the coral ship. The coral would eat it up. Rat’s mouth. Rat’s mouth. And then I it’s also known for something else. Right? So I’ll share with you. Vince Menzione [00:02:04]: Do you know what happened on August 12, Brandon Lee [00:02:08]: 1981? Partnerships were born. Yeah. Yeah. IBM and, Microsoft. Very good. Very good. Vince Menzione [00:02:16]: You’ve been following along. I love it. Yeah. So that was listen to your podcast. So for people who haven’t heard this before. Right? So Bill Gates comes to Boca Raton, Florida. This is the home of the PC, or at least it was back then. Right? They’ve they’ve sold the campus. Vince Menzione [00:02:30]: It’s now part of FAU and literally signs an agreement with IBM to license, not sell software, which was the first which was a first at the time. It’s a big deal. It was a big deal and sparked the ecosystem, changed the model. ISVs, right, software licensed software became a thing. PCs were born. Michael Dell starts making PCs in his dorm room. Compaq is the fastest company to a $1,000,000,000. A whole ecosystem of partnerships grows from there. Vince Menzione [00:03:01]: So lots of companies came out out of that decision that Bill Gates had. Vince Menzione [00:03:05]: Yeah. Incredible. Yeah. $5,000,000,000,000 industry. So, well, this is a unique discussion today, and I’m really excited to have you. Right? We know each other through Carson Hetty. Yep. And Carson’s been a guest on the podcast. Vince Menzione [00:03:19]: He was been part of both my digital event and my live event. He is what I refer to as the top social seller at Microsoft. Like, he sets the bar high for sellers to understand. And you 2 are been collaborating for a while now on an incredible podcast that you do, a a LinkedIn live show and podcast. Mastering Modern Selling. Mhmm. And you also have a third partner there, Tom Burton. Brandon Lee [00:03:46]: Yes. Vince Menzione [00:03:46]: So I was hoping maybe we spend a few moments here about maybe a little bit about your background and the genesis and how we got here. Brandon Lee [00:03:53]: Yeah. I mean, we we were talking about it earlier. I mean, my my background it took me a while to realize what my background because, you know, we just had this big, grand word, marketing. And so, because, you know, we just had this big grand word, marketing. And so, yeah. I’ve been doing that. I, in the 90 98, I started my first company. We sold that in 2000. Brandon Lee [00:04:15]: I had no idea what I was doing. But built a company at a couple million in revenue. Nice. Someone wanted to buy it. I’m like, okay. And built and sold a few other companies and then played fractional CRO for a while. And in, you know, 18, 19, I started looking at LinkedIn. What’s going on? I was looking at buyer journeys changing. Brandon Lee [00:04:35]: I was looking at call out you know, cold outreach declining a little bit. And, like, there’s something going on here. And, that’s when I started looking at, like, what what’s what’s new? What’s modern? What’s going on in the buyer journey? You know, for me, in in 2012 was the first time I looked and said the data was that buyers are doing about 30% of their research before talking to sales. Yeah. And today, it’s almost 80% with a with I think I heard on your show too, 75 percent of millennials want digital only. Vince Menzione [00:05:08]: Digital only. They don’t even wanna talk to a human. So our b to b companies Brandon Lee [00:05:14]: Yeah. We gotta figure some stuff out quick, and there’s a lot of pain with pipeline. I was spoke to a enterprise sales leader who said, our MQLs are 0. Our pipe our SDRs had a 97% closed loss rate. Vince Menzione [00:05:32]: Yeah. So Nobody wants to talk to SDRs either. Brandon Lee [00:05:35]: And their account executives, or full cycle account executives, still had about a 36% close rate. The problem is they had no pipeline because the only way they knew how to create pipeline was the same motions the SDRs were doing. Vince Menzione [00:05:47]: Right. Brandon Lee [00:05:48]: Make calls and send emails. So companies are there there’s a lot going on. Vince Menzione [00:05:53]: Yeah. And one of the main reasons why we wanna have this discussion today is I find that all of the tech companies, all the partners out there that I work with, and then you’ve been working with some of these as well, they really don’t do a great job on social selling. Right? They don’t get it. They don’t even do a good job on marketing, in fact, their own products and offerings. And so with this modern marketing, this modern selling approach, I thought we would dive in a little bit here today. Brandon Lee [00:06:20]: Let’s do it. Vince Menzione [00:06:21]: I wanna talk a little bit more about LinkedIn. You and I were having a discussion earlier about LinkedIn and this evolution that we’ve all seen. Originally, it was just a place to put your resume. And I started to notice we were talking about this earlier. I started to notice the change that was happening. I’d I’d say it was around 18 that sellers were reaching out to me. I was the chief partner officer of a $1,000,000,000 ISV, and they were either reaching out to me because they were looking for their next job, or they were maybe trying to sell me their product, and they wanted to get exclusive access to me that they couldn’t get through an email. And that was the beginning of the genesis. Vince Menzione [00:06:56]: And then fast forward to COVID, and when I came back brought the podcast back during COVID, I noticed a shift was happening. And people were paying more attention because we were all locked down and it became a town hall at that point. Right? Would you agree? And then, I think I think we’ve seen the tectonic shifts even more so since then. This evolution is happening even more rapidly. Satya Nadella says 7 years of transformation in 7 months. And so that acceleration just happened through COVID, and our lives have never really quite been the same since then. Would you agree? Brandon Lee [00:07:33]: Yeah. And you and I were talking. There a lot of things I’d love to respond to there. So let me see if we can do this one at a time. But, you know, we were talking before we recorded in in 2020. And I think it was about May of 2020. I had a CMO come on my show. This was pre before Carson and Tom and I had Master of Modern Selling. Brandon Lee [00:07:52]: I had a show called Digital Influence. And I was just trying to figure out, like, how are we building our influence, our relationships, our network through these digital channels? And I had a a CMO of a company come on, and I can’t remember the exact topic, but it was like, LinkedIn’s getting personal. And she came on, and I said, so you wrote a post the other day that LinkedIn is becoming personal. What do you mean by that? And she goes, personal content is, like, kicking butt on LinkedIn right now. Vince Menzione [00:08:21]: Yeah. And I Brandon Lee [00:08:22]: said, well, let’s talk about it. And and what we’ve seen is this transformation. And, you know, COVID accelerated for sure. The our culture, our environment now, the work from home, and people don’t wanna go back to the office. And, you know, budgets got tight. We’ve we’ve we’ve had a little bit of headwinds on the financial markets. So budgets are down. People aren’t on as many planes. Brandon Lee [00:08:44]: They’re not going as many hotels. They’re not taking clients out to dinner as much. All that stuff’s being pulled back. So what do we do? Right. And we just said the SDR model’s not working. Nobody wants to talk to an Vince Menzione [00:08:55]: SDR. Brandon Lee [00:08:56]: Nope. And I like to ask this question, especially with C Suite out there. Because C Suite, you know, you said 2 words that I don’t like to use very often. Social selling well, 2 phrases. Social selling or LinkedIn. I don’t like saying them because as soon as people hear social selling, they get these preconceived notions of what it is, and they go, oh, have you ever seen my social selling suck shirt? Vince Menzione [00:09:17]: No. Yeah. But tell me what people think it is from your perspective. Brandon Lee [00:09:20]: I don’t know. It’s they think it is what they think it is. Vince Menzione [00:09:24]: Interesting. So they have preconceived notions about Brandon Lee [00:09:27]: what that is. And because it could be Yeah. It’s well, I’m not looking for a job. I mean, I’ve a friend, Mick, who’s a he’s a sales trainer, LinkedIn guy. I see I hate saying the word, but LinkedIn guy in Belgium. And he was a guest on our show a few weeks ago or a month or so ago, and he said he went in this room. He was asked to speak in a CEO roundtable for the day, and he got 30 minutes. And he starts talking, and guy raises his hand. Brandon Lee [00:09:52]: He says, None of us are looking for jobs. Why are you talking to us about LinkedIn? Vince Menzione [00:09:57]: Wow. Brandon Lee [00:09:57]: Wow. Right? So if you say LinkedIn and that’s their mindset, why in the world would they wanna talk to me? Vince Menzione [00:10:03]: That’s right. Brandon Lee [00:10:04]: And we talk about creating qualified pipeline and growing your revenues, but there’s total disconnect. So social selling, LinkedIn, but, LinkedIn is evolving. LinkedIn became a it’s it’s a professional network. Vince Menzione [00:10:23]: Yes. Brandon Lee [00:10:23]: The problem is we held on to professional, and we forgot about networking. Yeah. And, you know, we had Facebook at the time. When LinkedIn, Facebook all started to come on, it was like Facebook was for personal and LinkedIn was for professional. But the problem with that mindset was, and it blows me away, is that when was business ever purely professional? Vince Menzione [00:10:45]: Never. Brandon Lee [00:10:46]: Never. Vince Menzione [00:10:46]: Never. Brandon Lee [00:10:47]: I mean, we take people out to dinner. We take them out to lunch. Vince Menzione [00:10:50]: That’s right. Brandon Lee [00:10:50]: We we get tickets to the ball game. We go golfing. Right? Corporations have these massive budgets for entertainment. Right? You you sponsor professional golf. Why? To bring your clients to these amazing events. Vince Menzione [00:11:06]: Build relationships. Brandon Lee [00:11:07]: Build relationships. And for some reason, we looked at LinkedIn and we’re like, I’m gonna hide behind my resume. Vince Menzione [00:11:14]: Or I’m gonna put my my sell sheet out there. I’m gonna Or or a link to my website. Brandon Lee [00:11:18]: I’m gonna publish my brochures. Vince Menzione [00:11:20]: My brochures. Brandon Lee [00:11:21]: Because, you know, when you meet somebody, you’re at a you’re at a trade you’re at a conference, trade show, an event, and you look over and somebody’s got their lanyard, they got their name. I look at, oh, Vince Benzion. Oh, I was like, oh, I wanna meet him. I what I do, oh, he’s standing in line at star I’m gonna go get behind him in Starbucks line. I’m gonna get up to him. I’m gonna pull out my brochure, and I’m gonna stick it in your face and go, Vince, do you have time Vince Menzione [00:11:42]: for a demo? Never. Never. Never. Brandon Lee [00:11:46]: But yet in this digital world of LinkedIn, that’s totally okay. That’s acceptable. And it’s stupid. It’s ridiculous Yeah. Because there there’s actually real human beings on the Vince Menzione [00:11:56]: other side. That’s right. Brandon Lee [00:11:57]: And get this. They act like human beings. Yep. Which means when you throw your brochure in their face, unless they’re currently in market, which in any industry, the average is 1 to 3%, they might be in market. You might get lucky because you’re at the right place at the right time. And there’s there’s a little bit of fruit and that’s what keeps a lot of sales leaders going. But it worked. They hold onto a story. Brandon Lee [00:12:21]: 3 years ago, it worked and we closed that. Yeah. But how many failures did you have in the meantime? And even worse, how bad have you screwed up your brand’s reputation because you’re just pissing people off Vince Menzione [00:12:34]: That’s right. Brandon Lee [00:12:34]: With spamming them in LinkedIn? Vince Menzione [00:12:36]: So I wanna go back to COVID for a moment. Okay. Brandon Lee [00:12:39]: Sorry. So I no. Vince Menzione [00:12:40]: No. No. Because no. It’s a great conversation and discourse. I wanna continue here. But I do think, I believe, I started, you know, I started back up the podcast during that time, and I was interviewing a lot of executives from the tech industry. And this change that was happening was how organizations were dealing with their people. They were dealing with their customers. Vince Menzione [00:13:02]: They were dealing with their partners differently because of COVID. Right. And because we were using tools like Zoom and Teams and other technologies, we were showing up in our pajamas. We were showing up with our kids in the back of the room screaming, Mommy, mommy, daddy, daddy, with our dogs and cats maybe jumping on our desk. Right? We’ve seen all of that. And so we needed we shifted, and our mindsets all shifted around. It was now okay to bring your authentic self to work, right, things you would leave behind about yourself. Yeah. Vince Menzione [00:13:38]: Right? How many people did you ever have work for you that you didn’t even know they had kids or didn’t know much about their family situation? We all were now in each other’s living rooms Right. Through COVID. And I think when you talk about, like the personal aspect of LinkedIn, I think that’s when the acceptability happened. Yeah. That you could bring your authentic self now to the platform, to the discussion, to the discourse. Right? What would you say about that? Brandon Lee [00:14:03]: Yeah. I mean, I think you’re spot on. I think that, you know, we you make me think of the times, remember, when you the rare opportunities that you had to work from home or you had to had to take a call from vacation or something and you pretended like you were in the office. Right? All of that went away. And I do believe that that one of the accelerators with COVID was so many people were isolated, and they didn’t wanna go throw all their social stuff on Facebook or Instagram. Vince Menzione [00:14:33]: Right. Brandon Lee [00:14:34]: And, and they missed their friends from the office, their colleagues, their relationships from the office. I think that was a bit of an accelerator to it. But I think the other thing was, you mentioned in in 2020, in COVID, companies were just trying to help their employees have a work from home environment. I mean, this is the first thing. Vince Menzione [00:14:52]: How do Brandon Lee [00:14:52]: we help them work from home? Let’s get them set up on Teams or Zoom or something so they could actually we could see people when we talk. They can see their customers when they talk. You know, does everybody have good internet access at home? Do they have a good chair? Like, we don’t want them sitting at the Vince Menzione [00:15:07]: kids’ hotel. Computer with a great camera, audio, all of those things, right? All of Brandon Lee [00:15:11]: that was the first 12 months of COVID, I believe. And let’s just use either easy numbers, 12 months. And then we started looking at what else. But in my opinion, the sales portion of it, the virtual selling portion of it, got kicked to the back because all these other things were important. And the belief was, when we go back to normal Vince Menzione [00:15:34]: Yeah. Brandon Lee [00:15:35]: Just wait till we get back on the plane. It’s like, okay. Everything’s down. So 2020, we didn’t see revenue numbers drop too bad because we were living off pipeline from 2019. It was in the end of 21 that people started going, wait a minute. What’s going on? Yeah. What’s going on here? And then you get into 22, and there was still some some bit of hope. When we go back to normal, it’s gonna all be okay. Brandon Lee [00:15:57]: But a lot of people, they didn’t wanna go to shows. And their their companies were dealing with some financial challenges from COVID. Vince Menzione [00:16:05]: That’s right. The economic headwinds that we all saw. Brandon Lee [00:16:08]: And so they weren’t their budgets Yep. Weren’t there. And, I mean, I had a client of ours, and this was probably 18 months ago, he was saying, I can’t get clients to meet with me in person because they’re not working at the office and they don’t wanna get up in the morning and get ready and go to the office to have a meeting with me there. So where it used to be, I’d fly in town and be like, I got an entertainment account. Let’s go have dinner. We wanna go to a game. You wanna do this? And people would come. They’re like, no, thanks. Vince Menzione [00:16:36]: You know, what struck me about what you just said is pre COVID, I had relationships I had built up as a seller. And if if I was fortunate enough to still be in the same organization, I had relationships with my colleagues, my partners and my customers. And to your point, like, that sales cycle, maybe we got to a certain point where, okay, we’re not going back in the office. Now what do I do? Right. And you talk about something. I wanna tie in here. Right? You talk about LinkedIn as this always on super conference. Right? This 24 by 7 by 360 5 day a year Except Brandon Lee [00:17:15]: this year. 360. Vince Menzione [00:17:17]: 66 with leap year, this super conference. So, how how what would you say about that and how how people are utilizing this super conference? Brandon Lee [00:17:27]: Yeah. Well, the challenge is most people aren’t using it in that way. Yeah. Right? And that’s why I like to say it because, so sort of like my t shirt that I had that said social selling sucks, I wanted to jolt people into thinking, Wait a minute. What do you mean? Aren’t you a LinkedIn type guy? I’m like, It depends on what you mean. I mean, that was a whole thing with social selling sucks. But I just want to pause people to say, What does this mean? So, the 20 fourseven, 365 is how do you act? What do you do? What is your goal when you go to a conference? And if you look at it from the corporate strategy side, we do a lot. Yeah. Brandon Lee [00:18:07]: We we we bring a lot of people. Are you bringing your team to LinkedIn? Are you bringing them to this conference? Most most companies aren’t. No. Right? If you, you’re going to they go, this is your biggest trade show of the year, your biggest conference of the year. Do you do a sponsorship? How big is your booth? What type of footprint? I get budget, but you so you go to sponsor. Why? Well, we get to then do a breakout session. Right? We get to put our CEO on stage during a breakout session and talk about this topic that we’re experts in. Why do you do that? You want people to come and listen. Vince Menzione [00:18:45]: That’s right. Brandon Lee [00:18:45]: You want to share your expertise. Vince Menzione [00:18:47]: You want to build authority. Brandon Lee [00:18:49]: Build authority, build influence. And then people that Your team members that are at the event, what do they do? Well, they walk around to go meet the people who they want to meet. They want to go meet their customers. What do they want to do? They want to network. They want to build relationships. And just like I was saying with that silly story about you and the Starbucks line and I throw my brochure in your face Vince Menzione [00:19:13]: It’s so true though. Brandon Lee [00:19:14]: We don’t do that. We don’t even do that in our booths. Right? Somebody walks in our booth, we don’t shove our brochure right in their face. We go, how can I help you? What are you looking for? Thank you for coming to our booth. We do something other than shove the brochure in their face. But yet, in LinkedIn, so many companies bought this crap. Automation in order to do what? I I think even the words tell you it’s wrong. I’m gonna blast my audience. Vince Menzione [00:19:40]: Blast them. You know, we can go on. So I wanna talk let’s talk about this. Right? So many people are not getting it right. This is what you’re alluding to. Let’s talk about that. Brandon Lee [00:19:53]: Yeah. So when when if I can, you know, start thinking about your biggest conference, right, and how you act corporately, how you act individually. What is your goal? You go to work a room. You go to network. Okay. Let’s take that, and now let’s look through that lens at LinkedIn. If you wanna sponsor something in order to have a breakout session, Well, you can go live on LinkedIn. You can create a live weekly show, and you can bring on your customers as guests. Brandon Lee [00:20:26]: You could bring on your prospects as guests. You can bring in your team members that are experts in certain areas and talk about the things that you’re doing, talk about case study. You can talk about anything you want. But you create it as a live weekly show and a podcast because don’t waste your effort. If you’re going to record something, then reuse it, reuse it in other areas. So you can go live on LinkedIn and you can take the video with tools like Restream, which is one that we use. You also we’re going live on YouTube, and we go live on Facebook just because we throw it, and we go live on X. Vince Menzione [00:20:58]: Nice. Brandon Lee [00:20:58]: But LinkedIn and and YouTube are our primary categories. And then we take the audio file, and we edit it, and we publish it to our podcast. So when you’re thinking about wanna go to this conference and a lot of companies right now are talking about their big conferences, and we’ve got a partner of ours that they’re booth manufacturing, And they’re saying, our customers are coming to us, and they’re shrinking their booth size because they’re shrinking the square footage of their booth because they’ve got shrunken budgets. Vince Menzione [00:21:28]: Interesting. Right? Brandon Lee [00:21:29]: So we know and they’re and a lot of them are saying, we have to go because we can’t no show. We’ve been going for 20 years. We have to go, but we don’t have confidence in the ROI, so we’re gonna shrink our budgets for it. We’re gonna be there, but we don’t. K. So how are we looking at LinkedIn in the same way? Right? So many companies have looked at LinkedIn kinda like that show. Well, we gotta be there. So alright, everybody. Brandon Lee [00:21:57]: Here’s a half day seminar on how to update your profile. And maybe somebody comes in and updates your profile, and then we pat ourselves on the back, and we go, we have great profiles. And it’s the Field of Dreams mindset. Right? If we build it, they will come. Vince Menzione [00:22:10]: Right. Brandon Lee [00:22:11]: But your profile and just posting brochure type of content doesn’t make POs magically fly out of the sky and fall in your pocket. So if we just keep extending this analogy of looking at LinkedIn through that lens, we we bring our whole team there. We train our team how to have talk tracks and conversations with customers. We have strategies at the about conferences that And we invest in it. And it’s for a lot of companies, it’s their biggest pipeline builder of the year. Vince Menzione [00:22:56]: If you’re part of the movement, you know I have a very strong point of view. I’ve sat on both sides of the table for over 30 years now. I’ve built growth through partnerships in PC, Internet, cloud, mobile AI, marketplaces, and more. I’ve also seen the demise of organizations that are resistant to change. I’m part of the communities, special interest groups, and associations, and I don’t see one place that mirrors the ecosystem and brings it all together. You see, I see a vibrant world where hyperscalers, builders, ISV sellers, SIs, MSPs, and other partners come together to spark the ecosystem’s growth. I’ve talked to many of you and what I continually hear is it’s noisy. I don’t know whom to listen to and where to go. Vince Menzione [00:23:44]: There’s a massive opportunity, but I’m not sure how to get there. Well, you’ve been heard. We’re getting ready to open the doors early on March 1st to pilot this new experience. We want this to be your place with your feedback and participation. If you’re a builder, an innovator, or a leader, visit our website. Your ultimate partner experience is less than a and this is why I think this is so valuable conversation, right? I am a company that has been a traditional sales and marketing organization, right? I might have a partner channel, I might have a direct sales organization. I might do co selling in the Microsoft world. Mhmm. Vince Menzione [00:24:31]: And I’ve been using marketing in the way that most organizations have used marketing. Right? Maybe some digital, maybe some click funnels, maybe some of that, but also, but not using LinkedIn in the right ways. Yeah. How do you talked about helping them and coaching them through that. Can you give us, like, an example of how that works? Brandon Lee [00:24:50]: Yeah. So first of all, like your principles, number 1 is mindset. We we gotta look at there’s a mindset shift here of of how we look at LinkedIn, or any of those modern selling. Because if you know, when I say a LinkedIn live with podcasts that goes to YouTube, that’s digital, not LinkedIn. And I’m a digital first, but not digital only guy. So if we look at some of the traditional outreach, and I’m gonna say traditional in quotes because there was, like, traditional outreach sales pre, call it, 2010. Right. And then you got this new modern traditional outreach from 2010 to, call it, 2020, which Vince Menzione [00:25:31]: was This is when Marketo and Eloqua and some of the technologies where marketing caught up a little bit to selling. Brandon Lee [00:25:37]: This is when Predictable Revenues, a book, was published in 2011 and everybody, you know, lost their and and everything moved. Vince Menzione [00:25:45]: That’s when we started Brandon Lee [00:25:46]: hiring SDRs and marketing automation. And I think that’s where blast came in and all this stuff and Vince Menzione [00:25:53]: And division of labor too. Right? Yep. Like, the whole division of, like, I don’t have consistency as a customer across who I’m talking to in your organization. Brandon Lee [00:26:00]: Right. Right. So when when that happened, a lot of the lead gen moved into marketing. And sales, quite honestly, just got pushed to the side when it came to digital and was just keep doing what you’re doing. Vince Menzione [00:26:17]: Yeah. Close the deals. Brandon Lee [00:26:18]: Yeah. Close the deals. Yeah. Go do your own outreach. Get on planes. Go do just go do your own thing. But marketing got all the focus. Vince Menzione [00:26:25]: That’s right. Brandon Lee [00:26:25]: And we created, quite honestly, culturally, we created some really crappy stuff. It worked for a while and that’s why it was good. But we saturated inboxes with email. We we saturated the voicemail. And so that you know this happened because then technology started creating to support people, us, all of us. Like, we all have spam folders now. Vince Menzione [00:26:50]: Yeah. Brandon Lee [00:26:51]: I mean, when asking anybody out there, when was the last time you checked your spam folder? Because there might be something important in there. Vince Menzione [00:26:57]: I never check my junk folder. Right. Right. Unless somebody calls me up or sends me a note or a DM and says, check check your folder because that’s where I think it wound up. Right. Brandon Lee [00:27:08]: So when all of that started happening, marketing got more of this power and control, but we really hurt our buyer seller relationship. And this is why, like, Larry Levine, a good friend of mine, was selling from the heart. Yep. He comes out and just says, selling has no trust in it. Yeah. Sales has an all time low of trust. Well, it’s because we we created email automation. We’ve created phone calling automation. Brandon Lee [00:27:38]: Right? I I remember I I’m not gonna say the company name. It’s a big one. Everybody knows. But I love their research. But whenever I go and I download now it’s all ungated now. I don’t have to put in my name or e or any. I don’t have to I don’t have to put in my name and email. No. Brandon Lee [00:27:54]: I do. I have to put in my email. But it’s just my email. No phone numbers. No anything else. I download their research, and then I look at my phone. And within a minute, my phone rings. Yeah. Brandon Lee [00:28:05]: And I always tell them, look. I am not gonna be a client. I’m never I am not a buyer for what you do. I love your research. You wanna just notate that in there so you guys don’t call me every 6 weeks Do Vince Menzione [00:28:15]: not call. Brandon Lee [00:28:15]: When I when I download your research. Vince Menzione [00:28:17]: Yeah. Brandon Lee [00:28:19]: But that’s what we did. And it made buyers even more hesitant when the poor sellers were making calls or sending their own emails because the brand saturated their emails. And and and then we had, at the same time, the startup world. Right? Martech 500 or Martech 750 in 2012 is now the Martech. They they capped it at 5,000. Vince Menzione [00:28:44]: I think it’s over. I think it’s 8,000 or 10,000. Brandon Lee [00:28:47]: 11,06 3 Vince Menzione [00:28:48]: at the end of 23. Brandon Lee [00:28:50]: But they just stopped. At 5,000, they said, man, screw it. We’re not gonna change the name anymore. Vince Menzione [00:28:54]: Scott Brinker. Brandon Lee [00:28:56]: Yes. HubSpot. But over 11,000 companies, and what you know what they’re all doing? Landing pages, mass email, going out and buying cold databases, and emailing people, calling people, putting the SDRs on the phone, calling, calling, calling. What did we do? Buyers just said, Enough. Yeah. I’m done. And this is where the mindset around a conference. This is where we gotta take a look at creating demand versus capturing demand. Brandon Lee [00:29:24]: So you have those 11 1,000 companies out there and all the other ones, and they’re calling in, they’re sending in emails, they’re hammering away. They’re all fighting in this red ocean of trying to capture existing demand. And in any market, the data will say in a TAM, at any given time, 1 to 3% are currently in market. Vince Menzione [00:29:45]: Interesting. Brandon Lee [00:29:46]: All that is going into 1 to 3%. Yeah. You’re beating the crap out of your each other, your competitor. Everybody’s fighting. And then we got buyer intent software out there. Well, now we know, like, Vince may have done a Google search for this, and now you got 50 companies that are all calling you and sending your emails because your buyer intent score somewhere kicked up. And now what are you gonna do? You’re not gonna respond? Vince Menzione [00:30:09]: Not at all. And you talked about something that doesn’t exist in the room anymore, and that’s trust. Exactly. And I talk about the principles of partnership and saying that you have to have mutual trust in a partnership in order to have a that’s the oxygen in the room. Right. It’s also the same oxygen involved in the selling process. If you don’t have trust, you don’t have a sale. Brandon Lee [00:30:28]: Here’s exactly. Now here’s here’s the question I love. So c suite sales leaders that are out there, here’s the question. When was the last time that you answered a call from an unknown number? Vince Menzione [00:30:42]: I blocked them all. When was Brandon Lee [00:30:45]: the last time you opened an email from somebody you didn’t know who it was from? Vince Menzione [00:30:49]: I’ll sometime if if it gets in through my spam filter, I might look at it, and then it’s it’s file junk, right, or block. Brandon Lee [00:31:00]: So the follow-up question is, if you’re answering I don’t and I don’t or a version of I don’t, maybe, kinda, sort of. Yeah. And all the companies are doing these motions. Would you actually buy from your own company based on the way your company sells? No. Would your company get your attention? Vince Menzione [00:31:21]: Not at all. Brandon Lee [00:31:22]: We wouldn’t. And yet this is our go to market. And our strategy has been post COVID, oh, let we’ll wait till it goes back to normal, and we ain’t going back to normal. No. Right? We didn’t, and we’re not. The make more phone calls. Send more emails. And now it’s even worse that you got sales on one side going, where’s our MQLs? And you got marketing on the other side going, All the MQLs we send you, you guys don’t close. Brandon Lee [00:31:49]: And so there’s this great division there. And all the companies are fighting for the 1 to 3 percent. And we’re sitting back going, you know, if we create demand, we stand out, and we’re in a blue ocean. And you and I were talking before and without names, but, you know, last fall, we had a customer, 400% of their qualified pipeline goal. And within 4 months, they were at a 120 percent of their annual revenue goal. We just had to change the mind shift, the mindset. We had to shift. Like, this is this is my job right here. Brandon Lee [00:32:24]: My job is to get people that are looking like this and go, just just look at this a little bit differently. And that’s why I come back to look at it is what do you do at a conference? How do you strategize a conference? And guess what? LinkedIn is a lot like your conference. Yeah. These digital platforms Like, they’re they’re listening to podcasts. That’s right. They’re Like, they’re they’re listening to podcasts. Vince Menzione [00:32:52]: That’s right. They’re there. They’re consuming from various forms. Right? Right. Like, 12% of people are listening to podcasts. 30% are on link. And so they’re on they’re on various platforms, but it all aggregates together to build your authority. Brandon Lee [00:33:04]: Right. They’re there. The question is, are you showing up there? Vince Menzione [00:33:08]: Yeah. Brandon Lee [00:33:09]: Or is your competition showing up there? But we’re at a we’re at a time right now. All this has been coming to a head. 2024, big year. This is the year that millennials a millennial person becomes the buyer at 70 some percent of the positions. Yep. Right? They’re and millennials buy differently. Vince Menzione [00:33:31]: They do. They they behave differently. They’re on social. Brandon Lee [00:33:34]: They’re on social. Vince Menzione [00:33:34]: They’re scrolling. They’re real they’re looking at TikTok reels and Instagram reels. They’re watching all that content. I wanna you talked about mindset, and that brings me back to this set of principles. I talk about both the set of principles around partnering, and I talk about the dysfunctions of partnering. And I think you had mentioned that you have a set of false beliefs. Brandon Lee [00:33:55]: The fallacies. Vince Menzione [00:33:56]: The fallacies. Brandon Lee [00:33:57]: The CEO fallacies. Vince Menzione [00:33:57]: Well, and I talk about mindset really being a c suite conversation. Right? You gotta get the mindset right at the c suite and then up and down the organization. So can you talk about those fallacies? Brandon Lee [00:34:06]: So number 1, we we touched on it earlier, is they think of LinkedIn as a resume, a place for your resume. It’s it’s where I go when I when I look for a job. So that’s one of the biggest fallacies we need to get it out. The other piece is that anything social media is self promotion, and it’s not. It’s brand promotion. Vince Menzione [00:34:28]: Yeah. Yeah. Brandon Lee [00:34:29]: We go back we go back to the conference. When your company sponsors so that you can be on stage for something, are you up there to promote you? No. You you use your CEO status to share the brand message to the industry. Vince Menzione [00:34:47]: That’s right. Brandon Lee [00:34:48]: It’s brand promotion, but it comes through your person Vince Menzione [00:34:52]: That’s right. Brandon Lee [00:34:53]: Because of the role the leadership role that you play in your company. So that big Vince Menzione [00:34:57]: fallacy position of authority. Position of authority. Right. Brandon Lee [00:35:00]: Right? So that fallacy is, you know, oh, LinkedIn, social media, anything. You’re like there’s there’s this pushback. And I get it because early social media was very self promoting. I mean, we didn’t know the word influencer until social media came about. And and a lot of influencers are very self promoting, but that’s their job structure. That’s their business structure. Vince Menzione [00:35:25]: I’m so excited to continue our partnership with a g one. Many of you know, I’ve made taking a green drink supplement part of my health ritual for over 21 years now, and it has made all the difference to my health and well-being. About 6 years ago, Athletic Greens and now their product, AG1, became my go to supplement. AG one is the first thing I take every morning to power my day. It covers all of my nutritional bases, supports my gut health, gives a boost to my immunity and energy levels. If you wanna take ownership of your health, try AG1 and get a free 1 year supply of vitamin d and 5 free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to drinkagone dotcomforward/vincem. That’s drinkagone.comforward/vincem. Vince Menzione [00:36:18]: Check them out. I think it’s acceptable to be self promoting in the context of it helping the organization as well as long as it’s aligned to the brand and to the strategy. Brandon Lee [00:36:29]: And and that’s that’s brand promotion that comes through you. It’s it’s a slightly different mindset. Vince Menzione [00:36:34]: Right. Brandon Lee [00:36:35]: But but I believe there’s the fallacy of social media gets all gets thrown into the bucket of the the person that’s a talking head on their phone doing 10 videos a day, and they’re they’re making their money through affiliate deal, you know, opportunities. Yep. Vince Menzione [00:36:51]: Agree. Brandon Lee [00:36:51]: Right? Or the the bikini clad women on Instagram and where they’re making their money or you know, all that stuff, it’s very self promote self promote. Look at me. Look at me. Vince Menzione [00:37:01]: That’s right. Brandon Lee [00:37:02]: And a lot of c suites are like, that’s not the way I got here. I didn’t get to my position by being self promoting. I’m I’m a team player. I’m a team builder. I’m about my team. So that’s one of the fallacies we just we’ve gotta address. Vince Menzione [00:37:16]: I see it so often too. And, you know, we talked about this earlier. Like, I do these podcasts with a lot of big corporate brands, a lot of leaders in those organizations. Some do a good job of it, like they do a good job of promoting that episode and promoting their brand and their self their personal authority and brand as well as the company’s brand. But there are others that they don’t know how to do it right. And it’s almost and it’s really, it’s challenging to me because I look to them candidly Mhmm. To take the podcast that we just did and help promote it because it helps promote my brand and reach. Right? And when they don’t do a good job of it, and it happens less time than more often, I guess, is what I would say. Vince Menzione [00:38:00]: But why do you think that happens? And how do you coach those organizations, the C suite leaders? What do you say to them now to help them be successful? Well, Brandon Lee [00:38:13]: that says a lot about the organization and the way that they’re structured, and it says the mindset that they have around all things digital. And we do that with our show too is, we gotta have you as a guest on our show. We put together this package, and there’s there’s shorts. There’s, you know, pre written social media content to help you. We’re like, you know, change anything you want. But there’s all these different shorts, here’s graphics. Here’s all of our tags and everything. And you have some guests. Brandon Lee [00:38:39]: They’re like, hello? Hello? Did you get did you get the email? Did you get the memo? Well, what does that say? They’re not equipped. They don’t have systems in place to take advantage of these because if they did, they would know, hey, this is great content that we could use to go tag our CEO or tag this person and do that. And, hey, let’s go tag the show and tag Brandon and Carson and Tom and take advantage of all their networks as well. And some of them just don’t do anything. So first thing for me, you know, what do I do is well, first of all, it tells me where they’re at. Tells me the structure of their business. That they’re probably one of those that are saying make more phone calls and send more emails because they don’t have any other actions that are actually helping them anyway. Vince Menzione [00:39:27]: So we reached the 400,000. I call it the Microsoft ecosystem, but it’s the same ecosystem that both Google and AWS care about. Right? In that ecosystem of partners, they range in size from companies that are 20 or $30,000,000,000 in revenue, like the large distributors, large reseller, transactional reseller organizations, some of the largest ISVs down to the smallest MSPs, small 1 or 2 person organizations. What would you say to them now to help them be more successful? What what are the 3 to 5 things that our listeners and viewers should be thinking about and doing differently, Brandon? Brandon Lee [00:40:07]: 3 to 5 things. So the the first thing I wanna set it up with, companies should be looking at, are they blocking out? Are they breaking in? Like, where where are these companies at? Vince Menzione [00:40:19]: And what do you mean by that? Brandon Lee [00:40:20]: Yeah. It’s, you know, blocking out is you’re an established company. You’re one of the OGs. You’re there. And if you get a little bit arrogant and lazy, the young, aggressive, digital first organizations, they’ll be on your backside before you know it. Vince Menzione [00:40:43]: Right. Right? There’s They might even be copying your content. Brandon Lee [00:40:47]: They might even be copying your content. Yeah. Couldn’t imagine that happening. Vince Menzione [00:40:50]: Never happened. Brandon Lee [00:40:51]: Could you? Vince Menzione [00:40:51]: Never happened. Brandon Lee [00:40:52]: But, yeah, it’s in in that’s the challenge we have right now. Right? I mean, gosh, don’t even get me started on the whole expert space like anybody because you can go out there and watch some videos. Go watch YouTube. Go read the OGs content and learn it, and then start parroting it. And if you know how to engage with people on social media, you know how to be consistent, which being consistent is just showing up and doing it. Put in a system. Go go post every day and parrot someone else’s content, and you will start to get a following. Yeah. Brandon Lee [00:41:24]: And so you ask, what are those? Number 1 is looking at your own structure and say, are we trying to capture demand or are we creating demand? And that’s gonna be a huge shift. And for most companies that have the very strong marketing and sales silos, can almost guarantee they are trying to capture demand. And there are some more companies on the marketing side that they’re trying to be more proactive around demand generation. But, honestly, it’s weak. Most of it’s weak. And there’s some people out there doing a phenomenal job, but most part, it’s pretty weak. It’s, you know, case studies. Yeah. Brandon Lee [00:42:02]: But, you know, case studies are still very sales y. What are you doing to help your customers think about what’s coming in 6 months? Vince Menzione [00:42:11]: Right. Right. Brandon Lee [00:42:12]: How are you helping them think about what the shifts that they should be working on? How are you bringing to them something of value that they really care about? And the biggest challenge is we use words like, you know, be a trusted advisor and add value. And if you don’t take the word serious, you start creating crap. Vince Menzione [00:42:30]: Yep. Brandon Lee [00:42:30]: You create a bunch of stuff and it doesn’t really do the job. And you go, well, we’re doing that. But but you’re not. Like, pull yourself back and really think about why should your customers or your prospects Why would they want to talk to you? Do that. And it’s not about you. It’s not about, oh, you got a new product or you got new pricing or whatever. What do they what would really, really make them go? Vince, I need to talk to you. I mean, we were talking about it. Brandon Lee [00:43:01]: Three messages today. Yep. I need to talk to you. Vince Menzione [00:43:05]: So I would layer in to these organizations. Specifically, we talk about brand and story. I would layer in those same organizations if they’re selling with and through a Microsoft and Amazon or Google. They need to be known Brandon Lee [00:43:18]: Mhmm. Vince Menzione [00:43:18]: With they need to be a shiny quarter in a bucket full of shiny quarters, again, that red ocean we talk about. And how do I stand out? Why should I, as a Microsoft seller, like a Carson Hetty Brandon Lee [00:43:31]: Right. Vince Menzione [00:43:31]: Wanna work with pay attention to me. Brandon Lee [00:43:33]: Yep. Right? But and that’s so if your your customer is a Microsoft seller, well, let’s focus everything on them. Vince Menzione [00:43:40]: Yep. Brandon Lee [00:43:40]: Why would they which we know the Microsoft sellers, what do they get all the time? They get partners going You got any leads? Yeah. You got any leads? Vince Menzione [00:43:49]: And thousands of emails and calls a week. Like, can I work with you? Can we do a deal together? Can you can you bring me into your accounts? It’s Brandon Lee [00:43:56]: and how’s that messaging working out for you? It’s not working out. Right. So do something different. What does that Microsoft seller need? What can you bring to them to make them want to talk with you? Exactly. So maybe let’s make this practical. Your CEO is very prolific with content. Your organization has a show and you get to invite those Microsoft sellers to come on your show as a guest and talk about the cool stuff that they’re doing. Now would they wanna come on your show? Like, you sit back and look at this company and go, okay. Brandon Lee [00:44:32]: Their CEO’s pretty they they create a lot of content. This is interesting. The team, all across different, departments, they’re active on LinkedIn. They’re commenting. They’re posting content. Overall, we built this brand of an organization that they’re active and they’re there. Vince Menzione [00:44:49]: You know, maybe they’re doing something very innovative and unique on, let’s say, AI as an example. Right? Brandon Lee [00:44:55]: What what’s your innovation? Vince Menzione [00:44:56]: What do Brandon Lee [00:44:56]: you guys talk about? And, you know, one of the fallacies we didn’t we didn’t get to all of them, but one of the fallacies with CEOs is I don’t have anything unique to bring to the market. Vince Menzione [00:45:05]: Yeah. Such a bet. Brandon Lee [00:45:06]: Which is totally wrong. Your your perspective is unique to the market. That’s right. And here’s the other the other thing with that is, for c suite, you wanna help all areas of your business Get active with content. It doesn’t have to be LinkedIn, but digital first because your employees are watching you. Do they see you? Are you there? Yeah. In an internal memo, it doesn’t matter. No one cares. Brandon Lee [00:45:31]: Nope. But are they seeing you out in public? Go back to the trade show. Go back to the conference. Sales is always going, okay. I got these important meetings, mister and miss CEO. Can you join me? Why do they do that? Because your person, your title, your presence matters. Vince Menzione [00:45:51]: Yep. So at the leadership level, I need to up level my game. Yes. I need to have I need to have my brand and story right. Yes. I need to tell my unique point of view is the way I would say it, maybe. Mhmm. Perspective, point of view, authority. Vince Menzione [00:46:06]: Yes. And then my team needs to come alongside me. Yes. And this is where, the amplification happens. Right? Yeah. And so many times, all I see is a marketing person repost a link to an event or whatever it might be with no point of view, no authority, maybe no following, by the way. They were just they’re just hired hands to go do that job, but they haven’t built their own authority, their own networks within LinkedIn. Brandon Lee [00:46:33]: Right. Yeah. So you get you know, I’ll get, oh, yeah. CEO. So, oh, yeah, our marketing team, they they take care of it. They’re crushing it. Yeah. They’re crushing it. Vince Menzione [00:46:42]: The marketing team does a great job. Brandon Lee [00:46:44]: And so we’ll go look and and go, okay. Well, here’s your here’s your post, and you had pick a number. You had 30 likes and one comment. So we go look at the likes, and 22 of them were your team members. Vince Menzione [00:46:58]: Yeah. They’re just amplifying it themselves. Right? Brandon Lee [00:47:01]: There’s no value in it. It’s it’s like you threw an event and no one showed up except your team members. And you’re like, we got all these people here. Vince Menzione [00:47:08]: We got a lot of leads. Brandon Lee [00:47:09]: We got a lot of people here. Right? So, yeah, as you were saying, leader led Vince Menzione [00:47:15]: Yep. Brandon Lee [00:47:16]: For sure. And then get your story right, get your systems right. When the leader starts taking something like LinkedIn serious, it actually demonstrates to the rest of the company that this is important. And then you equip them. There’s some coaching. There’s some training. There’s some guardrails that need to be put in place, but it’s gotta be part of that culture. It comes back to that mindset. Brandon Lee [00:47:42]: And we gotta get out of how much time does this take? Because it’s not about how much time does this take. It’s about how valuable can we make this. Vince Menzione [00:47:52]: How much time does it take? Brandon Lee [00:47:54]: Depends on what you want to accomplish. Yeah. May I ask this question? How much time does it take to make cold calls? Vince Menzione [00:48:03]: A lot of time. Right. A lot of time. Brandon Lee [00:48:06]: Is it is it is the the juice worth the squeeze? Vince Menzione [00:48:09]: Not not at all. Not at all. Brandon Lee [00:48:11]: So let’s stop looking at LinkedIn. Like, how much time does it gonna take? And let’s go, is there fruit from the activities that we’re doing? Because if I could have somebody that used LinkedIn for 8 hours a day and there was fruit and lots of it, I’d be okay with them not making cold calls anymore. Vince Menzione [00:48:29]: Yep. So for our viewers and listeners that wanna figure this out, what do they do next? Brandon Lee [00:48:38]: I think learn, observe, and this is the best way I think to do it. Who influences you? Where are you learning? Vince Menzione [00:48:51]: Who do you respect? Who do you Who do you respect? Brandon Lee [00:48:54]: And and what is it that they do? Whether it’s the company or the individual or the combination of them, what do they do that is getting your attention? Do you have podcasts that you follow? Okay. How influential is that pod? Oh, I love it. Great. Does your company have a podcast? No. Okay. So podcasts you love podcasts. Oh, yeah. I listen to them when I’m on a treadmill. Brandon Lee [00:49:20]: I go for a while. Love them. Great. Does your company have 1? No. Why not? You just demonstrated that Vince Menzione [00:49:27]: That’s right. It’s valuable. Brandon Lee [00:49:30]: Right? Oh, I got there’s people you know, I don’t do a whole lot on LinkedIn, but there’s a few people that I follow. Okay. Why do you follow them? I love their research. I love what their point of view. I learn a lot from them. Great. Are there people out there that want would want to learn from you? We are a customer. Great. Brandon Lee [00:49:46]: Are you out there on LinkedIn so they can learn from you? No. No. No. But but we have an email newsletter. Great. And our open rates are good. Are you sure? Because open rates and and, you know, don’t even we won’t talk about the cookie dying later, but, you know, your open rates don’t necessarily mean a human actually looked at it. That’s right. Brandon Lee [00:50:07]: It means their software looked at what your software sent them. So what are the click rates? Yeah. What are those trends? So I would say, first of all, is take that step back and say, who’s influencing you? Ask your team. Where are you learning? Vince Menzione [00:50:23]: And if I need some coaching, who do I call? Brandon Lee [00:50:26]: Well, we would love to talk to anybody. Okay. I would I didn’t I you know what? I’m not that self promoting, although I should be. But what should they do? Yeah. Look. We’re it’s get fist bumps .com and, Brandon Lee on LinkedIn. I’d love to help you, but and it’s if we can help you, I’d love to. Here’s the key thing. Brandon Lee [00:50:45]: Are you spending time, money, and effort, and frustration with your team trying to fight the red ocean of the 1 to 3 percent? Were you able to actually create demand? And I and I don’t say this very often. Yeah. And forgive me for being a little braggy right now. But it I had 3 messages today from people that said I needed one of them was from I think it was from my post today. She said, I need to know more about what you can what you do. When can we talk? Nice. Senior VP of a company. Another one was, so and so talked very highly of you, has tagged you in a couple of posts that they’ve read share. Brandon Lee [00:51:25]: Can we talk? And the other one was, okay. I think I’m ready. We need to talk. Vince Menzione [00:51:30]: Yep. You’re moving in down the funnel. In the funnel and down the funnel. Brandon Lee [00:51:34]: Well, I like to say we’re moving. We haven’t even talked about the matrix. Let’s move him in the matrix. Brandon, you have Vince Menzione [00:51:40]: been an amazing guest. I so enjoyed having you here in our beautiful studio. Look at this view here we have. This is incredible. Beautiful South Florida, Boca Raton, the Boca Raton moment as I refer to it. I had somebody at Microsoft say, I I don’t wanna hear Boca Raton moment anymore because I’ve heard it so many times. No. They got it again. Vince Menzione [00:51:58]: You were very generous to fly down today from Atlanta to be with our viewers and listeners here on The Ultimate Partner. This is such a great set of nuggets to help organizations, partner organizations that really need help here. A lot of organizations I work with, a lot of organizations that I know and admire still don’t get this right. So this has been such a great and valuable conversation for us. Brandon Lee [00:52:25]: I hope it helps. Vince Menzione [00:52:26]: Thank you, sir. Brandon Lee [00:52:26]: My pleasure. Thanks for having me. And thanks for letting me come down to Florida for the day. Yeah. Yeah. Be a part of that Vince Menzione [00:52:31]: to get you down here Brandon Lee [00:52:32]: more often. And have my my fist bump mug over there and everything. Vince Menzione [00:52:36]: I need a sip, actually. It’s been Brandon Lee [00:52:38]: a while. We’ve been talking for a while. Yeah. For for everybody, we we had about a 2 hour delay. So we’ve been talking for 2 Vince Menzione [00:52:43]: hours before we recorded. We’ve been we’ve been for a while here. So I wanna thank you. I wanna thank each of you, our valuable friends, listeners, for joining the Ultimate Partner. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Ultimate Partner. Online at theultimatepartner.com. If you like this episode, I’d be thrilled if you left us up to a 5 star review on either Apple or Spotify. This helps us to continue to feature amazing guests. Vince Menzione [00:53:17]: Also, please check out and subscribe to our new YouTube channel, Ultimate Partner. We’ll catch you next time on the Ultimate Partner. | |||
| 212 – Beyond the Hype: The True Power of Microsoft’s Marketplace for Partners | 11 Mar 2024 | 00:31:51 | |
Yvonne Muench Joins Ultimate Partner®
Join Vince Menzione as he sits down with Yvonne Muench, a seasoned leader in business strategy, product management, and partner programs. Together, Vince and Yvonne delve into the transformative power of marketplaces, emphasizing the growing importance of AI adoption within the Microsoft ecosystem. Gain insights into the rewards awaiting Microsoft partners, the tangible benefits of Microsoft’s marketplace, and key strategies for success in the commercial marketplace. Discover how strategic alignment, deep audience understanding, and effective partner planning can drive marketplace growth and foster fruitful collaborations with Microsoft. Don’t miss out on this invaluable discussion on navigating the evolving landscape of partner ecosystems. What You’ll Learn
I am thrilled to welcome you into a world that delivers unparalleled insights, best practices, and essential information to unlock your potential as a partner and propel you towards your most ambitious goals. This is a world crafted for partners like you. Our journey began seven years ago with a podcast. Our vision is to empower partners in the complex world of tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and AWS. Today, Ultimate Partner’s mission is clear and bold, “empower every individual, organization, and partner to achieve more through successful partnering. As an Ultimate Partner Experience Member, you will unlock a growing treasure trove of resources. Dive into recordings of our events, exclusive podcast episodes, and a wealth of unique content, all designed to enhance your Cloud Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy and ecosystem growth. We are in our early days and expect much more to come. As an innovator, being part of this experience is more than joining a community; it’s about integrating into an ecosystem brimming with innovation and collaboration. Here, shared experiences and insights are your gateway to progress, offering connections with peers and resources to elevate your Cloud GTM strategy. This is your platform to engage, seek support, and contribute to our collective growth. I’m thrilled to welcome you to this journey. Let’s navigate, thrive, and redefine success in the tech partnership landscape together. Come Sign Up LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Now on YouTube Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Many Typosmarketplace, isvs, partners, customers, isps, microsoft, azure, programme, microsoft cloud, isv, ai, build, benefits, apps, organisation, publish, sales, selling, offers, platform Vince Menzione 0:00 Hi. I’m Vince Menzione. I’m the host of Ultimate Partner and the CEO of ultimate partner. And I’m on a 10 year mission to empower every individual, organisation and partner to do more through successful partnering. We’re back at Microsoft Studios again today. And this has been an incredible year as Microsoft not only took the world by storm with Gen AI and co pilot, but also doubled down on the commitment to marketplaces. What we’ve been calling this marketplace moment. I’m excited to be joined by someone at Microsoft who has been at the centre of this marketplace transformation and leads the initiative designed to empower ISVs on their marketplace journey. Welcome you Yvonne mench. Yvonne Muench 0:44 Thank you, Vance. It’s great to be here. Vince Menzione 0:46 So glad to be here with you. Thanks. So excited about our conversation today. This, I have been also calling this the marketplace moment. As you know, you’ve worked directly for Anthony Joseph who joined us in Dallas for this incredibly engaging conversation and dialogue on marketplace. And a lot of our conversations here on the podcast have been centred on this. So I’m so excited for what we hope to accomplish today to help partners understand this important topic. So you’ve on can you share with our listeners your role and the mission of your organisation? Absolutely. Yvonne Muench 1:17 So I work in corporate cloud marketing, and on a team that’s focused on marketplace growth. Our mission is to make b2b commerce easier and have a thriving marketplace for all audiences, that’s publishers, selling partners or channel partners and customers. My team specifically focuses on scale global programmes to help ISVs in particular, but increasingly, those channel partners and transacting partners as well help them take advantage both of the Microsoft Cloud to build their applications and the marketplace to grow their sales. Vince Menzione 1:48 I love what your your organization’s mission is. And you report in through Anthony Joseph, as we mentioned earlier, and you sit outside the partner organisation we work very closely with the partners in that in that organisation as well, correct? Yvonne Muench 2:01 That’s correct. So I’m in the global demand centre part of Microsoft and that team focuses on onboarding customers at scale to the Microsoft Cloud. And ISVs are definitely a very important partner type. They’re also a very important customer segment as well. And we want to increase the quantity of ISVs that consider and adopt the Microsoft Cloud. And so that’s why the global demand centre is also a partner with our partner team to engage eyespace. Vince Menzione 2:32 So you’ve on Microsoft has been around marketplace for quite some time, what’s different now? Well, we’ve Yvonne Muench 2:38 really reached an exciting tipping point of sorts. And there’s a compounding set of factors that all influence that. It’s how the customers want to buy increasingly, in a digital online self serve fashion, the capabilities of the marketplace platform itself with increasing range of types of apps that can be transacted and private offers and flexible billing offers and how to sell them. And then internally, the focus and commitment to marketplace across Microsoft is really come to fruition, from engineering, to marketing, to partner, and sales teams all working together to make sure it’s a thriving platform for ISVs, with apps to find customers and to solve their business problems. So that’s been really exciting, exciting. And you’ll see that in the fact that we now pay our sellers based on marketplace, build sales, for ISVs that are considering but haven’t yet adopted marketplace, we have incentives to help encourage them cash incentives based on early ranges of marketplace, build sales, and all that works together to fuel that momentum we’re seeing, in addition to the platform itself, you know, the era of AI is also a factor that has really increased the number of ISVs that are excited about building apps on the Microsoft Cloud. So whether it’s using GitHub to speed their time to market in writing the code with generative AI, helping them finish the code more rapidly, or embedding the AI into their apps with Azure open AI and cognitive services, or even building ISV, or apps and API’s and extensible plugins into the copilot suite of products, there’s a whole range of new opportunities out there marketplace is going to be the place where they put those opportunities and get them in front of customers. And that’s another fueling factor. Vince Menzione 4:23 You know, you mentioned AI, and I can’t We can’t have a conversation today without discussing AI, at least at the at the tipping point here that it is caused. In fact, I heard someone say last week that the CEO is now the new CIO, because they’re getting ahead of the transformation at the C suite level. Right. What are your thoughts there? Yvonne Muench 4:42 Well, I mean, it’s changing everything. It’s exciting. It’s disruptive, and and it’s a new world and I am excited to be here in this moment, and I won’t pretend to know exactly where it’ll lead us. I just know that it what the Microsoft Cloud isn’t Everything to offer and with our partnerships in the best of breed players in the AI space, we want to be a platform for ISVs to build amazing products that we can’t even anticipate or describe right now and the sky’s the limit. And that’s going to unlock new capabilities and innovation with customers. Vince Menzione 5:17 And tie in the marketplace to this, the momentum is accelerating, in fact that you can sense it right. Canalis is, in fact, had originally said that we would see $45 billion flow through the marketplaces by the end of 2025. Next year, they’ve now since recanted and said it’s going to be the end of this year. And then tackle IO, an organisation that works around marketplace, they have a platform around marketplaces are now predicting $100 billion flowing through marketplaces by the end of 2026. And that might even be sooner. Yvonne Muench 5:51 Right? Well, I’m pretty bullish on marketplace. So I think those forecasts are really well within range. I see the marketplace as the future of b2b commerce. So that’s been driven in large part, as I mentioned, by those customer preferences that are changing, and today’s fast paced environment and the impact of AI. As we mentioned, organisations need more cloud solutions than ever before. They’re at pressure to remain relevant to accelerate innovation and to balance cost and marketplaces really help with that. So those customers want to maximise the cloud investments that they have the cloud commitments that they can use for app purchases, they want to simplify procurement and have it be really fast and easy click to deploy a SaaS solutions that are already validated for compatibility with the technology they use. So that’s what the commercial marketplace does. And we’ve recently done a study with Forrester a total economic impact study. And we found that customers have really compelling returns on marketplace. So it was actually 580%, three year ROI, with a payback and six months. So that was factors like reduced employee time for onboarding new vendors by 75%, reduced employee effort for each procurement engagement by 50%. And improved time savings with the finance and the payments teams by 30%. So that kind of benefit is creating the momentum of customers moving and embracing this new model of how to buy software applications, Vince Menzione 7:19 everything you say points to what we’ve been seeing in terms of the changes in buying behaviour, in fact, right? I mean, we’ve, we’re seeing, you know, whether it’s the millennial buying behaviour, or it’s just that we’ve all become accustomed since COVID, to doing things differently. The decisions are being made at the C suite level in terms of cloud commitments, but the line of business owners are making these buying decisions, and they want to make those decisions very similarly to the way they buy things in a consumer fashion as well. Yvonne Muench 7:46 That’s right. You know, I often think that like the consumer marketplace is, as it many times does, the consumer models lead the commercial models. And we think about the involved purchases that we do in the consumer world that we’re now comfortable with online, people buying houses buying cars buying Wedding Rings Online. So there is no purchase that is too involved or too high priced or too complex that can’t be considered and possibly, or already being done in a commercial marketplace. Absolutely. Vince Menzione 8:16 So want to double click right you lead a programme called the ISP success programme. And I was hoping you could share with our listeners more about this programme, and its purpose to the partner community. Yvonne Muench 8:27 Absolutely, I’d be happy to. So it went GA at last inspire in July. And simply put, it’s to help ISPs that want to take advantage of the Microsoft Cloud and take advantage of the marketplace platform. So we support it every step of the journey as they’re building the applications, publishing the applications and selling them through marketplace. And another key concept is that it’s a wide open door available to any b2b ISVs that could publish commercial applications. So that could be a brand new startup or an ISV, building their first app on the Microsoft Cloud or their 10th, or their 50th could be managed or unmanaged. And across the Microsoft Cloud, Azure applications dynamics power platform and 365 or teams. So we actually see really exciting data that over half of the ISPs we work with are building across the Microsoft stack. So the concept of Azure ISV, your team’s ISP is sort of a fallacy. Azure in teams being one of those hero combinations that we see most commonly. Absolutely. So to help build a publish we offer primarily technical benefits in the form of Cloud Credits are cloud sandbox across the Microsoft Cloud, best in class developer tools like Visual Studio and GitHub, as well as one on one technical consults to help both with app building and app publishing. Those are the benefits to help them get that app built and help get it published. And that in a sense, is what the ISP success programme is doing Vince Menzione 9:54 as partners want to take advantage of that programme. Where do we point them? Well, Yvonne Muench 9:58 ISP has Above is a website that they can find all the information about the programme, and it has the link to join. A couple other things the ISP has to do if they’re not already a member of our partner network, they will need to join before we can give the benefits. Additionally, they do have to be intending to publish to the commercial marketplace. Very Vince Menzione 10:20 good. You also lead and you’re very busy. You also lead another probe. The Marketplace rewards programme, correct, right? What’s the difference between these two programmes? Yvonne Muench 10:30 Well, actually, they’re all part of the same programme. So when we went GA, we incorporated marketplace rewards into ISP success. It still has two separate names, but that was a preexisting programme that focuses on the growth, what I call the growth stage of the process for ISPs that already have published applications. We help them instead of technical benefits now with sales and marketing benefits, to help them grow their sales. So it also doesn’t matter if again, a wide open door if an ISP started at the front door, so to speak with ISP success and build and publish benefits and then they publish great or if they publish on their own and show up in the store friends. That’s also great. Any publisher is invited to join and receive those benefits for free. They increase based on the ISPs performance in terms of application sales. The benefits include things like social promotion success stories, Microsoft seller spotlights, one on one consultations to optimise their listing with keywords and dynamic content, as well as most importantly, perhaps, Azure credits or free Azure grants to accelerate their sales. That is the most activated benefit and the most powerful in closing sales, especially large, even six figure and above deals. So the ISPs can use that free Azure to defray their costs of test drives and trials and proofs of concepts. Or they can use it to act as a deal sweetener with a customer, that can be really powerful. If a customer is first time considering a purchase on marketplace to help get them over the hump. It can also be really powerful. To help them choose the Microsoft commercial marketplace, and the Azure version of the application as opposed to versions that might be built on a alternative public cloud. I’m Vince Menzione 12:18 so glad we’re having this conversation today. Because I don’t know that every partner knows this and all of these amazing benefits that are available to them. Yvonne Muench 12:26 I can assure you they don’t I talked to partners all the time. And some of them are very surprised, even though it’s the most activated benefit. Some of them don’t know that marketplace rewards and we’re working hard to change that and do a better job of making it more discoverable. But also, some of them aren’t aware of how they can use the Azure benefits or some of the other benefits. So that’s an ongoing endeavour, we’re Vince Menzione 12:48 gonna put a shout out here for our partner listeners here to make sure they’re taking advantage of this, please, thank you. There’s gonna be a quiz later. So you Vaughn, I get messages and calls from partners all the time saying, I really would like to be a managed partner, I want to have a PDM partner development manager. What would you say to these partners? Yvonne Muench 13:10 Well, I hear that question a lot as well. And honestly, PDFs are fantastic. They help an ISP or any partner navigate Microsoft. And we’re a large, complex organisation. But honestly, our goal in in our team and the programmes that we build are designed to drive success across ISVs regardless of managed status. And honestly, we’re seeing that bear fruit. When we look at the ISVs that are progressing up the ranks have generated more and more marketplace build sales, the vast majority of them are unmanaged. And that’s, that’s really exciting. So you know what advice for those without a PDM first, engage in marketplace, and second, use the self serve resources. They’re not perfect, but you might be surprised at how useful they can be. So on engaging in marketplace, I always call that the single most powerful thing that an ISV can do to get the most out of their Microsoft relationship and effectively go to market with and through Microsoft, whether that’s selling through our field since Microsoft marketplace is now the foundational platform for cosell or selling through our channel or your own channels since marketplace provides access to and a way to extend margin to partners, whether that’s CSPs LSPs, MSPs s eyes, any acronym you want to use, and for selling direct to customers through the storefronts and the in product opportunities of Azure portal and team store where 95% of the Fortune 500 are using Azure and an Azure portal and 320 million teams customers are using teams and we’ll see things in team store. So that’s why both ISV success and marketplace rewards work to help ISVs take better advantage of marketplace. On the self serve resources. I want to take a moment and just share a couple of those alongside those programmes which are wide open. So go ahead and join and they all start free There are some really valuable resources and tools to be aware of, perhaps especially valuable to ISVs, new to Microsoft or without a PDF, a rich set of curated self serve content, sometimes referred to as mastering the marketplace. This is code samples and architecture diagrams and sash publishing tools, technical How to videos, marketing best practices, so take advantage of those, and you’ll find them on the SP Hub website. We also have a newly launched app advisor, which is a self serve guided experience that surfaces focused resources tailored to where an ISV is in the development stage, no matter where they’re starting from. So you can also check that out on ISP hub under the resources tab. And then of course, there’s an online marketplace community, and always on forum, peers, other ISVs that have encountered similar things, but also Microsoft experts to quickly and easily get questions answered. So you can find that link to join on ice we have as well, you can post a question to that community is probably been asked and answered before, if not, my team is involved in finding this means internally to answer the questions across engineering partners and sales. The answers provided draw from internal one on one engagements we’ve had from internal forums we have and that’s one of those places where PDFs go to get their questions answered. Yeah, Vince Menzione 16:16 yeah, it seems like there’s a lot of rich content to support the partners out there today. I did see a lot of resistance this year, to marketplaces, at least the early part of the year, when the announcements came out there was there was some reluctance, and particularly in some of the large ISVs that had well developed channels, right? What do you see from this? Yvonne Muench 16:38 Well, change is hard. And I definitely understand that and the larger the organisation, the harder changes. So agility kind of skews towards towards young and small. But I would start, you know, when we talk about when we talk with partners that are saying, Why Why should I bother? Why should I embrace marketplace, I often start with that customer angle of customers are moving to marketplace, and you don’t want to be behind on that trend. So you know, pre committed cloud budgets are one of the biggest factors driving that. And almost all of those customers are already using marketplace, 85 plus percent of them are and that body of customers with committed cloud spend, or what we call Mac Microsoft Azure consumption commitments, that is growing steadily 40% per year. So that kind of opportunity is only going to grow. And we often hear from ISPs, hey, you know, my customers ready to buy but only if through marketplace, they want to use their committed budgets, I’m gonna lose this deal. How do I get published quickly. And of course, there’s also benefits on the ISP side. Some additional reasons to embrace marketplace, you can expand your reach basically list once and sell globally, you can let Microsoft be your transactional platform outsourcing invoicing and taxes and currency conversions for almost any country that you might be selling in. You can let Microsoft be your deal making platform using those private offers to sell even highly negotiated price and terms types of deals that are well into the six figure categories. You can also engage your channel and extend margin and sell through partners via CSP private offers or multi party private offers. And finally, of course, you can get rewarded for your performance as I’ve been talking about with marketplace rewards I already mentioned increasing free Azure grants that unlock based on your marketplace build sales. But some publishers are also unaware that there’s also cash incentives for ISVs that kick in at 25k. In marketplace, build sales, and cosell benefits that kick in in 100k of marketplace, build sales. So many partners don’t realise that marketplace is actually the fastest and easiest way to unlock cosell benefits. Yeah, you can unlock them at 100k in Azure consumed revenue 100k a marketplace build sales, which is the full price of your application, not just the Azure component for a deal selling into the enterprise, that might be just one deal or a handful of them. And even top to your coastal benefits. There’s paths to earn them through marketplace that are accelerated. And that’s something really important to check out. If you are an ISV selling into large enterprise Vince Menzione 19:15 IT marketplaces streamline so much of the CO selling process, I remember back in the day when we would like compare quotes and we would try to reconcile what we were doing. And this has just been totally eliminated through the marketplace. Marketplace is taking and really automating that CO selling process. Yvonne Muench 19:34 Well deal registration was a burden, not only for ISVs, but also internally for us. And so it’s fantastic that you know, with the commerce platform and marketplace being where the cosell deals are done, then we can just eliminate that step entirely. Vince Menzione 19:50 I’m so excited to continue our partnership with ag one. Many of you know I’ve made taking a green drink supplement part of my health ritual for over two 21 years now, and it has made all the difference to my health and well being about six years ago, athletic greens and now their product ag one became my go to supplement. Ag one is the first thing I take every morning to power my day. It covers all of my nutritional basis supports my gut health gives a boost to my immunity and energy levels. If you want to take ownership of your health, try ag one and get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to drink ag one.com forward slash Vinson that’s drink ag one.com forward slash Vinson, check them out. See Yvonne? What are the most successful ISPs in Microsoft’s commercial marketplace doing well, that is driving their success? Yvonne Muench 20:52 Well, it’s important to understand that the most successful ISVs are basically the ones that are deeply engaged. So they engage in programmes and use benefits. And in fact, we find ISVs engaged in marketplace rewards outperform their peers by five to one in terms of marketplace, build sales. And also their ISPs are the successful ISVs are still deeply engaged in the marketing and selling of their own applications. Marketplace is a transactional platform with a lot of great capabilities, but ISVs still need to invest and execute effective marketing and sales and or engage partners as their channel so it’s not publish and walk away. For the really leading ISVs in terms of marketplace, sales, we find they have a marketplace first sales strategy. I any deal that can go through marketplace does go through marketplace, depending on the size of the organisation, this can be quite a shift internally in processes of marketing and sales and even operations, compensation and more, Vince Menzione 21:50 especially the larger organisations, right, the ones that we’ve talked about it or resisting the change is because they basically have to build new processes to drive this. That’s exactly right. So your organisation announced a new programme this year designed to help and was this applies to some of these partners we talked about that have these rich channel organisations. It was designed to help drive channel or seller adoption. This is you mentioned multi party offer. Can you share more about why this programme is so important? Absolutely. Yvonne Muench 22:19 I would call it more a capability on marketplace rather than a programme. But it is hands down the most exciting one delivered this year. I’m super excited about it. Today, it’s only available in the US but it is coming to additional geographies very soon. In a nutshell, this allows ISPs to engage channel partners in selling their applications through the marketplace. And we know that most ISPs sell through a channel, this is not a surprise, sometimes the majority or all of their revenue goes through a channel. So enabling this marketplace is incredibly important. And it’s sure to be a strategic lever in unlocking this explosive growth that we’re seeing. So established ISPs can bring their channel to marketplace, younger startup or other ISVs can tap into our channel through marketplace. And we’re just over a half a year in this launched in July at Inspire as well. And we’re already seeing that the average deal size in MPO deals are about 3x the size of private offers without up channel partners engaged. So it just makes great financial sense to bring partners into a deal. Basically, the ISV creates a private offer to a selected reseller, which then allows them to extend that margin, the reseller then engages the customer, the deal is still transacted on our commerce platform on Microsoft paper. So that means we still handle all the invoicing for all parties paying out the margin and the remainder to the ISV. And since we’re transacting the deal, importantly, this also means that the committed cloud budgets can be used for that purchase by the end customer. One thing to note to be a transacting channel, partner on marketplace, any interested partner will need to enrol in MPO and get a seller ID. It can sometimes take a few weeks to complete. And we’re seeing channel partners come to us with deals in hand ready to go, which is so exciting. So we’re advising any interested partners to get the enrollment setup and out of the way in advance. So the first marketplace transaction goes really smoothly without any delay. Yeah, Vince Menzione 24:16 it makes sense. So, again, we talked about this being the year of the marketplace. How do you think the shift in marketplace is going what’s next? And how should partners plan for it? Yvonne Muench 24:28 Yeah, well, the shift is on we are experiencing a lot of growth. And that is one of the challenges that we’re managing through. But it’s a good problem to have. We’re seeing that growth in all measures such as the number of publishers and apps, the new customers, the deal volume, the deal sizes, especially the deal sizes, and of course the total sales. So what’s next from us, you’ll see a lot of great continued enhancements, additional types of apps are good and offers as well becoming transact Bull, the continued geographic rollout of the multi party private offer capability, continued improvements in customer experience and searchability. And continued investments in marketing the marketplace and driving demand. The latter part I’m really excited about as well, you’re gonna see a lot more from us in terms of driving demand. So for example, this is things like driving increased customer awareness and traffic to the storefronts, merchandising of the leading apps within those storefronts, AI powered discovery experiences within Azure Portal to improve search and surfacing of solutions, proactive recommendation engines to customers, propensity scoring, for of customers for the marketplace, publishers, and marketing campaigns, to the end, through the field sellers to and through the channel and of course, direct to customers, a lot of exciting stuff coming in that space. Vince Menzione 25:52 So many exciting things coming down the road here. What would partners need to do now? Yvonne Muench 26:00 Well, you know, a lot of these investments I talked about will focus primarily on the apps that already have some marketplace traction. So my advice would be to jump in. For ISPs. If you have existing publish apps that are just contact me, upgrade them to transactable. If you haven’t already joined ISV success, we can help you whether you’re upgrading an existing app, or building and publishing an entirely new one. If you’re already published, join marketplace rewards and start using those benefits to accelerate and close deals and bring your channel to marketplace and get them enrolled in MPO. And if you are a channel partner out there in the US get enrolled now and for others do so as soon as it’s available when it comes to your area. So Vince Menzione 26:41 much to be done with these partners, bringing them together, getting them to execute together. I say ISPs channel partners transaction partners, again, to the end customers so much opportunity out there in these durable cloud budgets. It really is. So I have a favourite question. It’s not about marketplaces, though. But every podcast interview I do, I love to ask my guests this. So you’re hosting a dinner party. And you could have this dinner party anywhere in the world. We were talking about Rome a little bit earlier, that might be an interesting place, dad. And you can invite any three guests from the present, or the past to this amazing dinner party. Who would you invite? And why? And Yvonne Muench 27:22 it’s a fun question. So, you know, for any dinner party, you need to have a great conversation. And I think I’d start with inviting Trevor Noah. I loved his book. He’s fantastic live, and I’m seeing him again here in Seattle in next month. Obviously, he’s a comedian and a great storyteller. I especially admire though, how he can talk about even really difficult issues and topics. Many don’t know he’s Microsoft’s chief questions officer. In that role, he runs a podcast himself, yes, called the prompt, little AI flavour there. With the tagline you can’t find answers without asking the right questions. So you should check that out. I’d also invite the poet Mary Oliver, setting aside that she’s no longer living the line from her poem, wild geese, whoever you are, no matter how lonely The world offers itself to your imagination, speaks to me. And she’s such a keen observer of life and nature, an incredibly beautiful writer. I’d love to see the world through her eyes and ask her about that. But I imagine she’s pretty quiet and introverted. So my friend Trevor would help bring her out or love it. And then for the delicious food, I’d invite Yotam Ottolenghi, he’s my absolute favourite cookbook author. I don’t know if I pronounced his name correctly. But I think I have almost every one of his books, and I adore his recipes and the intense Mediterranean flavours that he brings to them. When I was on sabbatical, I cooked my entire way through one of his books. So I’d love to sit down at a table with him. But honestly, for dinner party, I invited him over early, and he would be in my kitchen helping me cook the food. And I’ve asked him to sign every single one of my cookbooks, Mediterranean Vince Menzione 29:03 cooking. So maybe we have this dinner somewhere in the Mediterranean is a coastal location that would suit me just it sounds fabulous. I might have to stop by at least for a beverage. Maybe I might see. I’d love that you’re buying you would have been just that amazing guests. I have so enjoyed our conversation. This topic is just so important right now for partners. And I can’t emphasise enough with, you know, $100 billion dollars, projected to be done through marketplaces by the end of 2026. And the amazing opportunity that this is creating around what Microsoft has been doing with AI and the durable cloud budgets, the ability to co sell such an amazing time for us. I want to thank you for joining Ultimate Guide to partner. Yvonne Muench 29:47 Well, thank you for having me. It’s been my pleasure. It is exciting times and it’s great to talk with you about it. Thank you. Thanks Vince Menzione 29:54 and thank you for listening and watching the Ultimate Partner Thanks so much for listening to this episode of ultimate guide to partner, online and Ultimate Partner.com. If you liked this episode, I’d be thrilled if you left us up to a five star review on either Apple or Spotify. This helps us to continue to feed your amazing guests. Also, please check out subscribe to our new YouTube channel, ultimate Bart? We’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Guide to partner | |||
| 211 – Why Does Every CEO Need to Be a Partnership Ecosystem Leader? | 04 Mar 2024 | 00:30:25 | |
Six Timer – Jay McBain Joins Ultimate Partner®
We are thrilled to welcome special guest Jay McBain, industry analyst, as he joins our host Vince Menzione for an enlightening discussion. Together, they navigate the ever-evolving landscape of the technology industry, covering diverse topics such as changing market dynamics, the transformative influence of generative AI, and the digital-first mindset adopted by millennial buyers. Join us as we uncover invaluable insights into business strategies, partnership dynamics, and marketplace trends. Whether you’re a CEO, industry professional, or tech enthusiast, this discussion promises to be intellectually stimulating and enlightening. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of why every CEO needs to be a Partnership Ecosystem Leader. What You’ll Learn1. Why CEOs should prioritize channel leadership with industry analyst Jay McBain. (0:00) 2. The changing nature of buying and decision-making in the digital age. (0:53) 3. Market trends and the role of partnerships in 2024. (5:52) 4. Platform companies and their success factors. (9:49) 5. Tech industry growth and marketplace fees. (13:31) 6. AI and its impact on the tech industry. (17:43) 7. Partner opportunities in the mid-market. (22:36) LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Watch on YouTube Announcing Ultimate Partner ExperienceI am thrilled to welcome you into a world that delivers unparalleled insights, best practices, and essential information to unlock your potential as a partner and propel you towards your most ambitious goals. This is a world crafted for partners like you. Our journey began seven years ago with a vision to empower partners in the complex world of tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and AWS. It started with a podcast. Today, Ultimate Partner’s mission is clear and bold, “empower every individual, organization, and partner to achieve more through successful partnering. As an Ultimate Partner Experience Member, you will unlock a growing treasure trove of resources. Dive into recordings of our events, exclusive podcast episodes, and a wealth of unique content, all designed to enhance your Cloud Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy and ecosystem growth. We are in our early days and expect much more to come. As an innovator, being part of this experience is more than joining a community; it’s about integrating into an ecosystem brimming with innovation and collaboration. Here, shared experiences and insights are your gateway to progress, offering connections with peers and resources to elevate your Cloud GTM strategy. This is your platform to engage, seek support, and contribute to our collective growth. I’m thrilled to welcome you to this journey. Let’s navigate, thrive, and redefine success in the tech partnership landscape together. Come Sign Up LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Now on YouTube Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Many Typospartner, year, microsoft, marketplace, company, buyer, market, top, partnerships, customer, people, big, platform, leader, opportunity, point, ai, channel, world, organisations Vince Menzione 0:00 I just finished an amazing episode with Jay McBain in our new South Florida studio. Jay is Principal Analyst at Canalis, a global technology analyst firm with a distinct channel focus. We had such an incredible discussion on why every CEO needs to be a channel leader. We’re here in South Florida at our new Boca Raton facility. When did you hit the big toe? It’s time to uplevel the game apart is the this is Ultimate. This is the ultimate partnering Ultimate Partner and ultimate ultimate partner. So live from Florida. Yep. And you are our very first guest in our new facility here. They’re nice courtesy of media zones, our partner and just excited to be here in person with you. Absolutely. Sort of that we talked about this Florida, this connection. We’re all the channel chiefs are coming to Florida. What do you think about that? Jay McBain 0:53 Yeah, all the celebrities are coming here. And we’ve got a good group of channel chiefs. It’s the southern southern Florida mafia for for the channel. Vince Menzione 1:00 I love it. I love it. Of course, with my Italian heritage, you had to say mafia. So Well, I’m excited to spend more time with you. You know, we it’s just two weeks ago that we were in person in Miami. We both had keynote presentations at the partner conference. And it was a really terrific event. And I really loved your session. So I was hoping today we could spend a little bit of time recounting some of that session. The five reasons why the next generation of CEOs will be partnership leaders warms my heart to know that as a partner, leader and former chief revenue officer as well. So I thought maybe we’d start here. I wanted to deep dive. But you had some very insightful comments, I thought maybe you can maybe summarise the five steps, and then we can deep dive into them. Jay McBain 1:48 Yeah, sure. Absolutely. So you know, for years now, we’ve been making these future predictions. You know, this is what’s going to happen to marketplaces. This is what’s happening to the new buyer. This is what’s happening to the economics of partnering and they were all a David Letterman top 10 list of you know, trends, yes, somewhat interconnected. But at some point coming to an inflection point. And 2024 happens to be the year of that inflection point, where number one, the new buyer is actually here. By the end of the year, a millennial will lead the majority of tech and telco purchasing over $5 trillion. And that’s both by number of millennials, as well as by budget. Number two, this platform economy, not just in the hyperscalers, not just in SAS companies, but taking hold and security. But outside of tech. You know, we always got confused that the biggest automotive companies and pharmaceuticals and banks wanted to become tech companies, every company was going to become a tech company, where we were confused as they actually want to become platform companies. And what that means yes, and that drives a whole different set of economics with the way partnering has worked for over 40 years down here in Boca Raton with August 12 1981. And that first IBM PC with the first IBM programme with Microsoft and others. But now we’re looking at a very different thing. And this is the year that it all changes. And then generative AI and other things that come into it. So again, inflection point all into one time. Vince Menzione 3:14 Yeah, I thought we would deep dive on these it was really great and insightful conversation. Let’s talk about the millennials first, right? Because we’ve been talking about the tectonic shifts. And this new generation of buyers, right, the different buying persona used to clicking three times on my my phone and a box shows up right and, and maybe they don’t want to speak to as many salespeople they want to make their own decision. They go through their own process. You’ve talked about this, and how the decision making process has changed. Can you spend a minute there on that specifically? Yeah, Jay McBain 3:47 so in a different psychology, different behaviours, different journey that they’re on. But suffice it to say they’re either Digital First, or digital only. Right. And when you said, you know, maybe I don’t want to talk to a human, the latest research says it’s 75% of them would actually like to get to end of job and this is to buy a million dollars worth of software. This is to buy a car, I’d like to get to end of job at a very important big decision. Digital only. Yeah, and so that’s 75%. So this is a different way to treat those first 28 moments before they make that decision. So that’s one thing. Second is their subscription and consumption friendly. You know, growing up on Netflix growing up on Spotify, yes, they’re okay to pay $1 a month for the rest of their life for a toothbrush that just gets replenished and they understand that they’re in it for life. And this goes again across technology, but it goes into every industry. Absolutely. And the way they bank the way they buy insurance the way they you know buy manufactured goods or you know pharmaceuticals it’s okay to buy be in these subscription or consumption models. And that leads to marketplace. Yes, there okay buy in seven layers to solve a problem. No one wants to buy this all you can eat you know best in class. To end to end platform, I’m okay building layers to my outcome. And I’m okay, building it as a team sport. So in the older generations, you and I generation, you know, we kind of looked for a single throat to choke somebody that was our trusted adviser, somebody that could really orchestrate it for us, right? The new generation, it’s okay to build a team. And it’s not going to be a team of the seven, seven, same seven people. It’s going to be a team of different types of people that have expertise in my industry that have expertise in my geography, expertise in the sector segment that I’m in the compliance and governance that I’m under all of the different angles, I want to build a team and I go back to sports, I don’t need seven quarterbacks that are 11 quarterbacks on the field. I need, you know, 11 different players, but I need them to each do their job of No, Bella Chuck. Well, you know, we Vince Menzione 5:52 talked about partner to partner for years now Microsoft parlance was around partner party, we’ve been talking about the decade of the ecosystem. I don’t know who coined that phrase, maybe someone we know, personally. But this is this is really about ecosystem. This is really, when I think about the, I call it the marketplace moment, in fact, we’re taking we’re digitally buying, right? There’s a lot of things that come with along with that, right the ability to consume against these large cloud commitments, but also the opportunities you say, to stitch together the solution that best supports your requirements. And this is where we get into multi party offers, in fact, where you can, in fact, layer several solutions together, bring it serve it up to a customer already, he’s made $100 million commitment to a Microsoft, Amazon or Google and say this is exactly what we need. Right. So it’s exactly what you’re talking Jay McBain 6:41 about. Yeah. And that’s the final piece of research on this new buyer is integration. First integration. First of all the things you’d write into an RFP, that’s important to you, you know, the price is important your service, your support, things like your brand reputation, you know, all these things would have criteria around how I’m going to make my decision. Number one criteria now is how you work in my environment. This is both as a personal story as well as a professional one, where Apple got on stage last year and said 79% of people won’t buy a car. Unless it is Apple CarPlay. Yeah, they neglected to mention Android Auto. But the fact of the matter is, you know, here’s an industry that’s $4 trillion in size, you may be, you know, taking over a dealership from your great grandparents. And all of a sudden, you’re going to lose four fifths of your buyers, because there’s not a technology integration in place. It’s amazing. And so watching this, and then, you know, feeding that into all the other parts of life, I’ll buy a product that’s 80% as good as the competitor, if it works better in my environment. So how do we feed in integration first buyer, a digital first or only buy or a subscription consumption marketplace friendly buyer. This is a complete reconstruction of how we do marketing, how we do selling, and how we do long term customer success. Vince Menzione 7:54 It’s fantastic. So the next thing you talked about was the death of the cookie, you brought this up before as a big factor, right? And really why partnering is so important right now. And again, with my experience in partnering and as a CRO for formally, what would you say about the old acquisition models and new models? Jay McBain 8:14 Yeah, so we talk about 2024 as an inflection point. And this end of the cookie, if you happen to be in marketing has been coming for years. It’s actually three years ago that on the iPhone, you could say I don’t want to be followed, I no longer want to be the product on the internet. And back then, you know, Facebook was publicly saying this could put us out of business. We rely on this, you think of Google whose half their company relies on this business model of selling our personal data in those first 28 moments. And obviously, there’s active buyers. So this is the third party data system. Were a couple of weeks ago to start off 2024 Google updates Chrome and Android to actually stop limiting cookies. They also made a declaration by the end of 2024. The cookie will be dead. Yeah. So in a world that moves from third party data, you remember the Cambridge Analytica scandal. And remember, you know, the billions of dollars which is created trillion dollar valuations for these companies and third party data selling our private data is now moving to second party, the channel partners ecosystem alliances are who owned these first 28 moments, the ebooks, the podcasts like this one, all the things that happen in these 28 moments, now becomes a second party data problem. And CMOS need to shift from third party to second party. And again, 2024 is the year that partners come out as the leading edge of the spear and on finding this buyer intent. And this is just a remarkable thing happening along with everything else. Vince Menzione 9:47 But it’s what we’ve been saying for so many years now. Right. I mean, many years ago, I went through a course by Miller Heiman strategic selling, and the whole idea was to find out as much situational analysis or awareness of your client. And the best way to do that is other people that are talking to your client who wants talks to your client than you, the seven or eight seats at the table, they might be competitors, they might be potential partners, they might just be friendlies. And be able to have those conversations. And now what you’re saying around this is, that’s why it’s so important that we have this new data intelligence. And we find new ways to approach the customer because we don’t have cookies. Jay McBain 10:23 And so you know, a story around Microsoft, for example, you know, they did a better job of surrounding the buyer. Yes, they didn’t have a better price than than AWS, they didn’t have better product. They didn’t have better Superbowl ads. What they did is had better coverage of the seven people that surrounded every buyer. They had more Microsoft endorsements sitting at the table. And that sat in the ebooks, at the events, it sat in the podcast, it sat in all the different moments that the customer was friendlier to that solution versus that one. And that’s one example. But that’s the future of selling is a surround strategy of these seven trusted people, and how you get them to influence that buyer. In those first 28 moments. Vince Menzione 11:11 It feels like the rest of the world is going to start speaking our language. This Jay McBain 11:15 was part of the why the next CEO should you know have partnerships in their resume or be a partnership leader. Yeah. Vince Menzione 11:23 So you this this year of the platform, but I wanted to dive in here a little bit, right, because this is this is somewhat new, you know, he talked about every company wanting to be a tech company. And now this year, the platform is a little bit of a different twist on this. Spend a little time with us on this one. Yeah, Jay McBain 11:40 so it started the year with we did a paper with HubSpot, one of these leading platforms, along with partnership leaders and others that put together a study of the top 50 platforms in the world. Let’s look at companies like Salesforce. Let’s look at companies like ServiceNow and workday and Marketo and NetSuite, HubSpot, but the top 50 platforms in the world and ask questions, you know, how did they? Did they do this at scale? How do they create these integrations at the scale? How do they surround the buyer? How do they deploy the resources, the people, the the processes, the programmes, the underlying technology? How does this all work? And what makes these companies obviously the the highest valued companies in the world, right? They make up the highest valuations. And if you start at the fortune 500, at the top moving downwards, they’re the most valuable companies in the world. So this is where I said every company is looking in to become a platform company. Yes. And the the riches that come with that. You’ve got to learn though the basic underpinnings the foundation of what it means to be a platform, and how you run a platform. It just doesn’t come by accident. No, you have to put things in place. And it takes many, many years to make sure that you can build it’s like a universe. It’s like a sun that has planets and gravity and everybody getting pulled in. Because you’re not going to go out and sign up everybody to be part of your platform. Your platform has to be its own flywheel that kicks out a lot of multiplier of opportunity, and want people to come in. And we’re breaking down now, which is a little bit of the magic, the decoder ring, of what makes that happen. What kind of people do we need? What kind of programmes do we need? What kind of technology should we be running? How do we go to market? Again, another reason why maybe the CEO should be a partnership leader, if you’re looking to be a platform in any industry. Yeah. And Vince Menzione 13:32 this ties into the whole marketplace conversation in such a great way as well. I mean, we’ve discussed the 45 billion that you had predicted by the end of 2026. I think it was originally 2025 2520 25. And now you said that that’s under call, then, potentially this year, what are we saying? Jay McBain 13:51 So I mean, at Wall Street, now we’ve got not only the Big Three hyperscalers. But we’ve got now with the bigger marketplace, SAS companies and others, starting to show what their future commits are. And it’s one of these again, to get these high valuations. You know, investors love to know how much money you’ve got committed to you. And just the top three have over $340 billion committed rounding. And then somebody at some point has to figure out how to put that into product skews and put that together into seven layer stacks. But that 45 billion which was a hockey stick, it’s an 86% compounded annual growth. We think it might be doubling every single year, and we don’t see it stopping after 2025. This is just a trend that continues feeding this new buyer. Vince Menzione 14:35 In fact, the number went from 300 billion to 340 billion in one quarter correct. So we’ll see what the what it’s expanding. Jay McBain 14:41 We’ve also got in the last 30 or 60 days, we’ve got four press releases now. I’ll use AWS Marketplace as an example. CrowdStrike snowflake Palo Alto and Splunk have all issued press releases that they’re running a billion dollar business on one marketplace. And one of the predictions we made Alongside the 45 billion, which we also under called, is that AWS, as a leading marketplace, would join the likes of TD cynics and Ingram as a top 10 distributor by 2025. Again, under called it, they’re already there, they’re there. Now you have to get to about 5 billion to overtake dnh. An exclusive networks. And they’re already there. Yeah. So this is an area where they may have achieved, you know, $5 billion as one marketplace. But their sites are on the 60 billion at TD cynics and 50 billion at Ingram. The numbers are astounding. And when you’re doubling every single year, it doesn’t take you long to get there. Vince Menzione 15:38 So what does this do to the channel and to distribution? Jay McBain 15:41 Well, the blow up with this is the channel from decades ago, was at the point of sale, all the economics worked at the point of sale. And partners were only measured at that point of sale. Yeah, how much do you sell? Well, the fact of the matter is money is changing hands in a very different way. And one thing that happened and Microsoft led this, and everybody soon followed is Microsoft declared that a marketplace fee shouldn’t be 20%, or shouldn’t be 35%, which has apple in court with epic and 45% of what they’re trying to chose the New York Times. But Microsoft, like we’re not going to make money off our ecosystem. It costs us about 3% of the fee to run a marketplace. So much like a MasterCard or Visa swipe and consumer, it’s about 3% of the deal. Architect The movement of money, which is complicated, it’s, you know, we’ve got to move the money, we’ve got to take on the risk that the customer doesn’t pay, we’ve got to wait for the time value of money, net, 30, net, 60. Net 90. And in the end of all that we have to hire Biff to break knees when that customer doesn’t pay. But for forever, we thought in the 1980s, that that was worth 40% margin, then it was 30, then it was 20. And, you know, we’re all kind of deciding what that’s worth. But it’s now been declared and Google followed Microsoft, and just a few months ago, AWS is finally on board. Yes, but everybody’s at the point now and all the end users know that the whole value add of taking my money on behalf of a vendor is worth three. So let’s talk about where the other 17% of the gross two nets are. And a partner would tell you Well, I guess I do free consulting, I do free design and architecture. I do free implementations. And it’s great. I’ve always always got paid at one point. And a lot of the other stuff that maybe other partners like a system integrator would charge for, I’ve ended up giving for free. And and now in marketplace model, I could still go get the other 17% on a private offer or some sort of multi partner offer. And I might be willing to give up the 3% because that’s a part of the business. I’m not all that interested in. Vince Menzione 17:43 Exactly, exactly. Yeah, it’s changing the entire value chain equation is what I would say there. If you’re part of the movement, you know, I have a very strong point of view. I’ve sat on both sides of the table for over 30 years now. I built growth through partnerships and PC, internet, cloud, mobile AI, marketplaces and more. I’ve also seen the demise of organisations that are resistant to change part of the communities special interest groups and associations. And I don’t see one place that mirrors the ecosystem and brings it all together. You see, I see a vibrant world where hyperscalers builders ISV sellers, s eyes MSPs and other partners come together to spark the ecosystems growth. I’ve talked to many of you. And what I continually hear is it’s noisy. I don’t know whom to listen to, and where to go. There’s a massive opportunity, but I’m not sure how to get there. Well, you’ve been heard. We’re getting ready to open the doors early to pilot this new experience. We want this to be your place with your feedback and participation. If you’re a builder and innovator or a leader, visit our website. So we can’t have a talk in 2024 or even 2023 For that matter without bringing up AI generative AI. I did an interview with Microsoft’s leading reseller and Google’s leading reseller that earlier this week and we had this discussion about what’s happened this past year. I mean, Satya Nadella recognise the CEO of the Year gave us all a masterclass this past year, right about partnerships. In fact, he had been working on the Gen AI partnership for five years or so. And it came to fruition and everyone was caught on their back heels. I mean, Google was caught in the backfield. So they responded accordingly. But it’s changing the game now, right? It’s changing the valuation of those organisations quite a bit from 2023 to this year. What would you say about Gen AI? Yeah, Jay McBain 19:50 and I think you know, Microsoft’s a good story where, you know, he will be crowned you know, with a Jack Welch award as the leader of the decade if not leader the century so far because, you know, overachieving Apple a couple of weeks ago in valuation, yeah, was a big testament to all the moves that have been made, not just the channel and partner moves, but the moves into generative AI. But there’s also he’s also confused the market, he’s come out and said it’s a $4 trillion opportunity. And in a world economy, that’s 105 trillion in GDP. That’s material. And so partners, you know, kind of look at that and go, I think I believe him. But Can somebody break it down? For me what that really means to me? Where in the cycle is this? What can I charge for? What’s my opportunity? How fastest growing? What kind of skills and competencies do I need to build? Now listen, I run a small business over here. And can somebody break down that 4 trillion for me, and, you know, at an analyst firm it Canalis. I mean, that’s what we’ve been doing. You know, here’s the $15 billion connected to that bigger number that happened last year, here’s the 150 8 billion, that’s going to happen within the next four years, a 59% growth rate. But very specifically, here’s the type of business model, here’s the kind of skills, here’s the kind of products you need to sell services you need to sell, to go take advantage of this. And it’s somewhat time delayed, you know, if you’re a VAR MSP, you know, there’s not a laundry list of things that you’re going to go and double or triple your business in 2024 around, unless you’re doing deep consulting on language models, and tuning and training, and, you know, connecting the dots between the 85% of the world’s business data in these large language models sitting out at open AI and sitting with Google. Unless you’re in these deep business conversations with the board and C suite at the biggest of companies. There’s not a lot to do this year. And, you know, our recommendation is perhaps go back and look at the cybersecurity industry growing by double digits. Yeah, look at managed services growing by double digits, look at the things you can control today. And perhaps don’t get too excited about changing everything shutting down your current business, and going all in. Vince Menzione 22:00 Yeah, no, I would add to that. I do think I don’t know where the $4 trillion number comes from how you break out, it sounds like we’re obviously not there now. But I do think that there is an immediate opportunity, Microsoft put some layered in some significant investments in incentives on their co pilot products. And I do think for some of the MSPs. What I’m hearing now is that every CEO, wants is having a conversation about Gen AI, right? How do I how do I take advantage? How do I execute against it? In fact, I heard a quote this week from somebody from Microsoft, that the CEO is now the new CIO. I love that quote, I’m going to reuse that. But I think I think they’re making transform transformation decisions that were normally made further down in the organisation, what would you say? Yeah, Jay McBain 22:45 so we went and asked, you know, Microsoft’s current 400,000 partners, what they think, and a third of them are very sceptical. And they’re happy to take a laggard or late majority play. The next third, are on the fence. And they’re not going to play early majority, or even early adopter. And then 1/3, and this was a comparison to when we asked them 2018 about AI, one thirds, a little bit more excited on the front end. So a highly sceptical, balanced audience, because guess what, they’ve lived through emerging tech hype cycles before, yes, 10 years ago, when IoT was going to take over the world. Last year when Metaverse is going to change everything. So you know, whether it’s quantum computing or Northern robotics, or self driving cars, or 3d printers, I mean, this is a sceptical audience to say that, you know, we’ll take a little bit of a wait and see. And certain partner types that are connected to certain customer segments are going to see a huge opportunity up front. And, you know, it’s wise that, you know, somebody breaks down that number. And make sure that over the course of five years, you know, ahead of time when to start to engage and, and get into these conversations, that technology lifecycle adoption curve, right. And I know the $4 trillion. I mean, when you break it against the world’s economy and 27 industries across 193 countries, and you start to, you know, augment resources and replace resources. And when you rethink your marketing and sales and customer success, your invoicing, your billing your finance, and operations and HR, every part of your company changes that adds up to 4 trillion pretty fast. Yes, it does. The fact of the matter, though, is that’s world economy talk. What services can I sell next Tuesday? And how do I skew them up? And what kind of people do I need to train to go and delight the customer? Is the conversations we should be having in partnerships. Again, another reason why, you know, senior in your company, you should have, you know, people that can understand how this is all going to work. Vince Menzione 24:51 So you and I have talked about the mid market quite a bit, and I spent quite a bit of time analysing this market. I did an event where we feel Richard, some of the leaders from Microsoft and talked about the big market opportunity. In fact, one of those leaders is doubling down on partner attach because it’s I think it’s an under penetrated, I believe you will agree with me here under penetrated market, I wanted to get your viewpoint on this as well. Because I do think it’s a huge opportunity for partners in general, that are both kind of clustered to the top to the enterprise. I’ll call it 11,000 enterprise organisations. Jay McBain 25:26 Yeah, so I happen to run mid market for years and years at IBM and Lenovo. So I know, it’s kind of the mushy middle, companies can quite easily have a top down strategy, the top 11,000, you know how to put out your resources, how to, you know, cover, have the capacity have the capabilities to cover that market. And then you know, the SMB is a little bit less known. It’s a bottoms up, it’s a community led, grassroots led, you’ve got to influence the influencers, which is a big part of the channel, this is where your channel strategies really form in SMB? Yeah, because you need an army to help you to surround those customers. And mid market is probably the least understood, because that’s where the two things meet. And there’s not a lot of expertise, there’s not a list of partners, you can just download that, you know, have mid market as their only target. There’s not a, you know, just an easy go to market routes to market that you can check the box, oh, I need to sign up these distributors, I need to sign up these partners, I need to go do this. And then we’re gonna go get our fair share mid market. So the leaders, you know, are under invested in their own companies. You know, there’s not an understanding either below or above them in their companies of what this is. So, you know, I’m glad that you’re taking this on, to figure out what this mushy middle is, and how to take action. I Vince Menzione 26:44 think it’s a digital, I think it’s it’s marketplace driven. And it’s combining all of the partners, all the seats at the table to accomplish what we need to do. To your point, it is the mushy middle. And the organisations that the top aren’t paying attention. The ones at the bottom are paying attention the way they need to, right. So Jay McBain 27:01 some need to scale up some need to scale downs, right. And it’s a massive market. Huge, it’s a huge market. And, you know, for for companies, there’s billions of dollars of opportunity, that doesn’t take that level of investment. Vince Menzione 27:12 I mean, I’ll quote out of school here, Microsoft alone has somewhere between 75 plus billion dollars of business in that market. So that’s a pretty significant market for partners. So I’d love to having you here today. And next time, we’re going to have a longer session we’re going to have we’re going to host you here and maybe even have some partners in the room. But we’re on a tight timeline today. So for our viewers, listeners, what are they need to be thinking about and doing differently now that we’re in 2024 in a big way. Jay McBain 27:43 I mean, the first thing in this is not a surprise to anyone is continued to be obsessed about your customer. get obsessed about the people they trust, get obsessed about what they read, where they go, who they follow, get obsessed about a journey that isn’t about the point of sale. It’s about the 28th moments before that, yeah, it’s at the point of sale, regardless of how money changes hands. So getting the customer to the dance, getting them on the dance floor. And now with every company, keeping them dancing all night long, every 30 days forever. You know, one company a couple of weeks ago became the most valuable company in the world. By telling Wall Street we’d be the most sticky, predictable, reliable, repeatable and scalable revenue. not reliant on a September launch of a product every year. Yes. And the market responded. And so, you know, we can talk about a $3 trillion company or we can talk about a startup. The same thing is, if you get obsessed about your customer, when you move outwards from your customer, you’re gonna find that there’s partnerships everywhere, in the integrations, in the go to market, in the routes to market in all the influence. All the things you need to do around your customer, are really partner driven at this point. And that’s why I think your leadership should have much better skills and partnerships. Vince Menzione 29:00 I love what you have to say. Jay, I want to thank you. This is your sixth appearance. The robe is coming. It’s the Saturday Night Live Saturday. I live Rob is coming, except it’s gonna have the five timer and then we’re gonna have the stripes at time you come. Yeah, a lot of them both. I want to thank you for joining us today live from South Florida. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of ultimate guide to partner, online and Ultimate Partner.com. If you liked this episode, I’d be thrilled if you left us up to a five star review on either Apple or Spotify. This helps us to continue to feature amazing guests. Also, please check out subscribe to our new YouTube channel, ultimate Bart? We’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Guide to partners | |||
| 210 – How Does the Union of Two Remarkable Tech Titans Redefine the Category? | 25 Feb 2024 | ||
Dee Burger & Tony Safoian Join Ultimate Partner®
In this episode, I’m joined by two remarkable leaders and friends. Dee Burger is the President of Insight North America, and Tony Safoian is the CEO of SADA Systems, a Google Partner of the Year for many years. Both Dee and Tony have been guests before on Ultimate Partner. Tony was one of our first guests seven years ago and was an inspiration to start the podcast. He is also one of only two six-timers on this podcast. Listen as Dee and Tony share the story of their first encounter and why they came together. We also discuss this incredible transformation: AI, Marketplace, Security, and the power of Microsoft and Google’s services. Plus, gain exclusive insights into partnering with the tech giants and other partners. What You’ll Learn1. Tech industry transformation and partnership strategies. (0:02) 2. Business growth and culture alignment. (2:03) 3. The merger of Insight and SADA. (4:06) 4. Transforming the reseller industry with a new business model. (11:56) 5. AI-driven commerce and marketplaces. (21:15) 6. AI, security, and Google’s services. (25:35)7. Partnering with Google Cloud and Insight. (29:53) LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Watch on YouTube Announcing Ultimate Partner ExperienceI am thrilled to welcome you into a world that delivers unparalleled insights, best practices, and essential information to unlock your potential as a partner and propel you towards your most ambitious goals. This is a world crafted for partners like you. Our journey began seven years ago with a vision to empower partners in the complex world of tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and AWS. It started with a podcast. Today, Ultimate Partner’s mission is clear and bold, “empower every individual, organization, and partner to achieve more through successful partnering. As an Ultimate Partner Experience Member, you will unlock a growing treasure trove of resources. Dive into recordings of our events, exclusive podcast episodes, and a wealth of unique content, all designed to enhance your Cloud Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy and ecosystem growth. We are in our early days and expect much more to come. As an innovator, being part of this experience is more than joining a community; it’s about integrating into an ecosystem brimming with innovation and collaboration. Here, shared experiences and insights are your gateway to progress, offering connections with peers and resources to elevate your Cloud GTM strategy. This is your platform to engage, seek support, and contribute to our collective growth. I’m thrilled to welcome you to this journey. Let’s navigate, thrive, and redefine success in the tech partnership landscape together. Come Sign Up LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Now on YouTube Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Many Typos SUMMARY KEYWORDSSummary Keywords customers, years, partner, google, insight, work, microsoft, market, technology, ai, organisations, great, biggest, incredible, strategy, talk, marketplace, ag1 Vince Menzione 0:02 Welcome to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince menzi own and my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through a successful partner. I have the great privilege of being here on site in Scottsdale, Arizona. We’re inside enterprises is hosting amplify 2020 for its annual sales and partner conference for an incredible interview with two amazing leaders and friends. D Berger is North American president of insight and a previous guest on Ultimate Partner and Tony Savoy in the CEO of sada and insight company, and a five timer on this podcast, inside acquired sought on December 1 of 2023. A move de and Tony say turn their combined capabilities into a multi cloud powerhouse, as Insight has long been a top provider of Microsoft Solutions, while sada is the global Google Cloud Partner of the Year, multiple years. Gentlemen, I’m so excited about our discussion today. Dee Burger 1:02 Thanks for having us. Thanks Vince Menzione 1:03 for having us. Excited to spend time with both of you. I have a long history working with both of your organization’s going back to my days at Microsoft, in fact, a lot of time here in Scottsdale, and Tempe within sight, and of course many years working with SATA back in my earliest days. So I’m so excited to exclusively feature you here for this conversation today. Appreciate that. So first, we’ve seen this incredible transformation in our $5 trillion tech industry for more than a decade. First, the transformation to the cloud. And then the acceleration we’ve seen these last few years. I call it the tectonic shifts, both of your firm’s were on the forefront inside has been the most transformative of the large partners working with Microsoft. And SATA has been referred to as both a born in the cloud partner back in the days when I worked with you, Tony, and has pivoted the business to become the most successful partner in the Google ecosystem. I was wondering if you could share your perspectives on what we’ve been seeing in these last few years. Tony Safoian 2:02 First of all, I want to say being a five timer. Kinda like on Saturday Night Live. I expect the jacket it’s in the mail with a firearm or jacket on it, because I know it’s quite a privilege. Vince, thank you. This is the sixth time Tony it is so like we’re just gonna get racking up the numbers until we’re gonna put all the jacket bars on. Yeah, I mean, it’s an incredible next chapter for us. Obviously, everything I’ve done for the last 23 and a half years has been creating best in class best in breed, I’ve been very focused on uneven in the playing field that every opportunity that you can grab, because like who wants to compete on an even playing field, like you know, who wants to be generic? I think speciality niches, scale, customer incumbency, being on the forefront is just so much more fun. And coming together in a way that was almost serendipitous is an incredible thing for our customers, and an incredible thing for our partners. And I have to say these my new boss. And he’s he’s awesome. I don’t have to say that I say that because it’s true. And the culture is what really matters as Joyce reminds us all the time d reminds us all the time. And you know, that is going to be the foundation of what allows us to make the most of this opportunity. And, you know, everything that I was hoping for, you know, prior to coming together is even more true now that being on the inside, but not just the DEA and the Joyce level. The executive team but everyone we’ve met hear the hundreds of people we’ve met at at amplify our first amplify it’s the same at every level. So this is a great launchpad for 2024 and beyond. And Tony Safoian 4:05 our vantage point you watching the market change, you know tech 2023 was a tough year for the industry. There was there’s a lot of absorption from overbuying, and 21 and 2022. And a lot of different segments. But technology keeps firing away. Right technology is marching forward. Gen AI is changing a lot of things. But all the things we were talking about just a year ago, cloud cybersecurity data, they’re all there. And our job is to help customers take all that and take advantage of it. Like so their businesses are better, as we kind of thought through what what led us here today. You have to be multicloud to succeed in that world. You know, we’d love the partnership with Microsoft and Microsoft is right there on the leading edge taking the world forward to so as Google and if we start with the idea, we’ve got to be great for our customers. We felt we had to be multicloud Absolutely Vince Menzione 5:00 brilliant move strategically. So I’ve been chronicling this rising dominance of the hyper scalars. And I think a lot of people don’t recognise the level of dominance, right? If you look at the data centres, the chips and the data centres, and the infrastructure and the go to market strategies, right, and securing large commitments from organisations at the C suite level, right, buyers are making decisions in the lines of business. But the C suite is where these large commitments are happening. And they’re estimating now that they’re about $340 billion in durable cloud budgets amongst the top three, was this a consideration for the move going forward? Tony Safoian 5:41 I like how he says it, and I don’t want to steal his thunder. So I’ll let him describe the strategy because I think it’s he says it really well. Well, Dee Burger 5:47 I think, no doubt, right, no doubt. So if you look at the investment, people are making the hyper scalars. Now, who would have thought, you know, 10 years ago that three companies were going to own a such a significant part of the infrastructure of the whole world. Everything happens in the cloud. Everything happens in the cloud. And again, back to our job is to be great for our customers, and whatever they need to do. We have to be relevant in those areas. Yeah. Vince Menzione 6:14 So let’s talk about the merger. How did this all come together? Dee Burger 6:19 We had to separate we had two separate pathways, don’t you start with your pathway, I’ll add mine will tell you how they came together. A couple of years ago, it became apparent to us that we need we needed to do something seismic, to continue to be able to grow at the level of trajectory and capacity and evolution that our customers and the market was demanding of us. Every one of our peers had done things way, way, way earlier in their journey than we had. And we were getting to a point where, you know, being broad and deep in this ecosystem, in itself was not, you know, sufficient to serve the needs of our customers and a evolving strategy of more customer centricity customers are asking us to be in more markets, that was very hard to do organically, they were asking us to be more comprehensive, which is hard for us to do organically, like, oh, we wish you could do the Microsoft stuff or wish you could do the, you know, the 50,000 store location work that we want, like, what we just couldn’t do that. So we looked at tonnes of options, kiss a lot of frogs looked at, you know, private equity and all this, you know, just essentially every option, including every strategic option. And it wasn’t really up until I started seeing Insite kind of show up at the big Google Events. And I was like, insights here that it even came sort of to the forefront of my mindset that this could be a potential destination. But as we started looking at it closer and closer, I was like, Oh, my God, they’re, they’re just like us. You know, they believe in the magic of products and services and solutions coming together. They are on their own transformational journey. They have the best incumbency of any potential strategic partner that we could ever dream of. And they are amazing people. Tony Safoian 8:18 Tell him the restaurant where the name of the restaurant where you got the whole thing started. verse, verse, Dee Burger 8:24 yeah, so So this is an interesting story. I know. It’ll be where the thing culminates. So different for me, you know? So I came to Insight summer of 2022. And we talked a lot about m&a. Joyce’s new into the CEO role, we talked about the different things we needed to build over the course of time. The fundamental idea is we touch a lot of customers. And we need to do more and more for those customers. Our mission is to do more and more, be more and more valuable doing more and more things. And started down the path of what are the most we historically have been close to infrastructure? So what are the infrastructure adjacent sorts of things, businesses to get in, we came up with a list. Being multicloud was the first thing we really wanted to do. And so I called a good friend of mine at Google, who will remain nameless, but senior guy at Google and said, We gotta get into Google. We’ve got to figure out a way to do a job there who is out there to buy and it took three seconds SATA. And so we started down this path. We then were contacted through Tony’s banker on Project verse happens to be the same name of the restaurant that they they got started in. We’ve met a bunch we had Tony out to Arizona with with his full team, we sell very much same thing like a fit. It doesn’t help to buy a company that is strategically aligned. That just won’t work. It just doesn’t work in your culture and insights gotta very culture really comes first. It had to fit. We saw the fit together. Tony and I talk because actually at one of these events, Tony, I had a call with Tony, I went out to the lobby, it was at our event called mastery that we do for our technology, or most technical professionals. And we talked and said, let’s figure out how to do this. And we spent three months we worked it out. And then the closing dinner, going back to verse was at the very restaurant that Tony got started November 30, the night before December 1 with Tony and his family and his team. It was really a great event. Vince Menzione 10:26 That is fantastic. What a great story. You know, this reminds me of this conversation, I think about both of your organization’s is really being categories of one. Alright. And Tony, and I’ve had a lot of conversations about his strategy. I know it very well. I feel like insights been the other company as well, that has thought about this holistically. And you know, it’s interesting, because I spent almost 10 years in the Microsoft world, right? And I know that Microsoft and the others as well. Like to fit you into buckets, right? You’re either an ISP, or you’re an SI, or you’re a large scale partner. But it seems that you are redefining your category. Can you talk to us a little bit about that? Dee Burger 11:10 Yeah, I’ll start. It was great. We just had Danica Patrick out. And she actually gave the answer. I’m going to quote for this, which was good. You know, they asked her if she had idols when she was going up. And she said, No, she wanted, she wanted to be the best her very much the way we think about it, you know, we are trying to build a business that we don’t believe currently exists. You know, when you think about a client and how hard it is, with a vast array of technology out there, how do you choose? How do you purchase? How do you implement? How do you manage? How do you transform that that whole cycle, we think we’re better positioned to help our customers do that, against the fastest evolving technology industry we’ve ever seen. And it’s only going to get faster. Tony Safoian 11:56 No, it’s completely right. I mean, we’ve been talking to anybody who would listen and you’re an expert in this area, but it’s like you’ve covered channels, partnerships, ecosystems, you’ve worked in it, you’ve covered it for years, you know, like the traditional tendency to put us in like little buckets, right? Like, oh, like, they’re a reseller. And though they’re an SI and they’re no, they’re an RSI, no, they’re NSP? No, they’re an LSP. It’s like just make up random acronyms and pigeonhole. Listen to, you know, traditionally, the one thing we’ve done well, well, you know, I think cloud has changed what customers need us to do, and has forced us to change our own business models, because like, you can’t just like buy a bunch of software from you know, vendor A, and then hire vendor bcde and hope that they implemented well, it just doesn’t work for customers, and it doesn’t work for us in our business model. So and we were both built that way. And we’re on these independent journeys, bring it together just supercharged charges at all we can think of a good name inside had had. So we’re just using there’s like we are the leading solutions integrator, and creating new categories is hard. So you know, Noreen, and Hillary are gonna have a hell of a time making it roll off of everyone’s tongue over the next two years. But that’s what we expect a new category, our own quadrant, we are one of one of solutions integrator, Vince Menzione 13:20 I love solutions integrator, I think it speaks volumes for what’s been missing, right. And we’ve, I’ve had these conversations, you have independent software vendors that do one thing, you have transactional partners that do another thing you have SI is that come and build on top of it. And if you’re lucky, they’re not si ‘s that are going to basically want to be there forever, right? You want to you want to get to the end result. And I think that’s exactly clearly what you’re saying, stating, you’re doing here for customer with the customer in mind and customer focus. Dee Burger 13:47 Absolutely. So I think about it, you know, from the standpoint that the the reseller industry was ultimately set up as a way to sell salespeople to partners. Right, the history was set up that way, he had all kinds of OEMs somebody figured out, Hey, we should consolidate the supply chain. Somebody else said, All right, it’s really hard for all these people to get to all these customers. So the reseller industry came about, and economics worked that way. The emphasis ultimately worked that way. We’re starting in an entirely different place. So there are a whole position in the way we’re going to transform is you start with the customer. And you become very valuable to your partners by virtue of the value that you have for customers. So it’s a it’s a big flip. Okay, Tony Safoian 14:36 it’s all about business model, incentive alignment, right? If you’re just selling, you care about selling as much as the customer will buy. If you’re just servicing. You want to be as slow as possible to implement the salvages before you get fired. You basically are aiming for a c plus, that’s right, right. But if you own the whole value chain, you want to you want them to buy X exactly what’s gonna solve their problem. And you want to implement it as efficiently as possible. So you can point to that value. And then when the next project and the next workload and the next, you know, strategic implementation, we want to be there forever, for different reasons, right? Not because we want, we’re going as slow as possible, we want to be there by earning the right to be there over and over again. And that’s kind of how we built our business from day one. I remember like managed services, which is a great endpoint for where we want all of our solutions to end up for the right reasons. But the reason we won in like 2000 to 2003 is like, we had an agreement you can get out of in 30 days. And I think that just creates a different culture. It does. And again, the customer knowing with comfort, at the end of the day, that they’re, you’re gonna wrap your arms around them. And this way, I see Dee Burger 15:46 Yeah, and we’re not successful unless we can point to business outcomes. So this level of incentive alignment, as a business model just really has not existed. So we’re going to just maximise that and lean on that. And the market will realise, you know, the trades will realise, but most importantly, our customers will just understand that, like, just working with insight is is a different experience. Vince Menzione 16:11 So what an incredible event you’re hosting here, right? You’ve had some of the leaders in the industry here. I mean, we could talk about some of the names. We we had Kevin Pisgah, on stage, who was co hosting my event been a podcast guest as well, Michael Clark Tony Safoian 16:25 got some good dance moves. Vince Menzione 16:26 He is He is a low energy. He’s incredible. And Michael Clark as well. Yeah, from Google, to people that I admire and have worked with over the years. How should each of these tech giants think differently? And what unique value are you ultimately delivering as a solutions integrator to the market, but more importantly, to the customer? Tony Safoian 16:46 Michael Clark said it best I think Google strategy is clearly a partner attached to every opportunity, every customer, every pursuit, every workload, 100% partner attach, it is paramount in our strategy, because, again, consumption economics, this stuff doesn’t just like light up itself. And I think that’s an important realisation and an important benefit to the channel. An enterprise is different, and I think it took Google maybe a few years to figure it out. But, you know, I don’t care if you have the best technology in the world. Unless you have a channel, you have partners, you have a strategy that includes them. The last mile is where the value is. So I think that multi year transformation, Google’s realise, going from a consumer mindset to an enterprise mindset, again, plays completely to our strengths. And no partner in the world can provide more parts of the value chain of how the best Google technology lands and produces outcomes for customers than this combination. And so I think, again, we’ve created an uneven playing field, it looks really good on paper. Now we get to go execute it post amplify, which is the big Launchpad of, of really sada and Google landing and insight and sort of a TEDx sort of way. So we got to go execute now and and prove it out. Dee Burger 18:13 And I think that’s very much the case, you know, back to the question of how they should be thinking about us. It is about execution. So the, of course, Microsoft and Google are phenomenal partners. But we got many more partners, and amplify attendees we had, I had a slide on this represent roughly a third of the value of all the businesses in the United States. That’s our that’s our partner crew. They’re making unbelievable technology. Our job is to make it work for customers to be in there to drive value with customers and then to work backwards to what how do you assemble the right the right set of things, that that’s what we’ve got to do. Vince Menzione 18:50 I’m so excited to continue our partnership with ag one. Many of you know I’ve made taking a green drink supplement part of my health ritual for over 21 years now. And it has made all the difference to my health and well being about six years ago, athletic greens and now their product ag one became my go to supplement. Ag one is the first thing I take every morning to power my day. It covers all of my nutritional bases, supports my gut health gives a boost to my immunity and energy levels. If you want to take ownership of your health, try ag one and get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to drink ag one.com forward slash Vinson that’s drink ag one.com forward slash Vinson, check them out. No, you had Kevin on stage and I’ve been talking to him about this SMC business that he manages at Microsoft. I mean, the numbers are astounding. People don’t realise that mid market is really, you know, everybody clusters towards the top to the enterprise, but this mid market is really untapped. Up to under Services underserved. And being able to again, I think your model is really effective in that mid market, which, by the way, it’s it’s $100 billion opportunity for even a Microsoft. So I just think that what you’re doing there specifically, it really hits home in terms of the market penetration. Dee Burger 20:18 No question. So so if you think about the numbers we are, in our calculation, we do work with about 70% of all the businesses in United States that have $100 million in revenue or more, we do at least $1. Right. So it’s kind of a I’ve been in the system integrator world for a very long time before coming here. Those models are heavy. And you can you can land that model and about 500 customers. We can we can land our model at a much broader we have 29 That actually was sought, I haven’t done a recount. First of all, the 70% held Prasad his base, which was interesting about 70% of thought his base, and so it was already working with, but another 1000. So let’s just say we’re at 30,000 customers now, there’s a lot of things you can Vince Menzione 21:00 do. Yeah, absolutely. I think there’s 11,000, I’m going to use my what I know, I think around 11,000 enterprise, and maybe it’s 38 or 35,000, mid market customers, and just sort of that you see the market pet potential is enormous. I mean, look, Tony Safoian 21:15 we have a total of what 230 field people Yeah, like, we’d love to use our two to 3000, to be able to get to these customers. And by the way, the E commerce platform, we’ve never been able to be transactional how customers start, especially at scale. So we’re going to work with Rob and everybody else on the Google side with the API integration. We want customers to be able to buy and start however they want. And, you know, I love the ambition of creating also the best commerce experience on the website. And Google has never been able to deliver their products like that through through any channel, right on their own website, you can kind of try and buy in that kind of stuff. But that opportunity to reach 1000s of more customers globally through the commerce platform is something we’re going to definitely worked to integrate starting this year. But again, their reach is phenomenal. And we could never get that URL. Vince Menzione 22:12 Glad you talked about law call ecommerce, we’ll call that transaction marketplaces, in fact, is the terminology we’ve been using to talk about what’s going on again, the three hyperscalers. Leaning in here, Microsoft just leaned in a big way this year, AWS was sort of in lead role before that Google’s also doing some significant moves into marketplace, huge opportunity. Canalis says, we’ll do $45 billion by the end of this year 80% through the hyperscalers through marketplaces, that the experience the buying experience is happening now the millennial generation not wanting to talk to salespeople, they want to go online, they want to click three times and have a box show up. Right. That’s the way we’ve gotten we’ve gotten indoctrinated this way. What do you think now about marketplaces in their role? And how are you addressing that? Tony Safoian 23:00 I think all 80% of all enterprise software will be bought this way in about three years. So and it’s not only a you know, millennial procurement, I don’t want to talk to people construct as is even more drivers in that there’s there’s legal, there’s commercial, there’s contracting, there’s the economic benefits that are just too powerful, you know, everybody’s biggest contract is their main hyper scalar, contract, one or two or three, of course, I’m gonna push as much as I can, right and to get those benefits. So we play a critical role to add value to those transactions to package those things a little differently. And, you know, Adobe, Cisco, you know, Teradata, like with like, all these companies, right, like, we are going to be that last mile for them to, and I think onus is on us to create, you know, a value beyond just a transaction there. But Google realises, you know, this the work that dyes is doing to resell enable every part of this value chain. We’re gonna play a bigger role than ever before, in a weird way, but it’s true. Vince Menzione 24:06 Any anything else you’d like to add? Dee Burger 24:07 Totally, totally agree. I mean, we are looking at it as sort of a fact of life the way it’s gonna go. And we’re building our business around around that outcome. I Vince Menzione 24:14 think it’s brilliant. I think it’s a brilliant strategy. You talked about AI a little bit you touched on AI, and we can’t have a conversation today in 2024. Without really diving in here, right? Last year was was in credibly insightful say, right, Microsoft comes in with their partnership. Google responds, right, both organisations, you look at market valuations, pretty significant growth for both companies this year. I think a lot of it was attributed to AI, I would say, What are your thoughts on delivering on the AI promise? I Dee Burger 24:46 mean, I think the first part is the tools blow you away every time you see him. And even if you look once a week, they’ve moved so far, so we’re so so early. Everybody’s experimenting with it. Not that many people are finding direct value other than in the wild, that stunning sort of thing. You can get great pictures and things. Our job is to ultimately drive that value. Our job is to create the connection between. It’s almost, you know, I started my career, long time ago when I wrote a dinosaur to work and we focused on reengineering. Right? It was a big reengineering as don’t automate, obliterate and whoever the guy is that did reengineering. We’re going to enter a new era of AI driven, reengineering. And it comes down to how do you orient the business differently to use these tools? Vince Menzione 25:35 You have me thinking the Flintstones there for a second? Tony Safoian 25:39 pedal power? Battle power? Yeah. I mean, look, we saw Jensen on stage, we saw Pat on stage, Google with Gemini, Microsoft with copilot and, you know, the opening I partnership, etc. I mean, is there is there a more comprehensive destination for your AI execution strategy, whether you’re, you know, building models, you need a bunch of computing power or processing power the chips, or, you know, you’re deploying them through the, you know, the best prebuilt multimodal models on the planet like inside, literally has, has all of it, which is incredible. And that optionality for the base of customers is great. The bet the biggest gift to Google was the launch of Chad GPT. It unleashed the giant that has invented literally invented transformers and a lot of this technology that’s running, you know, the foundational technology for everything that’s going on. So Gemini, you know, one, Gemini 1.5. Microsoft’s not stopping, they’re not stopping. So, you know, I’m actually very, very optimistic that I think that this is going to create way more jobs and it changes. And I believe in humans plus AI, and, you know, listened to, you know, a lot of various podcasts, I think we’re going to enter a decade of the biggest economic growth in history. And I think there’s certain markets that are at an advantage to this, North America is certainly one of them, and there are others. But I think it’s our decade, and thank God for, you know, this huge leap in evolution at a time where we feel like we needed the most, right, like, so. Thank you. Thanks, open AI. Thanks, everybody. And we’re in a tremendous position to help our customers do exactly that. Vince Menzione 27:35 And as we talked about the importance of the hyper scalars, layering in this AI component makes it even more critical, right? Yeah, it’s incredible. So another topic that’s on everyone’s minds these days is security. Right? We have we’ve all experienced in one form or another, I’m sure you’ve had many clients. It’s a real issue. And it continues to be an issue. And I know insight is focused incredibly well in the security space. Wanted to spend a moment here with you d to explain your position. And what insight is doing uniquely here? Well, Dee Burger 28:09 we’re doing a few things. Again, American keep it in the same thing. We are really driving it through incident response. How do you help customers prevent it? But then how do you how do you respond to it, one of the very unique things about insight is our technical depth. We’ve been able to help multiple clients, in case studies you can never use when they’re in a very bad position. By being able to bring the level of expertise and programme management to get them out of it. We’ve got all the normal security businesses and sell security software. And we do you know, some of the pentesting there’s different types of things. But our real focus on that is to get really good at helping clients when they’re in hot water. Back to the start with client value. Go help a client be valuable forever. No transact Dee Burger 28:58 security is one of the fastest growing parts of what we do in services, both professional and soon to be managed services. Google with chronicle with beyond Corp with reCAPTCHA with their general security posture across GCP. Google workspace identity, I think Google has one of the strongest security stories on the planet. Mandiant acquisition obviously put an exclamation point on that. In 2020, for many, it essentially is being rolled into Google proper. So again, by being an insight customer, you have access to all of that. And we’re going to leverage your scale your sock operations to bring that Google layer Google services Google capabilities to to all of our joint customers as well. And it is not it’s one of the areas that has, you know, experienced zero budget cuts in terms of customer investment. Vince Menzione 29:53 So this is the Ultimate Partner. We talk about partnering and obviously you are a pinnacle partner and both of you are Pinnacle partners in Europe. On right, and now together just this massive power, power force for our industry, but you also work with other organisations, right? We talk about customers, and we talk about other partners. So is hoping for our listeners and viewers, what is your perspective? And what would you say to them now to optimise for success working with your organisation, Dee Burger 30:21 you know, we are, again, we’re gonna be customer first, right? And we’re gonna be really, really valuable to our customers, sorry, to our partners, because we understand our customers context. And we can help position their solutions and their technologies and wages going to be valuable. Going way past the idea of let’s just tell them everything we can make it useful, make it valuable, make it long term. And so the partnerships that are going to work best for us are people that can work with us to ultimately contextualise their technology to make it useful to make it valuable. And that’ll be our continued focus. Vince Menzione 30:59 Tony, from your perspective, working with other partners? Tony Safoian 31:02 Look, I think, again, you know, two years ago, we were you know, we only sold what Google sold. And now we have 4050 plus marketplace enabled ISVs that really round out the ceiling of the solution set inside has 6000 others that we are figuring out and merging in some strategies and you know, going sort of focused in other strategies to this point, and you know, Sandy coming in as our CRO year and a half ago, really reoriented, again, exactly the way that he talks about a Joyce talks about it. We got to lead in our customers. Sandy has a slide she showed this week to our own team said when I first came in, I was interviewing customers are like, their response was like, What do you think it’s not, you know, how they’re like SAT is extremely accessible and responsive. But not top of mind. You know, and I think that’s a problem, right? So we got to all orient ourselves such that we become indispensable to our customers that they think of insight, insight, SATA, SATA all the time, because we’re in there, and we’re adding value, we’re part of their strategic planning, we’re part of their budget planning, we’re part of their security strategy planning, were part of their, you know, helping them prep for board meetings, like we just got to be in there. And, and the PullThru will come and the customer relationship will grow. We were both challenged with and again, varying degrees of success and different customers. But the likes to say like, you know, we do $1 with, you know, X percent of customers, but many of them is just $1. And for us to it’s like we have some of the biggest customers biggest companies in the world for which we do one thing. And that’s terrible, right? Because that’s how they think of us and the only way they think of us. So we’ve got a lot of work to do jointly to change that. Obviously, this coming together helps. We want we want a significant amount of their love attention, mindshare, wallet share, but in a way that earns it every day. I Vince Menzione 33:12 know you both work with ISPs, independent software vendors, I think about you both as being superhighways to the customer for those organisations in many respects. For partners that want to lean in with you, what should they do next? Tony Safoian 33:26 I think new partnerships, to that degree are are hard. Insight has a great platform for onboarding those, I think we’re going to adapt that platform. But I think it’s about solving a unique problem that fits into a solution pillar. And is hopefully if not marketplace enabled today, let us help you do that we do great. We have great services around marketplace enablement for new ISPs that are not on those marketplaces. And then you have to, you know, make the economics work, which isn’t, which isn’t that hard, and then bring customers with you. I mean, that always helps. You know, Tony Safoian 34:04 it’s simple. You want to do it. Let’s talk about a customer. Vince Menzione 34:09 Well, I want to thank you both. This has been a real privilege to be in the room with both of you and hear the story about how you came together two amazing individuals and friends. And I want to thank you for spending time with our viewers and listeners. Any closing thoughts going into 2024? Through 2024, that you’d like to share with this group of listeners and viewers? Tony Safoian 34:29 Well, first and foremost, thank you. So great to be back on talking about, you know, completely different trajectory. I think last time we spoke this is not on the table at all. And and you know, I don’t want to, you know, overstate this at all, but I don’t think I can like, honestly think this combination is it’s the biggest thing to have happened to Google Cloud, probably in the history of Google Cloud as far as partnerships go. Inside. It just made the biggest investment anyone’s ever made in entering the Google Cloud ecosystem that’s a compliment to Google a compliment to sada but also, of course, you know, insights vision, and it’s one of the biggest things have happened in the ecosystem period when you know, when a when a 40 year old company says, you know, I want to start a new practice they don’t say like that I’m typically say, I want to be number one tomorrow. And, you know, that’s what insights done. But thank you for this platform vents, keep doing what you’re doing a really an important part of our community. Vince Menzione 35:28 You know, I think about executive commitment and closing, and this was extreme executive commitment. On behalf of both organisations coming together. I want to thank our viewers and listeners for joining Ultimate Partner to amazing leaders, D Berger, Tony Sivan, and the insight team. So great to have you both. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Vince. Thank you. Vince Menzione 35:53 Thanks so much for listening to this episode of ultimate guide to partner, online and Ultimate Partner.com. If you liked this episode, I’d be thrilled if you left us up to a five star review on either Apple or Spotify. This helps us to continue to feed your amazing guests. Also, please check out subscribe to our new YouTube channel, ultimate Bart? We’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Guide to partner | |||
| 209 – 7 Keys to Unlocking “Pinnacle Partner Success” (Even When They Pivot) | 18 Feb 2024 | 00:11:38 | |
Ultimate Partner® Special
Join host Vince Menzione as he delves into the essential principles for achieving success in the dynamic partnership landscape, with a special focus on strategies tailored for Microsoft collaborations. In this episode, you’ll discover the transformative power of a growth mindset, leadership principles, and the keys to executing a winning partner strategy. Explore firsthand accounts of partner success with Microsoft, learn about branding essentials, and understand the crucial role of agility in staying ahead in today’s ever-evolving industry. What You’ll Learn
I am thrilled to welcome you into a world that delivers unparalleled insights, best practices, and essential information to unlock your potential as a partner and propel you towards your most ambitious goals. This is a world crafted for partners like you. Our journey began seven years ago with a vision to empower partners in the complex world of tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and AWS. It started with a podcast. Today, Ultimate Partner’s mission is clear and bold, “empower every individual, organization, and partner to achieve more through successful partnering. As an Ultimate Partner Experience Member, you will unlock a growing treasure trove of resources. Dive into recordings of our events, exclusive podcast episodes, and a wealth of unique content, all designed to enhance your Cloud Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy and ecosystem growth. We are in our early days and expect much more to come. As an innovator, being part of this experience is more than joining a community; it’s about integrating into an ecosystem brimming with innovation and collaboration. Here, shared experiences and insights are your gateway to progress, offering connections with peers and resources to elevate your Cloud GTM strategy. This is your platform to engage, seek support, and contribute to our collective growth. I’m thrilled to welcome you to this journey. Let’s navigate, thrive, and redefine success in the tech partnership landscape together. Welcome to the future, Vince Menzione CEO, Ultimate Partner LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Now on YouTube Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Many Typos SUMMARY KEYWORDSSummary Keywords partner, microsoft, principles, maniacal focus, success, organisation, year, growth mindset, mindset, ultimate guide, grounded, ag, apply, partnership, brand, satya, amazing, internally, work, competing Vince Menzione 0:00 Welcome to or welcome back to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzione, your host. And in November of 2023 30, leaders congregated to a packed house of partners to help spark the ecosystem in this time of rapid change and transformation. If you were there in person, you felt the electricity and excitement in the room. But if you couldn’t join us in person, I still wanted to share this incredible rich content with you here. So I hope you enjoy this amazing session, as much as I enjoyed bringing it to you. Vince Menzione 0:44 I am, I feel so grateful and so blessed? For this moment. And I just want to thank all of you for being here for supporting us. I wanted to take a few minutes this morning, before we kick into an amazing conversation just to ground us. And I don’t know how many of you follow along with me on my podcast and my journey. But, you know, I’ve talked about my transformation several years, several years in the business, running partner organisations, both on the partner side, and then almost a decade at Microsoft, and then 200 podcast episodes where I ask every single guest, what do the best do? And when you see failure, what do you wish you had said to those partners that failed partnering with you. And so from that body of knowledge that laboratory, I’ve boiled down a set of operating principles that I believe, make success. And they’re also the ones that lead to failure. And so I just wanted to ground us because I think it’ll, today is about the how, and to get to the how the tactics, we have to start with principles, we have to lead with principles. And so I’m just going to spend a few minutes here talking about a set of operating principles of successful partnering. And I believe there’s seven, you could say, there’s more, there’s less, but I’ve grounded in on what I call the internal victory, and then the partnership victory. And I’m going to discuss each one of these in a few mil. This could be an hour long presentation, and I’m going to do it in about five minutes. How’s that? All right, because I, I’m not gonna and by the way, this was a whole deck and it’s one slide. So I’m kind of proud that we got it down to that. But we talked a little bit about mindset when we started out the day yesterday. And this amazing leader, Satya Nadella who’s probably one of the greatest CEOs, legendary CEOs, at least of my of last decade, maybe even my career history. When Satya, I was I was at Microsoft during the bomber days and then the early Satya days. And the first three things that this gentleman did. He just got a copy of the book Mindset by Carol Dweck, if you haven’t read that book, I think it’s a great read on mindfulness mindset, growth, mindset versus scarcity, limited mindset. And that was a great opportunity for us to get grounded in the principle of growth mindset as an organisation. The second thing he did, and I mentioned this yesterday, the video of Michael Gervais, Michael Gervais, he was instrumental in helping set up the leadership team at Microsoft to move to a growth mindset. You see, these were Alpha leaders who were competing for resources, rewards, and, and recognition. And so those people were fighting and competing, in fact, built by firms competing against each other. And he he’s knocked down all those barriers. Mindset became a principle within Microsoft. And you go, wow, that’s like kind of a woowoo thing like we as leaders in our organisations, and to be successful partnering need to have a growth mindset, your CEO, your C suite, need to get there. And one of the principles we work through with the podcast. And the work that I do is around this and expect to see some more work even with Michael hopefully in the future. But mindfulness and mindset are critical to success while partnering and I believe that’s foundational, it’s a foundational element. And if it’s not there, Vince Menzione 4:15 it’s not going to be you’re not going to reach your pinnacle of success. Vince Menzione 4:20 I’m so excited to continue to partner with ag one. Many of you know I made taking a green drink supplement, part of my health ritual for 21 years now. And it has made all the difference to my health and well being about six years ago, athletic greens, and now their product ag one became my go to supplement. Ag one is the first thing I take every morning to power my day. It covers all of my nutritional bases, supports my gut health gives a boost to my immunity and energy levels. If you want to take ownership of your health, try ag one Vince Menzione 5:00 Get a free one year supply of vitamin D, and five free travel packs with your first purchase, go to drink ag one.com, forward slash Vince M, that’s drink ag one.com forward slash, then m, check them out. The second operating principles are on commitment. I talked about this yesterday, like, we all work in this partnership world. And sometimes we’re siloed. Because our executive teams aren’t necessarily committed. Commitment means a lot of things, it means from the C suite on down to the selling floor, everybody speaks partner, it means that the CFO is committing resources, it means the CMO is in lockstep with you on messaging and go to market. And it means that the selling organisation is selling with, through and CO selling in the partner journey. And so getting there is extremely important to success. The third principle I like to talk about is having a shared vision, and your partnership with Microsoft. I believe that this is fundamental Microsoft works off of this vision concept. And I believe that getting there is critical. It’s not just about the tactics, it’s not just about a situational relationship, it’s about having a long term vision for success and outlining what that looks like. And using that in within your own organisation, to rally people around what you’re trying to do, and how you’re trying to drive the growth of your organisation, and to get your partner on the other side on board. And we do visioning as part of the work that we do. But that’s an important principle, you need to get that down, you need to have a true vision for success. Well, both in terms of your partner strategy internally, as well as with your your key partners. So that’s when you get internal victory, you get it right, internally, you have growth mindset, you have extreme commitment, and you put vision and your values upfront. Vince Menzione 6:55 When you lock arms across the other side, if you notice in the middle of that diagram, mutual trust, if you don’t have trust, you don’t have a partnership. Vince Menzione 7:03 When trust is out of the room, there’s no there’s no oxygen in the room, there’s no partnership. And if you feel it sometimes don’t I mean, you’re in these meetings, and it’s not quite the way it should be. And you know, you’re just doing it, you’re just going through the motions, you have to have true mutual trust, before you lock arms with another organisation. So that’s a principle. It’s actually the oxygen in the room. And then when we move over to the other side, we need to do some things. We need to apply maniacal focus to the execution. You see, when I was a GM at Microsoft, I’d have all these meetings, we’d all get in the room. And we talk about like, yeah, we’re going to do this, we’d have all the slides, we’d say this is what our journey is gonna look like. These are the actions that we’re going to drive, this is our mutual go to market strategy. This is how much sales we’re going to drive. And then we leave Inspire. And I go to my PDM, three months later. So whatever happened to that partner, Vince Menzione 7:56 crickets, we didn’t execute. We didn’t apply maniacal focus, the execution where the best partners, and their former CEO is actually here. Today, I don’t know if I can’t, I can’t see everybody in the room. But they used to come to Microsoft with their book, every year it inspire. And they would have, they basically come to the table and say, This is what we did with you this year. And they’d show us the results. And they did that every day. But at the end of the year, it was palpable that they actually came and they demonstrated, this was your blueprint, this is what you were trying to achieve. This is how we achieved it together, applying maniacal focus to your success. Brand. You know this gentleman, if you were here yesterday, dux Raymond size, a great friend, he’s been on my podcast three or four times now, he does this better than anybody I talked about building your brand. And your brand story. You see, you’ve got to get your marketing really good both with internally and with your you know, to your customers, but your go to market message with the partner. And then the third piece is you need to brand back to Microsoft, you see, you’re trying to be a shiny quarter in a bucket full of shiny quarters, even if you’re a significant partner. And you know, you’re going to do more for Microsoft than anybody else. And you’ve got all these competencies and great solutions, you need to brand yourself. So branding is a critical component. And we’re gonna have a session on that today. So I just want to make sure that we’re all grounded on modern marketing principles and showing up and especially how it aligns to the new world that we live in today. The sixth principle is about delivering results, you say it’s okay to say you’re going to do it, but then you have to go delivered against it. And that’s if you’ve applied maniacal focus, if you’ve done everything you need to do on the go to market side and branding both internally and to your customers and to your partners. You get that flywheel going. That flywheel of success is where you will build momentum and that momentum will continue and then you feed into the other systems to say, this is what we did. This is how we did it together. And then you’re applying maniacal focus on it because you’re meeting Vince Menzione 10:00 regularly and discussing it. And every meeting you have with a seller and Microsoft, you’re discussing those success stories. You’re saying this is the slide that says what I liked that partner that showed up with the book, you show up to every meeting and demonstrate why you are relevant. Need to do that. And then we’ve done all these things were wildly successful as a Microsoft partner, right? Vince Menzione 10:24 We’ve done everything right. We’re at the pinnacle. We’re a top cosell Partner of the Year. And guess what Microsoft just did? They pivoted. They just changed everything right. They changed their priorities. They changed how they’re compensated in their people. They might have introduced a few things this year, like AI, like marketplace, and this whole new thing around SMC and what do you have to do now? You have to apply agility to your business. You need to be relevant, you need to stay relevant you need to thrive to survive, or you will be marginalised. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of ultimate guide to partner, online and Ultimate Guide to bartering.com. If you liked this episode, I’d be thrilled if you left us up to a five star review on either Apple or Spotify. This helps us to continue to feed your amazing guests. Also, please check out subscribe to our new YouTube channel, ultimate bark. We’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Guide to partner | |||
| 208 – Unlocking Ultimate Partner Success to Thrive in the Microsoft Ecosystem | 11 Feb 2024 | ||
Ultimate Partner® Special Interview
Join Vince Menzione in this special episode of The Ultimate Partner, where he shares insights from an exclusive interview conducted on the Partnerships Unraveled podcast hosted by Rick van den Bosch. Explore the intricate realm of tech partnerships and ecosystems, delving into Microsoft’s dynamic partner ecosystem, mid-market focus, and AI investments. Discover invaluable perspectives on Microsoft’s channel strategy and growth opportunities alongside expert advice on leveraging marketplace opportunities when partnering with Microsoft. Uncover the crucial role of partners in Microsoft’s AI strategy and explore potential opportunities in this burgeoning field. Don’t miss out on this enriching episode packed with actionable insights and expert guidance. What You’ll Learn
I am thrilled to welcome you into a world that delivers unparalleled insights, best practices, and essential information to unlock your potential as a partner and propel you towards your most ambitious goals. This is a world crafted for partners like you. Our journey began seven years ago with a vision to empower partners in the complex world of tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and AWS. It started with a podcast. Today, Ultimate Partner’s mission is clear and bold, “empower every individual, organization, and partner to achieve more through successful partnering. As an Ultimate Partner Experience Member, you will unlock a growing treasure trove of resources. Dive into recordings of our events, exclusive podcast episodes, and a wealth of unique content, all designed to enhance your Cloud Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy and ecosystem growth. We are in our early days and expect much more to come. As an innovator, being part of this experience is more than joining a community; it’s about integrating into an ecosystem brimming with innovation and collaboration. Here, shared experiences and insights are your gateway to progress, offering connections with peers and resources to elevate your Cloud GTM strategy. This is your platform to engage, seek support, and contribute to our collective growth. I’m thrilled to welcome you to this journey. Let’s navigate, thrive, and redefine success in the tech partnership landscape together. Welcome to the future, Vince Menzione CEO, Ultimate Partner LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Now on YouTube Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Many Typos SUMMARY KEYWORDSmicrosoft, partner, organisations, ai, marketplace, channel, customers, ecosystem, market, selling, work, recognise, model, bit, big, company, created, opportunity, partnership, cloud Rick van den Bosch 0:02 Vince, how are you doing today? Vince Menzione 0:03 Rick, it is so such a pleasure and an honour to be here with you today. Thank you so much for hosting me. Likewise, Rick van den Bosch 0:10 we actually recorded the podcast earlier together, but then it was on Ultimate Partner. So I’m very excited to continue the conversation today and the dive even further in the world of ecosystems on the channel today. Vince Menzione 0:25 You know, I love I love unravelled because I think it’s a great way to decode and talk about what we’re experiencing in our world in our lives today. So excited for this conversation. Rick van den Bosch 0:34 Likewise, I’m super curious. Also, for our listeners, Finns, who might not know you yet, could you elaborate a bit more on how you got acquainted with partnerships, and you’ve had an impressive career there. So I think it’s definitely interesting to learn a bit more there. So Vince Menzione 0:51 Rick, as you mentioned, I’m the CEO of ultimate partner and the host of The Ultimate Partner podcast over 200 episodes. Now we’re in the 200 range now, which is kind of crazy. I started my career in the early days of wireless computing describe this careers for successful business transformations. I’m on number five now. And I started off carrying a bag as a salesperson company that was in the early days of wireless computing before Wi Fi. We were pioneers in that technology. We I use partners to build an influence strategy to help us grow our market share. We went public on the Toronto exchange, we had a successful exit that companies now Zebra Technologies, I followed one of the leaders to go to a turnaround company that was at the brink of bankruptcy. And Golden Gate capital had spun us out. And I built a new business. And that’s where I started into the partnership role to really fully I was asked to build the government business. We were Panasonic’s largest competitor, Panasonic was the market leader in selling into public safety and military. And we had a product that was equally as good. I built the channel strategy, I went down to Washington, DC, I aligned with several the largest technology partnership organisations and I build that business incrementally X. Just we had, we had tremendous success. I was the growth engine, we sold the company to another company, General Dynamics large defence contractor, it was at that point that Microsoft recruited me. And for almost a decade I ran Microsoft’s we didn’t call it ecosystem at the time yet we call the partner strategy. But I ran the ecosystem for $4.6 billion business within Microsoft for almost 10 years. And I learned quite a bit about partnering and ecosystems and all the different types of partnerships and, and what that meant to building a successful strategy for a large tech giant like Microsoft. I left at the end of 2016. And I was convicted more than ever. That organisation struggled, I saw the partners that got it right. I realise a lot of organisations still struggle to the 400,000 Microsoft partners in that ecosystem, which is the same ecosystem that all the big tech giants really care about. It’s really one ecosystem. And I started this podcast Ultimate Partner, I started doing consulting work for those organisations. I went back inside for two years to the largest software company nonprofit. And I recognise that the C suite level, there was still a lack of understanding and alignment of our partnerships. And so when I left during COVID, I was convicted more than ever, that we needed to solve for this. And so I’ve made it my mission now, to help organisations achieve their greatest results through successful partnering individuals and organisations, I want to empower the world of partnering. And it’s I’m on a 10 year journey, a 10 year mission to help solve for that with ultimate partner. And we’ve expanded now from just being a podcast, to doing digital and live events. We’re going to be building a collective of organisations we want, we want to invite everybody that is that cares about the hyper scalar ecosystem to be part of that collective, because we feel that they need to have a stronger voice, working with the big hyper scalars. So that’s where I’m a mission to help solve. I won’t stop until the chief partner officer is that equal footing with the CRO, the CFO and the CMO and the organisation at the C suite. And that’s that’s where we hope to get to. Rick van den Bosch 4:23 I love that. And that’s super impressive Korean partnerships. And I’m very curious what you think I can totally imagine in the back in the days already at Microsoft probably it wasn’t called ecosystem yet. But I can imagine Microsoft is always the front runner and everything partner related. Really were a lot of things that were actually already ecosystem, even though we were mentioning it like that yet. Like, could you maybe give some examples what you see right now what are very hot topics. I mean, the market which actually maybe Microsoft was already starting to work or really laid the foundations for at that time. Vince Menzione 4:58 In fact, we can Hold the network back then. But I’m going to back I’m going to back up, because I feel like Microsoft created it at the very beginning. We might you and I talked about this once before. But when Bill Gates came down here to Florida to Boca Raton, to meet with IBM when they created the PC, and they were going to buy his operating system, he said, I’m not going to sell it to you. I’m going to licence it to you. And they also agreed to licence the hardware components that sparked an ecosystem that created trillions and trillions of dollars of new incremental revenue in our industry. And it created Michael Dell started building PCs in his dorm room, and Compaq computer got started. An organisation large reseller organisations in the United States CD W and some of these others started marketing started delivering magazines and doing direct marketing to sell you PCs and networking bars were created. The whole ecosystem was really spawned from that moment in time back in like 1981. Microsoft recognise that and they nurtured that they realised they couldn’t sell direct, they realise their where their strengths were. And they didn’t want to have 100,000 salespeople out there, they realised the leverage and the value of the partner network that they call it back in the day. And they also started to divide and conquer, like, okay, these parts they, they bucket ties partners into specialisations, they recognise that there were MSPs, and si guys, and ISVs, and GSI, guys, and so on, and learning partners and all like, and they started nurturing and building a whole partner, organisation around it. And they’ve done a better job than anybody at aligning that and aligning salespeople to the success of the partner ecosystem rather than dividing it up and siloing it. And Microsoft is probably the most, I think it’s either Gartner or McKinsey that says Microsoft’s the most complex hybrid organisation in the world. But they’ve figured out a way to make this all work and integrate it so that people a salesperson cares about selling a partner, there’s partner people supporting it, there’s partner development managers, and they have a division of labour. And then the organisation I think, is very unique in supporting that ecosystem. And then the Microsoft inspire Conference, which used to be the worldwide partner conference was the the seminal event that everybody went to every year. You know, I know that I know that you have some family members that participated in that I know they came, they came over to the US to go to that conference every year. It was it was the happening. And then COVID changed all this right. Now we went virtual, we went digital. And it’s a shame in some respects, that that ecosystem hasn’t gotten the nurturing and love that it needed before, which is where we came in, we came in and helped support that we just hosted a live event in person. We called it ultimate partner live spark the ecosystem because we felt like that nurturing needed to happen. And it was an overwhelming success. I mean, I’m still getting people reaching out to me, telling me how amazing they thought the event was. Yeah, Rick van den Bosch 8:06 absolutely. Like, I can only tell from my perspective, but everyone who is interested in Microsoft in my network knew about the event. And I also saw it everywhere throughout LinkedIn. And I’m actually super curious. And I think that’s actually so interesting to share with our listeners as well. I just said it already. But Microsoft is always the front runner, when you’re in general, when you’re embarking ecosystem, we are always looking at how is Microsoft doing it? Because we know that they have already tried and tested so many things. And if they launch it to the big public, then that’s also where they are all in and moving forward there. And I was super curious about that. Since would you like to share a bit more about the event, both in terms of how it was but also definitely what are the top priorities right now of Microsoft leadership? Because I think we can learn a lot from that in when we’re building a channel or partner ecosystem. Yeah, I’m Vince Menzione 8:59 so happy to share. You know, I’ve described this time we’ve been living through is the tectonic shifts right. We’ve been seeing in our world or lives geopolitically, all the things have been going on COVID accelerated transformation. Organisations invest invested heavy, but then we had the economic headwinds, and they backed off. We’ve seen, you know, tremendous layoffs in the last 18 months or so in the tech sector, which also has precipitated doing more with less. So I now do the job of three people. Microsoft did that too. By the way. They said like, well, we need to do this. So we came in and we said, You know what, you’re not doing a live event. I had reached out one of the I’ve been blessed to have some several leaders from Microsoft participate in Ultimate Partner. We’ve been privileged to have some of Microsoft’s top partner executives come use our platform is the place to tell the story. announce the new programmes and things like that. So I was able to get some of those leaders in a room and it was it was two days. 30 speakers 16 sessions by both, you know, both keynotes, fireside chats and panel discussions, workshop type discussions, where we took an align to the three major priorities Microsoft announced at their inspire conference. Of course, AI was priority number one, right? I mean, Microsoft’s investments in open AI and what they’re doing with Chet, which at GBT and copilot. I mean, they’re, they’re leading the way. Sati has been visionary in this respect. And they really, it’s making a difference you just see in the stock price these days, the other big announcement they made, I mean, AI is going to infuse into every product and every technology, and they want everybody to build with them. The second one was around marketplaces. And we’ve been talking about this year as sort of the marketplace moment. AWS was out of the gate a little bit early investing in marketplace, selling, of course, coming from their retail background. And Microsoft is playing fast catch up. And this year, they made announcements and said, If you want to do co selling with us, by the way, Microsoft between Microsoft, Google and Amazon, they’re about $300 billion in durable cloud budgets. That means that those three hyperscalers have went to gone to the enterprise customers and mid market customers and said, Buy these agreements for our cloud. And so they own those budgets. And they allow those clients to burn down those agreements by buying software from their marketplaces. So they’ve created a new channel. This channel with marketplaces is a new way for ISVs. And SI is to sell their solutions to Microsoft, Google and Amazon customers. So we we focused in on that marketplace moment. We had the leader of the marketplace organisation Anthony jofa, Joseph Joseph in the room, and we did a fireside chat talking about the benefits of marketplace. So organisations are really it’s still new. For a lot of them. I feel like it was where we were 10 or 12 years ago with the cloud. People were kind of resisting the change. But the change is happening. And in fact, Canalis did a study. Jim, our friend Jay McBain was part of that organisation. They said $45 billion will flow through marketplaces by the end of 2025. They under call that Jay said they under call that it’s going to be more like 50. And then tackle IO, which is one of the big marketplace software companies is predicting. By the end of 2026, we will see $100 billion in sales and transactions flow through these marketplaces between the big three. So we need to get out you need to get on the bus or get on the train. Because it’s taking off and you have to we have to embrace that, right. That’s the agility component of great partnerships and organisations. And then the third area of focus is really around the mid market. And I was privileged that the president of Microsoft small, medium and corporate accounts, which is essentially its Midmark, its mid market and SMB business. He was he was my keynote, he came in in a big way and supported the event, and really sparked the conversations and that mid market opportunity is huge. I know our friend Jay was talking about Jay again. But our friend Jay and Canalis did some study and some studies on the mid market opportunity and it’s in the trillions of dollars. And Microsoft alone. They do about $75 billion dollars a year in that mid market. And it’s only 40% penetrated for partners. So there’s a huge I’m calling it the acre diamonds like partners that are a lot we know this right? A lot of organisations only want to focus on the very big organisations, those organisations get saturated at some point, right, everybody’s calling on this mid market opportunity is huge. So it’s the third it’s the third pillar for Microsoft this year. And we brought in the leadership to speak to partners about how to be more successful selling into that market. So we recovered all three all the sessions revolved around those three pillars with Microsoft. I’m so excited to continue our partnership with ag one. Many of you know I’ve made taking a green drink supplement part of my health ritual for over 21 years now. And it has made all the difference to my health and well being about six years ago, athletic greens and now their product ag one became my go to supplement. Ag one is the first thing I take every morning to power my day. It covers all of my nutritional bases, supports my gut health gives a boost to my immunity and energy levels. If you want to take ownership of your health, try ag one and get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to drink ag one.com forward slash Vinson that’s drink ag one.com forward slash Vinson, check them out. Rick van den Bosch 14:46 I think that’s super interesting and also very similar to conversation. I hear from a lot of vendors that we speak to regularly in terms of what everyone is talking about and we know we need to do something with it and that’s why I would love to dive a bit deeper into the specific three key points. And I’m actually going backwards from the one you ended with. Like I think that’s so interesting right now maybe first question, some clarification on mid market. So is that do they call it mid market? But is it is it a combination of SMB and mid market and you should companies together? And secondly, why do you think that area of SMB is so important than why some a company like Microsoft is so heavily investing in that area? Well, Vince Menzione 15:29 like I said, the top of the the top of the pyramid, the enterprise organisations, which represents about 11,000, top organisations, you know, the big tech, the big organisations, the Coca Cola is of the world, the General Motors, all those big organisations. Like I said, they’re dominated by big GSI is global systems integrators, big projects, long sales cycles, it’s hard to move through those hard to navigate, and it’s crowded, it’s crowded at the top, in this bid market segment. I’ll do Microsoft’s numbers here. They have about 38,000, I’ll round it up. 38,000 accounts. Right, that’s, that’s a bigger, that’s a bigger chunk. Yeah, they just and they haven’t been good before at being focused in this area. Microsoft, used Microsoft as the example. I think everybody’s the same. And in terms of tech giants, they they had a different operating model for each of the their, what they call operating units. So if you went to the lat tam region, or you went to AIPAC, or you came over to a mesa where you are, you find a different engagement model it there wasn’t any universal Tality it was hard to navigate. And it was hard to work with the teams and those teams were not as partner centric. They were just worried about selling licences and selling what they had in the in their bag. Were enterprise knew it, they had to work with partners. They have they’ve changed the model. Now they’ve centralised all the resources. So in the Microsoft world, they’ve taken the 6000 employees across every industry in every geography at Microsoft healthcare name, all the industries enable the geographies. And now they report directly into this one individual Kevin P skirt. And they have a regional model. They they have three regions, the Americas, EMEA and the APAC region. And those three models. They also have a corporate vice president structured, but they’re centralising. They’re creating a methodology across. And they’re also welcoming and partners more, and they recognise that they had a gap here. And so they’re investing heavily. In fact, Microsoft 75% Of all the channel incentives for Microsoft this year, are going into that into that business 75%. So it tells you, they’ve made a huge commitment here. And like I said, there’s 38,000. And then at the SMB level, there’s 150 million customers at the SMB level worldwide. So huge opportunity for growth, and Microsoft’s not going to touch those SMB customers at all directly. So the huge opportunity for the channel to go. Again, this acre of diamonds and great opportunities for growth. Think about taking an organisation, any organisation of any size, and implementing AI, or all these other rich technologies, helping other helping ISVs and other SAS software companies get to reach to those customers and stitching it all together. Like we like to talk about the fact that customer doesn’t just buy one, one vendor, they put together a solution, they’re solving a business problem. And it requires multiple organisations to come together to do that. So there’s this huge opportunity in the work that you and I do to help solve for that, I think I think I mean, it’s it’s such a great opportunity for growth for all of us, Rick. Yeah, Rick van den Bosch 18:56 100%. And I think very impressive in terms of putting your money where your mouth is like aligning 75% of your incentives to that part of the market. I think that that’s a really big move. And something that we all in partnership should be aware of, because Microsoft like search, in my opinion, is the most brilliant strategic mind out there. So he won’t be doing that without some very thorough thought behind making such a move. Like I’m interested in the piece there like so we have mid market and SMB. And then I can imagine mid market is probably large enough that some of the direct sales of Mark, Microsoft’s can work on that but they’ll do a park assist play, but from what I understand SMB will be a pure channel play. So both the selling and the implementation and everything needs to be done by the channel. Vince Menzione 19:42 What they’ve done in the mid market is they call it corporate accounts. So these corporate accounts, these 38,000 customers, they have they have a one to many, so they have a direct sales rep. They have a swarm basically they’ve created a pod around those customers. So there’s technical resources, they’re selling resources, and there’s partnering resources supporting a group of customers. And the ratio, we’re in enterprises, maybe like one to five, one to seven, you know, one, one rep for seven customers, it’s more like a one to 25, or one to 50 model, depending on the market, and the specificity of the customer. So they are directly supported. But again, if you’re, if you’re calling on 50 accounts, and in the course of a year, and you have a big book of business to drive, you’re not going to do that yourself. You need transactional partners that are going to help sell the software and the licences, you’re going to need systems integrators to help implement support, project management, do all those things. And you’re going to need ISVs that are going to bring bring now they’re going to bring their marketplace transactable offers. So think about all of the SAS software companies, you want to get into that marketplace, because you want the sellers over here to say, Oh, you have a backup and recovery solution. This is the one you should use. And they are by the way, they’re starting to use AI internally, to be able to track the vendors and who’s being the most successful and who has the best customer SAT scores and the like. So I as a seller now have at my disposal a whole toolkit and also, you know, pane of glass that tells me who I need to bring in and who can best support me on those sales. So again, this whole partnering strategy is just critical to success. Yeah, Rick van den Bosch 21:28 it’s all super connected to each other. I think what also in the tying is a bit more to the marketplace point, which is also very interesting. One of the words that struck me was like a little bit of reluctance, see which I also really know this in the channel because we’re all a bit scared because what Amazon of course did in the retail sector was cut off the middlemen and go direct to customer. Yes, so I can imagine some of the reluctance is coming from that angle from specifically the channel. But what how do you see that the channel is being because from an ISV perspective, it makes a lot of sense immediately marketplace like you can bundle it, it’s easier to buy from a customer perspective with how do you see them tying in the channel? And also, what do you think like, for companies looking at that, and also trying to get their channel involved there as an ISP to skill operations? What like, what are a bit of the arguments why it’s also very relevant for the channel actually to to collaborate there? Vince Menzione 22:24 Yeah. Well, you know, the channels. I mean, we talked about the, the Boca Raton moment, the channel has had to evolve, right? Because if you’re following the big tech giant, you know, your models have changed, right? He’s there used to be all of the incentives, I was very close to Microsoft’s channel incentives programme. So I know the numbers about what we spent every year. And it was in the trillions of dollars. It was it was it was the it was the I’m sorry, it was in the billions of dollars, not the trillions of dollars, it was it was the one of the largest line items, in fact, in terms of channel incentives. And that shifted, though, it’s still there. But it shifted, it shifted to driving the right behaviours. And Microsoft will continue to do that. Right as, as we talked about with these channel incentives. Marketplace, if you’re if you’re in the channel, and you’re used to a model that was different, and you were making more money doing something else, and all of a sudden Microsoft or someone else imposes this new thing. You’re a little bit reluctant, right? But there’s other opportunities for growth, right? So you have to look at and say, I might make a little bit less here, but I can make more here. And you’re starting to see this evolution of the channel. Some of them, one of them here in the United States insight is, you know, I would say they’re on their forward leaning in terms of what they’ve been doing. They’ve been evolving their business to compete, they’ll do the transaction work, they’ll provide all the other services and resale and everything. But they are leaning more into the Accenture’s and GSI world a little bit more. And in fact, they made a major purchase just recently, of Google’s largest reseller and system integrator partner SADA Systems. So you see that you see that world evolving to right, where they’re morphing their business models, and they’re embracing marketplace. Some of these organisations again, you mentioned, the reluctance, working with Amazon looking saying, hey, you know, we know how Amazon operates in the retail world, are they going to do the same thing here? And I would say proceed with caution. I would say Microsoft will continue to be the Microsoft of old in terms of embracing their partners. But they are creating this value chain that says we are creating we’re creating value here because we have signed up these customers already. We’re working at the C suite level, by the way, those Mac agreements and cloud agreements that they the three hold. Those are negotiated at the CFO level these organisations they’re not in the line of business, but it makes it easier now to take removes a lot Under the friction from the process, so you don’t have to go find budget to go buy your software, you just have to find a customer that likes your software, and has access to a Mac agreement. So it changes the whole model up. And hopefully it will drive, it’ll drive better behaviour. And the channel organisations are going to evolve accordingly the same way, the same way the world evolved 12 years ago with the cloud, right? Everybody was selling Dell computers and targets bags back in those days, they still do. But nobody was selling cloud, they were like, What is this cloud thing? And it looks like it’s a direct a direct model, and you’re gonna buy directly from the hyper scalar? Well, that’s changed as well, we we’ve all recognised that that’s created more value for these organisations to not only sell the cloud, but also wraparound services around that. And I think we’ll see the same thing with marketplace. Yeah, 100%, Rick van den Bosch 25:49 I think we could do a full extra episode on the consumption based model. And indeed, how it works with actually the hyperscalers getting in at the sea level, having huge contracts where you can highly benefit as an ISV. Because it’s almost like Microsoft or Amazon is gonna pay you for the contract. But it’s with credits that the customer builds up, etc. It’s super, super interesting, right? And Vince Menzione 26:11 it won’t Yeah, and I want to just note here too, because we talked about the channel, right? It’s not going to replace the channel, the model today, at least not in the near term, it becomes another channel, right? It becomes another channel to the customer and the customer by various ways. And you just have to be agile enough to recognise that. Yeah, Rick van den Bosch 26:32 absolutely. I think one last question around the marketplaces like the examples and deeds of, of insight, for example, like joining the marketplace, and working more around that those are almost what I would call like the GSI, sort of really big Fars, or the DMR, almost direct market resellers. But for the SMB channel partner, do you also see a role there for that marketplace or less, so? Vince Menzione 26:56 No, just as much. So I mean, maybe maybe at a smaller scale, but these organisations are going to provide professional services, and support customers, uniquely and more locally, right. And there’s still that need, like if I’m a company in a certain geography, I have local relationships. And you know, I’d like to go back to the five or seven seats at the table, to say, who is influencing my decision process. And it may not be one of the big DM ours that we talked about, it might be a local systems integrator that you’re comfortable working with, they now have the ability to bring to you everything you need. Right? So it’s enabling them more, in fact, to go do this through marketplaces, because now they have, they have the full access to that marketplace. And customers aren’t going to do this by themselves. We know that right? This is technology, especially smaller organisations are more challenged, they don’t have the IT staff to go do it themselves. So I’m going to rely on my local and trusted vendor to support me in doing that. Rick van den Bosch 28:01 Yeah, absolutely. And I think any SMB channel partner, you might lose a little bit of margin when doing it in such a way, but you win it back as well, because everything is in one invoice. It’s very easy to manage, like everything you would use to do with a distributor in the past now is can be managed with a marketplace or hyper scalar as well. That’s right. That’s right. I love that then then we get to the final point of AI, of course. And first of all, I want to say like Microsoft, all in on AI, big investment. They had some tumultuous weeks, but I want to do a shout out to such because that is true partnership. Some album Back at the rings of open AI definitely not what I expected the author, it just happened. But then you can see like if you have a very strong partner, and they have your back, while in effect that’s going to happen. I think it’s the best decision for open AI and for the AI continuation of innovation and progress there in general. So big shout out there. I’m also super curious to learn in the like what the you see there in terms of the AI like, of course, we know why AI is so important. But I’m also super curious, what role does Microsoft see there for their partners in terms of bringing that AI to the market? They’ve done the big investments, they’ve worked insanely hard. I’m super impressed in integrating AI and all their products and in being in office in teams in every were in Azure like but what then now it’s I think up to the channel to bring it to market. Like what what’s their strategy there and what do you think that are some of the roadblocks they might see there? Vince Menzione 29:40 Well, first of all the call out this idea there right? That was a masterclass and strategy like what he did with with Sam. First, first of all, he was blindsided, right that I mean the board didn’t even let him know until minutes before they announced it, which is crazy. And then he He took the he took the high road. And he said, Well, how do I best support this? I want to support Sam, I want to support open AI. He brings Sam on board on a Sunday. Right, Sam, Sam, he sets up a new business unit. By the way, almost all the employees said they were going to leave. So he knew that like, if open AI isn’t going to do it, they’re all going to be Microsoft employees. And then he positions it. So Sam can run back into the CEO, or get back into the CEO slot, which was just incredible. Now on the product side, what you’re seeing, I mean, Microsoft has been the Productivity Suite, right, and we go back, I mean, let’s let’s look at offices is just a crowning example, and M 365. Now, and all of your productivity offerings and sweet. Everything is infused now with AI is getting infused with AI, it’s, there were big announcements and releases in early November, we’re continuing to see things they had their big Ignite conference, the ability to infuse all this technology, they’re all the partner stays pretty much the same in that regard, right? Because these are saying these are organisations that need to embrace and deploy these technologies, they will do that. The role, there’ll be addition, there are additional roles for GSIs and s eyes of any size and shape, to take advantage of the toolkits that are available in Azure AI. And you can go on with the list of Microsoft acronyms and names. But being able to take that technology and deploy it locally, people will want secure GP TS they’ll want they want the ability to do their own and not be in the public domain. So the ability to implement those is going to be huge opportunity in the ISP and SAS world community. Well, I mean, I want it I want to infuse this technology into my my offerings, right? So there’s the opportunity for those partners to go do that. And then to implement that. So it’s creating more opportunity for partners of all types to take and infuse that, that stack into into organisations. Right. And it’s we’re just at the beginning. So I can’t even predict where it’s going to go. But we are people are talking about this. As even probably the biggest thing that’s happened in the last 40 years, right, since the maybe 50 years since the chip. Right? Yeah, we went through the PC era, we went to the client server, we went to the internet error. We got to mobile computing, we got to cloud and now we’re in AI and it’s man, it’s going to be it’s going to be a wild ride these next 10 years. Yeah, Rick van den Bosch 32:25 it’s incredible. Really ended like the pace at which everything is progressing. I’m very curious to see where that’s where that’s going. And a question that comes to mind immediately we meet it’s such a new technology like we need to the left, but also it’s progressing so quickly. And that will keep the same pace priority or only grow exponentially from an innovation side. What strategy does Microsoft have in place to actually make sure that their partners, both the ISVs, and the channel can actually easily message that and take that message of AI but also the implementation etc. to the market? Do you see any potential blockers there are challenges for for Microsoft, Microsoft Vince Menzione 33:08 is putting out a lot in fact, once once we have the content live, I’d love people to come see like the videos and some of the things that Microsoft showed at our event. But I mean, they they want the partner world to embrace it. What I would say in terms of blocker, I would say one thing I will say about Microsoft, even as a former employee, I’m still people like Brad Smith, who’s president of Microsoft, there’s an ethical level within Microsoft that you don’t see in most, if not any other technology company that they will do the right thing they will do. They’ve always professed the cloud for good. People like Brad Brad wrote a book called tools and weapons and he sits at the forefront of Microsoft’s aim to ensure that we do this in the right way. Right. And Microsoft again, being a partner led partner, they took the word AI if you know this, they changed the name of the partner programme in July. In fact, we had Julie Smith, Julie Sanford, come on to the podcasts and talk about this. They change the name of the programme from the Microsoft cloud partner programme to the Microsoft AI cloud partner programme. So they’ve infused AI into everything including the name of the partner programme for the 400,000 partners, which tells me and the channel incentives and everything that they’re doing, that they’re leaning in have more heavily. They are, I know for a fact that they are quintupling the size of the technology groups supporting AI. They had a team of black belts as an example, here in the United States. That was a fairly small ragtag team, maybe 20 people they have, they are going five times the size of that organisation just to support customers here. And they’re doing the same things around apart they Microsoft’s view is we bring we bring the technology in We bring the partner and the customer together, and we go solve for it together, which has been always been their approach. Rick van den Bosch 35:06 I love this. Yeah, it just you can really see that Microsoft is always one step ahead of where they should, or multiple steps ahead, let’s say like that of where they want to go and where they are going. And that’s what you can clearly see with this as well. And again, also with things like that, I can also highly advise that to our listeners, like if you launch something, launch it back, like look at Microsoft, such an enormous company, but when they launch AI, they implement it everywhere. So everyone will know in their ecosystem, how important that’s gonna be for the upcoming five to 10 years or, and there are this case, Vince Menzione 35:40 and even their executives. Kevin, Pisco, when he spoke at our event says I spent at least a half hour every morning studying what’s what we’re doing on AI practising it, implementing it getting to know the product better. This is the president of a $75 billion division of Microsoft, he’s spending time there, which tells you the whole company is focused on this. And to your point, too, I think they caught a lot of others were caught flat footed. I think that there was a there were a lot of people in other places in Silicon Valley in particular, that were going and getting into the rooms and going, what do we do now? What’s our strategy going to look like? What you know, they were just so caught off guard by Microsoft’s announcements. It’s an amazing Rick van den Bosch 36:23 Yeah, absolutely. Awesome fans. I think this really was a pure masterclass early on where the partner ecosystem and channel is going, we spoken about how important SMB and mid market there’s going to be if you want to keep your growth rates that you had in the past as a tech company, because the enterprise market is getting saturated. So you need to really get that opportunity. We talked about how to really work together with hyper scalars and the opportunity with marketplaces and AI How can you best implement it? How can you leverage the AI that Microsoft is working with? I think it was super valuable. I definitely want to get you back later fence. And thank you so much for sharing this with our listeners. And to our listeners. See you next week. Vince Menzione 37:10 Thanks so much for listening to this episode of ultimate guide to partner, online and Ultimate Partner.com. If you liked this episode, I’d be thrilled if you left us up to a five star review on either Apple or Spotify. This helps us to continue to feed your amazing guests. Also, please check out subscribe to our new YouTube channel, ultimate bar. We’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Guide to barter. | |||
| 207 – Unlocking FY24 Growth: AI, Partnerships & Customer Focus | 04 Feb 2024 | ||
Microsoft’s Heather Deggans Joins Ultimate Partner®
Join Vince Menzione in a captivating conversation with Heather Deggans, VP of Microsoft Partner Go-to-Market for the Americas. Learn about Microsoft’s FY24 priorities, AI focus, SMB opportunities, and the importance of partnerships. Discover the co-pilot program’s benefits, insights on differentiation, and ecosystem growth strategies. Don’t miss this deep dive into the tech industry’s evolving landscape with a seasoned leader at the forefront of innovation. What You’ll Learn
LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Announcing Ultimate Partner ExperienceI am thrilled to welcome you into a world that delivers unparalleled insights, best practices, and essential information to unlock your potential as a partner and propel you towards your most ambitious goals. This is a world crafted for partners like you. Our journey began seven years ago with a vision to empower partners in the complex world of tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and AWS. It started with a podcast. Today, Ultimate Partner’s mission is clear and bold, “empower every individual, organization, and partner to achieve more through successful partnering. As an Ultimate Partner Experience Member, you will unlock a growing treasure trove of resources. Dive into recordings of our events, exclusive podcast episodes, and a wealth of unique content, all designed to enhance your Cloud Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy and ecosystem growth. We are in our early days and expect much more to come. As an innovator, being part of this experience is more than joining a community; it’s about integrating into an ecosystem brimming with innovation and collaboration. Here, shared experiences and insights are your gateway to progress, offering connections with peers and resources to elevate your Cloud GTM strategy. This is your platform to engage, seek support, and contribute to our collective growth. I’m thrilled to welcome you to this journey. Let’s navigate, thrive, and redefine success in the tech partnership landscape together. Welcome to the future, Vince Menzione CEO, Ultimate Partner LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Many Typos SUMMARY KEYWORDSpartners, customers, ai, microsoft, organisation, opportunity, smb, market, co pilot, business, talked, great, marketplace, segments, offerings, year, copilot, doubling, supported, big Vince Menzione 0:02 Welcome to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Manzi on your host, and I’m excited to be back here at Microsoft Studios in Redmond, Washington with Heather Dagens, the VP of go to market of Microsoft’s America’s partner, organisation, GPS. So excited to be back here with you today, Heather, Heather Deggans 0:21 thank you so much, man. It’s it’s great to see you. And thank you for having me. Well, Vince Menzione 0:24 it’s great to have this podcast in person, you were a podcast guest a couple of years ago. And then we got to spend some time recently in Dallas, Texas, at our live events. So so great to be in the studio here with you Heather Deggans 0:36 what a great event that was, I made so many great connections with partners and customers there, and I’m keeping up the connections on LinkedIn and other avenues. So thank you for hosting the event. Well, Vince Menzione 0:47 it was it was a pleasure and an honour to have you at the event. And we wanted to deep dive with you today here after that event, because we have so much exciting things to talk about today. But first, I wanted to spend a moment with about your career journey. I was just on LinkedIn. And I noticed you have an anniversary coming up at Microsoft. Tell us more about that. Heather Deggans 1:07 Yes. So it’s a milestone anniversary, it will be 25 years in March, which is quite the accomplishment. You were 10 at the time, yes, exactly. I was about to say I literally grew up here before I even knew my husband or had kids. So I’ve been blessed to be here with all three CEOs and see the transformation that Microsoft has been through. And through that time, I’ve been in a variety of roles. So back in House chief of staff roles, product rolls around modern work and such marketing is my third tour and marketing partner has always been at the core of what I did, and across many of the customer segments. So it’s been great. I Vince Menzione 1:45 love that because you have a 360 view, I’ve always said this about you and your experience, that you make it real because you’ve been on all sides of the business from Chief of Staff for the for the overall business, to marketing to the partner business now and back in the partner business again. So lots of excitement around partners, right, we talked about the excitement, the enthusiasm, the thirst from the partners coming from the event. And these fiscal year priorities. A big shift this last fiscal year, which started in July are still in we’re at the halfway point of 2024. I thought we would ground a little bit about the priorities. There’s three big ones, we could talk more about that and then all also the big changes that happen to the GPS organisation. In fact, this year, Heather Deggans 2:30 yeah, that’s great. So in July, we announced that the company was creating three regions, so AMEA, Asia, and Americas. So that was the first big change that we encountered in July, bringing together the US Canada and Law Team, which I think has afforded us so much opportunity sharing best practices collaborating, most importantly, making it easier for partners, as they oftentimes go across borders and had to work with separate teams within the different regions. So we’re very excited. We’re still landing the Americas, but we’re seeing a tonne of benefit from the best practice sharing across the board. And Vince Menzione 3:06 quite a big challenge, I think, bring everybody together too. Right? So you’re bringing lots of different culturals together different cultures together? Yes, Heather Deggans 3:15 but it’s been great. A lot of learning. And, you know, although the US is this huge market, Canada looks a lot like the US last him as so many complexities to culture as you hit, but also in the way that our partners work in those different Latin American countries. So the consistency and the collaboration and the learning, sharing has been a core tenet that we’ve tried to drive. We’re lucky that the FY 24 priorities stayed largely the same year over year, which was great. The one main change we made in our focus area. And the way that we manage partners is we added in a channels division to basically look at routes to market, right. So if I start from ISPs and digital natives, which we’ve worked with for many, many years, that’s really around delivering the platform capability, and really leveraging marketplace as an area which we’ll talk a little bit more about. When we look at services partners that’s really around unlocking the cloud transformation, and helping our customers imagine what’s possible. And then as I mentioned, channels, it’s really around the routes to market and enabling SMC cloud expansion. It’s a tremendous tam or total addressable market for us in our SMB and SMCC. segments and wild channels focuses on all segments are so there’s a primary focus there as well. And then we can’t forget devices, devices are huge. Winning with Windows and creating experiences that can power AI and our productivity and security solutions is top of mind as well. Vince Menzione 4:46 It feels like you’ve doubled down right the ISP businesses so critical, important Azure success. The selling partners, I’ll call them right, the transactional partners LSPs the channels to market and then also the sighs and building the competencies and practices, and of course, Windows and the devices business. Yes. You know, this year has been, we started off the year talking about marketplace moments. And then also AI has come to the forefront in such a big way. It’s been such an exciting time at Microsoft, I thought you could land with us those three priorities around the those three things that we talked about AI marketplaces, and this SMC opportunity. Heather Deggans 5:27 Absolutely. So there’s just tremendous opportunity. When we think about marketplace, this is the future of how businesses are looking to transact. We’re working on creating new technology or giving access to that new technology. And then us is Microsoft creating demand gen for greater opportunity for cosell. That’s an area that we want to double down in, and we’re putting our money where our mouth is, this year in FY 24 marketplace, build sales is a part of the Microsoft sellers comp, which that as you know, compensation drives behaviour. And so that’s a very exciting piece. It’s not necessarily just a GPS or partner led motion, but our sellers care deeply about marketplace. The second one you hit on was AI, I’d almost put ai plus security, I think it’s a huge opportunity to connect with our customers. Ai conversation. I don’t know about you, but in every conversation I have with customers and partners is coming up. It opens the door to the boardroom. They’re wanting to know how that they can use AI. We’re looking at, you know, how do we engage our partners to help lead in this journey. We’ve had a lot of conversations around AI with our partners. And the feedback that we’re hearing from them is first, it’s exciting, but terrifying. The innovation is coming out so quick partners are struggling to keep up. And so we’re really doubling down on the enablement around AI. Second is responsible AI, US laws and frameworks are just now starting to come about our partners and customers are looking at how do I enable responsible AI? Another areas internal process. So each of our customers are wondering how can I use AI to streamline process data, all of that to better serve their customers? When we look at you know, another insight from partners, they’re asking their customers are asking them for skilling. So the partners have to be at the tip of the spear and how they are driving customer Skilling and guidance to to them as well. And then finally, because you know, I’m in marketing, as you mentioned, marketing, so AI and marketing, how do we know our customers? How do we anticipate their needs? How can we get in front of that, and really help you know, our customers capture the market opportunity that’s out there? There were some exciting announcements about co pilot, I heard Yeah, which I know we’ll go through a bit more. But when we start to talk about AI insecurity, you know, I think if you pull those together, you really deliver the best solution to the end customer for all solution areas. And then the third area, which you mentioned, is SMC so small and medium corporate business. As I mentioned before, Tam is huge with our mid market customers. SMCC, which is our corporate mid market and SMB Are we really view as partner led segments, their partner led very strongly supported by Microsoft. And there’s so much opportunity out there. And this is where we want the partners to take the lead. We obviously need partners in enterprise as well, that doesn’t mean that we don’t, but we think about the total addressable market and being able to tap into these hundreds of 1000s of customers in actually millions of customers. When we start to pull on SMB, we think about that CSP and the motion that we have there. There’s just a tonne of opportunity. Vince Menzione 8:45 I agree. I call it the acre of diamonds in fact, and a lot of organisations don’t understand SMC feels like SMB only. And people missed that opportunity that the corporate account space is managed. And there’s huge opportunities. And these are fairly significant organisations. It’s just that Microsoft segments them a little bit differently than what other organisations do. Heather Deggans 9:06 Absolutely. And we’re not going to ask our partners to segment exactly like we do. So we’re going to try to the we’re trying to put more focus on that mid market and SMB, we haven’t supported our partners as much holistically and trying to look at you know, how do we make it easier and break down barriers where you don’t have to talk to a separate group. For it’s something we qualify as mid market versus SMB Vince Menzione 9:30 in a talked about AI and it has been the year of AI. It’s been the marketplace, but it’s really been the year of AI and obviously, Satya getting the recognition he’s gotten this past year for all the changes in the growth at Microsoft. But I also what I keep hearing from people is that we’re having different conversations now. We are in the C suite and their transformation conversations. I thought maybe we touch a bit a bit on that and the importance of partners leading with AI because those conversations are so relevant to partner growth. as well, Heather Deggans 10:00 absolutely. And that’s a bigger we’re trying to focus is innovation is coming out so fast. And so how do we actually look at enabling our partners to go and have those conversations? How are we priming the market with the customers as well, to enable opportunities? We’re doing a lot of you imagining what AI can do for your business. We’re also looking at AI from an industry perspective, what are the top use case scenarios for financial services or healthcare, and making sure that, you know, we’re outlining that to give our partners a place to start the conversation? Because oftentimes, the customers are coming to us and say, you know, I hear AI, I hear there’s a lot of potential opportunities, but I don’t know how to use it. And we don’t want to expect our customers and partners to have to learn that on their own. Yeah, Vince Menzione 10:47 there’s a lot of learning here, we talked about learning, and you’re providing a lot of learning for the partners there as well. But this is a time to transformation, right? We often brace it. Heather, I can’t believe we’re in 2024. Already. Of course, Microsoft’s been in 2024. Since July, exactly. And you’ve turned the corner and h2. But let’s talk about h1 and what you learned and what you’ve learned with partners here specifically? Heather Deggans 11:09 Absolutely. So there is so much learning from the first half of the year, especially as we went through an immense amount of change back in July. You know, it really took us a quarter to land that change. But now we’ve got some, I think, strong learnings out of it. So I’ll rattle off a few. It’s obviously not completely comprehensive. But one of the pieces that we’re looking at is how do we focus on customers through the entire lifecycle. So we have an M CEM sales stage lifecycle, which is a Microsoft way that we’re looking at how we pull customers through from that interest piece all the way to deployment. And so we’re looking at how do we make sure that partners are tied in for that entire lifecycle, obviously, new innovation, there’s so much new innovation, it’s so exciting, but making sure that we’re providing simplicity and clarity attached to that. I mentioned it earlier, industry provides relevance. So that is a place in the Americas that we are doubling down, both from a go to market perspective, but also from a PDM, a partner development management perspective. That’s where we we speak our customers language, and it provides that relevance, opportunity and all segments, as I mentioned. So enterprise is very, very important to us, as well as mid market as well as SMB, with the opportunity. And the way that we engage is a bit different, but they’re all very important. So we’re learning about what’s the best way to engage in all those. If I pivot, and I look on solution areas, modern work and security together, partner so well. And that enables us to deliver that end to end solution for our customers. All customers are concerned about security. These days, all customers are concerned about productivity and collaboration. So again, that’s very relevant. When we think about business apps. You’re we’re looking at business apps, really accelerating the migration of our on prem customers, with the support of offerings that we can provide partners and customers alike aim, if you’ve heard of that. And it’s an a push to modernise their business applications to enhance their AI readiness. Azure is really the foundation of everything that we’re doing. Generative AI is driving a huge wave of intelligent applications and insights from a massive amount of data in the cloud. So one of the Go dues we’re asking customers is get their data state in order to be able to really leverage the power of AI. Your marketplace, as we mentioned before, AI based solutions through Azure Marketplace to millions of customers is our aspiration and making sure that we have that. We talked a lot about the SMC opportunity. That’s a big CSP motion. I hope there’s lots of CSP partners that are watching this today. Because we have some exciting announcements around AI and copilot that will be relevant. Vince Menzione 13:54 We’ll be talking about that. Yeah. I’m so excited to continue to partner with ag one. Many of you know I made taking a green drink supplement, part of my health ritual for 21 years now. And it has made all the difference to my health and well being about six years ago. Athletic Greens and now their product ag one became my go to supplement. Ag one is the first thing I take every morning to power my day. It covers all of my nutritional bases, supports my gut health gives a boost to my immunity and energy levels. If you want to take ownership of your health, try ag one and get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to drink ag one.com forward slash Vince M That’s drink a G one.com. Forward slash Vince M check them out. You know you mentioned em Sam. I wanted to double click on this because we did a session at the big event on MCM. And I was sort of hesitant to do it. I was like, What is this emsam thing, but it’s being able to speak Microsoft’s language with a Microsoft seller. And it’s so critical for CO selling, that partners understand the process, the sales methodology that Microsoft follows with MSM. And so I thought, I think for people that haven’t listened or watched that interview, that segment, we should probably have them go back and do that. But anything else you want to say about MCM, Heather Deggans 15:29 I will say we’re trying to put more structure around how we engage with partners and customers. So if you’ll see, hopefully, our partners are noticing, we’re aligning the incentives to M Sam sales stage cycle. So if we’re in listening consults at the very beginning of the sales stage, we have these offerings in these incentives to be able to really empower our partners and customers there. And then as we go along the emsam stages, we’re looking at which offerings and incentives should we deploy, it’s not black or white, there’s some fluidity in it, but at least some guidance in a win formula of what we should be doing, when that makes the most sense with our customers and partners. Vince Menzione 16:12 So it’s an exciting announcements. AI has been exciting all along. But even more excitement now around, I was hoping you could cover off on some of the things that just happened. Heather Deggans 16:21 Yes, so very recent announcement. So this is a very timely discussion that we’re having. We had some great announcements around co pilot, there, we see it as an amazing opportunity for our CSP partner ecosystem is massive opportunity. It’s unique to Microsoft. When we think about co pilot, there’s really three pillars and the way that we’re looking at it, cloud innovation, go to market scale, and differentiation. So I’ll kind of dive into each of those a little bit more. For cloud innovation, we believe Microsoft has the most comprehensive and trusted cloud. We’re the only cloud that supports everything an organisation needs in today’s hybrid world of work. When we think about Microsoft 365, and teams offerings, Microsoft invest literally billions of dollars every year in r&d in this area. The second is our go to market scale. So through commercial marketplace combined with our go to market offerings, we are aspiring to help our partners with both depth and breadth to serve their customers. In every segment, as I mentioned, through marketplace, we can reach 95% of the world’s businesses, and we can connect you our partners with over with other partners in over 200 countries. The third area that I discussed was differentiation. So helping our partners differentiate with one of the largest technology ecosystems in the world. From low code, no code business applications, we started to look at the most comprehensive way that we’re looking at the enterprise portfolio. Tech Tools, devices solutions provide limitless opportunities for you to help your customers on their transformation journey is we’re seeing customers at all different areas of the transformation journey. And what we’re trying to do is have offerings for every segment. There is immense growth, as I mentioned, across all the segments, and so we’re trying to create customised offerings to fit the needs of those customers so that you and the partners can leverage those. And the announcements that we’ve made is further evidence of all of this and it’s a further opportunity for our CSP partners. Vince Menzione 18:29 You know, I hear parity, right? So small organisations, I’m an SMB, I run a small business, I didn’t have access to co pilot and some of the amazing technology that large enterprises like Microsoft have been utilising since since day one, and then also this democratisation. You know, Microsoft has always done such a great job of democratising technology and AI now for the masses, I guess, is what I would say the ability that every organisation and then every partner could use it internally, right. So the evangelism comes when we use the technology so partners as evangelists carrying forward to the millions of organisations What 150 million SMB organisations across the globe? Yes. Heather Deggans 19:10 There’s just such immense opportunity. I’m so excited about the announcements that we made any opportunity. You know, I speak to customers and partners every single day and co pilot, you know, the resounding feedback as a co pilot is defining our future and transforming our businesses together. Partners have given us some very pointed feedback, and they’ve asked some tough questions. We know our partner community is not shy, and I love that. So the first thing that I always get asked is when will it launch and CSP? Well, we heard you, as of January 16, copilot is no longer just available in EA, but it’s available through EA CSP and our direct customer self serve channel, which is huge when you think about opening up the opportunity. The second question I get is when are we going to expand the skews so more customers can take advantage of copilot for Microsoft 365 Hello again, we heard you, customers who are on Business Standard, Business Premium and office 365, e three and a five now also meet the prerequisites to buy a co pilot for Microsoft 365. So we’ve really opened it up, copilot will now work with Office 365 e three e five is designed with Microsoft 360 in mind, so it will leverage security and management features which are important for a secure AI rollout. And it gives customers a choice, some customers are going to want to start with co pilot for the AI benefits and then move to more of the security and management offerings. Some customers want to do the exact opposite security management and then I’ll dabble in AI. Some want to do it simultaneously. So this really frees up all of those boundaries that we had before. And the third area, as you mentioned as an SMB is when we when will you reduce the seat minimum so SMB customers can purchase. So customers can trial with a smaller subset of users versus having to get it for their entire organisation. There’s a theme here, we heard you were excited to share that we removed the threshold and the minimum seat requirement that customers can end customers can now purchase a quantity one. So we know that that’s a possibility. But we also advise that they purchase for a department to test and learn. In our early adopter programmes. We found that we’re department is using copilot where they’re experimenting where they’re sharing their experiences, they get a tremendous amount of value out of co pilot in a shorter time. So in essence, we’re listening, we hope we hit the mark. We’re excited about these changes. But I would implore this partner community to keep the feedback coming as it’s helping us to deliver better products and services for you and your customers. Just Vince Menzione 21:46 when we thought it couldn’t get more exciting. Yeah. So this is the Ultimate Partner. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask you, what do you see from the best partners that you work with? Heather Deggans 21:57 There are so many great partners out there across all of those partner types that I talked to you about. But you know, if I were to sum it up to the top things is collaboration. So collaboration within their own organisation back to Microsoft and with other partners in the ecosystem learning and coming together in a partner to partner value prop. That leads me to second one differentiated value prop. So we in the go to market team work with partners quite a bit to help them you realise what their differentiated value proposition is, so that they can differentiate in the market and we can support them as we go to market. Great customer engagement goes without saying, you know, making sure that as the you the partners have customer engagement, we’re surfacing case studies that we can use, whether it’s by industry, or solutionary, or customer segment, running pilots and supporting our partners through that. And then as I mentioned before, really supporting our customers through the whole customer journey and making sure that, you know, we’re supporting them from beginning to end, Vince Menzione 22:59 you talked about two things that struck me. One is the differentiation, I always talk about being the shiny quarter in the bucket full of shiny quarters, because partner has tried to be all things to all customers sometimes or to the Microsoft organisation and saying we could do it all versus focusing in on your superpowers and being very clear about what you bring to the table that’s different unique than anyone else. And then you talked about one of my favourite topics, which we’ve been calling partner to partner for so long, which I like to refer to now as ecosystem lead growth. Yes, and this is where I believe marketplace really sets the stage right with multi party offers. The ability for the customer is not just buying one solution, they’re they’re cobbling together multiple solutions, they might have security that they’re implementing, they might have different use cases, different solutions, ISV solutions, and they’re bringing that together with a licencing partner as an example. And bringing that all together with multi party offers. We can do that all now with one click. Heather Deggans 23:55 Yes, it’s very exciting. And the piece that you hit on in the beginning, we don’t want partners to do be all to all customers. It’s It’s too hard. You know, we’re very blessed at Microsoft that we have such a breadth of offerings, but that’s a lot for even our sellers to know where there’s no expectations that partners have to do everything. Well we want to be able to do is help our partners figure out where they shine, whether that shiny quarter, and then really go to market with them, and help align them to the right customers. And then as you mentioned marketplace is just phenomenal opportunities and that partner to partner or what did you call it? A partner? Ecosystem lead growth. I like that even better. Vince Menzione 24:33 Well, I love partner to partner but it’s not just two partners any long. Yeah, it feels like it’s a whole roomful of partners coming together exactly this ecosystem approach. So for the 1000s of listeners watching us or hearing us on the podcast today, what can they best do to align for success in h2? Heather Deggans 24:54 So there’s so much opportunity out there as we talked about with the innovation and so there’s there’s a lot that we We want to bring you along on with the journey and enablement. So I would say take advantage of all of that, whether you’re an ISV channels or services partner, whichever solution you focus on or industry. But if I were to take it to more of a micro level, macro level, the ISPs, we want to get your transactable offers in marketplace, as we talked about, that is an area that we’re doubling and tripling down at Microsoft. And so we want to make sure that our ISVs have offers in there, and we will commit to do a better job of driving demand to marketplace with our customers. The second is, you know, for our services partners, as we talked about, they’re really focused on the opportunity on AI and all of our cloud offerings. And so really looking at how do we open up the door to those boardrooms, where you know, it’s not traditionally been a great, easy path for Microsoft to get into. But our services partners can help us. And that’s really going to be AI and all those downstream opportunities, and channels, with his unique focus that we’ve put on our channel partners starting this year, it’s really around scale, and activating CSP is one avenue, but really looking at that new customer and your new customer opportunity and delivering that value prop there. And then the other thing is, we know that there’s a lot of innovation offerings out there, and sometimes it can be hard to keep up. So we would invite you all to join our partner LinkedIn group. On this LinkedIn group, we announce and provide monthly information for our partners in real time as it comes out. We have monthly insider calls that we would love for you to all participate in. We even have quarterly virtual partner summits. So making sure that we are we’re bringing the latest and greatest to our most treasured partners that we have. And then also looking at blogs and social updates, we’ve got a lot of ways to get you the information. What we’re trying to do is simplify the avenues in which we can connect with you all. So Vince Menzione 26:56 many great go dues for our partners. I’ve been on those monthly calls. Yes, I’ve actually spoken to you. I was I think I’m coming up soon, I think maybe in a couple of months from now. But I want to thank you, Heather, for joining us today in the studio. Thank you for and I want to thank you for your commitment to partners. It is it is heartfelt. And it is known and recognised for the way that you have supported this community. So thank you so much. Thank Heather Deggans 27:21 you. There’s a reason I keep coming back to partner through my career Microsoft. Thank you. So Vince Menzione 27:26 great. Thank you so much. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you for watching and listening. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Ultimate Partner online at Ultimate Partner.com or the ultimate partner.com. If you liked this episode, I’d be thrilled if you left us up to a five star review on either Apple or Spotify. And please subscribe to our new YouTube channel, ultimate partner. We’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Partner | |||
| 206 -Your Acre of Diamond Revealed – Exclusive with Microsoft America SMC Leader | 28 Jan 2024 | ||
Ultimate Partner Exclusive with Sharon Schoenborn
Unlock the secrets of successful partnerships with Microsoft’s Corporate VP of Americas SMC, Sharon Schoenborn, on Ultimate Partner®. Join us as she shares strategic insights into SMC business segments, AI investments, growth strategies, and leadership tips. With over 20 years of global experience, Sharon empowers businesses to transform and thrive in the Microsoft ecosystem digitally. LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP What You’ll Learn1. Partnering strategies with Microsoft corporate vice president. (0:04) 2. SMC business segments and partnership opportunities. (1:08) 3. AI investments and partner success in the Microsoft ecosystem. (6:27) 4. Partnering with Microsoft, growth strategies, and differentiation. (12:40) 5. Leadership, change management, and personal growth. (17:53) Why Ultimate Partner?I am thrilled to welcome you into a world of unparalleled insights, best practices, and essential information designed to unlock your full potential as a partner and propel you towards your most ambitious goals. Our journey began nearly seven years ago with a vision to empower partners in the complex world of tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and AWS. Today, Ultimate Partner is a beacon dedicated to revolutionizing your Cloud Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy and fostering ecosystem-led growth through this experience platform, including digital and live events, advisory services, and much more. In an era defined by tectonic shifts, such as the global pandemic, economic headwinds, and the rise of AI, the role of hyperscalers has become increasingly critical. With investments of billions of dollars in ecosystems, technology, and customer acquisition costs, they have secured over $200 billion in customer commitments to durable cloud budgets. We stand on the precipice of a marketplace moment where simplifying and streamlining economic models associated with co-selling and ecosystem-led growth will shape the decade ahead. Yet, as vendors and organizations demand more from us while resources diminish, we ask, “Where do we go? How do we navigate these seismic shifts? How do we thrive during this decade of the ecosystem?” If you’re a partner, you’re likely grappling with these questions. The watering holes of the past no longer offer the guidance required to transform into a Cloud GTM and embrace ecosystem-led growth. That’s why Ultimate Partner exists – to be your trusted compass amidst the noise. LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Many Typos SUMMARY KEYWORDSpartners, customers, microsoft, smc, organisations, business, smb, market, capabilities, conversation, differentiating, leaning, ai, talk, sharon, corporate, drive, solution, vince, sellers Vince Menzione 0:02 This is the Ultimate Partner the top partnership podcast. In this podcast Vince Minzy own a proven partner sales executive shares his mission to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. And now your host, Vince Menzione. Vince Menzione 0:28 Welcome to The Ultimate Partner for a special session shot here at reven at Microsoft Studios. I’m excited and delighted to be joined by Sharon Schoen born Microsoft’s corporate vice president for the Americas SMC small, medium and corporate business. Sharon, so excited to have you here today. Sharon Schoenborn 0:46 It’s wonderful to be here. Good to see you. Vince Menzione 0:48 So good to see you again. You know, it seems just like yesterday, but it’s been a couple of months since we were together in Dallas, Texas, for our live event, which we co hosted alongside your town hall. So much excitement in the room from partners. I was hoping we could sort of ground here for now and talk a little bit more about that excitement and what you’ve been seeing Sharon Schoenborn 1:08 you bet. Well, first of all, Vince, thank you for your time in Dallas and also the standing room only event that you ran with us. Yes. You know, it’s SMC is really one of the main growth engines for Microsoft. And it’s such a diverse and dynamic segment. And I have the pleasure of leading our America’s business and partners are really at the core to our success in the way that we deliver growth and we help to realise the value of their investment with our customers. Vince Menzione 1:32 You know, I’ve been talking about this acre of diamonds, my own quote, but Russell Conwell, who was a minister and founder at Temple University coined this phrase many, many years ago. But I believe the SMC businesses may be misunderstood, in many respects, or were helping to help partners better understand it right. A lot of these organisations tend to cluster towards the large enterprise and SMC sounds like SMB to a lot of folks. And then also the organisation of that was sort of it’s evolving, right, it was hoping you could help our viewers and listeners better understand how it’s Sharon Schoenborn 2:11 evolved. Yeah, it’s a great question, because we have changed a lot over times. And I must admit, we can become complex as well. The best way to really think about SMC is the fact that it’s two distinct segments. Okay. So yes, as you say, the true kind of core SMB business, which very much is part of why we say about 80% of our revenue for the SMB business, typically customers, 300 employees or lower is really what we consider SMB. And then above that corporate is everything under the top enterprise, commercial and public sector customers. So within the Americas, we have roughly around 14,000 managed corporate customers in the millions, obviously within the SMB space, Sharon, Vince Menzione 2:55 such a massive amount of business within the SMC sectors, the two sectors, I was hoping maybe we could double click on the two segments and how you go to market and each of them? Yes Sharon Schoenborn 3:06 we’ll do well, I always start with the corporate business. And over the last number of years, we’ve really standardised the way that we engage with our corporate or manage customers across the globe. You might recall from your days back at Microsoft, it was probably sometimes a bit unique by country and some of the things that we’ve done in our corporate business is to structure our sales team in pods. So typically, a pod would have around 300 customers within it. And what we do is we we rally our account executives, and our specialist and technical sellers to align to that set a 300 customers per pod. And with that it gives us it gives us a centre of gravity to engage into team and especially to be able to make sure that we’re optimising the, the platform opportunity with each of our customers. And what we do now also is having standard marketing strategies and solution plays. So when we think about each of our clouds across Azure monomeric, and business applications, we have standard solution plays that we go to market on. And that really is the standard socket that we want our partners to snap into right in terms of their offerings and go to market strategy. So we have, we have go to marketplace for those across corporates, and the ability to then drive Account Based Marketing interests within those then catch by our field sellers. And obviously, together with our partners, Vince Menzione 4:27 you know, strikes me as you’re talking here is thinking about the conversations we had at your town hall and our event. And just this massive opportunity and the opportunity for your teams to double click in fact, I believe I heard you say to your team, you can’t get to the customer alone. You need to work directly with a work very closely with the partners. I was hoping, you know, we talked about the opportunity and doubling down and double clicking with partners this year. Can you talk more about your commitment within the SMC business to partners? Sharon Schoenborn 4:58 Yeah, boy. I could go on here for a little while, Vince, I think if I, if I go back to the corporate segment for just a moment, and then I’ll speak to SMB, because they’re their two unique operating models, I would say in the corporate business, you know, I really do see our channel as an extension of our sales force. Right? And so, but the art is, how do we best align to be able to optimise an engagement with each other? Because that can be a really hard thing? And you know, there’s far more sellers in the channel than I have within my team. And then how do we how do we get that interconnect at the right point in time, I think a couple things, one, going back to the solution plays, that becomes a really critical alignment point for how our sellers are going to market and when we’re looking for really highly specialised partners to be able to help drive that demand and ultimately realise value for customers. I would also say that the the opportunity for us to align on acquisition, and upsell within the within the the base boy, our upsell, opportunity is massive acquisition is huge. upsell is massive, especially in markets, like the US or even Canada, where we have a high penetration across the business. So we really need our partners, oftentimes, our CSP partners who are leading those engagements with customers to be thinking about, how are we operationalizing, the customer lifecycle management cycle within the existing base of customers to be able to help realise the value across the platform? Yeah, Vince Menzione 6:27 and there’s a huge opportunity here for these partners to double down here, and we’ll talk a little bit more about some of the announcements that have been coming around AI and other areas. But as I think about it, it’s moving away from just the transaction, and you say, UPS upselling, into the organisation, but adding additional capabilities to drive that. And yes, and what I think your I hear you saying to the partners is, it’s time to double down yourselves, build your competencies aligned to our solution areas, specifically. And then also, when you’re working with your account teams better identify where you make a difference. Yes, Sharon Schoenborn 7:04 you know, if I had a magic formula with our partners, and especially when we’re investing as businesses, in alignment with those solution plays, obviously, starting with deep skilling, and that’s an area that we’re investing in quite significantly, but really asking our partners to drive those certifications and the advanced certifications in differentiating themselves, then with a differentiated go to market offering, as it relates to that, ultimately, our channel incentives are probably one of the areas that we invest the most to be able to help recognise our partners and be able to invest in their businesses and be able to then help optimise what that transformation can look like, within our partner organisations, we realise that’s a big shift. It’s a big shift for us. You know, it really has been five years ago, Vince, we could have been sitting here and you know, would have been a very different conversation about the go to market solutions. And so our partners have done an amazing job to really lean in. But we need more partners to be able to think about how am I going to differentiate in the market with the specific certifications and specialisation and being great at that. And being great at that. And that’s what I think one of the most critical things of being able to partner really closely is differentiating the market around a, a solutionary that that partner is able to excel in. We’re Vince Menzione 8:23 at this moment, right? I mean, Satya was just recognised as the CEO of the Year, I mean, just an amazing job that he’s done in his nine or 10 years as CEO of Microsoft. But the investments, these massive investments in AI, right, I mean, this, this last year has been astounding, and what it says to me and to all of us, I remember Kevin being up on stage at our event talking about this, like take the time to learn every day, because it’s changing every day, right AI, is infusing is being infused into all of the Microsoft products and families. And the opportunity is massive for partners. And what I hear now that’s different when I talk to Microsoft sellers, is we’re having different conversations than we’ve ever had with those organisations. We’re now in the C suite. And we’re having transformation conversations. And what I think I hear you saying, in fact, is partners need to lean into this transformation in a big way. What else would you say about that? Yeah, Sharon Schoenborn 9:20 at first, I would reinforce the point about learning. You know, Boy, I’ve been at Microsoft for a little while now. And I would say every day, I have to force myself to make sure that I’m taking one step ahead in terms of my own learning, because if I’m not that I’m falling behind, and I think that’s the same for our partners, right? And so, the opportunity we have is now you know, when you think about what our customers are aiming to achieve, typically it’s around some level of operational efficiency or being able to adapt their business models are really improving their customer engagement strategy. Our customers are leaning into this moment because they also know that if they aren’t thinking strategically about how AI is infused in the way that they operate, they can be left behind Now, one of the things that I’m most excited about is that when we have a platform opportunity at Microsoft, as you say, we’re really infusing AI across our solution set. And I’m especially excited about the fact that we now have co pilot for Microsoft 365, that is going to be available to our CSP partners and through our, to our customers to our CSP partners. But what that means is, it really opens up the ability for our smallest customers in the market, to have access to enterprise grade AI capabilities embedded in the solutions that they use every day. I mean, just think about that for a moment. That’s incredible. And the opportunity that we kind of have to, you know, really increase the productivity of our customers, and help them to innovate in ways they’ve never been able to. It’s incredibly exciting. I just can’t wait to see what our customers do with it. Vince Menzione 10:47 I mean, this is exciting. This, the excitement around this announcement is just I think, well, first of all, I’m an SMB ultimate partner is a small and medium business. And so now I’m able, because I feel like the haves and the have nots, I’ve had all these conversations with Microsoft, people like yourself about all the tools that you’re able to utilise, right that are infused within Microsoft 365. And I’ve been on the outside of that, right I’ve had, I’ve had to use more of the pedestrian tools that haven’t been infused into the platform for me. So as an SMB, I’m excited about that. Also, as a partner partners are also smaller organisations that maybe haven’t been able to take advantage of these capabilities. I think first of all the they become evangelists because become users. And what Microsoft is doing, as well as this democratisation of the technology, right? It’s not only for the very large enterprise organisations no longer Sharon Schoenborn 11:39 it is, I mean, let’s just talk about our small and medium business customers for a moment you’re spot on. And it gives us opportunity to really open up capabilities, that that I hope will will stimulate innovation in the market, over 90% of our customers are small and medium businesses, right. And, you know, our channel would understand this intimately. MSPs really are the IT department for so many of our SMBs, right? Oftentimes, our SMEs do not have internal IT, it’s their partner that are going to market with and looking for guidance. And so I’m really excited about what this opportunity means for our customers, and for our partners to be able to really activate this innovation and you know, but of course, as you say, you know, internalising it and being able to be best practice leaders in the use of AI. So you know, I would say this today, with co pilot for Microsoft 365, I challenge myself every day to try something different and see how I’m getting value out of it, because that’s the best way for us to demo to our customers, right? You Vince Menzione 12:39 talked about partners quite a bit here. And I, I’d be remiss, this is the Ultimate Partner. What do you see from the best partners you work with? Sharon Schoenborn 12:48 Well, I think back to the point of creating a differentiated capability and ultimately go to market offer. And being really, really great at that. Because I think that, especially when we talk about the the Manage space, being able to be really precise about how you’re differentiating in the market. Because we need our partners to really lead and drive growth there and not always have to be in hand to hand combat with our sellers, I’ve got a much, much smaller sales force then then the market demands. And so I think differentiating in the market off the back of that leveraging the skilling resources, and then really importantly, leveraging partner centre as a way to connect into Microsoft. And then of course, marketplace, Vince Menzione 13:34 yes, we’d be remiss to if we didn’t bring up marketplace, right, this huge opportunity area. And I, you know, we at that event, we brought all the partners together. So we bought some of the ISVs had been the creators of platforms, as well as the selling partners into the room. And I’ll be candid here and say that some of those selling partners have been kicking and screaming away in a way and saying, you know, they’ve been they’ve been slow to adopt marketplace. But I’ve seen a change, and maybe it’s just in the last couple of months now. I believe a lot of them are now leaning in on marketplace. Would you agree there? Sharon Schoenborn 14:10 I would I think it’s still early days. And I think the ability to have private offers in marketplace is going to be a really important opportunity for our partners to to accelerate growth for sure. Vince Menzione 14:19 And I also think about it you know, Microsoft has always talked about partner to partner. And this accomplishes quite a bit on the partner to partner side because now you are able to take multiple solutions. And I’ll use the term stitching them together, right, because the customer is not buying one thing. In fact, they’re not talking to one organisation and not just talking to Microsoft. They’re not just talking to a partner. They’re looking at several different areas rather than be security or some line of business application or multiple line of business applications. And they have a transactional partner that they’re working with. Marketplace just offers that opportunity that private offer to pull it all together for the customer lead Sharon Schoenborn 14:59 by the amazing capabilities within our channel, right in terms of in terms of making it real through projects, and also activation with each customer. Vince Menzione 15:11 So we are kicking into 2024 in a big way. For Microsoft, it’s the second half, it’s h2, right? I was hoping maybe you could spend a moment here maybe any great advice for these organisations on what they should be doing differently now that we are in the throes of 2024 that we’re in the throes of Microsoft’s h2. What would you say to those partners to do better or differently than we’ve seen before? Sharon Schoenborn 15:38 Well, a few a few areas, one, back to the point of learning, with all the innovation that’s coming to market, really leaning in role modelling that every single day and making sure that across our teams, we’re building the capability to have those differentiated offers, again, I come back to leveraging the partner centre to be able to be the surface area engagement to connect into Microsoft, I would also say, really pressure test, really pressure test your growth strategy. And ask yourself, are we really betting in areas where we can differentiate and be amazing and as we then think about more and more solutions, really make sure that that comes together? In the overall customer value proposition? I think sometimes we can get a little broad. And then then that runs the risk of not not differentiating as much in the market. It’s like those are those are really key areas. But at the same time get energised. Like, I don’t know that that takes much doing these days, because it’s such an incredible moment in our industry. Vince Menzione 16:43 I’m energy. Are you energised, I’m energised. So, you know, you mentioned something to about getting very specific about what your superpower is, I like to talk about the being the shiny quarter in the bucket full of shiny quarters, there are so many Microsoft partners. Some struggle with the differentiation but lean in or niche down to where your real strengths are and focus there versus trying to go broad, right, the partner that tells me, I’ve got 250 competencies and capabilities, I lose focus, I lose, they lose my attention. Yeah, Sharon Schoenborn 17:16 I think it’s I think it’s a an important thing to recalibrate and reinforce. And at the same time, we have some partners who can do it all right, in terms of like us. And so that’s really important thing in terms of looking at the unique partner communities across the market. Because depending on the profile, whether we have global system integrators, national system, integrator, services partners, CSPs, or our MSPs, really, again, it comes down to where we come together and drive the greatest. Good Vince Menzione 17:53 point. Good point. You know, Sharon, I’d love to pivot. I have many listeners and viewers that are earlier in their career in their career journey. So I would love for you to spend a moment here. Was there a spark? Was there a pivot? Was there a mentor, in fact, that helped you get to this? I mean, CVP at Microsoft is a big deal, right, corporate vice president. Tell us a little bit more about that journey. Sharon Schoenborn 18:16 Wow, um, do you know what I’ve been fortunate? I’ve been fortunate to have found myself in tech in the 90s and have am a person who enjoys change, I actually relish in and embrace change. I think if there was one thing that grounded me the most early in my career, I had an opportunity early in my career to work in mergers and acquisitions. But more on the people side, on the integration of acquisitions, and working with leadership teams right after an announcement was made to come together. And I studied and even got my grad degree in leadership development. And the the one skill that I feel has served me throughout my career, especially as I’ve moved on, and leadership is around change leadership. It’s about the EQ side of engaging and leading a business. And ultimately, all of us, as leaders, all of us together with our channel are leading change every single day, not just strategically, but certainly with our people. And so I think, having really gone deep into the principles of change leadership, at an early stage of my career that has been a pivotal asset for me. Ever since that point, and something that I greatly value, I’m still working on it, by the way, but at the end of the day, it’s my job to be a great leader for my people as we lead change and ultimately deliver business results. And I encourage anyone who’s earlier in their career to actually really get curious about the principles of leading change in some of the fundamentals, I think will serve you really well Vince Menzione 19:59 fundamentals. To end principles right before my heart in terms of driving that, in fact, I would love to know if there was a book was it was there a book that has been a favourite of yours on transformation change or principles? Sharon Schoenborn 20:13 Boy, there’s a lot like one that I think is really practical. And what I would definitely recommend to our channel leaders is adaptive leadership, adaptive leadership, it really speaks to the difference between solving technical challenges from adaptive leadership challenges and technical challenges are those that will probably deal with every single day as sales leaders, as business leaders, adapt to challenges are those that are really addressing longer term systemic changes that really require a level of deep and thoughtful stakeholder engagement to really get to an outcome that’s going to deliver meaningful change for the business. And again, so much of it does come back to the softer side around change leadership, but especially in organisations that might be a bit larger that have broader stakeholder groups, it really is more about how do you create that common shared vision, and really find a way to be able to enable that together and making some hard decisions as well. Vince Menzione 21:16 I love everything you’ve said had to say here because we are driving a transformation like no other I believe, during this time. And what an amazing leader to believing that now at Microsoft within this very large segment of the business. I have a fun question, I love to ask every guest. So Sharon, you are hosting a dinner party, and you can host this dinner party in anywhere in the world. But you can only invite three guests to this dinner party from the present, or the past, to this amazing dinner party that you’re going to host. I’d also love to know where you want to host it. We’ll talk about that a little bit more. You’ve lived all around the world. Who would you invite to this party? And why? Sharon Schoenborn 21:56 I love this question so much. Can I Can I take a little bit of liberty with answering how I would do this? Vince Menzione 22:02 You know, it’s early in the day, I’d love? Absolutely, I’d have Sharon Schoenborn 22:07 three dinner parties, three dinner parties. And I’d want to go to their space independently because I feel that each conversation is unique in its own. And I’m probably more of an introvert. So I like the one on one engagement versus so the first I would say is my team would know I’m biggest Peter Gabriel fan. So I love Peter Gabriel think he’s amazing human and I love what he stands for and his music back to the 80s Today, I’ve been known to fly from Sydney to Chicago just for a concert. Wow. Wow. So I think I would love to go to his farm where he has written many of his lyrics and just spend a very casual kind of picnic there having a good conversation with Peter Gabriel to understand a little bit more about what’s driven his mission. Because I think he’s a great human. Secondly, I would say my family came originally, like my great grandparents came from Germany and from Czechoslovakia years ago. And so and they, they landed in the Midwest, you know, ultimately in Minnesota, and had some pretty amazing experience, you know, finding their way and ultimately landing in their spot in northern Minnesota waggon trains, you know, bringing, you know, babies along in the below zero weather. So yeah, staying living in a tent in the middle of winter, while trying to build a very simple house. Like, I would just love to sit with my great grandparents. And listen and learn from what their experience was, I think it’s terribly humbling and inspiring and speaks to incredible level of resilience. And then a third, I would say, I’d love to go to Nepal. And I would love to spend some time with the Sherpas in there, you know, maybe two or three in someone’s home. And, and really I’m just understand a little bit more about what drives their spirit and energy and incredible capability. I think the Sherpas are the heroes of Everest. I think they’re the heroes of any major mountain climbing expedition. And I just think that having a conversation to understand where that spirit and energy and spectacular capability is driven from fascinating, Vince Menzione 24:40 so fascinating. I might follow you around I might have fun. Where’s Peter live? Where’s this farm? Sharon Schoenborn 24:46 Up in England? Yep. Vince Menzione 24:48 All right. Well, the pile sounds fantastic. Yeah. Have you have you? Have you been a climber? Sharon Schoenborn 24:55 Oh God, no, no. Vince Menzione 24:56 We had a guest to climb Mount Everest. So that’s I have a special that is. It’s amazing, especially. Sharon, you have been incredible. Everything that I hope to have you having you here today. Really, I really enjoyed this conversation. Such an incredible leader, such an incredible time in your business for our partners listening and viewing today. Just an incredible time to be working with Microsoft and Sharon’s SMC, America’s business. Again, one last one last time here for our viewers, and for our listeners, any last words of advice? Or maybe not advice, but just go do’s in terms of how we need to think about this year? Great. Sharon Schoenborn 25:34 Well, hey, first, Vince, thanks for having me. It really is a pleasure. And I want to say thank you for all the work that you’re doing with our partners, we really appreciate it again, standing room only event in Dallas a few months back, we really appreciate the the the the effort and the engagement. And for all of our partners, I just want to say huge, thank you. Thank you for everything you’ve done. Thanks for all that you will do. Thanks for leaning into this opportunity that we have right now to help service our customers in incredible ways to innovate with this era of AI and look forward to really moving the dial together in the SMC business, not just in the next six months, but certainly in the years to come. So thank you very much, Sharon. Vince Menzione 26:15 Thank you again. Thanks, Vince. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Ultimate Partner online at Ultimate Partner.com or the ultimate partner.com. If you liked this episode, I’d be thrilled if you left us up to a five-star review on either Apple or Spotify. And please subscribe to our new YouTube channel, ultimate partner. We’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Partner | |||
| 242 – Accelerating AI with Google Cloud Marketplace: A Conversation with Labelbox’s CMO | 11 Nov 2024 | 00:04:03 | |
Ken Olofsen, CMO of Labelbox, Joins Ultimate Partner®
I’m thrilled to introduce my conversation with Ken Olofsen, CMO of Labelbox, which was recorded live at the Google Cloud Marketplace Exchange! Labelbox, a longtime Google partner, has revolutionized data labeling for generative AI, providing a “data factory” that powers the most advanced AI models. Ken shares how Labelbox collaborates with Google to support model builders and enterprise teams. This includes an exciting integration with Vertex AI that allows users to use Labelbox’s human evaluation services to effortlessly fine-tune their models. In this episode, Ken discusses Labelbox’s use of Google Cloud Marketplace as a rapid transaction platform, enabling seamless, scalable partnerships. From simplifying contracts with private and public offers to offering a one-click evaluation solution on Vertex AI, Labelbox is setting the bar high for innovation in data annotation. Tune in to this episode of The Ultimate Partner to learn how Labelbox is shaping the future of generative AI through strategic partnerships! https://youtu.be/2xsGwreKdRg?si=TqCv1zjqPD37lzavLISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Ultimate Partner ExperienceEver wonder what you could achieve with the right partners? Dive into the Ultimate Partner Experience Community (UPX) and discover a world of possibilities! Exclusive ContentGain access to cutting-edge content and events crafted by partnership professionals. Stay ahead with strategies, trends, and in-depth interviews with the industry leaders in partnerships. Access to a Like-Minded CommunityOur next event is just around the corner and everyone is welcome. Although the event is open to the public, we want to give a special privilege to our members. Which means the Q&A session is exclusive to members only. It’s bound to be an exciting event and we look forward to seeing you all there! Make Connections That Matter!Dive right in and send a direct message to any member of UPX community! You are not just joining a group, but unlocking an open and vibrant network of professionals waiting to connect with you. Seize this golden opportunity to expand your horizons, fuel your career growth and discover exhilarating business prospects. The world is your oyster at UPX, let’s explore it together! Come Join UsI’m thrilled to welcome you to this journey. Let’s navigate, thrive, and redefine success in the tech partnership landscape together. Come Sign Up LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Now on YouTube | |||
| 205 – AI Empowerment – Microsoft 365 Copilot Unveiled for CSP Channel | 21 Jan 2024 | ||
An Ultimate Partner Exclusive with Thomas Abel
Thomas Abel, the Microsoft 365 Business GTM Director, joins Ultimate Partner for this exclusive interview following Microsoft’s massive announcements, coming to you live from Microsoft Studios in Redmond, WA. Thomas spearheads the expansion of Microsoft 365 Business, focusing on suites and premium value within the CSP channel. A collaborative team player, he crafts compelling partner narratives and strategies. Thomas drives partner profitability by strategically promoting upsells and attachments of Business Premium, Windows 365, and innovative premium offerings. His approach includes customizing formulas for strategic partners through incentives, promotions, and targeted programs. LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP What You’ll Learn
I am thrilled to welcome you into a world of unparalleled insights, best practices, and essential information designed to unlock your full potential as a partner and propel you towards your most ambitious goals. Our journey began nearly seven years ago with a vision to empower partners in the complex world of tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and AWS. Today, Ultimate Partner is a beacon dedicated to revolutionizing your Cloud Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy and fostering ecosystem-led growth through this experience platform, including digital and live events, advisory services, and much more. In an era defined by tectonic shifts, such as the global pandemic, economic headwinds, and the rise of AI, the role of hyperscalers has become increasingly critical. With investments of billions of dollars in ecosystems, technology, and customer acquisition costs, they have secured over $200 billion in customer commitments to durable cloud budgets. We stand on the precipice of a marketplace moment where simplifying and streamlining economic models associated with co-selling and ecosystem-led growth will shape the decade ahead. Yet, as vendors and organizations demand more from us while resources diminish, we ask, “Where do we go? How do we navigate these seismic shifts? How do we thrive during this decade of the ecosystem?” If you’re a partner, you’re likely grappling with these questions. The watering holes of the past no longer offer the guidance required to transform into a Cloud GTM and embrace ecosystem-led growth. That’s why Ultimate Partner exists – to be your trusted compass amidst the noise. LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Many Typos SUMMARY KEYWORDScopilot, partners, microsoft, co pilot, customers, organisations, people, medium businesses, data, product, ai, talk, meetings, csp, started, pilot, enterprise, teams, ag, shared Vince Menzione 0:02 Welcome to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzione. I’m your host. And my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. And I’m so excited to be back at Microsoft Studios, where we have an amazing guest today and an amazing announcement. Thomas Abel is the director of Microsoft’s 365 business go to market. So great to welcome you today, Thomas. Thomas Abel 0:25 Thanks, Vince, great to spend time with you today. Vince Menzione 0:28 So we’re in the middle of the fiscal year. All right, beginning of h2. And you’ve got some exciting announcements that you just shared publicly. And now you this is the first interview you’ve done. That’s Thomas Abel 0:40 right. This is kind of the first time getting to talk about this in a super public setting. But I think in many ways people knew this was coming. It was just a matter of time. But you know, it’s been it’s been an exciting journey. Certainly an exciting week for us. I bet. I bet. Tell us more about it. Yeah. So if you didn’t see the news, earlier this week, we announced three big changes for Microsoft 365, and co pilot for Microsoft 365. You know, we announced this product back in March of 2023. It has been a very fast nine months, in a very fast moving space with artificial intelligence. Back in November, we announced enterprise availability. And I’ll be honest, I’ve heard probably from many of your listeners, different messages and emails and items about where is CSP availability, exactly Where’s availability for small and medium businesses. And all I can say is, thank you. We always appreciate the advocacy, it is so important that we get that feedback. At the same time, we were always it was always in the plan. It just took a little bit of time to get there. And so we moved very quickly. We had teams working all over the holidays. And we’re really excited to share kind of three big changes. The first is that co pilot for Microsoft 365 is now available in the CSP channel. Wow. So the second that we’re expanding availability to more Microsoft 365 skews, so customers that are on Business Standard, or Business Premium, or customers that are on Office 365 e three, or you five or Microsoft 365, e three or E five, can now add Copilot to their subscription. Very nice. And finally, the big one, the one that took probably the most work is we’ve removed the seat minimums. And that means that customers of any size can start with any number of licences. Even me, Vince Menzione 2:36 even though I’ve been sitting here the haves and the have nots. I’m on all these calls with Microsoft executives, and everybody is powering through copilot. And I’m sitting there going well, I have to flip over to Chad GBT, if I want to do anything on AI, but this is you’ve removed all the roadblocks. That’s Thomas Abel 2:52 exactly right. You know, it’s, it was something we always wanted to have happen. We didn’t honestly think we could get this far this quickly. We pulled out all of the stops to make this happen. And it was really a question of, are we ready or not? And we said, Well, we think we’re ready. Let’s do it. Let’s do it big. Vince Menzione 3:09 This is big for the 400,000 Plus Microsoft partners in the ecosystem. And in fact, many of which are SMB organisations. So their ability to utilise the technology to become proper evangelists hasn’t been there before. Thomas Abel 3:24 It’s exactly I love the way you said that. Like, we often repeat this that many of our partners are small and medium businesses themselves. That’s right. And that means first that they have an amazing view into the needs of their customers. But then also, we need to respect them and help them as small medium businesses. And so you know, this is a win win on both accounts, I hope many partners will say hey, I can get value in copilot for myself, but also they’ll see the value in delivering it to their customers. And Vince Menzione 3:53 I think about like the next neck Netflix as an example. Right? So organisations that may grow into the the next unicorns that are out there that weren’t able to utilise this technology up until now. Yeah, Thomas Abel 4:05 I mean, we’ve we’ve had a really great learning experience with co pilot. It has been very fast, as I said before, but we started back in September with a small group of small and medium businesses that we gave co pilot to. We didn’t make a huge deal about this because we knew that people would be hounding us to get in on it. Exactly. But it’s really been impressive to see how these customers have evolved in using it. And I think small medium businesses actually are going to realise more value out of something like copilot than the large enterprises simply because their primary competency isn’t being the finance person or being you know, the marketer. It’s doing whatever their business is about. Yes. And this gives them more time to do that. Vince Menzione 4:52 So let’s double click here and what this really truly means for me as a partner, Thomas Abel 4:57 yeah, so a couple of different pieces. is. The first is that it’s now available to transact. We shared before that it’s a $30 per user per month SKU. Of course, through the CSP channel, partners can resell that product to their own customers. Just a great classic CSP opportunity for for our Microsoft partners. That’s kind of the first step. But one of the things that I think is so cool about co pilot on top of Microsoft 365, is that it builds on all of the things partners are already doing in selling Microsoft 365 is, of course, that means you need to sell Business Standard or Business Premium into your customer. But one of the things around co pilot and AI is security, how are you ensuring that with this new tool, you’re also securing your infrastructure, and co pilot respects all of the security rules that are already in place for Microsoft 365. So if you’re a partner that already knows how to sell Business Premium, or how to deploy security, managed services, or endpoint protection, these are all things that only get turbocharged when your customers are asking, Hey, what do I need to do before I deploy AI solutions? In my environment? Clearly, partners Vince Menzione 6:12 are super important to what you’re doing, you’ve got to spend a lot of time with them. Were there any aha moments from that? Thomas Abel 6:18 Yeah, I think there’s a couple different pieces to it. One is, you know, the opportunity is very clearly there. We have some data that we talk with a lot of customers, and they say about 87% of businesses today are looking for AI to help them with a competitive advantage. And when I take that stat, and I combine it with what I hear from partners, which is every single renewal conversation they’re having their customers are saying, What’s my AI strategy? What should it be, like, this is an opportunity, you have customer demand, you have this moment, and now you have a product to serve it. And so putting those all together is just a Ha, we had, you know, we were tracking the the kind of first purchases that were taking place. And there was a partner that had standing orders from their customers that as soon as you can hit Buy, I want to buy, they were small. They were they were it was a me five customer, a Business Standard customer, a Business Premium customer, a couple of different customers. And they were all small, about 10 seats each. But it was the start, it was each of those customers saying hey, I want to start with a pilot. I want to experience this. I’m going to deploy it out to a department and I’m going to see the learnings. And what’s great about copilot it’ll tell you we have copilot dashboard in the product. They’ll tell you the time savings that your employees are experiencing. As a partner, you can go show that dashboard. And it’ll sell itself at that point. Vince Menzione 7:42 It’s the same sentiment we’ve been seeing in the enterprise as well. Everybody wants to utilise the technology and they want to bring it to life in their own organisations. What are you doing now? What are you building to help partners be more successful here, Thomas Abel 7:56 I mentioned copilot dashboard, which is a great resource of customers that have started using co pilot for Microsoft 365, we can show those data insights and say how it’s helping them. But for partners specifically, we did something about three years ago I think is a little unique. We took product engineers and tasked them with figuring out how to help partners. Wow. Which Yeah, it’s a little bit differently, we took this team and the net result is a thing called Microsoft 365 Lighthouse lighthouse. That is our multi tenant management solution. It integrates with other third party multi tenant management vendors as well. But it gives partners the ability to manage the security of their tenants across all of them. We recently added one more thing to it, which we’re calling sales advisor. And what I love about this is it’s taking a step beyond just tenant management to helping partners sell to customers. And so last week, in addition to announcing the product, we also launched recommendations for propensity to buy co pilot for Microsoft 365. Vince Menzione 9:00 Wow. So it’s like giving me it’s like candy to me as a partner. The number Thomas Abel 9:04 one thing I hear from from partners is I’d like some leads, please. And this is my attempt to help here we we delivered a bit over 150,000 Customer propensity signals through Microsoft 365 Lighthouse sales advisor. So if you’re a partner, you can log in right now and you should be able to see your customers and which ones are most likely to buy copilot based off of our signals that we use for all of our direct enterprise sellers as well. It’s Vince Menzione 9:34 walking the talk right Microsoft has got the largest ecosystem than a the organization’s in our marketplace in our technology world. And it’s walking the talk in terms of how you’re helping partners be more successful. Thomas Abel 9:46 You know, I appreciate that quite a bit. We’ve worked on this quite hard. We really think that partners are foundational to our success. It’s why we build the products the way we do. It’s why we build so much surface area in the products we do we think about products like Business Premium, and how much there is there that partners can help with in terms of security policies and endpoint management. You know, we’re really committed to the channel, I love Vince Menzione 10:12 it. And Ultimate Partner, we’re excited to continue our partnership with ag one. Friends who know me well, including those of you who listen to this podcast. Know, I’ve made taking a green drink supplement, part of my health ritual for over 22 years now. And it has made all the difference to my health and well being. About seven years ago, I made ag one part of my morning ritual and protocol. I take ag one the first thing every morning, it covers all of my nutritional bases, supports my gut health, and is a boost to my immunity and energy levels. If you want to take ownership of your health, try ag one, you’ll get a free one year supply of vitamin D, and five travel packs with your first purchase, go to drink ag one.com, forward slash Vin Sam, that’s drink ag one.com forward slash Vince M. So Thomas, I was hoping you could double click with us on the difference between Microsoft co pilot and co pilot for Microsoft 365. Thomas Abel 11:21 Yes, a little bit of confusing branding. There’s a lot of CO pilots going around both at Microsoft and it seems like just in the ecosystem, Vince Menzione 11:28 I’m not the only one who feels this way. Thomas Abel 11:32 We certainly started with just Microsoft co pilot. And you know, that is a large language model, empowered with internet data, publicly accessible internet data and a chat based experience that was previously known as being chat or being chat enterprise. And you know, you can go to copilot.microsoft.com today, and go test it out pretty cool experiences that you can go have. When we talk about co pilot for Microsoft 365. We’re changing that a little bit, we’re supercharging some aspects of it. The first is about security and data protection. With Microsoft co pilot, if you sign in with an inter ID account, we give you what we call business grade data protection. Okay? Essentially what we mean by that is Microsoft will not have eyes on access to your prompts or the responses that are being generated. Got it. So your data is secured. Right? When we talk about Microsoft co pilot for Microsoft 365. We upgrade that to what we call enterprise date grade, enterprise grade data protection. And what we really mean by that is respecting all of the policies that are already in place for Microsoft 365. From the user level, where you have user level permissions on files, all the way up to the tenant level. If you have data residency policies in place, we’ll follow all of those same policies with where we’re processing your request, or your queries and the responses through our large language models with copilot. Vince Menzione 13:02 And what that means to me as in layman’s terms is that you might have sensitive information that is only shared with let’s say, the executive team or a certain sector of your business that may have been available to everyone else universally within your organisation and you have the segmentation. does pop privacy policies apply across the business? Exactly Thomas Abel 13:22 right. I’ll give you an example. You know, this is this is inside baseball. But as we were getting ready for this announce, we we started the blog post writing the blog post of what Nicole was going to share Nicole diesen, the head of our global partner solutions organisation was going to write in the blog. And we put that on a SharePoint site like you would normally and we are collaborating on it. It turns out people at Microsoft are very excited about availability and the CSP channel. And there are a couple of people that every morning, the first thing they would do is log into copilot and ask it when is copilot launching in the CSP channel? Oh my god, of course, as we’re writing this blog, all sudden copilot, very diligently starts answering. And they’re paying us like, Hey, did you hear the news? And we’re like, How in the world? Do you know this? Well, it turns out this is kind of classic shift of the SharePoint site. This was a SharePoint site that was used for one purpose. And over time, it had added more and more people to it. And so you know, it was just out of date user permissions that too many people had access to that draft document. And co pilot was just following the rules. Yeah, it’s just doing his job. Exactly. And so we went back in and we’ve set the right restrictions and and when in about 15 minutes, those same people were asking him ask again, and all of a sudden COPPA was saying, Hey, I don’t I can’t answer that. I’m sorry. And it’s a great example of co pilot really following all of the things we’ve already put in place with Microsoft 365. Vince Menzione 14:53 You know, we talk about industries quite a bit and I was just thinking about two very sensitive industries, financial services and healthcare. and HIPAA compliance in healthcare and financial services, certainly very sensitive banking gate and things like that. So those organisations have those privacy policies with copilot Exactly. Thomas Abel 15:10 And this kind of connects to the second big difference between co pilot and co pilot for Microsoft 365, which is we are enriching we are what we call grounding your responses and prompts with your company’s data, meaning that we understand the context of the questions you’re asking, and can use that context and the answers we’re giving. So exactly as you’re calling out of having sensitive data. Yeah, that exposes, in some cases, poorly structured data silos. At the same time, if you structure that correctly, especially as a partner, this is an opportunity for partners, then your customers and your employees can take advantage of that. Yes. And they can use that graph data to better get responses from the large language models. Vince Menzione 15:55 Talk about partner opportunity, SMB space, 150 million SMBs. globally. What does this mean for our partners? Thomas Abel 16:06 Yeah, well, I’ll give you another number, because we like to talk about users as well, about one, slightly over a billion users in commercial, small and medium businesses around the world now have access what they need to start with Microsoft 365. But certainly we’d like to get there. Vince Menzione 16:26 I think about this as a seminal point, in much the same way I think about AI generally is a seminal point for organisations that are looking to transform. Now turning into Microsoft saying, we really want you to be part of this transformational journey. I know that at the enterprise side, that’s been the case. I think it’s the same in SMB, would you agree? Thomas Abel 16:46 Certainly, you know, the most exciting thing for me is, this is going to change how small and medium businesses work. If we talk about what copilot really does, it is integrated into the Microsoft 365 apps that people are using day in and day out, Word, Excel, PowerPoint teams outlook. And so the power of like co pilot for Microsoft uses in Excel to take a small business that maybe today doesn’t have an accountant, or it doesn’t have a CFO, but being able or a finance department being able to use copilot as kind of like a finance intern to help you spend less time analysing your data, and more time going back to whatever your core businesses, that’s going to be such an accelerator for small businesses that they’ve never had access to before, Vince Menzione 17:36 and creating dashboards and all the tools and keep it my favourite Thomas Abel 17:39 demo I do. I downloaded a spreadsheet from the US Department of Agriculture just about fruit prices. And you can give it to co pilot and co pilot will look at all the data and they’ll say, hey, there’s a couple of outliers here of fruits that are way more, you can charge more for them relative to their weight and relative to their serving size. And like it’s a classic example of a small business maybe won’t be looking closely at that data. We have teams of people at Microsoft that pour over this type of data, but being able to ask copilot, hey, which products are better for me to sell. And it’s saying, hey, looking at your company data, these things are better to sell, they make more money for you. They’re their higher priced pets an insight that you can turn into action. Vince Menzione 18:23 I love it. And you’ve gotten to work with partners quite a bit during this process, right and your role. And then this rollout, talk to me a little bit what your experience has been working with these partners. And the excitement in this sort of, I’ll call it a pilot for lack of a better term that you had here. Thomas Abel 18:39 Yeah, we started with a very small group of partner early access SMB customers and a few partners that were in that as well, really just saying, Hey, we don’t know what we don’t know, here with how the world is going to change with artificial intelligence. But let’s give you copilot for a month or two. And let’s see what you do with it. When I think about how partners learn from it, the number one thing is, this is a totally new interaction model between humans and computers, right. And that’s going to take time for people to learn. And so just like the move from on prem to cloud, there is a massive change management curve that that partners are going to have to help their customers through. The funniest thing for me is a couple of partners. They created one pagers of like, how to do co pilot how to use it, what prompts to use, and they printed them out and they laminated them and this to me is so 2000s of like classic 1990 Yeah, laminate the cheat sheet, and they handed it out to every single one of their users. And it works like this is this is back to the basics of learning how to use artificial intelligence and changing your daily routine to accommodate it. One of the things that I’ve started doing is I’ll ask copilot once a week. So hey, what are my most important meetings next week? And which day? Should I come into the office? And it’ll look at my calendar, and it’ll say, Hey, these are the meetings that I think are most important. And it looks like Wednesday is the best day if you were to only come in on one day, come in on Wednesday, because your manager is going to be in as well. And you have a meeting with these other people that they said they wanted to whiteboard. Yeah. Vince Menzione 20:22 Wow, that’s a great use case. The other one I heard about was teams. And that when you’re having meetings in teams, the summarization, the Go dues, and the summarization of the meeting taking place. Thomas Abel 20:35 Exactly. You know, teams is probably the very first feature that everyone starts using and doesn’t stop using teams followed by outlook, I would say it’s just the those kind of core you use those so much, that it’s very easy to start leveraging copilot. Copilot recaps in meetings are very powerful. One of the things that I think is so obvious, but also a little tricky to do is, you know, when you have a meeting with someone, we want the AI to summarise the action items. I don’t want the AI to respond with my action items different from what you think your action items are. So let’s make sure that the action items are the same when we both ask the AI, what’s going on. Vince Menzione 21:16 I love that. And I love that. So many times we misinterpret what our intentions for meetings are, what our Go dues are. So Thomas, for our partners that are watching us today, or listening to the podcast, what do they need to go do now? Thomas Abel 21:30 Yeah, it’s gonna be a learning curve. So I would say first off, start playing with these tools. In order to be able to tell customers the value, you’re gonna have to realise the value yourself. I think that’s an easy one. We’re also publishing an immense amount of content to help partners and to help them create their strategies for how to sell them to their customers, you can start by going to our landing page where we’re hosting all of this content aka.ms/csp, copilot, we’ll keep updating that if you haven’t started transacting, or if you have that customer that’s paying on your door, you should check out the Microsoft Partner centre where we published how to transact because we know this was kind of a non standard launch middle of the month. But we also knew is important, we wanted CSP partners to be able to transact on day one. And Vince Menzione 22:20 I believe there might be some incentives that are being driven into this too. Can you talk to us more about what what partners should anticipate coming? Yeah, so Thomas Abel 22:29 one of the things we’re doing to kind of make sure everyone sees the opportunity with co pilot is we’re including co pilot for Microsoft 365 and the strategic product accelerator. So partners that qualify for our incentives, we’ll be able to earn up to 7% incentive on top of copilots sales, which is of course a great opportunity. It’s not a cheap SKU. So there’s a lot of money there as well. That’s Vince Menzione 22:55 fantastic. Thomas, I feel so privileged that you chose Ultimate Partner to tell this story today. I want to thank you for joining us. I want to thank our viewers and listeners for joining us today. Thanks so much. | |||
| 204 – Empowering Healthcare Tech: Nina Somerville’s Vision at Microsoft | 14 Jan 2024 | 00:31:10 | |
Microsoft’s Nina Somerville Joins Ultimate Partner®
We are diving into the dynamic world of healthcare technology and partnership ecosystems with Microsoft’s Vice President, Nina Somerville. Explore Microsoft’s significant investments in healthcare, AI applications, and the keys to successful partnerships. Nina shares her extensive leadership experience, emphasizing the importance of transparency, empathy, and a growth mindset in the tech industry. Gain valuable insights on AI adoption, data readiness, and fostering diversity. Join host Vince Menzione and Nina Somerville for a deep conversation on career growth, mentorship, and the critical role of partnerships in the health and life sciences industry. Don’t miss this engaging discussion with a seasoned leader shaping the future of healthcare technology. In Her Own WordsNina Somerville, Vice President, US Health & Life Sciences Nina Somerville is a dynamic sales leader with extensive experience in the technology and public sector industries. As a seasoned VP of Sales, she has spent over 20 years building and leading high-performing teams across various segments, industries, and technologies. Nina has cultivated her skills in leadership, communication, and relationship building with roles in sales, sales management, teaching, and coaching. She recently rejoined Microsoft from Salesforce, where she spent the last four years leading national teams across diverse business segments and industries. Prior to that, she spent over a decade at Microsoft, serving in various roles across Northeast Enterprise, Services, and Public Sector in both the Federal and State & Local divisions. Nina’s multifaceted background and strong leadership skills, along with her deep understanding of Microsoft’s business and her ability to drive results, have been honed through her diverse experiences within the company. Outside of work, Nina is dedicated to positively impacting her community. She serves on the board of a local non-profit that prepares and distributes meals for those who are food insecure. Additionally, she is involved in her local schools and youth sports programs, supporting the growth and development of young people. Nina is a proud Virginia Tech graduate and resides in Vienna, VA, with her husband and their three children. In her free time, she enjoys cheering on her kids from the stands and spending quality time with her family. LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP What You’ll Learn1. Microsoft’s healthcare investments and leadership insights. (0:00) I am thrilled to welcome you into a world of unparalleled insights, best practices, and essential information designed to unlock your full potential as a partner and propel you towards your most ambitious goals. Our journey began nearly seven years ago with a vision to empower partners in the complex world of tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and AWS. Today, Ultimate Partner is a beacon dedicated to revolutionizing your Cloud Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy and fostering ecosystem-led growth through this experience platform, including digital and live events, advisory services, and much more. In an era defined by tectonic shifts, such as the global pandemic, economic headwinds, and the rise of AI, the role of hyperscalers has become increasingly critical. With investments of billions of dollars in ecosystems, technology, and customer acquisition costs, they have secured over $200 billion in customer commitments to durable cloud budgets. We stand on the precipice of a marketplace moment where simplifying and streamlining economic models associated with co-selling and ecosystem-led growth will shape the decade ahead. Yet, as vendors and organizations demand more from us while resources diminish, we ask, “Where do we go? How do we navigate these seismic shifts? How do we thrive during this decade of the ecosystem?” If you’re a partner, you’re likely grappling with these questions. The watering holes of the past no longer offer the guidance required to transform into a Cloud GTM and embrace ecosystem-led growth. That’s why Ultimate Partner exists – to be your trusted compass amidst the noise. LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Many Typoscustomer, partners, Microsoft, work, AI, life sciences, team, call, leader, verticals, talking, great, data, health, years, conversations, ag, healthcare, fact, share Vince Menzione 0:00 Do you want to learn about Microsoft’s significant investments and focus in healthcare? An industry that represents 19%? of gross domestic product? Would you like to learn from an incredible business leader who’s made her mark by putting people at the center of her approach to leadership? And are you interested in how you should think about growing your business in 2024? Then you’ve come to the right place. This is the Ultimate Partner the top partnership podcast. In this podcast, Vince Manziel, a proven partner sales executive shares his mission to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. And now your host, Vince Menzione. Vince Menzione 0:49 Welcome to or welcome back to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzione, on your host. And today, I will Nina Somerville 0:57 Nina Somerville is the vice president of the US health and life sciences business at Microsoft nine and I had the opportunity to work together during my decade at Microsoft. And she is both an incredible leader and human. You’ll learn about the US health and life sciences business. It’s an incredible business opportunity for any partner, but also the human side of how this leader engages with partners and our team to drive results. I hope you learn from this discussion. As much as I enjoyed welcoming my friend Nina Summerville Vince Menzione 1:35 Nina, welcome to the podcast. Nina Somerville 1:38 it is so good to see you. It’s good to be here and good to see an old friend and face and I am not commenting on your age just just good to see you. Vince Menzione 1:49 We have known each other for quite some time, I think it’s going on 16 years. Nina Somerville 1:55 Yeah, it might be longer. Vince Menzione 2:01 Well, we had the opportunity to work together at Microsoft. Not only that we had adjoining office spaces. If you recall, back when I first joined the company, so I’m so excited to welcome you as a guest on Ultimate Partner. It’s great to see you. And your and your rise in your career. You are Microsoft’s Vice President, for the US health and life sciences business, one of the most impactful verticals that I could think of in fact, so kudos to you, my friends, so excited to have you as a guest today. Nina Somerville 2:34 Thank you so much. Now it’s a it’s an honour and even hear you say that it’s a it’s a privilege to represent the group. So thank you Vince Menzione 2:41 quite a bit of an amazing trajectory. And we’re gonna get into that during this conversation today. But for our listeners, maybe the one or two who may not know you, or your role at Microsoft, can you tell us a little bit about that? And your mission? In fact, Nina Somerville 2:58 you bet you bet. So. So again, I’m fortunate enough to lead it’s the it’s the US health and life sciences. So what does that mean are payers providers, med tech devices, pharma, so everything you’ve sort of put in that category, which is, which is a wide array, I think the exciting thing is, in all of those businesses, there’s an ultimate patient outcome, or health outcome, that’s really important. We have everyone from account managers to technical specialists to specific solution area specialists, when you think of the portfolio from, from modern workplace to Azure, to dynamics to surface. And beyond, so specialist there, and then and then customer success, folks who really help the customers deploy and use and find value out of the things they’ve invested in. It’s exciting. Vince Menzione 3:51 It’s exciting, and also to highlight Microsoft’s investments. And I think one of the things that partners don’t always understand when they think about a vertical, and you know, you and I were in public sector back in the day when we weren’t the only verticals, is the level of investment, like you’re basically the CEO of a business within the business, you have people and you can spotlight this to talk about this any way you’d like. But you basically have an entire organisation across sales, marketing, and you know, the customer operations and so on that your your drive and technology that you’re driving against and, and supporting those customers. Is that right? Nina Somerville 4:30 It is I mean, I want to say me, I think I think really important is I lead a field team that touches the customers every day the company invests overall in the industry. So there are health specific focus individuals, everything from former nurses and doctors to deep technical expertise in our engineering team, in our product teams in our global marketing teams. We also have a worldwide health industry team that also touches the US so it’s it’s beyond On the nynas world of things, it is really, health and life sciences as a focus for the company is really broad. And we get the benefit of sort of bringing all those to bear for customers as they need them. Vince Menzione 5:13 You know, this for partners specifically that are looking at this is potentially a new opportunity and those that are in this space, healthcare is roughly 19% of GDP. And we were talking about this earlier, like Microsoft is really invested significantly, you just talked about some of those investment areas, also have made significant dollar investments in technology over the years. Certainly, we will talk a little bit about AI and Microsoft’s announcements there. But also, I was thinking about the acquisition of nuance, which was significant acquisition just about two years ago, I believe. Now, can you tell us more about how Microsoft thinks about investing in healthcare? Nina Somerville 5:52 Yeah, I think I think most importantly, as Microsoft understands the importance, I look every day at our team, and I talk about the opportunity, we have to change the future of healthcare for future generations. I mean, it’s it’s, it sounds cliche, I don’t think it is, I think with AI and fusion with technology with, as you mentioned, nuance, I mean, it amplifies the value that the healthcare domain expertise they bring the AI outcomes they bring paired with the history of Microsoft and the platform. It’s a group of us were talking about it yesterday, I think that the excitement is we can take people from cloud to digital to true AI transformation when you marry that, that portfolio and expertise and, and I know we’re on on your call today. But but we don’t do that without partners, that that does not happen, we have so many things that we can bring, it doesn’t land at the customer, we don’t execute, we don’t scale without our partner ecosystem. Vince Menzione 6:54 Now, it’s just thinking about that. Because there, you know, we can talk about you have the payers, you have the providers, which are a significant portion of the business, you have life sciences. And across each of those verticals within the vertical, you probably have several sets of partners that you and your team work with. Thinking about this now in terms of how you’re layering in and working with partners to support the business. But I want to spend a moment on AI like it’s the elephant in the room. It’s what everybody’s been talking about. And I think about Satya here and in a big way you and I both worked in the early in the bomber days, and now in the Satya days and probably noticeable changes and changes in the way that businesses run. But some big announcements recently on the AI front. What use cases are you and your team? Seeing? Nina Somerville 7:43 Yeah, well, you just mentioned the vast set of customers we have. And so I think I think the answer is it varies dramatically and every customer. What I’ve been finding really interesting and wonderful is we leave conversations, just thinking way beyond all of the art of the possible I think the hard thing for customers, then as we talk to partners, I think this is really important. The help we need is how do we pick those high value low risk use use cases to start for the customers who aren’t already on the journey? Many are? How do you pick something that they can start and figure out? Is my data ready? I always say is your data AI ready? Is my data ready? Things like copilot getting getting in touch and a taste of how AI can be infused in your daily work to start, and then there is a sky’s the limit. You could you could spend way too much time figuring out all the possibilities and not start. And so I think where I’m finding the most exciting partner conversations is really helping those customers start. And and it’s hard because we get excited by the million possibilities. Vince Menzione 8:55 Do you have an area that you recommend they start? I mean, you mentioned getting your data. Right, right. That’s like garbage in garbage out. We all know. So how do you think about that when you have these kinds of customer conversations? Nina Somerville 9:06 I do. I do think there’s a there’s a data component of making sure obviously, that that they’re ready to take full advantage of the capability. I think back to you know, we take responsible AI really seriously, which is, is there. So we’ve actually we’ve we’ve found that our HR teams, our legal teams are talking to legal on the other side to say, hey, here’s how we think about responsible AI. So I think having open conversations about those that have done it, and how did they How did they do it and then back to what I said which is one of those low risk but high value places where you can be sure that the data that’s being accessed is within your environment. And that it is it is something that you can test and implement and watch to to make sure excuse me that it makes sense. Before you go do a massive, massive The project. And so, again, I think I think that the key is it depends on the customer where they are. So I think it’s really personalised, of course, within a given segment, we can say, hey, it happened here. Now we can replicate. And we are seeing some of those. But But I think the help is helping the customer figure out where they can start. Vince Menzione 10:19 Yeah. And you, you reminded me when you were speaking about the attorneys, and HR and all those different groups getting together about HIPAA compliance, right, so that you’re in a regulated industry, there’s a level of security and in fact, risk around sharing data. Sure. So how do you think about that as an example? Nina Somerville 10:38 Yeah, I think, yeah, I think we’re still we have a tonne of mature customers who are very deep into this. And so I’ll make some general statements that don’t apply to all of them. But I do think we still have a lot of fear in the system of what is what is AI? What’s accessible? How will people be, you know, using hallucinations, as fact. And so I think from a compliance standpoint, one is is your data secure? Are you using AI to to search and bring out outcomes from a subset of data that you can keep in a secure way? We’re not talking about public web searches, right. And so So I think it is it is really important and how you set up the data, what AI is accessing, and what the people are accessing. So let’s think of a call centre, a contact centre, you call in a, an agent is doing an AI a search and using AI to bring forth outcomes, but from a subset of content, not everything on the web. So it’s about it’s about that setup and about that protection, but it’s also educating people that it can be done in a safe way. Vince Menzione 11:49 Yeah and Brad Smith, your president and chief legal officer always talks about responsible AI. I mean, that’s that’s built into his talking points and the mantra that he shares. Nina Somerville 12:00 Absolutely. Vince Menzione 12:01 So I love to talk about partners, this is the Ultimate Partner and you’ve been around partners, you’ve pretty much your entire career, if I remember correctly. What do you see from the best? Like, what do you see from the best partners you work with in the HLS? Business? Yeah, Nina Somerville 12:16 I think we have to at an exec and a leadership level align on priorities. And we have to look at joint customers and say, How can we do better? I think sometimes where we stall ourselves is where we keep just doing that, when really, we need to get our respective account teams together, the folks on the ground at customer fill in the blank, what’s that account plan at that customer, and then we can level up things that we can repeat across other customers, then we can talk in an exact level. It’s wonderful to know the execs at Microsoft, it’s wonderful to know, leadership, it’s also really important that on the ground, we’re operating in a cohesive way. And so often, that’s my immediate follow up to partner conversations, which is let’s get the teams together and align them because they’re doing the real work. My individual contributors, and my first line managers who are with the customers every single day, they know better than talking to me. And so I think that’s the most important is that we’re aligning at each customer, which is hard, that’s hard to scale, especially depending on the size of your organisation. So I also then think, often, the first place to start when, as a new partner to Microsoft, is where are we already both somewhere? If we’re both there, what are we doing that work insights, because we share together about a customer that we’re both serving and helping? And where can we show up better together? Vince Menzione 13:47 And also speaking the same language, right? I, my eyes were opened actually, just when the event we were talking about the event we just hosted back in November, we did a session on M SEM. And I was hesitant to even do it, like, why are we going to do a session on M SEM. That’s Microsoft sales methodology. It was one of the best sessions we had Elliot Dunlap come from Dallas, and do this session. And it became really clear to me like we’re not always speaking the same language like your team is here, and having a conversation and then all of a sudden a partner comes in. I encourage partners to come back and listen to that session, because you really have to understand Microsoft’s approach and speak the same language Microsoft speaks to about the customer. Nina Somerville 14:31 No, I totally agree. And, and beyond sales methodology, I would actually just call it an orchestration plan. It is it is how we with and I mentioned the various roles and within our teams, there are many, many roles. It’s how do we orchestrate beautifully when we show up at a customer? How do we handoff from the technical person to that customer success person to maybe an implementation partner. If we don’t understand each other, that doesn’t happen and we’re conky in every company calls customer success a different thing or calls a technical specialists a different thing. And so we do have to understand each other. You’re totally right. Vince Menzione 15:08 And we can go, we can go deep on this one. But I think we’ll save that for another session. So what about partners that didn’t get it right? Whether it’s in this role, or various roles that you’ve had at Salesforce, and Microsoft and Oracle, in fact, if I remember going back far enough in your career, what did you see? partners do wrong? I guess is what I would say are where they failed. And you wish you had said to them at the time, like, I just wish you to go do this the right way? Like, what would you expect? Um, then Nina Somerville 15:39 I feel like everyone has wonderful intent. And we all have our personal goals. So one, it’s on both of us to understand each other’s goals, priorities. So that’s on us too. I think. I think sometimes we might have failed together. And I wouldn’t necessarily say that there’s a, there’s a point, I think, easier for us to consume, in our massive scale, is just really understanding what you can deliver to a customer. How do we deeply understand how to partner with you as well. So I think sometimes, there’s a lot of trying to serve us. And know, there’s such deep expertise in that partner. And I think I think it’s it’s more of that true understanding at the field level. But I would also say, back to my statement of, let’s figure out where we both already are. Sometimes the Hey, call me if you need x. Okay, but it’s easier for me to say, hey, we’re both here doing this work, let’s do this together. So I think that gets lost that the pitch of Call me if you need something, I acquainted to this fence, this is a little silly. But when you have a sick neighbour or a relative that needs something, and you say, Call me if you need anything they want, do you just have to show up? And so that’s kind of the way I would put it. Vince Menzione 17:04 So would you put that on both sides, then would you say on your team, as well as the partner team? Nina Somerville 17:08 I would and I think, you know, again, we all get busy in our day jobs. And so I think where we are already both doing work is the easiest place to start and understand each other, then we can go other places together. Vince Menzione 17:20 I agree, going deep together, right, like belly to belly into an account together. Nina Somerville 17:25 And, and I think that’s having hard conversations, and it’s not working. Yeah. Agreed. Again, it’s back to the same as like your native relationship with your neighbour. So stop doing that it makes me mad. We have to have honest conversations, too. Vince Menzione 17:39 I talked about being deliberate or aggressive in a diplomatic way. It’s like having that transparency with empathy, that you go back and say, Look at this isn’t working. And let me explain to you why and what how it could be better and what, what good looks like or what great looks like. Nina Somerville 17:57 Yeah, and I say I talked earlier about the vast resources at the company focused on health and life sciences. There’s the vast partner ecosystem doing great work and other than life sciences. The customers are our collective customer. And so there’s there’s just got to be a mutual respect Vince Menzione 18:15 as well. And Ultimate Partner. We’re excited to continue our partnership with ag one. Friends who know me well, including those of you who listen to this podcast. know I’ve made taking a green drink supplement, part of my health ritual for over 22 years now. And it has made all the difference to my health and well being. About seven years ago, I made ag one part of my morning ritual and protocol. I take ag one the first thing every morning, it covers all of my nutritional bases, supports my gut health, and is a boost to my immunity and energy levels. If you want to take ownership of your health, try ag one, you’ll get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five travel packs with your first purchase. Go to drink ag one.com forward slash then Sam. That’s drink ag one.com forward slash Vince M. Vince Menzione 19:21 Nina I’d love to pivot. As you might know, I am fascinated with the career journey. I’ve spent a lot of time mentoring earlier and career professionals. And I’ve got to see your rise. In fact, I don’t know what your title was when we first met if it was director or senior director. But being a VP at Microsoft is a big deal. So I’d love to deep dive a little bit here. Like was there a spark? Was there a pivot? Or was there maybe a mentor that came into the room that helped you propel to this incredible spot in your career? Nina Somerville 19:49 I really say I meandered. I was a teacher, a high school teacher for five years. I think when we met I was a SharePoint SSP in federal, probably not maybe by then I have was doing something else but but you know I think the important thing is try things. I just yesterday ran into someone who it was the first manager job and it was so I take this field sales job or do I take this people manager job and I cared more about helping people and chose that path and those little moments, I think just just help you get places. But I’ve had moments in time where I have a goal, I want to be my boss’s boss’s boss. It’s worked out better when I just look to try experiences and experiences where I think I can make a difference. And, and that meandering along the way has worked out. But again, I don’t think there’s been a specific thing. And I will say I’ve had such a luxury of working for just really good people. And, of course smart, of course, great at their jobs, but but just good people. And so if people always ask me, like, Who do you follow? What do you do? And I said, if you stay around good people, I think that’s the most important. Vince Menzione 21:13 So you make it sound. So like meandering feels so casual. And I don’t see I mean, I don’t see it that way. Right. I think I think you’re incredibly bright. I think you’re, you’ve got passion about what you do. You’re also I’m just gonna share this, like, I think you’re a really great people person, like, I’ve always found you to be that. So is there a superpower there? Like, can I peel back for me a little bit here, because I do think there’s so much more tonight than just me. Nina Somerville 21:44 I think I do think there is put people first, just straight up, put others first and you will rise naturally, by doing that. Other people’s good work that you help facilitate is better than promoting your own. And, and I think that’s what’s probably served me well along the way. And I believe in that wholeheartedly. I always feel like the people that are really out promoting themselves don’t get there. But, but the people that really take stock and all the work that people around them do, it naturally will help you it might be slower, actually, it might be slower. But then I think it’s real. That’s, that’s the most important man and and I really, you know, I think get to know everyone around you how they are in, that’s getting harder, my team is really big. There are a lot of people that work on my team that I don’t know. So also putting good leadership in place. And so that first line leader is the most important job in the company. Because they really take care of that team and know the team and know how they like to be recognised and know what’s going to put them in a place where they’re thriving. And so as I’ve done bigger jobs that that having really good leaders has been one of the most important things. Vince Menzione 23:02 What traits do you look for in a leader? Nina Somerville 23:06 I think there’s balance across the team is really, really important. If if everyone knows the industry really well, it’s okay to bring in someone that’s a really good people leader, but that doesn’t have that background. If everyone knows the data really well, is there someone else who focuses more on people? I think balance and obviously, diversity inclusion is huge, important to any company, especially at Microsoft. But just think that balance across an organisation. And we’re like that I have great leaders that work for me great leaders I work for and I think we balance each other nicely. And that’s really going to just just help everybody’s game. Vince Menzione 23:46 So I’m going to ask another hard question is how do you avoid the unconscious bias of hiring a person who’s just like you? Nina Somerville 23:58 Yeah, well, I think we have to be really intentional. We have some programmes internally that help us have some sort of outside views when we’re looking at hiring to make sure that that it’s not just our, our opinion, but I think you have to have constant looking for a bench of leaders. And you should know a massive network of people that could fill the next job that you might have open. Because if you if you have to act quickly, you’re going to grab that person closest to you that you know the best, that’s probably the easiest. So it’s a long game. It’s actually not about that moment in time. But I also engage other people in your choices so that you aren’t short sighted, we all will all do it. Yeah. Vince Menzione 24:40 So make sure you have almost like a board of directors supporting you in the decision process. So this is a favourite question I have. You are hosting a dinner party, and you can invite any three guests from the present or the past. This amazing dinner party, we can talk about where you want to host it maybe even as a possibility. Who would you invite? And why?
Yeah, well, there’s a couple of versions of this. So I have a couple versions. There’s a personal version, which is I wanted to have myself attend myself today and myself at like, 95. Just just wouldn’t it be lovely to know how it’s all gonna turn out and how you know, where it’s all come from. So that there’s there’s a personal version of that current current state and job. I think it would be incredible to have a dinner party right now with all of the future CEO and CO directs past and future of Microsoft. Very cool. Can you imagine just how much has changed in the last 12 months? Can you imagine that, that that looked back to even just 10 years down the road, what what life is going to be? Vince Menzione 26:00 I think it’s just fascinating to get bomber gates and to enter rooms, let alone who’s going to be the leader? 10 years from now, right? Who’s going to be the successor 100%. Nina Somerville 26:10 And you know, you say those three names, and there’s so much different, obviously. But, but I spent a long time at Microsoft and I was gone a little bit and I came back and, and I think the one thing that sticks with me a lot is it says it. And I feel like it’s always been a lived value is that culture drives growth. And I really do believe we keep that in order here. Because you don’t, you don’t just drive for growth’s sake, it’s culture, and that’s a internal as well as the customers and partners. You know, Vince Menzione 26:45 you and I had the opportunity to work with Michael Gervais when he was working with the organ. And we just had him on the podcast, in fact, again, his fourth appearance, and you reminded me the whole growth mindset and what we learned and how we shifted the organisation back in those days, anything that you feel is like, how would you remark on your, your days before and your time back? Now? What is it eight or nine months since you’ve been back? What was the most remarkable moment from that? Like, the biggest takeaway for you? Nina Somerville 27:16 I think it’s constant learning. Really, I think there’s an openness to fail, there’s an openness to share, when you don’t know, we’ve been talking recently about, you know, if you can’t prep for every meeting, and spend time worrying about what other people think, and Michael actually has that I think that’s his, you know, is is new book that’s out is about that fear of what other people think. And you just got to be true to yourself, and be honest with what you know, and Don’t fake it. And it kind of goes back to what you said about leadership and successes along the way. Those are the people I see shine the most when you really they are themselves, obviously in an appropriate and respectful way. But being okay with what you don’t know what you’re good at what you’re not bring people around you who are good at the things you’re not versus trying to be at all. Vince Menzione 28:07 I love that advice. That’s great advice for our listeners, nine. So you have been an amazing guest and I just so love getting together with you. And you’re running an incredible business and health and life sciences. For our listeners, some of which may be in the health and life sciences, vertical business or verticals. And some that may be interested in working in your sector. Two things, I guess is what I would ask. One is how can they best engage with your teams? And then how can they line up for success in 2020? Nina Somerville 28:42 For sure, well, I think first, it is a thrilling place to be. So there is not another industry and team where you get to impact patients outcomes wellness across the country, the globe, and an exciting time and technology to be able to influence that again, in a responsible way. It’s it’s thrilling. So one jump in if you’re not in right. To, you know, we’re engaging again, I would I would go back to engaging at the geography or account team or customer level where there’s already been work done. And obviously we can help navigate folks to the right place. But yeah, I couldn’t be more proud. It’s, it’s, it’s, and I will tell you, the folks on our teams have been in this business for years and years. There are a lot of folks who have chosen to stay in health and life sciences at Microsoft, because of that passion for the customer. And so it is one of the best teams I’ve ever been around. Vince Menzione 29:45 I would agree with you. I got to know some of those folks over the years and you have some incredible passionate people around health and life sciences in your organisation. So one more thing on the 2024 piece like and how to how to were you setting up your team to be successful in 2020? For sure. Nina Somerville 30:04 So we are for us, it’s the back half of our fiscal year. So, not a lot will change in our in our next in our next six months. But But I think we are always evolving to say, do we have the right specialists? Do we have the right alignment? Are we serving the market the right way. And again, I’ll go back to, we need partners to help us scale. So what I would say to is, this isn’t about figuring out Microsoft, it’s also about come and share the work you’re doing and the insights you have, we are always learning. And so I just look forward to meeting. You know, so many so many new partners and figuring out how we better touch and help the lives of more. I love it. Vince Menzione 30:44 I love it. We’re gonna have to get you up on stage at one of our upcoming events this coming year nine. Nina Somerville 30:52 It is good to see you. Thanks so much for having me. Vince Menzione 30:55 It’s so great to see you. Thank you so much for making time today for our listeners. Thank you. Bye bye now. Vince Menzione 31:06 | |||
| 203 – Unlocking a Trailblazer Tech Journey Sparks Empowerment and Innovation! | 08 Jan 2024 | ||
Sonic Wall’s Michelle Regusa McBain Joins Ultimate Partner®
Dive into Michelle Ragusa-McBain’s inspiring journey, from her tech career to her advocacy for women in technology and business. Listen as Michelle, SonicWall’s Global Channel Chief, speaks on cybersecurity partnerships, tech career growth, and the evolving role of MSPs. Join her and Vince Menzione as they discuss SonicWall’s innovative partner program and effective cybersecurity strategies. Discover key tips for successful partnerships, overcoming industry challenges, and setting goals for personal and professional success. In Her Own WordsMichelle Ragusa-McBain is a highly visible thought leader in the global technology channel and serves as Vice President and Global Channel Chief at SonicWall. Her mission is to enable partners to grow and profit with the boundless shift to cybersecurity. Entrepreneur Magazine named her as one of the top 4 people to inspire women to pursue a career in Tech; SMB Magazine recognized her as one of the 150 most influential people in the global IT Business Community. CRN named Ragusa-McBain nominee for Women of the Year 2023. CompTIA named her Advancing Women in Technology Leader 2021. Channel Futures awarded her the Circle of Excellence for Channel Leadership & Innovation and the DE&I 101 award, and she was the recipient of the prestigious Cisco Worldwide Innovation and Growth Award. Michelle has keynoted the largest and most influential technology conferences globally, including Channel Partners, CRN, CompTIA, IT Nation, and Kaseya. In her free time, she is a passionate advocate for Women, Diversity, and Inclusion in Technology. Michelle serves as Chair Emeritus of Advancing Women in Technology for CompTIA, sat on the board of CRN’s Women of the Channel, is Co-Founder of Tech Worlds Half non-profit; a longstanding member of the National Women in Technology Group and most recently serves as Florida Leader for Alliance of Channel Women. In her free time, she loves spending quality time with her husband, daughters Brooklyn and Cali, and ever-growing fur kids, including Husky, Auggie-Doggy, Calico Kitten, Luna-Meow, and fish Strawberry and Blueberry. She loves volunteering and giving back to various organizations, including the American Heart Association and Ronald McDonald House. She is a passionate wanderlust who loves traveling the world with her family, 90 countries to date, and all seven continents! LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP What You’ll Learn1. Cybersecurity partnerships and career insights with SonicWall’s global channel chief. 2. Michelle Regua McBain’s role at SonicWall and her experience in the technology channel. 1:45 3. SonicWall’s new partner program and acquisitions. 5:31 4. Cybersecurity threats and opportunities for MSPs. 9:19 5. Cybersecurity threats and partnering for protection. 13:53 6. Building successful partnerships and avoiding common pitfalls. 22:01 7. Career journey and leadership path with SonicWall’s global channel chief. 26:34 8. Overcoming obstacles and finding success in the tech industry. 31:47 9. Optimizing for success in the new year. 36:24 I am thrilled to welcome you into a world of unparalleled insights, best practices, and essential information designed to unlock your full potential as a partner and propel you towards your most ambitious goals. Our journey began nearly seven years ago with a vision to empower partners in the complex world of tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and AWS. Today, Ultimate Partner is a beacon dedicated to revolutionizing your Cloud Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy and fostering ecosystem-led growth through this experience platform, including digital and live events, advisory services, and much more. In an era defined by tectonic shifts, such as the global pandemic, economic headwinds, and the rise of AI, the role of hyperscalers has become increasingly critical. With investments of billions of dollars in ecosystems, technology, and customer acquisition costs, they have secured over $200 billion in customer commitments to durable cloud budgets. We stand on the precipice of a marketplace moment where simplifying and streamlining economic models associated with co-selling and ecosystem-led growth will shape the decade ahead. Yet, as vendors and organizations demand more from us while resources diminish, we ask, “Where do we go? How do we navigate these seismic shifts? How do we thrive during this decade of the ecosystem?” If you’re a partner, you’re likely grappling with these questions. The watering holes of the past no longer offer the guidance required to transform into a Cloud GTM and embrace ecosystem-led growth. That’s why Ultimate Partner exists – to be your trusted compass amidst the noise. LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Many TyposUltimate Partner – Michelle Ragusa-McBain SUMMARY KEYWORDS partners, sonicwall, organisation, programme, people, great, important, ultimate guide, channel, years, career, vendors, love, michelle, business, support, grandmother, partnerships, acquisition, listening SPEAKERS Vince Menzione, Michelle Ragusa-McBain Vince Menzione 00:00 Do you want to hear from a global channel chief, leading the transformation of a legacy Channel programme into a force in the cybersecurity space? Do you want to know how this person didn’t take no for an answer and propelled her career as an award winning woman in the channel? And are you interested in the opportunities ahead? As we each prepare for success in 2024, then you’ve come to the right place. This is the Ultimate Partner the top partnership podcast. In this podcast, Vince Menzione, a proven partner sales executive shares his mission to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. And now your host Vince Minzy. Welcome to or welcome back to The Ultimate Guide to bartering. I’m Vince menzi on your host and today, I will. Michelle Regua McBain is the global channel chief at SonicWALL, a leader in the cybersecurity space, and Michelle and I have an engaging conversation in this world of technology partnerships, channels and ecosystems. Michelle also shares her insights into her exciting role and Sonic walls evolution within the channel. We also discuss her career journey, and how never saying no help propel her path to this amazing success in her career. I hope you enjoy and learn from this discussion as much as I enjoyed welcoming my friend Michelle Regua. McBain Michelle, welcome to the podcast. Michelle Ragusa-McBain 01:45 Thank you, Vince, I’m so happy to be here with you today. Vince Menzione 01:49 I am so excited. You know we could, you and I were having a little bit of a conversation just before we got started today. So we have a really great working relationship. We’ve known each other for a long time. And I’m so excited to welcome you as a guest on Ultimate Partner. You’re the global channel chief at SonicWALL, a leader in the cybersecurity space. So I’m really excited for our conversation today. Michelle Ragusa-McBain 02:13 I’m delighted. Yeah, I’m really excited also to be a part of SonicWALL. It’s a great place to be. Yeah. Vince Menzione 02:20 we’re gonna dive in on that. So you know, you and I know each other for quite some time. We’ve been on stage at the same time. In fact, same events. I bumped into your husband every once in a while. We’ll talk more about that at some point you do it looks, it looks like he might be travelling from now. Occasionally you’re both travelling for the one or two people that don’t know you. I thought maybe we’d start there. Right. Tell us a little bit more about you, Michelle, and the exciting role that you have at SonicWALL. Sure. Michelle Ragusa-McBain 02:56 Well, I am really excited. I’ve been in the technology channel for about 20 years, always working with partners. I began in about 2005 as an engineer in a global Academy with Cisco. And I was there for many years. For 12 years I did a lot of different roles at that time working in commercial enterprise telco, public sector, public sector, state local education, and distribution. So I thought I did all of the things I do and took a different opportunity. I pivoted and I went to Office Depot during the CompuCom acquisition, there were two companies that were thought of to go bankrupt that year. It was Office Depot and Toys R Us and we know what happened at Toys R Us. So I was happy to be a part of a transformation. I thought that was very exciting. And really helping to lean in and pivot up traditional brick and mortar retail into tech services was really something very exciting for me. After that I went on to consult for a few years with the JSW group and I love that I got to work with incredible vendors and distributors. And then I returned to Cisco for a few years where I led the global SMB MSP mission. And now I am at SonicWALL for about eight months now, which is good news that happened fast. And I am very happy I started as their North American channel chief four months later, I was promoted to the global channel chief and I get to work with an incredible leadership team many of which have been there many years my my boss or CRO Jason Carter has been at the company for 17 years, which is incredible. Our CEO Bob and Kirk were co-CRO and now CEO. So we have two really passionate long term people leading the company leading the ship and a team that is very diverse. We have new hires, Spencer Stark, he’s leading a mia we have devashish Who’s in a PJC we have Oscar, who’s now leading Last time, we have just an incredible group of people that are new, bringing different diverse thoughts and perspectives. We have a new cmo and a new head of product. So Christine Bartlett and Shandra. Prasad. So all around you mix people that have been at SonicWALL, 1020 30 years, with people that are very new and different. And bringing those two worlds together, we have a lot of love. We’re 100% channel vendor. So all of our work goes through the channel, and we love our partners. Vince Menzione 05:30 love that. First of all, you talk about the huge legacy, right? You have leaders there that have been there. 17 plus years, right. So the legacy of the business understanding the business that’s deep. And then as you said, the diversity new new fresh faces, new fresh minds coming into the organisation. I love that infusion of the to that inclusiveness of the organisation. You mentioned it, this huge legacy in the channel, right. I think the number was 10,000 partners that I read. But now you’ve been on a tear, right? 17,00? Michelle Ragusa-McBain 06:00 Yeah, 17,000 Vince Menzione 06:02 borders. Okay. You’re now in. And you’re new. Ron, congratulations on your role. Wow, is it first of all, is eight months, it doesn’t even seem like it’s been a month since you that you announced that you were going to SonicWALL. And now taking over global. Eight months went by this year went by fast we’ll jump in there a little bit to Michelle Ragusa-McBain 06:22 get the faster it goes. You have to cherish every moment especially? Vince Menzione 06:26 Absolutely. So tell me about what you’re doing with the programme. I am seeing that you’re reimagining the programme. What do you hope to achieve in 2024? With the new programme? Michelle Ragusa-McBain 06:36 Yeah, great, great question. So we, we did what we call outside in and what does that mean? It really just means, you know, a lot of vendors, they operate in a vacuum, they launch something and they wait for anticipation of results. After the launch. They didn’t seek feedback, they didn’t seek input. And sometimes things fail that way. Right. So when Bob took over our CEO, he spent a year really doing outside in and encouraging every single member of the ELT down to the, you know, highest and lowest ranks of the organisation to get out there. seek feedback. So, in the last, you know, several months, we’ve been to close to 60 events around the world. We’ve done a lot of quarterly business reviews, we’ve met on site with new and future partners, asking what works, what doesn’t? How can we innovate? How can we make you more successful and more profitable? How can we be easier to do business with what do you need from a vendor or SonicWALL to really drive your success. So in that conversation in those thoughts, we had a lot of good feedback, a lot of good discussion. So our new secure first programme, that’s the first time we’ve really changed it in the last eight years post del release, we were owned by delta post acquisition, and now we are private equity backed. So we have a brand new programme that’s really exciting. A lot of our silver partners are being promoted to gold gold partners are being promoted to platinum, we’re reducing the rebate threshold so more partners can earn incentives and drive their business with us. We’re also accruing MDF. So if you do business with us, and you’re strategic, we want to co brand co market who innovate with you and put money back into your organisation so that you can do great things with us by your side helping to support you. In addition to that, we have our MSP programme. And we have merged the two so that a lot of our partners now whether your customers choose to procure an end product, or they want recurring revenue, monthly payments, Pay As You Go cancel any time billing in arrears. Either way, we have a plan for you. And we can earn points. So regardless of how your customers are choosing to procure, you’re going to get those benefits, and you’re going to earn up the ranks of our pyramid in our partner programme with us. And then we have some great acquisitions that we’ve made recently. So one of the ones that was most exciting in the managed service provider space was the acquisition of solutions granted, so having an MDR solution that we can help. There’s about 83,000 MSPs in the world, and they don’t all want to be mssps, although majority of them are selling security in some way, shape, or form. And so how can we help you stand up a practice that does MDR cloud readiness, evaluation, vulnerability assessments, all of the things that we know it’s not if but when a cyber attack is going to happen? And it could be the end to a small to medium business 60% of small to medium businesses that are attacked in cyber breaches go out of business. So this is people’s livelihoods. It’s their By the way, they put food on their table and pay for their children’s education and keep the lights on for their business and their employees. We want to keep them safe. We want to keep our partner safe. And so we’re really looking to continue to invest in that acquisitions around sassy and zero trust, and really exciting portfolio that is going to really lean into making this a new dawn for SonicWALL. And for our partners. Vince Menzione 10:24 I love the energy of what you’re doing. First of all, the listening to her so important to listen to your partners. I wish more organisations did more of that. And then it seems like you’ve tailored the programme to to or stratify the programme in such a way that you’re solving for each individual group of partners, each constituency group and said, Oh, I’m hearing. Michelle Ragusa-McBain 10:43 Yes. And really, instead of dividing it, it we’re really trying to bring it more together. Because a lot of times if you say how much of your portfolio, like you see a lot of companies are going towards a subscription consumption, recurring revenue model. A lot of vendors, Cisco, HPE, Dell, Lenovo, many, many vendors are now looking at recurring revenue. So a lot of MSPs. Well, a lot of traditional VARs, 73% of them say they want to be MSP 83% of those MSP. So they want to be mssps. So we’re living, we’re living in a transformation. And you know, post COVID Every company is a technology company right now. So every vertical needs help, right? Even though they want to utilise technology, they want to implement it, they want to design it, they are not all experts in it. So they were they rely and depend on virtual CIOs and trusted advisors, which are these MSPs that are going to help keep them up and running and safe and protected, and give them peace of mind. And so there’s a lot of noise and clutter in the in the space, because there’s a lot of conflicting priorities. But for me, it’s all about the partners, if we know what their needs are, and we can help provide them not only the right products and technologies, but the right support the right enablement, the right ability for them to scale their business, then I think that will be mutually successful. And that’s very important. Vince Menzione 12:09 Bringing your depth of expertise into the organisation, I think has been invaluable to SonicWALL. What are you seeing? We’ve talked, we’ve talked a little bit about this right, the greatest opportunities, what about the threats that we’re seeing is we’re kicking in now into 2024? Michelle Ragusa-McBain 12:24 Yeah, we do a great. We have over a million sensors around the world in 215 countries and territories over 32 years. So we collect a lot of data. And we’re using this data, AI, machine learning predictive analytics to really foresee what is happening in the threat landscape. And we’ve seen some really interesting things in our recent Security Threat Report, which I’m happy to share if anyone wants or you can Google it. But I would highly recommend reading it because it’s important to see what’s happening. Because if you’re aware, you can defend against it. And some of the high level things that I’ve seen, we had a decline of ransomware. So about a year ago, I think I was on stage right after you. And I did my my speech. And one of the things I said is every 14 seconds there was a ransomware attack. It was very telling at that time. Well, we’ve seen a 41% decline of ransomware. However, there was a rise in April, May in June. So it couldn’t be back. It could be coming resurging and back on an incline. So be aware of that. But we did see a rise in crypto jacking by 399%. So I believe that cyber criminals we believe that cyber criminals are trying to go more into the shadows, it’s a little bit of a longer process. But there’s a lot more discretion that’s involved in that there’s infinite mining that can occur. So there’s a lot of possibility of wealth very quickly, very secretly. And in addition to that, you know, people were really looking down on cybercriminals. So there are things that you can go on the dark web, and you can buy ransomware as a service, the criminal cyber hackers are getting much more crafty, but they also prey upon the vulnerabilities of those in need. How many people got a link during COVID? Listen, I’m sorry, your package has been delayed due to COVID. And it was very easy for people at that time to be susceptible to things right. In addition to that, one of the things that we saw that was very threatening, you know, the war with Russia and Ukraine or, or Hamas and Israel, like people will take advantage of timely political situations they would you like to support a family. Click here to learn more donate or what have you. And so in these situations, there’s a bunch of people that were not technical, that are now technical are forced to be in some way, shape or form. And you know, you’re only as good as your weakest link. So phishing attacks are also on the rise, malware attacks, IoT malware and In the verticalization, right? Again, state, local education and government are under siege, like those were the two biggest areas that were hit. And a lot of times, I would say we did a great webinar on E trade opportunities and how to recession proof your business because we know we’re facing economic headwinds. There’s political instabilities, there’s, you know, China’s reset, you know, it kind of economics are going down, which impacts the world. And so in these changing landscape, your business model has important and schools are being attacked, this is a really important place to keep our children safe. And there was a great, a great webinar that somebody provided, and they said, you know, they went in and they tried to breach a bunch of teachers, they just said, Hey, can you give me your password, and seven out of the 10, teachers just handed it over, right? And so this is an example of how we need to really be on guard and protect the vulnerable during these challenging times. Vince Menzione 16:00 Well, you brought up education, I like you, I also spent time in the public sector space. And in on the Microsoft side alone, there are 60,000 academic licences. So that’s how many licenced so many licenced customers Microsoft has in that space, and the sift the lack of sophistication in those organisations to your point, you know, there’s a lot of its do it yourself. So they are so vulnerable, because they don’t have the sophistication of a bigger organisation that locks them down, right. And they buy a lot of different software, and they cobble things together. And there’s a lot of holes in that. It’s crazy. Zero Michelle Ragusa-McBain 16:35 trust is there for a reason, gives zero checks, the people. Vince Menzione 16:41 It’s scary the level of threats. And again, I being where I was before, I got to see and witnessed some of the being in the room and some of these more sensitive conversations, we’ll call them. But it we really all have to protect ourselves any advice really just for users that you want to share? What we all should be doing along along the lines of securing ourselves? Michelle Ragusa-McBain 17:04 Yeah, I think that the most important thing is to get a vulnerability assessment to see where your risks are, I would also highly recommend if you haven’t already talking to an expert in the cybersecurity insurance space, because we know that these threats are imminent, and you don’t want you know, you go to an expert who has superpowers for a lot of things, right? I wouldn’t go to somebody who had limited expertise on something that was so important, like there are nice to haves and there are need to have. And this is some of the things that are in need to have. So where are some of the gaps? How do you continue to train even your own workforce? Regardless of the position, right, we know that our technicians are going to be very technical, but our administrative assistants are gatekeepers? Do they have understanding? Can they help train those people within the world that exists that you’re supporting? On those really pivotal things? And then how do you protect yourself? You’ve been breached? What’s your incident response plan? How do you recover? How do you have your disaster backup? If you do get a ransomware attack? Do you negotiate with a terrorist, right? There’s a lot of pro con, but you have to go through all of these kinds of permutations and combinations of of possibilities in order to be protected. So we have a great vulnerability assessment in our solutions granted team, but there’s others out there as well. And I recommend just talking to somebody so you feel safe. And you’re prepared. Vince Menzione 18:36 You know, you mentioned backup and recovery. So critical to you know, dealing with these ransomware attacks, right, the ability to get back up on your feet, if you’re so chosen to be attacked. But we could go on for a long time here. But you know, Michelle, this is the Ultimate Partner right? And so we do focus in on the art and science because it’s both an art and science around partnering. So I asked all of my guests this question, what do you see from the best partnerships? You’ve been around this space for quite some time, even though you’re still very young, but 17 years? What do you see from the best partnerships? What do you see from the best of the best? Michelle Ragusa-McBain 19:16 Yeah, I think this is probably the easiest question for me. Because I believe that relationships are still that immortal principle and foundation of people buy from people they like, people they know and people they trust. And that sort of that old adage people buy from people they like it never really changed. But in order for you to, to have that relationship to earn somebody’s trust is it takes a lot of time. It’s not an instantaneous go to a show one time we tell them what we do. We have a lot of bells and whistles and we leave. It’s a lot of conversations and it’s a lot of development. It’s a lot of understanding what’s what are their customers like what’s important for them. What verticals are their specialised in what geography? Do they specialise in? What help do they need? Do they need more marketing help? Do they need more training and certification help? Do they need more money help how everybody’s different, and everybody’s at a different age or stage of their development. And for me the best relationships, and I use the story, I love the story. And I’m going to give a shout out to my friend, Rob Ray, who is now at PAX eight. But we we joke that Rob has had a beer with every MSP in the world, I’m pretty confident he is true. I don’t think it’s a false. He’s a legend and a legend. And I joked with my Canadian husband that I’m not sure which is my favourite Canadians. But I will say, we were at a bar at a hotel lobby bar where I think most of the relationships and conversations happen in the IT channel and on a napkin at two in the morning. And I was talking to a partner and Rob offered him a beer. And they said, Oh, at the time, Rob was with Daddo. And I said, Are you a Datto partner? And the partner said, No, but I feel like I should be Rob’s always so nice and kind. And he’s been buying me beers for the last 12 years, you’d like and I said the story to rob after and Rob said, it’s all about the long game. And I laughed, because it’s true. It’s it’s a relationship that’s watered and happened over collective periods of time, that allows us to really nurture and grow like I would say, the grass is greener, where you water it, right. And I think that if you invest in it over time that it develops, and it builds. And I do believe that that’s part of the reciprocal, the reciprocal nature of listening and learning, because it can’t be one sided, I don’t ever want to pitch at customers and partners, I don’t ever want to force my products are my, my, my vendor on them. I want to make sure that they understand I understand their needs, and that I can associate how we can help them. And that’s where I think we build trust. Vince Menzione 22:00 I love that. I love that. And it is for the long game, right? I mean, I think back on all the things I’ve done over the years and the people that you know, I built up so many great relationships over 20 plus years, right? And they they come back into your life and one form or another over time, right we shoot I believe in that reciprocity, so bridge. Michelle Ragusa-McBain 22:25 Again, that’s my life rule. You never know. So some people are short sighted, but you’ll have to think about the long term. 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What about partnerships that fail like I think about the bee I think about being in the room and cringing type of type of moments. I’m sure you’ve had those as well. Right. So what would you say to those organisations like you’ve seen? You’re seeing it fall apart? It’s crumbling, or it’s just not happening? What do you wish you had said to them? to course correct. Michelle Ragusa-McBain 24:05 I’ve been a part of other organisations, different organisations that that use, let’s say, words, but not actions, if you will. So say I say I’m listening to you, but you’re telling me the same thing five times and nothing changes. Do I really feel? Do you feel that I really listened that I really understood that I that I really wanted to make a difference. So I think it has to be twofold, right? It’s not just the listening part of it. That’s one aspect of it. But it’s the action that happens is a correlation of what you heard. And so that’s why we relaunched our new secure first programme. That’s why we took two different programmes and merge them together. That’s why we made the acquisitions that we did, because we heard our partners. That’s why we’re making the integrations that we’re making and that we’re connecting with the RMS and PSAs and born in the cloud distributors and all the things that are important to our partners to The simple and easy to do business with SonicWALL. That’s why we’re enhancing and really changing rapidly. Our our roadmap, our technology roadmap, because we heard you and we, we heard what you love, and we heard what you need. And I think those are the things that are very important. It’s not just one sided. But But beyond that. I also think that some people just say things I learned very early on very early on, it’s okay not to know the answer. It’s okay to have to not have the answer. I think about the movie, the holiday movie Santas in the room. So I have to note him, but a miracle on 34th Street where Macy’s did not have the product that they need it and they sent them to a competitor. And I think that was a very telling moment, where you say, I may not have everything you need, and that’s okay. But I want to make sure that you have everything you need to be successful. And it’s less about me and more about you. That’s a partnership, we have to help each other. And if I just care about me, then I’m not helping you. Because it’s one sided and selfish. So I do think that the partnerships that fail are the ones that don’t consider or have full transparency or honesty, or or care for the other person in that relationship. Vince Menzione 26:23 Yeah, I’d like to think about the the I call it a scarcity mindset. And it becomes more like a transaction than a partnership. Yeah. respects? Michelle Ragusa-McBain 26:33 Yes. And you’ve seen that right? Or they don’t have the right support. They don’t have the right team supporting, I could go and tell you how many partners I go. And I say, Do you know who your channel account manager is that they can identify it if they don’t have somebody supporting them? That’s a problem, right? And even, you know, there’s many different types of models that vendors can have to support partners. And I know there’s so many partners and you have to scale. But it’s really important that they feel the love that they feel the love from the vendor that’s supporting them. Vince Menzione 27:04 So exciting times at SonicWALL. You’ve got I feel the excitement in the room here. And so for the partners listening today that want to work with you and your organisation, how do they do so? Michelle Ragusa-McBain 27:16 Well, a few things. First, you could just go to sonicwall.com. Easy peasy. And we have a our secure first programme is there. So if you’re not signed up as an MSP, but your SonicWALL partner, we can do that we can get you signed up, because you don’t want to miss that opportunity. It’s a great programme. And again, it’ll count towards your, your, your levels, your tearing, so you’re going to earn more back if you’re in that programme. In addition to that, if you’re not a SonicWALL partner, we know it’s hard, right? If you’re already invested, and you’ve made a relationship with somebody else, to pick up everything you’ve done and move it over here. That’s a process. And we support that. And we want to encourage that because we know it’s a challenge for you and your team. So we’re doing what we call tear match plus one was that mean? Basically, any partner out there, we don’t care who you’re working with today, we will honour you at the level you are with whatever competitor you’re working with today. So you’re gonna get the exact same discounts, plus one with us. And it doesn’t matter who you’re working with. Of course, you have to show us can’t just tell us, I’m a Platinum Partner, like you have to kind of show us some somehow. But in addition to that, we will grandfather you in, we’ll give you all of the help and support, you need the enablement and training you need to get you up and running and hit the ground running because it would be futile for us to get you in our programme and not help you be successful in transactional as well. So you’re gonna get a lot of support, and grace from our team in order to understand what you need to do. But we want to make sure that you get the right discount that you need. We’re also doing new customer deal, Reg. So if you bring us any new customer, this for new and existing partners, we give you 50% off that deal, we want you to win the opportunity and put SonicWALL in so 50% of the deal. In North America, that might vary globally. But that is our goal, we’re going to make sure that we help you win those new opportunities, and we’re gonna give you the best price points that we can to do. Vince Menzione 29:15 I love it. I love it. And we’re gonna put links in the show notes so people can find you and find links to the organisation. But I’d love to pivot. Michelle, I’m fascinated with the career journey, as you might know. And I’m also fascinated and helping to share with others. How a leader like you got to this incredible spot in your career. You talked a little bit about the journey with us, but I was hoping you can share was there a pivot point? Was there a spark that got you on this path to this incredible role as the global channel chief for SonicWALL? Yeah, honestly, Michelle Ragusa-McBain 29:49 How far back do I go? I’ve been sharing the story recently and if it’s okay with you, I’ll just take a moment and go backwards and forwards Because I think it’s really important for anyone listening who thinks I can’t do that, or I won’t do that, or I’m not able to do that. And I want everybody listening to know that they have their superpowers, and they can do anything they set their mind to, and that with the right mentorship and champions in support, you can achieve it. I also as a woman in technology for the past 20 years, and very passionate about getting other women and diverse individuals to participate in a career in tech, we’ve had a quarter of women leave careers in technology during COVID. So in a stagnation and a decline of women even entering careers in tech for the last 10 years. So there is a lot of opportunity still left to be had. We all love our careers, we have flexibility, we can go to wonderful locations and meet incredible partners and worked with great team lucrative careers, you know, all of the great things, and yet we’re not able to attract, retain and promote top talent. And diversity, equity. Inclusion is very important to me. So I share this for that story. Vince Menzione 31:08 That’s important to me as well, by the way. Michelle Ragusa-McBain 31:10 Thank you and your and your girl dad. Also you have some daughters, right? How many daughters do you have? Vince Menzione 31:17 No, I have one daughter. I have one daughter. But I’m also passionate about this, this topic and being a male ally as well. And I don’t want to Yeah, so I want I want you to get back to your your spot there. Michelle Ragusa-McBain 31:29 Yeah no, I love that, honestly, an ally ship is very important, right? If most positions of power are held by men, it’s very important that you have allies and champions that understand and can help support and champion and build a bench to help mentor young women coming early in their careers or getting to that next level. So it’s very, very pivotal. I thank you for saying that. But basically, my story started with my grandmother and my grandfather and another grandfather who immigrated to America. They were entrepreneurs. I have one Native American grandmother who was born here, but all of the rest emigrated. So I was born in a first generation family, who had, you know, language barriers, socio economic barriers, hardships. My grandfather went to war, my grandmother got sick. My mother and her brothers and sisters went to an orphanage for a few years, my great aunt foster them. So all of these complexities, right, my, my mother married my father, he wasn’t a great guy, she ended up having to leave because he was abusive. And we went to a domestic abuse shelter. There was a lot that, you know, I learned grit and determination and overcoming adversity very early. And I didn’t have mentorship. I didn’t know. I didn’t know anybody who knew anybody who worked in technology, if I’m honest with you. So I didn’t know what I wanted to be. But I was the first in my family to go to college. I was the first to get an MBA. And I was the first to work in technology. And I’ve been here for two decades. And I can tell you that that journey started because of man lumic le still remembers him dearly. He asked me if I could sell him a router. And I said, I don’t know what a router is. But if you teach me, I’ll sell you three of them. And he said, I like your answer. I like you. You’re a good candidate. And he ended up being an area vice president at the time of Cisco. And he told me about their global Academy. And he brought me under his recommendation for this very competitive programme where every seat had 800 people compete for one seat. So it was very challenging. You had to have three phone interviews, if you passed those they flew you out. If and only pass those, they flew you to RTP, North Carolina, we’ve had I’ll call it speed dating interviews, three in person interviews with 50 other people in the room interviewing at the exact same time, a bell would ring you have to get up and go to the next person. And if all six of those people did not vote for you, you did not get the job. And the last interview that five I did great. The last one, he looked at my resume and I’ll never forget because he laughed in my face. And he was like, I don’t think you’re cut out for this. And I was just so blown away. Because I’ve gone this far. I didn’t come this far to only come this far. And I said, I think you’re wrong. Can we complete the interview before he told me what I am and I’m not capable of doing? And he said, Okay, and we went through the interview. And at the end I said, Do you think I’m a good fit for the role? And he said, I think you’re a good fit when you didn’t take no for an answer. And that changed my life. I got my foot in the door pivoted many times. Always with the love of partners though. That was my dream. You know, to one day be a channel chief and for me, mentors like Lou and like Wendy bar and Pat Finn and sales leaders that I had in my career. Were very important to me. And I remember you know, I had Wendy on my podcasts and one time she said, I said, What is your biggest weakness? And she said, I’m not good at math. And I said, you were the channelled chief of Cisco, how is that possible? She goes, I hire Well, I surround myself with people that are good at things that I’m not good at. And I just I learned things from so many mentors, Janet shines, and you know, Nancy hammer thick and wonderful women and men who taught me so many different things throughout my career and kept me here, that I can be a working mom, I can have work life balance, or I’ll call it integration, I can have heart surgery and still come back stronger than ever. So my career has been very interesting. But not exclusive. It just takes the right support system and the right tribe to have your back and to guide you. And to remind you what your superpowers are and why you’re there. Vince Menzione 35:53 Never take no for an answer. never remember that. Michelle Ragusa-McBain 35:57 Never, ever. So Vince Menzione 35:59 inspiring. I love your story. Thank you. And congratulations for your recent recognition for the whip the women of the channel. Thank you. Yeah, so so awesome. Michelle Ragusa-McBain 36:10 Such an honour. Yes, thank you. Vince Menzione 36:13 And it’s well deserved. So I have a favourite question. Okay. And this is a favourite of mine, because I think it kind of answers a lot of questions. So we just get to it. You’re hosting a dinner party. And you can invite any three guests from the present, or the past. Some one person actually pick people in the future that they want to invite to this amazing dinner party. And we could talk about where you’re going to host it so we’ll get into that next. But whom would you invite? And why? Michelle Ragusa-McBain 36:47 You know, I pre read this question, and I thought a lot about it. And over time, so many different people have entered my mind that I’m just you know, enamoured with or fascinated with or, like, you know, inspired by, you know, Oprah Winfrey, Edgar Allan Poe, Jesus. But at the end of the day, for me, the one person that I would really love, because personally, my grandmother was my mentor, my role model that I overcame all the adversity with my mom, who taught me how to become a strong, resilient woman. She passed away one month before I met Jay, my husband, so she never met my husband, and she never met my children, and whatever you believe, but after she passed, I kept seeing a yellow butterfly. So I like to believe that she’s still with me. So I would like to bring together my grandmother and my husband and my children so that they can meet each other because they’re probably the most important people in my life. Vince Menzione 37:49 I love that. I love that. Where are we gonna host this dinner party? Michelle Ragusa-McBain 37:52 Oh, well, that’s I didn’t go that far. Let’s see. All the food that my grandmother she she came from Poland. So be great to go to Poland and have some good put on easing capacity. Vince Menzione 38:07 Sounds like a great dinner. Maybe I’ll come and bring a beverage and come I would love it. Well, that sounds wonderful. It just sounds wonderful. And she, you know, I have a sense that she’s with you as well. Michelle Ragusa-McBain 38:20 I believe that too. And your mom was I believe our cherished people never leave us I always believe. Vince Menzione 38:26 Yeah, always. So one last question. Sorry. I can’t believe it’s 2024. Ready? I mean, what happened to 2023? Michelle Ragusa-McBain 38:35 I don’t know, we blinked. Vince Menzione 38:39 Like the year just flew by this year. And you know, we’re kind of on the precipice of this new year. And all of us are sitting there going, what do we need to do better or differently? And how do we optimise for success? What advice do you have? For all our amazing listeners of the Ultimate Partner on how they can best optimise for success this year? Michelle Ragusa-McBain 38:57 Yeah, that’s a great question. I think firstly, everyone needs to pause and reboot. Take the time over the holidays over the New Year to relax, rejuvenate, I can’t tell you how many people I meet that are like, I’ve never taken a day of PTO. And I’m like, is that an award that you’re proud of? Like? Are you leading a team that’s just, you know, you need to rejuvenate so find balance and find time to to refuel, to have precious time with those you love yourself. You know your verb kids, whoever it is right, enjoy that time. And then I think it’s important to evaluate reflect on the past year, what worked, what didn’t? How do we what opportunities what would I do differently? What would my partners teams want to see more of less of? And I also like to check in with other people see what their answers are to this maybe a LinkedIn post for those lazy likers out there that are not posting a lot of content, I think it’s a good opportunity for you to evaluate how you’re, you know, defining your brand defining your company and how you’re recruiting feedback. So I think for me, once you have the reflection, then you have to set goals, right? And what do you want to manifest in the year ahead? You have to draw a line in the sand. And maybe those vision boards that people do, I’ve never done one. But I have a goal to do that, and just finding time, but maybe when my time that I rejuvenate, I could do a vision board. And I would say, What do you want to achieve in the next, you know, one year, three years, five years and putting it pen to paper or putting a picture down, and really just for seeing how you want your life to go. I was just reading a Facebook post the other day, and I don’t want to bring it down to this. But somebody said, my, my employee didn’t come into work, we thought he was sick. And we found out that he passed away. He was 60 years old. And so you read stories like this, and it just gave me pause. Because we all think we have so much time. And as somebody who had heart surgery at the age of 39. I can tell you when they put you in under anaesthesia. The last thing you think about is the you know emails that you have to send or the conflicts that you have or the work stresses that you have. You think about what really matters most and the little things in life. There’s really nothing bigger. So if you can reprioritize refocus and just take in those moments and really understand what is it you want to do what are your bucket list items because no time is granted? What do you want to achieve professionally? What do you want to achieve personally, and start working towards those goals because my favourite Native American proverb is pray to God but roll away from the rocks. So keep, you know rowing towards your Northstar and you will achieve it. Vince Menzione 42:00 I love that. I love that. Michelle, you had been an amazing guest so so great to have you my friend Don Ultimate Partner and sharing your wisdom with our listeners. It’s wonderful to see you. So wonderful to spend the New Year with you. So looking forward to more together this year here in South Florida and elsewhere. So I’m hoping to see you at other events I know we’re probably going to be on the slated a couple of events this year together. Michelle Ragusa-McBain 42:26 So I look forward to having Thank you, Vince and to you and to all your listeners Happy New Year. Wishing you love health, happiness, laughter and prosperity and all the best things. Vince Menzione 42:39 | |||
| 202 – Ultimate Partner LIVE: “A Journey of Teamwork, Faith, and Igniting Partnerships” | 04 Jan 2024 | 00:24:22 | |
Listen as Vince Menzione Kicks Off LIVE in Dallas
Building an event from scratch in 100 days is not for the faint of heart. I am incredibly grateful to everyone involved in the process. The friends who said “just do it”, the team in Las Colinas, the experts who came on the team, the sponsors who placed blind faith in my ability to fill the room, and the hundreds or perhaps thousands who cheered us on and helped fill the venue. I’m excited to release this keynote from Ultimate Partner LIVE. I wish you all could have been in the room to feel the energy, the excitement, and the spark around partnerships and igniting the ecosystem. It was electric. We will be sharing select sessions such as this one with our listeners and hope you join Ultimate Partner Experience to watch all the sessions and experience more! LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP What You’ll Learn
I am thrilled to welcome you into a world of unparalleled insights, best practices, and essential information designed to unlock your full potential as a partner and propel you towards your most ambitious goals. Our journey began nearly seven years ago with a vision to empower partners in the complex world of tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and AWS. Today, Ultimate Partner is a beacon dedicated to revolutionizing your Cloud Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy and fostering ecosystem-led growth through this experience platform, including digital and live events, advisory services, and much more. In an era defined by tectonic shifts, such as the global pandemic, economic headwinds, and the rise of AI, the role of hyperscalers has become increasingly critical. With investments of billions of dollars in ecosystems, technology, and customer acquisition costs, they have secured over $200 billion in customer commitments to durable cloud budgets. We stand on the precipice of a marketplace moment where simplifying and streamlining economic models associated with co-selling and ecosystem-led growth will shape the decade ahead. Yet, as vendors and organizations demand more from us while resources diminish, we ask, “Where do we go? How do we navigate these seismic shifts? How do we thrive during this decade of the ecosystem?” If you’re a partner, you’re likely grappling with these questions. The watering holes of the past no longer offer the guidance required to transform into a Cloud GTM and embrace ecosystem-led growth. That’s why Ultimate Partner exists – to be your trusted compass amidst the noise. LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Many TyposUP Live Event – Vince Menzione…t kickoff – Full Length Audio Thu, Jan 04, 2024 12:16PM • 24:23 SUMMARY KEYWORDS partner, microsoft, talk, ecosystem, marketplace, leaders, people, organizations, room, event, candidly, podcast, call, business, sponsors, company, opportunity, pivot, successful, inspire SPEAKERS Vince Menzione, Announcer Announcer 00:00 This is the Ultimate Partner the top partnership podcast. In this podcast, Vince Menzione, a proven partner sales executive shares his mission to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. And now your host, Vince Menzione. Vince Menzione 00:21 Welcome to or welcome back to The Ultimate Guide to partner. I’m Vince Menzione, your host, and in November of 2023 30, leaders congregated to a packed house of partners to help spark the ecosystem in this time of rapid change and transformation. If you were there in person, you felt the electricity and excitement in the room. But if you couldn’t join us in person, I still wanted to share this incredible rich content with you here. So I hope you enjoy this amazing session, as much as I enjoyed bringing it to you. I want to thank all of you, from the bottom of my heart for being here. I can’t tell you how important this is. And what an amazing moment this is. As we each find our purpose and our mission, I just want to welcome you this event is live the Americas version and sparking the ecosystem for a reason. Because my passion and mission is around this remelt did a great job on the tee up. But I’ve described my career as for successful business transformations. See, I didn’t start at Microsoft. I did a startup in the early days of wireless computing. We took the company from 6 million to 120. We went public on the Toronto exchange. I then did a turnaround the Golden Gate capital had spun out of a chapter 11 We grew that business exponentially. That’s where I built my first partner ecosystem. We didn’t call it ecosystem back then, by the way, don’t my first partner channel. I was the growth engine in that company. And then I was recruited by Microsoft, by a woman by the name of Linda Secor. And for almost a decade, I was what we now call ecosystem, I was the leader of the public sector, partner business, Microsoft, and then also an adjunct member and then a direct member of the US partner leadership team. So I got to be really involved in Microsoft, they’re all levels and understand how the engine works in many respects. And when I left the organization, I had always known that partners struggled, they still struggled today, I’m sure we have conversations out in the hallways, everyone loves Microsoft. But it’s not easy, right? We know that. And that’s why we’re bringing everybody together today. We’re trying to help accelerate your success. This is what ultimate partner live is all about. It’s about accelerating your success. It started off with a podcast. But when I started the podcast seven years ago, when I left Microsoft, it was seven years ago last month, I started a podcast with a vision of getting to this moment and hopefully accelerating it from here. And the reason why is I recognized that you needed the easy button, you needed the decoder ring in order to drive your greatest results. And I saw the partners that got it right. And in fact, I started interviewing them on the podcast, and I understood Microsoft understood how to direct them. But they needed additional guidance. And being that lighthouse, that guide was where ultimate partners and ultimate partner guide ultimate partner started what Michael had to say here about aligning your purpose and mission, I think hopefully resonates with everyone in the room because Microsoft has this big bold mission. And I think we all have an opportunity whether we’re only Microsoft partners, that we’re partners with other tech giants to align our mission and our vision for success around at and my mission is to help organizations like yours leaders like you, individuals and your organizations to achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. Now, I don’t have all the answers. And I don’t I don’t I don’t say that I do. But I do have I know who the people are, that can help you get the answers. And that’s what this is all about. And that’s why we’ve assembled this meeting today the summit, and we’re going to talk about some of the steps here we’re going to talk about how we got here, we’re going to talk about our amazing sponsors and speakers. This rich agenda over the next two days, I don’t think you’ll have ever seen an agenda like this in one room. And I’m really just proud and grateful for all the people all the great leaders who come together to to be here. I want to first start with our sponsors are believers, the people who came forward, it was only 120 days ago that we said we’re gonna go do this. And it’s been a it’s been a long journey, believe it or not only 90 or 120 days. But these were the organizations that came forward and said we believe partners need the help. They need the guidance. We need to get together in person again, like this. We love digital events. I hosted a digital event we’ll talk about that. But this was an opportunity for everyone to show up in a big way. Microsoft came on in a big way became the title sponsor for the event. We’re expand say Age came on in a big way carve, ey BDO, partner tap, and archive 360. All came on as Title sponsors, and then the community who joined us in the room, some of some in the room, some not in the room. And we’ll talk about that community more through the sessions here. So I want to thank all all of those sponsors round of applause for those sponsors, by the way. Some amazing friends and believers. And I want to thank, wow, I asked a lot of people, like I knew, and what I hope I am doing here is bringing together for you what I believe to be the right people, as if we had done this as a podcast, in fact, but bring that the people in the room who can help you decode what success looks like, tell you the what and the why. But more importantly, the how to achieve your greatest results. What you need to go do in Microsoft fiscal year 24. And beyond, in order to achieve your greatest success working with Microsoft, working with the leaders here, we’ve had some amazing support. It started with a gentleman by the name of Kevin peacemaker, who you will meet later today. If you didn’t meet him last night, if you were at the reception, hopefully you got to see Kevin, he has been he’s drives an amazing book of business at Microsoft. He’s a president of the SMC business, and you’ll get to know him better. He’s got an incredible passion around growing with partner led growth and partner assisted growth. And he has been a big supporter from day one. That’s one of the reasons why we came to Las Colinas to support his townhall yesterday, and to align you all and with with his sellers. You see, we used to do things like this, right? We used to get people together, we get the sellers with the partners, we do that at Inspire we do that and other events, co selling events. We’ve been doing a lot of that digitally. And I get it we’ve had we had COVID, we’ll talk about the years we’ve had, it’s time, it’s time to bring it back live. And we’re going to do it here today. So I wanted to give you an idea of been asked a lot of people say who’s coming, who’s coming. And I really wanted a slide with all of your logos up here. But candidly, we couldn’t pull that together as quickly. But I want to thank each of you for your commitment for coming here. And being in the room. I know some of you have traveled cross country to be here. And from other locations, some some are local to Dallas, Pam, and others, and so excited to have you all in the room. But this is kind of a breakup or breakdown of who’s in the room. Right? A very large group of CSPs. We have most of the large solution partners in the room. Right? So if you’re, you know, the LSPs are there category of partners, the biggest organizations that are resellers, systems integrators now transforming their businesses that are in the room, we have a group of ISVs in the room of significant group of ISPs, a lot of SI guys in the room, a lot of companies that classify themselves as that size. And then a group of others that’s made up of organizations that didn’t classify themselves in a certain way, maybe feel they go across multiple swim lanes. That’s very true of everybody. And then also people from Microsoft and other sponsors and others that are here with us today. 270 was the capacity that we had in the room, and we reached our capacity for this event. So I want to thank everyone for joining us. I talked a little bit about this. I had been blessed to have so many amazing friends. Many of them have been guests on Ultimate Partner. It all started. When I left Microsoft and I had a coach you said you should do a podcast. And I was like what this podcast I was starting to listen to podcasts at that time. This is back I finally got an iPhone SE said it was okay to get an iPhone. And because Steve used to jump on them back in the day, I got an iPhone and started listening to Tim Ferriss and a few other podcasts. And this friend said you should do a podcast and so I asked like a dozen people. And some of them were early guests. And I said what do you think I should and I said well do this thing around partnering it’s I could help these organizations and I could we could at scale provide because even at that point Microsoft only had certain moments when you could learn about how to be successful right there was WPC became Inspire. And then maybe there’d be some other event like DTA or third event. But it was only at those touch points that partners got to hear from the tech giant. And then I also wanted you all to understand from leaders that had won an award winning partners like what did the best do I knew I knew because I was I was on the other side of the room and would meet with all these partners, right and I got to see what success looked like what the best of the best did and what they did differently and I wanted to instill that in everyone and so that’s what Ultimate Partner started out as candidly went on a went on a little bit of a hiatus. You see, I wasn’t sure where it was gonna go. i This was my vision all along, but I went back inside For two years, I went back into the largest software company in the nonprofit sector billion dollar business as their channel chief. And then I got to see from the other side, again, how organizations struggled. You see, if you work in a big company, not everybody is partner centric, not everybody’s on board, right. And I have a set of principles, operating principles. We all get it, because that’s why we’re here. But not everybody gets it. And sometimes the chief revenue officer doesn’t get it. And sometimes the CEO doesn’t get it. And sometimes the CEO, certainly the CFO doesn’t want to invest in it. And your chief marketing officers running around doing things that don’t include partners. Like, that’s crazy, right, but that’s the way our world operates. And that’s what I am on a mission to help change with all of you. And we’re going to continue to build content and support and an organization that helps you drive your greatest results. And today is day one of that. So ultimate partner has morphed. We started out this year, knowing that we wanted to get to this point. We did a couple of things. We moved the podcast more into a master class, we’d interview a bunch of leaders from organizations and try it and if you go, tell them to partner up, you type masterclass, you’ll see a bunch of episodes I did with Microsoft’s America’s had their Dagens was one of those guests, because I wanted to help you decode, like, how do you work with the tech giant, by the way, it’s not just the partner development manager, I need to work across the entire organization, I need to understand all the touch points that touch my customer. And then, you know, how do I decode that? And how do I become more successful navigating the tech giant, and then also all of these amazing guests, we decided to do a digital event, I really wanted to host an event in Seattle around inspire this, this, this more from from Seattle. The challenge with doing something around inspire, candidly, is it was all pre recorded. It was recorded weeks ahead. So in the June Microsoft event is like the middle of July, weeks ahead, it was all pre recorded. And a lot of people were leaving for vacation or going off to other trips and ventures and things. So it was impossible to pull all the leaders back in the room to after they heard what they said it inspire and bring them back in the room and say, Okay, now how do I make this successful? We couldn’t do that. We couldn’t do that in Seattle, at least in that timeframe. And it was risky. And so Rommel and I had been talking about this location, and then this opportunity came up. So what you’re gonna get in the next two days, is really a little bit of what happened did inspire, take into you in person, you’re going to hear from the leaders of Microsoft, I mean, this is an amazing lineup, you’re going to get to interact and have conversations with them about what success looks like, you’re going to be able to give them feedback on what Microsoft needs to do better and differently, going into their new fiscal year, or maybe even in the second half of this year. Second semester, this is your opportunity, this is your moment to help drive the growth of this ecosystem be part of this thing. And that’s what we’re all about today with ultimate partner live. What an amazing agenda. I mean, I couldn’t have somebody, I had a conversation with somebody about a week ago, who was new to the partner world knew nothing about Microsoft’s when are you going to throw another one of these another month or so that’s like, wait a second, this commitment, by the way to have the commitment from so many leaders, presidents, corporate vice presidents and Microsoft to come to Dallas, in the middle of the week before Thanksgiving, American Thanksgiving, and have a meeting like this is unheard of. It’s crazy. It’s crazy, all the leaders and you’re going to have a rich day of content. Today, you’re going to learn more than you probably have ever known about how Microsoft operates at the Americas level at the ISP level, you’re gonna hear from a leader Dan Rippy, who knows how to make it real. He’s just amazing and amazing friend, he’s been a guest on the podcast. He was part of another event I did a year ago. You’re gonna Of course, we’re taking Microsoft’s priorities for this year, right. So if you look at what was talked about inspire, there was a lot of other things that were talked about. But if you’d had to boil it down to three things, there are three major priorities within the organization, of course, AI marketplace, and this amazing opportunity around the SMC business, right. Those are the three things if you don’t come away from anything else, you’ll know that the event is structured around those three things. And bringing the leaders of those three things in the room is just remarkable. And I couldn’t do this without their support. So I just want to thank them for their support and being here in the room. And thank you so much. To me, I’ll rattle off Heather and Alvarado and Felice and Dan and I mean it’s an Anthony Joseph and we have it’s, it’s gonna be incredible couple of days. I hope you I hope you feel the energy and, and be part of this in such a big way. I want to spend a few minutes here you see, this is also why we got here. We’re living in a time like no other right. I can’t emphasize this enough. We you know, we’re In this, I call it the tectonic shifts if you go back to 19 2019. I mean, our world is radically changed since that time, right? We all live through COVID COVID. Accelerated technology advancement, right? A lot of bad things happen because of COVID. A lot of loss, but it also accelerated, Satya Nadella said that we saw seven years of transformation for seven months, other leaders have talked about how our lives have changed, right? I mean, we all just hit hit the button on our phone three times, and a box shows up at the end of the day. And we do that every day. I mean, I get Amazon deliveries twice a day, sometimes society is changing. We’re going through geopolitical time, like no other two wars. In fact, just a very sad time in terms of what’s happening in that part of the world. We’ve been going through economic headwinds, right, we’ve had massive success in terms of technology transformation. But we’ve also had the headwinds, the pullback, because everybody over invested over pivoted during COVID and then had a pullback, massive layoffs, technology companies, the technology sector hit worse than any other honestly, right, the rest of the economy has been cranking along. And because of that, we’ve had to do more with less, right? Our organizations may be scaled down, and maybe you’re doing the job of two people, or Microsoft got rid of its partner development managers, because they also laid off people. And by the way, this isn’t just Microsoft, it’s Amazon. It’s Google. And it’s, you know, you go down the list, Facebook, Facebook, and so on. Everybody did this. Some of them I’ve hired back, some of them have reappropriated resources. But the truth is, we’ve all been living with this. And then also this, like there was this comfortable notion like, oh, yeah, I have a partner developer. And then I’m sure I do this thing. And now you have to do it alone. Or you have to find other ways to do it. You have to be creative. You have to be entrepreneurial in your spirit in the way you go about your business. People are finally rail realizing though co selling is super important. And Microsoft recognizes this in a big way. And some of the shifts they’ve done with marketplace. There are if you don’t know this, there are $300 billion dollars and durable cloud budgets amongst the Big Three $300 billion. Microsoft, Google and Amazon are at the CFO level, negotiating massive contracts with the largest customers. They’re also doing that, by the way, in the SMC special hear about that from Kevin today. Opportunity. Because I remember years ago people said why don’t have to cosell with Microsoft. They don’t do anything. They don’t sell anything for us. Right? I got to report all this back. No, there’s a huge opportunity now and marketplace is the way to get there. And a lot of you in the room are resisting it. I know because I talk to all of you marketplace is the non fungible token, if you know what an NF t is, it’s the it’s the non fungible token. It’s the ability to take what we used to do with pieces of paper and proposals and budget together and all this paper process and getting our systems to talk to one another are CRMs and are our partner center and all that it takes all the friction out of the system or takes a lot of the friction out of the system. It also allows you to do what Microsoft has always called partner to partner, which I now call ecosystem like growth, which is why we’re here because there’s opportunities for all of you, you still on the pie chart to work together more effectively. I don’t want to burst your bubble. You’re not the only person your customers talking to. And Microsoft people. You’re not the only person your customers talking to your customers talking to at least seven seats at the table. My good friend Jane McBain from Canalis, who has been a big supporter and advisor to ultimate partner likes to talk about the seats at the table. You see we make the decision to buy today, as technologists or as people implementing a solution the same way we buy a vehicle. Like when I went out and got my jeep, I called all my friends that had jeeps and I asked them like what do you think about the hybrid model and you talk to the people that you trust the seats at your table, and you make your decision and the other partners that at that table are influencing your customer. So why not work together? Right, this is what partnering is all about. And by the way, the customer is not buying just a point solution. They’re stitching together a business solution to a problem that they’re trying to solve. And that problem may include one ISV to ISVs, it might include a security partner, it might need an implementation partner, it’s going to need all of those resources coming together right to drive that one solution in and marketplace helps drive that. By the way marketplace. There are a few marketplace vendors in the room organizations that deliver software, one of them will expand as a sponsor of this event. And but there are a couple of others in the room that that are also in this this part of the world that’s growing and accelerating predictions around marketplace. We’re all saying like why do I have to do this marketplace offer? Nobody sees it. Nobody’s gonna buy off of my marketplace solution like why am I doing this? That’s how you get to the durable cloud budgets. That’s how customers this is going to be. It’s going to change things. People don’t like change, right? We resist change. I got up on a stage 12 years ago and talked about the cloud opportunity in front of a bunch of channel partners that looked at me glaze eyed and said, I’m not ready for the cloud. We don’t why do we? Why do we want to sit? We want to sell PCs and targets begs, why do we want to go to the cloud? Well, guess what’s happened to that industry? Yeah, this is what’s happening with marketplace in a big way. So the predictions, and I’ve had several guests on my podcast talking about this $45 billion by 2025. That’s a low estimate of how much revenue will go through marketplaces. That’s analysis. Early estimate. Jay McBain from Canalis, said we under called it I had he and other leaders on an episode and we talked about it 50 is probably still under cutting it. And in fact, tackle who just released their survey has predicted $100 billion will flow through marketplaces by the end of 2026. That’s three years from now. 100 billion dollars. CrowdStrike is already doing a billion dollars through marketplaces, that tells you that it’s an opportunity for growth, it’s another channel, it’s another route to market. It’s not the only route to market. But if you don’t embrace this moment, and this is Microsoft’s marketplace moment, this year, you’ll hear much more about this over the next two days. You need to embrace we need to pivot you need to understand it. My again, Jay, he’s not even here. But because he’s hosting his own event. Canalis is having their conference in Palm Springs this week. I couldn’t plan the timing of this any better. But he’s called this the decade of the ecosystem. And I I’ve embraced this deck this ecosystem LED or this partner led growth model, because I believe we used to call partner to partner but it never did it justice, right. We talked about the seven seats. There’s one ecosystem by the way, you’re all part of this ecosystem. 1981, Bill Gates went to Boca Raton, Florida. And that’s what started the ecosystem. Now if you know what happened, he signed an agreement with IBM to license his software to IBM, not sell his software license it and they also license the PC components so that companies like Dell, and Compaq, and CW and other makers and resellers could come to become businesses, right. And that didn’t really exist in a big way Microsoft has was that really created it spark the ecosystem in 1981, whether it even recognizes it to this day it did it. And that ecosystem is now over 400,000, strong, representing all of you, and you know, another 399,700 or something that aren’t in this room, but are recognized in the Microsoft ecosystem. This movement is real, it’s all going to be about partner to partner, which means working more closely with the tech giant means working more closely with each other, which is why you’re all in the room. Because there’s opportunities for partner to partner. And you know, one of the big things I get from people when we talk about not going to inspire not having an Inspire is you would walk the hallway in Vegas. And at the end of those three days, your your business, your book of business, your your your strategy for the year was planned. And you can’t do that digitally, candidly. So that’s why we’re here. And that’s where we’re going to continue to build that. So this is a moment I could talk about the principles. I will hopefully tomorrow if we have time. But pivoting agility is one of the most important principles of success in successful partnering. And it’s the time you either gonna resist the change, you’re gonna pivot your business, or candidly, you don’t want to hear this you’re become extinct. Or you’ll be marginalized in a small little piece. Maybe Maybe you’ll find a niche, but you won’t grow your business successfully unless you learn Announcer 23:53 to pivot. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Ultimate Partner with your host Vince Menzione online at Ultimate Partner.com and facebook.com/ultimate Guide to partner. We’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Guide t | |||
| Holiday Encore – Unleashing Partner Business Growth in 2024! | 19 Dec 2023 | 00:48:23 | |
Microsoft President Kevin Peesker, Joins Ultimate Partner®
We are bringing you some of the best episodes of 2023 to help you prepare for success in 2024 and recognize Kevin Peesker as the Ultimate Partner Leader of the Year for 2023. At Ultimate Partner, the top partnership podcast, we uniquely feature the leaders, the best in the business from leading tech organizations and hyperscalers who are driving the greatest impact in our world of ecosystems. Today, we have a very special guest, Kevin Peesker, President, of Worldwide SMC & Digital Sales at Microsoft. Kevin leads a massive business that drives go-to-market and sales across the world’s lower enterprise, mid-market, and small and mid-sized business markets. In this exclusive interview, Kevin shares his insights on how his 7000-person organization is leading the charge with a partner-led and partner-assisted mindset during this rapid change and digital transformation. Join us as we delve into Kevin’s experiences and learn how partnering with Microsoft can help achieve business success. It’s an opportunity to gain valuable insights from this successful business leader. Don’t miss this incredible high-energy discussion with Kevin Peesker on The Ultimate Partner. Tune in now and take your business to the next level. In Microsoft’s WordsKevin Peesker, the President of Microsoft’s Worldwide Small, Medium, Corporate & Digital Sales Organization, is a proven business transformation leader with an exceptional 30+ year record of driving collaboration between government/industry and technology and creating customer-obsessed organizations. Kevin’s commitment to customers and partners drives his passion for providing technology solutions globally that make a local impact. Widely respected for delivering positive customer outcomes, he leads with a digital-first mindset enabling digital capabilities and the value of the Microsoft cloud for all. Before his current role, Kevin served as the President of Microsoft Canada for five years, where he led a world-class team providing transformative outcomes for Canadians. Before joining Microsoft, Kevin held multiple senior leadership roles with country and regional responsibilities spanning 70 countries across finance, marketing, operations, sales, and general management. What You’ll Learn
Over six years ago, I embarked on a mission to empower partners struggling to navigate the complex world of tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and AWS. Today, I’m thrilled to announce the launch of Ultimate Partner, an extraordinary media, events, and advisory company dedicated to transforming your Cloud Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy and fostering Ecosystem Led Growth. Having witnessed the industry from multiple perspectives – leading a $4.6 billion Ecosystem at Microsoft, spearheading partnerships for a billion-dollar company, and hosting 200 episodes of the Ultimate Partner® -, I’ve gained invaluable insights and crafted a manifesto of principles to guide your success. In an era defined by tectonic shifts, such as the global pandemic, economic headwinds, and the rise of AI, the role of hyperscalers has become increasingly critical. With investments of billions of dollars in ecosystems, technology, and customer acquisition costs, they have secured over $200 billion in customer commitments to durable cloud budgets. We stand on the precipice of a marketplace moment where simplifying and streamlining economic models associated with co-selling and ecosystem-led growth will shape the decade ahead. Yet, as vendors and organizations demand more from us while resources diminish, we ask, “Where do we go? How do we navigate these seismic shifts? How do we thrive during this decade of the ecosystem?” If you’re a partner, you’re likely grappling with these questions. The watering holes of the past no longer offer the guidance required to transform into a Cloud GTM and embrace ecosystem-led growth. That’s why Ultimate Partner exists – to be your trusted compass amidst the noise. Quickly Find Interviews with all these Amazing Leaders Other episodes feature Microsoft Leaders.The Functional Areas of Partnering with Microsoft Global Partners Solutions with Vince Menzione Best Practices Assisting Partners to Scale with Cameron Lim. Creating Innovative Routes to Market – Oguo Atuanya. 155 – Microsoft Partner CMO, Inspires Partners to Unlock Their Greatest Results in 2023 How the GTM Organization Accelerates Partner Growth to Capture Market Share – Heather Deegan’s. How Partners Can Achieve Their Greatest Results with Marketplaces with Jake Swenson. How Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS) is Investing in Partners with Jim Lee. The Role of Customer Success in Partner Success with David Lochridge. How Microsoft’s Top Seller Engages Partners with Carson Heady. The $30B+ Partner Opportunity Co-Selling with Microsoft with Lani Phillips. LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Many TyposSUMMARY KEYWORDS partner, microsoft, organization, customers, vince, business, smc, aligned, industry, partner ecosystem, market, engage, outcomes, ecosystem, lead, kevin, partner organizations, world, success, perspective SPEAKERS Announcer, Kevin Peesker, Vince Menzione Vince Menzione 00:00 At Ultimate Partner we bring you the leaders in this industry, the best in the business from the leading tech organizations and the hyperscalers, the ones that are driving the greatest influence and impact to our world of ecosystems. My next guest on Ultimate Partner leads a massive business at the largest software company on the planet. His organization is responsible end to end for driving go to market and selling across the lower enterprise, the mid market, and the small and mid sized business market across the globe. And today, you’ll learn how being a partner, the ultimate partner, working with his organization, can help you achieve your greatest business results. Announcer 00:48 This is the Ultimate Partner the top partnership podcast. In this podcast Vince Menzione, a proven partner sales executive shares his mission to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. And now your host Vince Menzione. Vince Menzione 01:08 Welcome to or welcome back to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzione, your host and today I will Kevin peacemaker is the president of SMC small midsize and corporate accounts and digital selling at Microsoft. And he joins us for an exclusive view his view on how this significant component of Microsoft’s business is leading the charge how his 7000 person organization globally is leading with a partner led and partner assisted mindset during this time of rapid change and digital transformation. I hope you enjoy and learn from this discussion with this incredible business leader. As much as I enjoyed getting to know Kevin P skirt. I’m so excited to welcome athletic greens as the latest sponsor to Ultimate Partner friends who know me well know I’ve made taking a green drink supplement, part of my health ritual for over 20 years now. And it has made all the difference to my health and well being. About five years ago I added athletic greens and now their product ag one has become my go to green drink supplement. I take this literally every single day. Ag one is packed with 75 high quality vitamins, minerals, Whole Foods source superfoods, probiotics and antigens. It literally is replaced every vitamin in my cabinet. I take it at the start of the day, and often have a second serving on days when I really need it. If you’d like to give ag one a try. Athletic Greens is giving away a free one year supply of vitamin D, and five travel packs with every new purchase. Check them out at athletic greens.com forward slash Vince M. Kevin, welcome to the podcast. Kevin Peesker 03:16 Thank you so much, Vince fantastic to be here. Vince Menzione 03:19 I am so excited to welcome you to Ultimate Partner. You’re the president of SMC and digital at Microsoft. And I’m thrilled to have you join our listeners today. Kevin Peesker 03:29 Thank you. Thank you appreciate it. Vince Menzione 03:31 So for our listeners who may not understand your role and the mission of your organization, can you take us through that? Kevin Peesker 03:38 Hey, sure, Vince. And is it okay, if we do this in with a little bit of energy? Is that alright? I love energy. Let’s do it. Oh man, thanks so much. It really is terrific to be able to engage with the events and with the rest of the partner ecosystem who I know and love. That’s maybe started on your question against the mission as well. Vince Microsoft is a very purpose focused organization and our mission based on empowering every person and organization on the planet to achieve more. That’s where we come from. So within that vein of that’s the Microsoft big mission. My role is to lead Microsoft Small, Medium corporate and digital sales organization. We call it SMC very creative and acronym among many at Microsoft, by the way, SMC is a 7000 plus person organization. We do just under $60 Billion US of revenue, we are aligned to serve over 90% of the world’s customers. And we do that in a very digital first way. As you can imagine with the scale. We do that by leveraging talented people over 90,000 partner organizations engage with us in any given day and month and we bring the best together Some of our partner organizations are people and Microsoft technology to serve our customers at scale. And so maybe it’s from an SMC perspective, leveraging off the big vision is we are there truly to leverage the technology, leverage our global reach and deliver meaningful local impacts. So everyone in the economies we serve can benefit from digital transformation. That’s who we are. Vince Menzione 05:28 It’s such a significant remit, right? It’s everything except the enterprise organizations if you break that down, right, Kevin Peesker 05:34 right. And maybe for the partner team, the enterprise within Microsoft is sounds like a lot. But it’s actually very few. If you think as a global ecosystem, enterprise, our enterprise team represent 11,000 organizations globally, which out of the 10s, and 10s of millions is very, very small. Vince Menzione 05:53 Yeah. And so when we think about this partner ecosystem, this is the organization that’s really touching it most significantly, right. 100%. And you and I were talking about this a little bit earlier, like I was a GM at Microsoft. Yes. And when I was in the business, we had different approaches to going after SMC fact, we had SMB, and then we had corporate accounts. And then we combine those together to create SMC. And it was a little fragmented, if you will, we didn’t have like a collective approach. Can you take us through how you’re driving greater impact and how you’ve organized for success? Kevin Peesker 06:27 Yeah, thanks, Vince. You’re right. By the way, it doesn’t matter what organization a person is in whether it’s partner organization with 10 people or a large organization that has a couple 100,000 People like Microsoft, there is continuous iteration around what is the best way to organize for success. And from a Microsoft perspective, we’ve gone through multiple different views of how we should align ourselves best to serve markets, and to serve customers. Our current perspective, which we initiated just over a year ago, is that we have a tremendous business serving the enterprise within the enterprise is our large public sector customers, the largest corporate enterprise customers on the planet, we felt it valuable to look at our small, medium and corporate size customers with a global lens. So we did a fundamental shift, we aligned each of our country organizations, plus our digital sales organizations, and our global marketing, we aligned that together in one group this year, we are iterating to also bring the partner ecosystem into the end to end construct by which we think about our go to market. So the business of SMC has fundamentally gone from being divided into areas into a global organization with a clear alignment around our, our corporate customers, and our small, medium business customers end to end in every country or the world and having consistency through that process. That’s the shift that we’ve made. And that’s how we’re going to market now and into the next fiscal year and beyond. Vince Menzione 08:19 And I think that’s what’s really significant. And for our listeners who don’t understand that is that Microsoft breaks out by by geographies GIS, and then with NGOs, vertical segments, right? That’s correct. And so what you’ve done is now combine that so it’s not so fragmented across the world. You’re creating a powerful organization, probably with a repeatable model for success a go to market model, is that what I’m hearing? Kevin Peesker 08:43 Yeah, Vince, you are you are spot on. Vince straight out of business school coming to you live, is the statement that you just made. What it is, from our perspective is there is great consistency of the go to market motions. There’s great consistency as we think about Microsoft solution areas, Azure modern work business applications, about how we bring those product areas to market. And I think the big transformation for us is realisation which we were doing on a last mile basis and sputter in specific geographies, a realization that our enterprise customers are looking for certain outcomes and engagement. Our corporate managed large midsize corporates are looking for certain engagement. And then the SMB market is also looking for that. So a shift for us has been to look at each of our solution areas pick Azure determine what is it that are the best ways that we can go to market engage with corporate customers and Azur with small medium business customers in Azure, and then work at end to end from marketing through to Microsoft badge team members through to our partner ecosystem to really drive in To end success and ultimately enhance the way in which we go to market together with the partner ecosystem. So it’s a pretty fundamental shift really real time there. But it’s been in the works. And we’ve already put some of those aspects of that strategy in play. Vince Menzione 10:15 So I’m excited to deep dive on the partner piece. But before we get there, we’ve been living through both exciting and interesting times. Right, some really great excitement coming out of Microsoft. We had the America’s lead for chat, GBT come on the podcast, not too long. But it’s really exciting there. But we’re also living through significant headwinds. In fact, the last few years, right, ever since COVID, the lockdown? Yeah. And now the financial headwinds, I’ll call them. What do you see? And how is your business evolving during this time of rapid transformation. Kevin Peesker 10:47 This is one of these ones where I think perspective truly is everything. And let’s just step back COVID was hopefully a once in a generation event, actually, I think, with the way in which technology is evolving, we should be able to respond to future scenarios like COVID, in a much different way, and in a much faster way than we potentially did through COVID. And we saw that the impact of tech in that regard. But after 30 years in the tech industry, I’ve seen economic highs and lows many times before Vince COVID, altered the perspective, of course of how and where work is done from a Microsoft and the rest of the technology industry, we all saw a considerable increase in demand for our products and services, which drove rapid acceleration, frankly, and moving to the cloud, as is organizations maybe move their timelines and compress their timelines forward in that regard, I think the macro economic conditions that we have all faced and are facing with inflation, energy access in certain parts of the world, it’s affected many industries more dramatically than anyone could have anticipated coming out of the pandemic, people will say, Oh, I saw it coming. Well, nobody has that crystal ball. And so after this rapid period of expansion, our entire industry has had to adjust. And most companies, including Microsoft, we’ve had to make some really tough choices over the past three months, importantly, as a organization, and I hope our partner ecosystem feels this as well, our shared values of respect, integrity and accountability, they aligned us to the aspects of what is within our control within our business, to be able to execute with finer precision and greater operational rigor. So Vince, I think, in this sense, while it’s been challenging, I’m actually really personally very optimistic on the gift that change and challenge has for our businesses. I shared a quote recently with my team, from Marcel Proust, who was French philosopher, poet. And it translated it states happiness is good for the body. But it’s grief that develops the powers of the mind. And I’m sure you have events I’ve seen over and over that it is in the most challenging times that the greatest learning and progress is made. And as we reflect on what some of those learnings are, it’s clear companies that embrace the cloud partners who made strategic technology investments, and built up their capabilities and modernize their practices, they accelerated their leadership position in the market. And those who did the work are experiencing that their expertise, even in difficult times, remains in high demand. I seen this in multiple geographies around the world. And then now you layer on top of that the enhancements which you just mentioned, in AI, have aI itself artificial intelligence moving from hype to reality. If you think about the Gartner Hype, curve, hype to reality, we clearly are at a another significant inflection point for our entire industry. And in that regard, Vince, I think our partners stand to benefit immensely from the next wave of innovation, which will occur, which includes the current wave of innovation that was really accelerated during COVID COVID. Vince Menzione 14:40 I am in so agreement with you about these times these times of headwinds, and we’ve seen this before some of the greatest entrepreneurial ventures have grown out of economically challenging times. Right. You bet. We’re starting to see this now. And I think this is we’re in a place right now where I think the invention is going to happen in an even bigger way. I always feel from the customer side, like what are they willing to do now that they weren’t before? Kevin Peesker 15:04 Vince, this this is it is absolutely ominous to me. And I’ll give you an example. Recently, I was asked to do a keynote in Chicago, which I did with the YP organization, Young Presidents Organization, which is actually composed by the way, I didn’t realize this of a Young Presidents and then a graduated Young Presidents group. So in the room were 120, plus CEOs, owners of their firms, amazing businesses that crossed every industry. And I did a keynote with them, and then answered questions, Keynote for about 45 minutes and answer questions for 45 minutes about AI and the impact of AI on their business on their kind of lived reality, the response was phenomenal. And I think, Vince, you and I have probably grown up in this industry, where a lot of our time was spent engaging with Chief Information Officers with Digital Officers CISOs, what I’m finding foundational at the customer level is how Intune aware, and how desirable it is for CEOs to truly understand, what can technology do for me. And let’s go to the basic core in either assisting me in operational efficiencies, or in changing the way that I engage with my customers at the C suite level. It’s a foundational question. And what we’re seeing from the entire ecosystem of customers, whether they’re the very largest, or those, that our SMBs is a deep desire to engage, I think a little fear maybe of not being left behind, but more. So I think it’s a bit of a Darwinian moment of an understanding that, hey, I as a leader better innovate. Otherwise, I’m going to be passed by who’s someone by someone who does. It’s a really, really interesting environment that we’re in. And I’ve, I’ve never seen it as compressed and as active as it is right now. Vince Menzione 17:20 Some great insights there. What about if I flip this over to the partner side? Sure. What are you seeing from partners working with you and your team? And what would you say to them now, to get them best engaged with working with your organization, Kevin Peesker 17:33 there’s different scenarios of partner engagement. And maybe I’ll break it up into into a few partners on one side, global solution integrators, system integrators, they’ve been working deeply to build three specialization and capability to drive innovation, not large national partners who are building services to allow for both the movement to cloud but also application development, I am seeing a deep industry from that ecosystem interested in in truly determining what are the customer outcomes that they can deliver smaller partners who are specializing in aspects of the tech stack, whether it’s in cloud data, or it’s insecurity, or it’s in modern work, aligned to industry outcomes of modern work, those groups are doing phenomenally well being specific about industry outcomes, and customer outcomes in various sectors. And then if we think about the massive ecosystem of scale, which would be through the large global distributors, or large oil distributors, who are engaging with 1000s of partners, that are that either asserting the entire stack or being more specialized, I’m seeing that entire ecosystem shift in its development. And so from a Microsoft perspective, what’s been really, really critical for us is being adaptive to what’s required by each of those tranches of partners, ultimately, with the end goal in mind of being their best partner to drive and deliver customer outcomes. I think that ends up with providing longevity for the partner organization with their customers, but then also from an internal Microsoft perspective, how do we also ensure that we’re assisting in providing outcomes from some of our digital assets from our telemetry of what we’re seeing in the customer ecosystem? And that’s been I’d say, more of a newer development piece for us have that end to end communication that we have through our partner center to be able to provide leads get the feedback when there’s some Microsoft expertise involved for the partner to know who to go to where to get that from, and then to go align together to engage and win with the customer. And then for the partner to move on to the next and win in the next one from the shared learning that has occurred. So I think of the entire ecosystem, Vince in a few different sub segments, because that’s kind of how I see it operate. Vince Menzione 20:27 Yeah. Many organizations are learning to do more with less. And as you think about how you’re going to reach your revenue targets this year, I recommend you check out partner tap, a founding sponsor of Ultimate Partner, partner taps, pipeline discovery and CO selling platform, partner taps pipeline discovery and CO selling platform will help your channel and sales teams to hit their revenue targets faster. Even with fewer resources. Partners app gives your teams the new automation and partner data. You need to source more pipeline and close deals faster with your best partners. You can find out more information at partner tap.com. And multiple partners in that client account. Right? We talked about the I call it the five seats at the table. It might be seven or eight partners that are engaged with that one client. You mentioned the telemetry you were talking about partner center. And that really is the hub right for the organization for partners to come together. Yeah, a lot of work right now on marketplaces, we won’t dive in too deep on marketplaces, but recognizing that having a marketplace solution, I call it a non fungible token, right, it gives the partner the opportunity to stand up their offering in a way that helps them best engage with your team. Is that not right? Kevin Peesker 21:49 You bet I went, when I think about, well, what’s the best engagement with our partner organization, I try and put myself in the position of, okay, if I’m a partner organization, working with Microsoft, knowing what I know about Microsoft, what is it that I would do to optimize success and in discussion with with principals and owners, and CEOs and presidents of partner organizations, we basically go down that discussion. And to your point, Vince, it is clear that Microsoft is got has a strong solution alignment, Azur Azure infra Azure data, Azure AI services, we think about Azure in that way. And therefore, when a customer contacts us, when we contact a customer, if you think about the go to market of how we how we view the segments that we serve, the deliberateness by of partnering with an organization that has built capabilities, expertise, certifications, that can respond to the customer’s requirements, and take them from an infrastructure perspective through to application development, because really, the application is where all the value is in terms of outcomes, that understanding from a partner perspective, and the alignment of us with them through marketplace, and through the certification systems that we have, that truly provides a massive amount of trust alignment, and makes for the connection to be very, very seamless between our organizations. So I’m seeing more and more partner organizations, be in alignment with that make appropriate investments with that, so that they are tightly intertwined with Microsoft. And then of course, our responsibility is to assist with that skilling to provide incentives that are in alignment with that so that the partner organizations can earn dollars for their activity and their investments. I think those two things go hand in hand. Vince Menzione 24:11 You bring up some really good points here. In fact, we’ve had Dan Rippy on the podcast and leads the Microsoft cloud partner program, where it was a lot of rumbling in the partner world back when it was first announced. I think it’ll be a year ago this month, in fact. And then Dan brought clarity to the conversation. And really what you’re doing is you’re saying, Hey, show us that you’re invested. We’re jointly invested in our outcomes, show us how you’re doing that. And that will help us better engage with you. Kevin Peesker 24:39 It’s logical, isn’t it? Yeah. I think that sometimes we do as organizations and as an ecosystem, we make things really, really complicated. At the at the end of the day, there’s a customer who is in name the industry and their desire or is to be able to earn enough funds to pay the salaries. So the people in their organization could put food on their table, and to have some money left to invest and some money left to pay the investors a reasonable return. That’s the essence. And so therefore, from a customer perspective and a partner perspective, the tighter we aligned to the outcomes that are required to make a difference to empower every organization means we make a difference we are purpose led about the success of others, not the success of as example the success of Microsoft, it’s through the success of others that Microsoft will earn the right to continue to invest, continue to operate. I think the easier we make that the more streamlined our engagements are in driving success in the market. Vince Menzione 25:55 And a lot of organizations are looking towards Microsoft, right? You go back 40 years ago to Boca Raton, when the PC came out and Microsoft license, Bill Gates license, the software and ecosystem was built at that point. Amazing, right. And you and I talked about 30 years, I think I’ve got 30 or 35 years of experience here. But Kevin, what have you been around these partnerships for so long? What do you see from the best ones like the best in the business to bet to better? Kevin Peesker 26:19 Oh, without a doubt, and yeah, it’s been a it’s been a privilege, I started my my first partner job was in 1992 1993. In Sydney, Australia, at that time it was you drive over to the partner, you cajole them to get a cup of coffee with you, you talk about your offerings in a speeds and feeds of your offerings. And you sort of begged them to please please, please consider selling whatever it is that we have in front of you. And I’ll be back soon. So things have moved on from that, but in a way they haven’t in and I say that, I think obviously the entire ecosystems offerings have changed, we’ve gotten much more aligned to not pushing speeds and feeds down into the customer ecosystem, we are all about driving, what’s the end outcome, which is fantastic. What I’m finding though, is again, and again, over the decades, the great partners, the truly ones that are special, they have amazing clarity, a great partner knows who they are and what they want to be. And I also see that they invest to succeed each day, and to succeed for tomorrow. So they succeed to win in the near term, clearly, because they’ve got to pay bills with the margin they make. But they also find a way to carve out dollars to be able to position them for the next wave. And there was a recent stat that I saw a comment was from JP Morgan. But anyway, over the last 30 years, there’s only one technology company that has been in the top 10 largest organizations in the world that’s been Microsoft over 10 years, organizations come and go think about the partner ecosystem, there have been partner organizations that come and go, our industry is aligned to agility, rapid change, rapid transformation. And so that concept of Well, I’m just going to worry about today, that’s not success for tomorrow. And I think the third element if there’s a third element would be, I find that partners who truly truly desire long term relationships with their customers, they act differently from others who are just trying to optimize margin optimize profit, they act as though Well, we’re gonna be here for decades, and therefore we’re going to do what’s required to bring you the best of technology to your organization. And do that consistently. We’re going to change with you push you challenge you as a customer around what’s required so that you can be your best because when you’re successful will be successful. So I see those three elements repeat time and time again, Vince, lat last last one might be as I think, from a Microsoft perspective, we we hold our values very, very strongly internally and Microsoft respect respect for our customers respect for each other integrity, doing the right thing, regardless of if anybody is watching and accountability, which is fundamentally do what you say you’re gonna do. I recently was in Redmond, and we had the 14th largest partner organizations in Japan, the CEOs of all of those partner organizations with So in Redmond, and we literally we discussed respect, integrity and accountability, how we act as Microsoft, and the partner ecosystem, those very senior folks talked about what the values are from their perspective, and how we therefore aligned, which effectively builds trust. So if there’s a fourth pillar, it’s trust, built between the vendor don’t between Microsoft, and between our partner organization. So those would be the big four that I’ve seen. So the respect, Vince Menzione 30:31 the integrity, the accountability, and trust, and I talked about trust, like, if you don’t have trust in the room, you don’t have oxygen in the room, you don’t have a partnership in the room. Kevin Peesker 30:41 Beautiful, beautiful. And that other one, though, the first one I mentioned, which is just, I’ll stress it, because I sometimes see confusion, a great partner, knowing who they are and what they want to be, I think sometimes there’s a view that, well, hey, I’ve got AI as a partner, I’m serving this customer set, I need to be great at everything, modern work, infrastructure in the cloud, data, AI, cybersecurity, I need to be awesome at all of these elements of business applications, I think it’s really, really hard for most organizations to be awesome at everything. But it is much more achievable to be phenomenal at certain elements and build a great business off of that, which has a reputation that’s second to none, I think many customers will have multi partner relationships, because they look for some degree of specialization and expertise. Vince Menzione 31:45 I love what you have to say there, I refer to it as sort of showing up as a shiny quarter and a bucket full of shiny quarters all the 1000s of Microsoft partners, right? What makes you stand out, right? From a business value perspective? And then you also touched on, I want to I don’t want to forget this. You talked about agility. And I also I talk about a set of fundamental principles around well, what makes successful partnering and agility is the part the component Microsoft will shift right? Few years ago, we weren’t talking about teams, we certainly weren’t talking about changing. And so how do organizations pivot? or invest in a way without betting the farm, I guess, is what I would say. So think about areas of growth, where you can invest in your business to grow the business within through your relationship with Microsoft, Kevin Peesker 32:33 you bet things think about, you’re so right, I mean, aspects of the stack, which weren’t there, five, seven years ago, that’s an awful long period of time, and they weren’t there. And now they are becoming predominant discussion points and execution points with customers. As a small example, we launched this concept of do more with less to respond to the economic challenges that are occurring in many industries. And one of the discussions that I’ve had with end user customers is, tell me what is it that you are fundamentally objective, what your fundamental objectives are as outcomes during this period? And sort of layering down and getting into will? Is it changing an operational aspect? Is it getting efficiency? Is it enhancing the way in which they’re engaging with a customer in a certain part of the channel, whatever it is, what we’ve seen is this concept of I just can’t have a project that takes me 18 months, or 24 or 36 months to deliver a return on investment, I need a faster turnaround. Otherwise, I’m frankly not going to invest. Well, several partners to figure that out. And they have built very quickly, a low code, no code type application development section of their business, we do it off of Microsoft Power platform, to be able to go in and take an analog process, digitize it, not in six months, but in a week, and then layer that in to the company’s operations so that they can handle things more efficiently. Or if they have a staff crunch, they can’t get the talent to be able to handle more business with less. And that to me is just a great example of how partner organizations looking at their own talent doing a little bit of rescaling to then align on a market opportunity. To your point, Vince, that is agility. And I think we’ll see even more of that emerge as AI begins to be infused as a co pilot against so many aspects of how we’re going to waystations think about their operations. Vince Menzione 35:03 So many great learnings today, Kevin, for the listeners from from the hundreds of 1000s of Microsoft partners that are out there. How can they best engage with you and your organization? Kevin Peesker 35:15 That’s fantastic question. Thank you for asking it, please. We have an amazing partner organization led by Nicole Denson, that we run globally, it operates in each of our countries, which is fantastic. So I mentioned the structure upfront, we have a global SMC Small, Medium corporate structure. But underneath that we have individuals in each of our core markets, effectively serving over 180 countries around the world. So we are deeply aligned in core markets to the partner ecosystem in the market. The first part is reach out to Microsoft itself. If you are managed partner, you should know who your person is, if you’re not a managed partner, we have amazing distributor relationships, tutor relationships that have complete Microsoft services, literally Microsoft employees working within the distributors that are there to serve. So those would be the first two areas that I would say, hey, just reach out and make sure that we’re engaging with you in the right way for you. Vince Menzione 36:26 Great, great answer, Kevin. So I’d like to pivot here, right? You have had an amazing career journey. You were president of Canada, just before this role, and did some amazing things. And if you’re Canadian market, very fortunate, but such a great career. How did like it? Was there a spark? Was there a pivot? Like, was there something that set you off? 30 plus years ago, Kevin, on this path to success in this stellar career? Kevin Peesker 36:51 I? I would love to say it was all planned, Vince. But that would be a load of Yes. What are your thoughts? You made a comment recently, which is one that was told to me when I was I was about 27 years old. And I was asked to go and have dinner with a small group of people with the CEO of a company called Lexmark, which was a spin off of IBM back in, in the 90s. And I naively said to the CEO is one of those kinds of questions you ask when you’re young, I stated, I have aspirations to lead a company one day, what do I What should I do to become the CEO of, of Lexmark, and he just looked at me and he’s like, I can just imagine, he was maybe 60 years old senior in the industry, and a kind of chuckled a little bit. And he said, Kevin, there’s a long path ahead of you. It’s not determined yet for you, where where you will be your happiest, where you’ll be your most passionate where your skills will align. So first, figure that out, determine what you are most interested in, and where you will apply your greatest level of energy. And alongside that, regardless of what the role is, do the best job you can in each job, and good things will happen. That’s what he said to me later I heard Satya respond to a similar question and, and such as CEO of Microsoft. And Satya said another thing is such a never imagined that he would be the CEO of Microsoft. But what he did want to do was do the very best job and become the deepest of expert he could in the job that he was in. And so from my perspective, I always did have a desire to lead a company, I had that leadership, the view of being someone who would serve others, while also taking responsibility and, and having the the pressure of that plus, I think the opportunity to impact were the things that I was aligned to within my own DNA. Along the way, though, it is been a journey of just such iteration. And when you talk about agility, number one are at our industry requires agility. It requires a desire and a mindset that is adaptive to change. But it also requires, I would say pretty significant resilience. Because what you learn to do and what become you become great at suddenly, in certain circumstances becomes obsolete. And so you have to do it again and again and again. And so if there’s any kind of message to someone who’s maybe in the earlier stages of their career or mid stages of their career is pleased. It’s going to happen. AI is probably Leigha bigger disrupter than we’ve ever had in technology, we’ll see if that those words come true, bigger than the PC bigger than the internet bigger than having a handheld device that has amazing compute power and information at your fingertips. It’ll be fascinating to see how people adjust, adapt, demonstrate resilience, and really think of not what was but what could be, and what potentially will be in the future. Kind of cool. It’s such a great time to be in this industry. Vince Menzione 40:37 What strikes me as you can’t prepare for 30 years out, Kevin Peesker 40:40 you can’t prepare in our industry, you It’s you can’t prepare for five years. So I mean, yeah, one of the one of the things that I would say I’m most proud of in my last role in Microsoft, with my Canadian leadership team is, we picked a couple of things pretty early, we picked how rapidly cloud would move from, oh, I can’t trust it, oh, it’s not secure. Oh, I really like hugging my servers and my storage devices to the most the highest required compliance industry is going, well, we just studied this for three years. And, yeah, we need to move to the cloud, we’ve gone through it with our board, and therefore we are moving to the cloud at pace, we need to move our core data to the cloud at pace that has shifted what we saw alongside that was the requirement to rapidly skill and invest in skilling both within our customers within the channel ecosystem, and within ourselves. And so the opening of Microsoft’s entire portfolio of IP, all of the internal skilling that we have opening that up to the entire ecosystem, that was the right thing to do. And, and it’s one of those of you can lead a horse to water will they drink, it’s their choice. In this case, it really was critical that we provide the platform for individuals to be able to advance their skills for the next wave. I I’m so excited that multiple partner organizations, many, many have done that. And it’s paying off for them. Vince Menzione 42:24 Yeah, I love seeing the transformation of our partners, we tend to focus on quite a few of them here. So so great to see. Yes, you Kevin Peesker 42:32 bet. You bet. It’s inspiring. Yeah, Vince Menzione 42:34 it is very inspiring. So I have a favorite question, Kevin, and you are hosting a dinner party. And you can host this amazing dinner party in any part of the world. It might be Singapore, it might be Australia, and it might be in Toronto might be in Seattle, who knows. And you can invite any three guests, Kevin to this party from the present, or the past. One guest even said in the future, they had three guests from the future, they want to invite. Whom would you invite Kevin? And why? Kevin Peesker 43:06 Oh my gosh, that that’s I’ve never thought of that before. So let me I’m not gonna I’m not gonna be clever enough to give a really astounding answer. But I’m going to start out with one, which is when when I was 18 years old, I was at university in the US. I had an athletic scholarship, and I was down there. And it was the first day of classes and I got a call that my father, who was 42 years old was unfortunately killed in an automobile accident, sorry. And so he never saw me as a pure relationship. Because I was 18. And he was my dad, I would love to have a discussion with him adult to adult. So that would be number one. And number two is I just thought watch the masters. I have been doing that since I was a kid used to do with my dad. I’ve always admired Jack Nicklaus. And what he stood for, he’s up there in years, but boy, he would be an intriguing, intriguing dinner guest. And number three would be cautious, hard to do three. I would love to go in the future and see how either my daughter or my son have a turned out at my age, which is in mid late 50s. What the world’s like for them, and maybe as a precursor to, well, what could we have done differently today? To make their world a better world? What shouldn’t we have done to make their world a better world? So that would be a fascinating dinner party Vince Menzione 44:46 and be absolutely fascinating. I would love to come along and meet your dad. Jack lives down here in Jupiter, Florida. You run across them I have run across him if you happen to know his favorite Italian restaurant. Let me and cellos they have a beautiful portrait of he and the owner when you walk in. That’s amazing. And yeah, so we’re gonna have to maybe we can host it down here and Jupiter, how do you what do you think? Kevin Peesker 45:09 I love it. I love it. I’m there. Vince Menzione 45:11 I’m going around a golf in there, maybe Kevin Peesker 45:12 I’m absolutely. Vince Menzione 45:16 So you have been an amazing guest. Kevin, I’m so thrilled to have you today, I feel honored and privileged to have you as again, Kevin Peesker 45:23 thank you, Vince, for I know that you’ve been a voice of connection across the incredible ecosystem, which is the partner ecosystem. In my career, there’s no way that the businesses that I’ve worked within would have had success without the partner ecosystem. One of them was a direct company. And one of my jobs was to initiate the partner ecosystem in Canada, for that organization that was fully and slowly direct. And it was incredible to see the impact that occurred for that company, once we did that, and how we engaged and built that ecosystem. So thank you so much to you for everything you do to connect multiple aspects of what this incredible industry does each and every day to have impact on others deeply. Appreciate it. Vince Menzione 46:16 Thank you very much from from the heart. And I would love to have you back again, Kevin. So I’m fact I’d love to deep dive we take probably take another episode, just a deep dive on your learnings. Taking a direct organization to make it partner assistant partner lead a lot of organizations struggle with that today. Yeah, they’re not as far along or advanced as Microsoft is in their ecosystem thinking. So we’d love to have you share some of your learnings as well. And then our next slide, I’ll be Kevin Peesker 46:45 happy to chat about that. It was a fascinating period. And as that organization, it now has a robust global channel. At one stage, it was never so it’s pretty cool to see that type of transformation occur. And I know a number of vendor organizations have have had to consider that or really had to make the assessment of how far do they go? Or in what way do they interact with the partner ecosystem. So it’s a really, really cool area of focus. Vince Menzione 47:18 So Kevin, you’ve been an amazing guest. I want to thank you. Kevin Peesker 47:22 All the best. Cheers, Vince Menzione 47:24 cheers. So there you have it. Another amazing guest joins Ultimate Partner. And I hope you enjoyed this interview as much as I did. Odds are if you’re a technology partner, executive, and hearing my voice, chances are you too, are looking to accelerate your success through partnerships. I mean, let’s face it. We all have seen partnerships that look good on paper, but never live up to their expected results. There are a lot of reasons why partnerships fail, and at ultimate partnerships, we help you get it right by applying a proven set of best practices and framework that’s used by leading partners working with Microsoft, and other technology giants. If you want to learn more, follow the link in the show notes, or visit our website at Ultimate Partner.com. | |||
| Holiday Encore – John Jester: Reshaping Veeam’s Future with a Partner-First Approach | 17 Dec 2023 | 00:26:26 | |
We are bringing you some of the best episodes of 2023 to help you prepare for success in 2024; this one is an incredible example of a Top ISV Transforming to a Cloud Model. A Top Industry Executive Joins Ultimate Partner®As a former executive at Microsoft and Google, John Jester knows a thing or two about driving transformative initiatives now, as the Chief Revenue Officer at Veeam – a Gartner Magic Quadrant leader in backup and data management – Jester is again bringing his expertise to the table. In this Ultimate Partner episode, we sit down with John Jester to discuss his vision for Veeam and how he’s leveraging the company’s rich partner ecosystem and over 400,000 customers to drive growth and innovation. By putting partners and customers first, Jester is reshaping Veeam’s future and leading the charge in the channel. In John’s WordsAs Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), John leads Veeam’s go-to-market growth strategy and builds upon Veeam’s position as the #1 provider of Modern Data Protection solutions spanning Cloud, Virtual, Physical, Hybrid, SaaS, and Kubernetes. Before Veeam, John spent three years at Google Cloud as VP of Customer Experience, ensuring customers adopt and realize value from Google Cloud. This included global leadership of Professional Services, Customer Success, Customer Support, Training, Cloud Certifications, and Customer Engagement through the Executive Briefing Center and Customer Advisory Boards. Before Google, John spent 20 years at Microsoft in numerous roles, including Corporate Vice President of Worldwide Customer Success, where he established a new organization to drive the adoption of Microsoft’s cloud services, Vice President of Worldwide Specialist Sales, where he led enterprise specialist sales across the full suite of enterprise cloud services including the transformation of the sales force to a cloud/subscription model, General Manager of Global Accounts with responsibility for Microsoft’s top 100 enterprise customers, General Manager of the UK Enterprise Business, and General Manager of America’s Incubation Business to drive sales of the company’s new and acquired products. John attended George Mason University in Fairfax, VA, earning his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a master’s in business administration. He lives in Seattle with his wife, Kelly, and their two daughters. John enjoys golfing, cycling, and sports car racing in his spare time. What You’ll Learn
Visit our website. Over six years ago, I embarked on a mission to empower partners struggling to navigate the complex world of tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and AWS. Today, I’m thrilled to announce the launch of Ultimate Partner, an extraordinary media, events, and advisory company dedicated to transforming your Cloud Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy and fostering ecosystem-led growth. Having witnessed the industry from multiple perspectives – leading a $4.6 billion Ecosystem at Microsoft, spearheading partnerships for a billion-dollar company, and hosting 200 episodes of the Ultimate Partner® -, I’ve gained invaluable insights and crafted a manifesto of principles to guide your success. In an era defined by tectonic shifts, such as the global pandemic, economic headwinds, and the rise of AI, the role of hyperscalers has become increasingly critical. With investments of billions of dollars in ecosystems, technology, and customer acquisition costs, they have secured over $200 billion in customer commitments to durable cloud budgets. We stand on the precipice of a marketplace moment where simplifying and streamlining economic models associated with co-selling and ecosystem-led growth will shape the decade ahead. Yet, as vendors and organizations demand more from us while resources diminish, we ask, “Where do we go? How do we navigate these seismic shifts? How do we thrive during this decade of the ecosystem?” If you’re a partner, you’re likely grappling with these questions. The watering holes of the past no longer offer the guidance required to transform into a Cloud GTM and embrace ecosystem-led growth. That’s why Ultimate Partner exists – to be your trusted compass amidst the noise. Visit our website. Partner Ecosystem Leader Episodes163 – A Partnership Leader Uniquely Growing Hubspot’s Ecosystem Community 162 – How You Can Unleash the Power of Data to 10X Your Partner Growth! 153 – Janet Schijins – Ecosystems & Megacosm 150- Celebrating 150 Amazing Episodes with a Five-Timer Guest, Jay McBain 149 – WTF is an Ecosystem? And How Partner Hacker helps tech companies PartnerUp with Jared Fuller LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Friends who know me well know I’ve made taking a green drink supplement, part of my health ritual for over 20 years now and it has made all the difference to my health and well-being.About five years ago, I added Athletic Greens, and now their product AG1 has become my go-to green drink supplement. I take this literally every single day. AG1 is packed with 75, high-quality vitamins, minerals, whole foods source superfoods, probiotics, and antigens. It has replaced every vitamin in my cabinet, If you’d like to give AG1 a try, Athletic Greens is giving away a free one-year supply of vitamin D, and Five Travel Packs with every new purchase. Check them out. athleticgreens.com/vincem Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Typos SUMMARY KEYWORDS partners, microsoft, customers, partnerships, customer, partnering, organizations, veeam, marketplace, john, leading, create, cloud solution provider, successful, competencies, leaders, solution, building, ultimate guide, model SPEAKERS Announcer, John Jester, Vince Menzione Vince Menzione 00:00 A former Microsoft and Google executive, now leading transformation for a top software company by focusing on its rich partner ecosystem, and it’s over 400,000 customers. My next guest on Ultimate Partner is well known for driving and leading transformative initiatives with two of the tech giants and is now leading the charge at this jogger nut in the channel. Announcer 00:26 This is the Ultimate Partner the top partnership podcast. In this podcast, Vince Menzione, a proven partner sales executive shares his mission to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. And now your host, Vince Menzione. Vince Menzione 00:46 Welcome to or welcome back to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzione, your host and today I will John jester is the Chief Revenue Officer at Veeam. A Gartner Magic Quadrant leader in the backup and data management space beam has an enviable footprint of both customers and partners. And John is reshaping and leading beams partner first charge. I hope you enjoy this discussion as much as I enjoyed welcoming John Jester. I’m so excited to welcome athletic greens as the latest sponsor to Ultimate Partner friends who know me well know I’ve made taking a green drink supplement, part of my health ritual for over 20 years now. About five years ago I added athletic greens and now their product ag one has become my go to green drink supplement. Ag one is packed with 75 high quality vitamins, minerals, Whole Foods or superfoods, probiotics and antigens. If you’d like to give ag one a try athletic greens is giving away a free one year supply of vitamin D, and five travel packs with every new purchase. Check them out at athletic greens.com forward slash Vince AM. John, welcome to the podcast. John Jester 02:16 Vince, it’s fantastic to be here with you. On the Ultimate Partner podcast. Vince Menzione 02:22 I am so excited to welcome you as a guest on The Ultimate Partner podcast. You’re the chief revenue officer at Veeam, a leader in the backup recovery and data management space. And we both worked at Microsoft so welcome. John Jester 02:36 Yeah, no, it’s great to be here. I think we shared eight years together at Microsoft for quite quite some time together, working with partners helping them be successful back at Microsoft. Vince Menzione 02:48 So a rich career in technology, of course, Microsoft and the work that you’ve done at Google. But for our listeners that don’t know you, can you tell us a little bit more about John Jester. Yeah, you John Jester 03:00 bet too. You know, we already mentioned this, but I spent almost 20 years at Microsoft various roles, including the global accounts business to the top 100 enterprise accounts around the world, the worldwide specialist sales team, which was basically where Microsoft had the specialists focused on cloud, and then building out Microsoft’s customer success business, which owned global adoption of Microsoft 365, dynamics 365. And then consumption for Azure. So long time at Microsoft, and then a little over three years at Google Cloud, running worldwide professional services, Customer Success support, learning and the executive engagement program. But it was all about, hey, how do you work closely with partners to add value to customers, make them successful using Google Cloud, make them successful using Microsoft? So yeah, long, long history, working with partners long history in the enterprise space? Vince Menzione 03:55 Yeah, you’re being a little bit modest, I think about the business units you ran, and they were transformational at Microsoft. I mean, certainly the CSU or the client success unit was a new level of impact that Microsoft was trying to make towards the customer moving away and shifting from the old model to this new consumption model. Right. John Jester 04:14 Yeah. And I think all of us have that challenges. You know, we work in a cloud world is a How does a vendor like Microsoft, or Google or Bing work closely with a partner ecosystem, to add value to customers? And I think that’s one of the things that’s been great about the shift to cloud is it’s about adding value. And you know, Microsoft, investing in creating a customer success unit is a great example of that. Moving from, hey, I’m going to sell you software to I really want to work with you and add value and you know, Microsoft, that really went a long way in helping customers be successful. And then same thing at Google. Google made a big investment to build out customer success to help their customers get more value from the platform. Vince Menzione 04:59 Veeam is a nificant leader in the space that you’re in, you joined this organization? Well, almost a year ago now, right? John Jester 05:06 Yeah, so I’ve been at Veeam as Pharaoh for nine months now. And you’re right, we are a leader in the marketplace, we’re very proud. We’re number two worldwide market share, according to IDC. And probably even more importantly, we have 450,000 customers now talk to those customers, I talked to our partners. And we know that data is one of their most important assets. And we really aspire to help them manage that data, protect that data, anywhere they have, it could be on premises, could be in the cloud could be through a cloud solution provider. But we want to provide that solution to help customers manage data wherever it is, and protect that data. So that’s our mission. That’s what we’re focused on. Vince Menzione 05:50 So what do you hope to accomplish? John Jester 05:52 Yeah, so I think the main thing that we want to do is help customers manage and protect their data wherever it is. That’s the goal. That’s our focus. And we’re to do that by working closely with our partners. I think one of the things that we’re so proud of at Veeam is we are 100% indirect business, every deal we do goes through the partners. And it’s core to how we think about our strategy, its core, and how we think about going to market. But even with that focus, working closely with partners, I think the main thing that we try to anchor ourselves in is how do we make our customers successful. And I think that’s how you create the best partner models is you don’t just sit down and talk between the vendor and the partners, and what we’re going to do together, you actually start with the customer? And what’s the innovation we’re bringing to the customer? What are the business problems we’re trying to solve? And then reverse out what’s the right partner models that you can go to market together and make those customers successful. And I think that’s so important. Didn’t, you know, a couple of things that we’re starting to see, you know, being our product portfolio is getting broader, you know, we’ve added in protection for Microsoft 365, we just launched a new product for Salesforce. And then we’ve really seen tremendous growth for a product we call caspin, which is protecting Kubernetes. But all that means we’re getting a more complex product portfolio. And that means we have to work with our partners in new ways. We’ve launched a competency program, so that we can help make sure our partners have the right competencies across that product portfolio. And the other thing that our partners came to us and said is, hey, we’re starting to specialize, how can you help us work together the partner ecosystem? So that’s something we’ve really focused on lately? Is it bringing our partners together so that we can create better solutions for our customers? So I’d say, hey, those are things that we’re really trying to get done, but anchor ourselves, let’s make the customer successful? And how do we work with our partners to make that happen? Vince Menzione 07:59 I love the focus on the customer, right? The customer being the Northstar theme has a really strong pedigree, I mean, I speak to some of your partners, and I know many of your partners. And in fact, some of your partners will say that Veeam is like my favorite organization to work with. And I’ve heard that literally from one of the leading organizations out there. So this focus on customer, how do organizations and partners best work with Veeam? Is there a strategy for them to engage with you and your organization? John Jester 08:29 Yeah, absolutely. And it makes me incredibly proud when I hear you say that, about partners really wanting to work with them, because it is part of our DNA is working with partners. And you know, we do our partner advisory councils every quarter. It’s like gold to me the feedback I get from partners, but yeah, working with Veeam. So we have 35,000 partners that work with us. We’re proud of that. But what we want to do is engage with the partner. And I mentioned that competency program, that’s something that we’ve really been investing in, but work with us, help us understand, where do you want to focus? Where are your competencies? How can we help you develop those and go to market together, one of the things I’d call out is we have something called Veeam, cloud solution provider program. And this is something customers started asking for is, hey, we want more of a cloud solution provider type service that we can consume like cloud, but can be customized can meet our needs. And we now have over 10,000 vcsp partners who are hosting beam who are working with customers creating these unique solutions. And I just bring that up as one example of a thinking about a customer need reverse engineering, what’s the right partner model, coming up with the competencies and then really taking that to market together. So that’s a great example of what we do together, of course, as some of our customers want to work, you know, with the hyperscalers so we’re in the marketplace. is for Azure for AWS for GCP. And then our distribution partners. They’ve got their own marketplaces. And they came to us and said, Hey, how can you be part of that. And I would just mentioned a couple, stream one from TD cynics aerosphere. Ingram marketplace. So, you know, we really try to listen to our customers, and then work with our partners to build the solutions they want, and then create it in a mechanism that they can purchase and consume it based on their choice. Vince Menzione 10:32 Many organizations are learning to do more with less. And as you think about how you’re going to reach your revenue targets this year, I recommend you check out partner tap, a founding sponsor of Ultimate Partner partner taps, pipeline discovery and CO selling platform will help your channel and sales teams to hit their revenue targets faster. Even with fewer resources. Partners app gives your teams the new automation and partner data. You need to source more pipeline and close deals faster with your best partners. You can find out more information at partner to app.com marketplaces are just so important right now I know if you saw the latest from Canalis $45 billion will flow through marketplaces by 2025. So you’re prescient and leading the charge here, John on marketplaces. You know, you mentioned the hyper scalars. And we talked about the cloud solutions 10,000 partners in the V CSP program that you have. What do you do there? Like how you get those organizations best engaged with V? John Jester 11:44 Yeah, so we have a dedicated onboarding program where we go through the technical competencies, and a lot of those VCs fees actually customize our product, and they add value added services on it. In that’s where we spend the time with them is it we don’t just want partner number 10,001. Offering beam as, as much as I love our partner ecosystem, what we want to do is, hey, what are the unique competencies they have? How could they extend our product? How could they add additional services on that add more value for the partners. And that’s the type of conversations we really lean in and spend time on. I think we’re somewhat unique in that we put part of our partner organization actually in our engineering team, because I really find that’s how we do the most innovative things is understanding what the partner is trying to achieve. And then actually working with our engineering team, how do we engage? How do we create some of the API’s, some of our partners need to really customize that solution and make it unique? But that’s, that’s what I’d say on the vcsp. Front, like, come work with us. Talk to us about your customer base, the competencies you have. And then let’s create something unique in the market. And I’d even say, you know, the GSI is have approached us and talked about, hey, they’re building out business continuity practices, they’re building out data protection practices, how can we work together to make veem part of that, and it’s the same thing, it’s doing some engineering work, it’s doing work to understand what customers need, and then create that unique and differentiated solution that makes the partner have unique offer and market, and also, frankly, makes being more relevant to our customers in that space. So these are areas that I get excited about, is hey, how do we really think about the customer reverse engineer the solution? And then do the engineering work? Or do the commercial work to bring it together? Vince Menzione 13:36 Well, I love what you have to say, because what you really said was partner led to me, right? Because I see so many organizations, whether they be SAS or independent software vendors that tried to take this direct approach to market. In fact, that’s pretty much the norm these days, versus what you’ve said, you have integrated partner across the various components of your C suite, you’re going across product, you’re going across marketing, you’re going across selling as the CRM of the organization to drive that. And you’ve been around this partner world for quite some time. And this is the Ultimate Partner. So John, I need to ask you this. What do you see from the best partnerships? John Jester 14:13 He I think there’s three things that jumped out to me when I think about the best partnerships. The first is what we’ve already hit on. Start with a customer reverse engineer. The solution you need to bring to market to start there with the customer. Second thing is a partner models have to have success and profitability for the partner for the vendor. Getting that right. I know it sounds simplistic, but the long term partnerships I have are ones where we sit down together we do our quarterly business reviews, those metrics, those KPIs mean that the vendors being successful, the partners being successful, and then ultimately the customers being successful and that’s just one thing I’ve got to brag on about beam. Our net promoter score NPS is 82 One, hey, that’s about having a product that customers love. It also is about having partners that implement that product and make it work. And we would not have achieved that NPS of 82, without our great partner ecosystem without great product. So it’s bringing it all together that I think is so important. So three things, start with the customer, reverse engineer that solution. And then the second thing there that I think is so important is building the right model from the start that mutual success. And then great communication and QBRs, and reviews. Vince Menzione 15:33 And you pointed out the value back to the partner, you’ve mentioned this a few times. And I want to stress it right, because sometimes, again, the direct model, but even the marketplace model doesn’t always allow for value on both sides. In fact, many of the partners that we all know and love, are they a poor a marketplace, I’ll be candid and saying this, because they don’t see enough value. They don’t see the top line revenue to their organizations generally. And they’re not seeing the incremental value and embracing marketplaces. But what you’re telling me and telling our audience here is, in fact, you’re creating joint value you’re creating, they’re building on top of the Vehm solution, which is adding incremental value to the offering, but also greater value to the customer. John Jester 16:19 Yeah. And I think that’s so important that if you build that type of model, you’re going to create long term success. And that’s what we’re oriented on. Vince Menzione 16:28 So you’ve been around these partnerships for quite some time. I mean, 20 years at Microsoft, I mean, I feel like Microsoft almost invented the channel back if you go back to Boca Raton, and the first PC, right? And then three years of Google running a client based or customer focused organization, but also very partner centric. Why do you think that organizations often don’t get it right? Like, what would you say to the partners that you had worked with? Or the organizations that you were trying to partner with? That didn’t get it? Right? What would you say to them? Now, John Jester 17:00 I’d say the first thing that I always run into when something goes wrong in a partnership, it’s poor communication sounds so simple, but how many times is someone may be unhappy with the dynamics of the partnership, or you’ve got a big customer implementation that’s going wrong, and instead of communicating, saying, I need help, or saying, Hey, this is just not working? For me, it’s putting pressure on me from an economical standpoint, that’s not sustainable, like be transparent, have the conversation. And I’ve always found that when you have an open dialogue, you can course correct, you can fix partnerships, you can fix a challenging customer implementation, etcetera, where it goes wrong, you don’t have the open communication, things build up. And inevitably, there’s some type of blow up and that can be unrecoverable. And so that’s my number one thing is open communication. You know, we’re only successful if we make our end customer successful. And that comes by working and adapting, and thinking that we’re going to have everything right from day one, and we’re gonna have the perfect model and the perfect deal. It’s just not realistic. We’re going to have to adapt, we’re going to have to change. And if we communicate, and we talk to each other, we can make that happen. Vince Menzione 18:14 Yeah, I find it as well, right. organizations don’t communicate enough. I say you need to over communicate almost in an aggressive way, but a diplomatic way. And point out, like what’s not working, right, we’ve got green, yellow, red on our scorecard. We’re yellow or red. But we’re not talking about that. It’s almost like the elephant in the room. People go into the meeting with kind of that on their mind, right? John Jester 18:36 Yeah, you’re spot on. I spent three and a half years in the UK. While I was working with Microsoft, and there was a term I picked up on there. They call it tea and biscuits, which means, hey, you sit down, you have a meeting with the partner, maybe you have tea, you have biscuits, you’re very nice. You don’t talk about anything difficult. And it’s so important to you know, stay away from that type of relationship, because it may feel good in the meeting, you may walk out and everyone’s like, Oh, we didn’t rock the boat. But you’re not actually creating a great partnership. You’re not building better solutions. You’re not taking care of customers. So I always say, a avoid the tea and biscuits meeting, I do enjoy the tea and biscuits. Don’t get me wrong. Talk about the tough issues go after that elephant in the room. That’s how you’re going to have a better partnership. Unlike tea Vince Menzione 19:25 and biscuits, I might use it. I’ve been using the term Barney meetings. You know, I love you, you love me. And then almost Kumbaya, right? So many times I’d had these meetings when I was a GM at Microsoft with partners, and we’d have this great meeting, we’d say we’re going to do all these great things, and then nothing would happen. we’d all go away. And I’d ask the PDM later on, like whatever happened, and there was no follow up, right? John Jester 19:49 Yeah. So important. Vince Menzione 19:51 So I love what you have to say about the partnership side and we’re gonna we’re gonna reuse some of this but I’d love to pivot like you Have had just an amazing career. John, I was taking a look at your LinkedIn profile again this morning. And you know, great pedigree of leadership roles across these amazing organizations, the leaders in this industry. Was there a spark? Was there a best piece of advice? Like, what got John jester on the path to this point in your career? John Jester 20:22 So I’d say this is not anything, that’s rocket science. But I’d say early in my career, so when pulled me aside, and gave me really good advice, which is, it’s not what you accomplish. It’s how you accomplish it. And I know that sounds simplistic, but I think a good test for all of us to have, especially early in career when you’re leading teams is, hey, you’re going to work on a tough project together. And that project, let’s say it’s a successful project. That’s not actually what’s going to determine the long term sustainability of your ability to get things done. It’s going to be the people on that team, would they volunteer to work for you, again, to work with you again. So how you get things done, how you treat people, how you make them successful, is actually much more important to the long term sustainability of delivering results, then, hey, you go in your aggressive you get a project on the project to success early in our career, we think, hey, we did it. High five, job well done. It’s actually really how you did it. And do people want to continue to work with you. That’s what will drive long term sustainable results. Vince Menzione 21:35 I love what you have to say here. Is there any words of advice for leaders out there looking to be better leaders? John Jester 21:42 Yeah, I think Kate, the big thing, and I sound like a broken record is they start with the customer, reverse engineer what you need to get done, enable your teams put the KPIs in place, open communication, doing all those things, I think is what sets us up for success. Vince Menzione 21:58 I love that. So John, we’re gonna have a little bit of fun. This is one of my favorite questions I get to ask, and I don’t ask it of every guest. But I do want to ask this of you. You are hosting a dinner party. And for this amazing dinner party, you can invite any three guests from the present? Or the past? Whom would you invite? And why? John Jester 22:20 Yeah, it’s a fascinating question. So who I would invite, I would invite Albert Einstein, Leonardo, Da Vinci, Isaac Newton. And why would I do that? Because I think all of them, obviously, were innovative. And were thought leaders in their respective timeframes they were all also thought of is probably slightly crazy by the mainstream for coming up with these creative and innovative ideas. But I think the level of personal conviction, the ability to think through incredibly difficult challenges, you know, you think about Albert Einstein, the theories he came up with, they’re still being upheld as we do additional research, etc. So I just think it’d be fascinating to just try to get a sense over this dinner conversation into their thought process, how they went about things, thinking through completely new undiscovered areas, and then coming up with inventions on the back of it. So those are my three. I’m a bit of a geek, so you know, you can you can see who comes to dinner. Vince Menzione 23:23 I love it. I love it. Where are you going to host this party? Do you have a location planned out? John Jester 23:28 I think I could see this happening. Probably in Napa Valley down to California. I think if we had the right wine set up a little sons that action, we could get the most creativity out of this conversation, really get people to open up and chat. Vince Menzione 23:43 I love that I think Leonardo would definitely open up with a nice glass of right. What do you think? I do to John for listeners? This is 2023. And we’re really stepping into 2023. Now, right? Any words of advice, we’ve had a little bit of headwinds in the economy. I feel optimistic about 2023. So I was hoping you can give our listeners some best words of advice or wisdom to launch us up into a very successful 2023 John Jester 24:12 event. You know, it’s early February, I think most of us have just wrapped up our sales kickoff, would I say is a take that energy, take that excitement, go meet with your partners, go meet with your customers, craft the solutions that our customers need? It’s a better environment right now from a business perspective. That’s the signals I’m getting from customers from partners, etc. Take that energy and excitement and use it to get off to a fantastic q1. Vince Menzione 24:40 I love what you have to say, John, in fact, I again, am optimistic we in the tech sector have an opportunity and obligation to lead at this time. And what you said is just so right on for that. John, I want to thank you. It has been a pleasure having you as a guest on Ultimate Partner. I know how valuable and how limited your Time is so really great to have you join our listeners today. John Jester 25:03 Thanks for having me. Vince really enjoyed it. Vince Menzione 25:05 Thank you. So there you have it. Another amazing guest joins Ultimate Partner. And I hope you enjoyed this interview as much as I did. Odds are if you’re a technology partner executive, and hearing my voice, chances are you too, are looking to accelerate your success through partnerships. I mean, let’s face it, we all have seen partnerships that look good on paper, but never live up to their expected results. There are a lot of reasons why partnerships fail, and that ultimate partnerships, we help you get it right by applying a proven set of best practices and framework that’s used by leading partners working with Microsoft, and other technology giants. If you want to learn more, follow the link in the show notes, or visit our website at Ultimate Partner.com. Announcer 25:58 Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Ultimate Partner with your host Vince Menzione online at Ultimate Partner.com and facebook.com/ultimate Guide to partnering. We’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Partner | |||
| Holiday Encore – Google Cloud: Unlocking a $30 Billion Opportunity for Tech Leaders | 16 Dec 2023 | 00:20:13 | |
Google’s Ecosystem Leader for North America Joins Ultimate Partner®
We are bringing you some of the best episodes of 2023 to help you prepare for success in 2024; this one is part of a MASTERCLASS Series working with Google Cloud. Google Cloud is approaching a $30 billion business, ranking it number three of the leading cloud providers, or “hyperscalers.” Google Cloud creates a massive opportunity for partners to help Google’s customers take full advantage of their cloud environments by providing the ecosystem of additional services, platforms, and expertise only partners can provide. If you’re a technology leader, looking to learn how to grow your business effectively, don’t miss this exclusive Ultimate Partner series Precision Partnering, where I’m joined by the Google Cloud leaders driving the partnership business to help define what it takes to partner with Google effectively. Jim Anderson, VP of Google Cloud North America, Partner Ecosystem and Channels, joins me to kick off this critical series of the podcast, Precision Partnering Masterclass. In this episode, Jim and I explore the ins and outs of Google’s mission to drive growth and accelerate customer outcomes through their partner ecosystem, and how Google infuses the right mindset into the selling organization. We also discuss the emergence of marketplaces, and the exciting opportunities in store partnering with Google. In Jim’s wordsAs an Executive on Google’s Cloud team and a board member for Altair (NASDAQ: ALTR), Jim has more than 25 years of experience with some of the world’s leading technology companies, including Hewlett Packard (HP), Dell, and Cisco. Jim works with customers and partners to leverage emerging Cloud, AI/ML, and Data Analytics technologies to accelerate Digital Transformation by driving data-powered innovation. Jim is known for his experience in helping businesses, at an inflection point, take advantage of market transitions. He has been described as a thought leader with the agility to make an impact that matters. Throughout his career (including six years with Global responsibility), Jim has successfully run businesses that help customers leverage digital technologies to drive efficiencies and enter new markets. He has been selected as one of the “Most Influential Black Americans in Corporate America” (2020 Savoy Magazine) and a “Best of Biz 2015” award winner in the Executive of the Year category. What You’ll Learn
This episode of the podcast is exclusively sponsored by Google Cloud. Google Cloud’s mission is to accelerate every organization’s ability to digitally transform its business. More than any other top cloud provider; Google Cloud as unique capabilities to meet customers’ needs across four areas. Data, Trust, Open Infrastructure, and Collaboration, all underpinned by Sustainable Technology. Learn more at cloud.google.com On becoming, The Ultimate Partner™At Ultimate Partner, we bring you the leaders in this industry, the best in the business from the leading tech organizations and the hyperscalers, who drive the greatest influence and impact to our world of ecosystems. With this exciting new Masterclass Series, Ultimate Partnerships becomes The Ultimate Partner™ More than just a new look, The Ultimate Partner is doubling its commitment to helping YOU become the Ultimate Partner by getting it right. Do you want to be The Ultimate Partner? Visit our NEW website. Other Noteworthy Episodes Featuring Google Cloud https://theultimatepartner.com/episode/159-google-transforms-the-future-of-healthcare-and-what-it-means-to-you/ https://theultimatepartner.com/episode/146-a-top-google-sales-leader-investing-in-partners-to-fuel-hyper-growth/ https://theultimatepartner.com/episode/140-one-google-executive-applies-10x-mindset-to-improve-healthcare-outcomes/ Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect Many TyposSUMMARY KEYWORDS partnering, customers, google, organization, ultimate guide, partner ecosystem, leveraging, partnerships, success, marketplace, mindset, google cloud, journey, jim, ai, solutions, business, cloud, drive, listeners SPEAKERS Vince Menzione, Jim Anderson, Announcer Vince Menzione 00:00 At Ultimate Partner, we bring you the leaders in this industry, the best in the business from the leading tech organizations and the hyperscalers, the ones driving the greatest influence and impact on our world of ecosystems. With their latest earnings results, Google Cloud is approaching a $30 billion business, ranking it number three of the leading cloud providers, or hyperscalers. This creates a massive opportunity for you as partners to help Google’s customers take full advantage of their cloud environments by providing the ecosystem of additional services, platforms, and expertise only partners like you can provide. So if you’re a technology leader, looking to learn how to grow your business effectively, then you won’t want to miss this exclusive Ultimate Partner series Precision Partnering. In this series, I’m joined by the Google leaders driving the partnership business to help define what it takes to partner with Google effectively. Announcer 01:08 This is the Ultimate Partner with the top partnership podcast. In this podcast, Vince Menzione, a proven partner sales executive shares his mission to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. And now your host Vince Menzione. Vince Menzione 01:28 Welcome to or welcome back to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzione, your host today. I welcome Jim Anderson is vice president of Google Cloud in North America, partner ecosystem and channels. And he joins me to kick off this important series of podcast precision partnering. In this episode, Jim and I explore the ins and outs of Google’s mission to drive growth and accelerate customer outcomes through their partner ecosystem, and how Google infuses the right mindset of value mindset into the selling organization. We also discuss the emergence of marketplaces, and the exciting opportunities in store partnering with Google. I hope you enjoy and learn from this discussion. As much as I enjoyed welcoming back, Jim Anderson. This episode of the podcast is exclusively sponsored by Google Cloud. Google clouds mission is to accelerate every organization’s ability to digitally transform its business more than any other top cloud provider, Google Cloud as unique capabilities to meet the needs of customers across four areas. Data Trust, open infrastructure and collaboration, all underpinned by sustainable technology, learn more@cloud.google.com. Jim, welcome back to the podcast. Jim Anderson 03:00 Hey, Vince, it’s great to be back. Thanks for having me. Vince Menzione 03:03 I am so excited to welcome you back to Ultimate Partner to kick off this special series of episodes, we’re calling Precision Partnering Jim Anderson 03:12 for vision partner, I look forward to talk to you about it. So you’re the leader of Vince Menzione 03:17 Google’s North American partner organization. But for our listeners who might have missed our last episode, Episode 157, can you define your organization’s role and mission? Jim Anderson 03:29 Sure events. As you mentioned, my name is Jim Anderson. I am the Vice President of Google Cloud, North America partner ecosystem and channels, and part of the North America sales executive team. Google’s cloud mission is to accelerate every organization’s ability to digitally transform its business. The mission of our partner organization simply builds on this mission to leverage our ecosystem to help customers maximize their return on Google technologies as they go through this transformation journey. Vince Menzione 04:00 Jim, that’s a massive mission. And we’re going to spend these next series of episodes going through that in greater detail. But what’s the essence? Jim Anderson 04:09 Well, that’s we are extremely focused on delivering differentiated partnerships that produce the business outcomes that our customers are demanding and expect Google’s best in class technologies empower organizations to really harness their data to provide actionable insights. While leveraging the best and most secure open infrastructure. We also enable industry transformation through AI and ML capabilities are a hot topic right now. And we combine this with applications from our partner ISPs, and with implementation assistance from our solution partners to ensure customer success. So Jim, Vince Menzione 04:43 our last episode was a fan favorite. And in that interview, we discussed how your leader Thomas Kurian, has put a stake in the ground when it comes to partnerships. His announcement that all deals must have a partner attached to them. And he’s gone on and been on other podcasts since where he’s talked about the importance of partnering to Google. How does this approach impact how you’re investing to drive the growth in the business? Jim Anderson 05:08 I know one of the things we talked about during our last podcast was having a value mindset. Google’s business approach starts there, as our focus is on the outcome versus just the transaction. Partnering for us is just not about partnering with the companies we work with. It’s also about partnering with customers for their digital transformation journey. If one truly believes in a value mindset, then partnering with an establishing a solid ecosystem of partners that can ensure the success of this journey is non negotiable. I would say we have this mindset throughout our entire organization, starting at the top in my previous role I responsible for our South Central region. And what I have observed that when it comes to transformational deals, we never went alone. Vince Menzione 05:57 I love the fact that you bring a seller’s mindset, this value mindset. Can I borrow that? I really love that term. You mentioned it last time and I talked about growth mindset. I talked about partner led mindset, but value mindset really nails it in terms of the customer, right showing up with the right value for the customer. Jim Anderson 06:17 Exactly. Our value mindset encourages our sales team to involve partners in most of their deals. In North America, we have launched partnering with precision initiative to support a win win environment for our customers, our partners, and Google. This includes investments in key areas like ISP, cosell partner service capability, and differentiated solutions with a goal of accelerating customer outcomes and maximizing impact. How do we improve the value that we bring to customers, because we want to be a partner for their whole cloud transformation journey. Vince Menzione 06:55 So since our last discussion marketplaces have truly taken center stage Canalis predicts that the marketplace opportunity mostly focused on the hyper scalars, like Google will exceed $45 billion. It’s an astounding number by 2025, can you help our listeners better understand that opportunity for partners working with Google, Jim Anderson 07:19 we’re really excited about this emerging digital channel, we see the same growth opportunity for marketplace that many of the analysts see. But marketplace creates a win for not just the customer, but also for Google and the partner, from our customer perspective, marketplace greatly reduces the friction of trying new technologies. And your cloud environment allows customers to increase their ROI associated with their spending commit, by leveraging both first party and third party products against that commit, that’s when a partner, it can greatly reduce the procurement cycles associated with their software. And by Google mounting it to count towards the commit, increasing the financial incentives for a customer to use their product. from a Google perspective, it helps customers take full advantage of our platform, and really optimize their spin in the cloud over time. Vince Menzione 08:15 So Jim, from my perspective, as well, I believe it takes the friction out of the partnering right, it becomes in many respects, the non fungible token that allows the organization’s to go to market more effectively. Would you agree here? Jim Anderson 08:29 I definitely agree. What we’re working on, and you’ll hear me talk about it often is how do you remove the friction, and bringing this whole ecosystem together to increase the value we bring the partners and reduce their time to value and marketplace is right along the lines and making that happen? Vince Menzione 08:46 such exciting times ahead? I’m so excited for this next couple of years for marketplaces. And for Google. We talked about this earlier in AI has been in the news quite a bit. I’d be remiss if we didn’t have a discussion about AI, the open AI initiative chat GPT. And I know that Google has been front and center when it comes to AI and AI initiatives. I was wondering how Google is responding to what’s out in the marketplace right Jim Anderson 09:15 now. I don’t think Google is responding to that. I think we’ve been involved. As you mentioned, for a long time with AI, we have a long history of AI and bringing innovative technologies leveraging AI to market. As you know, we include it with a lot of the applications that we bring the market, right. The key thing is how do you leverage AI to really make a difference with the customers in our society in a positive way. And that’s really what we’re focusing on as an organization. Based on our history around AI. We’re looking to leverage large language models are capabilities around conversational AI, and what we do with search in ways that are unique to the industry. It’s exciting because AI will change the way that people enter Aqua technologies, Google will be on the forefront of that, working with our partners and customers in ways that benefits their organization. So Jim, Vince Menzione 10:08 over the last six years, I’ve been following what’s been going on in our tech sector this transformational time. And I’ve been watching Google’s rise through my own experiences, working with organizations, and the interviews I get to do with great guests and partners. What do you believe it takes to be a great partner working with Google, Jim Anderson 10:29 we want our partner ecosystem be a multiplier of success with our customers. I know the previous episode, and I talked about the principle of one plus one equals one, when it’s really a multiplier effect. And I know my math was bad. But in other words, we’re focused on how do we remove the friction? How do we come together as a joint success model, realizing that neither of us can do it alone is critical to our mindset, and our success. What I did was work with partners that have focused on expanding customer reach vast and building capacity around digital transformation, and are committed to co innovation with us, there’s a lot of opportunity for innovation, and how we engage with partners, really is just beginning to surface with some of the technologies out there in the marketplace. And I look forward to taking advantage of it as we move forward. And really improving how we bring value to our customers. Vince Menzione 11:23 Jim, I love what you had to say about one plus one equals one. And I know you were a math minor, for instance. So Jim Anderson 11:31 map, I don’t know if it’s showing right now. Vince Menzione 11:35 But I think the point is well served in that really going back to the customer. And then all of the partner precision what we’re talking about here, because it’s not just one partner, it’s not a transaction like it was several years ago, it takes a group of organizations coming together, we could use the term stitching here, but bringing together the value for the customer in the right way, we’re going to learn how your organization comes together, and supports that customer with the right value mindset, Jim Anderson 12:05 exactly the right value mindset, where we can bring the right partner with the right experience at the right time to take them on that journey and be a mentor for them on that journey as they move along it. Vince Menzione 12:17 I’m so excited to bring this to our listeners. But what about the partners that don’t get it right? And then don’t get partnering? Right? What was the kryptonite? Jim Anderson 12:26 The biggest issue I see with partners that have struggled with us is their lack of focus on what some call year to journey and the cloud partners that mostly invest in acquisition with little investment and ensuring the success of their customers cloud journey, tend to struggle and fall short of expectations, that transaction doesn’t produce the win. It’s the journey that determines success. Our goal is really to make our customers a superhero on their cloud journey, and partners and Google Cloud, Jim act as their mentor to help them on that journey. I think kryptonite happens when one loses this perspective. So I always encourage partners to think customer first and keep the right perspective, understanding that we are here to help customers who are going from where they are today through our journey, and we need to invest in their success. And I think what Vince Menzione 13:21 I hear it’s not a one and done type of transactional model in the cloud. In that you are building right you’re you’re innovating new solutions. Google’s platform is known for having so many innovative aspects and workloads that you’re really helping them reimagine their business. And that’s a long process. Jim Anderson 13:39 Exactly right. It is long process. And what customers want is they want to partner for that process, right? They’re not looking for us to simply drive a transaction they’re looking for us to share in their success journey. And that’s what we want to do. Vince Menzione 13:53 So Jim, what advice would you have for our listeners, they’re going to be joining this series of episodes this masterclass precision partnering on optimizing for their success. Working with Google Jim Anderson 14:04 lasting partnerships are all about finding a key win for all the stakeholders involved. I encourage partners that are looking to understand how best to work with Google to first understand how we measure success. I believe success is measured differently in a consumption business versus a transaction business. I always suggest they have a story of how they drive that success for us. And it’s easy for our sales teams to understand. This means understanding your value mindset, and that we are focused on driving digital transformation, and customer acquisition, leveraging our platform. I also believe that focus is a key success factor when trying to partner a global set the Salesforce has a clear understanding of your value proposition and when best to engage. At the same time, many customers see the complexity of their environment increasing as they try to take advantage of multi cloud and hybrid environments. They see partners To help them remove some of that friction that we’ve already talked about, we are looking for partners that want to double down with us to build the technical capacity to help customers accelerate their digital journey. Every customer’s journey is a little different. Agility is important in our world. So we’re looking for partners that are able to adapt to ensure our customer success no matter where they are in their cloud journey. Vince Menzione 15:22 I love what you have to say on a few fronts here, right, the doubling down talks about commitment. And then you mentioned agility, which is one of my favorite aspects of successful partnering is that organizations need to understand when they need to pivot when there’s new opportunity areas and take advantage of those opportunity areas. So I know we want all of our listeners to think about those things as we go through these next episodes. But Jim, can you take us through what our listeners will hear from and what they can expect in this precision partnering series at the podcast, Jim Anderson 15:54 Google is trying to leverage his partner ecosystem to bring maximize value to our customers, we approach the market with four pillars when it comes to our partner organization. We have the ISP pillar, which we invest in CO sell with, we have a resale pillar that’s more of a traditional value added reseller pillar, which we work to bring value to our customers that want to work with resellers. We also have a technical enablement to learn because the services associated with our partners, and the customers that need those services are critical. And we have this focus on service delivery, excellence. And we also have a solutions pillar, right? Because we believe that the partner ecosystem can be a differentiator for us in the market. And we’re going to do that with horizontal and industry solutions. As we move forward. I often talk about this concept of a trifecta where Google is the platform, ISPs offer a solution. And we have implementation partners that can come together to take that ensure success of that solution with the customers and who we hear from from your team. You’re gonna hear from Rob Harper, who’s responsible for Channel Sales and how he’s leveraging precision partnering to really drive value with our resell partners in the market. You’ll also hear from Chris Voss, who’s responsible for what we call our service partner. A lot of people know them as GSI as the global system integrators. And they’ll talk about how we’re leveraging our service partners to ensure customer success. We also have Clyde de Souza, who’s responsible for partner engineering organization, and working with customers to drive their technical enablement and making sure they have the capabilities needed to ensure success of digital transformation and our customers. You’ll hear from Scott Bertelsen, who leads our ISV organization and you’ll talk about how we’re leveraging ISPs and partnering with them on cosell to make sure that we’re bringing value to our customers. And last but not least, you’ll hear from Rebecca Potts, who’s responsible for our solutions, pillar driving business outcomes with our customers in leveraging the solutions we bring to market as a differentiator for us. So that’s the team. Hopefully, it’ll be a great conversation. Vince Menzione 18:09 So excited to take our listeners through this precision partnering journey, pulling together all that Google offers to support the customer. Jim Anderson 18:20 Well, thanks, Mick. It is really exciting to be back. I love listening to your podcasts. And I love the thought leadership that you are driving when it comes to partnering in the marketplace, and really the partner ecosystem, I believe, fundamentally over the next three years, you’ll see a lot of innovation when it comes to partnering, and how we partner three years down the road, we’re probably a lot different than how we partner today. And I’m glad that I’ll be able to be a part of that journey. Vince Menzione 18:47 So for our listeners, stay tuned for precision partnering in these next several episodes. So there you have it. Another amazing guest joins Ultimate Partner. And I hope you enjoyed this interview as much as I did. Odds are if you’re a technology partner, executive, and hearing my voice, chances are you too, are looking to accelerate your success through partnerships. I mean, let’s face it. We all have seen partnerships that look good on paper, but never live up to their expected results. There are a lot of reasons why partnerships fail. And at ultimate partnerships, we help you get it right by applying a proven set of best practices and framework that’s used by leading partners working with Microsoft and other technology giants. If you want to learn more, follow the link in the show notes, or visit our website at Ultimate Partner.com. Announcer 19:45 Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Ultimate Partner with your host Vince Menzione online at Ultimate Partner.com and facebook.com/ultimate Guide to partner we’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Partner | |||
| Holiday Encore – How Did a Channel Juggernaut Pivot to Become a Leading Solutions Provider? | 13 Dec 2023 | 00:34:24 | |
Insight President, Dee Burger, Joins Ultimate Partner®
We are bringing you some of the best episodes of 2023 to help you prepare for success in 2024; this one is a MASTERCLASS in Transformation. Note this interview was recorded well before Insight’s acquisition of SADA, stay tuned as we plan to bring Dee Burger back soon to discuss what’s next! In today’s fast-paced digital world, businesses constantly seek innovative solutions to stay ahead of the competition. One of the biggest game-changers in recent years has been the transformation to cloud computing, and its impact on businesses of all sizes cannot be overstated. This shift to the cloud was a turning point for one solution integrator, taking them from a transactional business model to a leading player in the industry. How did a channel juggernaut pivot to become a leading solutions provider? In this Ultimate Partner episode, we are thrilled to be joined by Dee Burger, President of Insight North America, who shares with us Insight’s ride and how he is leveraging his vast experience to drive growth and success. Join us as we explore why Insight’s customers and partners trust them to deliver top-notch solutions to achieve their ambitious business goals. In Insight’s WordsDee Burger assumed the role of President of Insight North America in May 2022. He leverages extensive IT industry knowledge to help clients maximize the value of technology so they can achieve their most ambitious technology goals. He leads the Insight North America business, including partner management, Insight Public Sector, commercial and enterprise sales, and solutions delivery. Burger drives Insight’s evolution into an industry-recognized solutions integrator, helping organizations accelerate their digital transformation journey. Burger is a 29-year veteran of Capgemini, where he excelled in various roles. His vast experience includes leading mergers and acquisitions, digital and cloud solutions, business applications, consulting, strategy, and transformation. What You’ll Learn
163 – A Partnership Leader Uniquely Growing Hubspot’s Ecosystem Community 162 – How You Can Unleash the Power of Data to 10X Your Partner Growth! 153 – Janet Schijins – Ecosystems & Megacosm 150- Celebrating 150 Amazing Episodes with a Five-Timer Guest, Jay McBain 149 – WTF is an Ecosystem? And How Partner Hacker helps tech companies PartnerUp with Jared Fuller LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Transcription – by Otter.ai – Expect TyposSUMMARY KEYWORDS insight, partner, world, customers, partnerships, business, partnering, people, integrator, solutions, client, organization, services, capgemini, companies, market, dabo, adapt, years, technology SPEAKERS Announcer, Dee Burger, Vince Menzione Vince Menzione 00:00 How the transformation to the cloud pivoted this juggernaut in the channel from being a transactional engine to becoming a leading solutions integrator. For my next episode of Ultimate Partner, I’m joined by the North American leader for this top solutions integrator in our space, who’s taking this business to the next level to help its customers achieve their most ambitious business goals. This is the Ultimate Partner the top partnership podcast. In this podcast, Vince Menzione, a proven partner sales executive shares his mission to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. And now your host Vince Menzione. Welcome to or welcome back to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzione, your host and today I will deburr is the president of insight North America and shares with our listeners. How he’s applying is over 30 years experience that a leading consultancy to help insight achieve its mission and why customers and partners should rely on insight. I hope you enjoy this episode. As much as I enjoyed welcoming D burger. I’m so excited to welcome athletic greens as the latest sponsor to Ultimate Partner friends who know me well know I’ve made taking a green drink supplement, part of my health ritual for over 20 years now. And it has made all the difference to my health and well being. About five years ago I added athletic greens and now their product ag one has become my go to green drink supplement. Ag one is packed with 75 high quality vitamins, minerals, Whole Foods or superfoods, probiotics and antigens. It literally is replaced every vitamin in my cabinet. If you’d like to give ag one a try. Athletic Greens is giving away a free one year supply of vitamin D and five travel packs with every new purchase. Check them out at athletic greens.com forward slash Vince M. D welcome to the podcast. Dee Burger 02:28 Thanks Vince happy to be here. Vince Menzione 02:30 I am so excited to welcome you as a guest on Ultimate Partner. You’re the president for insight in North America, a fortune 500 solutions integrator and accompany with a rich history in this technology sector we all care about. So welcome. Dee Burger 02:45 Thank you, Vince. Thank you. Vince Menzione 02:47 So for our listeners who may not know you, can you tell us a little bit more about D Berger, and your mission at InSite? Dee Burger 02:54 Absolutely the me parts easy part because I am the world’s foremost expert on that after 53 years, I got to Insight a little less than a year ago. And my role as you as you said is I run the North American business for insight which is about 80% of insight. Insight is across North America, EMEA and APAC. From my vantage point I spent 30 years at Capgemini. Before this did a very wide variety of things that that have been helpful. So far in my tenure at InSite. I live in a little place called Kiawah Island, which is off of Charleston, South Carolina, which for those of you looking at a map because really convenient to go from Kiawah Island to Phoenix, Arizona where insights headquarters is right outside of Phoenix and Chandler on the Insight side, as you said long heritage insight is 35 years old this year and has a really interesting history from starting off as a product reseller small product reseller got bigger acquired a bunch of companies became a really big product reseller. And now we’re pivoting to what you refer to as a solutions integrator that we think is really unique in the market and something that is going to help us build a an even better future than the proud history so far. Vince Menzione 04:04 Yes. So a couple of comments here from my side. First of all, cue Island is absolutely a beautiful location. I lived in the Charleston area for a couple of years, just a few years back. So what a great location to be located in and insight. I know so well from my early days at Microsoft are big reseller partner, Microsoft, and we’re early to pivot, right. We were moving everyone was moving to the cloud about 10 years ago and this time of transformation and the business models were changing. And Insight was on the forefront of that and has been leading this transformative time that we’re seeing and you really expanded your footprint. And I was hoping you could expand on with us and with our listeners today on like what that’s looked like how that pivot has happened. Yeah, I Dee Burger 04:47 think it’s a good one it to me. It goes back to my initial discussions with insight which a little over a year ago, Joyce Mullen is our CEO Joyce had been here predated me by about a year and a Half Joyce had moved from my role now into the CEO role was about 10 days into the journey. And we had a discussion about being a solution integrator, I looked inside, I saw some of the history, I saw some of the different things that go on in the business. One of the questions I had was, why would you be interested in me, we got into the discussion about how you actually can take what has gone on in the product business and the depth that is required to be successful in that business, and pair it with a really successful services model. And what what the integration of that would look like, I had to then go interpret it. And Joyce has a big background, Adele knows all there is to know about that product business and how that works. I knew that she needed to fortify herself a bit in the services area, I had to then interpret what is this retailer model? I was aware of it certainly but but hadn’t spent a lot of time on it. It’s got an image people talking about a bar, and it’s somewhere between a medium and negative connotation when they talk about that. In reality, as you started taking, what is that really? Okay, what is it really for insight when I had to interpret, we got 2000 salespeople with 29,000 customers. So it’s this tremendous set of coverage, we have 500 architects with depth into exactly where the leading product companies in the world are going with their products. And a true understanding how that goes. We have 6500 partners and relationships with them, we have a full scale set of set of capabilities, to manage logistics, configurations, all of that with physical devices, and to perform the physical services go with it, then we have all the things I was used to at Capgemini. We have all the applications go to the cloud and the ability to do it all as a managed service. So a lot of that, for me was being able to effectively interpret what does that mean, and how do you bring it. And so what we’ve done is we’ve put it together as a solutions integrated thing about what it does for a client, right, so we break our client segments largely into commercial, corporate and enterprise, small, medium large, for a small client where we have, we’ve got the ability to access a wide range of technology, they wouldn’t be able to do otherwise. And the enterprise had gone all the way to the top, we’ve got the ability to do services, projects for them with a variety of things and and to also be able to do specialized sorts of procurement, that will be harder for them to do where it really comes together is in the middle of that. Imagine yourself as CIO of a $3 billion company, and you’re trying to figure out the latest phase of how you’re helping to evolve your company, there’s a very, you want to do something, you don’t know how to do it, you don’t know what you need, you don’t know how to get it, you don’t know how to get it implemented, you’re trying to stretch your team has been doing a certain thing for a year history, but you’re trying to stretch to a new area, we’ve got the ability to help them figure out the problem, to put ourselves in their shoes to figure out what the best technology choices are, how to buy them, what they should be bought at how to bring it together and a reasonable way how to actually stand it up for it for them. And then and then how to run it as a managed services long term. So when we talk about being a solutions, integrator really is taking all the strengths from the product world and all the strengths from what people think about as the system integrator world, and bring them together in a in a unique way with a level of reach that the system integrators would could never have based on the weight of their models, but would frankly never ultimately attempt to get into because of the way we can we can recognize the sheer number of touch points we have Vince Menzione 08:33 what strikes me and that what your comments there are having known the old model before, right, we used to call it the transaction model. Organizations like insight, were very good at going beyond the transaction model, again, applying a level of services to support I think back in the early days of Wi Fi and some of those early implementations of technologies, imaging, computers, things like that, and applying that. And then the SI is we’re doing this other thing up here, right, but then relying on the insights of the world, you bring it all together. Now as I think about it, right? You’re bringing this, you’re bringing the whole solution set together and being a one one place that an organization can go to deliver that and you said the 3000 person organization, they may not work with a Capgemini, they may they’re looking for something extreme or midway between that right and then what they’re seeing on the transaction side is very hollow. I mean, not not to be subject or to look negatively on the channel. But there’s that transaction piece is not getting you what you need to get to an organization’s in this world of SAS in this world of hyperscalers. They’re looking for somebody to bring it all together, right? They’re looking for the ISV solutions to layer on top and create a great stitch together a complete solution for their organization, Dee Burger 09:45 no question about me. Our premise is if you get more and more valuable to the customer, your business is going to do better in a linear sort of way. So all of that for us is trying to be more effective in solving customer problems. And Vince Menzione 09:59 you brought up a really into Just one point here, right? Like you don’t look like from your pedigree and your background, your typical person that came out of the transactional world, right? The typical mold, there is somebody who came from that world. You came from Capgemini and spent 30 years in a very different environment. What does that look like to you? And how are you helping to lead that evolution? Dee Burger 10:20 It’s an interesting one is it to evolution is a good word. So insights got a lot bigger services business, then we’re generally credited as having. So it’s a roughly billion dollar services business that has been built with a lot of acquisitions that would have looked like things kept them I would have acquired along the way, hardcore cloud skills, data skills, application skills, that type of stuff. I will say, when I first got here, one of the comments I made to Joyce was, I felt a little bit like a zebra and a field full of horses. And that is different I was I was the odd one. I feel like there’s a lot more zebras. Now, there are a lot more zebras that just didn’t recognize the zebras. As soon as you got out closer in the field, you realized there were a lot more stripes out there than that, then you realized in our services team. So there’s that I think, I think the two aspects that are unique from from my background that I’m able to bring to insight. One is services is not services is not services, right? So if you think about Capgemini, Capgemini, they had business lines. So doing management, consulting, doing finance and accounting, outsourcing, building an application, assisting with engineering, very, very different things, different buyers, different value propositions, in many ways. That’s what we’re talking about it inside of the solution integrator, we’ve got a wide range of things we can do for customers, very few scenarios would say, All right, let’s stitch them all together in one big pile, right. So it’s about how you have different faces to a customer, you work within their problem set, you put yourselves in their shoes really worked to help solve their problems. And then you go back into the, into the kitchen and figure out which ingredients you need to pull together to do it. So in some ways, that’s a it’s a very similar path. The other one is I got to Capgemini and kept doing when I was small, right. So the Capgemini entered was a part of Gemini consulting in the US and early 90s, it was $120 million. I left when it was, I don’t know, 23,000,000,020 4 billion, something like that. And so a lot of the steps along the way to scaling are things that insight is going through, starting off in a much more advanced position than the Capgemini I entered ultimately. But a lot of the things you do to scale to industrialize your processes to think bigger with regards to client or other aspects that that I’ve been able to bring. Vince Menzione 12:36 So you brought up, you brought up the bigger picture of Capgemini. And what that was, what is in sight and what isn’t, is kind of the million dollar question there. Dee Burger 12:47 I think it’s a good one. We’re never going to attempt to be Accenture, right, put Accenture out as the goal to Accenture’s got 800,000 plus or minus people now, doing all kinds of things. Where our unique opportunity is, is the way we fuse our two worlds together. Like if you if you go back and think about a Santa Monica, you go from selling to architecture to partners to warehousing and logistics to configuration to physical services, applications, managed services. There are companies in the world that compete with us in every one of those markets in no one of those things, are we the biggest company in the market, but there are no companies in the world. They’re bigger than that than us and each of those, right so our ability to provide balance our ability to solve problems in a more holistic way in the system integrator world, when you think about infrastructure, most of the time, that’s something the clients dealing with. That’s right. There’s a project plan and there’s an element in that project plan that says at some point somebody buys stuff, right? And in the reseller world, it really is all about you starting with the product just starting with what do we have to sell? You’re not starting necessarily with what the client’s problems are. What do we have to sell and how do we get them to buy more we’re we’re able to bring it together, start with the customers problems bring the right ingredients each time, the secret to Insight success, both now we’ve had a very good run of late but but even more so in the future is how to bring all that together. And that’s where our very resolute focuses. Vince Menzione 14:21 Many organizations are learning to do more with less. And as you think about how you’re going to reach your revenue targets this year, I recommend you check out partner tab. A founding sponsor of Ultimate Partner partner taps pipeline discovery and CO selling platform will help your channel and sales teams to hit their revenue targets faster. Even with fewer resources. Partners app gives your team’s the new automation and partner data. You need to source more pipeline and close deals faster with your best partners. You can find out more information At partner tap.com. So focus on the customer, how are you training or evolving your sales organization to be more of that versus the old model? Dee Burger 15:12 It’s an interesting one, we talked about this one a lot. Part of the answer is, there’s still a lot of specialized selling, right? It’s not like with, with a couple 1000 salespeople and 29,000 customers, it’s not like each of the 2020 9000 customers has to have the full conversation about everything. And so we’re really starting about thinking about in tears, we are we are a different insight to different tiers of the market. And we want to make intentional choices about customers, and where we focus. So at the top, call it 100 clients, we want to bring the full insight, we want to ultimately be in their strategic roadmap, we want to think about that relationship, not just next month, but next year, or three years from now, five years from now, 10 years from now, what role do we play in our clients business? And how do we help them along bringing what we have, ultimately, we’re not doing that for 29,000 customers. And so so the sales team really has to evolve with a range of people that are specialized in the different things we do, and then have a reasonably limited set of people that are expected to bring it all together and have a different type of kind of connected discussion. But it’s, but it’s important, the sales team that I met when I first got insight I was blown away by and I was really surprised not I didn’t have a negative expectation was gonna see. But the professionalism was, was absolutely fantastic. The question for us and the way we strategically position the business is always going to be balancing that specialist generalist line. And getting that in the right position to make sure we’re talking to our clients about the right things. Vince Menzione 16:47 Yeah. And I’ve seen it firsthand. I mean, I’ve been to your facilities in Tempe and been close to your team over the years that I was at Microsoft, let’s talk about these times we’ve been living in right, there’s still some headwinds. I mean, we we call this a time like no other when we were going through the COVID pandemic. And now, we’ve been dealing with the economic headwinds, right, what are you seeing now that you didn’t expect to see during these times? And how are you achieving success during these times? Dee Burger 17:14 I agree in that, no matter how crazy you think the world is, today, the odds are, it seems is going to be crazier tomorrow. You know, and it has been, it has been truly a wild ride for, let’s call it the last three years, doesn’t appear to be settling down anytime soon. So we don’t really bank a strategy upon that. The key way I think about it, and framing it is you go back into the old old days of 2019, the world was, for the most part in a series of equilibriums. Right there were there were enough PC shipments for people that needed them. There were enough lifeguards, for beaches, there were enough restaurant workers for restaurants, there was enough whatever for whatever, right, it had largely gotten into a into a balance. In 2020 2020. Everything was disrupted, immediately every equilibrium in the world was thrown off translated their market. So you take the end user devices, they actually, you know, in a strange sense shot straight up, right, you know, in a market that usually grew in line with population or GDP in some in some proportion, minus of innovations and product releases and stuff like that, all of a sudden, when when you’re actually working from both home and from the office, you need new devices, that market went crazy, that’s now kind of crusted and trying to find its own equilibrium services in the very beginning of that almost shut down. I remember sitting around thinking, you know, what, if this market gets cut by half, what do you do? How do you manage through that, and then had a huge boom of a couple years as as customers and companies realize that the people that and a time of uncertainty, like COVID was the people at the biggest disadvantage were those that had not invested in their technology, and that weren’t on that curve. And so there’s an over investment for a couple of years and services, probably the last two years have probably been the best two years in the history of the services industry that’s going to normalize as well. So when you look at that, you say, All right, it’s going to continue to be unpredictable, we’re not really going to know exactly what’s going to happen. What do you do? First thing you do is you focus, focus on the customer, if you’re doing a great job for your customer. And if you’re really delivering value into their business, you’re not going to be the one that that gets reduced, you’re going to continue to grow. The second one, though, Against this backdrop is how do you build resilience into the business model so that as things shoot up, or shrink or modulate over time, how do we make sure that we’re along for that ride, and really doing a good job and being dynamic with it. And then the third one is you just keep paying attention and you’re, you’re ready to adapt, as you need to adapt and aware that the things you take for granted one day may or may not be the same market conditions you might face next week. Vince Menzione 19:57 You brought up a really good point first of all focusing on The customer is super important here. But I picked up on what I like to refer to as agility. Right? And I think it’s I think it’s a characteristic of great partners or great organizations that understand how to partner is having those listening mechanisms like how do you how are you listening to the customer? How are you listening to the market? And how are you pivoting? When you need to? Is there anything special you think about when you think about agility? Dee Burger 20:22 That honestly, I think you said, it’s, there’s all kinds of noise, right? So several 1000 People talking to 10s of 1000s of customers, everything’s out there. The question is, as an organization, are you hearing it? Are you are you hearing it? And are you interpreting it? Or are you acting on it? My view of it, and some of the things we’ve adapted is creating sort of a periodic forum, so that you turn it into a discipline around how you adapt. The good news for me at that insight is I’m still so new, Everything’s new. Right? So I haven’t had time to get into some sort of rhythm where we’re things could get stale yet. But we talk about it as we a very tight knit leadership team, we talk a lot about the dynamics in the market, we review it as a team, at least once a month, have those discussions talk about where to adapt. And so I think the key is make sure your ears are open, you’re you’ve got the ability to interpret and you’re willing, a big part of it is the willingness to adapt. Vince Menzione 21:20 So valued advice there. And he talked about I think, was 6500 partners, with an ecosystem. So you’ve been around this world of partnering for quite some time working with, we talked about Microsoft and all the major hyperscalers all the major software publishers, what do you believe in this world of partnerships? What do you see from the best partnerships that you work with? Dee Burger 21:44 I think it starts with, there’s a real reason for the partnership, being a partner for the sake of being a partner. It’s not like, it’s not it’s not like being friends in middle school. You know, if you think about it, there’s a real reason, our business reason and the end, the partners business reason need to intersect in a way that we know how we drive value for each other. And we’re honest about that relationship. We’re honest about how it works, because I think you can do you can do an awful lot from that vantage point. I think the other one is, there’s a lot of partnerships that are rooted in corporate relationships, which is necessary, but nothing actually matters, unless there’s a field relationship. And so it’s that balance of, are we aligned strategically? Do we understand what we’re trying to do? Are We Connected in the right way? But can the folks that are actually dealing with a particular client or client situation? Can they get aligned? Can they work to take the aspects of the partnership that we thought about in a strategic way, and make it practical and tangible to a customer? I think that’s where an awful lot of partnerships struggle, is that it is it is hard to be able to run it on two separate levels, it’s two separate sets of people. It’s two separate incentives. And frequently, it’s two sets of discussions. Vince Menzione 23:00 So what do you see from the best of the best there in terms of getting that level of alignment from the corporate conversation down to the field organization? Dee Burger 23:07 I think it’s I honestly think it’s a it’s a focus question. So if if we go again, 2000 sales executives, 6500 partners, if we say, hey, hey, team, let’s focus on our 6500 partners get going, they have no idea what to do with that, right, and you’re leaving it to chaos. And so we work to be very targeted around which partners in which markets for what reason a lot of the architect community I talk to you about earlier, that architect community is that translation. Ultimately, we’ve got to be with our clients, giving them the very best we know about how to make their fortunes better. At the end of the day, that’s our reason to exist. That’s why our business is here. And being able to do so means that you’re able to focus a message a lot better with with who you’re working with, and what areas and you know why. And I think that translation gets gets down very well to a sales team. I think it’s when they’re left to their own devices. And your partner with partner a over here, Partner B over here and Partner C over here, and it just happens to be who took who out to lunch last? It’s it can’t be left purely to randomness. Vince Menzione 24:13 So what I think I heard you say here is you’re relying Yeah, you have overlay resources that are supporting the organization from a solution perspective, right, their solution specialties. And when there’s a need from a client, you’re pulling in the right resources, the right partners to to address that customer’s needs. Dee Burger 24:29 Absolutely. Right. And we know in advance the why to it. Vince Menzione 24:32 Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. So conversely, when you’ve seen partnerships fail, what would you say to them now? Like what what was the kryptonite that got in the way of a successful engagement? Dee Burger 24:44 I think a lot of it is adaptability. So there’s a strategic partnership that gets set. Let’s, let’s say, as we sit here in April of 2023, that somebody in January 2022 decided, hey, what’s the partnership going? Let’s go on this area. And the world is adapted a bunch, and the team is still in the old mode. Without having really thought about how the market is so dynamic. The partnerships also have to remain dynamic. The relationships have to be to be fostered, certainly at both those tiers, but the whole discussion about why we have the partnership, what we’re trying to do for customers, how it actually flows with the latest and greatest developments, I think that the key there is to be very dynamic, keeping that purpose in mind and keeping the two tiers the relationship in mind. Vince Menzione 25:33 Yeah, good. Points. Cindy. President inside North America, it’s a big deal. I mean, you’re a publicly traded company, a big organization, very well respected in our industry. What got you to this point? Like, was there a pivot? Was there something a spark that happened to get you on the right track that got you on the track of success, both at Capgemini. And now here, Dee Burger 25:56 I think I think the most important, I go all the way back to the beginning of my career. So I started with Gemini consulting, I was 22. And I went to my onboarding class, and everybody else was 30. And it was a unique situation, where if, if you designed an org chart, it was literally a diamond, there’s Zeos single point up here, a bunch of people doing a whole bunch of stuff, single point of the bottom, right here. Um, I was a research associate, I was hired, be I knew somebody Gemini consulting, they gave me a chance. And fairly quickly, I got put in a position where I was managing, and I started off attempting to manage the work really well, without an understanding that what you’re really managing is people. Yeah. And I think the key to to, if I look at my career, the thing that has helped me the most is an understanding of leverage, you know, if I, as an individual can make myself 50%, better, great. If I could make 10 People 10% better, that’s twice as good. If I can make 100 People 5% better, that’s another two and a half times as good as that. Right? So the idea of a recognition, particularly you take a company against a big company, right? If we can make if we can do small things and provide the right context and the right framework and the right, morale, boost assistance, whatever, to make 12,000 People marginally more effective. It’s better than anything else I could ever do that day, you know, and I think I’ve had a lot of experience the time over time running large organizations that but I think that principle is the key. And I think that what, what allows a success in a large organization, Vince Menzione 27:32 focusing on their on your people. So it’s such an important lesson for all of us, right? Like you said, managing Dee Burger 27:38 to help and not manage, yeah, help. Managing is one thing, right, coming up with a better idea for how they might do their job. That’s one thing. But to actually help, really is far, far more valuable. Vince Menzione 27:49 I love what you have to say there. So we’re gonna have a little bit of fun. This is like one of my favorite questions I get to ask are our most amazing guests and you are hosting a dinner party dinner party could be anywhere. It could be a beautiful Kiwi Island, it could be in Tempe, Arizona, any of these locations would be fantastic. But you can invite any three guests from the present or the past to this amazing dinner party. Who would you invite, and why? Dee Burger 28:16 So I’m gonna give you an answer to this guarantee you’ve never had before. And we’ll never have again, my three. The first one the easy one with my background. So I went to Clemson so it invite Clemson’s head coach football Dabo Sweeney, unbelievable guy, I’ve got a watch him a bunch. Watch his philosophy. He’s been a extraordinary success at Clemson. Interesting personal history, all the stuff he’s ever come the positive attitude, the leadership, a lot of that actually met him. I mean, interesting enough. So I met Dabo walking around on the streets of New York City. I’m Joe Blow. I run into Dabo. I was left with a colleague, we’re going out to meeting at 50th and fifth in New York City. We were just grabbing lunch had to be back. I ran into Deborah walk on the street, had a chat with him. The conversation ended with Coach Sweeney. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. We’ve got to get back to our meeting. He sat there and talked to us for 20 minutes on the street didn’t know me from Adam. But as nicer guys, you ever see vegan in the conversation, his enthusiasm for what he was building was so obvious, and it’s a big part of why he was successful. So Deborah’s got the first seat. The second one would be a guy named Tim urban. Tim urban started a blog called Wait, but why I found him I was doing a role at Capgemini where I was responsible for our global digital business. So part of it was how do you organize 30,000 people doing work with data and cloud and everything else and pulling that together? Part of it was What does digital mean to the future of our business? And so in that I read everything I could trying to educate myself on I ran across Tim urban with an incredibly interesting take on how AI was going to evolve. Given how they would go Elon Musk, strangely enough, also found Tim urban thought he was so interesting. He invited him out to spend two or three days following him around. Teach him about neuro link and all the different things going on. So at Tim urban next to Dabo, and Tim urban, and the third one would be iron Rand. Yes. Who wrote Atlas Shrugged and the fountainhead she’s probably been gone for 50 years now. But I’ve read Atlas Shrugged about 10 times. And I think when you’re when you’re thinking about clarity around the purpose of what you’re doing, truly being valuable sorting out sorting out all the puffery that goes on in the world from from actual progress. I’ve always I’ve always loved that book. And I’ve used it as a way to center myself. So it’d be a very odd discussion at the dinner party. I’d have a great time. I’m not sure what the others would think of each other. But I would certainly have a great time in such an environment. Vince Menzione 30:52 I think it’d be a great party, I might want to come Come join you. I’ve also read Atlas Shrugged and the fountainhead so I was a fan back in the day, I know you’re reminding me I need to go back to those lessons. There’s some really great lessons in our books. So Dee Burger 31:07 they’re, they’re great books. I mean, the only issue with them at all is I think, Atlas Shrugged is about 1100 pages. So it’s not for the faint of heart. Vince Menzione 31:17 I had a president of the company I worked for many, many years ago, who recommend the book, I purchased the book and it sat on my bookshelf for probably a year and a half before I finally cracked it open. Yeah, it took I think it might have been a summer project to read that book. Dee Burger 31:32 He has better in the Kindle version. You don’t want to take the physical one on airplane, because it’s all you’re gonna take. You almost have to check it. Vince Menzione 31:38 Yeah, it’s pretty thick. says this has been great day, I really enjoyed this conversation, getting to know you a little bit better here and welcoming you to our guests, any words of advice for our listeners, many of which are in this partner world, many of which partner with your organization on optimizing for their success throughout the rest of 2023? Well, Dee Burger 31:59 I mean, go back to what I said before the world is resetting the world is resetting from a crazy, crazy shock. And I believe that right now, we’re in a volatile world winners and losers separate from each other, right? In a world where everything’s great. Everybody wins. Mediocre companies can do really well. I had a guy say before he described it as in a hurricane, even turkeys fly. But when the wind stops, gets who hits the ground first. We’re in a period where the wind has stopped. And it is a time for companies to differentiate. I’m really happy with where insight is and how we’re going to compete in that market and how we’re going to invest in our growth during a turbulent time. And I hope everybody else thinks the same way. Vince Menzione 32:42 Right? Well, I’m rooting for your success as well and 2023. I love the progress you and the organization have made. Joyce has been doing an amazing job. I knew Joyce from her days at Dell when I was on the Microsoft side of that equation. So rooting for your success. excited to have you on board today. And thank you for joining our listeners. Dee Burger 33:02 Thank you, Vince. I really enjoyed it. Vince Menzione 33:03 Thank you. So there you have it. Another amazing guest joins Ultimate Partner. And I hope you enjoyed this interview as much as I did. Odds are if you’re a technology partner, executive and hearing my voice, chances are you too, are looking to accelerate your success through partnerships. I mean, let’s face it. We all have seen partnerships that look good on paper, but never live up to their expected results. There are a lot of reasons why partnerships fail. And that ultimate partnerships, we help you get it right by applying a proven set of best practices and framework that’s used by leading partners working with Microsoft, and other technology giants. If you want to learn more, follow the link in the show notes, or visit our website at Ultimate Partner.com. Announcer 33:56 Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Ultimate Partner with your host Vince Menzione online at Ultimate Partner.com and facebook.com/ultimate Guide to partner. We’ll catch you next time on The Ultimate Partner | |||
| 240 – Exploring the Hyper-Scale Marketplace Shift with F5 and Google Cloud | 09 Nov 2024 | 00:04:21 | |
Lisa Citron, VP of Global Partner Ecosystem at F5, Joins Ultimate Partner®
Thrilled to bring you an exclusive conversation with Lisa Citron, VP of Global Partner Ecosystem at F5, live from the Google Cloud Marketplace event! In this episode, Lisa dives into how F5—a leader in app delivery and security for nearly three decades—has evolved to harness the power of cloud marketplaces and hyperscaler partnerships. With deep insights into the shifts toward C-suite and board-level conversations, Lisa shares how F5 is tackling critical security concerns, especially around AI and API protection. Her perspectives on adapting to new buying behaviors and scaling securely with cloud partners like Google Cloud are essential for anyone navigating the digital transformation landscape. Tune in to learn from Lisa’s journey and hear how F5 is leading in the cloud era on The Ultimate Partner! https://youtu.be/17dq53pw85M?si=KSBMLfTh6sIucQnWLISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Ultimate Partner ExperienceEver wonder what you could achieve with the right partners? Dive into the Ultimate Partner Experience Community (UPX) and discover a world of possibilities! Exclusive ContentGain access to cutting-edge content and events crafted by partnership professionals. Stay ahead with strategies, trends, and in-depth interviews with the industry leaders in partnerships. Access to a Like-Minded CommunityOur next event is just around the corner and everyone is welcome. Although the event is open to the public, we want to give a special privilege to our members. Which means the Q&A session is exclusive to members only. It’s bound to be an exciting event and we look forward to seeing you all there! Make Connections That Matter!Dive right in and send a direct message to any member of UPX community! You are not just joining a group, but unlocking an open and vibrant network of professionals waiting to connect with you. Seize this golden opportunity to expand your horizons, fuel your career growth and discover exhilarating business prospects. The world is your oyster at UPX, let’s explore it together! Come Join UsI’m thrilled to welcome you to this journey. Let’s navigate, thrive, and redefine success in the tech partnership landscape together. Come Sign Up LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Now on YouTube | |||
| 239 – Unlocking Google Marketplace Success: Insights from Optimizely | 08 Nov 2024 | 00:09:23 | |
Matt Egan, Senior Strategic Alliance Leader at Optimizely, Joins Ultimate Partner®
I just wrapped up an insightful interview with Matt Egan, Senior Strategic Alliance Leader at Optimizely, at the Google Cloud Marketplace event! In our conversation, Matt shared his journey driving Optimizely’s co-selling partnership with Google Cloud. From co-marketing to co-innovation, he emphasized how these strategic pillars have expanded opportunities for Optimizely to help organizations optimize digital experiences on a robust Google-powered platform. For anyone navigating the intricacies of partnerships or aiming to enhance their go-to-market strategy, Matt’s takeaways are pure gold—especially his advice on building executive commitment and focusing on the revenue impact of co-selling. Don’t miss this episode on The Ultimate Partner! https://youtu.be/ml9YJb24XCs?si=5B1jVcMbcKdCZqr5LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Ultimate Partner ExperienceEver wonder what you could achieve with the right partners? Dive into the Ultimate Partner Experience Community (UPX) and discover a world of possibilities! Exclusive ContentGain access to cutting-edge content and events crafted by partnership professionals. Stay ahead with strategies, trends, and in-depth interviews with the industry leaders in partnerships. Access to a Like-Minded CommunityOur next event is just around the corner and everyone is welcome. Although the event is open to the public, we want to give a special privilege to our members. Which means the Q&A session is exclusive to members only. It’s bound to be an exciting event and we look forward to seeing you all there! Make Connections That Matter!Dive right in and send a direct message to any member of UPX community! You are not just joining a group, but unlocking an open and vibrant network of professionals waiting to connect with you. Seize this golden opportunity to expand your horizons, fuel your career growth and discover exhilarating business prospects. The world is your oyster at UPX, let’s explore it together! Come Join UsI’m thrilled to welcome you to this journey. Let’s navigate, thrive, and redefine success in the tech partnership landscape together. Come Sign Up LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Now on YouTube | |||
| 238 – The New Era of Chief Partner Officer: Innovation, and Driving Success | 15 Oct 2024 | 00:36:51 | |
Janet Schijns, CEO of JSG, Joins Ultimate Partner®
Today, we’re joined by Channel Legend, Janet Schijns Co Founder and CEO of JS Group. Join us as we dive deep into the evolving landscape of partnerships and leadership in the tech industry. In this episode, we explore a wide array of topics, from the potential pitfalls in e-commerce management to the changing roles of CEOs and CIOs in the age of cloud tech. Janet Schijns is a dedicated and strategic leader known for her protective and defensive approach in supporting business partners. She keenly understands the delicate balance between shielding partners from disruptive market noise and ensuring management remains receptive to critical feedback. Her leadership focus aims to prevent any slowdowns in partner sales momentum, while also fostering transparent communication channels within the organization. We’ll unpack the complexities of modern partner ecosystems and the rise of new marketplace dynamics, emphasizing the critical importance of Chief Partner Officers (CPOs) and why they could be the most sought-after CEOs of the future. Janet and Vince will also highlight how companies like Vodafone and Infosys are making substantial commitments to tech giants like Microsoft, and discuss the nervousness surrounding traditional distribution channels amidst these shifts. Moreover, you’ll hear insightful predictions about the future of marketplaces, how generative AI is reshaping repetitive business tasks, and why an inclusive partner strategy is paramount. We’ll also delve into the economic uncertainties we face, the booming investment in cloud infrastructure, and the critical role of alliance managers in navigating these new terrains.Whether you’re a tech enthusiast, a business leader, or someone interested in the future of partnerships, this episode is packed with valuable insights. So, tune in as we explore how to stay ahead in a constantly evolving business landscape and why the next big CEO might just come from the CPO ranks. What You’ll Learn From This Episode:00:00 – Introduction 00:00 – Overprotection hindered feedback; significant channel change. 04:17- Decreased customer interaction with salespeople in purchases. 07:20 – Outdated training, needed skills lacking, partner-focused. 10:51 – Ultimate partner summit: engage, learn, achieve, innovate. 15:02 – Advising boards on market strategy topics. 17:32 – C-suite struggles relinquishing control over channels. 21:18 – AWS became 5th largest distributor with $1B+ clients. 24:12 – Thrilled to announce partnership with Impartner. 26:18 – Power is crucial due to Gen AI compute. 29:21 – Failure prompts crisis responses; opportunity prompts growth planning. 34:08 – Firms investing in marketing achieve higher growth.36:11 – Join UPX for exclusive insights and community. https://youtu.be/W63c9MbK4X8?si=XqC0t-JuQlvYYQ9tLISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Ultimate Partner LIVE – Executive Summit ’24 – Join Us! https://web.cvent.com/event/048d3ecc-7af8-49f8-a392-bb6f762811e8/summary?tm=EJH77Dldc2o1TtIQSEJd7SLqmotpUE_ik2AhshHjwOE Don’t Miss Out – Sign Up Today!I’m thrilled with the lineup for Ultimate Partner LIVE ’24 Executive Summit in Dallas, TX, on October 22nd and 23rd! This year’s summit promises to be bigger and better. It will be an immersive experience bringing together over 300+ partners across ISVs, LSPs, and SIs. Join us for two days of insightful discussions, hands-on workshops, and unparalleled networking opportunities with industry leaders and Microsoft executives. REGISTER HERE TranscriptJanet Schijns [00:00:00]: So how do you partner? Right? What are the tenants of partnering? It’s interesting how confusing that is for some traditional channel organizations. Mike Gervais [00:00:11]: Microsoft’s purpose is in service of your purpose. Jay McBain [00:00:15]: And, again, 2024 is the year that partners come out as the leading edge of the spear on finding this buyer intent. You show up to every meeting and demonstrate why you are relevant. Sharon Schoenborn [00:00:26]: Every day, I have to force myself to make sure that I’m taking one step ahead in terms of my own learning. Vince Menzione [00:00:31]: That flywheel success is where you will build momentum, and that momentum will continue. And then you feed into the other systems to say, this is what we did. This is how we did it together. You know, we talk happy talk sometimes about channel and partnerships. But the truth of the matter is it isn’t always and partnerships, but the truth of the matter is it isn’t always easy. It’s not. And organizations still struggle here. Like, I I have phone Janet Schijns [00:00:48]: calls and I have DMs Vince Menzione [00:00:49]: from people. It seems like every day I get a new one. Like, I’m building a practice. Right. We’ve been at it for 7 years. Janet Schijns [00:01:01]: Something’s wrong. Or our Vince Menzione [00:01:02]: leadership our leadership still doesn’t get it. Janet Schijns [00:01:04]: Right. Or I got the last push through on cost of channel again Vince Menzione [00:01:08]: from the Janet Schijns [00:01:08]: CFO. Yeah. Yeah. I get those same tax, and it’s changing so quick. Vince Menzione [00:01:11]: Right? It is. Janet Schijns [00:01:12]: So that’s part of it. Part of it is even the old dog channel leaders That’s right. Having to learn some new tricks. And so you and I get a lot of calls because of that. Vince Menzione [00:01:20]: Yeah. And we we’re gonna talk more about that as well, some of the new tricks that they’re learning. Janet Schijns [00:01:24]: Yeah. So some of those new tricks learning. Vince Menzione [00:01:26]: But why do you think organizations still struggle here? What what what would you say is the main reason? You’re face to face at the board level. You’re talking to the c suite. Right? You’re with the channel chief or the chief partner officer, whatever the title is these days. Janet Schijns [00:01:40]: Yeah. Why Vince Menzione [00:01:41]: do you think that they’re still struggling? Janet Schijns [00:01:42]: You know, increasingly, it’s interesting. Increasingly, we’re being pulled in by the board or the c suite and not the channel leader. Vince Menzione [00:01:48]: Yeah. Janet Schijns [00:01:48]: Because so much is changing. Yep. Right? Because so much is evolving, and they’re not sure what’s supposed to happen. And I think the reason why so often there’s a little bit of a gap I’m not gonna say disconnect because I don’t think it’s a disconnect. I think if you speak to the c suite, they understand, particularly if they do 75% of their sales through the channel Vince Menzione [00:02:06]: Yeah. Janet Schijns [00:02:06]: That the channel is important to them. The disconnect comes from the fact that the channel chief has long been, and excuse me to our audience listening at home, the shit umbrella Yeah. For the channel. Yes. So their job has been to hold the umbrella up. And no matter what the CFO said, no matter what the sales leader said, their job was to protect the partners. Vince Menzione [00:02:26]: Yes. Janet Schijns [00:02:27]: Right? So you hold that umbrella up. I I did that. I hit a very, you know, sore and Vince Menzione [00:02:31]: very large. Defend and Janet Schijns [00:02:32]: protect. Defend defend and protect, and don’t let that hit the partners because if you let that noise hit the partners, they’re gonna slow down and stop selling. The problem though is that umbrella also keeps the feedback from the partners getting up to the management. And so I think what happened in in protecting the partners, they actually overprotected leadership. And so we just finished a survey. Doctor Ashlyn Silva, who’s the head of our research survey, just did a CRO survey of firms that had channel leaders. And the channel leaders all said that the change in the channel was significant. That was the most common answer, significant change in the channel. Janet Schijns [00:03:08]: The CRO said some change. Vince Menzione [00:03:11]: Interesting. That was some mean by significant change? Janet Schijns [00:03:13]: Significant changes in routes to market, in partners, and how we’re gonna go to market, and how we’re gonna partner. Right? As we dug down in the survey, in our channel survey, which comes out later this year, the CROs, while they saw some change, mind you, some change, they did not see that that overwhelming level of change. And, again, I think it’s because that umbrella now is so lodged in place. They’re not getting that feedback. Vince Menzione [00:03:36]: The transparency isn’t there No. No. No. Back up to the c suite. Janet Schijns [00:03:40]: It’s just not getting to the c suite. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Vince Menzione [00:03:42]: Is it a translation issue as well from the chief partner officer or the channel chief up through the c suite or maybe a lack of trust or understanding? Janet Schijns [00:03:51]: Play protect me games all the time as the channel leader, which a lot of folks in the traditional business have had to do. Thankfully, in some of the SaaS businesses, it’s been more transparent. But when you have to play that protect me game, it gets to the point where the channel chief is kinda covering their, you know, butt for the issues too. Vince Menzione [00:04:08]: Right. Janet Schijns [00:04:09]: Right. So I think it’s partially transparency. I think the other part is the c suite only specializes in channel during ops reviews Vince Menzione [00:04:16]: That’s right. Janet Schijns [00:04:17]: And board meetings and earnings calls, and they don’t specialize in the channel the rest of the time. And so what we’ve seen, and I know I’ve shared this stat with you, but not probably with your viewers. What we’ve seen is in 5 years, we’ve went from 51% of the time a customer spends in a b to b tech purchase being with a salesperson to only 14% of the time they spend with a salesperson. Yes. So this motion that we used to have where if you added more sellers, both partners or direct sellers Vince Menzione [00:04:43]: Right. Janet Schijns [00:04:43]: You would get more sales. This was a common, right, has been something that that’s how everybody’s looked at the channel. It’s just more salespeople. We heard this Vince Menzione [00:04:51]: feet on the street, reach. Janet Schijns [00:04:52]: Yep. You’re extending your coverage. Right? We’ve all heard this reason for having the channel. Right? Because they’re a sales channel. Well, now you’ve got a Microsoft who’s adding, you know, what, 90% of their partners are adding aren’t transacting. Vince Menzione [00:05:04]: That’s right. Janet Schijns [00:05:05]: We’re seeing this across the space. It’s about influence and advocacy. And and so when that starts to happen, it’s very difficult if you’ve been reluctantly in your c suite partnering in the first place now to let these people Yeah. Do even more. And believe me, they are referred to, for those of you in the channel listening, as these people, by a lot of by a lot of c suite leaders. Vince Menzione [00:05:29]: CFOs particularly love yeah. That’s yeah. We’re gonna dive into the chief partner officer role. So I don’t wanna because I think that we what you’re uncovering here is it’s important. Let’s go there first. Janet Schijns [00:05:42]: Okay. Vince Menzione [00:05:43]: I had Greg Sarafin here just a few weeks ago from Awesome. Chief partner officer. Yep. Different role. Yeah. Different role. Different set different set of skills. Janet Schijns [00:05:52]: Yes. Vince Menzione [00:05:53]: We spent almost an hour and a half in in the studio here. He gave us a master class and what he did at taking them from a 1,000,000,000 to about 8 or 9,000,000,000. He’s retiring. And so I think about that chief partner officer. Right? That role. I think the role that the nomenclature around the role is being overused and overhyped personally. Right? Janet Schijns [00:06:16]: When everybody becomes a CPO, no one’s a CPO. No. Vince Menzione [00:06:18]: But no one’s a CPO. But I do think that there’s a new set of skills. Janet Schijns [00:06:23]: Very different set of skills. Vince Menzione [00:06:24]: Set of skills. And I look at a person like Greg as an example of that, honestly, who comes from Yes. Comes from a financial acumen Janet Schijns [00:06:31]: Right. Vince Menzione [00:06:32]: Where the channel chief is somebody who maybe grew up in the channel, maybe was at at a vendor like a Microsoft or an HP or a Cisco Janet Schijns [00:06:40]: sales experience. Vince Menzione [00:06:41]: Sales experience mostly. And the translation back to the c suite isn’t as fluid, transparent, or the conversations that are being had are not being understood the way they need to because they’re not in the language of the of the Janet Schijns [00:06:54]: And and and half Vince Menzione [00:06:55]: of the Janet Schijns [00:06:55]: time, it’s skills. Yeah. Right? And we’ll talk on that. The other half of the time is just the culture of the company. Right? The channel chief has kinda been this, I don’t really know what he does, but or she does, although there’s very few she’s. I don’t really know what they do. She’s. Vince Menzione [00:07:08]: I don’t Janet Schijns [00:07:08]: need another thing. We’ll talk about that. Yep. They’ve kind of been cloaked in this little bit of secrecy. Right? There’s a lot of hugs. There’s a lot of mugs. Yeah. There’s a lot of events, and they’re doing a lot of things. Janet Schijns [00:07:20]: And, you know, they bring in sales, and the company says, hey. You know, that’s good, and and we’ll talk to you again and give you a hard time next next month or next quarter. But the skill set has not been invested in. No. So despite the fact that there’s so much change in the channel and that the channel leaders see that, what you see is still very traditional training. When we go in and do our partner expert training for teams, and that is really around how do you partner, not just resell or sell. Vince Menzione [00:07:47]: Give me that word again. Janet Schijns [00:07:48]: Partner expert. Vince Menzione [00:07:49]: Partner expert. Mhmm. Interesting. Janet Schijns [00:07:51]: So how do you partner? Right? What are the tenants of partnering? It’s interesting how confusing that is for some traditional channel organizations because then they start to say things like, no. No. No. Our product team handles that stuff. Oh, we have an alliances organization, and it’s in the strategy group. Vince Menzione [00:08:08]: Exactly. Janet Schijns [00:08:09]: We have a program group, and this is an interesting new trend that I’m seeing at variety of companies, including Verizon as an example, where the program team for partnering now reports to the CFO. Vince Menzione [00:08:21]: Interesting. Janet Schijns [00:08:22]: And in a in an attempt I can only believe to control money Vince Menzione [00:08:25]: So like a shadow organization for the partner organization? Janet Schijns [00:08:28]: Well, it’s the actual program team, and they’re not the only vendor I’m seeing doing this. So starting to move that partner program, you know, your traditional triangles, silver, gold, Vince Menzione [00:08:36]: you know. Trust in the channel chief Janet Schijns [00:08:39]: and something. Vince Menzione [00:08:40]: And holding the dollars. Janet Schijns [00:08:41]: Because you’ve seen it in the past in marketing. Yep. We’ve seen it in the past in the channel, and we’ve seen it in sales. We’ve seen the CRO have it. Now all of a sudden, I’m starting to see a trend of it moving that or just the program Vince Menzione [00:08:52]: Yeah. Janet Schijns [00:08:52]: Moving to either some level of compliance. Vince Menzione [00:08:56]: Mhmm. Janet Schijns [00:08:56]: And, you know, we’ve seen some bad stuff happening, so I understand why, or finance. And the reason I point this out is because partnering has now become something that’s all hands on the field. Vince Menzione [00:09:06]: Yeah. Janet Schijns [00:09:06]: It’s not just the it used to be pretty simple. Vince Menzione [00:09:09]: Right? Janet Schijns [00:09:09]: You wanna partner, see the channel chief, they’re over there. Yeah. Now Vince Menzione [00:09:13]: And they have the partner program, and then they have a bunch of organizations. Janet Schijns [00:09:17]: They run almost like a different company. Vince Menzione [00:09:19]: So They’re bolted on. Janet Schijns [00:09:20]: They’re bolted on. They’re kind of this good thing. Now then we started having companies say we’re gonna be a 100% channel. They still don’t mean that. No. They mean they’re gonna put sales through the channel on their paper. Vince Menzione [00:09:31]: That’s right. Janet Schijns [00:09:32]: And then we have companies like Microsoft, like E and Y, like AvPoint, which I’m honored to sit on the board for, who look at partnering as systemic across the organization. Approach. Holistic approach, it’s embedded. It’s not a separate thing. Right? Although they have a program and they have all the elements, it’s part of everybody’s job to partner. And that’s the world we’re moving towards. And that’s why the skill for that CPO, that ability to reach cross organization, Greg has that skill. Right? Vince Menzione [00:10:00]: He has that skill. Janet Schijns [00:10:00]: That ability to to understand that there’s a bigger gain than signing the PO today. I was talking with Infosys. I’ll use them as an example. They’re genius at partnering, and they’re doing $7,000,000,000 deals with 37 partners in them. Vince Menzione [00:10:17]: Wow. Janet Schijns [00:10:18]: So you start thinking about the scope of partnering. Right? And in the past, you would have said, oh, good. They’re gonna do the install and config and management. That’s not the case anymore. Right? These are really complex situations. Vince Menzione [00:10:31]: They are. Janet Schijns [00:10:32]: And so the partnering, I actually think the next CEOs will come from the CPO. Vince Menzione [00:10:38]: Well Janet Schijns [00:10:39]: yes. Partnering is so embedded now in what the go to market motion for every company truly needs to be. Vince Menzione [00:10:51]: We’re excited to announce ultimate partner live executive summit, October 22nd 23rd in Las Colinas, Texas. We’re bringing back the event that we hosted last year, but in a new facility with state of the art capabilities and live streaming. This is your opportunity to engage with other technology leaders to learn the what, why, and how to achieve your greatest results partnering with Microsoft and other tech giants. Featuring leadership tracks, fireside chats, and workshops designed to help you achieve more. Why do you believe that CEO needs to be a partner leader? Janet Schijns [00:11:34]: Well, because I think I want the audience to think about 10 years ago when we started saying every company is a tech company. Vince Menzione [00:11:39]: Yeah. Janet Schijns [00:11:40]: Right? Car companies stopped being car companies. They started being tech companies. Right? Tesla was iPhone. Companies were everybody’s a tech company. Vince Menzione [00:11:48]: That’s right. Janet Schijns [00:11:48]: And that’s become true. Right? Every company is primarily led by tech. COVID sped that up. Vince Menzione [00:11:53]: Or a platform company. Janet Schijns [00:11:54]: Or a platform company within being a tech company. Vince Menzione [00:11:56]: That’s right. Janet Schijns [00:11:57]: But it was like, hey. Everybody’s a tech company. Now everybody’s a partnering company. So that’s the next evolution. We’re only at the tip of that evolution. Yeah. We’re not somewhere where it it’s advanced yet. Yeah. Janet Schijns [00:12:09]: And so what’s happening By Vince Menzione [00:12:10]: the way, new jobs, new opportunities for those of us who are in the tech world to venture outside of traditional tech. Gosh. Janet Schijns [00:12:17]: We we’ve been on conversations, you know, with Lynn and health care and others, and everybody’s partnering. Now what’s interesting about that is some companies, and you know I’m talking about you if I’m talking about you, they’ve just named their channel chief CPO because you’re supposed to have a CPO. Yes. Much like what happened initially when everybody became a tech company, they named CTOs. Vince Menzione [00:12:36]: That’s right. Janet Schijns [00:12:37]: And many times the CTO was just their CIO with a fancy new branding. Vince Menzione [00:12:40]: And in Janet Schijns [00:12:40]: fact, you saw a lot of people do CIO, CTO. 10 years before that, we saw the same thing with CISOs. Right? Originally, the CISO was just some guy who knew about security. Right? Then it became Vince Menzione [00:12:50]: Bob in the closet Janet Schijns [00:12:51]: back in the day. Bob manages our McAfee licenses. Right? Okay. Let’s make him do so. And then it became a career, a profession, and a very difficult one. And the same with CTO, and now they think the same with CPO. So we’re probably in year 2 of this trend, and it’s a 10 year get to Vince Menzione [00:13:09]: Yeah. Janet Schijns [00:13:10]: Maximum capacity ability. And so I think what you’re gonna see is a lot of failures in the current CPOs, the same way we saw when CMOs started. Vince Menzione [00:13:19]: That’s right. Janet Schijns [00:13:19]: CMO started the average tenure was a year. Right? Because everybody thought, I know, oh, we need a CMO marketing. We’ll just get somebody’s better. Vince Menzione [00:13:26]: That’s right. Somebody was good with Marketo. Janet Schijns [00:13:27]: Right. We’re gonna we’re gonna make them a CMO. Like, this is good. That person’s good at arts and crafts. They’ll be good at this too. Vince Menzione [00:13:32]: That’s right. Janet Schijns [00:13:32]: Not so much. And so we’re seeing the same thing now with the CPO, and the skills are very different. Right? The channel chief is about sales, about partner management. Right? And it’s down. I’m managing you, mister partner, missus partner. Vince Menzione [00:13:47]: That’s right. Janet Schijns [00:13:48]: The CPO is about managing up, sideways, down, you know, spinning in circles saying, how do we put something together that’s so exquisite for our customers through our partnerships with both our customers and our providers and our partners that we can’t be beat we can’t be replicated and then turn that into a partnering platform, if you will. I think the 2 end up kinda Vince Menzione [00:14:12]: Yeah. Janet Schijns [00:14:12]: Smudging together and make something that is I can’t think of another word. I said it already, but I’ll say it again, exquisite for our customers. Yeah. And we are very early days in that. Vince Menzione [00:14:22]: Very early days. And, you know, we talked about Microsoft being prescient and being a harbinger of things. Microsoft has been good at doing this internally. Some of that is organizational. We’ll talk a little bit more about that. But some of it you know, I talk about things like mindset Yeah. Commitment, trust, and execution is 4 areas. When we talk about this CPO role Mhmm. Vince Menzione [00:14:41]: That I think we need a lot of work here. Janet Schijns [00:14:43]: We need a lot of work. Vince Menzione [00:14:45]: Go back to Greg. And, Greg, you’re getting a lot of kudos here today. But I think about the ability that in we talked about the influence strategy and the ability to be credible, to have trust Janet Schijns [00:14:55]: Right. Vince Menzione [00:14:55]: With that leader, that partner leader. Janet Schijns [00:14:57]: Correct. Vince Menzione [00:14:58]: It cannot be the person who was the channel chief last week. Now it’s just changing their title. Janet Schijns [00:15:02]: Well and that’s we’re seeing that. Right? We’re seeing people say, hey. Let’s do that. And what I’m trying to explain explain or or help the c suite and the board, I sit on several boards. Right? And having that conversation, being asked to present to other boards, being asked to be an adviser to a board on this topic is it’s not about routes to market. Vince Menzione [00:15:19]: That’s right. Janet Schijns [00:15:20]: That’s been true. Now not not to say you’re not gonna have routes to market. Right? Of course, you are. Vince Menzione [00:15:25]: Yep. Janet Schijns [00:15:25]: But your strategy for partnering is not about routes routes to market. It’s about commercialization of innovation. Vince Menzione [00:15:32]: Yes. Janet Schijns [00:15:33]: How will you commercialize innovation amongst your ecosystem? And that starts with a trust ecosystem. So who will you treat as a partner? And this gets them every time as well and as poorly as you treat your own employees. Vince Menzione [00:15:47]: Wow. Janet Schijns [00:15:47]: Because a good partner should be a part of your team. Vince Menzione [00:15:51]: Yeah. What’s the answer you get when you ask that question? Janet Schijns [00:15:53]: We can’t do that. Then you’re not ready. You’re not not Vince Menzione [00:15:56]: ready for that. Janet Schijns [00:15:56]: You’re not ready. Vince Menzione [00:15:57]: Right. Janet Schijns [00:15:57]: Right? So how do you make that happen? How do you make it so that your partners I want people to be confused about who works for which brand. Yes. This is Right? Vince Menzione [00:16:05]: This is the joint value proposition. Janet Schijns [00:16:08]: Through integration. Right? And it’s multiple parties. Vince Menzione [00:16:11]: That’s right. Janet Schijns [00:16:11]: And so what we’re seeing now is some heroes. We’re starting to see the alliance manager who has long been tasked with this Vince Menzione [00:16:18]: Yeah. This Janet Schijns [00:16:18]: webbed weird Vince Menzione [00:16:20]: Fuzzy role. Janet Schijns [00:16:21]: Fuzzy role of press releases and product releases and trying to manage one of your biggest customers slash partner slash developer slash slash Vince Menzione [00:16:31]: Yep. Janet Schijns [00:16:31]: They’re starting to rise up as heroes because this kind of nebulous territory has been something that they’ve they’ve broken their teeth on. Vince Menzione [00:16:38]: Yeah. Janet Schijns [00:16:39]: Right? And they they do have a little more ability to work in the gray zone, and that’s the key. The channel chief, a lot of times and some of them will retrain. Some of them will retrain and be fine. I have no doubt of that. There’s always the exceptions. But the rule is the channel chiefs have been in a black and white arena for a long time. Vince Menzione [00:16:55]: And a lot of it is the vendor partner role or vendor channel Janet Schijns [00:16:59]: role Correct. Vince Menzione [00:17:00]: Which is more one-sided. Janet Schijns [00:17:01]: Correct. And I am not, so that the audience hears me, not saying that the channel chief role goes immediately away tomorrow overnight. No. Because that would Vince Menzione [00:17:08]: be primary function. Janet Schijns [00:17:09]: Right. It’s a primary function. Yeah. It’s like it would be like saying your direct sales leader’s role is gonna go away. Of course, that’s not gonna go away. Right. So any significant route to market that you have is still gonna have a sales leader. Vince Menzione [00:17:20]: That’s right. Janet Schijns [00:17:21]: Right? That makes sense. It’s the layer above that. It’s the understanding that you could be in a in a sale. Yep. Right? There could be 37, as I mentioned earlier, partners. Vince Menzione [00:17:31]: That’s right. Janet Schijns [00:17:32]: And so in that scenario, you don’t get to be in charge. And this is the hardest conversation I have because the the c suite is so used to, we’re going to let the channel sell that product. We’re going to give the channel this discount or give the channel this commission. We’re gonna block the channel, always my least favorite discussion, from key accounts because we own them. News alert, no one owns an account. Want the audience to hear that. But those tenants Vince Menzione [00:17:59]: That’s right. Janet Schijns [00:18:00]: Right? They don’t work in a partnering world. Vince Menzione [00:18:03]: And this is where mindset Janet Schijns [00:18:04]: sales world. Vince Menzione [00:18:05]: This is where the shift in mindset has Janet Schijns [00:18:07]: to happen. Very hard because then and especially my friends in the European markets. Right? They’re they don’t like stories. Americans like stories. Vince Menzione [00:18:13]: Or storytellers. Janet Schijns [00:18:14]: They want, like, metrics and measurements. And, like, how am I supposed to measure that? And what I say to them is, look. I read your last 10 press releases where you made an announcement mega megacosm. My term, megacosm. Right? Right. Name your megacosm of partners because I do believe it’s gonna be a megacosm. It is. Vince Menzione [00:18:26]: Forgot ecosystem, Janet Schijns [00:18:27]: it’s gonna be a megacosm. Like, it’s this is where Vince Menzione [00:18:30]: we’re going. We went channel sales We’re talking unit Janet Schijns [00:18:36]: partnering ecosystem, megacosm. Yeah. So you’re gonna go with a megacosm strategy. And your metrics already are messed up because I took your last 10 press releases, and then I went and talked to your head of sales. And I said, they announced 10 things. Oh, with IBM, we’re doing this. We’re doing this with Microsoft. We’re right? All over the news. Janet Schijns [00:18:56]: How many sales did you make? Not very many. Vince Menzione [00:18:59]: Goose goose eggs. Janet Schijns [00:19:00]: 6. Yeah. And so you’ve been doing these press releases. You have been in effect partnering. You haven’t figured out how to commercialize that. Vince Menzione [00:19:08]: That’s right. And That’s where the alliance leader, the check the chief revenue officer, the CFO. This is where everybody. So this is that whole influence strategy bringing corralling that whole Janet Schijns [00:19:18]: Correct. Vince Menzione [00:19:18]: Group together in the right in fact, Janet Schijns [00:19:20]: like really wanna see everybody’s eyes roll Vince Menzione [00:19:22]: Yep. Janet Schijns [00:19:22]: Then you start to talk about, okay. So advocates, who might be your advocates? Who else is there? Who else did you partner with? Some of them are very unnatural. They’re not who you would naturally think. And who are your detractors? And they’re like detractors. What do you mean? So I was just at CCA, Cloud Communication Alliance. Great event, by the way. Yep. I was talking with a group of CEOs and CROs, and I brought this up and they were like detractors. Janet Schijns [00:19:43]: What do you mean? And I said, okay. You all do stuff that’s, you know, aiding collaboration and communication. Do you not think the CSO is a detractor for you sometimes or whoever their security consultant is is a detractor for them making progress? Vince Menzione [00:19:56]: That’s right. Janet Schijns [00:19:57]: Oh, yeah. And how about the website guy? Whoever’s running their website in ecommerce, do you not think the website ecommerce provider is not a detractor for your service? You’re saying we could put chat bots in. They have their own approach to it. Your call center application, your c cast application fails. Vince Menzione [00:20:13]: Do you Janet Schijns [00:20:14]: really think they like you when they just did a web campaign and they’re getting judged on ROI? You have detract natural detractors. Vince Menzione [00:20:19]: It’s fascinating. Janet Schijns [00:20:20]: So partnering is not just about the positivity. Vince Menzione [00:20:22]: That’s right. Janet Schijns [00:20:22]: Right? It’s also about the negativity and how do you manage the negativity. How do you lower the noise and the friction in the system? And that’s why I think they will be the next CEO because as every company becomes a partnering company, every company starts to learn to manage the megacosm. The person who won, they’re gonna be the most hotly pursued CEO ever. Vince Menzione [00:20:41]: I agree. I agree. So, we could riff all day Janet Schijns [00:20:45]: on this topic. I Vince Menzione [00:20:46]: mean, we can talk about mindset, execution, executive commitment because that’s this all ties into this. There’s a topic we’re gonna talk about together. I’ve been talking about quite a bit. We’ve been talking about the tectonic shifts. What we’ve been seeing at the again, the c CEO becoming the new CIO Yep. And how that’s impacting these cloud decisions. Right? You know, you come out of the telco world. Vodafone just signed a was it a 1,000,000,000 and a half dollar commitment with Microsoft? Janet Schijns [00:21:13]: Yes. They did. And I Vince Menzione [00:21:14]: know the person who executed it. Janet Schijns [00:21:15]: And they’re all doing that. Vince Menzione [00:21:16]: They’re all Janet Schijns [00:21:16]: doing that. This is all this is happening. Yes. Vince Menzione [00:21:18]: It’s happening. So now I’m in the line of business, and I’ve got this huge cloud commitment in a company, and I’m talking to an ISV or a security company or, know, somebody, MS whatever whatever the role is. I wanna I wanna cobble it together. We’re talking about the whole marketplace concept here. Right? And then last year and Jay talked about this in in our conversation. 5 organizations got to a $1,000,000,000 or more with AWS, which made it AWS with the 5th largest distributor. Janet Schijns [00:21:45]: I think it did. Yeah. And I think they’re on their way to 4th this year. Vince Menzione [00:21:48]: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that changes July. That changes things. Janet Schijns [00:21:52]: You’re nervous if you’re in distribution. Vince Menzione [00:21:54]: You are nervous. And and somebody asked me yesterday, I won’t mention the name of the company, but it was somebody asking me for advice from one of the large hyperscalers, was about what what what happens to distribution for us? What do we think about with distribution? So we can go in a lot of different directions here. A lot Janet Schijns [00:22:08]: of different directions. And I think Vince Menzione [00:22:10]: Yeah. Janet Schijns [00:22:10]: You know, the key to me with marketplaces is they’re not a panacea. Right? You can’t just say, hey. We’re gonna go on the Amazon Marketplace or the Microsoft market and be done because you’ve got health care companies that have very specific requirements. Yes. You have highly regulated industries like utilities and Telcos. And Telcos. Right? And so I am seeing that not only are the hyperscaler marketplaces coming up, but so are the specialized marketplaces coming up. So you’re starting to see the Cerner’s and McKesson’s and other and health care, right, kind of rising up. Janet Schijns [00:22:39]: You see Workday and Salesforce and others. And so I think there’s going to be to go back to our channel experience, almost like a triangle of marketplaces, right, that says, okay. At the top, you’re gonna have your hyperscalers for specific broad based, marketplace, and then you’re gonna have specialized marketplace and then hyper specialized marketplace. Vince Menzione [00:22:58]: This ties into your megacosm too if you think about it from that perspective because you have the hyperscalers, and then you have the galaxies and Janet Schijns [00:23:05]: the solar system. Exactly. And it kinda comes into this megacosm. And so and instead of being a triangle, it’ll kind of be a big circle. Right? It kind of squeezes together. But what we see is that the folks that are ignoring that trend and we do see it. Right? And Yeah. I’m sure you see it too. Janet Schijns [00:23:21]: I do. Hey. That’s not gonna be us. It is Vince Menzione [00:23:23]: A lot of the large ISVs still, by the way, because because they don’t wanna disrupt their channels of distribution. They’re just Janet Schijns [00:23:28]: distributors that. Vince Menzione [00:23:29]: And the 31,000 partners downstream on the long long tail. Janet Schijns [00:23:33]: But what I would say is, and I’m gonna say it to the audience, it’s an and strategy. It’s not an or. Yeah. Right? So it’s an and strategy. It’s I have a traditional channel. I have a traditional distribution. Let’s face it. Right? Bread’s just bread without a toaster. Janet Schijns [00:23:46]: Can’t be toast. So there’s hardware. There’s gonna be hardware. Right? That that’s just reality. Vince Menzione [00:23:50]: Yep. Janet Schijns [00:23:51]: But there’s also gonna be marketplaces, and your customers like buying from them. And so we’re seeing more and more, I think, what I saw last week. I think it was from Tackle. It might not might have been somebody else. It was 21% of the deals were being done by a partner. Vince Menzione [00:24:04]: Yeah. It could have been. I don’t know if they didn’t see the tack of research. Janet Schijns [00:24:07]: And Microsoft is empowering that. Vince Menzione [00:24:09]: That’s right. Janet Schijns [00:24:09]: So we’re gonna see an end strategy here. Vince Menzione [00:24:12]: Absolutely. Absolutely. We are thrilled to announce our partnership within Partner Software, the world’s leading provider of partner management technologies. Serving over 4,000,000 partners globally, Impartner excels in delivering cutting edge solutions for partner relationship management and partner marketing automation. Their robust platform offers essential tools like program compliance tracking, customizable partner journeys, and comprehensive business planning. These features empower partner teams to swiftly transition from program design to achieving maximum value. Impartner is dedicated to supporting partner ecosystems everywhere and continues to innovate with new modules like analytics studio, designed to help track and maximize the ROI of your partner program. For more information, visit impartner.com. Vince Menzione [00:25:11]: So lots of numbers coming out with regards to marketplace. Right? Our our good friend Jay and the Canales organization said 45,000,000,000 by the end of 2025. They said that they’ve under called it. Tackle, who you just mentioned, right, who’s actually gonna be here for our event in here on May 30th, in fact. Little plug for our May 30th event. Dallas. They’re saying a 100,000,000,000 by the end of 2026. Janet Schijns [00:25:33]: Yep. I’ve seen that number too. Vince Menzione [00:25:34]: So are we in a hype phase? Because I’ve been talking about the marketplace moment, and I’ll I’ll be self inflicted maybe that I’m helping to create some of the hype speaking on stage at the at the channel partners event and some other places about this that everyone needs to get on board. But is it a hype phase? Janet Schijns [00:25:49]: There are certainly gonna be winners and losers. Right? So you might pick wrong in a marketplace. You might pick the wrong strategy, but it’s not a hype. It’s just early adopter phase. Right? And and I know for some people listening, they’re like, we’ve been on a marketplace for 5 years. It’s not early adopter. It still is pretty early in the adoption Vince Menzione [00:26:07]: early adoption. Janet Schijns [00:26:08]: Cycle. And so who’s gonna win and who’s gonna lose? And I think we all can say Microsoft’s definitely gonna win at the hyperscale or Amazon and Google. Vince Menzione [00:26:14]: Yeah. Janet Schijns [00:26:15]: Right? They you know, they they’ve they’ve got so much investment. Vince Menzione [00:26:18]: That’s right. Janet Schijns [00:26:18]: And the other thing that we’re many times failing to realize is that with Gen AI, there’s almost this big bang moment coming where Gen AI uses so much compute power. Quantum computing leaps on top of that, and all of a sudden, the most precious thing in the world to every company becomes power. Yeah. Because you gotta power those data centers for all that compute power. Yep. And so what we’re seeing is Amazon now the number one provider of alternate energy. Yep. Right? Microsoft talking about power. Vince Menzione [00:26:48]: They’re they’re putting their data centers near power in your high and dry. Janet Schijns [00:26:51]: Seen $1,000,000,000,000,000,000 contracts for power from the hyperscalers happening in the coming years. And what’ll happen is they will eat up the power. Vince Menzione [00:27:01]: Yep. Janet Schijns [00:27:02]: So even if you’re a specialized marketplace, you will end up in a hyperscaler marketplace just from a consumption of power standpoint because there will be no power left. Vince Menzione [00:27:13]: And layer on top of that, like Microsoft last year, $32,000,000,000 in cloud build out. Janet Schijns [00:27:18]: Right. Vince Menzione [00:27:19]: They’re spending each of the hyperscalers is spending an inordinate amount of their investment dollars on chips right now. Janet Schijns [00:27:25]: That’s right. Vince Menzione [00:27:25]: They’re buying Nvidia stock is where it is. Janet Schijns [00:27:27]: Right. They’re buying up processing capacity. Yeah. Achilles’ heel is power, so they’re buying up power. 2nd Achilles’ heel is chips. Right? Because we saw what happened during COVID. Vince Menzione [00:27:37]: Absolutely. Janet Schijns [00:27:37]: Got Intel building a monolithic chip manufacturer in Ohio that will still only do about 2 or 3% of the chips that are needed. Yeah. Vince Menzione [00:27:44]: And we need a lot more chip capacity here in the United States. What what’s happening in the in China and and Taiwan right now is still Janet Schijns [00:27:52]: Still very Vince Menzione [00:27:53]: far Janet Schijns [00:27:53]: with peril. Right? And so I think you’re gonna see a world where it’s not always the best solution that wins. It’s often the person that dealt with risk best. And in fact, when we go in and do our market action planning practice, shameless plug, it’s a great program. Our market action planning actually starts with failure first. Vince Menzione [00:28:12]: Failure first. Janet Schijns [00:28:12]: So what would be the things that would make you fail? How would you fail? How would your biggest competitor kill you? What would happen? What and, by the way, it’s a depressing structure. It’s a I’m not saying it’s not By Vince Menzione [00:28:22]: the way, the military organizations go through this strategy exercise. Right? Janet Schijns [00:28:26]: Fail first. Vince Menzione [00:28:27]: Fail fast. Right? Janet Schijns [00:28:28]: So so we do fail first, and it opens up. You watch the aperture and people’s brains open up around partnering particularly. Right? And in the marketplace world Vince Menzione [00:28:39]: Yeah. Janet Schijns [00:28:40]: Around how they’re gonna handle partnering in a marketplace driven customer self serve world, and they start to realize that their failure points are very different than their failure points would have been for channel sales. Vince Menzione [00:28:52]: Yeah. Yeah. Janet Schijns [00:28:53]: Right? Channel sales was, oh, there’s another vendor comes in. The partner likes their program better. They pay more. Right? Those were the failure conversations. Now the failure conversations are somebody inks an exclusive partnership with somebody else, and we don’t have access anymore. Vince Menzione [00:29:05]: That’s right. Janet Schijns [00:29:06]: And our customers turn because all their money unless, remember, that’s how the marketplace works. Vince Menzione [00:29:10]: That’s right. Janet Schijns [00:29:11]: CIO puts money into it. Vince Menzione [00:29:13]: A cloud payment. Janet Schijns [00:29:14]: A commitment, credits, whatever that specific marketplace calls it, and you then get forced into that funnel. Vince Menzione [00:29:21]: That’s right. Janet Schijns [00:29:21]: And so when we do our failure planning, a lot of times, that’s how marketplaces then becomes in their plan. So when we do the optimistic planning and by the way, for everybody listening, you race to a crisis, you walk to an opportunity. It’s human nature. So when we talk about opportunity, it’s always how do we grow 30%, how do we grow a 100%, how do we right? What how do we do this? You start talking about failure, all of a sudden it’s, oh, shoot. Yeah. And all of a sudden What’s Vince Menzione [00:29:46]: our contingency planning? Plan again. Yeah. Janet Schijns [00:29:47]: So during the optimistic portion, marketplace was down low in the top ten for a lot of the boards and CEOs. When you start talking failure avoidance, marketplaces pops up Vince Menzione [00:29:57]: Yeah. Janet Schijns [00:29:58]: Way up into the top 5, top 3, top 2 for Menyorg. Vince Menzione [00:30:01]: And this makes the alliance leader more relevant to the conversation more relevant. Because they’ve had the relationships with the Microsoft, Amazon, Synodos. Janet Schijns [00:30:09]: Tentacles in there. They know where to knock on what doors. Vince Menzione [00:30:12]: And then the conversation about placing your bets across all 3. Correct. On all 3 sets of rails. Janet Schijns [00:30:18]: Correct. And then we start having the conversation about how do you operate. How what’s your operating model in that? That’s right. Right? Vince Menzione [00:30:24]: That’s the piece where I feel that most ISVs at least struggle. Janet Schijns [00:30:28]: Struggle. And the first thing I always tell an HR loves me for this one. First thing I always tell them is you gotta get away from thinking of your operating model like an org chart. Vince Menzione [00:30:36]: Yep. Janet Schijns [00:30:37]: I want you to think of it like a deck of cards. Mhmm. And you can play any number of games with a deck of cards. Right? You can play Rummy. You can play hard. Vince Menzione [00:30:45]: Thought about that Harry. Janet Schijns [00:30:46]: You can play whatever you want. Yeah. Right? Yeah. But it’s a deck of cards. And in the deck of cards, you gotta have kings and queens and aces and right. But you can play a different game with that. So it’s less about organization structure and more about the plays you’re trying to make Vince Menzione [00:31:01]: I love Janet Schijns [00:31:02]: it. That deck of cards. Right. And it really changes how people start thinking because they’re like, oh, that changes who my aces are. Right? That changes who your this partnering strategy changes who you today, your aces are CEO, CFO, CSO, CIO, CMO. Right? You got your aces. Right? Vince Menzione [00:31:18]: That’s right. Janet Schijns [00:31:19]: But they’re not your ACEs anymore. So now how do you manage in an org chart when your ACE is the alliance manager who’s been there for 20 years and knows where everybody is buried at the biggest hyperscaler? So that’s the it’s really becoming an interesting full bodied conversation around operating model when we do our market action planning days. Vince Menzione [00:31:40]: Do you wind up with a new org? Janet Schijns [00:31:42]: Yeah. You wind up with a new org Yeah. Or at least a shadow org strategy. Because operating model and that’s where I love everyone, but that’s where a lot of companies start with org model Yeah. And then they try to push operating model into it. Just start in the market action planning to start with Vince Menzione [00:31:57]: It’s like stuffing operating model. Stuffing people or or process into it. Janet Schijns [00:32:01]: Right. And so I’ve you know, I I think that that world of partnering is gonna get away from that command and control finally in corporate. Yeah. Vince Menzione [00:32:09]: We are almost at the midpoint of 2024 already. I can’t believe it. Like, it was just New Year’s Eve here. Janet Schijns [00:32:15]: Like that. And Florida wish you happy New Year 7 seconds ago. Vince Menzione [00:32:17]: Exactly. Exactly. How should we each prepare? What should we be doing differently going into the second half of this year? What what what great advice or strategy, Janet Schijns [00:32:28]: that you can great question. We had a silent recession in 23. Vince Menzione [00:32:32]: Yeah. Janet Schijns [00:32:33]: I’m talking to you. Right? You all know it’s true. We just didn’t talk about it in the Vince Menzione [00:32:37]: Economic headwinds. 470,000 people laid off last year. Right? Janet Schijns [00:32:41]: Right. And we’re, I think, in you know, if you watch, layoffs. Io, I think we’re over a 100,000 already this year in the tech space and Vince Menzione [00:32:49]: the start of the space. Not over. Janet Schijns [00:32:50]: It’s not over. No. In fact, the big ones are just starting. Right? Tesla yesterday. Right? So I think the economic uncertainty continues at least through 25. I don’t care what the pundits say. Right? You’ll at least you’re gonna see a pop because of the election. Vince Menzione [00:33:03]: Yep. Janet Schijns [00:33:03]: Get ready. If you need to get a mortgage, get ready. Yep. Because you’ll have a little window right before November where things will come down. Vince Menzione [00:33:10]: Insurance. Right? The interest rates will come down again. Janet Schijns [00:33:12]: Right. So just personal advice. Get ready. Vince Menzione [00:33:14]: Refinance if you’re ready to do that too. Janet Schijns [00:33:16]: High rate time, right about October. On top of that, we’re gonna see tech continue to grow. Vince Menzione [00:33:25]: Yes. Janet Schijns [00:33:25]: It’s just where it’s growing and where it’s declining. Right? We’re gonna see generative AI really swap out, finance teams, core repetitive task teams, contact centers. So we’re gonna hear these big numbers, 30% laid off, 25% laid off. Right? But it’s gonna be in those routine tasks, easy to replace with a machine area. Vince Menzione [00:33:46]: Yes. Janet Schijns [00:33:47]: And any partner who’s not involved in generative AI, not using generative AI as an understand it, will be making a huge mistake. Vince Menzione [00:33:54]: Huge mistake. Janet Schijns [00:33:54]: Basically signing their termination papers. Vince Menzione [00:33:56]: Yeah. Janet Schijns [00:33:57]: We’re gonna see marketplaces continue to rise. The biggest reason is because it lets you compare and contrast offers Vince Menzione [00:34:02]: That’s right. Janet Schijns [00:34:03]: And manage costs. Vince Menzione [00:34:04]: Manage costs. Janet Schijns [00:34:05]: And in the current financial environment Vince Menzione [00:34:06]: Streamlines the process. Streamlines the Janet Schijns [00:34:08]: process, manage cost is a good thing. Yep. The third thing we’re gonna see and we continue to see, marketing is leading the way in sales. Yeah. The firms that get it, and we just finished a a study on this. The top growth firms in our industry invested more in marketing and got more leads from marketing than the bottom growth companies who were still trying to push the sales mantle. Right? Hire more salespeople. Hire more salespeople. Janet Schijns [00:34:30]: This is a failing play. Vince Menzione [00:34:32]: It is a failing play. Janet Schijns [00:34:33]: You could, in fact, and we have the data to prove it, let go of half of your sales team. Spend half of that money so you’re still saving money on marketing and double your sales. Vince Menzione [00:34:43]: Absolutely. Janet Schijns [00:34:43]: This is the world we’re moving into. Right? Self serve world where people learn on their own, and marketing is who helps us. Vince Menzione [00:34:49]: So we’re Janet Schijns [00:34:50]: gonna see this huge pump in marketing. And then we’re going to begin to see the pushback on partnering. Vince Menzione [00:34:54]: Yeah. Janet Schijns [00:34:55]: Interesting. Before you push through any innovation Vince Menzione [00:34:58]: You’re gonna get the resistance. Janet Schijns [00:34:59]: You get the resistance. Right? That’s how you know you’re there. Vince Menzione [00:35:01]: Yeah. Janet Schijns [00:35:02]: Right? A little like, when there’s no resistance, you’re not there yet. We’re gonna see I think it’s gonna be early for Vince Menzione [00:35:07]: We’re birthing. We’re birthing. Birthing. Janet Schijns [00:35:09]: End of 24, beginning of 25, you’re gonna see some massive pushback on partnering. Vince Menzione [00:35:14]: Yep. Janet Schijns [00:35:15]: Right? A a little like no. Right? No. And then it’s gonna pump through, and it’s gonna be I Vince Menzione [00:35:20]: can’t wait for that day. I can’t wait for that day. Janet Schijns [00:35:22]: Crazy. So if you’re not partner enabled, get there. Vince Menzione [00:35:26]: Yeah. I love it, Janet. You are so so good to have you here. Janet Schijns [00:35:29]: Oh, thank you for having me. Vince Menzione [00:35:31]: Well, we’re gonna do this again. Yes. So, we’re gonna get you back here in the studio. Janet Schijns [00:35:35]: Would love to be nice Vince Menzione [00:35:36]: to have you. Janet Shines. If you don’t know her, you need to know her. The JS Group is it was formerly known. Yes. Our incredible organization. Janet Schijns [00:35:44]: Now dot com, if you’d like to see our Vince Menzione [00:35:46]: And, an amazing friend. And so so good to have you here. Janet Schijns [00:35:48]: So great Vince Menzione [00:35:48]: to be Janet Schijns [00:35:49]: here with you. Vince Menzione [00:35:49]: I love what you’re doing. Thank you Janet Schijns [00:35:50]: for everything you’re doing to champion and save the channel. Vince Menzione [00:35:53]: Thank you. And you’re a mutual admirer as well. We really appreciate you. Awesome. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of Ultimate Partner. Hopefully, this episode and all the episodes we’ve recorded are helping you better align your partner strategy to achieve your greatest results. So I wanna ask you something. Vince Menzione [00:36:11]: Have you implemented everything you’ve been learning? And are you now achieving the growth and revenue objectives that you hope to achieve? If not, it’s time to take action now. Join ultimate partner experience. We’re building the community I’ve always dreamed about. With UPX, you get access to exclusive industry insights, unparalleled networking opportunities, tons of educational resources, and support from a community that shares your goals. Join us now. Visit our website, the ultimate partner.com, and sign up today. | |||
| 237 – Leadership Agility: Scaling Your Business to New Heights | 08 Oct 2024 | 00:37:09 | |
Steven Pivnik, Entrepreneur & Founder, Joins Ultimate Partner®
Steven Pivnik is a highly accomplished serial entrepreneur and CEO of a leading Microsoft partner, renowned for his ability to apply a growth mindset and agility in leadership. With a sharp focus on innovation and results, Steven has led his company to success, demonstrating what it means to embrace challenges and drive meaningful progress. His expertise in guiding businesses to achieve their greatest potential has made him a sought-after leader and visionary in the tech industry. In his new book, “Built to Finish”, Steven chronicles his entrepreneurial journey, offering valuable insights into the strategies and mindset that helped him scale new heights. His story is one of perseverance, leadership, and a commitment to continuous improvement, providing readers with practical lessons on navigating modern business complexities. Through his experience, Steven Pivnik continues inspiring leaders to think big and act purposefully. What You’ll Learn From This Episode:
LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Ultimate Partner LIVE – Executive Summit ’24 – Now OPEN! https://web.cvent.com/event/048d3ecc-7af8-49f8-a392-bb6f762811e8/summary?tm=EJH77Dldc2o1TtIQSEJd7SLqmotpUE_ik2AhshHjwOE Don’t Miss Out – Sign Up Today!I’m thrilled with the lineup for Ultimate Partner LIVE ’24 Executive Summit in Dallas, TX, on October 22nd and 23rd! This year’s summit promises to be bigger and better. It will be an immersive experience bringing together over 300+ partners across ISVs, LSPs, and SIs. Join us for two days of insightful discussions, hands-on workshops, and unparalleled networking opportunities with industry leaders and Microsoft executives. REGISTER HEREKeywords Steven Pivnik, Built to Finish, growth mindset, leadership agility, serial entrepreneur, entrepreneurial success, business leadership, company growth strategies, scaling a business, leadership insights, business innovation, growth mindset in business, agility in business leadership, business transformation, entrepreneurship lessons, business leadership development, tech industry leader, how to grow a business, leadership strategies for success, successful business growth, innovation in leadership, leading with purpose, CEO insights, business success story. TranscriptTranscript (Provided by Descript) [00:00:00] Steven: With an AI specifically right now, I think it’s really going to help the creative. Um, so if you add in, sprinkle in a little bit of creativity into your product design, into your go to market strategies, like even into your culture, it’s going to help tremendously. [00:00:20] Intro: Microsoft’s purpose is in service of your purpose. And again 2024 is the year that partners come out as the leading edge of the spear on finding this buyer intent. You show up to every meeting and demonstrate why you are relevant. [00:00:33] Intro: Every day I have to force myself to make sure that I’m taking one step ahead in terms of my own learning. [00:00:37] Intro: That flywheel of success is where you will build momentum and that momentum will continue and then you feed into the other systems to say this is what we did, this is how we did it together. [00:00:48] Vince: Welcome to the Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzione your host, and I’m on a mission to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. Much of the discussion we have these days is around the tectonic shifts we’ve been seeing in our world and in our lives. [00:01:04] Vince: We talk about the need to apply a growth mindset and agility to how leaders need to achieve their greatest results. Today I’m excited to feature a leader, a CEO of a Microsoft partner, who applied such a mindset, to take his company to the pinnacle and has chronicled his journey in his new book, Steven Pivnick is a successful serial entrepreneur. [00:01:29] Vince: And the author of “Built to Finish”. Steven, welcome to the podcast. Vince. Thank you so much for having me. So excited to have you here in Boca Raton, Florida. We, we, you know, you love our background, right? We bought the beach right in for you. [00:01:40] Steven: The background is fantastic. What a great touch for, for a recording studio. [00:01:44] Vince: Absolutely. And, uh, thank you for making the trip from New York city. [00:01:49] Steven: Yeah. I’m glad we were finally able to put this together. [00:01:50] Vince: I know it took a while. We had, uh, the airlines have not been our best friend here and getting you here. [00:01:54] Steven: No, not at all. For a second there, I thought like we were cursed, but I finally made it. [00:01:59] Vince: Well, so excited to welcome you here today. You and I had the opportunity to know each other when I was leading Microsoft’s public sector business. And you were, you were leading one of the top partners working with Microsoft. And we want to talk more about that journey today. You know, we talk about the tectonic shifts we’ve been seeing in our world. And in our lives and how organizations have become agile and having to address those issues. So we’re going to tie in that conversation today But also more importantly for our listeners and our viewers today. Tell us a little bit more about Steven Pivnick. [00:02:29] Steven: Sure, so I’m a serial entrepreneur I’m, also an endurance sports enthusiast. I’ve become addicted to ironman distance triathlons Mountaineering and ultra-marathons. And I think the two, the entrepreneurship is an endurance sport. They have a lot of similarities and, um, that’s kind of me in a nutshell. [00:02:49] Vince: Yeah. And also an author, right? So, the genesis of this interview today is that I saw Steven announced his book “Built to Finish.” Which is the journey, both your professional journey and your athletic journey. Right. I was hoping maybe we’d spend a little bit of time on that and why you wrote the book. [00:03:08] Steven: So, um, as I was approaching my entrepreneurial finish line, which is basically I think most entrepreneurs want to realize the value of their creation and exit their company. [00:03:16] Steven: So as I was approaching my exit, which was to a 4 billion competitor and selling my company to them, I was also approaching my, my, um, endurance goal of getting into the iron man world championship and competing there. So those two events actually happened about 12 months apart. And after coursing that finish line in Kona, Hawaii, I said, you know what? I want to memorialize this journey in a book. offer tips and tricks and advice with the hopes of inspiring others to set audacious goals. [00:03:45] Vince: I love, that audacious goals. I mean, the whole, I, the whole journey in triathlon, well, both the business journey as an entrepreneur. I’m living that myself and then also the athletic journey. [00:03:57] Vince: So, uh, I’m hoping we’re going to, uh, dive deep into those conversations today. So do you think that, what do you see the similarities here between the two? [00:04:06] Steven: There’s so many. Right? From the planning, preparation, execution, perseverance, setbacks, pivots, stamina, all of those can be applied to entrepreneurship and they could, it could be applied to endurance sports. [00:04:22] Steven: So, and they all, they all feed on each other. So there’s, that’s just the beginning of the similarity list. [00:04:27] Vince: Yeah. And in the book, you actually draw parallels between the two, right? You take us on the journey, you’re coming to the United, your family’s coming to the United States, your early journey. The, the business journey and then you, and then you’re weaving in the, the athleticism and the journey to a triathlete. [00:04:42] Steven: Sure. I mean, it all starts with the grind. You know, I talk about, you know, the, the grind that my parents needed to go, my parents and grandparents, you know, went through in uprooting a family from the former Soviet Union to Brooklyn, New York. And then the grind that’s necessary to start up a business and all the things that need to happen at the, in the early stages in order for you to, to make it to a point where you can actually, you know, see that finish line. Eventually, [00:05:04] Vince: Such a great story about, you know, I like to refer to grit and determination as to like amazing factors. I got to live with my grandparents who came to this country in the 1920s and we all lived together. And I felt like I saw a lot of similarities in reading your story to my family’s journey. [00:05:21] Vince: So it was really terrific. Uh, many of our listeners or viewers are partners, right? So this is the Ultimate Partner. You spent a little time in this world that we live in now, and you were very successful working with. Organizations like IBM and then Microsoft and that transition from the IBM world to the Microsoft world, which I thought was fascinating. [00:05:40] Vince: But the journey wasn’t overnight. What experiences or best practices can you share with our viewers and listeners about that journey from start to exit? [00:05:50] Steven: Sure. Um, one of my partners used to describe us as the pilot fish that swims next to the shark, right? So, in the 90s… [00:05:58] Vince: I never thought of it that way. But I love it. I love the analogy. [00:06:00] Steven: I’m not 100 percent sure that I love the analogy because we’re not, we’re just the live of somebody else. But, um, in the nineties, our, our specialty from a business partner perspective, I ran binary tree, uh, it was email, right? Um, in, in layman’s terms, we were the best email moving truck in the world. [00:06:17] Steven: If a company needed to move an email platform from someplace to someplace else, we were that truck that got them there. Um, so in the nineties, IBM was that shark. Right. So we made sure that we latched ourselves, I’m sorry, that shark, not truck, shark. We latched ourselves onto IBM success. So that was one of our, you know, best practices. [00:06:36] Steven: We made sure that we identified, you know, what their goals are, you know, what, um, and what they’re trying to do from a market share perspective. And we said, you know what, we’re going to help them get there. And we did. And when the tide shifted in favor of Microsoft, you know, we’re talking about like 2005 ish. [00:06:53] Steven: Yep. And then IBM started. growing as the bigger shark in the waters, we said, you know what, you know, time to pivot and let’s go follow that shark because, um, it, the grass is going to be greener over there. And boy, was it. [00:07:07] Vince: Yeah. I remember the move from Lotus notes to the Microsoft platform. Yeah. And it was, and it was huge. [00:07:13] Vince: And Microsoft spent a lot of time there. And then of course, Microsoft moved everybody to on, to the cloud, right? So there was that additional… [00:07:22] Steven: Like I said, as long as there was movement, we were happy because we facilitated all of those email changes for a variety of use cases. Like you mentioned, there’s several others. [00:07:30] Vince: Well, let’s dive in more on the Microsoft side since IBM probably is less relevant today to some of our listeners. But like, what was that like to work with Microsoft? What were some of the learnings you can share? For partners starting out or really earlier in their journey now, like what, what were some observations you had and how did you learn to swim alongside them? [00:07:51] Steven: Sure. Um, I hope I’m not insulting Microsoft in any way, shape or form because at the end of the day, they were the best partner in the world to have. Um, but I’ve heard this saying, and it’s kind of true. You can go out of business doing business with Microsoft. Yes. Yes. Microsoft has a million and one initiatives. [00:08:05] Steven: And I think the biggest challenge business partners have today is figuring out which one of these initiatives they want to latch themselves onto. Because if you don’t choose wisely, you can go, you may go out, you won’t go, it’s not guaranteed to go out of business, but you may, right? So, you know, choosing wisely, um, from these, all of these initiatives because they have part, they have programs, you know, around the globe, around every single, um, stack of theirs, every single technology, um, product. [00:08:31] Steven: And it changes every year. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. So latching onto the right one and knowing if and when to change is probably one of the biggest challenges business partners are faced with. [00:08:41] Vince: It’s fascinating because we talk about a set of operating principles around what makes successful partnering. The seventh and last principle is agility and the ability to learn and know intuitively when to pivot. [00:08:52] Vince: Right, and I think that’s exactly what you’re talking about here. Give can you give us an example from, from your experience there, like was there, was there a chance that you had a, that you had a pivot with Microsoft that you can share? [00:09:03] Steven: Yeah, I mean, there was more, on more than one occasion, we had some full starts around SharePoint. [00:09:09] Steven: And I’m not blaming Microsoft, I’m blaming ourselves because maybe we just, SharePoint is such a, you know, why is such a big beast? Yes. There’s a lot of things that you can do around SharePoint and maybe we chose incorrectly and we just, we, we were, we were so successful with exchange. And then Office 365. [00:09:23] Steven: We wanted to replicate that success with SharePoint. And We couldn’t. So one of many failures, right? And again, maybe we didn’t latch on to the right program or the right component of SharePoint, or maybe our technology wasn’t as good as our email technology was. But that was one of the, um, the oops, the multiple oops that we had in our business journey. [00:09:43] Vince: Were there any significant, I mean, that was one pitfall specifically. Was there anything else during that period of time? Like you took this company on a very successful journey, a very successful outcome, uh, and exit to Quest, which we also know. Uh, we know some of the, uh, former Quest folks as well. Um, was there anything else along that journey that you can share with our listeners? Some learnings there? [00:10:05] Steven: Yeah. One, one, one of the ones that come to mind is our international expansion, right? Because our forte was dealing with the largest customers on the planet. Like if you threw a dart at the fortune 5, 000 list with your eyes closed, Pretty good chance to get a land on a customer of ours. [00:10:20] Steven: Most of these companies are international. So that, that kind of dragged us overseas. And in some countries we had great success in other countries, not so much. And I attributed that to, um, kind of the U S mentality of, as long as you have a body, you know, in that continent, you’ll be fine. Like for instance, in the continent, in the continent. [00:10:38] Steven: So which, which, which was a huge mistake for, for example, Germany. Which is the biggest market in Europe. Um, we had a salesperson in Germany, but the rest of the staff that’s necessary for a project, the solution architect, the consultant, the support engineer, et cetera, et cetera, they were in other countries. [00:10:54] Steven: So we had minimal success in Germany in the beginning versus France where we had an entire team there. Our sales executive, our solutions architect, our consulting services manager, our support engineer, you know, five of the five touch points that a customer would have with us was in country. Speaking the same language, understanding that culture, you can guess our success in France was awesome. [00:11:17] Vince: You know, it’s funny that you mentioned that because I see similarities, organizations that try to come into the North American and U. S. market, and they might land in a place let’s say like Canada or even like French Canada like Montreal, right, and expect that they’re gonna cover the U.S. market in California and Florida and places like this. Uh, same, same, same similarities, right? Culturally so different than the market here in the United States. [00:11:42] Steven: Yeah. So that was one of the many pitfalls. If I had to do it again, it would be a team per country. And, um, you’d be, we would have been a lot more successful quicker. [00:11:52] Steven: I mean, we eventually got there. We figured, we figured out what the differences were and we figured it out. [00:12:02] AD: We’re excited to announce Ultimate Partner Live Executive Summit, October 22nd and 23rd in Las Colinas, Texas. We’re bringing back the event that we hosted last year, but in a new facility with state of the art capabilities and live streaming, this is your opportunity to engage with other technology leaders, to learn the what. Why and how to achieve your greatest results partnering with Microsoft and other technology leaders featuring leadership tracks, fireside chats and workshops designed to help you achieve more. The registration is now open. Go to the ultimate partner.com to learn more. [00:12:23] Vince: And you spent a lot of time and I recall even in the book like you would go out to Redmond, you’d spend some time at Microsoft headquarters. Uh, what did you see there working with the Microsoft teams that you work with? Um, you mentioned, uh, you, that, you know, working with Microsoft was, I guess, I’d say probably the biggest partner, right? They understood partner, they embraced partnering, I’d say probably more so than IBM. Um, what did you see there and were any, were there anything, were, any learnings you’d have there? Because I talk about building those personal relationships, building that brand and story, being known for the one thing, working with Microsoft. What were your experiences there with Microsoft? [00:13:17] Steven: You hit the nail on the head. I was going to say relationships, right? At the end of the day, businesses are built on relationships. [00:13:23] Steven: And, um, hopefully partners aren’t penny wise and pound foolish and don’t want to get on the plane to go have lunch and or dinner and or breakfast or any sort of meeting with the people that they’re working with. You know, once you, nothing beats establishing that type of personal relationship. And it’s, it’s, it’s. [00:13:41] Steven: It, it paid off for us, you know, 10 times over by getting on planes repeatedly and spending, you know, numerous, numerous, um, Um, meetings out there just to get to know people and understand, you know, um, what drives them, what their bonus on what they’re quoted on and things like that. And they don’t, they really don’t mind sharing. [00:14:02] Steven: You just, you just have to ask. [00:14:03] Vince: Yeah. We talk about, you know, asking what their scorecard looks like, right? Like how are they, how are they balanced? Exactly. What are the metrics that they’re driven against? Like, and that changes every year as well. So understand, understand your scorecard and what drives success. [00:14:16] Vince: I used to also use a term, uh, uh, how can we, what, what would it take for us to get you a red jacket at the end of the year, which was the pinnacle award, the top award for being the most successful person at Microsoft. Those people would get those red jackets. So that was always a great question to ask people. [00:14:32] Steven: Yeah, a hundred percent. And they don’t mind sharing. Right. So they’re very, very transparent. And they’re not going to beat around the bush. And as long as you, you ask, like one of my CFOs used to say, don’t ask, don’t get. Exactly. Ask, you’ll get the answer, and then you can align your priorities with theirs. [00:14:48] Vince: So, successful exit. You talked about some of your passions around athleticism. I’ll talk about triathlete, uh, climbing. We’re going to talk a little bit more about that. But you’re also doing some work with other organizations now, like you and I had a conversation about coaching some organizations on how to be more successful. [00:15:06] Vince: Tell us a little bit more about that and what’s the profile, the person you’re working with and what are the outcomes that they’re looking to achieve? [00:15:14] Steven: Sure. So I’ve benefited tremendously from advisors, especially towards the tail end of my company’s career. Um, earlier on, like most entrepreneurs, I was very cocky. [00:15:23] Steven: I thought I knew it all and I didn’t want any help, which was the totally wrong approach. So when I, when I wised up and brought on, um, advisors, guess what? The company started growing, decided becoming much more profitable and we were like perfectly marching towards an exit strategy. Nice. So now that I’ve had that, had that exit, I’m basically giving back to the entrepreneurial community and doing for others exactly what advisors did for me. [00:15:49] Steven: I love that. So we’re, I’m, I’m about. 48 hours away from signing from a deal being signed for the first business partner. Um, that’s, you know, signed up with me now that I’ve done it, I can help others. [00:16:01] Vince: So they’re getting to their exit. They’re out there… [00:16:02] Steven: Where we’re in the tail end of due diligence right now, and they should be exiting in about 48 hours. [00:16:07] Vince: Is there anything specifically you can share with our viewers and listeners about that? Like, is there, is there, cause I have this, I told you about my set of operating principles, but is, You talked about having a vision and grit and determination, those types of things. Is there anything, is there like a formula that you share? [00:16:22] Steven: Sure. Um, so I answered, I’ll answer your previous question and this one, as far as like a typical profile, you know, this customer of mine, you know, fit my ideal profile, which is a company doing at least 10 million in ARR. That’s profitable, um, but has, uh, is experiencing some roadblocks, right? Maybe a little bit of stagnation, a little bit of slowdown in sales growth, maybe a reduction in profitability. [00:16:45] Steven: And the owner has been at it for a while, you know, 5 to 10, maybe sometimes 15 years. In this case, it was 20 years, the owner. And they’re just, you know, ready for that exit, but they can’t see that light at the end of the tunnel. Right. So the formula is really to help, um, Take things out of the way so that light can become visible and by take things out of the way, there’s so many, um, but that’s, that’s what advisors help me do and that’s what I’m able to help others with right now. [00:17:13] Vince: Like read the label of the jelly jar that you can’t read when you’re inside the jelly jar. And, uh, you know, just, just, you’re, you’re working, so you’re, cause I feel this myself so many times you’re, you’re working in the business that you can’t work on the business. [00:17:27] Steven: A hundred percent. I mean, that’s such an overused statement, but it’s so true. [00:17:30] Steven: And a lot of CEOs don’t realize what the difference is. And once they actually see that difference, it’s, um, like this, it’s like this aha moment. Oh my God. So this is what it means to work on the business instead of being in there 24/7. [00:17:43] Vince: So invaluable. I love that. So let’s go back to the book for a second, because I love the title. [00:17:49] Vince: Uh, you know, there’s a famous book “Built to Last” that, you know, similar in terms of the name of the title. So can you elaborate on what it truly means to be “Built to Finish”? [00:17:59] Steven: I mean, you just have to be, you know, super passionate about that finish line, you know, whatever that is. There’s so many different, you know, finishes. [00:18:06] Steven: There’s, you know, degrees in education. There’s, you know, maybe marriage in a relationship. Um, obviously the exit, the sale of a business or crossing an actual finish line or getting to the top of a mountain. So you just, you need to be super passionate about that finish. You need to know your why. Like, why, why is this important to me personally? And once, and I love Simon Sinek. [00:18:29] Vince: Yeah, I was just thinking of Simon Sinek. I love it. [00:18:31] Steven: What’s your why? You need to know. It’s so, it’s so true though. Once you know your why, the how becomes a lot easier. And there’s just, there’s so many people out there that can help with the how, but you need to figure out, you know, what the why first, and then you’ll get there. [00:18:47] Vince: Yeah. Um, we talk about mindset. That we talk about. Uh, vision, having a vision, but having your, um, we refer to a term personal philosophy. And a lot of times people have a statement that’s basically, is there a why, right? Right. What, what is, what is it, what is your ultimate outcome for your life for, for your purpose, you know, and it’s a little bit different than a mission statement. [00:19:11] Vince: So, uh, in the book, you emphasize the importance of resilience and adaptability. Which, um, which are also tied into this principle seven I talked about, which is agility. Uh, from a business perspective, what traits can organizations cultivate to help them along that journey? [00:19:28] Steven: Um, if I had to pick one, especially in today’s day and age, I would say creativity. Right? Because there’s so many companies, individuals that are following, you know, specific playbooks. And there’s nothing wrong with playbook. I mean, I think a playbook is fantastic because, um, sometimes previous results do are responsible for future success, but in other cases it is not. So I think creativity is key, especially from a go to market perspective, because there’s so many, there’s so many companies and brands that just, you know, copy each other. [00:20:00] Vince: Yeah. [00:20:00] Steven: With AI specifically right now, I think it’s really going to help the creative. If you’re, if you’re already creative, you can 10x your creativity with the help, help of ChatGPT and other products. Um, so if you add in, sprinkle in a little bit of creativity into your product design, into your go to market strategies, like even into your culture, it’s going to help tremendously. [00:20:23] Vince: So talk to me about that from the binary tree perspective. Was there anything specifically that you can point to from that? [00:20:29] Steven: Um, yeah, we, um, we were super creative, I think. Like, one of our competitors said it best. We created a problem where a problem didn’t exist. I love that. So, the problem was email migration, right? [00:20:41] Steven: Yeah. So, email migration was supposed to stink. If you’re converting data, especially, and people don’t understand how complicated a calendar entry is. There’s a lot of complexities behind a recurring calendar entry. Yes. So, the market understood that if you’re going from apples to oranges, IBM to Microsoft, or vice versa. [00:20:59] Steven: Mm. You’re going to drop a couple of things here and there and just expect the worst and just deal with it. Um, we, we went out of our way to show the market that it can be perfect. You can have 100 percent data fidelity during the migration and during this integration period where half of your company is on one platform. [00:21:18] Steven: And the other half is on the other while we migrate everybody over. So we became super creative in saying, if you’re dealing with these problems, that’s a problem. It doesn’t, migrations don’t need to stink. They can be completely flawless and, and seamless to your end user community. And that, um, served us really well. [00:21:36] Steven: And how’d you brand that or how’d you market that? Um, so we went, we did a lot of trade shows and we did a lot of road shows and when it was our turn to get up on stage, um, we were not embarrassed because Microsoft also does a great job of putting forward on multiple partner solutions to the marketplace. [00:21:53] Steven: They’re, they’re rarely exclusive and when it was our turn to get up on stage and even though our, our, our friends from our competitors were in the audience. We just, you know, beat them up left, right, and center saying that we are the best game in town from a data fidelity perspective. And when it was their turn, they really couldn’t combat that because they knew they weren’t. [00:22:13] AD: We are thrilled to announce our partnership with InPartner Software, the world’s leading provider of partner management technologies, serving over 4 million partners globally. Impartner excels in delivering cutting edge solutions for partner relationship management and partner marketing automation. [00:22:31] AD: Their robust platform offers essential tools like program compliance tracking, customizable partner journeys, and comprehensive business planning. These features empower partner teams to swiftly transition from program design to achieving maximum value. In partner is dedicated to supporting partner ecosystems everywhere, and continues to innovate with new modules like analytics studio designed to help track and maximize the ROI of your partner program. For more information, visit in partner.com. [00:23:08] Vince: So we’re living in interesting times. Um, I refer to them ever since COVID actually, uh, this is a time like no other, this tectonic shifts we’ve been seeing, right? This I’ll call the economic headwinds, uh, geopolitical climate that we live in, uh, changing and buying behaviors. Uh, the dominance of the hyperscalers, I mean, even more so than the days when when you were leading your business, like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon really are dominating even more. [00:23:34] Vince: So now, cause the, The investments and commitments, especially around AI that are required. And also this co selling has become even more important than it was when you were running your company. Um, characteristics, do you believe organizations need to think about to lead and succeed during these times? [00:23:53] Steven: So again, your creativity comes to mind in this case, and in this specific instance, just, you know, figuring out where the gaps are, even with these behemoths out there, they’re still, they’re leaving a lot of gaps in their solutions and in their technology for business partners around the world to fill. [00:24:10] Steven: Like, in my case, back in the day, Microsoft could have easily came up with a migration product, or IBM could have, but it just wasn’t a priority for them. They were out there getting market share, and they left that opportunity out for business partners, and several of us did really well because of that gap. [00:24:25] Steven: So, I think just looking out for where the gaps are, because they will continuously be there, and filling them is a good strategy to undertake. [00:24:34] Vince: So, is that your best advice for the organizations listening today on how they can achieve their greatest results? [00:24:41] Steven: Um, so again, so if you’re looking for a new product, I think identifying a gap and filling that gap is fantastic. [00:24:47] Steven: Um, if you already have a product in market, then you’re putting the foot on the gas and using, you know, all the popular modern, you know, go to market strategies around, you know, social media and people laugh at me when I tell them, how come you’re not on tiktok? They’re like, well, I hate tiktok. I don’t use tiktok, but I’m like, but doesn’t mean your customers aren’t on tiktok. [00:25:05] Steven: That’s right. I mean, I stopped watching television. If I, if I have half an hour to kill. Like waiting for a plane to take off. I’m, it’s, it’s entertaining as hell. [00:25:13] Vince: It is entertaining. [00:25:14] Steven: So there’s a lot of executives out there that are probably doing the same. [00:25:16] Vince: So there’s no excuse for somebody not to be on TikTok. [00:25:19] Vince: We’re getting a lot of views on TikTok these days. So you’re going to see some of this on, on there as well. So talk about your next adventure, right? We talked about certainly the, the coaching work that you’ve been doing with organizations. But I know you’ve got something really big planned in about another year. Is it next year? [00:25:37] Steven: May. Yeah. May of next year. There’s only one month of the year to do the, to do what I’m about to tell you. [00:25:42] Vince: Yeah. So let’s talk about that a little bit more. [00:25:43] Steven: Um, Mount Everest. So I’ve climbed some of the other seven summits. Um, actually, thanks to Microsoft, I fell in love with mountaineering because I spent a weekend out there and I went to explore Mount Rainier. [00:25:54] Steven: And then a month later, I summited Mount Rainier. Yeah. Fell in love with the entire concept of mountaineering. And I went to, um, Alaska a couple of times, Kilimanjaro, Akinkanwa in South America, which is second highest to Everest, and, um, finally found a partner, um, because I want to come back alive. [00:26:12] Steven: And I want to, I want to increase my chances of summiting, did a lot of due diligence and found a partner, Alpenglow Expeditions, that I’m going with in May of next year. [00:26:23] Vince: Wow. So what’s the preparation look like for that journey? Yeah. [00:26:27] Steven: So fortunately, I mean, a lot of the endurance, um, training that I do currently, a lot of swimming, biking, running, um, is definitely going to help tremendously, but I need to add a whole bunch of strength and conditioning, um, training to that. [00:26:39] Steven: Um, so the, the, the amount of squats that I’m doing and step ups is through the roof to get me ready for that. And, um, I plan on spending some time in Colorado. I’m doing a lot of the 14ers. Okay. Yes. Get used to, um, altitude again. And, um, yeah, so I think a combination of all of that is going to prepare me for the rest of it. [00:26:58] Vince: Yeah, we have, in fact, we’ve had other guests here. We’ve had other, uh, Everest guests. Uh, have I made some introductions? [00:27:03] Steven: Yes, I spoke with both of them. Fascinating individuals. [00:27:05] Vince: Louise McElroy and, uh And, uh, yeah, and Erwin Visser. But, uh, also, Louise leads some of these 14ers. So, um, there’s a whole group of women, uh, “She Summits” is the name of the group, actually. Some friends of ours. [00:27:20] Steven: Actually I plan on reaching out to her again, because I, I need some of the, because there’s a lot of 14ers. There’s a lot of 14ers. I need to come up with a strategy for which ones I should hit and when, prior to the, prior to departing. [00:27:31] Vince: And I think she’s done most of them, I think, if not all of them, uh, most of them, if not all of them. So, uh, certainly that’s going to be a great conversation there. Maybe we should have you both on the podcast together next time. With Irwin. That’d be great. And Irwin’s been here in the studio. He, uh, he helped lead our event here in the studio back in May. So it’s really kind of cool. So this question is a favorite of mine. [00:27:52] Vince: Uh, and I like to ask every guest because the answers are fascinating. So Stephen, you’re hosting a dinner party. And you can host this dinner party anywhere in the world. We were talking about some really great restaurants and locations prior to filming today. Um, you can invite any three guests from the present or the past to this amazing dinner party. Some people have even mentioned people in the future that they’d want to invite to this amazing dinner party. Whom would you invite and why? [00:28:23] Steven: Okay, top of the list is easy. My grandfather. I mean, my grand… talk about, you know, perseverance, the grind. Pivot, setback, stamina, execution. And when we, when my wife and I, after our second daughter was born, we moved half a mile away, the stress that we went through was unbelievable. [00:28:43] Steven: And he, he uprooted an entire family. We were, we lived in Italy for six months waiting for a visa to get into the U S. So we were literally stateless, right? We, we had to, we had to give up our, our Soviet visa. citizenship. We had no status in Italy, in Rome, and waiting for approval to get into the U. S. [00:29:00] Steven: That’s fascinating. Unfortunately, um, as, as I got older and I got married, you know, I had kids, my career started taking off. I was spending less and less and less time with him. So as I got older and smarter, this is when I should have been talking to him to get more information and stories out of him. So my grandfather’s at the top of the list. [00:29:19] Vince: Was he the reason why you came? [00:29:21] Steven: Yes. [00:29:22] Vince: Okay, so he was, he led the family out. [00:29:25] Steven: He, he led the family out. He convinced my grandmother. He convinced my mother and father, who were recently married. And it just had me, I was, I was two at the time. And he’s like, oh, we’re, we’re leaving. [00:29:35] Steven: And this was at the really, really, um, beginning of this huge, you know, immigration wave. that happened from the Soviet Union to the U. S. in 72. [00:29:45] Vince: 72. And then you settled initially in Coney Island, if I remember correctly., [00:29:48] Steven: Yeah it was so, we, it’s, we, there was this organization that was helping immigrant families. [00:29:52] Steven: They got us an apartment in Coney Island, and then from Coney Island, we went to Brighton Beach, and my mother still lives in Brighton Beach. I’m going to see her tomorrow. [00:29:58] Vince: That’s fantastic. Hi, mom. So, okay, so who else is coming to this party besides your grandfather? [00:30:05] Steven: Uh, I think Richard Branson. Okay. I love Richard Branson.I mean, he is such an adventurous entrepreneur. Yeah. I mean, his story is fascinating. I mean, I love him from a business perspective. I love him from an adventure perspective. He’s not as crazy as Jesse Itzler, my other, um, entrepreneur, adventure entrepreneur that I love, but there’s just something about him, which is just fascinating. I would love to pick his brain. [00:30:29] Vince: I’ve got to see him speak before and uh, It was at one of the Microsoft conferences. You might have been there. Yeah, he spoke at one of our conferences. [00:30:38] Steven: I remember actually seeing him on stage. Yep. He’s, he’s just a fascinating individual. [00:30:42] Vince: What an entrepreneur. [00:30:43] Vince: What a creative entrepreneur. Let’s talk about that.. [00:30:45] Steven: Super I was just telling my daughter on the way here, um, how he started Virgin Airlines. It’s a fantastic story and how he started a whole bunch of other things. [00:30:52] Vince: Tell us that story. [00:30:54] Steven: So, he was actually, he was on a, um, waiting to board a plane to go to, I think, some Caribbean island and the airline, the announcement came on and they said, we don’t have enough passengers, so please come back tomorrow for this flight. [00:31:07] Steven: He was furious. He, he ran around the airport and then he, he chartered a plane. He was asking people for like a 737 or whatever was popular at the time. And he finally found one, chartered it, went back to the gate and said, Hey, who, who wants to go today instead of coming back tomorrow? Everybody raised their hand, he collected some fee from them, and he goes, I have, there’s a better way to serve the traveling public, and I’m going to create that airline to serve us in a better way than we’ve been treated. [00:31:36] Vince: That is fascinating. Yeah. All right, who’s number three? [00:31:40] Steven: Any Navy SEAL. I’m in awe of the military. Um, I, I wear a dog tag with no name on it just to, I, I never served, but, um, if I had a chance again, I would, I remember signing up because back when I was going to college, the selective, um, service was on, I see you needed to register for the draft before being accepted to college. [00:32:01] Steven: So I remember like it was yesterday running to the post office so I can register and, but I was never selected anyway. I’m just in awe of the military. And, you know, SEALs and Rangers, you know, they’re the creme de la creme of, you know, military personnel and they’re just, thank you for your service.If you have any, if anybody in the military was, thank you, but SEALs and, you know, Rangers, they’re just, just incredible in my mind. [00:32:27] Vince: It’s funny you mentioned that, cause I was thinking about this actually just today, because I grew up at the end of the Vietnam era, a little bit older than you, a few years older than you, I think. [00:32:36] Vince: And, um. It wasn’t popular, right? The military wasn’t popular, but I, when I dove into the public sector arena, I got to visit and work with a lot of general, former generals and current generals and military leaders and get to go to air force bases and air army bases. And there’s a level of leadership and leadership training that happens in the military. [00:32:57] Vince: It doesn’t happen anywhere else. It doesn’t, it doesn’t happen in our colleges and university system. Which is a pity, actually. Uh, but, and I’ve met so many great leaders through that. Yep. Yep. So that’s really terrific. And where were you hosting the dinner? [00:33:09] Steven: Where am I hosting the dinner? Oh, man, where am I hosting the dinner? I just came back from Sardinia, so I had, I would have to say Sardinia, because we’ve been thinking about going to Sardinia for the last 20 years. I dunno why it’s taking this long, but I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s just a magical, magical place. The beaches, Italy, almost as blue as this. [00:33:30] Vince: so I’m, I’m going to Italy. Um, so when, uh, when this airs, I’ll probably be back from then, but we’re going to Italy as we talked about a little bit in about another week or so, and we are doing the coastline. We’re doing Positano. We’re doing Puglia. And, uh, I was looking at Sardinia. I was, I was looking at some. Pictures of the beaches there. Absolutely gorgeous [00:33:50] Steven: It’s, it’s, it’s breathtaking and it, it’s so worth the schlep to get there. Okay. ’cause it’s not exactly the easiest place to get to. No. But it’s very, very worth it. [00:33:54] Vince: All right. So, uh, if you don’t mind, I might come to this dinner party. Maybe I’ll bring dessert or was it gelato or tiramisu or something? We’ll find something. Uh, I don’t, I don’t know what the Sardinians have, but I’m sure they have something unique to their culture. [00:34:06] Steven: They have plenty of gelato. I, we, we had our fair share. [00:34:09] Vince: So, uh, we have a lot of young entrepreneurs, current entrepreneurs, uh, listeners and viewers that follow us. What would be your best advice for them, for those that are starting out on their journey or along their journey to build an organization that’s built to finish? [00:34:32] Steven: Surround yourself with folks, whether it be executive team members or advisors that have been there and done that. At the level at at a greater level than you’re at today, right? [00:34:44] Steven: So if you’re running, let’s say a 5 million company and you want to hire a new head of sales or your CFO don’t hire somebody that’s only worked for a 5 million company, bring in somebody that’s coming from a 10 or 15 million company because he or she is going to really help, you know, move the needle a lot quicker than somebody who hasn’t worked at that level. [00:35:03] Steven: Yeah. So, um, don’t be as silly as I was for the first. Two thirds of my career and not bring in the necessary executives and advisors. [00:35:14] Vince: Yeah, that’s really great advice. Steven. So good to have you here today. So excited. Yeah. I’m so excited that you came down, spent some time with our team. Our amazing viewers and listeners, uh, so great to see you again. [00:35:27] Vince: It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other. And, uh, if you haven’t gotten this book yet, I highly recommend it. Uh, there were so similar, so many similarities for me reading the book. Uh, not, not as much on the triathlon side, cause my knees gave out a long time ago, but on the professional journey, the personal journey, and certainly the journey, uh, the, the immigrant journey, I guess is what I would say. [00:35:48] Vince: And just that. That, that story resonates so, so much with me. Thank you again for joining us. [00:35:52] Steven: No, I really, really enjoyed it. Thank you for having me. [00:35:55] Vince: Thank you, Steven. And thank you to our listeners and viewers. If you haven’t done so already, you can follow us along on Spotify, Apple, and our new YouTube channel. [00:36:06] Vince: Please subscribe on your favorite channel and tell your friends about The Ultimate Partner. And TikTok. And thank you for listening and joining The Ultimate Partner. [00:36:16] AD: Thanks for listening to this episode of Ultimate Partner. Hopefully this episode and all the episodes we’ve recorded are helping you better align your partner strategy to achieve your greatest results. So I want to ask you something. Have you implemented everything you’ve been learning? And are you now achieving the growth and revenue objectives that you hope to achieve? If not, it’s time to take action now. Join Ultimate Partner Experience. We’re building the community I’ve always dreamed about. With UPX, you get access to exclusive industry insights, unparalleled networking opportunities, tons of educational resources, and support from a community that shares your goals. Join us now. Visit our website, theultimatepartner.com, and sign up today. | |||
| 236 – The Power of Storytelling to Drive Unstoppable Partner Success | 25 Sep 2024 | 00:54:58 | |
Miri Rodriguez Joins Ultimate Partner®
I was thrilled to welcome Miri Rodriguez to Ultimate Partner for our first in person interview at our Boca Studio. Miri is a multifaceted professional with an impressive track record, recognized as an award-winning writer and an extraordinary public speaker. In her role as the Chief Storyteller at Microsoft, Miri has harnessed the power of narrative to create deep, personal connections between brands and their audiences. Her ability to blend creativity with strategy has made her a sought-after voice in the industry, inspiring countless individuals and organizations to rethink how they communicate and engage. As an expert in brand storytelling and the award-winning author of Brand Storytelling, Miri has redefined how companies approach marketing, emphasizing the importance of authenticity and emotional resonance. Her work demonstrates that storytelling is not just a tool but a transformative experience that can elevate a brand’s presence and impact. Through her insights and expertise, Miri Rodriguez continues to shape the future of marketing, empowering brands to build meaningful, lasting relationships with their audiences. What You’ll Learn From This Episode:1. Introduction and Branding as a Feeling (00:00:00 – 00:08:00)
2. Miri’s Journey and Microsoft’s Storytelling Evolution (00:08:00 – 00:14:00)
3. The Power of Brand Storytelling & Why It Matters (00:14:00 – 00:18:30)
4. Infusing Brand and Story Across Business Verticals (00:18:30 – 00:22:00)
5. The Role of Empathy in Brand Storytelling (00:28:30 – 00:35:00)
6. The Future of Storytelling with AI (00:40:00 – 00:45:00)
7. Practical Storytelling Strategies for Executives (00:48:00 – 00:54:00)
LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP Ultimate Partner LIVE – Executive Summit ’24 – Now OPEN! https://web.cvent.com/event/048d3ecc-7af8-49f8-a392-bb6f762811e8/summary?tm=EJH77Dldc2o1TtIQSEJd7SLqmotpUE_ik2AhshHjwOE Don’t Miss Out – Sign Up Today!I’m thrilled with the lineup for Ultimate Partner LIVE ’24 Executive Summit in Dallas, TX, on October 22nd and 23rd! This year’s summit promises to be bigger and better. It will be an immersive experience bringing together over 300+ partners across ISVs, LSPs, and SIs. Join us for two days of insightful discussions, hands-on workshops, and unparalleled networking opportunities with industry leaders and Microsoft executives. REGISTER HERE Transcript[00:00:00] Miri: The brand is everything. The brand is how you make your customers feel. Essentially, that’s what it is. So when you think about what is my brand, it’s a feeling. [00:00:11] INTRO: Microsoft’s purpose is in service of your purpose. And again, 2024 is the year that partners come out as the leading edge of the spear on finding this buyer intent. You show up to every meeting and demonstrate why you are relevant. [00:00:26] INTRO: Every day I have to force myself to make sure that I’m taking one step ahead in terms of my own learning. [00:00:31] Vince INTRO: That flywheel of success is where you will build momentum and that momentum will continue. And then you feed into the other systems to say, this is what we did. This is how we did it together. [00:00:40] Vince: Welcome back to the Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzione and my mission is to empower every individual, leader, and organization to achieve their greatest results through successful partnering, building a successful brand and story. [00:00:55] Vince: Have become key skills for organizations to reach the pinnacle of success. A few years ago I searched out an author who’s an expert in this area. And I had her on the podcast. Miri Rodriguez is many things. An award winning writer, an incredible public speaker, and a chief storyteller at Microsoft. And I’m delighted to bring her back today for an incredible and wide ranging conversation to better equip you and your organization to achieve more. [00:01:24] Vince: Miri, welcome to the podcast. [00:01:28] Miri Thank you. I’m back. I am so excited. Finally in person, right? [00:01:32] Vince: We’re finally getting to do this. We’re gonna, we’re on, we’re on in front of our audience. [00:01:36] Miri: We’ve never met in person before. We’ve never met in person after all these years. We’ve been together and connected for a long time, but never in person. [00:01:41] Miri: So here we are. [00:01:41] Vince: Unbelievable. Great to have you back on Ultimate Partner. You know, I was going back through the archives. You were a guest in January of 2021, which was pretty incredible from a time perspective. [00:01:54] Miri: Intense. That was intense times. I remember when you asked me to join, I was like, We’re in the middle of COVID you’re still doing podcasts and it’s incredible. [00:02:00] Miri: I mean, it’s just, I’m glad you did that though. But it’s, it’s been so good for you. [00:02:04] Vince: It has been amazing. You know, we got, we got a lot of new listeners and we came back during COVID. And, uh, but not like this, not in the studio, not doing, and it’s so great to have you in person. [00:02:15] Miri: Nice area, nice place. [00:02:16] Vince: Yeah, well, how do you like our beach, right? [00:02:18] Miri: know, I was just saying, in Florida, we love our beaches. I travel a whole lot and I can never, like, this is just, this is our beaches, everybody. We love this place. [00:02:28] Vince: So, uh, we did our intro, but, uh, but for our viewers and our listeners that don’t know Miri, I thought maybe you take us on a little bit of your personal, professional journey. [00:02:39] Miri: Yeah, absolutely. So I’ll start with Microsoft. You know, that little company, everybody talks about [00:02:44] Vince: the guys in Seattle. We all, we both know. [00:02:46] Miri: Yeah. I’ve been there for 12 years now. I just actually, August 6th was my 12th year anniversary. I can’t believe it. The anniversary. Thank you. I, it was one of those things that I said, I’ll be here 4 years and then go. And yeah. Still here. Um, and I’ve been doing so much. I’ve had the opportunity to do so much at Microsoft and I think one of the things that I love about the company is that is that it’s so versatile and so global and there’s so many things happening all the time. So I haven’t gotten bored. Uh, prior to that, I was doing tech in different companies, um, here actually in South Florida, Motorola and Brightstar. [00:03:16] Miri: Um, and you know, I just started my career basically in sales support and that led into marketing and that led into comms. I am a comms major, so that was like the initial, I went back to like my heart. And then, you know, the storytelling thing came up. You don’t go to school. When I was, you know, back in school, you don’t go to school for storytelling. [00:03:34] Miri: But now it is a thing. So I think we’re going to talk a little bit about that. So I am now a storyteller. I’ve been a storyteller at Microsoft for six of those 12 years. [00:03:42] Vince: That’s fantastic. [00:03:42] Miri: Yeah. And I was doing I started that an engineering in the engineering organization. And then I’ve gone through different orgs. [00:03:49] Miri: And now I am in the health and public sector, um, industries. And I love it. I am so excited. There’s a lot of stories we’re telling there. They’re exciting. [00:03:58] Vince: Well place that’s near dear to my heart as well as many people know I started off at Microsoft in the public sector business Yes, and we’re just comparing notes, right? [00:04:08] Miri: We like know everybody like we probably worked together didn’t even know it [00:04:11] Vince: I’m like, yeah federal state and local education Healthcare. [00:04:14] Miri: Yes, and and it’s [00:04:15] Vince: really like it’s it’s the most impactful segments of Microsoft, right? It’s yeah the the impact The we think about health care You The ability to do good in the world. [00:04:27] Vince: Education is so important. Fundamental. Federal government people don’t recognize like the role of supporting Our troops, all the work that goes on there and state and local government, right? What would we do without it? [00:04:41] Miri: You know, the, the police department, the fire department, the stories we hear, I just, you know, it gives me chills every time. [00:04:49] Miri: I’m like, wow, we are enabling this kind of thing for our citizens, for you and I. Yes. And I just, I just love it. I love it. It just I’m so I’m I don’t think I’ll ever leave there. And it’s [00:04:58] Vince: not for profit, right? We could talk about this for hours about it’s all about. It’s all about the better good. It’s about doing good. [00:05:04] Vince: And [00:05:05] Miri: I love the people there because they do care. Yes. When you talk to our officials and actually within our own organization, a lot of them have come from, you know, state local and they just have the servant heart and it’s so genuine. And so I love I love our team and I love who we work with. I love our customers. [00:05:23] Miri: I’m having a lot of fun. [00:05:24] Vince: Servant heart. You’re absolutely right with that. Yeah. And they spend their entire career in that segment. [00:05:30] Miri: And they, and they truly, it is very authentic. Like, I’ve seen it and I love it. [00:05:34] Vince: So, brand story, right? I, I, I brand you brand story and it’s so fundamental for those of you who have been aware of my principles of successful partnering. [00:05:46] Vince: We talk about all the principles from growth mindset to executive commitment. And then when we get into like how to be a successful partner working with Microsoft, the 500, 000 organizations out there that partner with Microsoft and some of the other guys as well, brand and story are so important, so fundamental to success. [00:06:06] Vince: And most organizations just don’t do it well, right? And there’s this myopic thinking about like how to partner with Microsoft. And I thought maybe we’d go there today and talk a little bit about what you do. Yeah. But also layer in this conversation because I believe it’s so fundamental to successful partnering. [00:06:24] Vince: So I thought maybe I’d get your point of view. Sure. On the topic. [00:06:28] Miri: And I have to say thank you because the work that you do for the partners, it’s, it’s so valuable. So important. It’s beyond valuable. It’s, I think it’s critical, uh, this kind of conversation that this table conversation and other ones that you have in it that you touch on is things that partners, when you’re, you know, when you’re on that side, you’re just worried about so many things that it may not be that they don’t want to think about branding or stories or, you know, programs, but they just, it’s not, it’s not top of mind. [00:06:56] Miri: And so you come and you deliver this kind of podcast and, and, and the conversations we’re having. And then you’re like, they’re, they’re thinking, Oh, that’s right. Right. I thought about it, but I didn’t activate it. Now it’s a time to activate. So thank you for that. I’ll start with that. And you’re right. [00:07:09] Miri: It’s um, it’s a topic where a lot of people will say, well, that belongs in marketing for for storytelling or branding. Uh, and it isn’t. I mean, in my, in my work, the brand is everything. The brand is how you make your customers feel. Essentially, that’s what it is. So when you think about what is my brand, it’s a feeling. [00:07:28] Miri: It’s a feeling and if you can’t answer that feeling in one word, you probably haven’t branded yourself. Well, you know, uh, and that’s that’s something that it’s a science and as well as an art. So you have to be able to say, you know, what is the brand that I serve like Microsoft. Obviously we’ve. We, when Satya came on board, you know, that we branded ourselves differently. [00:07:47] Miri: Uh, we started going out with the mission statement of to empower every person in organization on the planet to achieve more. [00:07:53] Vince: Yes. [00:07:54] Miri: And that word empowerment is not only our history because we empowered people in the back, in the, you know, in this, in our story of our brand, but it’s also our charge and our feeling, you know, what it feels like or not to be empowered. [00:08:06] Miri: So that’s very key in that word. So ask yourself. Um, you know, what is that word? What is that feeling that I give in that? It’s your brand. And then the story of that is. Why you’re here. You know, why? Why am I still here? The brand story really serves two purposes. One. It is the story of the actual brand. It is an entity. [00:08:25] Miri: It was born. It has friends. It has foes. It’s growing. Hopefully growing. You’re scaling, right? And that story never ends until the brand ends. Hopefully it won’t. But you know, you continue to tell a story. Nobody will ever get bored of story. Nobody, nobody will ever, because we, we thrive in story. We connect through stories. [00:08:41] Miri: So you will always have an opportunity to talk about the brand and the brand story. And then work marketing, marketing and communications actually comes in is to enable the other stories that infuse your brand. These are the stories of your CEOs and your C suite and your frontline workers and the backend workers. [00:08:57] Miri: I mean, you can just be here for hours talking about what infuses your brand to deliver that to your customer. [00:09:03] Vince: So how do you infuse brand and story? In the markets that you serve. Tell us more about what that looks like. [00:09:10] Miri: Yeah, I mean, so right now, like I mentioned, I’m in health and public sector industries. [00:09:14] Miri: And I have to say the stories are really easy to infuse because there’s so many great stories that already are being told. And the beautiful thing about brand and story is that If you do it well, if you do it well, that your own customers, your own partners, your own audience is going to talk about your brand. [00:09:32] Miri: I always think about brand story in the how as, as, as a product, you think of your story as a product, uh, you’re designing a story with purpose. And you know, the designer really like think about the chair you’re sitting in or the stool. I think it’s a chair, chair, stool, um, and you know, somebody designed it. [00:09:49] Miri: Somebody designed it and they thought I’m going to make this tool and one day you’re going to use it as the user of this product, you can decide what to do with it. You could sit on it. You could stand on it. Please don’t fall. Don’t do that. You could sleep on it. Maybe really uncomfortable too, but there’s something you can decide the use. [00:10:06] Vince: Yes, [00:10:06] Miri: of your product that you that’s there. But somebody designed it with a purpose. And if they did a really good job, you’re probably going to use it for its purpose. So the same thing with story. If you take time to design your brand story in a way that is malleable and that that the user can take a look and go, Wow. [00:10:22] Miri: The story makes sense. I’m going to reshare. I’m going to make it mine and they own it. Then you’ve done a really great job at branding. [00:10:28] Vince: I love that. I love that. I started thinking about, you know, as you talk about Microsoft’s purpose and mission. Uh, our purpose and mission is in service of that same base, right? [00:10:38] Vince: So we talk about. We empower every individual organization and partner to achieve their greatest results through successful partnering. [00:10:45] Miri: I love that. [00:10:47] Vince: We’ve dovetailed right into it because it’s such a powerful mission. [00:10:50] Miri: It is. And everyone wants to feel empowered. And here’s the kicker of that. Empowerment, that word, means something. [00:10:58] Miri: Some different things to different people. Yes, and so that when you think about your brand, what is that word? What does that feeling mean to your audience? It has to be ubiquitous enough that people can make it theirs. If it’s not, then you’re only branding your mission for your, uh, you know, for, for what you want the brand to go. [00:11:15] Miri: And you’re not allowing that malleability that we’re talking about for the brand story. [00:11:24] AD: We’re excited to announce Ultimate Partner Live Executive Summit, October 22nd and 23rd in Las Colinas, Texas. We’re bringing back the event that we hosted last year, but in a new facility with state of the art capabilities and live streaming. This is your opportunity to engage with other technology leaders, to learn the what, why, and how. [00:11:48] AD: To achieve your greatest results, partnering with Microsoft and other tech giants, featuring leadership tracks, fireside chats, and workshops designed to help you achieve more. [00:12:04] Vince: So I find your role fascinating because you don’t see it, right? We’re, I hope that there’s many like big corporate executives that are watching and listening today. Because even if I look across even the fortune 500, I do not see your role like this storytelling role. And Microsoft really made some serious investments. [00:12:23] Miri: Yes. [00:12:23] Vince: I remember when Satya first became CEO. [00:12:26] Miri: Yes. [00:12:27] Vince: And this role. Emerged, evolved, was created. [00:12:30] Miri: It was created. And, uh, [00:12:32] Vince: Steve Clayton, who I know is someone you worked with. Yes. Right. I’d like to talk more about, like, how that happened. But we had Steve come in. I was mentoring a group of individuals, early and career professionals that had a high trajectory at Microsoft. [00:12:44] Vince: And we brought Steve in and I had never heard about this brand story or storytelling role that existed at Micro, and he was like chief storyteller, right? [00:12:51] Miri: He was the chief storyteller, yes. [00:12:52] Vince: And then you, uh, and then I met you and it was, oh, well, you, you’re working in conjunction with Steve. So tell us more about how that evolved. [00:12:59] Miri: Yeah, it’s great. So when I came into that role, I was actually here in Florida. And I don’t know if you know the secret when you talk when you’re a Floridian like me, and they offer you a job at Microsoft. Your first thing is you’re going to negotiate not to ever go to Seattle. That’s right. And then, you know, then you end up going to Seattle. [00:13:13] Miri: It’s a lie. You’re lying to yourself. So I ended up going to Seattle because I was offered this role, which was very fascinating, intriguing to me. It was a storyteller role within engineering. And I’m like, [00:13:24] Miri: What is that? Engineering, especially in engineering. And it was Satya’s. Way of thinking, you know, up until then, Microsoft had been this kind of closed source. [00:13:34] Miri: Nobody knows what’s happening behind closed doors, who the engineers are and what’s going on and what the next thing is. And so he came in with this real. Authentic idea of like, Hey, let’s show the world. What’s happening. Let’s show the humans behind the tech. And this was at a very critical time for us because we were driving digital transformation at that time. [00:13:53] Miri: So we’re now introducing the cloud and in that transform, you know, that that on premises to to the cloud. Um, process. What does that look like? And our engineers. This was a first time for them, right? They had not been cloud engineers before the cloud didn’t exist. So the stories were that the stories were like, Hey, we are digitally transforming, but there’s also personal transformations going on. [00:14:16] Miri: There’s job transformations happening. And so they brought us three of us into engineering to actually tell those stories. [00:14:21] Vince: Fascinating. And I don’t think of engineers as storytellers at all, right? I mean, I think of them. Working on a, behind a computer screen. So tell us about that. [00:14:29] Miri: Oh, a hundred percent. Oh, I failed. [00:14:31] Miri: Exactly for that reason. I was, I failed for the first three months. I was like, I don’t think I can do this. I’m like, I thought I could do the job. And I, can I get a story out of this engineer? I actually remember, uh, you know, connecting with one of them. I was, we were talking about IOT, the Internet of Things. [00:14:44] Miri: Yes. And I, you know, you take them out to lunch. You want to warm them up. You want to say, hey, can I interview you? And this is a great story to tell. And I remember, I mean, He just looked at me and I, I thought I prepped him good. And he just gave, he’s like, hand out. He’s like, give me your hand. I was like, okay. [00:14:57] Miri: And he just puts the IOT device in my hand. He goes, there’s your story. You know, I was like, Oh my gosh. Well, and it makes sense to them. That’s the story. [00:15:05] Vince: That’s the raspberry pi, right? [00:15:09] Miri: And so I was like, yeah, exactly. And so I was like, how do I tell a story out of this? And it, it, it became very clear to me. [00:15:15] Miri: You know, stories matter, but we have to get very intentional about the design of stories. So, back to your question about Satya and how this came to be and, you know, and, and Steve, um, I, I was very honored to work with Steve and we created, actually, he created, uh, a council, a storytelling council, where we brought storytellers from different parts of the organization, of the organization, of the company. [00:15:38] Miri: I mean, we’re so big. And they were special. These pop ups like me and engineering other people. And so we’re like, it became increasingly clear that we needed to have some kind of hub where a community of storytellers, where there was storytellers popping up in different, all the verticals, all the verticals, including finance. [00:15:53] Miri: I mean, sales everywhere. So we’re like, okay, what does this look like? How do we enable, how do we train? How do we infuse? How do we, and how do we tell a cohesive story? That was important too. And so So under Steve, even though I wasn’t directly working for him in his organization, I was actually in engineering, uh, I worked a dot, I worked out in line with him. [00:16:11] Miri: He led that charge, uh, and it was a beautiful fusion of coming together from different parts of the organization to parts of the world, uh, to have this conversation about storytelling. So we actually had a storytelling, uh, summit annual that was happening. We all got together in HQ. It was just incredible. [00:16:27] Miri: And it really, it really cemented the importance of stories. Uh, and I mean, here we are, right, as we keep telling great stories, so. [00:16:36] Vince: Well, and I go back, I mean, it was a seminal point when Satya first became CEO. [00:16:41] Miri: Yes. [00:16:42] Vince: And, uh, Frank Shaw, Chief of, right, so Steve reports, does he still report to Frank? [00:16:48] Miri: No I, so he, I think, I think he’s now in, uh, Government Affairs or Yes, something like that. [00:16:53] Miri: Yeah, but at that point in time. So he’s now under Brad Smith. [00:16:55] Vince: Under Brad. Yeah. But at that point in time It was noticeable. There was this change in tone from the company, from Satya. [00:17:03] Miri: Immediate. [00:17:03] Vince: Wanting to get out in front. Um, very communicative. Very open. Open. Very open. And I’ll never forget the first earnings call as CEO. [00:17:13] Vince: Both he and Amy hood came on the earnings call. And if you recall back in the early days, I go back to the growth mindset, scarcity mindset, growth mindset, Satya brings growth mindset, infuses it into the business. And from day one, he gets in front, he’s on front foot with the analysts and open conversations about the company and where he’s taking the company. [00:17:35] Vince: And, and that to me more than anything else helped propel the stock price from being flat for 10 years. To its trajectory now over 400 a share [00:17:44] Miri: and we call that vulnerability. [00:17:45] Vince: Yes [00:17:46] Miri: He became vulnerable. [00:17:47] Vince: Yeah, [00:17:48] Miri: and he took a chance to show up in that vulnerability and we see you know We we look at people that do that and we’re like, wow, that’s fascinating And we almost like we admire it from afar, but to activate that it’s so hard [00:18:00] Vince: Yes [00:18:00] Miri: for leaders to activate that it becomes so hard and we know that everybody’s watching and what if we say the wrong thing? [00:18:05] Miri: And here’s where story can help because you know Story can make you not only empathetic towards your audience, they become empathetic to you. We were no longer looking at Microsoft as a big tech dinosaur giant. We were looking at Satya and going, wow, what an incredible leader who is leading this company. [00:18:21] Miri: And we were able to zero in to his leadership. And that’s what story does. We saw his humanity. And that made him just, Who he is today really in the company [00:18:31] Vince: and the ability to emulate that right down in the field and even amy I mean, I think about a chief finance officer like that who’s able to tell the story When she gets on the earnings call, she’s [00:18:42] Miri: fabulous. [00:18:43] Miri: She’s incredible I I always quote her, uh in you know, when we when I do workshops and turn on i’m like Please look at the head of finance I mean if if anything could be like finance of all things to talk about if anybody can Yes, if anybody can talk You Talk you up on finance and numbers and they make it make you feel good about it. [00:19:00] Miri: You’re a great storyteller. Uh, and so my role in many other roles started to grow and pop up and people in our organization started to actually, um, invest in these roles and actually create roles. Um, and you know, it became a mix of things. So we have storytellers that are actually in marketing and sales and comms, uh, in different parts of the Oregon engineering, of course, uh, in design. [00:19:21] Miri: So I happen to be in sales. I’m in under Judson’s org. Um, and it’s just, there’s no discrimination as to where you can be a storyteller because we’re really all storytellers. Right. [00:19:31] Vince: And they can emulate from you. [00:19:32] Miri: Absolutely. [00:19:33] Vince: So I have your book here. Um, look at this. This is, this is brand storytelling. This was released in March. [00:19:40] Vince: We were talking about this earlier, during the height of COVID, well, the beginning of COVID [00:19:44] Miri: lockdown, [00:19:45] Vince: lockdown, March of 2020. [00:19:47] Miri: I had a 15 city world tour. [00:19:50] Vince: And you can tell this is dog eared because I’ve read it. I’ve read it. Um, we’re going to get real now, right? For our viewers and listeners, because I, we talk about, you know, Having a marketing plan, having built integrating brand and story into your marketing plan in the book you have an integrated marketing plan that you share. [00:20:09] Miri: A reimagined one, [00:20:09] Vince: a reimagined one, but I was hoping you could share some of the principles of that with our viewers and listeners today. [00:20:15] Miri: Yeah. And I, it’s interesting. You call out the date. Because my book was scheduled to come out actually the summer before that. So 2019 in the summer. And there’s an interesting, like the, the, the publisher takes a lot of pride and work into the book releases dates because they know the market. [00:20:33] Miri: So they go ahead of you and like, Hey, have your written book by now. Turn in the manuscript and do this whole thing. It was the first time I wrote the book. So I was like, and then I pushed back. Um, there was stuff happening personally. So I was like, Hey, let me, Let me just, I’ll write it later. And so they pushed my date to March, 2020. [00:20:49] Miri: And I was like, how about December? You know, like what’s up? Nothing’s happening. [00:20:53] Vince: Nothing happens in March. [00:20:53] Miri: I’m going to make no sales. And well, here we are. Right. It was locked down and not only was it locked down the message here about putting your customer at the heart of your brand story. Just began to resonate immediately. [00:21:07] Miri: People were calling me. I mean, I had to stop taking calls because people were like, Mary, what do I do now? What’s the story? Do I tell? We are literally like, do I sell right now? What is what is what’s happening? How do I in a lot of this is spoken here in the book. And here’s to your question. How do we integrate story into our marketing plan? [00:21:24] Miri: Story really is integrated as part of your brand mission. Your story really has to be asking yourself. It’s really creating an end to end machine. Bringing all of the players in, and it has to start from the top. And I know you have a lot of, you know, top leaders here listening and CEOs. And I have to say it starts with you. [00:21:42] Miri: Uh, a lot of your marketing people may be already trying, have been trying for a while and it won’t get done. It will not be infused and integrated the right way. If you don’t make this part of the strategy, it’s as simple as that. And why is it important to make it part of the strategy? Because if you don’t, you’re going to have pockets of it here and there, and it’s not going to be cohesive. [00:22:01] Miri: And so it might look like you’re working on a story, maybe, Oh, we’re going to do a story as part of a marketing plan. A campaign, campaigns come and go. So an actual brand story, uh, strategy really is the leader saying, Okay, what stories are we going to tell and how and when? And who is going to go tell those stories? [00:22:19] Miri: And it’s literally having those questions. And sales should be there. And marketing should be there. And operations should be there. And customer service should be there. Everybody should be on that table. Why? Because marketing is over here talking about a product that may not be available to this customer yet. [00:22:34] Vince: Right. [00:22:35] Miri: And then we go and we put a lot of money on that campaign. We know this. And then they go out and the customer’s like, where was my product? And it’s not GA. And so the story fails. [00:22:43] Vince: That’s right. [00:22:43] Miri: The brand fails in telling the story. And so if you have these people brought in, in one table and say, okay, what is your, what are your priorities? [00:22:50] Miri: What are your priorities? And then look to where the priorities, if they don’t meet, you’re not telling the stories right. You’re not. [00:22:56] Vince: So I want to stop you here because I, when, when we outline successful partnering, we talk about having your mission statement basically for the partnership. Like what’s the better together. [00:23:07] Vince: Yeah. So if you’re a partner with Microsoft, what’s, what’s the one thing that makes you stand out? Yeah. And then what you’re saying is you build a unified brand story that goes across each of the Business functions of the organization, right? So you go across finance, you go across marketing, customer success, product, engineering, [00:23:27] Miri: design, sales, sales, [00:23:29] Vince: everyone has to be aligned to this brand story. [00:23:31] Miri: That’s it. And it starts with you decide the mission, like back to you. You, you took the Microsoft mission and made it for the partners. Same thing. How does it align to, for us, right? We exist to empower every personal organization. So how am I, what does that mean to me in my sales org? Yes. What does empower mean? [00:23:47] Miri: Empowerment mean to every person and every organization. In this case, my organizations could be public sector, and so there’s a lot that I need to advocate for there. So it’s very broad and it’s broad and broad. On purpose. On purpose, so that you can deliver it and, and, and succinctly make it part of, you know, let your, your teams make it part of their mission within their org. [00:24:07] Miri: So it starts with the leader infusing that in, in every aspect and keeping people accountable. How shared priorities. Um, you know, I think it’s important for us to have a shared priority across all of them. If it’s not part of the priorities, and nobody’s, you know, if the bonus doesn’t depend on them, they’re not going to do it. [00:24:21] Miri: It sounds nice, but they’re not going to do it. So if you say, hey, this, you know, part of our priorities is diversity and inclusion, all those big things, storytelling, making sure we tell the story correctly, and we still tell the story succinctly, and everybody’s telling the story, you know, cohesively, is one of our core priorities at the company. [00:24:39] Miri: How often and how long until other people tell it. [00:24:42] Vince: I love it. I love it. So, you know, think about this. This is this is where an area where partnerships fail because marketing is off doing its own brand. They’re all marketing. Yes. Directly to customers. Yes. Not inclusive of the partners that they’re working with. [00:24:56] Vince: Not telling the story together. Or the process itself. Or the process itself. [00:25:00] Miri: And so, and we mean well, [00:25:02] Miri: But it’s so siloed, and we mean well, and time and time again, it fails. A campaign may give you, and we know campaigns, they do yield results, but they’re short lived. A brand story is going to be literally the continuous. [00:25:14] Miri: The continuous narrative of how you’re what’s happening with your company and why we think about especially now and so the social climate. Let’s talk about that. [00:25:23] Vince: Yes, let’s talk about social. I mean, it’s it’s actually very sad in some respects what it’s doing to our young people. [00:25:29] Miri: And what what is doing to our young people is those young people are actually gonna become our customers, by the way. [00:25:34] Miri: So they’re being they’re they’re being. They’re being, uh, educated in certain ways in certain, uh, areas, and they’re being infused and overwhelmed with content and your brand no man, no matter where it is in the in the in the in field. That generation is being we’re all being impacted. And so when you think about social issues, and you think about your brand right now, those kids Gen Gen Z Gen A they are looking at your brand and asking themselves. Why do I want to be? [00:26:01] Vince: Yes, [00:26:02] Miri: either part of that brand or work for that brand eventually or buy from the brand, whatever, whatever, however they come in touch with your brand. And it goes beyond the product. It goes beyond product. I mean, there’s, I could have the same exact product. And if one brand, one customer sells it at, you know, let’s say two t shirts, uh, and one is sold at 20 bucks, the other one sold at 50 bucks. [00:26:22] Miri: But the one that’s selling at 20, uh, 50 bucks is, uh, talking about, you know, social responsibility, corporate responsibility. Those kids are buying that T-shirt. They are. And it’s, it could be the same price, it could be the same product. It doesn’t matter. So now the stories go beyond the product before, you know, back when we could just say, sell a really good product and we’re good. [00:26:41] Miri: Um, but the reality is it’s no longer. And so we are competing against a, a really incredible scenario environment that it’s overwhelming with content, overwhelming with social issues and demands from our consumers. Yeah. That are saying, what is your brand really about? Are you really, is your supply chain really green? [00:27:01] Miri: And they’re keeping us accountable. So it doesn’t, it doesn’t just sound nice to say we’re going to be green by 2025. Come 2025, they’re going to be like, okay, tell us how you became green. That’s a story. You’re telling stories. Are you lying to us? And so that is the accountability that our consumers expect of us. [00:27:16] Miri: Those consumers are going to become partners. They’re going to become, you know, employers, employees. And so we have to really think about that story. [00:27:23] Vince: Gen Z is really big on authenticity. Yes. We’re starting to see that now. It’s permeating through everything. [00:27:30] Miri: They won’t buy a product, even if it’s really good, if they feel like their, you know, the company they’re buying from doesn’t align to their values, for example. [00:27:36] Miri: That’s happening. [00:27:37] AD: We are thrilled to announce our partnership within partner software, the world’s leading provider of partner management technologies, serving over 4 million partners globally. In partner excels in delivering cutting edge solutions for partner relationship management and partner marketing automation. [00:27:55] Vince: Their robust platform offers essential tools like program compliance tracking, customizable partner journeys, and comprehensive business planning. These features empower partner teams to swiftly transition from program design to achieving maximum value. Impartner is dedicated to supporting partner ecosystems everywhere and continues to innovate with new modules like Analytics Studio designed to help track and maximize the ROI of your partner program. [00:28:26] Vince: For more information, visit impartner.com. [00:28:34] Vince: Well, you work for one of the best companies in the world. I mean, Satya has been recognized as CEO of the Year, multiple years now. Yes. I want to ask you what you see from the best and where, what do you see, where, where do you see when organizations fail on this brand and storytelling? [00:28:48] Miri: Empathy. [00:28:49] Vince: Empathy. [00:28:50] Miri: Empathy. Um, I remember when Satya wrote his book, Hit Refresh. Yes. He actually, I don’t know if anybody knows, but he actually wrote an employee version for all of us. Where he actually has his own notes in it. [00:29:03] Vince: I did not know that. [00:29:04] Miri: It’s fascinating. And [00:29:05] Vince: I referenced the book quite a bit. [00:29:07] Miri: loved it. [00:29:07] Miri: And I ate it up. I just opened it and never closed it. I ate that book up immediately. I have to say, it changed my perspective on empathy. Um, before that, I thought empathy was a personality trait, which I did not have, you know, I was like, not an empath. Uh, my kids will remind me of that all the time and they were like, you’re cruel. [00:29:25] Miri: And I’m like, that’s okay. It’ll be fine. You’ll be fine. Um, but, um, [00:29:29] Vince: Get over it. [00:29:31] Miri: Yeah. Get over it. It’ll be fine. I’m like, no, don’t be a flake. And, um, and, but no, I mean, I read it and he spoke about his own stories and he, I can not forget the story he tells there where he was, you know, he, He was applying for a role internally and the, he had checked all the marks. [00:29:47] Miri: He was good for it. He had all the skillsets and then the, the hiring manager said, okay, um, let me, you know, let me ask you this question. If you saw a baby on the floor crying, what would you do? And he’s like, I don’t know, I’ll, I’ll look for their mom. I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. He’s like, you pick it up. [00:30:03] Miri: So he failed the interview. [00:30:04] Vince: Yeah, he failed. [00:30:05] Miri: He failed the interview because he had no empathy. And that was such a lesson to him. And then to all of us, he started this idea around empathy being a skill set. And I was like, Oh, okay, then I’m going to, I’m going to go get that skill set. I’m going to really work on this. [00:30:19] Miri: Empathy shows up in so many ways for a brand. In so many ways for partnership, because again, it has the opportunity, it’s pregnant with opportunity of you making your audience think of you as a human, so you win, they’re more forgiving when you make a mistake, which we’re bound to, it’s okay, uh, they’re more apt to being on your corner when they get to know you a little bit more than just the brand, um, and, and then you get to empathize with them. [00:30:43] Miri: What does that look like even today? And now we can introduce AI. It enables us to get past our biases. And our lived experiences and in our own, uh, our own ideas. And it enables us to open up a space where we can really see people and companies for who they are and what they’re trying to do. And then we can help each other. [00:31:01] Miri: So I think it’s great. [00:31:02] Vince: How do you build empathy into an organization and into a brand? [00:31:06] Miri: Again, when you tell the stories, Immediately you become, you start to empathize, right? So, I have told stories, you’ve seen my personal stories. [00:31:14] Vince: Yes, I have. Yes, I have. [00:31:15] Miri: Um, and I’ve shared [00:31:16] Vince: And we’re going to talk about some of those. [00:31:18] Miri: Yeah, yeah. And so I’ve been, I decided, actually, to start sharing those stories publicly. And it wasn’t easy. I’m talking about on social media. It wasn’t easy for me to share. And then I realized, well, if I don’t share, I could be navigating this on my own, and nobody will ever understand. But if I share, people will look at me, and they will. [00:31:37] Miri: Not that they will have ever gone through something like this, but they can understand, you know, I, I can talk about something that makes you makes me embarrassed. You may not have the same story, but you felt embarrassment. So we meet at the embarrassment. We meet at the feeling. Yeah. And that’s so powerful because you’re like, Oh, I, I cringe because I mean, I can understand you could, I can understand embarrassment. [00:31:55] Miri: Maybe not, maybe not the same scenario, but you should understand what I may have felt. And so that is the power of story. It’s packed with this idea that we can, we can invoke emotion from people and the emotions remind us that we are human and reminds the, remind us of the human experience and the human connection. [00:32:11] Miri: And that’s where we need each other. It’s so powerful. [00:32:13] Vince: You have to be vulnerable and you were very vulnerable for those who don’t know you were a cancer survivor. [00:32:18] Miri: Yes. [00:32:19] Vince: And you were very vulnerable about that time. [00:32:21] Miri: Yeah. [00:32:22] Vince: And most people don’t feel that in, like in, in our corporate domain, like LinkedIn. Yeah. [00:32:29] Miri: Yeah. [00:32:29] Vince: Like that’s not something we should do. Right. A lot of people say, well, that’s your personal life. That’s not your professional life. Tell us more about how you, how you think about that. [00:32:38] Miri: Yeah. I actually, I, I, and I should say, I didn’t. actually share the entire thing. So I was very, I decided first to share where I was going cause I was going to be away for a while. [00:32:47] Miri: I had to have a lot of procedures. So I wanted to just say, Hey, I’m going to pause. And that’s when I first decided. But beyond that, I knew that this was going to be life changing for me. I knew it. And so I wanted to preface it with I, it’s going to, this is where I’m at right now and this is where you’re going to see me later. [00:33:05] Miri: Um, and all of that I’m going to be sharing as much as I can because of the learnings that I’m going through. And this is what story does, um, at the corporate level and at the personal level. We have conventional wisdom, right? It’s like, you know, let’s be good to each other, be good to your neighbor. Okay. [00:33:21] Miri: The conventional wisdom becomes so much more powerful when you add on your story on top of that. And now it’s your, it’s your lived experience through the conventional wisdom. Like, Hey, be good. Okay. Well, why be good? Well, because your time is, your time is marked. I mean, you’re just all the things. And so my decision to do that was important because I wanted to share that at the, at the personal level and actually became a corporate thing at the same time because of so many women came to me that were at corporate and saying, Miri, I went through or I’m going through or I just got diagnosed. [00:33:52] Miri: And so it, it infuses the actual company. When you, because one individual, all of us, right, all of us infuse what’s the culture. So it’s, I’m part of that culture. And so you’re part of that culture. If you become more human, more vulnerable, you drive a cold. It’s a, it’s a culture changer. It really is. [00:34:09] Vince: Yeah. [00:34:11] Vince: Any advice for our viewers and listeners, CEOs, executive teams on how to do what you just did. [00:34:19] Miri: Yeah. To me and to all of you, I think. The important thing here is to ask yourself, what is your legacy beyond the company? What is your personal legacy that you can integrate as part of the company? You’re there, you’re driving, you’re leading, uh, you have the charge, you know where you’re going. [00:34:37] Miri: Hopefully you know where you’re taking the company and your own goals there. But there’s a person, there’s a personal question you got to ask yourself. Why am I doing this? Why do I get up every day to lead something like this? Why is this important to the world? And then to me, And if you’re able to, and if you can be vulnerable with that question, and then share it with people, I mean, they’ll eat it up. [00:34:56] Miri: They want to know. Everybody wants to know. And that’s what Satya did, that’s what leaders that are admired do, is that they’ll integrate their own, their own life philosophies into the why. What is your why? Uh, not just because you get paid a lot of money, but what is your why? Yes. And, and that is a very personal question that infuses really the mission of your company. [00:35:17] Miri: People want to know why you’re there, why you’re leading, why you’re waking up every morning to do this. And if you can answer that question and actually be, be open with it, uh, you might be surprised, very surprised about how people tune into you as a leader and tune into the brand as a result. [00:35:31] Vince: Yeah. Some of the best posts I do on LinkedIn, the most viewed or commented upon or when I’m vulnerable. [00:35:37] Vince: I talk about a failure. I talk about maybe the fact that now my son works in my company with me or talk about that journey that we’re on and [00:35:46] Miri: yeah, [00:35:46] Vince: yeah, [00:35:47] Miri: we want to see humans. We want to remind ourselves that we are human, that we have this connection across times and, and, you know, ages. And it’s at the end of the day, it’s business, people doing people. [00:35:58] Miri: It’s not just business doing business. [00:35:59] Vince: Absolutely. So, uh, Microsoft partners. [00:36:03] Miri: Yes, [00:36:03] Vince: we know. We know a few. We have one actually. So I was like, you have many roles. [00:36:08] Miri: I do. [00:36:09] Vince: So, uh, we had our recent conversation. You’re like, Hey, I’m now a Microsoft partner. I was like, Wow, wait, what? How does that happen? So let’s dive into this latest endeavor of yours. [00:36:19] Miri: Yeah. So first of all, I’m going to say this is the first time I’m actually publicly talking about it. So here you got it out of me. I think I’m actually, I don’t know. I, I, I won’t say that it’s true, but I don’t, it’s check that. Check me, please. I think I’m right now the only employee and partner at Microsoft and how this happened. [00:36:35] Vince: That’s right. How does that happen? So you have an MPN number too then. I do. Yeah, so congratulations. Thank you. I have one as well, by the way. I’m an MPN. [00:36:43] Miri: I’m going to go for MVP. Okay. [00:36:45] Vince: Awesome. [00:36:45] Miri: How did this happen? It happened, again, and it’s interesting. It happened because through my journey, so this was a two and a half year journey, um, I began to think about my collection of, Stories at Microsoft, and that involved a lot of my personal experiences involved women that I mentor and I have mentored or that have mentored me men that have mentored me and just like just being a woman in tech and the navigation of that. [00:37:12] Miri: And I remember one of my mentors said. Cause I mentor women one on one and, and, and he was like, Mary, you can’t scale that. And I’m like, I know, but I love it. It’s like, you can’t scale it. You Do something that, it’s like, if you, if that back to your legacy, what is your personal legacy? You can do that. And you know, nobody will find out and it’ll be like 20 people. [00:37:29] Miri: But if you, if you scale it, you, you’re just, it just becomes global. It becomes ubiquitous and you can’t be everywhere. I wish I could. And so me too. Yeah, exactly. You and I were talking just backstage about, you know, having conferences and I’m like, I keep saying no, I just don’t have the time. I love it. So, uh, sitting, this is incredible. [00:37:48] Miri: Every time I had a surgery, I had five. Every time I had a surgery, my recovery time was maybe, I don’t know, six to eight weeks. I was in bed, and I was just thinking. I was just thinking. I put all my electronics away. I had my, I’m a writer, so I just journaled, journaled. And I had downloads, and ideas, and downloads. [00:38:04] Miri: And I just, they didn’t make sense at the beginning. I was like, I’m probably drugged. I’m like, this is, this is all the anesthesia wearing off, but I just good meds and I was just writing, writing, writing. And then my last one, which was July 30th last year, so like last one, I just came actually from my doctor for a minute. [00:38:21] Miri: Was I just just a year? Well, just now. Yeah. Wow. [00:38:24] Vince: Yeah. Congratulations. [00:38:25] Miri: Thank you. And so, um, I, It all of a sudden came together like a puzzle piece, and I was like, Oh my gosh, I got it. And it couldn’t have happened before because of the timing. So what this is, and then I pitched it to Microsoft and they say yes, it’s just crazy. [00:38:39] Miri: This is um, a large language model, now built on Azure, yay. Um, it is think ChatGPT meets Chief. You know Chief? [00:38:47] Vince: Yes, of course I know Chief. [00:38:48] Miri: So, okay. So basically, the, the large, the GPT model, instead of you going and inquiring, you know, like, sourcing from the internet, it’s actually women coming in, asking whatever questions, and the source is other women. [00:39:02] Miri: It’s expert women. That are going to come in and answer the question very, very personalized, very, yes. And so for the women experts and authors on that side, we actually, it’s going to be a model where they actually get royalties every time the AI uses their answers. So we’re building their empires. [00:39:19] Miri: Fascinating. And then the users can meet me, right? They’d be like, hey, storytelling. Hey, you know, I want to scale my business with storytelling. Well, Miri, the source says, Miri says, right? And so you get me, you don’t have to read my whole book. It could be boring. I don’t know. Was it boring? [00:39:33] Vince: Wasn’t boring at all. [00:39:35] Vince: Come on. I’m throwing this thing apart for granted. Some people [00:39:37] Miri: just don’t read the whole book. And to be honest, to be fair, some people just want like cliff notes. Hey, tell me how this applies to me. [00:39:43] Vince: You have to sign my book today. [00:39:44] Miri: Okay, I’ll do that. Excellent. Um, but so it’s going to take the, it’s going to take the entire knowledge base and it’s just going to make, personalize it for you, what you need for that purpose. [00:39:53] Miri: moment in time. And so it’s by women, for women. I’m really proud to say, uh, now on Azure. And yeah, I, I’m a partner. [00:40:01] Vince: I love it. And so how are you going to make this available? I mean, obviously today we can announce it, but when is it available? [00:40:07] Miri: My partner’s going to be like, uh, so, okay. So we are planning to launch it for users by March, hopefully March 8th, next year. [00:40:14] Vince: We have a little time. [00:40:15] Miri: But I am actually connecting, connecting with women who want to start building the AI we’re building now. Love it. Um, and these are experts. So if you consider yourself an expert, uh, in any field, in any way, we actually have niche areas, so it doesn’t have to, it’s, it’s all the verticals of a business, it is actually wellness as well. [00:40:32] Miri: So the holistic part of all the things that we do, um, and you want, you don’t have to have a book. You can say, Hey, I have a method that I want to create. The AI will also help you. With a questionnaire and put that together. So if you don’t have it all succinctly, you’re like you’ve mentored women before you haven’t, you know, you could put it together. [00:40:48] Miri: Um, so we are inviting women who are experts to start actually building with us. So connect with me at the end. [00:40:54] Vince: And is it only for women? [00:40:56] Miri: Yes. [00:40:57] Vince: Okay. Because I was thinking on the partner side, I know many women leaders, experts that I could bring to you. [00:41:03] Miri: Please bring them all.And I have been asked the question why actually, um, actually I connected with Chris Kapp about this before and I love him. [00:41:13] Vince: I love Chris Chris Kapp is sell for the people that don’t know. [00:41:16] Miri: so he asked the same question. Why for women only? And I was like, well, hold on. Just like Facebook, right? They came out and did something. It’s soft for something for. Then it went mainstream and it will probably, absolutely. [00:41:28] Miri: But for us, um, for me, we have something to solve immediately. And it’s that equity, uh, and that accessibility to women. And that I didn’t have, and I don’t have still. And so it’s really, it’s really something that we want to provide and come out with, go to market with, and then we’ll open it up. But really for me is, my legacy is to be, [00:41:52] Vince: Um, I’m so excited about this. [00:41:54] Vince: I can’t wait. We’ll share it with the world. [00:41:57] Miri: Yeah. [00:41:57] Vince: And I’ll introduce you to many people that maybe you don’t know that. [00:42:00] Miri: I can’t wait. Yeah. I can’t wait to meet everybody. [00:42:02] Vince: So let’s talk about meeting people. Um, we are hosting an event in Dallas, Texas, October 22nd and 23rd, and you’re going to be there. [00:42:10] Miri: I am. for the invitation. I am. [00:42:12] Vince: I am so excited to have you speak. [00:42:14] Miri: Thank you. [00:42:15] Vince: Uh, what are we going to talk about? [00:42:17] Miri: Yeah. So we talked a little bit of storytelling as a strategy and just, you know, high level. Really? We got high level. I’m going to get a little more granular on storytelling in the future of storytelling with AI. [00:42:29] Miri: How have we, and especially me in my role, been integrating AI and things like copilot in the different areas to deliver stories that matter and to get through the junk, to get through the just the fluff and deliver succinct, content to our audiences because they deserve it. [00:42:47] Vince: Nice. So you’ll be able to take us through like how to best use ChatGBT as a storyteller. [00:42:52] Miri: Absolutely. [00:42:53] Vince: Oh, that’s fascinating. And what we’re doing at Microsoft, [00:42:55] Miri: we’ll be sharing prompts. We’ll be sharing, I’ll do a demo. So a lot of people love the live demo. So that’ll be fun. Um, but also like what prompts work and how to prompt. Uh, so talking about that, basically the power of AI right now, people are being, you know, Kind of skittish around how to use it. [00:43:09] Miri: They think it’s like, it’s not Google, by the way. I mean, I love Google, but it’s not, it’s not like a search engine, right? It’s, it’s really a, uh, think of it as a smart intern, you know, it’s a, it’s, it’s something that can help you and can enable efficiently. Um, plus you get to train it at the same time and the more you train it. [00:43:28] Miri: The more output you’re going to get out of it. So a lot of times now, especially as CEOs, you’re like, well, do I have to go hire a storyteller? Uh, no, you’re probably you’re, you’re marketing teams doing some of that. Some salespeople are. So now that you introduce something like GPT models, uh, you are getting a lot of time back and they can use it. [00:43:45] Miri: They should be using it for storytelling, which is going to work. Okay. [00:43:48] Vince: If you haven’t registered yet, right. It’s a registrations open. Theultimatepartner. com go to the registration events page and sign up because Miri is going to be out. I mean, it’s just outstanding having you here today, but on stage is going to be a whole nother level. [00:44:02] Vince: It’s going to be [00:44:03] Miri: fun. [00:44:03] Vince: And I think we’re going to have some of these books available for, for people too. Great. We might be giving a, having a giveaway. We’ll talk about that. [00:44:10] Miri: Okay. [00:44:10] Vince: But you have to come. Um, I have a favorite question. Okay. That I love to ask my guests. Yes. And, um, I just found out the New York Times has stole my question. [00:44:22] Vince: They’re starting to ask people this same question. I have been asking this question for years now. [00:44:28] Miri: Ah. [00:44:28] Vince: But, Miri, you’re hosting a dinner party. [00:44:31] Miri: Okay. [00:44:31] Vince: And you can invite any three guests. [00:44:34] Miri: Okay. [00:44:34] Vince: From the present. [00:44:35] Miri: Mm hmm. [00:44:36] Vince: Or the past. [00:44:37] Miri: Okay. [00:44:38] Vince: One or two guests have actually given us guests from the future. [00:44:42] Vince: Pretty interesting. [00:44:44] Vince: And we can talk about where we’re going to host this party. I’d love to hear where you, like a favorite place to have it. [00:44:48] Miri: Okay. [00:44:49] Vince: Whom would you invite and why? [00:44:51] Miri: So I have three, three choices. Oh my gosh, that’s a hard question. I remember you asked me this question before. I think I’m going to give it a shot. [00:44:59] Vince: You have to use different answers. [00:45:00] Miri: I’m gonna. I don’t remember what I said. Okay. Every time it’s going to be different. Um, okay. So I, I, I think I would like to have the, the, uh, the, the dinner in Morocco. I’ll tell you about it. Yeah, the food is so good. [00:45:13] Vince: Is it? Oh my gosh. Because we were talking about Italy earlier. [00:45:16] Miri: Italy is Italy. But Morocco has this fusion of Arab and, um, and French food. And it’s just, the, the flavors are incredible. So we could have a really beautiful dinner. Sounds fabulous. In Morocco, like overlooking the desert or something. Um, I would definitely would love to have Da Vinci. [00:45:32] Vince: Leonardo da Vinci [00:45:33] Miri: Leonardo da Vinci and I would love to have him because I just want to hear his his brain like I just want to understand what is what’s top of mind. This is a person who I mean talk about stories. He built everything. He did everything. He, he was just, I mean, [00:45:49] Vince: First helicopter. [00:45:51] Miri: He was everything. He was a painter. He was an architect. He did so many things. And I’m like, how can somebody just, how can all of us really do all the things? And we can. And he’s just, and I would love to ask him, how, how do you do all the, how did you do all the things? Like, how, what was going on in your head? [00:46:04] Miri: Um, and one of the things that I love about him is that he activated stories. In everything that he did. He had a story of the why a lot of times. We really, yeah. And so he’s, you know, why did I do this? He took a lot of notes. He took a lot of notes. And Milan, there’s a whole, there’s a whole gallery actually of his notes. [00:46:21] Miri: Fascinating. Uh, and he’s just explaining like his, his why, like why he saw something like that, why he thought about something. It’s just, I love the why. I think it’s a great, great, great thing. I would love to see Steve Jobs . [00:46:34] Vince: I would as well. I mean, his, um, you know, we, Microsoft, Apple was always the bad guys, but what an amazing marketer and storyteller, storyteller. [00:46:45] Miri: And I, so I think he changed the game for us in tech. I think he was the one that showed up and said, I can sell a product or I can sell a story. And if I sell the story, I’m going to sell the product and more. And he did that really, really good. I mean, we can all attest to that. [00:47:01] Vince: There is a famous uh, video of him leading a group of marketers when he first came back into apple and the first campaign, the geniuses whatever it was called the um, Crazy the crazy no the crazies. [00:47:15] Miri: Oh the crazies. Yes. [00:47:16] Vince: Yeah, that is just fascinating. [00:47:18] Miri: So good And then I would love to meet one of my ancestors And I I’ve been you know, really doing an entire just kind of ancestry I’ve been on this journey. [00:47:31] Vince: Take us through your ancestry. [00:47:32] Miri: Yeah. Well, so I was, I was, I’m born in Venezuela and I came here when I was 13 and I’m actually, so I’m a, I’m like 50 percent indigenous. [00:47:40] Miri:. And then European from Spain and Portugal, the other 50. [00:47:44] Vince: Cause there’s also a lot of Italians in Venezuela as well. [00:47:47] Miri: There is a lot of Italians. I didn’t get that passport, man. I wish I had. There is a lot of Italians. Actually, Venezuela, Venezuela is, uh, the Italians dubbed it little Venecia. [00:47:56] Vince: That’s where the name came from. [00:47:58] Miri: Yes, that’s where the story came from. Um, and so I would love to meet my ancestors because I, part of our own stories come from our past. [00:48:08] Vince: Yes. [00:48:08] Miri: And they inform our future. And the more I know about them, the more I know about myself and where, where I’m going, where my legacy is going. Oh, [00:48:14] Vince: I love this. [00:48:15] Miri: And I have been doing a lot of work of, well, through my own, you know, medical journey. [00:48:20] Miri: I had to really think about genetics because I was actually diagnosed. I have a, the BRCA gene is a gene mutation and that’s, I had no, I was the first one in my family diagnosed with the BRCA gene and, and even though it never skips generation. So somebody in my family has it on either side. So I started to really learn about epigenetics and, uh, and gene mutations and I thought how interesting this entire thing is. [00:48:41] Miri: We, we have so much of us that is integrated in our story, in our history that we don’t think about. But when we think about it, it makes it I have an engineer that I mentor and he was like, you know, I, he’s like, I love what I do here. He’s at Microsoft. He’s at, he’s at Xbox. And he goes, but I’m always, it’s like, I always want to work with my hands. [00:48:59] Miri: I always want to work with my hands. And it’s like, I love to code, but I just want to work with my hands. And so we did the work with him and he finds out that he has like this insane Irish background. And they’re like, the, like his, like, Great, great, great parents, great parents, how like they were like, uh, smiths. [00:49:15] Miri: And so he’s like, that’s where it comes from. It’s in my blood. And so it’s part of like our story. And I think when we integrate that and then we enable tech as part of that, cause we didn’t have that technology. We have it today. My gosh, we have like, we can, we can really leave a great legacy, a personal one and a corporate one. [00:49:33] Miri: Uh, while we, when we infuse our ancestry plus technology. [00:49:36] Vince: So this is so fascinating because as you know, I’m going to Italy, [00:49:39] Miri: I know, [00:49:40] Vince: and I’m going back to the villages where my grandparents are from. [00:49:43] Miri: I know. And I cannot wait to hear those stories. [00:49:45] Vince: Oh my goodness. [00:49:46] Miri: You’re gonna just like it’s it and you it will change your life. [00:49:49] Miri: I’m going to tell you that because it gives you mission. It gives you it reminds you of where you come from and where you’re going to go. It gives you mission and it just it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful. [00:49:58] Vince: So can I come to the party? Do I get to go? I can bring dessert. [00:50:03] Miri: Well, you’re the host, so you’re already invited. [00:50:05] Vince: Morocco sounds fascinating. I can see this beautiful desert setting. [00:50:10] Miri: Sunset. [00:50:11] Vince: White tablecloth. Tents. I love it. I love it. [00:50:14] Miri: Music. They play a lot of, like, weird, like, I shouldn’t call it weird, very intricate instruments that they have, like, handmade instruments. And it’s just beautiful. It’s wonderful. [00:50:21] Miri: Wonderful. [00:50:22] Vince: Wonderful. So, um, I really want to thank you. So great of you to come up here. So great to have you on this podcast. Um, we have a lot of listeners and viewers that are trying to align for their success. Um, you know, this is a, I call this the tectonic shifts we live, we’re living through right now. [00:50:41] Vince: Yes. I mean, this is a time like no other. I think it started during COVID. I mean, if you think about what’s happened geopolitically and just our lives. Economically, our world has changed. Uh, companies don’t operate the same way that they did. The cultures have changed. Hyperscalers, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon really dominating the world. [00:51:00] Vince: I mean, everything is changing right now. What’s the best advice you can give to our listeners and viewers watching today to optimize for their success going into 2025? [00:51:11] Miri: Great question. Great question. Um, you’re all leaders because you’re doing something good, right? Already you’re all where you are because you’ve attained great skills to lead a team to lead an organization, uh, to lead an entire company. [00:51:25] Miri: And that’s all wonderful. Um, but I ask of you to think again about legacy, personal legacy and empathy. And how can you turn that into your superpower? Um, how does that look for you for your team? How does that look Um, you know, it’s it’s it’s important. For your your customers and your partners. And when you think about that, it may look different to all of you. [00:51:49] Miri: But when you think about it, it really it’s an exchange. Of energy that you’re giving and that you will see will be begin to change culture. You have the power to really change that culture and be be nimble through all the things that are happening right now. Everybody looks to you. You’re the leader. [00:52:06] Miri: Everybody looks to you to for the mission, but not just the goals. The people mission. The culture mission because if you have a great culture, you know this, um, they’re gonna do what you need them to do. They’re gonna just they’re gonna be there. They’re gonna want to be there. So it’s all about culture. [00:52:21] Miri: It’s all about. It’s all about people. You know, everybody’s asking themselves the same question. What is my legacy? Uh, where am I going? And if they can attach their personal legacy to yours, you got them. I am attached to the Microsoft legacy because our leader has infused that in us. And I’m there and I wake up every day to empower somebody to empower something. [00:52:38] Miri: Uh, and that’s my legacy. And so I’m able to actually Do other things under that, that same umbrella. So can people say the same thing? Can your people say I’m attached personally, emotionally connected to this mission? Because my leader, that is his legacy and it goes beyond, you know, the numbers and the corporation. [00:52:55] Vince: Yeah. The Stoics have a term for this and it’s, I’m going to butcher it, but I think it’s memento morte, which means remember that we’re, we’re only here. We’re all going to die. We’re all mortals. We’re all going to die. Yes. And so what do we want our legacy to be? [00:53:10] Miri: That’s it. Ask yourself. [00:53:11] Vince: Yeah. This is fascinating. [00:53:12] Vince: I love, I love so much having you here today. [00:53:15] Miri: Thank you for having me. [00:53:15] Vince: And I’m so excited to host you in, in October. [00:53:17] Miri: I can’t wait. [00:53:19] Vince: Thank you so much, Miri. Thank you. For being an amazing guest, an amazing leader, and, uh, writing an incredible book, which is in, uh, you’re, you’ve had your second edition now, so we’re going to have the updated version. [00:53:31] Miri: Yeah. I’ll bring you the updated version. All right. Terrific. [00:53:33] Vince: Thank you so much for joining Ultimate Partner. [00:53:35] Miri: Thank you. [00:53:36] Vince: And for our listeners and viewers, um, I can’t leave without saying this. Take the time today to share this interview with your friends. Uh, we would love to have also a five star review comments on LinkedIn, uh, YouTube, and subscribe to our channels on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple. [00:53:59] Vince: And I want to thank you for listening, joining, and viewing the Ultimate Guide to Partner. Thanks for listening to this episode of Ultimate Partner. Hopefully this episode and all the episodes we’ve recorded are helping you better align your partner strategy to achieve your greatest results. [00:54:16] Vince: So I want to ask you something. Have you implemented everything you’ve been learning and are you now achieving the growth and revenue objectives that you hope to achieve? If not, it’s time to take action. Now join ultimate partner experience. We’re building the community I’ve always dreamed about. With UPX, you get access to exclusive industry insights, unparalleled networking opportunities, tons of educational resources, and support from a community that shares your goals.[00:54:47] Vince: Join us now. Visit our website, theultimatepartner. com, and sign up today. | |||
| 268 – Cracking Microsoft SME&C: The Partner Playbook for Growth | 16 Jul 2025 | ||
Recorded Live at Ultimate Partner LIVE in Redmond, WA
Unlock the secrets to explosive growth in the digital landscape! Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Is your business ready for 2026? Welcome back to the Ultimate Partner® Podcast. Join Alistair Butler, Jennifer Weis, and Steve Hale in a deep dive into Microsoft’s Small, Medium, and Corporate (SME&C) business – aptly called the “Acre of Diamonds.” This session unveils how Microsoft’s intentional decision to establish SMEC as its fourth and fastest-growing region, now a $72 billion business, creates unparalleled opportunities for partners. Learn about the MCEM framework, a common methodology for solution selling, and how partners can strategically align their sales organizations, leverage Microsoft’s investments, and build a “win formula” to unlock immense customer value and profitability in this high-growth segment. Key Takeaways:
If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. https://youtu.be/a8jwaqWFNAAKey Tags: Microsoft partners, Acre of Diamonds, SME&C, mid-market, channel business, MCEM, Microsoft investments, partner programs, solution selling, Azure consumption, customer value, win formula, executive buy-in, sales alignment, territory planning, ATU, STU, ecosystem multiplier, partner profitability, co-sell, services revenue. . https://youtu.be/s33fltuizEoKey Tags: Microsoft, Lori Borg, Microsoft Partner, Go-to-Market, Technical Agility, Organizational Agility, AI, Agentic AI, Ecosystem, Partnerships, Growth Mindset, Digital Transformation, Business Strategy, Innovation, Technology, Microsoft Americas, Channel Partners, Sales, Marketing, Engineering, Customer Success, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Cloud, Satya Nadella, Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Change Management, Business Growth, Co-selling, Solution Areas, Digital Marketing, Cloud Computing, Microsoft Programs, Partner Hub, Future of Work, Tech Trends. Transcription: Transcription: [00:00:00] Jennifer Weis: My recommendation to a partner is if you wanna get serious in this space, go figure out what solution you’re gonna go sell. Build your wind formula, set how many goals you’re gonna do, and then build a territory plan. [00:00:14] Vince Menzione: We believe this time is like no other. We believe we refer to these as the tectonic shifts, [00:00:20] Intro: all the hyperscalers in the world, if you add them all together. Managed services will be one and a half times larger because it is the customer buying behavior that has created the need for all of us to rethink our models. Until we have data quality, the effectiveness of AI cannot be realized and effectiveness of the partnerships cannot be realized. Can you figure out, first, what your purpose is and how Microsoft can support your purpose and how you can support Microsoft purpose? Now we have a partnership. It’s the ultimate partnership. [00:00:52] Vince Menzione: Welcome to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzi, own your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. We just came off Ultimate Partner Live at Microsoft Redmond Campus. Our most powerful event yet over two days. We gathered top leaders to tackle the real shifts shaping our industry. If you weren’t in the room, this episode featuring Alistair Butler and Jen Weiss of Microsoft and Steve Hale, a partner from suse, brings us to the conversation of the acre of diamonds and how to achieve your greatest results. Working with Microsoft, it’ll bring us to the edge of what’s next. So let’s dive in now. So I’m excited to help lead this conversation with you all. And this is, has a very unique theme. It’s called Acre of Diamonds, and anybody who knows who about acre of Diamonds, it’s actually a fairly common term. It was a thesis. Russell Conwell who created Temple University in Philadelphia, which has become an outstandingly successful university system, wrote this thesis about your acre of diamonds. And I’ve been talking about how Microsoft, especially its S-M-C-E-N-C business, its small, medium enterprise and channel business, that mid-market is really your acre of diamonds. ’cause so many partners tried to focus in on the very top at the tip, tip of the top. And we talked about that. Yesterday, Nicole and I had that conversation about like focusing in this area. So I’m thrilled to welcome on stage. Alistair, Jennifer and Steve, thank you for joining us. Come on out. Come on out. Woohoo. We got some, a kickass team here. Jennifer, so great to see you. I heard [00:02:36] Jennifer Weis: that introduction. I’m a little, I’m [00:02:38] Vince Menzione: sorry. Whoops. I’m dropping things. I’m gonna grab it for you. [00:02:41] Jennifer Weis: Where to go. [00:02:41] Vince Menzione: Yeah. I didn’t want to get. You know, start attaching. Thanks. Good to see Alison. I don’t think I can live up to that side. See my friend introduction. Oh, we know. We all kind of know that. So, um, we’ve got an incredible panel conversation today and I really wanted to spend some time with each of you. I thought we’d take a moment just from a context perspective, have you intro, because I did a little bit of an introduction, but I didn’t do it justice, to have each of you introduce yourselves. Your roles in your organizations, and then we can talk about like, how do we take advantage of this business opportunity. So Steve, [00:03:13] Steve Hale: we’ll start with you since great to see you, Vince. Great to see you, sir. Well, it’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks so much for the invitation. I appreciate it. Real. Uh, quick background. I think I’ve worked in four different buildings around campus here, over my, my career. But, uh, you know, right now I run, uh, software, uh, partnerships at suse. So it’s a really a pleasure to be here with all of you. So great to have you in the room. Alistair. [00:03:35] Alistair Butler: Thank you for the opportunity. Lovely to be here, Vince. So good morning everybody. My name’s Alistair Butler. I run our, um, mid-market West business here in our SME and C [00:03:47] Vince Menzione: business. Right. And you, and you’re even struggling with that we call SMC. I know, I know. We, [00:03:52] Alistair Butler: we, we, on the day it happened, we are, we EC now, but uh, we’ve moved a little bit past that. There was intentionality for it. Yeah, of course. Our mid-market customers, um, you know, we really wanted the enterprise piece in that small, medium enterprise and channels [00:04:08] Vince Menzione: and just to find that. Mar the, the, the scope that you have. ’cause it’s a very significant, you talk about it very casually. Yes. Like you have a lot of customers in that market. Yeah. [00:04:17] Alistair Butler: So, um, I think many of you would understand, um, Microsoft’s regions and SME and C as its fourth Yep. Uh, region. That’s a $72 billion business in, of its own right. Um, you can do the math on roughly what that’s going to be in the us. Um, but for me, I have, um. Um, small, medium, uh, corporate customers or enterprises. 5,000 of those through the western part of the us [00:04:41] Vince Menzione: Yes. That’s a very significant number. Absolutely. 5,000 just in the us in the western us. [00:04:47] Alistair Butler: Yeah. And then I have a peer, uh, Noman Act who has a similar sized business on the east, and then we have a Canadian team in the Latin team and a team. [00:04:54] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And after Jen, I’m gonna ask you a que another question about how your team is organized as well. Sure. But Jen, kick ass, by the way, I do know I’ve known you for many years. Um, you have an excellent reputation from partners about the work that you do in helping organizations, and I got to see up on stage yesterday as well. So, [00:05:13] Jennifer Weis: yeah. Well, thank you for having me. Here I am. My role today is I’m actually A PDM in our global SI organization, but I heard Vince mention some of my history and you talked to Lori this morning and you talked to Alyssa this morning and you’re asking the number of years, and I started counting back and I’m like, I’ve been in the Microsoft ecosystem for. 30 years, so, and we were just joking right? Outta school? Yeah, we were just joking behind back there. I said I was a Microsoft partner when I received a fax to put an internet email. For a company with Microsoft Mail, an exchange for, oh, beta was just coming out. So I’ve been, I’ve been in the Microsoft ecosystem since then and uh, I’ve worked for small sis, I’ve worked for medium size sis working on that. SMC or back then, I don’t remember. It was. Called SMB, I think we know it’s something else. And then I heard you mention CDW as the director of software sales at CDW. And that’s where kind of the conversation today will come in from what I did at CDW to take it from a, you know, 200 million to a billion dollar, you know, Microsoft business there just a number of years. And then went to an ISV. So I got the ISV part of it, a partner to partner part of it. Now I sitting here representing kind of the Microsoft PDM, but a lot of the stuff I do now is all the stuff that I did when I was a partner and how I learned to be agile and really evaluate every year what’s Microsoft doing and how am I gonna have to change the business and change it really quick to drive results. [00:06:48] Vince Menzione: And the work is that you do is very in instructional to organizations like Steve’s. About how to align for success. So I think it’ll be a little bit of a cross conversation here. You bet. But Alistair, I want to spend a moment here a little bit more of a double click. So first of all, 5,000 organizations is fairly significant. Yes. For any of you who don’t know, there’s probably about 11,000 enterprise organizations at the very, very top of the pyramid. Maybe even less than that today. ’cause it, you know, down. So you’ve got a number almost equal to that, just in the Western United States. Yes. And then you have sellers, you have leaders, you have, uh, managers or leaders underneath you as well. Yes. Talk about how your organization is structured a little bit for the, for the partner. Yes. [00:07:32] Alistair Butler: Very, very happy to. So one of the things that, uh, within Microsoft and end caps that the way we try to run the business, of course, is with consistency. So just like, um, leaders in the strategic parts of our business where they have an account team unit, an A TU, um, and then those are supported by our stews. Our, um, uh, specialist technical units we’re exactly the same. We’re exactly the same. So we have an a TU layer, and then we have our stews in the Azure space and biz apps and in modern work and, uh, and security. So, you know, there’s a number of layers to that, to, to get to that, uh, amount of reach or so. But I think one of the things that I would stress as to, um, where we are at now as a company, it was a very intentional decision, um, by Satya and, and, and Amy to, um. Create SME and C as it is now. Yes. This was a decision 18 months ago into Microsoft’s fourth. Region prior to and forever and a day, we were actually part of the geographic regions. That’s right. We would roll up to them, but, um, it’s now Microsoft’s largest region at $72 billion. It’s also, its fastest growing region at $72 billion. So, um, for any of you who have been around us for a while or worked with big companies, when a decision like that is made, it’s. Big. Yeah. All of a sudden we are not sharing resources with strategics. We have our own teams, uh, with uh, GPS, with um, our SE and O teams marketing. And that will take time to mature and of itself. But with the new leader that we have, um, we’re very much elevating, uh, the investment into, into, into the segment. And, uh, that should be opportunity for all of us. [00:09:28] Vince Menzione: And I just wanna differentiate for those who are watching and, and paying attention today. ’cause I, you bring up some interesting points. If you’ve been around Microsoft long enough as I have it, we, it was sort of a, we didn’t pay enough attention. We didn’t have the right rigor and we didn’t have consistency because every region, every geography, every industry, in fact, public sector being one of the industries would treat that part of the market differently. And we didn’t put the right level of investments depending on where the investments got laid across the business. By creating that fourth region, you created a level of consistency, dependability about execution structure, organizational structure, investments that did not exist in Microsoft. And that’s why to me, it has become an acre of retirements, [00:10:13] Alistair Butler: um, completely and. Um, to su to suggest that, you know, our success will, um, come with the partner community as part of that segment is a gross understatement. Yes. Everything that we are, uh, building, um, in our programs, in our M stem phases, in our training and enablement, um, is now going very much through a part lens. And, you know, that’s why it’s so wonderful to be chatting to a few folks here today [00:10:40] Vince Menzione: and. Just a few years ago. In fact, when it was first stood up, it wasn’t getting the same level of attention from the partners. It’s one of the reasons why we have you here. Yes. Uh, and it also wasn’t, um, set up in a way, or the commitment wasn’t quite there. I remember it was about a few years ago, first conversations I had with then the leader of the organization who was Kevin Piker about doubling down. Like it was the first like foot in the ground saying, we are gonna double down now we’re gonna bring partners in. Uh, you mentioned that having the scale of the organization, but you also have, I will say, I’ll suggest, uh. Your organization is structured so that you have maybe, uh, more accounts per rep Yes. Than when you get up to the very largest enterprises account. So I might have Coca-Cola and that’s my only account, but when I get into, which is very, a very significant organization’s, what you call small medium. Enterprise. They’re still very big companies and most companies, they are enterprise big enterprises [00:11:36] Alistair Butler: in other technology companies. Completely. It just speaks to Microsoft’s reach and brand and, you know, what’s over a $200 billion business today. But yeah, so look, the, at the higher strategics, you know, that’s a one to five type ratio in accounts. Then we get into majors growth. Um, that might be anything from five to. To 20. And then it’s our, then it’s our segment that comes in. We top out at 50, 60 accounts per rep, but it’s in that a TU and stew model, which we actually run, um, in pretty thoughtfully designed pods. So small teams are really hunting in those pods with their partners, um, with their partners. And, uh, um, the ability to reach the customers with that is with those partners. [00:12:22] Vince Menzione: I wanna dive in a little bit and I’m going to ask the perspective from the partners in the room. Steve, you and then also get Jennifer’s perspective as a partner development manager. How do you engage, how do you find the engagement? What, what, what is, what is the type of engagement you do? What, what are best practices you can share with our community here? [00:12:40] Steve Hale: Yeah. It’s, it’s a great question. I think, um, if, if I’m sitting in the audience and I, I don’t, I don’t know. What your size and scale is. If you’re a smaller consulting partner or you, you’re a part of a, a larger, you know, technology company, an ISV or who, whomever, the way I look at it is sort of the so what factor, like what we know that we have a huge ecosystem to be able to tap into with Microsoft. And so, you know, at the end of the day, how do we do it? How do we do that in a way that’s gonna help us drive solution selling? So, um, we were talking a little bit earlier. When, um, so I, when I did this at Microsoft, I just remember bomber would, would, he would pound his hand on the, on the conference room table, and he said, the field is always right unless proven wrong. So the business units were already saying, Hey, we’re gonna build these solutions. We’re gonna have this stuff, we’re gonna go to market. Yeah. And he would come in and pound his fist and say, the, the field is always right unless proven wrong. And so what he meant by that, where we’re. You know, preparing for the midyear reviews, right, with the 90 slide deck. And then the, you know, six point font was all about like, how are we gonna drive customer solution value? And that was the part that I loved about it. Right? That’s where. If you think about the history, you’re talking about a TU and the whole design of what happened back in Tailwind and all of that, um, what it was all about was making sure that we have a solution oriented selling mechanism that is integrated with partner solutions. And that’s the part that that’s beautiful about it. Microsoft has always been true to that part of it. And if you think about. The strategy of it is very different than, let’s say, I mean, not to, um, you know, say one is better than the other, but like an Oracle model or whatever, where it was a very direct selling motion at Microsoft. What, what bomber did was, which was cool, I. Was he peeled off a little bit of services margin out of the consulting business and fed it into the ecosystem part of it to help develop ISVs and and integrator partners. We were talking a little bit earlier about, you know, your, your history at Biby and, and you know. That is what it’s all about, is like if you really are in the ecosystem selling business, which Microsoft is, that’s great. Okay. Prove it and then show us that you, you, you have an alignment to that model in terms of how you do investment and help the businesses grow, and that literally becomes the ecosystem multiplier. So what [00:15:12] Vince Menzione: instruction would you have for the partners in the room and those watching us on livestream? How, how to engage with [00:15:18] Steve Hale: Alistair’s organization? Very self, selfishly, I would say figure out how to use their money. [00:15:23] Vince Menzione: Okay. [00:15:24] Steve Hale: Very cool. I mean, to, to be fair, right? Yeah. And, and the reason why I say that is because there, there, if you look at the consumption model that we, that. We want to drive with Azure, right? You want to try and figure out, like, how do you tap into that part of it to be able to drive those? Um, look, at the end of the day, the way I think about it, when I talk to my sales teams, it’s all about the workloads. It’s about what is driving the customer investment? Where is the money coming from? Where is the Vander Gold for, I don’t care if it’s a, a huge, you know, Coca-Cola or all the way down to a, a smaller, uh, a smaller company that’s trying to. Innovate. They want to innovate. They need partnerships that are gonna help ’em go drive this. This is stuff that I did with, um, after I left Microsoft. I was with Bridge Partners here as a consulting firm that’s, that’s, uh, uh, very near and dear to my heart. But, you know, it’s going from a massive company down into, um, a, a consulting organization that’s always thinking about customer value and solutions. So that would be. You, you know, I mean, figure out how to tap into the wealth of Microsoft, but also at the same time be very, very focused on the workloads and the customer solution value. I mean, how do you get [00:16:39] Vince Menzione: relevant? Jen, I want to come to you because I know you spent a lot of time with organizations and, and their lack of relevancy, their lack of engagement models, and I know there’s some points you want to share on that as [00:16:51] Jennifer Weis: well. It, well, it, it. Builds on what you both were saying and and using Microsoft’s money. And to be blunt, so when you mentioned Biby, I was at BUR for years. Biby was acquired by CDW, then I was at CDW, then I went for startup ISV. But that was exactly it. We would sit down every year, first off being relevant as a partner. No offense, it’s not about the partner’s model and what the partner does. If you wanna be relevant to Microsoft. You have to do it the Microsoft Way. Mm-hmm. So every year we knew changes were coming. Microsoft is not simple. It’s complicated, but at the end of the day, it’s not. If you just take that ego out of the way and you say, okay, Microsoft’s gonna come out in the June timeframe and they’re gonna come out with their incentives and investments, and that’s how their sales reps are compensated. So every year I sit down with that plan. And I would go through it and I would say, okay, how am I going to make money? Yeah. Off this plan? And how am am I going to model our win formula to be able to go after you said the solution areas, how am I gonna do that? And I’ll put a plan together. And then I, I think it was Lori Alyssa said, then I go to the executive board and say, okay, I plan to bring in, you know, you gave me a quota of whatever million in profit, right? This is how I’m gonna make a million in profit, but. I’m gonna need to make these three changes. Do I have your buy-in? And every year they’re like, go for it. And we did it, and I would deliver. And then the next year I’m like, okay, here we go again. But if you go into it with the attitude of it is what it is, yes, you can influence changes for future years, but you’re not gonna change it that year. Yeah. So you just accept what it is. And then you build a strategy to maximize the heck out of it and earn, I mean, Microsoft, we, we, when we were at Burbank, they were our biggest customer because we used their funding, but we used it and delivered results and delivered results and delivered results. And so we even went to Microsoft many times and said, I think we can do it better, but we’re gonna need investment from you. You [00:19:02] Steve Hale: bet. [00:19:02] Jennifer Weis: Right? And we wanna bring this program and they’d go. Okay. You did it last year, so go ahead, do it again. So that’s how we built a great strong Microsoft practice in consulting. Then we brought it over to CDW and then we brought it to the licensing piece of it, and we just build kind of a program sales, and there’s really three elements to that. The first element is, uh, someone was mentioning it, the maniacal focus, right? Yeah. The first element is everybody on your team has to know what you’re actually doing. Our goal is to drive x. And this is how we’re gonna do it. We built a win formula. Well, you have to have this marketing funnel. Then from this marketing funnel, you then deliver this and train your sales reps on this. And you just, you build that whole win formula from your account based marketing to your hero offer. And you go through those pieces of it, and then you just turn around and deliver. But you needed that. You needed the executive buy-in, so you had to have from top down if it’s just alliance driven. And it was mentioned this morning. It, it doesn’t work. [00:20:05] Vince Menzione: It doesn’t work. [00:20:06] Jennifer Weis: And so you, that’s what we did is we, and we did it really quick and really agile and we just repeated that motion and created that flywheel. [00:20:13] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And that’s what we did. You got the executive commitment within your organization, right? I got the executive [00:20:17] Jennifer Weis: commitment within the organization. So we’re doing that with partners now. We worked on a majors motion, 15 partners. We walked in, it’s like half the partners got it and they’re like, yep, we’re gonna adopt it. And they’re. Crushing it just in the last two, you know, two months. Some of the other partners are still trying to decide what solution, and so they’re a little bit farther behind. So that’s my recommendation. Build a plan, get executive buy-in. Then build your win formula with all the roles aligned and then just go deliver. But you make it easy and you make it simple. [00:20:51] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And you mentioned all the roles. This is with the Alyssa conversation earlier, right? Engineering go to market, co-selling, your alliance team, your executive team at the executive level to executive [00:21:01] Steve Hale: level. Yeah. What, what I, what I loved about what, um, Alyssa said earlier was, uh, you’ve gotta have the technology piece of it. Yeah. Like once you, if you have that, then you’re good to go. And then the co-selling motion, right? Yeah. Which is what. They’re really, that’s gonna be the next question. That’s where we’re gonna roll into. But I, I loved her point of view on that. And I think it’s like, how do we, how do we connect with the, with the machinery that is happening at Microsoft, it is creates this scale. And how do we do that in a way that’s gonna be profitable for all of us and help our customers? So, Alistair, [00:21:33] Vince Menzione: thousands of sellers, right? Mm-hmm. Within the organization. How do I get their attention? Right? I, I’m one of 165,000 partners in the Americas. Lori Borg mentioned earlier. Yes. So how, I mean, that’s an incredible number of partners. Tapping on the door, on your door. [00:21:48] Alistair Butler: It’s a quest. It’s a question I get a lot and, uh, we still okay on Mike? You can, yeah. Yeah, we’re good. You’re good, you’re good. Um, so it’s a question I get a lot and, um, it’s easier to answer now that we are specifically a fourth region, if you’re serious about that. Customer segment, you really need to think, um, through firstly making sure your sales organization has some dedication to that customer segment. Um, you know, just speaking very openly, if my, uh, sellers are engaged with a partner and you know, the first time they’re together and they have an open discussion, okay, so how do you look at us? And they’ve got seven strategic accounts and four. They turn off straight away. Yeah. Right. Because they’re trying to, my sellers are trying to engage really with anything from two to five partners to run their scale business. Yeah. Okay. So a lot of that’s regionally based. A lot of that, of course, is still into its relationships and connectivity and rhythms that are running in the business. But if you’re serious about wanting to grow with us and SME and C business, really think about segmenting your own sales teams, um, for that. That’s, that, that’s number one. Um. And I can give a very brief example of we had a, we had A-A-G-S-I, huge player. You would all know them. Um, came to, uh, myself, uh, last summer. Um, we’re making plans for six months away. Um, we’re actually going to double down, um, our Kevin Ster and, and create a, uh, a mid-market segment. What’s your advice? I showed them my a TU structure, if you align to that. When you’re ready and you can demonstrate the right skill base and understanding of M Em. I’ll make all the introductions. Ah, M em. Yes. The executive team listened to that. They came back three months later and they showed us the plan and they were activated across my sales team within six weeks. Yeah. [00:23:51] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:23:52] Alistair Butler: It can be done now. There’s an intention to that and I think maybe just the final piece, um, here, Vince, to your go have an opinion. There is in the segment enough white space for all of us have an opinion on what the solution areas that you have, skills and expertise in sustainable, um, and the industries where you have presence. It’s a really difficult thing sometimes for a partner, and I’ve been around partners since the mid nineties to actually be declarative. But when you share that opinion and your value proposition. The connection into the sales team is so much faster. It happens at the first meeting versus folks finding out at the third or fourth, and I’ve just wasted, you know, two months of starting to, it’s much, much better to be cleaner and clearer. Um, all of our growth, um, is in the middle part of our mail even. And, uh, we, Microsoft partner to help us go Microsoft account list, by the way. Absolutely. Now for [00:24:52] Vince Menzione: those who don’t know it, yep. You mentioned M em, I’d like to double click on SEM a little bit. For those who don’t know M em, we’ve actually had speakers talk about M EM specifically on stage. Great. It’s a great topic, but I think we should double click and I think with amongst the three of you, you probably have different perspective on here, but I think I’ll, I want to get all three of your perspectives on M EM and how to engage as a partner to drive msem. [00:25:16] Steve Hale: So at the end of the day, it’s a framework, it’s a methodology to be able to help us be able to, I think, strategically and tactically sell better. Right? So, I mean, we got all the acronyms in the world. Um, at the end of the day, I think it comes down to how do we have a connected fabric in terms of how we do solution selling together and how we deliver. Um, you know, that value and messaging, I, I was, um. It was funny, I was at a, uh, a dinner and a customer came over. It was a partner dinner, and the customer came over and they said, and I’m not gonna say who the partners were, but um, the customer came over and said, Hey, are you guys actually working together? Like we were having a conversation with the technology company and, and, and the customer said to us. I love that about you guys. I love that you’re actually sitting down and talking about technology working together to help us deliver value in my organization. You know, so m sem and, and you’re, you’re the expert on it. It, it’s a framework. It’s a methodology. That’s great. How does it help us? How does, how do we make it real? And how does it deliver customer solution value? Yeah. In my, my opinion. Double click on me. [00:26:31] Jennifer Weis: Yeah. Well, well, with M Sem, I was talking earlier about the wind formula. [00:26:35] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:26:36] Jennifer Weis: The, and, and you mentioned the, the funding programs and different things. Yeah. So within M Sem, there are the five stages. But within each stage there’s specific guidance given to the sellers on this is the ha halo conversation you have, this is the hero offer you pitch, and the hero offer usually comes with funding to deliver something. So, and there’s even, I think [00:26:58] Vince Menzione: we actually have a slide that might help us along here actually. So let’s go. There’s [00:27:01] Jennifer Weis: even campaigns in a box. [00:27:03] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:27:04] Jennifer Weis: Right? That you and marketing materials. I was shocked when I started to work with some of the partners, even some of my own, but the partners that weren’t mine, and I would ask, do you know what M SEM is to their sales teams? And the sales teams are like. No. Yeah. And I’m like, okay. And then I would say, show me your strategy, you know, wind formula for how you’re going to land this. And they’re like, well, here’s our offer. Here’s the technical capabilities. And that’s not a strategy, that’s a, that’s a technical solution. So we would go through the wind formula that you see there. We would go through and say, well, what are you doing at each stage? But there’s, there’s a link on this slide too. I said, Microsoft has this built already. You just need to go get the material and make it your own. Right. Go get the campaign in a box. Go get the, the, the halo conversations and material. Go get the hero offer. Just make it your own. And so we help optimize that. They have a strategy and then it’s like, now we just go land this with your sellers. Yeah. And that’s you. You gotta build that formula to be able to land it. And if you follow the Microsoft methodology, then when you go in and talk to. You know your sellers, it’s really easy because you’re talking the same language. You have the ability to collaborate and sit down at the table together ’cause you’re talking the same thing. And it, it gives the, the partners the ability to, to fast track going to market, but then make it their own. Yeah. [00:28:28] Vince Menzione: And Alistair, this is very deliberate at Microsoft. When, when, when I was a Microsoft gm, we didn’t have this No. Everybody followed their own methodology. You have a common language Yes. That you’re, when you, when you’re having reviews, funnel reviews, any business reviews in your business, you’re talking through this right. [00:28:44] Alistair Butler: Absolutely. So M CAPS is a hundred thousand people organization that is wired to this. [00:28:49] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:28:50] Alistair Butler: And you know, it’s been around a few years, uh, a few years now, but the commitment to it, and I suspect the longevity will, will continue because it really has given so much more clarity and understanding of our own business. As to how competitive we are, um, uh, what the customer experience is. Dare I even say, what’s the profitability profile for our partners in that? And yes, we live by this for any operational review. It is so important that your sales teams have an appreciation of this. Yes, they don’t need depth, but they need an appreciation. But you must have at least one person. Or at least a small team, really understanding the programs, how you leverage the dollars, the timings, the announcements to actually filter all of that into your sales team. That is a, that is a critical point as to doing, doing business with us, really. But yes, for anything that we’re doing on our pipelines and looking at program activations and, and anything that you might imagine on a sales dashboard, um, uh, finds its way back, uh, back to this. [00:30:00] Vince Menzione: Steve, when your sellers, you’re working with your organization and your sellers, how are you implementing em to help them be successful working with Microsoft? [00:30:08] Steve Hale: You know, I think at the end of the day, what, when, when we talk about leveraging our, our partnership and our center of gravity with a partnership like Microsoft, at the end of the day, like what, you know, and I’m not trying to get into like product specific stuff, but. It. What we’re, what we want to do is make sure that our delivery of what we’re trying to focus on, we, we talked about this earlier, which is be be really clear about what we’re going to do, and also be clear about what we’re not gonna do. Yeah, because otherwise we can just be random and we can, you know, say we’re gonna do all these things, but, but, and we’re trying to conquer the world. And that’s why Microsoft did the segmentation in the first place, right? That’s right. And that’s where, that’s right. Trying to get very focused. So if you think about, I mean the orig, the original a TU piece, they used to call it the atomic, uh, unit. And so it became the account team unit, all of that stuff. And now it’s being implemented and they’re doing it for a reason. And, and, and ER’s point is like. Are we gonna focus on mid-market customers or, you know, be dedicated to that. Be clear about what you’re gonna do and be really clear about what you’re not gonna do and prioritize. [00:31:19] Alistair Butler: There’s, um, there’s a, um, little piece here to add as well, particularly for the partner community, for the segment that I’m part of. Yes. Um, different to our strategics who have. Um, the CSUs in stages four and five. You’ll see ladies and gentlemen, realize value and manage and optimize. We have a lot of Microsoft people around, around those, those don’t exist in our, that’s right segment in SM, E and C, we are fully committed to that being partner. A partner delivered. Uh, and lifecycle delivered with your services. Right. So where we coach our sales teams much more in recent years is the connectivity into the partner base such that we are getting actually an understanding of your services. I. And when we’re together in the customer, um, that’s a really positive thing. Yeah. And, um, many, many changes have happened in a very short period of time, uh, that we’re really positive about lots of energy going into it. And, uh, even in our CSP program that plays very, uh, cloud solution partner program that plays very prevalently here. Um, good, uh, profitability and margin for our partners in that aspect. [00:32:32] Vince Menzione: That comes back to the IDC study that we talked about yesterday. And was it $8.65 of services revenue for partners for every dollar of Microsoft. Yes. Commitment. And I think the point you’re making too is there’s, you don’t have this massive consulting services organization. You really need the partners in the room here to drive that. [00:32:51] Alistair Butler: We do. And there was even an organizational announcement where. Um, folks in our global, um, solution partner teams even joined us. So we’re now one organization. Yes. Obviously that cements the, uh, commitment to [00:33:03] Vince Menzione: that part of our strategy. That’s right. So Nicole’s organization absolutely is part of you, same organization that you sit in now. So it’s really intertwined the partners into the business. Anything else we should add? Yeah, [00:33:14] Jennifer Weis: well I was just gonna add, and I talked about it yesterday in the breakout session, if you attended, is the other thing that I’m doing with partners that is coaching them on how to do account planning. Yeah. And you, we were helping them to understand that Microsoft and the enterprise builds these four segments in their account plan, but in the SM. E and C, it just doesn’t roll off the tongue. [00:33:35] Vince Menzione: That’s why they’re using smack. That sounds [00:33:38] Jennifer Weis: terrible. Uh, you build a territory plan and you mentioned another partner that came to you guys and said, we are, we’re gonna invest in this. So my recommendation to a partner is, if you wanna get serious in this space, go figure out what solution you’re gonna go sell. Build your win formula set how many goals you’re gonna do. And then build a territory plan, you know, so that you can come to the teams and say, I’m going after this market or this industry. I have a target list of a hundred accounts. My goal is to close 20 deals. And this is how I am su structuring, accountability and ownership within me, my partner organization. And we’ll align with you on the, the first, the blue stages on there. And then once we’re done with that, then we go deliver the. Purple stages because there’s no CSU. Yeah. So it’s, it’s not complicated. It’s complicated to learn how to put it together, but once you know how to put these things together, it’s [00:34:34] Alistair Butler: not complicated. And then my, my best sellers working with their three to five partners on their territory plans are doing exactly what, yeah, Steve was suggesting where there’s clear delineation on who’s on first, who’s on second. Within that, under a common. Under a common language, it’s, it is designed well. It is designed simply. Um, and the partners where we do it the best with, we just fly. I love [00:35:02] Steve Hale: it. I love it. Yeah. The, the, the, the cool thing about Microsoft is that they will get super, super complex about everything, but then they generally will boil it back up into something that’s executable. And that’s what I love about it. I mean, they wrote the book on co-sell. They did. And so like Howie. You talk about M and all the acronyms and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all that kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, they really know what they’re doing. And if you tap into that method and go along with the acronyms and figure out how the machinery works, it’s a great ecosystem be to be a part of it really is. [00:35:35] Vince Menzione: Well, we are up on time. We promised everybody a break. Um, hopefully you’ll all be around if for networking for a little while. I know Jen was leading a session yesterday. There’s a lot of great knowledge in the room here on how to engage with Microsoft. How be more successful driving your business. And if you haven’t, we haven’t. We actually have a double click on M Sem. As a video that’s in our ultimate partner. If you got Ultimate Partner website on YouTube or even the ultimate partner.com and go through our sift through our search on sem, you’re gonna find some in great, some great instruction on what SEM is and how to engage with sem. So, and I know we could, we could spend hours on SEM here and we have some great experts who can take you through this. So I want to thank each of you got great conversation today for our partners. This is, this is how you need to engage this. This is where the acre of diamonds is for each of you. So I want to thank you all for being part of this conversation. Thank you. You, you. Thank you. Thanks for tuning into this episode of Ultimate Partner. We’re bringing these episodes to you to help you level up your strategy. If you haven’t yet, now’s the time to take action and think about joining our community. We created a unique place. UPX or ultimate partner experience where leaders come to learn from each other. It’s more than a community. It’s your competitive edge with insider insights, real-time education, and direct access to people who are driving the ecosystem forward. UPX helps you get results, and we’re just getting started. We’ve got big plans for you this summer as we’re taking this studio, and we’ll be hosting live stream and digital events here. And it’s all coming to you soon. So visit our website, the ultimate partner.com to learn more and join us. Now’s the time to take your partnerships to the next level. So visit our website, the ultimate partner.com to learn more and join us. Now’s the time to take your partnerships to the next level. | |||
| 267 – The 1% Club: Elastic’s First Secrets to Partner of the Year Status | 13 Jul 2025 | 00:36:06 | |
Recorded Live at Ultimate Partner LIVE in Redmond, WA
Unlock the secrets to explosive growth in the digital landscape! Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ Is your business ready for 2026? Welcome back to the Ultimate Partner® Podcast. This was a fan favorite as I was joined by former Microsoft executive and current Elastic leader, Alyssa Fitzpatrick, as she reveals the strategies behind achieving pinnacle success as a Microsoft partner. Learn how Elastic consistently earns “Partner of the Year” awards by prioritizing technology innovation, fostering deep engineering alignment, and ensuring maniacal focus across all functional teams. Alyssa shares invaluable insights on gaining executive buy-in, establishing clear communication “swim lanes,” and leveraging data to drive impactful decisions. Discover the importance of consistent engagement, human relationships in partnering, and why adaptability is the new IQ in today’s rapidly changing market. Key Takeaways:
If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership, this is your community. At Ultimate Partner®, we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. https://youtu.be/DgzjeaUiYM8?si=fScjJ-a3QaZlMMh0Key Tags: .Microsoft partner, Elastic, ultimate partner, partner of the year, cloud go-to-market, alliance strategy, executive commitment, technology innovation, engineering alignment, co-selling, go-to-market, influence strategy, partner resources, adaptability, data-driven decisions, human relationships, BRS, QBR, EBC, channel leadership. https://youtu.be/s33fltuizEoTranscription: [00:00:00] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: Adaptability is that has become really the most important thing that any leader needs to do in this, this world that we’re in. Um, it’s no longer one, two year roadmaps. It’s three months. [00:00:16] Vince Menzione: We believe this time is like no other. We believe we refer to these as the tectonic shifts, [00:00:22] Intro: all the hyperscalers in the world, if you add them all together. Managed services will be one and a half times larger [00:00:28] Vince Menzione: because it is the customer buying behavior that has created the need for all of us to rethink our models. [00:00:34] Intro: Until we have data quality, the effectiveness of AI cannot be realized and effectiveness of the partnerships cannot be realized. Can you figure out, first, what your purpose is and how Microsoft can support your purpose and how you can support Microsoft purpose? Now we have a partnership. It’s the ultimate partnership. [00:00:54] Vince Menzione: Welcome to The Ultimate Partner. I’m Vince Menzi, own your host, and my mission is to help leaders like you achieve your greatest results through successful partnering. We just came off Ultimate Partner Live at Microsoft Redmond Campus. Our most powerful event yet. Over two days, we gathered top leaders to tackle the real shifts shaping our industry. If you weren’t in the room, this fireside chat with Eissa Fitzpatrick, the partner leader for Elastic, an award-winning partner, brings us right to the edge of what’s next. Let’s dive in. So we always talk about like the pinnacle of success, like how do you get to be the top Microsoft partner? And that’s one that we aspire to is where we came up with the term ultimate partner. ’cause an ultimate partner is a partner that she’s their greatest results. They understand how to be part of that 0.001 point. Percent, you’re not in that 99, 9 per percent. And I saw that quite a bit when I was at Microsoft. I got to see the one per the 1% that knew how to, how to operate in a, in a, in a congruent way. They knew, knew how to apply all these principles in order to be successful. So we wanted to have, as our next guest, an organization and a leader that’s been driving that. In fact, this is also somebody who’s former Microsoft who’s gonna be joining us and having a conversation about. How do you get to be partner of the year? How do you get to the pinnacle of success as an organization? And so I’m thrilled to invite, and I think she’s in the back ready, uh, Alyssa Fitzpatrick, I don’t know if anyone knows Alyssa. Alyssa was at Microsoft for many years. She was in the global partner organization. Uh, she’s now running Elastic, which if, if you, if you haven’t been keeping up, like who are the top partners, especially in the marketplace world, elastic is at the very pinnacle of success across the entire ecosystem. Of partners and cloud go to market. And so I’m so thrilled to have her spend some time with us talking about how do you get to that level? How do you become the most successful partner out there? How do you become a pinnacle partner? And so Alyssa, so great to see you, my friend. That’s great to meet. Thank you. Great to see you. Thank you. Great to see you. We were comparing scars the other day. Yes. I had, um, we both had accidents within the last month or two, right? Yes. Yes. Your, yours is much better. You look much better. Mine. Mine was a little bit easier [00:03:13] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: than the getting hit by a car. I, uh, I did it all to myself. Um. When you have low blood pressure, there is a you swoon sometimes, and if you don’t get yourself to a place where you’re stable, you can fall over and the heaviest part of your body is your head. So I broke my fall. Right there. So it was three weeks ago. I’m healing pretty well, but I had a couple of black eyes for two weeks, which was really wasn’t Turn the camera on, I’ll tell you that. But um, but yeah, I was, [00:03:43] Vince Menzione: I wasn’t turning the camera on either, so. Well, it so great to see you. Thank you, dad. So great to have you. Yeah, we’re in, we, we brought the event up to you. [00:03:50] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: Yes, you did. We did. I love it. Yeah. Yep. [00:03:53] Vince Menzione: And I wanna sit, I wanna sit down with you and have some conversation’s today. Let do, let’s do, uh, it’s so great to have you. I mentioned the fact that you spent many years at Microsoft. That’s how we first met you were at Microsoft. [00:04:03] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: Yep. [00:04:03] Vince Menzione: I knew. I knew even back in that day. You were in the sailing. You were a big sailor. Yeah, [00:04:07] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: I did. But you didn’t grow up in [00:04:08] Vince Menzione: the Pacific Northwest. No. Yeah. So tell us more about your background. I grew up in [00:04:11] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: Colorado, actually in Boulder, Colorado. Nice. Beautiful town [00:04:14] Vince Menzione: and, uh, [00:04:16] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: kind of, it was a small town in the seventies. Very, very small town, very different. Um, but I did come to University of Washington for school, but I quickly left because I was only up here for the school year, never spent a summer. Oh, and if any of you have ever experienced a summer in Seattle, that’s why, you know, we live here and I didn’t until 30 years later. When I came back to work for Microsoft and I was like, how did I not know this? I got to work in all these other places. I lived in San Francisco, I lived in London, I lived in New York. Um, finally came back here and, uh, it, it’s outstanding. [00:04:54] Vince Menzione: Summers are beautiful here. Yes, absolutely gorgeous. [00:04:56] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: It is, it’s amazing. And I, yes, I love boating and I’ve taken my passion for sailing, which I’ve been sailing for about 35 years, and I’ve transitioned that into cruisers. Um, there’s a lot that you can accomplish up here and up into Canada and just, it’s the most beautiful boating place in the world. So I love it. [00:05:16] Vince Menzione: I love it. And you know, we had Lori Borg gun just before you. Mm-hmm. Spent 26 years in the Microsoft ecosystem at a partner. You, I know you’ve had several. Points before you got to Microsoft, but you went from being a Microsoft executive. I want you to talk about what you did at Microsoft and then you went back, you went back out now and leading a top award-winning partner. So take us through a little bit of that. Yeah, [00:05:36] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: it’s, it’s actually been a lot of fun. Yeah. Um, and, and I will, you know, kind of caveat it, that you don’t have to come from Microsoft to have a successful partnership. Um, because it was already happening before I got there. It was, it was already in line. And so, um, I can’t take credit. For the, the Partner of the Year awards because I joined Elastic a year ago. And, um, and that motion was already happening and, and what the, what I see is, um. A company that made commitments and followed through on them and was very, very focused in, uh, making the partnership itself work. And so it doesn’t mean that because I’ve got a background at Microsoft that that was the recipe. Um, it really is understanding all of the programs and the opportunities that your partner provides, and then tapping into that, um, being on the Microsoft side, it, I got to see. Who are the partners that were tapping into our programs and how are they working for them? And taking the feedback of, well, this is gonna work if we do it this way. We need to drop the threshold here, or we need to do that. And I learned a lot about how my partners. Worked, transacted, engaged, marketed cosal, and, and that really gave me a different perspective because when I came into Elastic, I, I understood the ecosystem in a way that I, I hadn’t before Microsoft. And so it. Really made it clear how do we go to market as elastic together with our ecosystem because our technology powers, um, all the ISVs out there as well. So we’re, we’re all, we wanna partner with everybody. Um, and so when I look at what I learned at Microsoft and the power of the engines that they build, that we can tap into the partners that do. Are the partners that win. And so that, that really is it. It’s as simple as that. It’s understanding what’s available and then tapping into it. And when it doesn’t work for you, feed it back. Give that feedback so that they can modify because. Coming from Microsoft, I knew I wanted programs that worked for my partners. Interesting. And if it wasn’t, then I wanted the feedback so I could modify. And that’s really important to not just ride along and go, well, it doesn’t really work, so I’m not tapping into it. Mm-hmm. Figure out how to make something work for you or go and give that feedback so that you could say, Hey, what if we did it this way? Yeah. Microsoft will listen. Our partners will listen. We all want to win together. [00:08:10] Vince Menzione: How do you give the feedback in a way that’s both deliberate and diplomatic? [00:08:15] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: So, um, I’ll take a page from what Lori just said, the. Go to market build with go to market, sell with. It’s, um, it’s probably been the mantra here for almost 10 years now. Yeah. And, um, if that is not your mantra in the way that you’re running your partnerships, um, with Microsoft, I strongly recommend that you, you adopt that. Um, and it works for everybody else. And so that’s what’s the nice part about it is every partnership that we run at Elastic, we look at what is the build piece. Where’s the innovation coming from? What’s the solution that we’re trying to build for our customers? The how do we market that? How do we tell the world about what we built together, what we have, and then the sell? How do we empower our sellers to understand how to work together? And so making sure you, you really have that spectrum and, and you’re working that, and then decide what works for you. Yeah. And, and to bring that feedback in, you’re gonna have, you, you need to have points of contact for each one of those, um, those swim lanes and working with [00:09:15] Vince Menzione: those functional, functional areas that I like to refer to as Yeah. You’re working with [00:09:17] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: Microsoft. Yeah. And that’s where you give the feedback. [00:09:19] Vince Menzione: Yep. [00:09:20] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: If it’s a build, you give it to the build team. If it’s go to market, let’s take the marketing team and show them what we need to do. So it’s really important that you land the feedback in the right place so it can be, um, taken in and then addressed. Um, otherwise it, it tends to float around without, um, [00:09:36] Vince Menzione: yeah. You bring up a really great point, but, well, you brought up a couple, several good points I wanna make sure I want to highlight. First of all, you talked about executive commitment and that’s super critical to success. Like if your executive team is not on board and helping to drive the the alliance strategy all up. You’re gonna lose. Um, but you talked about the, the swim lanes and making sure that you, you’re aligned by role. And one of the things we’ve encouraged organizations to do over the years is not just have one person who’s responsible for the alliance mm-hmm. But to embed leadership from your organization with leadership. At the Microsoft partner leadership level. So your build team and their build team are aligned. Your go-to market and their go-to market are aligned, your co-selling, their co-sell are aligned, and any other areas, right? There are other functional areas that are gonna align with your business. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Is that how elastic Exactly? Yeah. [00:10:26] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: And, and it’s very empowering for the teams because the marketing team, they, they, they work incredibly well together and the rest of us are like, oh, what are they doing over there? Alright, that’s great. And then I get in, you know, information from what’s happening on the build. And you know, we, at every single Microsoft conference or, or any of our partner conferences, we try to release. Um, do press releases on new functionality and that’s coinciding exactly with roadmaps. And so we really wanna make sure that the build team, all they’re thinking about is how do we innovate together and make sure that everything that we’re doing from our roadmap and their roadmap are aligned. Marketing, empower them to go and find those opportunities and drive it. And then the cell team as well, it having each team have a connection versus one person trying to work the, the entire, um, agenda. It really does empower the team and make it agile, quick and innovative at, at the very, um, source. [00:11:24] Vince Menzione: And let’s dive in on executive commitment. ’cause all those things are, all those teams are reporting into a C-suite leader. Mm-hmm. Right. Generally the CEO of the organization or or other role, how do you drive that and how do you drive the communication from your level of role within the organization driving partnerships and strategy there? How are you then communicating with that leadership team and how are you sprinkling in the priorities that you need to drive into the business? [00:11:48] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: You know, I think that’s probably the. Biggest challenge for, um, individuals in the, um, the global channel leader role is getting the buy-in from our executives and getting them to understand the opportunity to the magnitude that, that we see. And they’re very numbers oriented. Yeah. And so it’s a challenge. It’s a, it’s tough to really go in and get the leadership to understand what the opportunity is, because a lot of times it is. Belief, you know, build it, they will come. Well, we do have proof for that. And there are partnerships out there that you can point to and say, look at somebody our size, our scale, and what they’ve done by doing X, Y, Z. So I think the best way to sell your story is to look in the industry at peer group successes or even bring in and, and I know this sounds crazy, but bring an analyst in because. Your leadership, hearing it from you is one thing, but when they hear it from someone else, there is a different impact. And I’ve, I’ve recognized that as I’ve been trying within Elastic to, uh, modify and move our focus going to my senior executive team. By myself is less effective than going to my senior executive team when I bring in outside data or even an outside consultant. Yeah. To really prove the story. And it doesn’t mean that there’s not credibility with me. It’s, there’s so many ways to do partnering. That is your way, the best way. And so trying to find that right recipe for your company, it is important to do the research. Do your homework, make sure you’ve got a financially driven plan, that you have, a metric that your leadership can say, okay, I believe in that metric when it goes up or down. That’s what I’m gonna hold you to. That is really important. Otherwise, you’re asking your leadership to, um, you know, really believe in something that may or may not happen. You’ve gotta prove the story. [00:13:52] Vince Menzione: So what’s the secret sauce? What, I mean, you, you’ve given a lot of it, but Right. But partner, the year status, multiple years. Right? This is, uh, you’ve, you’ve just been awarded again, some of the other cloud, uh mm-hmm. Hyperscalers as well. What is the secret sauce within Alaska? Elastic that helps you become partner of the year? Like what, what do you think it is? [00:14:12] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: Well, I actually think, um. Lori nailed it with technical intensity and I do remember when, you know, when Satya said that is the most important thing for Microsoft and our partner ecosystem. What I’ve seen, the way that Elastic engages with our partners is technology first, and that is something that’s different. I’ve been in. Partnering for 35 years, and the early days of partnering was all about co-selling, and it was all about how do we line up our sellers? How do we engage ’em, spiff ’em, do whatever we can do to have a meet in the market. Well, that doesn’t work anymore if you don’t have the technology. Innovation. And so it really does come down to leading with your technology first and embedding your tech in, uh, Microsoft or vice versa, somehow making it hook in and understanding what are the release cycles, where, what is the next innovation and. Until you get deep in, you may not hear what those roadmaps are. And so you’ve gotta build those relationships so that you can become part of the fabric that is doing the innovation. And then you’re actually. Driving Microsofting. So what I’m seeing now is the way that Elastic and Microsoft work is we have these innovation sessions regularly where we look at our technology and we, we compare roadmaps. Yeah. And as we do that, we’re affecting each other’s maps. Um, we ask for functionality in, um, the marketplace. It took a few months, but we pushed and pushed and pushed, and it’s something that we really needed so that we could do multi-year transactions with our partners. Um, they responded and we worked together and, and we made it happen. And so I think the secret is, I. Lead with your technology and make sure that it is something that can really work and hunt with the partnerships that you’re trying to build and then wrap the relationship around that, that’s where you start. Um, and I do think that that is the secret sauce that has made Elastic very successful, is we are fearless in going into the engineering organizations and, and really asking for more. Um. I love it. I come from an open source background, um, at, at Elastic, and it is fearless. It’s like, Hey, let’s build here. Let’s do that. Let’s do this. And it is, um, so it’s a very, it’s fascinating, um, exciting time to watch this happen, but when you think about the partner world. It has changed so much, and yes, co-selling is very important, but if you don’t have the nucleus of technology and innovation together, it, it doesn’t matter what you’re selling out there. [00:16:53] Vince Menzione: So I’m hearing tech intensity, I’m hearing engineering. I’m, I’m seeing, I’m visualizing your engineers in the room with the Microsoft engineers in the room, having very, very deep conversations about product alignment. Mm-hmm. [00:17:05] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: And fit. [00:17:06] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. And, and re-engineering the technologies on both sides. [00:17:09] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: And I think that to get to that point, to be in the room is, it’s important to, to push, to have the conversations, but then do what you say you’re gonna do. Deliver on time, deliver those features and that functionality that you both agree to. And that’s what really proofs it out. [00:17:29] Vince Menzione: You’re speaking my language. I talk about this all the time. Like I would sit in those rooms with the PowerPoint slides. We’d have great meetings, we’d have great alignment. We’d, we’d set goals with one another. We we’re all high fiving each other at the end of the meeting saying, we’re gonna achieve incredible success this year. And then crickets. Yes. We never hear back from them. And it comes back to that maniacal focus. People miss the maniacal focus part of this. Mm-hmm. Right? Mm-hmm. And it sounds like you’re doing all that, right? Your engineering teams are maniacally focused, working with Microsoft. You’re driving the go-to market strategy. You’re driving the co-sell strategy across the organization. Yep. [00:18:03] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: Yep. It. [00:18:03] Vince Menzione: It’s quite a bit. What would you say from a, like a resourcing perspective, how do organizations need to think about their resourcing for a successful partnership like yours? [00:18:12] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: You know, that’s a, that’s a really interesting question because that is probably the biggest challenge that we, we all face every day is, that’s right. Our, our teams are never big enough. Um. When I came into Elastic, I, I was astounded because the partner organization, um, is of size. Um, but for the size of company that we are, it’s, it’s, it’s pretty lean. But the hyperscaler element of our partner organization is about 15% of the org all up. And so there was a clear decision made, and this is before I showed up, that the hyperscaler relationships were king. They were the top, top dogs. We’re going to make sure we get that right. And so that actually for three years, it was that maniacal focus, which did make other partnerships suffer, right? Because we just didn’t have the resources. But that was a choice, and those are the choices that you have to make. Sometimes you can’t do it all. And right now I’m making trade-offs where I’m like, this year. I’m not gonna be able to do that because I’ve gotta get this right and this is going to stay healthy and this is gonna stay strong. And so it is trade-offs. But I would say that if you want to go. Part of the hoop and you really wanna make Microsoft or a hyperscaler relationship work or any partnership, it is focus and intensity around that and putting the resources where your focus is. And that should align all the way up to the the board. Because if they are, let’s make this work and you move your resources and say, look, another part of the partner organization may suffer as a result. That’s understood. Yes, as long as you communicate and you’re clear with that. But I would say that resourcing, um, making sure that you’ve got, you know, the right leadership that’s connecting at the leader level and running those BRS and QBR and making sure that you constantly have, um, you know, an EBC every six months that keeps the executives together and has that rhythm of the business. That’s really important. So you’ve gotta have that executive leadership and that alignment. But then you’ve gotta have folks in the field that are helping your sellers really work the deals. Um, it’s not easy. I mean, it’s not just hit a button and get it done. And so we, we do have to help our sellers get it across the line and drive a marketplace first mentality. In our company. And so it, it is, um, resourcing I think is, is critical to make sure you got the top and the field resources. We have a whole team on marketing and we wouldn’t, we wouldn’t be where we’re at right now without the, um, the incredible focus from marketing and engineering. [00:20:53] Vince Menzione: And I think I heard you say getting your executives aligned at the top. By the way, the upstairs of this building is the EBC, it’s the executive briefing center for Microsoft. I’m sure you use this quite a bit for some of those meetings. What do you find is like the secret sauce or the sweet spot getting the, your executives in, the Microsoft executives at that level aligned? Is there some level of engagement? Executive sponsorship. How do you, how do you do some of those things? Well, [00:21:18] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: so you do need to have executive sponsorship. That’s important. Um, and then you choose where that comes from. Does that come from the partner team? Does that come from engineering? Does that come from marketing? ’cause that sponsorship can come from different parts of the organization and, um, and that, that’s important ’cause that really does kind of give you that north star of what you’re doing. But then, um, in order to make those, those. Consistent meetings, those qbr, those brs successful, you do need commitment from your leadership. And so when we have an EBC or even A QBR, my. My CEO will fly up. My CRO will fly up. We bring everyone here to show the commitment, and we do that twice a year. So Microsoft knows we’re gonna come in. Yeah, we spend an entire day together and, um, there is an entire, um, afternoon of engineering and then they say. Been off and the engineers go in another room and I don’t even know what they talk about. But, um, but we do bring everyone together and it creates the relationship, it creates the consistency and the understanding. ’cause when your CRO hears directly from the top brass at Microsoft about what they’re doing Yeah. He’s motivated. Yeah. And so it is important to not just have ’em dial in on Zoom or teams or whatever, get ’em here. Get them in the room. That’s when it really, the magic does happen. It is human relationships that we do that partnering. I, I’ve been 35 years in partnering and, and my kids ask me what I do and I say, I built human relationships. Yeah. Um, where they weren’t before. And, and then we create business out of that. That’s what it is. But it starts with the human relationships first. And, and so get your leaders here. It makes a difference. It really does. And [00:22:59] Vince Menzione: demonstrating that your leaders are willing to make the commitment to come here. Mm-hmm. And engage with the other executives in the room is critical. Yep. It also takes a lot of the pressure off of you as a leader of the partnership organization to not have to have the, be the intermediary to the conversation about like, we’re not driving the right results on co-selling with our C-R-C-R-O. To have the CRO kind of put in the hot seat in a way. Yep. Right. Yep. It’s okay. It’s okay to have that conversation with the other aligned executives on the other side of that. Mm-hmm. And I think that’s part of your secret sauce. [00:23:31] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: Mm-hmm. Yeah. As as long as everyone’s in the know as well, when you hit those roadblocks, which you will hit, having your leadership understand what’s happening in the relationship not only helps you get over those roadblock, it helps. You not get as much and you know, you don’t get on fire as much. Right. You’re not gonna get shot at because now you know, like your leader knows Okay, they can’t transact that way. We have to do it this way. Yeah. And so you’re not in the middle going, wait, wait, wait, let me explain all this stuff to you. They’re in the know. And that’s so helpful to, you know, the, the velocity of the business. [00:24:08] Vince Menzione: So we talk about embracing change. We talk about adaptability. We’ve used the term adaptability quotient, in fact. Mm-hmm. Like that’s, that’s the new iq. And EQ is the aq. Right. It’s, it’s something you really need to lean in on. Right? Yeah. How are you leaning in now? You, you’re sitting here as a. And you work with the others as well, but you’re sitting here with Microsoft being a very significant part of your business, knowing that in a couple of months as things are gonna change, right? We’re at the end of 25. Moving into 26, what are you doing from an adaptability perspective within your own organization and how are you also, uh, how are you in tuned with Microsoft on some of this now so that you are able to get the feedback loop going in a way that you’re thinking about your planning and process. Mm-hmm. [00:24:51] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: Um. Adaptability is that has become really the most important thing that any leader needs to do in this, this world that we’re in. Um, it’s no longer one, two year roadmaps. It’s three months and the fourth month something could pop that you didn’t know about. And, and, and. It could derail your strategy. So you, you, you’re constantly adapting. You’re constantly watching. You have to do your homework more than you’ve ever had to do your homework because your homework changes every day. And so, um, being adaptable to what’s happening in the market, but also looking at your performance, looking at how is your relationship actually working and starting to be your own data science scientist and figure out, well, when this happens. And these two things come together, that’s a great opportunity. Or really start analyzing how does the business happen? Where is it good? Where is it suffering? Where can I actually close some of those gaps? And, and looking across the business. At a, a regular cycle. So you’re seeing, um, we used to, we, we called it a correction of error. I don’t know if they still do at Microsoft, but whenever there was something that was kind of going off the rails, we would have a COE, a correction of error. And it was kind of like whack-a-mole. Like whenever something came up, we were like, oh, everyone would jump on it, fix that problem. Something else would pop up over here. That’s the same thing that happens in our world, but we’ve got to be agile in looking at not only knowing those are coming, but predicting them and looking at our business and saying, okay, I’ve seen this, this play out before and I think we’re heading into this kind of, um, gully or whatever it is, moving the boat, getting back on track. And so I do think it is really important as leaders of our organization to know our data, to know what’s happening and really. Wallow in it and, and watch, because the market is changing so quickly, our data is going to tell us a lot of the things that we may are pontificate about and try to give excuses or reasons. Yeah. Focusing in the data is going to help you make Dr. Data driven decisions, but also give you the confidence and the credibility. As to why you did that. And so I really think agility does come from, um, being able to adapt to changes in the market, but doing it in a smart way, in a way that you can defend and explain to your leadership. [00:27:24] Vince Menzione: So that’s your advice for the partners in the room is what I’m gathering, right? It’s that you really need to pay attention to your data. Your data will tell you where you need to go as an organization. [00:27:33] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: I, I, you know, you can get data to tell any story, like everybody knows that. But reading your data and looking at trends and using what you know, you’re in these roles for a reason, using what you know to make those decisions and powering it with what you’re seeing in front of you and how the, the business is actually transacting and actually, um, you know, moving through the cycles. [00:27:57] Vince Menzione: I wanna spend a moment on influence strategy though. Okay. We really, we’ve talked about a lot and I think we’ve covered a lot, and I hope people are getting a lot of great nuggets here today about aligning your business, getting your executive team involved, getting everybody in the right room. Mm-hmm. Doing it on a regular basis. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. How do you think about your influence strategy, like as the leader coming into the organization? Like you said, all about a year enrolled. Mm-hmm. You can’t take all the credit, but you’ve been driving obviously more success on partner of the year award. Um, what is your influence strategy? How do you think about your influence strategy with the. Both your leadership team as well as the Microsoft Leadership team. [00:28:33] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: So, um, I, I do actually think about that quite a lot because, um, I came into role a year ago and we were, you know, it always feels like it’s in a state of emergency. Um, I came in, there were nine different organizations all rolling into different leaders that there had been no one in the channel, um, chief. Uh, had had a channel, no one had been in this role for two and a half, three years. Wow. So it was a little bit, you know, wild out there. Yeah. Um, I had 42 different compensation plans across a team of under 142 comp. [00:29:07] Vince Menzione: You sound like Microsoft with 42 compensation plans. And [00:29:09] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: I’m like, what are these people doing? What? Everyone’s doing something different. Right. So. I had to really bring things together so I had an influence story, so I had a place to start because I really wanted to go to my leadership and say. We’ve gotta bring this together. We’ve gotta be a cohesive team. We’ve gotta have a culture of our own and, and something that we’re striving for. Everyone has a different goal. We need a North star for our organization. Yeah. And so my influence journey started with. I gotta get a number that matters. Yeah. Like what’s gonna matter to my leadership and what’s gonna matter today. That number that I landed on, which was, uh, you know, a specific revenue target, um, will change. And it’s a specific revenue target. ’cause it’s not all of revenue. It’s a kind of revenue that I’m, I’m saying this is most important, this is what we’re gonna go after and I’m gonna fix this. Next year might be a different one, but right now I’m laser focused on showing. Progress and showing improvement and bringing the organization together and everyone rowing the same direction. Um, I’m down to six compensation plans guys, so [00:30:20] Vince Menzione: Very cool. [00:30:21] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: Yes, I know. Thank you. That was a lot of, it took a year to get us kind of organized, but now the teams. Understand what they do, and they can cross pollinate, they can work across the regions and actually share best practices. And so my influence strategy started there, which is let’s create a unified structure and then I can start to prove what we’re capable of. Yeah. The part that. Tends to get lost is you need an influence strategy across the entire organization. Because partnering is building a company inside of a company. It is, it truly is. When I love that, when I, when I talk to my CEOI say, we have sellers. And what we do with our own sellers is we compensate them to do the things we want them to do. We give them marketing so they can get demand gen. We give them compliance, we give them, uh, Salesforce, we give them a portal to work in, um, you know, uh. All the things that they need. So we have to do the same thing for our partners, but we don’t get to pay them. To do what we want them to do. So we have to create an incredibly attractive partner program and value for our partners to wanna work with us, and it has to be compliant. They need a portal. They need sales and marketing. They need demand gen. They need everything that we’re offering our entire internal organization. We need that for partner. And don’t let me forget engineering, right? We’ve gotta have engineering as well because our partners push us to do better. And so it is like building a company inside of a company. So your influence strategy cannot stop with sales and it cannot stop with the CMO and the chief product officer. You’ve gotta get into the services team, you’ve gotta get into legal, you’ve gotta get into the IT department because if you don’t have it working for you, your stuff’s gonna be at the. Bottom of the list, right? So your influence has to go all the way across the organization. I love this. I love this. It’s exhausting too. [00:32:20] Vince Menzione: Well, and we could, I mean, I’d like, I’d love to, I know we’re short on time, but, uh, you, I think what you said too is you develop a strong point of view as well. Like you came in and you had to go solve for some real. Nagging issues mm-hmm. Within the organization. And then you develop a strong point of view that you bring into those other organizations. Yep. Because you’re the one beating the drum every day. Yes, yes. Yeah. So you, you gotta come at it with a very consistent theme. [00:32:46] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: And I think the consistency is critical because I, um. I, I’ll, I’ll give you a fail fast. Um, it wasn’t as fast as I’d like it to have been, but uh, when I came in we had a bunch of metrics that we would put up and say, okay, these are our partner numbers. And I started watching my sales team and, you know, they kind of just started tuning out and I’m like, what is going on? Like. What, what’s wrong with my data? Why? Why don’t they like this? And I got closer and closer where I was like, okay, and here is the source revenue. Here’s the deals brought by partners. Here’s the deals we’re co-selling. Here’s the deals that are going into marketplace. And they started to finally clue in and they’re like, well, that number’s not right, or That doesn’t work for me. And I finally got them to wake up and I was reporting partner data. That my partner team deemed important, but my selling team didn’t care at all. Hmm. So make sure your data, your whatever you’re reporting against, lines up to the way that sales reports theirs, because if you’re looking at different slices, you’re gonna lose the audience. I love it. So [00:33:57] Vince Menzione: many great nuggets. It’s really important. So many great nuggets because I did lose the audience, but I got ’em [00:34:01] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: back. But [00:34:02] Vince Menzione: yeah, that was a, that was a surprise for me. But the course correction is important. I know we’re running up on time now, but I think just to the point there is you come into these organizations, the team is already set up line a different way that what they’re reporting is not relevant. And you have, that’s where you have to come in with that very strong point of view. Yep. And go fix it. Yeah. [00:34:20] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: And ask yourself, is this right? Yep. I didn’t do that until it, it was too late. Not late, but it obviously has worked. E so [00:34:28] Vince Menzione: well, I want to thank you. Yeah. This has been a really great tutorial, I think a great instructional, um, we’re gonna, we’re gonna play this again. It’ll probably be on the podcast because I think most of us as leaders in organizations, we miss this. We miss all. How do you get to that pinnacle? Mm-hmm. And there’s so many things you need to do in an organization to drive this level of success that an elastic will drive. Mm-hmm. Within a Microsoft or within the hyperscale community. Yep. So, so thrilled to have you join us. Thank you. Today. You, this was wonderful. Thank, I really enjoyed it. Thank you. So [00:34:56] Alyssa Fitzpatrick: it’s my favorite talk topic to talk about. I love [00:34:57] Vince Menzione: it. I’ll you back again. Thank you all. All right. Well, thank you Alyssa. That was fantastic. Thank you. What a great conversation. Thank you for joining us this morning. Thanks for tuning into this episode of Ultimate Partner. We’re bringing these episodes to you to help you level up your strategy. If you haven’t yet, now’s the time to take action and think about joining our community. We created a unique place, UPX or Ultimate Partner Experience where leaders come to learn from each other. It’s more than a community. It’s your competitive edge with insider insights, real-time education, and direct access to people who are driving the ecosystem forward. UPX helps you get results, and we’re just getting started. We’ve got big plans for you this summer as we’re taking this studio, and we’ll be hosting live stream and digital events here, and it’s all coming to you soon. So visit our website, the ultimate partner.com to learn more and join us. 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