Ultimate Partner®, a podcast by Vince Menzione - Technology Industry Sales and Partner Executive - Stats, Episodes and Rankings - My Podcast Data
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In this deep-dive panel discussion, industry experts Erin Figer, Erika Irby, and Reis Barrie celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the Microsoft Co-Sell program by dissecting its evolution from its 2016 inception to today’s data-driven, outcome-focused landscape. The group explores the critical shift from transactional sales to modern, frictionless co-sell motions, emphasizing the importance of signals, intentionality, and building credibility with Microsoft field teams. Whether you are navigating the complexities of the marketplace, struggling with reseller enablement, or looking to integrate AI into your sales process, this conversation offers actionable insights to align your organization’s go-to-market strategy with Microsoft’s evolving priorities and achieve results.
https://youtu.be/KV1MGSoyWbQ
Key Takeaways
Effective co-selling has shifted from autonomous, fragmented motions to a highly collaborative, data-driven approach essential for modern cloud GTM strategies.
Credibility is the currency of partnership; without trust from vendors and customers, technical go-to-market motions will fail to produce long-term outcomes.
The “REO” (Reseller Enablement Offering) model is an operational unlock for ISVs to go global and sell local without the friction of multi-party private offers.
Integrating AI into CRM systems is vital for identifying total addressable market (TAM) signals and maintaining sales velocity.
“Don’t automate a bad process” remains the cardinal rule; technology should be used to refine existing, successful motions, not to propagate inefficient ones.
The human element—community, in-person events, and empathy—is a necessary differentiator in an increasingly digital, automated B2B landscape.
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.
[00:00:00] Vince Menzione: So when we, so, uh, this all started ’cause I was trying to figure out what was next when I left Microsoft and I had this woman who was doing work, actually starting the co-selling process when we first started doing co-selling. And she was working with one of our partners and she was working with my team when I was at Microsoft.
[00:00:17] And then I said, this lady knows a lot about this stuff. So I reached out, I left Microsoft, I said, I think we can help each other. Like, I think we’re gonna, I got these companies that I spoke at Microsoft’s conference. They’re like, can you come help us out? And we teamed up. And, uh, we’ve been friends and doing fun stuff ever since.
[00:00:34] And she’s spoken at just about every event in some capacity or another, whether it was on stage or a workshop. Aaron Feiger. And then, uh, I, I found, I also, through Aaron, I met this other gentleman who had another company and he was doing amazing work with ISVs or SDCs, uh, Reese Barry from Carve. And then, uh, when I think we started up the event, I mean, Erica Irby came to one of our first events and spoke on stage.
[00:00:58] I was like, yeah, this. The person knows what she’s doing. So I’ve asked the three of them to come up and kind of round out and end the day, but all three of ’em have a tremendous, uh, background in this whole process of co-selling go to market strategies. And I thought you, you can, I’m just giving it over to the three of you.
[00:01:17] Erin Figer: I we don’t need
[00:01:18] Vince Menzione: a, you don’t needer you don’t need a clicker and you, you know what you’re all gonna be talking about. But these are some really smart people about how to partner with Microsoft. So, yeah. No, thank you for having us.
[00:01:27] Erin Figer: Um, hello. Hello. I think this is on. All right. So actually we’re gonna do an exercise.
[00:01:32] Um, I want everyone to close their eyes. Close your eyes. Close your eyes. All right. I want you to think back to January of 2016. What were you doing? Where were you in your career? What company were you working for? What was going on in your Microsoft partnership in January of 2016? Okay, Erica, what was happening for you?
[00:01:59] Erika Irby: So, uh, is this on? Sorry, I cannot tell. Um, I was at Veeam for the first time. We had just launched our first, uh, endpoint backup, uh, product in April of the previous year because nobody knew what cloud was yet, and people were scared. So we had to launch that product. And we had a relationship with Microsoft in a sense that about 20% of our business sat on Hyper V.
[00:02:25] That equated to about, I think like around 90 ish million dollars, which at the time was incredible for us. But to Microsoft was, you know, like, who are you guys again? And, um, we begged and begged to have any type of communication with them. Events. Funding nothing. We did not know what Azure consumption was.
[00:02:43] We didn’t have any of that information. And if somebody would’ve told me at that time that nine years later we would sign a five year contract with them and have multiple products dedicated to Microsoft, I would’ve been like, y’all are bananas.
[00:02:58] Erin Figer: Reese, what were you doing in January of 2016?
[00:03:00] Reis Barrie: Uh, let’s see, Jan, 2016, I was moving from Orlando, Florida to Seattle, Washington, uh, sight unseen with no place to stay.
[00:03:10] Uh, to take a job at a place called Microsoft or Consulting Gig, a place called Microsoft. Um, kicking off some of the cool motions that we’re, uh, we’re gonna talk about today, I think.
[00:03:20] Erin Figer: Does anybody know the significance of January, 2016 in the audience? Any takers? It was the launch of Cosell officially for Microsoft.
[00:03:31] Congratulations. We’re celebrating 10 years of officially. Problematizing how you connect with the Microsoft sales organization in a programmatic at scale way. And try to build meaningful relationships. And I have been helping partners since the inception of Microsoft’s Cosell program. Um, I was on the partner side, Reese was on the inside.
[00:03:59] You were at a partner. So we have all seen the evolution of Cosell across all three hyperscalers launching, you know, their co-sell initiatives. So I just wanted to take a moment to recognize. I didn’t know how many people realized that it’s been 10 years, it’s 10 year anniversary. I think it’s a big milestone.
[00:04:15] Huge. So. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we, you know, when they launched it, I went, I was consulting for a startup outta Boston and we were trying to get Microsoft’s attention, competitor to fame, and I went to the business development guy and said, uh, do you, did you just see this program that Microsoft launched? I think we should include this in our branding strategy and we should use co-sell as a way to get our brand out to Microsoft and be able to tell our story of who we are and what we’re doing and that we’re in their accounts and they don’t even know it.
[00:04:55] ’cause we’re the startup out of Boston who switched over from AWS to Microsoft. And we did, and I put every single opportunity in the system I could for the first six months, which was the last six months of their fiscal year. We go to partner of the, we go to, what was it called? Them WPCI think at the time.
[00:05:13] Mm-hmm. Uh, in Vegas. And Nasuni won wins like all four wards worldwide. US Education, healthcare Partner of the year because I put 117 deals in the system and then it seeded Na Sunni’s Marketing for the next two years. ’cause Microsoft gave them tons of money and attention and we were off to the races.
[00:05:35] Right. And then it was, can you repeat that? And we went and repeated it with Red Hat and Rubrik and Nintex and Quest and. I don’t know, lots more. But it was, it’s been fun journey co-selling. And it’s interesting to see now, um, how we continue 10 years later to evolve co-sell. And so Erica, what were some of the takeaways you had today listening to the conversation about how co-sell, how you’re modernizing and co-sell is changing inside your organization, especially now being a boomerang.
[00:06:08] Erika Irby: Yeah, well we call it a Veeam ring ’cause everything a veer ring, everything has to start with with Veeam. Well, one thing I was gonna comment on, I think I’m sitting here thinking how wild is it that back in the day we actually had to define that co-sell was an action that, that, you know, partners and vendors needed to take or, and different vendors and alliances.
[00:06:25] I mean, now we can’t even imagine going to market without, you know, that, that attach. But at the time, we were just very autonomous and everybody sold their own product and it, it took like this actual motion, um, to get us working together. But now look at us. I mean, this community is incredible. And we can also see this by, and even when AGU was mentioning earlier, all the bosses he had in his room, I mean.
[00:06:47] How many people like know each other. I mean, this is like part of that, that ecosystem. But today, um, a couple of things I took away, and by the way, we want a lot of interactions, so we’re going to kind of throw it back out at you guys. But for me, um, outcomes came up repeatedly that was mentioned multiple times about outcomes.
[00:07:04] Um, speed with intentionality. I think that was super critical. We have to go to market. There has to be a sense of urgency, but if we’re not intentional, it’s like, what are we doing? It’s just like a big mess. Um, and then credibility. And this is something I think is super important, regardless of, um, all of our emotions, all of our go to market, all of the, the things that we do, if we are not credible or not building trust with our vendors, our, our co-partners, our customers, we will never be successful.
[00:07:35] Um, so those are the three main things that I took away from, from everybody talking today. And I, I thought, I mean, to me personally, I thought those were pretty powerful.
[00:07:42] Yeah.
[00:07:42] Erika Irby: So we’d love to hear.
[00:07:43] Erin Figer: Yeah. And I know Reese, you have been doing a lot around outcomes and changing kind of the cosal, um, intention.
[00:07:54] Reis Barrie: Yeah. The, uh, the, just thinking back to today, like that was like such a, it was really a, a big key theme of today. Like everyone talked about, whether it’s pivot of, of sales, partnership, um, even when you’re talking about AI and some of the, the, uh. POC discussions. So the live like type of stuff, everything was centered around that narrative.
[00:08:17] And so, um, and it’s the same with, it’s the same with partnerships. It’s the same with your co-sell motion, same with your benefits utilization, um, and the way you’re utilizing partnerships. And so that’s, that’s a huge, huge component of, um, what I also took away from today. Um, and then somebody, I think it was Mark who said it that I’m gonna, I’m gonna steal this because the, the whole, um.
[00:08:40] Near and dear to my heart of like, don’t, don’t scale automate ai, A-I-F-I-A bad process. Like as someone who deals with like, for the most part, bad processes, like day in and day out, um, and trying to refine them and improve them. Like, that’s one of the first things that we, uh, that we talk to partners about when it comes to their partnership and, and the processes they have in place.
[00:09:03] So those are like two really big, just takeaways from
[00:09:06] Erin Figer: Yeah. Nice. So we’re here to learn from each other, right? Like this is an ultimate partner community of learning from each other. So I’d really love to hear from the audience, like what are some of the things you’re doing in your cloud? Go to market approach and co-selling that you’re trying out.
[00:09:23] Either you tried it, you failed fast, you learned from that, that you can share those lessons learned or like what’s working and how are you changing to be more outcome driven in your cloud go to market, uh, approach. Any takers in wanting to experience share? Great. Give that man a mic.
[00:09:50] Audience Member: The SMB investments. Um, these, these new, I don’t know what they are. I partner accelerators, PBAs, uh, there’s kind of something going on in the SMB space where it just seems like they’re coming outta the woodwork to come help. On deals. I’ve never seen Microsoft really embrace the customer that they, the way they have in SMB in the cos sells.
[00:10:10] I’m not sure if anybody else is seen that, but seems to be working. It’s two things. One, you at Data 60
[00:10:22] America.
[00:10:54] I think, I think part of the rarity there is that. Typically you wouldn’t get a seller attached, right? They’re unmanaged that they’re kind of in the nobody cares category, but,
[00:11:06] um. So Microsoft made a huge investment in the distribution space saying we’re gonna lean on distribution to help enable our 165,000 indirect resellers that we have as a business. And part of that enablement goes back to field sales alignment. So there’s these roles, ca roles called um, partner Solutions Sellers, PS.
[00:11:30] And so they’re aligned by, um, solutions architecture, if you will, for Microsoft. So, or cloud solution area, whatever the new term, modern work, uh, or, uh, AI work, AI workforce, um, data and ai. And so they are there to help support your deal. So it’s, it’s a huge investment and one that I would just can say continue to advocate for it if you’re seeing success with it, because I mean, we’re heading into FY 27 planning for Microsoft.
[00:11:58] So. Like there, there could be role changes. So I would say if it, if it’s helpful, like make sure you’re talking positively about it.
[00:12:05] Reis Barrie: Yeah, yeah. Just to, to your point, like I, I’d say like, um, in the last six to 12 months, like that’s been a, a thing that’s like we’ve to go back and like, I mean we manage a portfolio of a couple dozen, dozen partners at this point, and so we’ve had to go back and rewrite some of our playbooks, reeducate some of.
[00:12:26] Uh, some of the partnership folks that we use because, um, historically you kind of get into this like void of, you’re in partner center, you’re picking, you know, account alignment and it’s not managed. And so it’s like, okay, I expect to do nothing with this deal on the Microsoft side from a co-sell standpoint.
[00:12:42] Um, but that’s kind of, that’s changed quite a bit, um, in the last six months where, um, it’s not like a, it’s hard to create, it’s hard to create processes and dependence around it ’cause it’s not like a guarantee that you’ll get, you get engagement, but. Uh, you see more eng engagement, more on more and more deals.
[00:12:58] Um, and so we’ve had to go back and work with some of our partners to rewrite some of our, uh, deal sharing playbooks to account for, uh, things like that, which is, it’s super cool to see, frankly, um, to see engagement on these, like predominantly.
[00:13:12] Erin Figer: So in that motion. So first off, for the folks that are on the other side of this black curtain by the food station, if you guys could please stop the conversation.
[00:13:19] It’s really hard to pay attention to what’s going on in this room. Um. Thank you. Thank
[00:13:25] Erika Irby: you for saying that.
[00:13:26] Erin Figer: That was a great, that was a great, that’s a great point. And what I wanna talk about next is like in order to kind of continue to evolve the playbooks and they’re changing and people are changing, and priorities are changing, what are some of the signals that you guys are using internally in your organization, whether you’re building or buying, um, but would love to learn from all of you.
[00:13:46] What kind of signals are you looking at to help you continue to like co-innovate, co-sell, co-market? Um, in your go-to market strategies?
[00:13:58] Audience Member: Yeah,
[00:13:58] Erin Figer: please. Um,
[00:14:00] Audience Member: well, I’m, I’m, we’re building everything from scratch right now because we’re brand is integration.
[00:14:39] Like having our, our engineer be able to interact with product
[00:14:43] Erin Figer: engineer.
[00:14:50] I’m gonna pick on trend ’cause I had just spent last week with them and Sanjay, I think like what you guys are building internally, um, using signals, building it into an AI agent. To help you understand your tam, you wanna share a little bit.
[00:15:06] Audience Member: Happy to, and I’ll disclose. The first thing I did was hire Aaron Feiger to run my co-sell operations, uh, for the, for the second time.
[00:15:12] It’s
[00:15:13] Erin Figer: nice to be a GDI again
[00:15:14] Audience Member: for the second, so well planted. Um, but honestly, like I can’t have an environment where I fail my sellers, like this process has to be frictionless in co-sell and marketplace operations. Or I lose trust in my own house, let alone in my channel and in my customer base. So. Uh, building that strong foundation is like job number one.
[00:15:34] I’ve been, I spent a decade at Trend. I’m back, uh, five weeks on the job now. Um, but I’d say we’ve built a multi hundred million dollar cloud marketplace business thinking highly transactional. And what we’re trying to pivot to is a highly dated driven approach where we can look at any cloud in any region around the world, figure out roughly how many accounts they have.
[00:15:57] Figure out what those customers are spending and things that we can protect from a cybersecurity standpoint, knowing that four or 5% of that total spend will be spent on cybersecurity, doing an overlap of where I have existing customers in that drawing a tam, overlapping that with my incumbent partners to get the Venn diagram of like, where’s my sweet spot to move this forward?
[00:16:18] And then where’s my blast radius? So when I sit down with a guy leading France, or a person leading healthcare. I can have a really specific opportunity about how to leverage my cloud partnerships to accelerate deals and expand growth in a very surgical, data-driven, propensity driven way. And it like totally changes the conversation.
[00:16:40] And the other thing we’ve done because you get a lot of pushback and when you’re working with Microsoft, uh, I was chatting with a few folks today, like if you’re in cybersecurity, it’s not easy. They got a 25 billion ish dollars cybersecurity business. So you gotta find your swim lanes. And the dialogue I have now internally with my sellers is a major League baseball analogy, which is, if you play major league baseball and if you hit the ball 30% of the time, you’re gonna go to this little thing called the Hall of Fame, right?
[00:17:07] If you bat 300, if you’re in sales and Microsoft, or Amazon or whoever helps you, 30% of the time, you’re gonna go to this thing called President’s Club. That’s the difference between sitting at home in Ohio and sitting with your beach. You know, your, your toes in the sand. So it’s, we’re really trying to change.
[00:17:25] Uh, one of the first things I ask my team is, what’s our brand promise to our sales leaders and our sales team? And if you don’t know that answer, you got a fricking problem. So you gotta get that. What’s your Brene Brown would call it? What’s your North Star? What are your values? Whatcha are you gonna deliver?
[00:17:38] Right? So you gotta get that right and then you gotta be relentless in making it frictionless. And then you gotta hire Aaron Fier to run your co-sell.
[00:17:46] Erin Figer: Okay? Okay. And so, I mean, I think like that’s a trend that I’m seeing across the partners that I’ve been working with is how they’re using data and doing more data driven, um, decision making and getting to their TAM faster so that as they start to then look at this pathway of, okay, now I’m trying to go to market, what.
[00:18:11] Programs does Microsoft have or my other partners have that I can use to move me down that path faster. But getting that tam and feeling more confident about it, like, this is the group, this is the subgroup that I’m gonna start with until I see something that says, oh, I need to deviate and do something different.
[00:18:30] Um, so I’m definitely seeing that trend. Like what are you seeing, uh, what are you guys doing at Vem?
[00:18:35] Erika Irby: Um, so a couple different things. So like you were saying, we, we do leverage, um, AI more, uh, recently for New Deal Reg, um, automation. And we lit, literally just launched it this week. So this is the week that it’s exciting until the, someone tries to use it for the first time and then for.
[00:18:52] Um, so I can’t wait to see my emails later, but, um, it, it’s, we’re seeing like that, that that movement, which is, uh, definitely good for that. We have a task force internally for marketing, so trying to figure out how we’re gonna, um, you know, leverage that, uh, um, internally. And I think that Veeam, you know, they, they have been on the forefront of technology for, for a while.
[00:19:12] You know, they were the first with the. Virtual backup and, you know, all these things, you know, really trying to be ahead of the thing, ahead of the game. But, um, one thing I, I, I love how many people brought up the intentionality and the mindfulness because I think sometimes we can easily. Put out a whole bunch of tools.
[00:19:28] I love that you called out the point about the bad processes, um, because it actually, I think, can just create more confusion, more of a mess, and that, um, really mindfulness will be so much more beneficial, you know, down the road for your partners, for your customers, for everybody that has to, you know, do that interaction business with you.
[00:19:47] I did wanna call out that I thought it was lovely that you had a positive comment about Microsoft. I dunno if I,
[00:19:53] Audience Member: yeah,
[00:19:53] Erika Irby: I like rarely hear that. So like, awesome. I hope that does get back to Microsoft. I hope that they do, um, continue that. I’m sure their SMB is quite a bit bigger than maybe others, but that is a massive install base for, for Veeam as well.
[00:20:07] And even though we’re driving and trying to push into the enterprise, protecting that install base is just absolutely critical for success.
[00:20:15] Erin Figer: What about you race?
[00:20:17] Reis Barrie: So if I’m looking at like signals, I, I think. Uh, I’ll focus on too, I think you mentioned, uh, the, the cycles of change at Microsoft. Like it used to be an annual thing and now it’s like a, then it was a half base thing, and then it was a, now it’s a quarterly thing basically.
[00:20:30] Um, but there’s also like, there’s, there’s big signals and small signals, and so annually we still get like that, like the, the, the guiding direction so that we can align. How we talk about ourselves, how we talk about our partnership, how, how we enable our sellers and whatnot. And then we got a lot of programmatic shifts from a, from a quarter to quarter standpoint.
[00:20:50] Um, and so focusing on the, like these, um, these signals so we can align our, our messaging and our frameworks to align with, with, with our partnership, um, is, is one thing that’s, you know, super, super important to keep, keep tabs on. Um, and the second one, I’ll, I’ll give, you’ll. Mention is more on the cus sorry, uh, customer side, but like the seller enablement.
[00:21:15] And so how is your, on the marketplace side, how, how are your sellers talking to your customers about marketplace? Um, are they, are they bringing up earlier in the, in the qualifying discussions of how does the customer prefer to buy? Um, are there fire drills with two weeks to go, um, till the, till the deal closes and now the customer wants to go marketplace and, and no one knows how to do it?
[00:21:37] Um, seen that way too many times. Um, and so, but how, how, like studying kind of the, uh, maturity of our sales org to see well, like where, where, where is our, our, where are our sellers competent to have this marketplace discussion? Um, because I often relate, like, this is kinda a silly analogy, but I, I, simple stuff works really, really well with me.
[00:22:00] But I like, have you ever been to a farmer’s market and you’re like nervous to buy something? ’cause you don’t know if they take credit card.
[00:22:07] Audience Member: Yeah.
[00:22:07] Reis Barrie: And so like to me, I’m like, okay, well, like it’s the same thing with Marketplace to me. And so like, it’s, it’s the same concept of you want your customer to be able to buy, they want the way that they would like to buy.
[00:22:19] Um, and you want the person that they’re interacting with to be able to, um, facilitate that, that transaction in, in a way that feels frictionless. Yeah. Right. Uh, and so that’s a lot. Like, those are the kind of, the really two deep signals, um, that we, we look at a lot.
[00:22:37] Erika Irby: I wanna make a comment on the marketplace.
[00:22:38] So I don’t know if anybody else is experiencing this, you know, Veeam being an ISV, we have a really strong traditional, traditional channel motion. So, to your point about how sellers are, are managing the marketplace, to be totally honest, we struggle on, um, that, because right now it feels like a deal that goes to the marketplace is taken away from a reseller, and that reseller loses out then on that upfront margin and.
[00:23:06] Um, there’s not a clean path necessarily for, you know, just because the, the deal happened there. They really, they still need to maintain that because they’re the one pri providing the services. And somebody had brought up earlier that, um, A SMB customer will never be successful without a partner. And I, I totally agree with that, but it’s like that part is missing.
[00:23:26] So we almost need like a mindset change. In the channel where the marketplace is just a route to market and how the customer receives the product. It shouldn’t totally matter because at the end of the day, the, they still have to provide the services. It’s like, I could go to Home Depot and purchase a bunch of pipe for my house, but can I install it a thousand percent?
[00:23:49] No. I would destroy my house. I used to have to have a plumber. So I think there’s, we could help our channel by changing that mindset, and at the same time, we, we need the marketplace owners to, to provide the benefits so that it is still very attractive for those traditional. Partners to, to push their customers there or else I, I think we’re just gonna constantly have that strife.
[00:24:11] Erin Figer: Yeah. Does anyone in the audience, has anyone in the audience activated REO with Microsoft? You have? Yeah. So how’s it, like, how’s it going? Yeah, there’s Bump. Yeah.
[00:24:32] Audience Member: How that shifts making people more effective in their roles individually. So we’re early stage of it, but it’s, it’s been a good experience.
[00:24:42] Erin Figer: Has it helped to kind of unlock some of that friction with the resellers and continuing to include them to get to the s and b customers?
[00:24:49] Audience Member: Yeah, I think the, the challenge that we’re working through right now is, you know, Erica may have said it, but it’s.
[00:24:56] It’s not just the, the view of the marketplace taking people out of the equation, it’s how do we use the marketplace for, for co-innovation to keep people in it. So if, if, if it’s gonna take three to five of, of us in this room to deliver that spectrum to innovation for the customer. Um, how do we use the marketplace as a force multiplier of bringing that together and making that transaction easy?
[00:25:21] Yeah. If, if our consumers are more and more influenced by Instagram and TikTok Shop Now buttons, like my husband’s texting me about my stuff that showed up today,
[00:25:31] Erika Irby: which is none of his business.
[00:25:32] Audience Member: None of your business. That’s right. Just put it
[00:25:36] Erika Irby: in my room. Thank you.
[00:25:37] Audience Member: If people are, people as consumers in the, in the u, us consumer based economy is driving more and more people through like that social experience of purchasing, that is an area where I do think Microsoft could help us and we could help ourselves in marketing how that, how we leverage it to be a force multiplier versus another omnichannel.
[00:25:58] Well,
[00:25:58] Erin Figer: so on that note, how many of you have put a button on your website? Click to buy? Yeah,
[00:26:02] Audience Member: that’s, that’s where I’m at with our marketing team.
[00:26:04] Erin Figer: Right?
[00:26:04] Audience Member: Yeah. That’s, I think, the next evolution for us in the, in the REO piece.
[00:26:08] Erin Figer: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:26:10] Audience Member: I, I don’t want it on our website. I want to, I want it on my Instagram, my LinkedIn, my TikTok reels.
[00:26:15] That’s, we’re going to, sir, it’s coming next week at our sales kickoff. Yeah.
[00:26:28] besides the, you know, RE speed wagon? Uh, it’s the Microsoft Reseller Enablement. Um, offering, so like you activate your resellers to just take your listing and be able to do a private offer so that you don’t have to do multi-party private offers anymore. Your resellers can just take the listing and sell it directly, and they don’t have to wait for you to send them the offer.
[00:26:52] Then they have to go do, so it takes out some of the steps and that friction in the process streamlines it and it allows them to like. Add on and do their own pricing. And then the reseller, however you have your arrangement with that reseller, continues to pay you in the back end for, um, selling that through the marketplace.
[00:27:11] Erika Irby: I think I’m going to have you come and do a webinar for our Veeam partners to, to help them with that, because to your point, I don’t, I don’t think it’s as prevalent yet. It’s, it hasn’t really caught on.
[00:27:21] Erin Figer: Yeah. It’s been really an unlock of, I had a large, um, ISV that I helped. We implemented REO internally, so they have 34 marketplace offerings and they have this initiative.
[00:27:36] They wanted to go global, sell local, and so they launched five more publishing accounts and they came to me and said, we need to replicate our catalog five times 34. And I was like, oh God, please, no. And luckily like two months later, Microsoft, like GAed, uh, REO, and I was like, here’s your answer. We’re not going to do that.
[00:27:58] We’re going to enable each of your publishing accounts to be resellers of your quote unquote gold standard publishing account, and that we actually implemented REO as an internal mechanism for them to issue their own publishing accounts, to resell private offers in local currencies. Um, and that was really an operational unlock for them.
[00:28:25] All right. Anybody you wanna ask a question to the audience?
[00:28:29] Audience Member: Okay. I’ll just keep going.
[00:28:32] Erin Figer: Um, all right. So what are some other, um, signals or ways that you guys are evolving the way you’re co-selling? Um, does anybody else have some experience shares that they want to, to share with the audience? We’ve got, we’re using data, uh, we’re using some ai, we’re helping us get to our audience faster.
[00:28:51] I really loved work span, um, building in an AI tool inside your CRM system, um, so that you can get some of those signals. Any other signals that you guys are using, uh, to change the way you’re co-selling?
[00:29:07] It’s quiet on
[00:29:07] Reis Barrie: Maybe, maybe I’ll share one, but Yeah. Yeah. So, um, just when it comes to, like, for us, account alignment to me is like one of the most important things and consistently doing, uh, you know, account planning and account alignment against Microsoft their accounts. Um, now it’s a bit interesting ’cause you can include some s and b stuff in there.
[00:29:27] Um, but also, uh, Jason you mentioned up there, the. Uh, marketplace rewards, having the propensity mapping. And so looking at not only from an account alignment, um, what Microsoft accounts are, we, um, you know, areas are we most penetrated in, but also of those accounts, which ones are already buying on marketplace.
[00:29:47] Uh, maybe have a commitment to Microsoft in, in some way to help us just further, uh, further target and focus on, you know, if we have 500 opportunities that we’re trying to, um. I’m trying to work through, um, to Sanjay’s point, like what’s, what’s the 30% that I’m gonna get my batting average on? Um, and so that constant account alignment to us is like a, is a huge, huge signal, um, for us to focus on.
[00:30:14] Um, and then you can even take it a layer deeper to identify, okay, well if I’m looking like, do I have density within Nina had the, the ou up here on the screen. So do I have densities with density within like specific. Uh, verticals or regions, um, or segments that I should maybe if I just focused on that one segment or one vertical, um, you know, then all of a sudden I, I’m super successful having an executive sponsorship in that, uh, in that ou, something like that.
[00:30:44] Um, and, but that, that’s all starting with, um, the foundations of that being that consistent account alignment and leveraging some of the, some of the propensity stuff that Microsoft is, is providing.
[00:30:56] Erin Figer: And then making sure you’re like bringing it back into your CRM and storing it so that you can continue to use that information ongoing.
[00:31:03] And we’re trying to figure out how to embed more and more.
[00:31:37] And are you integrating like. Microsoft and other partners into that data as well. It’s like, this is a great partner. Incorporate them at this point in the journey. Yeah, we um.
[00:31:50] When
[00:31:50] Audience Member: you’re in the process with, with Microsoft, we haven’t opened it up externally, so that’s our crawl, walk, run is we’re, we’re trying this out internally. Let’s see if we can work the bugs out, get the agents working, and then how do we now go to our MSP community and offer this up as an agent they can use within their sales team.
[00:32:08] And on the end of. We’re still working in the middle, but front end profiling, it’s helping a ton, um, and giving us a lot of good intel that the sellers are driving through the agent on the back end. It’s, it’s giving us not, um, just propensity data, but what’s resonating. So if we launched 12 products this year and we trained sellers on.
[00:32:28] What’s hitting, where’s my pipeline velocity coming from? Where’s my close rate coming from? So that every month when we have our sales town hall, it’s like, here’s the top three sales motions that are actually driving pipeline and fast to cash close rates.
[00:32:42] Erin Figer: And I gotta imagine that helps you get to your differentiators.
[00:32:45] Audience Member: Oh
[00:32:45] Erin Figer: yeah. And refining your superpower story.
[00:32:48] Audience Member: That’s right. That’s. Yeah, because it’s for, for our sales team. I mean, we were talking about it earlier, it’s all about simplification. There’s so many options, so much noise. It’s like, just go focus on these three things and this is where you’re gonna deliver impact and outcomes to your customer.
[00:33:01] And if we’re doing that, we’re all winning.
[00:33:03] Erika Irby: Yeah. I, I, um, just recently, this is why one of the coolest things that Veeam has done, we just launched this tool called, um, expansion iq, and it’s part of our command, the expand motion this year where we’re really. Upselling and cross-selling our, um, install base.
[00:33:17] This tool takes all the partners individual propensity data, puts it against four solution plays that we think are the main plays, and then provides them, this is what you could be earning if you took this motion. And then from a marketing perspective, we provide them. And to do this, here’s your campaign.
[00:33:37] Here’s your this, here’s your that. Step one, send this email. Like very, very, you know, just, uh, planned out. And I loved what Nina said earlier today when she shared that, um, org chart. Essentially with all the different, um, industry focuses we are driving. One of our go to market actions is a Microsoft healthcare campaign.
[00:33:56] That is like very, very specific, but it’s helping our partners in that manner. Could they go to their own database and pull their own and do all this stuff? Of course. But for our sellers to go blink and then give them a report and be like, here it is. It makes it so much more relevant. And then the steps just, they just hand that to their marketing org and then they’re just off and running.
[00:34:18] Going back into your team to say, Hey, we rolled out these 12 things, only three landing. You gotta go back to the drawing on the other side. Or We need more money for these three. Yeah, but let’s figure what’s not with customer
[00:34:38] to record the.
[00:34:47] Audience Member: A better, faster, uh, listening post for, uh, can I talk really loud? Um, it’s, it’s, it’s helped turning on a listening post for our engineering, our marketing, our service delivery organization that would’ve taken months or quarters to get spun up in an executive board meeting or something. Right now they get it real time every week.
[00:35:09] Okay.
[00:35:09] Erin Figer: So what I’m hearing, like the theme here is to really like. Understand your sales process. Also, your co-sell sales process that runs in parallel with that. And how do you continue to serve up the right data at the right time to help your people take the right next action to continue to drive those outcomes that you’re looking for, but then also using data to circle it back, to say what’s working, what’s not working, to continue to refine that whole motion.
[00:35:43] Um, so if you’re not doing that, I think that’s a big aha moment and takeaway, uh, from today’s session or from here today is like, okay, am I really identifying all the opportunities in my process to involve data to help my people continue to drive outcomes?
[00:36:04] Audience Member: You
[00:36:04] Erin Figer: have a,
[00:36:05] Audience Member: you have your head in up back there, Gary.
[00:36:06] Yeah. I, I couldn’t tell if, uh, you were prompting me when you asked that question and I, I didn’t want to, you know, do a shameless plug for cloud, but I think everybody
[00:36:15] Erin Figer: should shamelessly plug, plug away.
[00:36:16] Audience Member: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, you brought up a mitt and, uh, the co-sell thing, but it, it does relate to what Reese had said about, um, you know, the being at the farmer’s market and.
[00:36:26] Not sure what, you know, can I use a credit card or not? And I think that, um, or
[00:36:30] Erin Figer: can I use Apple Pay? I still ask. I’m like, do you, do you accept Apple Pay?
[00:36:32] Audience Member: Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it’s like, I think, uh, a lot of times you don’t understand the seller in that situation is not sure how to handle that conversation. So, and there’s not a lot of information about their, about that.
[00:36:44] Like how to, when it comes to a seller talking about marketplace and asking about the commit. Because the commit obviously is one of the main drivers, right? 900 billion out there. And committed spend across all the hyperscalers. So how to actually bring that up with a customer and what if they don’t know, right?
[00:37:05] So there’s a whole process that, you know, they, they need to be taught this. But the first thing that’s also come up multiple times is activating them also means how to engage them. So an approach there of how to engage your salespeople is critical because if salespeople aren’t in it, they’re nothing’s happening.
[00:37:23] You’re not gonna do well with marketplace. And on the co-sell part, it’s kinda the same thing. The typical thing, and I remember talking to Aldo Desal about this at another Ultimate Partner event, but uh, you bring your salespeople into a call, like you set up a call with, with Microsoft and the seller comes in unprepared.
[00:37:42] Typically they’re not sure what to say and it’s a little bit intimidating. How, how, how do I, you know, what do you do in this situation? Like, so you start talking about product ’cause that’s what you know, and it’s the last thing you want to do. You, you want to understand what they care about, like em stage and, and, uh, what’s your consumption story and what kind of MRR impact you’re gonna have.
[00:38:03] So it’s, these things are just unusual topics for the salespeople to be prepared, uh, to talk about. But it’s critical if your salespeople are gonna be enabled that they can do that. So I think from a co-selling standpoint, that’s just what I want to mention. And by the way, we offered a tool that does that.
[00:38:20] Erin Figer: Nice. Awesome. Thank you. Uh, I mean, I don’t know about you. Reese Cloud Atlas. Every time we helped an ISV with their cosell motion, we would say, okay, we’re ready to go share cos sells and drive introductions. Have you done your sales enablement? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ve enabled the sellers we have, and then we launch like the first batch of cos sells and then they immediately come back.
[00:38:43] Stop, stop, stop. Don’t share any more deals, like we’re causing too much confusion. Uh, we didn’t do our sales enablement. Wow. Grace,
[00:38:52] Reis Barrie: I mean, sound
[00:38:53] Erin Figer: familiar?
[00:38:53] Reis Barrie: It sounds very familiar. It sounds too familiar. Uh, P-T-S-D-A little bit there, but the, uh, sorry,
[00:38:58] Erika Irby: but that’s why you guys have jobs.
[00:39:00] Reis Barrie: Yes. Go on. It’s, it’s, um, but this, you know, I, I always come back to the, the concept of like, if we showed up to a Microsoft co-sell call the way we do to a customer call, like, oh.
[00:39:14] Erin Figer: It,
[00:39:14] Reis Barrie: it would, it would be night and day difference of the value you’d get outta your Microsoft partnership and co-sell. That’s all. It’s
[00:39:20] Erin Figer: Well,
[00:39:20] Reis Barrie: but I think people
[00:39:21] Erin Figer: forget Microsoft is your customer too.
[00:39:23] Reis Barrie: Yeah.
[00:39:23] Erin Figer: They’re your partner, but you have to sell to before you can sell with and through. So you first gotta like master the sell to.
[00:39:30] Reis Barrie: Yeah, a hundred percent. So there, there’s there like, and then to your point,
[00:39:34] Erin Figer: it’s still true. 10 years later, people, it’s still true. Back to the fundamentals, right?
[00:39:39] Reis Barrie: Yeah. It’s,
[00:39:40] Erin Figer: yes. Go for it.
[00:39:44] Audience Member: The, um, Microsoft being customer, right? So, and I love what you said about sem uh, alignment. So we actually made it a point, um, in our co-sell process, we have a validation checkpoint with Microsoft. If we build a co-sell packages, um, we are an si We’re not primarily ISV, but I think that’s shifting as well gradually.
[00:40:10] And ESI kind of becoming a little bit of ISV. Um, so why it’s important, I think like Ree said, like you come up, you show up to co-sell call and you just pitch your services or say, well, let’s do account planning with this and that. Right? But what if it doesn’t work in the field? So that validation became critical for us, and I can tell you that now we have success stories that are actually proven based on that multifaceted feedback, uh, as to it’s one thing to build it.
[00:40:46] Yeah. But is it useful for seller, for Microsoft sellers actually in the field? Can they actually position it and help clients to be more successful? Because that’s the ultimate goal. So that validation became, uh, an important checkpoint for us, uh, to make those packages repeatable and successful for customers at the end of the day.
[00:41:06] So when we talk about signals, you absolutely right. It’s not just customer signals like we use ZoomInfo, we use all this data points, et cetera, but it’s also signals from the field because while Microsoft is a huge organization, they’re also very dynamic. On very regular basis, a lot of things changed. So taking those signals into account, uh, has created that, what we call like, more of a holistic approach for us, uh, to make it more meaningful.
[00:41:33] So
[00:41:34] Erin Figer: I like it. And you made it sticky by making it like a required point in the sales process? Absolutely. That everyone stops. Take a moment.
[00:41:41] Audience Member: Yeah.
[00:41:41] Erin Figer: And make sure that we’re all on the same page.
[00:41:43] Audience Member: Yeah. And I think for us as si it’s even more critical. Like I, I, I think there is a lot more to happen in marketplace as, as, as much as we talk about it, but being in si I, we still kind of figure it out, like how Mark marketplace actually becomes a place of transaction for a size.
[00:42:01] Yeah. So that’s why, you know, we’re passionate about packages and it’s not just a matter of publishing it and say, oh, it’s co-sell ready? Then what? Yeah. Right. So yeah, so, so that’s why that, that checkpoint is very important for us. So
[00:42:16] Erin Figer: definitely, definitely. I think you ladies over here in the corner had some, some hands up, Michelle and, and the other Michelle, Michelle Squared.
[00:42:26] Audience Member: Thank you. Michelle Squared. I like it. Um, so. I’ve been a little quiet because I wanna just give my background. So I’m a global VP of channels and alliances and, um, I think it’s a bit of this, uh, the movement, right? So I love your farmer’s market analogy so much. I’m gonna steal that. Thank you. But the reason is because you don’t know unless you’re gonna meet your partners where you are or meet your customers where they are in that journey.
[00:42:53] So the first time that they’re selling whatever their goods or wares are, and somebody says, do you take Apple Pay? That’s a clue. And then when you hear it over and over again, you realize there’s a correlation that there’s a need in the market. So in In my life, all roads read to Romes, right? Reseller and VARs, OEM, alliances, MSPs, MSPs, ISVs System integrators.
[00:43:17] And as a partner leader, you wouldn’t necessarily think marketplace is first because you feel like you’re going around your partners. But am I meeting my partners where they are in their journey and choosing to procure the way they want to procure? And I think that’s the notion that I have a lot of learning from this team and everyone in this room to understand how do we in a company.
[00:43:38] Prescribe the right solution to, to meet our partners in that journey. And I’ll use, kind of circling back to the MSP space, PAX eight, one of Microsoft’s largest partners created a marketplace dedicated to MSPs. And while I was the global Channel chief of SonicWall, a lot of partners said to me, I like you.
[00:43:56] I like your products, I like your firewall, but unless you’re on the park, PAX eight Marketplace, I’m not gonna buy from you because they make my life frictionless. And easier to do business with. And I think that’s the motion that every vendor in this room needs to understand is, are we truly meeting our partners where they are?
[00:44:14] PS I work for Carrero DDoS Solutions and come to talk to me about that. Thank you.
[00:44:18] Erika Irby: Well, and a Guo owes you some money for that commercial right there.
[00:44:30] Audience Member: From, we’re actually community first. Um, as an MSP, even though we’re national, like we really focus in on community local touch. Um. Like you said, um, um, Southern seldom me in a southern way. Like that’s what we focus on. I’m your
[00:44:45] Erin Figer: huckleberry.
[00:44:46] Audience Member: I love that. Exactly. Um, and we’re seeing a ton of success with actual in-person events now.
[00:44:53] Like the majority of our business is come in, leads are coming from that right now. And even though, like I, I truly believe in digital first motions, we need to be on Instagram and have that self-serve motion as the next generation comes up in our. Buying and transitioning to their kids or whatever that looks like.
[00:45:14] Like we have to remember that there’s also a trend of tactile in person people first coming with it. And so like we, I, I feel like there, there has to be that motion engaged and I would love to hear your thoughts around how are vendors thinking about engaging in that community driven approach, not just the platform itself.
[00:45:37] Erika Irby: Yeah, I, I personally also, this is hilarious ’cause we’re like best friends, so we can talk about this later, but, um, from a Veeam perspective, Michelle, um, we are seeing a resurgence in like these thought leadership type of events. And I think there’s, this is, this is sort of related, but just to, this is kind of how I think about this.
[00:45:57] Um, Barnes and Noble’s business has like gone through the roof lately, and they are, they’re actually like opening more stores, which is bananas because at one point they were like going outta business because nobody wanted to go and like, touch a book or talk to somebody. But that is changing, thank God.
[00:46:11] Right? That is like changing and people are actually like becoming more social because they’re missing this. Um, my kids’ generation refers to places like Barnes and Nobles as the third place. Like this magical place that exists where you can talk to a real human that’s not on your phone. Like it’s, it’s amazing.
[00:46:28] But anyways, we’re, I think we’re starting to see this in marketing. We used to like pump everything out digitally, but after a while people get that form and they’re like, I am not putting my dang information in this form. And then your ability to capture that lead completely dissipates. All it is, is, is now an impression, which is.
[00:46:47] Fairly worthless. You can have millions of them and nothing happens. So we are definitely investing more into, um, uh, live events, but also with the live streaming because then people can, they’re still watching it live. They still have to register for it. They knew they couldn’t make it. So I think that there’s definitely that digital aspect that’s super helpful.
[00:47:05] But a purely digital, you will never make that connection.
[00:47:10] Erin Figer: Yeah, I mean, I think. Unfortunately, COVID made us, you know, all do things digitally. But now that we’re past that, getting back to that multifaceted approach, I think if we think about what’s going on in the B2C world, lots of communities within communities, there’s whole company’s getting created, like women are bringing women together to do craft circles.
[00:47:37] And literally. Okay. But like I did that digitally. That was pretty awesome. I was like three years. That shameless plug. No, I, no. But like then now there’s like companies that are actually like renting space, bringing people together, like crafting and while they’re doing the activity, um, if anyone’s ever done therapy, a therapist will say.
[00:48:01] You know, if you wanna get your kids talking, get them coloring, like distract them and they will start to open up. And so you distract people with an activity and they start to open up. And what they really are, thrive, like what they really need is in this digital world where we’re getting so much information, we still need.
[00:48:22] The next layer of filter to help us vet out and validate and confirm like our thinking or like our suspicions on things like, am I in the right going down the right path? Is this the right direction? So there’s still a human element that needs to be involved in that buyer journey, and you’re seeing that with these little micro communities inside communities.
[00:48:45] Um, and so I’ve. I mean, I love micro communities inside of bigger communities. I’ve started two of them, three of them. So I, it definitely, like, we need still that in person, uh, interaction and I love seeing it coming back in our space.
[00:49:04] Erika Irby: I, I was just thinking about ear, the, the previous panel and the, the topic came up about who can assist partners as they transition from that direct to CSP motion.
[00:49:15] And I mean, yes, it, I think Microsoft plays a role there, but I think it would behoove Microsoft to invest in these communities and they would enable that change. Yeah,
[00:49:26] Erin Figer: yeah, yeah. There is a person inside of Microsoft who has that remit, but she’s like one person, one person trying to do that. I was like, wow.
[00:49:36] Okay. Grace, what are you seeing amongst your partners and also your perspective with working with Microsoft?
[00:49:42] Reis Barrie: Yeah, yeah. Um. There’s a really good, uh, the frontier study, the work like door work study that they did, um, which talks really heavily about just like in this, you know, post 20, you know, 2020 culture, how like the amount of busyness has just increased in an insane amount and how a, a really strong use case for AI is to buybacks from that time essentially, um, for us to, you know, return back to a, a normal state and I think social creatures, right?
[00:50:10] And so, um, in this. I run a fully remote company, which is like a blessing and also like really interesting to try to create a really strong culture within people that are, you know, 13 times zones apart times. Um, and so it’s uh, it’s a really interesting thing and coming together and, um, into an in-person space or a place here or a place where you can actually talk to your customers, talk to, um.
[00:50:39] Step away from that, like that busy day to day where like, I, I can’t even fit a 15 minute break in to grab lunch. You know, days like how much, supposed to find 15 minutes to just have a, a casual conversation and these types of events, which I’m sure Vince is cheering back there that we’re talking about this right now.
[00:50:57] But the, uh, but these type of events, they let you decompress from that day and they let you kind of just have these really important conversations that, you know, bring us back to just being humans To me.
[00:51:10] Erin Figer: And being human and co-selling with each other. And on that note, we’re 44 seconds over. Yeah, we’ll give it back to Vince,
[00:51:18] Reis Barrie: but we were plugging Vince’s events, so I think we’re okay.
[00:51:21] Vince Menzione: We One more question. We have one more question from, sorry. Oh yeah.
[00:51:23] Reis Barrie: It’s
[00:51:23] Audience Member: maybe more a, a shared just as we’re talking
[00:51:25] Vince Menzione: by the clip, right.
[00:51:27] Audience Member: And to compliment everything that you guys have been talking about around co-sell and. Getting ready in line with Microsoft to speak to the customer and speaking. So the signals that we’re going after are on the actual conversations that are happening in the conversation.
[00:51:41] So aside from all the planning, which I agree on, we’re building agents to hear what’s going on on the calls with Microsoft, on the calls with customer, and grab those actual signals. Are we answering the questions in the right way? What types of questions are coming back to us that we weren’t able to answer.
[00:51:58] Maybe we forgot some information that we planned on and thought about can we signal and provide that feedback to the user, the seller, or whatnot on the call. And so as we’re doing this, ’cause we’re in the communication space, so we have some self-interest here ’cause that’s sort of the future of our business.
[00:52:12] But it’s a really interesting opportunity for us to grab these signals to improve how we’re selling with our customers, how our partners are selling with our customers, with Microsoft. It’s just an interesting way with everything that’s going on full circle, we’re trying to complete that sort of sales journey with AI and, and grab those signals and keep getting better all the time.
[00:52:32] Erin Figer: Yeah, I love that. And I think it’s like the ongoing balance of people, process and technology and how do you continue to keep the human in the loop? It, as we continue to introduce and evolve AI and use of data in our companies is like continuing to be mindful about the human in the loop. Um, part of that journey.
[00:52:54] So thank you all.
[00:52:55] Vince Menzione: Very cool. Great conversation.
[00:52:56] Erin Figer: Thanks for all the audience engagement. We appreciate it.
[00:52:59] Vince Menzione: Co-selling the house, co-selling the house.
[00:53:02] Audience Member: Thank you, Vince.
[00:53:02] Vince Menzione: Thank you. And I remember that January, 2016. Yes.
296 – Why the Obsolete MSP Model is Dying and How to Join the MIP Elite
In this insightful episode, Oguo Atuanya, CVP of Vendor Experience at Pax8, joins us to discuss the pivotal evolution in the IT channel: the transition from Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to Managed Intelligence Providers (MIPs). We explore how the marketplace is moving beyond traditional infrastructure support toward a future defined by AI-driven orchestration, business consultancy, and scalable agent-tech organizations. Oguo details how Pax8 is leading this transformation by curating solutions that allow partners to move from transactional service models to life-cycle management that prioritizes measurable ROI for the Small and Medium Business (SMB) market.
Key Takeaways
Pax8 is redefining the role of the distributor by acting as an AI commerce platform for the SMB market.
The shift from Managed Service Provider (MSP) to Managed Intelligence Provider (MIP) is critical for scaling in the modern tech era.
Successful MSPs must evolve into business consultants who integrate AI-driven workflows rather than just selling infrastructure.
Security and automation are foundational elements that every modern MIP must prioritize to ensure scalability for customers.
The “MIP Playbook” provides the curriculum-driven enablement partners need to successfully pivot their business models.
Building strong, end-to-end customer lifecycle management is the key to minimizing churn and maximizing long-term value.
https://youtu.be/c8uCnMJd9bg
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.
In this compelling discussion from the Ultimate Partners Winter Retreat, Microsoft GM Katharine Kennedy joins Vince Menzione to break down the operating models of “Frontier Firms.” Katharine shares her incredible journey of scaling the ServiceNow partnership from zero to $1 billion in TCV and reveals her current mission: building Adobe into the next great frontier firm for Microsoft. The conversation dives deep into the necessity of AI-led innovation, the critical importance of placing trust at the center of every technological stack, and why traditional quarterly business reviews are being replaced by real-time, constant connectivity. Whether you are an ISV, SDC, or channel partner, this session provides a roadmap for navigating the tectonic shifts in the AI ecosystem through organizational alignment and shared vision.
Frontier firms integrate AI up and down the UI, agent, and data layers while evolving their internal operating systems.
Successful partnerships require a shared vision at the highest level that melds two mission statements into a single belief system.
The traditional QBR is becoming outdated, replaced by real-time, constant communication across engineering and product teams.
Trust must be the primary pillar of AI development, supported by core principles like fairness, reliability, and accountability.
Leading with co-innovation and customer-centric data solutions is more effective than leading strictly with revenue goals.
Strategic use of the Microsoft Marketplace remains a “hidden gem” for achieving scale and high-velocity growth.
https://youtu.be/OU22MIfs-1A
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.
294 – The Missing Piece of Your Ikigai: Why Nobody Finds Purpose Alone – Vince Menzione
Not your job title. Not your company’s mission statement. Not your OKRs. Your reason for being.
In this solo episode, I challenge the traditional concept of Ikigai — the Japanese framework for finding meaning — and reveal the critical piece that’s been missing from the standard four-circle model all along.
I draw from 40 years in this industry, from carrying a bag in the field to leading a $4.6 billion partner business at Microsoft, to a serious accident that stopped me cold and forced me to ask the hardest questions of my life. What came out of that experience changed how I see purpose entirely.
My conclusion: purpose is not a solo exercise. You don’t find it in a diagram. You find it in the room — the right room, with the right people, at the right moment.
In this episode, I introduce the Fifth Circle — the question every partner leader and ecosystem builder needs to add to their Ikigai: Who am I finding it with?
https://youtu.be/_z_QRObCXSc
Key Takeaways
Ikigai represents your “reason for being” across four circles: what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for — but that’s not the whole picture.
The traditional model is almost always framed as a solo exercise. For those of us building partnerships for a living, that framing is incomplete.
Proximity is a strategic asset — especially now, in the Decade of the Ecosystem.
My accident was the catalyst that clarified everything: my purpose wasn’t in the content I created. It was in the community I served.
293 – The $500B Cloud Commitment Opportunity Are You Being Left Behind?
In this compelling discussion, Vince Menzione sits down with Dexter Hardy, founder of Ntegral and the visionary behind Spark, to deconstruct the massive transformation happening within the cloud ecosystem. Dexter shares his journey of evolving from a traditional systems integrator to a marketplace powerhouse with over 300 solutions and customers in 100 countries, revealing the “Marketplace Operating System” that drives global sales without a massive headcount. They dive deep into the Spark GTM methodology, discussing how companies can bridge the gap between building a solution and actually driving “Get It Now” transactions while navigating the $500 billion committed cloud-spend landscape. From the nuances of multi-party private offers to the critical role of AI in becoming a “frontier firm,” this episode provides a high-level masterclass for any partner looking to turn the marketplace into their most effective revenue stream.
In this compelling discussion from the Ultimate Partner Winter Retreat, Vince Menzione sits down with Marc Monday of ServiceNow and marketing expert Ashleigh Vogstad to deconstruct the “tectonic shifts” currently hitting the tech industry. As the market moves from AI excitement into a period of “POC fatigue,” the conversation pivots to the essential groundwork required for success: clean data, governed workflows, and the transition from an attention economy to a trust-based machine economy. They explore how Gen Z’s massive spending power is reshaping marketplaces and why simply automating a 27-step bad process with AI is a recipe for failure. Whether you are a partner manager or an entrepreneur, this episode provides a roadmap for staying human in a machine-to-machine world.
Key Takeaways
The market is experiencing “POC fatigue,” making it critical to transition from experimental AI to real-world value driven by central databases and knowledge graphs.
ServiceNow is shifting focus toward “Control Tower” solutions to govern and orchestrate how various AI agents interact with mission-critical data.
We are moving from a human-centric “attention economy” to a “trust economy” where machines make high-stakes decisions on behalf of users.
Automating an existing 27-step approval process without rethinking the workflow first results in an “automated bad process” rather than a solution.
By 2030, 75% of B2B buyers will be Gen Z, a demographic that favors authentic voices and direct-to-fan platforms like Substack over traditional channels.
Hyperscaler partnerships are becoming essential “third-party validation” layers that allow AI agents to verify a company’s win rates and credibility.
If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community.
291 – The Power of Three: How Top Leaders Turn AI Into Growth
In this episode, Vince Menzione sits down with Rebecca Jones, Chief Growth Officer of Bridge Partners, to deconstruct the “Power of Three” co-selling model and the shift from AI experimentation to scalable business outcomes. They explore the critical importance of customer-centricity, the role of agentic workflows in solving complex B2B problems, and why the most successful leaders prioritize progress over perfection to show momentum within weeks rather than years. From her background in the financial sector to her experience scaling with industry titans like Microsoft, Rebecca provides a masterclass on navigating the current “tectonic shifts” in technology through strategic alignment and executive commitment.
Key Takeaways
Bridge Partners focuses on connecting strategy to execution, boasting a 90% referral rate driven by deep expertise in product marketing and partner ecosystems.
The market is shifting from mere AI “dabbling” to purposeful applications in MVP and scale, specifically through agentic AI that tackles real business problems.
Success in today’s landscape requires knowing your underlying value and maintaining an unwavering focus on customer-centricity.
The “Power of Three” (Hyperscaler, GSI, and ISV) remains the ultimate design for go-to-market scaling, provided there is a clear joint value proposition.
To show immediate momentum, new executives should focus on “quick wins” achievable within six to eight weeks rather than long-term three-year plans.
Effective co-selling requires removing blockers like compensation misalignment and securing top-down executive sponsorship across all leadership silos.
If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community.
https://youtu.be/nClWjCm6S6A
290 – The AI Pilot Era is Officially Dead—Are You Being Left Behind?
In this keynote from the Ultimate Partners Winter Retreat, Nina Harding breaks down the massive shift happening in the AI landscape as customers move away from experimental pilots and demand concrete ROI and business outcomes. She emphasizes that the era of selling products and time-and-materials approaches is over, replaced by outcome-based, verticalized selling where vendors and partners share accountability. Through real-world examples in healthcare and retail, Harding outlines how partners can leverage Copilot Studio, Agent 365, and Microsoft’s incentive programs to build specific superpowers, differentiate themselves, and ultimately lead the AI mission alongside Microsoft.
Key Takeaways
Customers are no longer interested in AI experimentation and now expect immediate, concrete return on investment.
Selling products is dead; the modern approach requires a consultative, signal-based strategy focused entirely on business outcomes.
The traditional time-and-materials billing model is disappearing as clients demand shared accountability for project success.
Rapid proliferation of AI agents has made security and governance top priorities for enterprise customers.
Success in the Microsoft ecosystem now requires partners to highly verticalize their value propositions by industry.
Defining and clearly articulating your unique “superpower” or niche is essential to stand out to the Microsoft field sales organization.
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.
289 – The End of Attention: Why ‘Business as Usual’ Will Fail in 2026
In this compelling episode, Ashleigh Vogstad, CEO of Transcends, joins Vince Menzione to discuss the tectonic shifts occurring in the global partner ecosystem. Ashleigh shares her firsthand experiences studying AI at Oxford, the rise of the “Trust Economy,” and the controversial Amazon vs. Perplexity lawsuit. They dive deep into the practicalities of becoming a “Frontier Firm,” the importance of building proprietary AI agents, and the ways Gen Z and AI-driven marketplaces are revolutionizing the buyer journey. Whether you are looking to win Microsoft Partner of the Year or navigate the demise of traditional SaaS, this conversation provides a strategic roadmap for leading through the AI revolution.
Key Takeaways
The economy is shifting from a focus on human attention to a foundation of verified trust.
Future commerce will involve “selling to machines” as AI agents begin making purchasing decisions on behalf of humans.
Microsoft is prioritizing “Frontier Firms” that integrate AI into every customer interaction and internal process.
Gen Z buyers are prioritizing product value and “dupes” over traditional brand names, with 75% of buyers expected to be Gen Z by 2030.
To win Partner of the Year, organizations must publicly celebrate “better together” stories with validated customer wins.
Modern leaders should transition from a “growth mindset” to a “frontier mindset” to keep pace with rapid technological change.
https://youtu.be/xJmd43NvfnI
If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins.
Key Tags
Trust Economy, Selling to Machines, Amazon vs Perplexity Lawsuit, Frontier Firm, AI Agents, Copilot Studio, Anthropic Claude, Microsoft Partner of the Year, B2B Marketplaces, Gen Z Buyer Behavior, Digital Freedom, AI Therapy, Ray Kurzweil Singularity, Substack Growth, Co-selling Partnerships, MCI Funding, Azure Accelerate, Agentic AI, Transcending Tech, Ashleigh Vogstad.
288 – The Millions You’re Losing Without Even Knowing It
In this deep dive, Jay McBain reveals the harsh reality of the “28 Moments” in a modern B2B buying journey, using a multi-million dollar SAP deal at AstraZeneca as a wake-up call for vendors. He explains how traditional marketing leads are failing in the “decade of the ecosystem,” where trusted partners like NTT and SoftwareOne are winning deals in “light blue” partnership moments months before a customer ever downloads an ebook. If you aren’t visible in the seven-layer stack or collaborating with the partners who hold the customer’s trust, you aren’t just losing the deal—you’re losing the entire market.
Most vendors lose major deals without ever knowing a transaction was even taking place.
The average considered purchase involves 28 distinct moments of research and influence before a sale.
Trusted partners often close the deal in the “middle moments” months before the money is actually spent.
Traditional marketing leads (MQLs) are often too “flimsy” compared to deep partner-led relationships.
Winning in the ecosystem requires being part of a “seven-layer stack” of integrated technology and services.
Data-sharing platforms like Crossbeam and Workspan are now essential to seeing the “invisible” pipeline.
If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins.
Key Tags:
28 Moments, Jay McBain, Ecosystem Strategy, AstraZeneca SAP Deal, Seven Layer Stack, B2B Buying Journey, Partner Ecosystem, NTT, SoftwareOne, Channel Strategy, Buyer Intent, Informa TechTarget, Collaborative Selling, Crossbeam, Partner Tap, Workspan, Marketplace Tracking, Co-selling, Tech Integration, Revenue Architecture, Pipeline Growth, Trusted Advisor, Digital Transformation, SAP Optimization, Microsoft AWS Competition.
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Transcript
Oguo Atuanya Audio Episode
[00:00:00] Oguo Atuanya: I, I mean, the ultimate goal is to get that MIP channel as intelligent or even more intelligent and agile than any enterprise IT department.
[00:00:13] Vince Menzione: We just finished Ultimate Partners Winter Retreat here in beautiful Boca to a sold out crowd. Today I’m joined by Dexter Hardy, the founder of Integral for a compelling discussion, a guo. Welcome back,
[00:00:29] Oguo Atuanya: Vince
[00:00:29] Vince Menzione: to the welcome back to the podcast, my friend. So good to see you.
[00:00:33] Oguo Atuanya: Good to see you, my friend. It’s been about, what, two years?
[00:00:35] Vince Menzione: It has been two years, almost two years. Almost two years ago now. And uh, man, this
[00:00:40] Oguo Atuanya: thing is just picking up steam.
[00:00:41] Vince Menzione: It is. We’re having a blast. We were having so much fun. It was
[00:00:44] Oguo Atuanya: awesome.
[00:00:44] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:00:44] Oguo Atuanya: Really awesome.
[00:00:45] Vince Menzione: And you were for context, for people watching and, and listening. Uh, we were here in Boca yesterday for the Ultimate Partner Executive Retreat.
[00:00:52] Yep. It was this awesome event and great to have you involved in it. Uh, pat, thank you so much. So, uh, last time you were here
[00:01:00] Oguo Atuanya: Yes.
[00:01:01] Vince Menzione: Uh, you were representing Microsoft where you spent 22 years.
[00:01:05] Oguo Atuanya: 22
[00:01:06] Vince Menzione: years.
[00:01:06] Oguo Atuanya: Two years, right. Outta outta Junior Heart.
[00:01:07] Vince Menzione: Amazing. And, uh, tell us, tell us about your journey so far. Uh, almost two years, a year and a half at Pax.
[00:01:14] Eight. About a
[00:01:15] Oguo Atuanya: year and a half.
[00:01:15] Vince Menzione: Yeah,
[00:01:16] Oguo Atuanya: a year and a half.
[00:01:17] Vince Menzione: And tell, tell for our viewers and listeners, uh, your role at Pax eight.
[00:01:21] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah.
[00:01:22] Vince Menzione: Which is a preeminent company in this space. We used to use the term disty. I’ll let you describe them. Uh, officially
[00:01:29] Oguo Atuanya: No,
[00:01:30] Vince Menzione: because they don’t, you don’t use that term.
[00:01:31] Oguo Atuanya: We’re not, we’re not a distributor.
[00:01:33] Vince Menzione: Yes.
[00:01:33] Oguo Atuanya: Scott Cha would kill me.
[00:01:35] Vince Menzione: That’s right. No, I know, I know. I remember the, uh,
[00:01:38] Oguo Atuanya: the New
[00:01:38] Vince Menzione: York, was it the New York Times article? Yes. Yes.
[00:01:41] Oguo Atuanya: Was kind of a,
[00:01:42] Vince Menzione: that was a launching point coming out. Yeah, yeah.
[00:01:44] Oguo Atuanya: No, we, we, we see ourselves as, um, um, the pre, uh, permanent marketplace. For SMB.
[00:01:52] Vince Menzione: Nice.
[00:01:53] Oguo Atuanya: Right. So you think about the SaaS and the cloud.
[00:01:55] Yeah. You know, solutions that you need. In SMB, we work with vendors to bring it, um, you know, to the SMB market through, uh, MSPs. And we also, uh, see ourselves as the premier
[00:02:08] Vince Menzione: Yes.
[00:02:08] Oguo Atuanya: Um, AI commerce platform for SMB.
[00:02:13] Vince Menzione: Very interesting.
[00:02:14] Oguo Atuanya: Right. And as we go through the discussion, uh, this afternoon, you’ll see why.
[00:02:20] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:02:21] Oguo Atuanya: That differentiation is
[00:02:23] Vince Menzione: key. I, I love, I love to dive in. I love to dive in. I will say this, I, I think you’ve gotten a lot of people very interested in the community. I mean, certainly your events are becoming bigger and bigger. You’re beyond conference.
[00:02:36] Oguo Atuanya: Next one’s coming up in Salt Lake City
[00:02:38] in
[00:02:38] Vince Menzione: June.
[00:02:38] I plan on being there, salt Lake City in June.
[00:02:41] Oguo Atuanya: I must have you there.
[00:02:42] Vince Menzione: I will be there and you will, and you will be at our event in May.
[00:02:45] Oguo Atuanya: Absolutely.
[00:02:46] Vince Menzione: Talking about beyond, but also talking about this community. Uh, I’ve also woken up over the last year or so as well and learned a lot about this SMB community and ms, what we call MSBs.
[00:02:58] You’ve re you’ve re-categorized them, uh, but this community is palpable. The opportunity is huge.
[00:03:04] Oguo Atuanya: It’s huge.
[00:03:05] Vince Menzione: And, um, I would say that, uh, yeah, we can talk, we’ll talk, we’ll just talk through it. ’cause it is huge. Yeah. There’s a lot of things that need to be done.
[00:03:12] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah.
[00:03:13] Vince Menzione: And I think, I think PAX eight is, uh, at the forefront in driving a lot of this.
[00:03:17] The hyperscalers, like Microsoft are, are paying attention now more in a big, in a bigger way than before
[00:03:23] Oguo Atuanya: being great partners.
[00:03:24] Vince Menzione: Been great, great partners. Yeah. We’ll talk about your role with Microsoft in that regard.
[00:03:28] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah.
[00:03:28] Vince Menzione: But talk, let’s talk about this evolution too. Let’s, uh, so for those who are listening, who are used to maybe us talking about a SaaS software company Yep.
[00:03:36] Or an ISV or an SDC, uh, we’re talking about MSPs, managed service providers, which is the common term that people use. These are, these have been traditionally the companies, the smaller companies, they used to call em mom and pop shops back. The old VARs that became managed service, the past
[00:03:53] Oguo Atuanya: provider in, in the past, they’re getting bigger.
[00:03:54] Vince Menzione: And then Yes. One of the big
[00:03:55] Oguo Atuanya: ones, y say
[00:03:56] Vince Menzione: Nexus Tech. We had Yes.
[00:03:57] Oguo Atuanya: Partners of ours.
[00:03:58] Vince Menzione: Nexus Techs, new Charter.
[00:04:01] Oguo Atuanya: Charter, Michelle
[00:04:02] Vince Menzione: Evergreen, I could Ira Lyra. Yeah. They’re, they’re becoming bigger and bigger. Private equity is getting involved. What’s important, what’s important to note too is that the customer is driving this because customers are requiring more and it’s no longer about, and my my point of view is it’s no longer about loading up software and just letting it go.
[00:04:22] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah.
[00:04:23] Vince Menzione: You need to be hands-on all the time.
[00:04:24] Oguo Atuanya: Abs. Absolutely. And, and
[00:04:26] Vince Menzione: yeah,
[00:04:26] Oguo Atuanya: kind of skating towards that park of, um. MIP?
[00:04:31] Vince Menzione: Yes. Let’s talk about MIP
[00:04:35] Vince Menzione: So last year, year Beyond conference, I believe you launched this like new in I, we’ll call the new nomenclature or the new name, or this new thing.
[00:04:46] And evolved. And evolved, yeah.
[00:04:48] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah.
[00:04:49] Vince Menzione: So talk about the managed intelligence provider for us.
[00:04:52] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. Wow. When it happened In Beyond Or at? Beyond, I should say. Um. We thought it’d catch on because it’s apt. I mean, it’s, it’s sort of indicative of what’s happening now and what will happen over the next 24 months, but, uh, the sort of migration towards this and the marketplace has been immense.
[00:05:17] I mean, you, and you, you know, hit on what the difference is. Yes. Earlier on, um, today. What’s driving this shift is that most MSPs have been really good at being tools and technology infrastructure providers.
[00:05:36] Vince Menzione: Yep.
[00:05:36] Oguo Atuanya: Right.
[00:05:37] Vince Menzione: They would hook up your network and your printer. In the old days, they fix your, fix your computers.
[00:05:42] Yes. Or replace re-image, all those things. Right? Yes. That was the old days. And,
[00:05:46] Oguo Atuanya: and, and also provide some very manual services delivery, which will now play. In this new era that we are actually, I shouldn’t say going into, it’s taking all,
[00:06:00] Vince Menzione: we’re, we’re there,
[00:06:00] Oguo Atuanya: we’re there right now. So, um, you know, they, they, I guess the transformation from MSP to MIP others partners that would actually become managed intelligence providers.
[00:06:14] That means really, you know, integrating intelligence into workflow that matters for the SMBs. Right. So you
[00:06:23] Vince Menzione: so double click on that for,
[00:06:25] Oguo Atuanya: for
[00:06:25] Vince Menzione: our
[00:06:26] Oguo Atuanya: viewers. Yeah. So all really means is that you’re moving from being that, you know
[00:06:29] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:06:30] Oguo Atuanya: Technology, infrastructure, tools, provider to, you know, becoming an, an orchestrator and a and a and a business consultant.
[00:06:38] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:06:38] Oguo Atuanya: Right. For you. SMB. Right. So important. ’cause you have to now get into, uh, very secure, streamlined automated AI driven workflows to help them.
[00:06:52] Vince Menzione: All driven in the cloud. Everything’s in the cloud now, as opposed to the old days. Right. On premise.
[00:06:58] Oguo Atuanya: All gone. None. That’s happening. It’s all gone. All gone. Yeah.
[00:07:00] So you, you’ve got this automated platform right now. You should as, um, an MIP, um, we actually gonna be in a position to design, um, agent tech organizations for your, uh, SMBs who wanna scale. ’cause as we talked about yesterday, yeah. SMBs have opportunities they wanna grow, but not have the wherewithal to go hire a hundred people.
[00:07:27] Instead of doing that, you go hire a hundred agents. Yeah, but you’re gonna need that MIP to architect, the organization, launch it for you, manage it, get you, you know, automated, you know, workflows that you’d leverage to run your company, and then they have to manage and optimize the technology. Um, as necessary.
[00:07:49] So, so, huge shift.
[00:07:50] Vince Menzione: Huge shift.
[00:07:51] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah.
[00:07:52] Vince Menzione: And it was interesting for me being at the, where you talked about the write of Boom conference that you, were you, your organization was there? Yeah, I was there as well and I was in the room with some of the Microsoft folks and we had some of those larger partners we talked about
[00:08:07] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah.
[00:08:08] Vince Menzione: That were in the room as well. And just, uh, different perspectives too. Like I hadn’t heard it firsthand. It was interesting for Microsoft too, to get that feedback from. From some of them as well. Um, I think, I think the ones that are progressive are already on board with you. I’ve, I’ve already talked to some of those organizations, like, oh, we’re a hundred percent Pax eight, that’s it.
[00:08:29] But then some of the others I think are still, there are still people out there that are stuck in the past. Would you agree? Like this community is in the, is in a transition right now to this new model?
[00:08:38] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah.
[00:08:39] Vince Menzione: Tell
[00:08:39] Oguo Atuanya: us
[00:08:39] Vince Menzione: about that.
[00:08:40] Oguo Atuanya: There are, I mean, listen, I, I don’t, you know, wanna put a number. You know what we’re seeing.
[00:08:48] But I’d say that about eventually, let’s say we’re gonna have about 30% of folks that really get it and move.
[00:08:56] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:08:56] Oguo Atuanya: Right. The others we’re gonna have to,
[00:08:59] Vince Menzione: there’ll be the laggards that’ll
[00:09:00] Oguo Atuanya: take longer and let me just, you know, sort of rephrase that state. Most of them understand, you know, what the opportunity is with this whole Yeah.
[00:09:14] Vince Menzione: You
[00:09:15] Oguo Atuanya: know. They’re still struggling with being able to, you know, articulate this story, um, from a value prop perspective, right? You know, go in, talk to the SMBs, help the SMBs understand how, you know, they can be more productive, more efficient, and um, ultimately more profitable and scale, um, with an agent, you know, framework.
[00:09:44] They still struggle. Yeah. And, and that’s kind of where we come in, where we helping these SMB or sorry, MSPs and to be ips.
[00:09:54] Vince Menzione: So tell us, understand that. Tell us what you’re doing. I believe you, you stood up like academies and things like that, right? You’re doing some outreach, some enablement for the community?
[00:10:02] Is that what it is?
[00:10:03] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah, we we’re heavy, we’re heavy in, um, enablement. Um, because, you know, everyone realizes that. To be successful with this whole campaign. It’s not just about putting agents up in an agent store, real, SMB, you know, native, um, vertical aware agents that actually, you know, when you deploy it in an SMB business, right, they drive value right away,
[00:10:37] Vince Menzione: right?
[00:10:38] Oguo Atuanya: Right. So, but we also realize that it’s not just about, you know, landing the agents in the marketplace, but enablement is a huge factor. That’s why when you go back to things, you know, like academy, uh, the MIP playbook, uh, some of the, uh, inculcation integrations we we’re doing with, um, partners, really critical to have that enablement layer.
[00:11:04] Vince Menzione: Interesting.
[00:11:04] Oguo Atuanya: Along with providing the agents and the, in the agents store.
[00:11:07] Vince Menzione: Who’s developing these agents in the agent store? Are they providers for the MSP community? Are they organizations like Take, take us through that model.
[00:11:17] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. So they, they, they, because
[00:11:18] Vince Menzione: you, you manage all the vendors.
[00:11:20] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah, I do. Right?
[00:11:21] Vince Menzione: I do. So tell us more about that.
[00:11:22] Oguo Atuanya: I do. So it’s, it’s multifold, right? Um, one fold is you have prebuilt solutions that you know vendors.
[00:11:30] Vince Menzione: Yep.
[00:11:30] Oguo Atuanya: Built for, you know, SMBs and they’re directed towards SMBs. Then you also have a second category, uh, sorry, category of solutions that are more tools that MSBs use.
[00:11:42] Right? But there’s also a third, um, prompt to this where we are orchestrating an integration of, um, um, IP between
[00:11:54] Vince Menzione: interesting the
[00:11:55] Oguo Atuanya: vendor department, uh, into providing, you know, solutions. That we can land in the, in the agent store.
[00:12:03] Vince Menzione: That’s fascinating. So, yeah. So you have, so you have a standalone product or a standalone solution or agent.
[00:12:10] You have the orchestration and then you have the customer tools and the tool. And the tools.
[00:12:17] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. It’s um, it’s sort of a three flying approach that, um, the market needs, right? Yeah. And that, that’s key. By the way, Vince, when you know, um. You’re developing these agents and these solutions.
[00:12:30] Yeah. Because they’re not, they’re not just tools anymore, right. Essentially it could be somebody’s, uh, FTE.
[00:12:38] Vince Menzione: Yes.
[00:12:38] Oguo Atuanya: Right. So they have to address a specific outcome. They have to be, you know, uh, valuable. You have to show the ROI and for these SMBs. Don’t have a lot of wiggle room.
[00:12:53] Vince Menzione: So you, that they’re smaller companies, right?
[00:12:55] Yeah. So anything you do is gonna be super impactful. Yeah. It’s not something they can absorb necessarily, or, you know, lose time and money.
[00:13:03] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah.
[00:13:03] Vince Menzione: Uh, you’ve gotta be very sensitive to that in this, in this market, this size market. And even the MSPs are, even though there are some that are much larger, there’s still a lot of smaller MSPs out there.
[00:13:14] Oguo Atuanya: And, and coming to the MIP playbook, um, what partners don’t need anymore. Um, it’s hype.
[00:13:23] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:13:24] Oguo Atuanya: They need an almost curriculum driven approach, right. To landing this initiative and infrastructure and also managing it long term. Yeah. So that’s what the MIP playbook does.
[00:13:39] Vince Menzione: So you were an executive at Microsoft.
[00:13:41] You managed the channel partner. I, I would call the resellers and the disti. In fact, for the America’s business, I believe was your role.
[00:13:49] Oguo Atuanya: I I did manage the large resellers. At
[00:13:51] Vince Menzione: large resellers. So at one point, and you also had the Disti at one time?
[00:13:54] Oguo Atuanya: At one point I had the Disti, the telco, the domain providers.
[00:13:58] Vince Menzione: Yes. The large resellers. I remember when we first met, yes. I think that was when,
[00:14:00] Oguo Atuanya: yes.
[00:14:00] Vince Menzione: Yes. And so when you came, PAX eight is a very strong Microsoft partner. You were, again, I mentioned you were the launch partner or one of the launch partners for the marketplace.
[00:14:09] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah.
[00:14:09] Vince Menzione: But talk about the role and the relationship with Microsoft and the value that PAX eight provides for this market, uh, kind of layering between, uh, the Microsoft components and, and the SMB market.
[00:14:24] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. Does that
[00:14:24] Vince Menzione: make sense?
[00:14:25] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. So, so Microsoft has always been. Um, keen on the SMB segment, um, you know, Jose Gomez and Company in the Americas, and folks like, um, Alison West Hughes from a core perspective that, yeah, they’re very serious about this SMB segment. And, um, I’d say the key difference with Microsoft is Microsoft realized early.
[00:14:56] Probably based on the fact that Microsoft’s always been a very strong channel friendly,
[00:15:01] Vince Menzione: yes.
[00:15:01] Oguo Atuanya: Oriented company. I realized earlier that you really can’t scale cost efficiently by having a direct SMB business, right? Right. You have to go through the channel.
[00:15:14] Vince Menzione: They’re what, 160,000 MSPs or ips?
[00:15:19] Oguo Atuanya: Um, for us at pax,
[00:15:21] Vince Menzione: I think for the world.
[00:15:22] Oguo Atuanya: Uh, yes.
[00:15:22] Vince Menzione: Somewhere the world around there. The world, yeah. You would have to reach all those companies individually, which Yeah, you’d
[00:15:27] Oguo Atuanya: have to, well, I mean, even then the, there’s the Ians of SMBs
[00:15:31] Vince Menzione: Yes. In worldwide. Yes. That’s right. Right. At at the customer level. The pyramid is huge. You can’t,
[00:15:35] Oguo Atuanya: you can’t really scale.
[00:15:36] No, you can’t. You can only do that through the channel.
[00:15:38] Vince Menzione: Yes.
[00:15:39] Oguo Atuanya: And, um, I think, I think the relationship between Microsoft and PAX has just. Strengthened over time because Microsoft sees, if we go back to that definition of a, you know, distributor versus a marketplace and a platform provider stuff. So we’re seeing the difference.
[00:15:56] Yes. And the value add and, you know, the services led approach that packs it, you know, brings to, um, um, driving the SMB business. Yes. Um, you know, just that we have, we think PAX eight, we have a very strong relationship. And a very strong MSP ecosystem, which is critical when you sort of, you know, uh, look at that difference between just a regular reseller and an MSP.
[00:16:26] Vince Menzione: Absolutely.
[00:16:26] Oguo Atuanya: Right. Um, you just can’t, what we talked about earlier, just transact a solution and then walk away. It’s, it’s, uh, it’s, um, it, it’s, it’s really a sustainable end-to-end, you know, customer life cycle management approach. When you’re dealing with them.
[00:16:44] Vince Menzione: I think it’s important here too, and, and again for the maturity model of our listeners and viewers, it might be at different levels of understanding about the, about the model.
[00:16:53] But if you think about the model and the evolution, right, being the, from the old model of being, uh, hardware centric and maybe software centric, uh, the old days of what was a disti, which are not at disti anymore, but, um, the distis were there to provide credit. Availability of product.
[00:17:12] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah.
[00:17:12] Vince Menzione: And And delivery, basically.
[00:17:14] Right? Yeah. That was it.
[00:17:15] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah.
[00:17:16] Vince Menzione: And that’s how that they were intermediaries on some of that.
[00:17:19] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah.
[00:17:20] Vince Menzione: But PAX eight evolved at a later time.
[00:17:22] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah.
[00:17:23] Vince Menzione: More modern time, I would say in the cloud. Yeah.
[00:17:25] Oguo Atuanya: PAX eight. So one in the cloud, if you will.
[00:17:28] Vince Menzione: And I think that’s maybe a differentiation and this new model that it also feels to like this MSP community has been coming along.
[00:17:36] And I, I, I believe a lot of thought leadership from the PAX eight side. I’m speak, I’m speaking for you here, but in terms of some bold moves that the organization is doing.
[00:17:46] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. Listen. Um, as you know, I dealt or engaged with PAX eight for a while before joining PAX eight.
[00:17:54] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:17:55] Oguo Atuanya: I’d engaged with p fact fact pxi, funnily enough was the first meeting I had, um, when I came back from the uk.
[00:18:02] Vince Menzione: Is that
[00:18:02] Oguo Atuanya: right? Yeah. During my stint running, um. Um, devices, uh, sales organization for Microsoft. The first meeting I had coming back into the Americas was so P Aid and Nick Hedy and, uh, Ryan Walsh and, oh, that’s so funny. Joke about it. By the way, Ryan Walsh all has a prep, uh, notes study, you know, he got ready for the media.
[00:18:26] Vince Menzione: Oh, that is hilarious. I met Ryan. Uh, we were on stage together at a channel partners a couple years ago.
[00:18:32] Can’t
[00:18:32] Oguo Atuanya: miss his energy.
[00:18:33] Vince Menzione: He can’t
[00:18:33] Oguo Atuanya: miss his energy.
[00:18:34] Vince Menzione: Such great energy.
[00:18:35] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. But, but listen, I think if I could just sum it in a, you know, in a, um, a framework or a box. The key difference between PAC sales is we look at engaging with MSPs in SMB, um, from a customer lifecycle management.
[00:18:57] So we start from, Hey, how do we help you with customer acquisition? When you do acquire the customers and you make that first licensing transaction, it doesn’t go away. That’s when we actually start, you know, thinking about how do we help, um, you ensure that your SMBs realize, um, value from what you sold them.
[00:19:18] You know, if you need to expand, but, um, beyond one, you know, skew in the stack, that’s what you do because you understand the needs of USMB that helps drive consumption, you know? Nurture that through all, we start, you know, looking at, is it time for re sorry, renewal. There’s a team minus approach to renewal.
[00:19:37] ’cause we also keep our eyes on churn. You can, you know, gain as much business as you can, but if you churn, it does nobody any good. Yeah. So we look at things end to end from our position to churn. And that really is embedded in the platform that sits underneath the marketplace.
[00:19:53] Vince Menzione: And you act as the, well see, we’re gonna use technical terms here.
[00:19:57] CSP. You’re the first layer of CSP and then they, they also, in many cases, sometimes they’re not, but in many cases they are the CSP to the customer. They’re providing the, the licenses to the customer.
[00:20:10] Oguo Atuanya: Well, we, so we, we are the first tier of that, you know, two tier
[00:20:14] Vince Menzione: Exactly.
[00:20:15] Oguo Atuanya: Model. So we, we,
[00:20:16] Vince Menzione: you’re tier one
[00:20:17] Oguo Atuanya: Microsoft.
[00:20:18] Vince Menzione: Yep.
[00:20:19] Oguo Atuanya: Right. We, you know, as an existing might press on an example, it could be one of our other vendors, like, you know, um, any of the 150 vendors we have. We engage with them, we enable the um, MSP, who’s the resell, who’s really in the traditional sense, the reseller layer, much more valuable in terms of what they do.
[00:20:41] Vince Menzione: That’s right.
[00:20:41] Oguo Atuanya: And then. The MSP engages with, uh, the end customer. So that’s kind of what the flow is.
[00:20:47] Vince Menzione: Yep. Yeah. And that’s one component of what they do for the customer. The transaction is a one one and done sort of.
[00:20:53] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah.
[00:20:53] Vince Menzione: But then it’s all the managed services and layering Oh, provide on top of it. And then all the other solutions say 150 platforms.
[00:21:00] Oguo Atuanya: Uh, 150 vendors.
[00:21:01] Vince Menzione: Vendors, yeah. So hundreds of platforms that are available to the customer for
[00:21:07] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah.
[00:21:07] Vince Menzione: Through taxane.
[00:21:08] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. But, but lemme just emphasize that especially. We are going actually where we are. Right. Um, again, it starts, it starts way to the left of the continuum than just driving the transaction.
[00:21:23] Vince Menzione: So take us through the continuum then.
[00:21:25] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah, that’s what I said earlier, the continuum is, you know, helping this, helping with
[00:21:30] Oguo Atuanya: even, you know, prior to that it’s, it’s helped. We’re getting to a point now where we’re helping these MSPs and they should all be able to do that during the MIP era.
[00:21:38] Vince Menzione: Yep.
[00:21:39] Oguo Atuanya: Understand the market they’re playing it. Yeah. Understand, you know, the market, their SMBs are in, understand their verticals or their scenarios so that you can actually build, you know, this precision, outcome driven, you know, solutions.
[00:21:52] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:21:52] Oguo Atuanya: Right. That, that’s the beginning and then you sell and acquire.
[00:21:58] Right. And then once you acquire that business, uh, it’s always on, you know, situation. You’re helping realize value. ’cause if you don’t. You’re not expanding beyond the stock. Yes. And um, you’re not driving consumption. And if you don’t drive consumption,
[00:22:14] Vince Menzione: you’re not making any money. You’re really not making,
[00:22:16] Oguo Atuanya: it’s not churn.
[00:22:16] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:22:17] Oguo Atuanya: Right. And then they have to keep an eye on, when renewals come about, there has to be a healthy T minus period. Right. Um, so ensure that you renew during renewals. Um, that’s actually when we then look at, Hey, what’s your stack look like? Right. Especially with the agent era, right? Do you have everything you need?
[00:22:37] Do you have the processes? Is there governance? Is there enough security for your, um, SMB, right? So that’s kind of the tune up time before we renew, and then we help you renew and then retain so that it’s, it’s a, it’s a sort of lifecycle approach, not just transactional.
[00:22:55] Vince Menzione: Oh, I, I hear. Talk and, you know, I talk to different people in the industry about the SMBs, the MSPs in the SM B market, uh, that some of these organizations are very much, they’re very technical.
[00:23:07] Yeah. Like they’re technical folks. Sometimes they’re not sales folks or they’re not consulting type folks. Yes. So how do you help them overcome some of those challenges or those gaps? I mean, I know some of it’s through the academy.
[00:23:19] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah.
[00:23:19] Vince Menzione: Do you help them also with selecting like, how do they think about their organizational structure to have the right people in the right seats and those types of
[00:23:26] Oguo Atuanya: things and that, that’s, that’s,
[00:23:27] Vince Menzione: yeah.
[00:23:27] Oguo Atuanya: All what the MIP playbook, that’s, and the process is all about Nice. It’s, it’s, Hey, how do we expand your horizon, you know, beyond just providing the technical aspect things, how do you understand the business? How do you go about conversations to discover, right, your, uh, SMB, right? And once you discover, how do you go about architecting, you know, a value framework that includes, you know, maybe looking at the organization and suggesting agents and then, you know, when you land them, right?
[00:23:59] What’s the, um, optimization, you know, process beyond just landing them. So it’s, it’s helping them.
[00:24:08] Vince Menzione: Make transit, become business
[00:24:09] Oguo Atuanya: consultants.
[00:24:09] Vince Menzione: Right, exactly. Which is what they need to do.
[00:24:11] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. The, in this era, you really need to understand what your SMB is doing because, you know, think about it for the longest, this sort sub, you know, consultative approaches were only sort of reserved for enterprise.
[00:24:26] Vince Menzione: Yeah, that’s right.
[00:24:27] Oguo Atuanya: But when you look at how, you know, the solutions that we sell, I change, they’re really enterprise solutions now that are in SMB. Right. You have to sell that way. You have to engage that way. Right? So that, that’s, that’s a key differentiator between being an MSP and an MIP, bringing that intelligence into you applying, you know, an intelligent workflow to the way your SMB conduct that, sorry, conducts their business.
[00:24:56] Vince Menzione: So tell, take me through, uh, what the ideal MMSP or MIP looks like to you. Like what is the. The, the top of the top and to the right. And then where do you see the challenges? Why do some organizations or, or, ’cause I’m sure there are some that struggle, whether it’s 10%, 20%.
[00:25:14] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:25:15] Vince Menzione: Because it’s, it’s, it’s a continuum.
[00:25:16] It’s a, it’s a cycle to get from, from point A to point B for a lot of these organizations. Right?
[00:25:21] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. So
[00:25:21] Vince Menzione: what do you see from the challenges they need to overcome and, yeah, so, so the,
[00:25:25] Oguo Atuanya: the, the optimal MSP looks like what we just described, right? Yeah. Right. You have an organization that thinks through the process that way, set up.
[00:25:33] Right.
[00:25:34] Vince Menzione: And they become an ongoing consultant. They help them through the process. They understand ai. Right. This is another thing too, right? Organizations, I mean, are struggling right now with their
[00:25:43] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:25:44] Vince Menzione: Their people.
[00:25:45] Oguo Atuanya: It’s gotta be the baseline.
[00:25:47] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:25:47] Oguo Atuanya: You know, these days, understanding ai, understanding the agent, you know, journey.
[00:25:53] Uh, what works well is, um, you know, you, um, you know, you, you. You have to be able to design, um, land a scalable, secure, uh, environment, um,
[00:26:13] Vince Menzione: secure.
[00:26:16] Oguo Atuanya: So, so security is key here,
[00:26:20] Vince Menzione: right? I keep thinking about Claude, what’s happened just in the last several weeks. Yeah. In our industry with people putting things up on, through, through open browsers.
[00:26:28] Yeah.
[00:26:29] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah.
[00:26:29] Vince Menzione: To Claude and to. Different tools.
[00:26:31] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:26:32] Vince Menzione: And if you’re an SM B and you’re trying to lock down your environment’s, don’t want, that’s, you don’t want your data exposed.
[00:26:37] Oguo Atuanya: That’s why security is
[00:26:38] Vince Menzione: huge,
[00:26:39] Oguo Atuanya: is key. But, you know, one of the things we recommend is start very specific. Uh, it could be a bundle that includes, you know, could be co-pilot, could be some other AI pillar.
[00:26:52] Uh, and then it has to be, you know, a security layer.
[00:26:57] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:26:58] Oguo Atuanya: Uh, to that. Then there has to be an enablement, you know, services layer to that as well, right? So, um, you build secure, um, you land, uh, and then skills develop key, right? And then monetization. You have to be able to hit those levels, uh, to be able to survive in this world.
[00:27:22] You’re no longer just selling. Tools.
[00:27:27] Vince Menzione: Yes. At margins,
[00:27:30] Oguo Atuanya: flat margins. So the tool, the tool sprawl, um, is what takes a lot of margins away.
[00:27:37] Vince Menzione: Yes.
[00:27:37] Oguo Atuanya: From the equation.
[00:27:38] Vince Menzione: Right? Tell, tell us about that. ’cause I, I, I remember even back in my Microsoft days, yeah, we would go in and, and have partners that were successful that would say.
[00:27:47] In fact, the ones that are most successful would basically tell the customer, you already own it. Like you have a, you have an enterprise agreement and it has all the capabilities you need to run your enterprise, and you’re buying all these other one-off solutions and trying to patch them into your, into your portfolio of your, your solution set.
[00:28:04] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. Nobody, nobody, especially in SB, nobody wants any more tools.
[00:28:08] Vince Menzione: No, I can
[00:28:09] Oguo Atuanya: imagine. Um, you, you’ve gotta sort of assemble this thing into a platform that works.
[00:28:14] Vince Menzione: Yep.
[00:28:15] Oguo Atuanya: Right. And it’s gotta be repeatable. If it’s not repeatable, then you’re not driving the frequency. Right. It’s gotta be scalable. Um, ’cause if it’s scalable, then you’re going into, um, that kind of sprawl where people start thinking they need to replace gaps with more tools.
[00:28:32] Yeah. Nobody needs. Right.
[00:28:34] Vince Menzione: And that creates more vulnerability by putting
[00:28:36] Oguo Atuanya: Absolutely.
[00:28:37] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:28:37] Oguo Atuanya: Absolutely. Yeah. It’s
[00:28:39] Vince Menzione: fascinating. So
[00:28:40] Oguo Atuanya: it’s, it’s a different, um. Sort of engagement and I, I’m refraining from saying it to different kind of sell because the connotation of sell is you transact and you’re gone. It’s a full lifecycle engagement model.
[00:28:56] Yeah.
[00:28:56] Vince Menzione: I think what you’re doing is you’re enabling the evolution of this market.
[00:29:01] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah,
[00:29:01] Vince Menzione: that’s the way I would say it.
[00:29:02] Oguo Atuanya: Well, that, that’s exactly what we’re trying to do with, um, the shift from MSP to MIP is. Um, we’re driving the transformation in SMB.
[00:29:12] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:29:13] Oguo Atuanya: I, I mean, the ultimate goal is to get that MIP channel as intelligent or even more intelligent and agile than any enterprise IT department.
[00:29:23] Yes. ’cause they are the,
[00:29:24] Vince Menzione: they are ones, the enterprise IT department
[00:29:26] Oguo Atuanya: for that customer. Yeah. The, the word trusted advisor is gonna take a very, you know, it’s
[00:29:31] Vince Menzione: fascinating,
[00:29:31] Oguo Atuanya: more serious connotation in this space. Because the SMBs are dependent on you as the MMIP for that.
[00:29:39] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Let’s talk, we, we had a session on marketplace yesterday.
[00:29:42] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah.
[00:29:43] Vince Menzione: Um, you have been a great driver now through, especially through this new program, the new unified marketplace.
[00:29:50] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah.
[00:29:50] Vince Menzione: Uh, PAX eight is stood, stood above and beyond and doubled sales, I think is what I thought I heard. Take, take us through some of the,
[00:29:58] Oguo Atuanya: well, I mean, uh, uh, a marketplace. Uh, marketplace sales has grown exponentially,
[00:30:04] Vince Menzione: exponentially,
[00:30:04] Oguo Atuanya: right?
[00:30:05] Um, um, this partnership with Microsoft is really all about for the first time, um, integrating, you know, both the, uh, Microsoft, uh, marketplace and the P State marketplace into the MSP delivery, you know, system. Right? What does that mean for the MSP? It means that for the first time, the MSP is gonna have an ability to, um, you know, uh, bundle seamlessly or package seamlessly.
[00:30:36] I know from a Microsoft Yeah. Package seamlessly. Um, you know, so Microsoft, uh, solutions and third party solutions that are complimentary again, to driving the outcomes that, you know, uh, the SMB needs. It’s really all about provisioning. Um, and, um, you know, building those solutions intelligently and, and dynamically, right?
[00:31:05] Where it’s very scalable, right? So that, that’s sort of what the intelligence and the, the dexterity of our marketplace, uh, does. Right? So, so it’s, it’s, it’s creating, you know, um, provisioning, building, uh, transacting. Then really managing in a very automated fashion. Right. So that’s what the MSP gets. Yes.
[00:31:32] The vendor, like Microsoft and other vendors remove the guesswork from, is this actually gonna hit the mark for, uh, SMBs? ’cause we do that curation through the discovery when we, you know, integrate marketplaces. Make sure that those solutions, those agents that land in the marketplace are SMB applicable.
[00:31:57] ’cause the other thing we, we, we see in the marketplace, and I’m using the general marketplace is, um, a lot of companies will tell you that they have SMB solutions or agents. Yes, in the marketplace. And then you go into the marketplace and these are really enterprise, enterprise
[00:32:14] Vince Menzione: solutions. Solutions that are
[00:32:15] Oguo Atuanya: being forced down into SMB.
[00:32:18] Well, you can’t do that these days ’cause you have to hit that, you know, customer, um, precision when you’re driving, you know, outcome based solutions. You have to be precise.
[00:32:29] Vince Menzione: What is, what is the curation process for? Um, I’m an SMB customer. I come to the MSP. And you help at your marketplace level, it sounds like you help design what the right solution is.
[00:32:42] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:32:42] Vince Menzione: So what, tell, take us through that process real quick.
[00:32:45] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. So, um, you know, we have a set of folks internally. Along with our PXI labs people.
[00:32:52] Vince Menzione: Okay.
[00:32:53] Oguo Atuanya: When we’re actually intaking, you know? So
[00:32:56] Vince Menzione: you’re using AI as well on that side of Yeah. We use AI Doing your discovery process for the customers. Yes.
[00:33:02] Using
[00:33:02] Oguo Atuanya: AI as well. It, it uses ai, the rules that are being written into it, you know,
[00:33:06] Vince Menzione: it
[00:33:06] Oguo Atuanya: processes, Hey, it’s gotta be applicable from an SMB perspective. Right. This
[00:33:10] Vince Menzione: is very cool.
[00:33:11] Oguo Atuanya: Right. So, um, you know, we, we do that, we ensure that it’s, um. It’s applicable. There’s no guesswork. Right. Then we put it on the, um, on the agent store.
[00:33:22] Right. And then, um, you know, we help the, uh, uh, MSPs, um, architect and fit solutions around the agents, you know, for very specific outcomes. That’s, uh, so it’s,
[00:33:36] Vince Menzione: this is fascinating.
[00:33:37] Oguo Atuanya: It’s a very curated process.
[00:33:39] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So for, um, the market, the MSP market or MIP market that are watching and listening today, and maybe they’re not with PAX eight yet.
[00:33:49] Like what would, what would be the, the, I mean you’ve already described what the differentiation Yeah. Just, I’m just thinking out loud here. Like what would you say to them today, especially as this market is changing, not your market, but the, just the technology sector, the, the shifts are happening so fast right now.
[00:34:07] What would be the. I guess the one piece of advice you would give to this community of technology companies out there that they should think about for 10 26.
[00:34:18] Oguo Atuanya: It’s, it’s really refrain from Yeah. Selling just tools and infrastructure. Yeah.
[00:34:30] Vince Menzione: Which is the way a lot of them have been structured. That’s right.
[00:34:32] They’ve done right.
[00:34:33] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. Think about
[00:34:34] Vince Menzione: they’ve gone down a road with a vendor because they got great margins for some reason.
[00:34:37] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. So understand your customer, the space they’re playing and how you can build, you know, solutions, uh, for them. Be specific vis-a-vis the solutions that you’re building. Right.
[00:34:50] Again, um. I was having a conversation yesterday with Nina Hard, and we’re talking about the high heat of, uh, traffic verticals, right? Yeah. Uh, you know, things like healthcare, uh, things like financial services, right? Be very specific in the solutions that you’re building, right? Don’t experiment too much land on what an applicable solution is.
[00:35:18] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Predictable
[00:35:18] Oguo Atuanya: solution. Make it repeatable, make it. Scalable. Emphasize on the upscale and enablement right, and focus on the monetization. Understand exactly how you’re gonna articulate the value add and the ROI. To
[00:35:40] Vince Menzione: To the customer.
[00:35:41] Oguo Atuanya: The SMB.
[00:35:41] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:35:42] Oguo Atuanya: Because that’s where a lot of folks struggle, right. They still cannot do all that,
[00:35:47] Vince Menzione: and they get stuck on the cost to the customer.
[00:35:50] They get hung up, I guess, is what I would say. Right. They don’t, they don’t articulate the value enough.
[00:35:55] Oguo Atuanya: Well, they’re not selling outcomes.
[00:35:57] Vince Menzione: They’re not selling outcomes. They’re selling,
[00:35:58] Oguo Atuanya: they’re trying to piece together tools.
[00:36:00] Vince Menzione: Hot
[00:36:00] Oguo Atuanya: and hot
[00:36:01] Vince Menzione: tools,
[00:36:01] Oguo Atuanya: spot applications.
[00:36:02] Vince Menzione: Tools, tools is the best way to
[00:36:03] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah.
[00:36:04] Vince Menzione: To describe it
[00:36:04] Oguo Atuanya: to
[00:36:05] Vince Menzione: the
[00:36:05] Oguo Atuanya: company and all else spills come to Pax it.
[00:36:07] Yes. Teach you how to do it.
[00:36:09] Vince Menzione: Well, I, I’m fascinated to join you in June at Beyond.
[00:36:13] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah.
[00:36:13] Vince Menzione: Um, same
[00:36:15] Oguo Atuanya: here.
[00:36:15] Vince Menzione: So dates again.
[00:36:18] Oguo Atuanya: Vincent, you put me, I think it’s, uh, June 7th to the ninth.
[00:36:21] Vince Menzione: June 7th to the ninth.
[00:36:22] Oguo Atuanya: And this is, uh, in Salt Lake City. In Salt Lake City
[00:36:25] Vince Menzione: this
[00:36:25] Oguo Atuanya: year.
[00:36:25] Vince Menzione: Salt
[00:36:25] Oguo Atuanya: Lake
[00:36:26] Vince Menzione: year. Yeah. You had it, you had it in a different in Colorado last year
[00:36:28] Oguo Atuanya: we had it in Denver.
[00:36:29] So this is actually, this is actually, um, this is
[00:36:32] Vince Menzione: your hometown,
[00:36:33] Oguo Atuanya: the company. Yeah. This is, this is the mainstream. Beyond. So
[00:36:36] Vince Menzione: I love
[00:36:37] Oguo Atuanya: it. This is a big event.
[00:36:38] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:36:38] Oguo Atuanya: Right. ’cause we also have regional events.
[00:36:40] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Like four or 5,000 people. I think last year
[00:36:43] Oguo Atuanya: it was right around three to 4,000. Three to 4,000 last year.
[00:36:45] I think we’re gonna get, you know, more than that. Yeah. In, in, uh, salt Lake City. Then of course we have, um, a regional beyond. We just had the Em me version in, um, Berlin. Um. Netherlands,
[00:36:56] Vince Menzione: Netherlands
[00:36:57] Oguo Atuanya: after that.
[00:36:57] Vince Menzione: But you did Berlin last year? We
[00:36:59] Oguo Atuanya: did Berlin. Berlin last I knew years ago. Next year we’ll be in, uh, uh, Copenhagen.
[00:37:03] Vince Menzione: Okay.
[00:37:03] Oguo Atuanya: And then we’ll also have, um, uh, Asia version. Nice. Uh, in 27
[00:37:08] Vince Menzione: Milano. Maybe the year after would be good.
[00:37:11] Oguo Atuanya: We, we, we need to arrange, I’ll work with, um, uh, you know, uh, MCEO. Harold.
[00:37:16] Vince Menzione: I love it. I love it.
[00:37:17] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah.
[00:37:17] Vince Menzione: Um. I would, uh, so I have one question. I might’ve asked you this question before, but I would love to just ask you now.
[00:37:24] ’cause times have changed. Our lives change, but this is my favorite question. I ask all my guests, especially all my good friends like you, you’re hosting a dinner party and you can host a dinner party anywhere in the world. It might be here, it might be in Houston, it might be in Kenya, it might be anywhere.
[00:37:41] We maybe, maybe it’s in EMEA or AsiaPac. Um. You can invite any three guests from the present or the past to this amazing dinner, whom would you invite? A guo and why?
[00:37:55] Oguo Atuanya: So this one always gets me because
[00:37:58] Vince Menzione: I love that.
[00:37:59] Oguo Atuanya: Yeah. So, you know, you and I have talked before, right? So there’s a standing, uh, invitation for my mom, you know, who know?
[00:38:05] Love that. Yes. Swear a while ago.
[00:38:07] Vince Menzione: Yes. Yes.
[00:38:07] Oguo Atuanya: And then, you know, my sister also who
[00:38:09] Vince Menzione: passed
[00:38:10] Oguo Atuanya: away, passed away in May
[00:38:10] Vince Menzione: last year.
[00:38:11] Oguo Atuanya: So I’d love to have this tea because, you know.
[00:38:14] Vince Menzione: Some great conversations. We’ll see how
[00:38:15] Oguo Atuanya: he’s doing and, you know, and check
[00:38:17] Vince Menzione: in with
[00:38:17] Oguo Atuanya: how, how, how things, um, are going and now Wow. This third one,
[00:38:24] Vince Menzione: who’s the third one?
[00:38:26] Oguo Atuanya: This third
[00:38:26] Vince Menzione: one is, he talked about your son a little bit the last couple of days. Yeah. Days. But I don’t think,
[00:38:30] Oguo Atuanya: I don’t think he’s, he wants to be bored.
[00:38:33] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:38:33] Oguo Atuanya: Having, having, um, a dinner with you
[00:38:35] Vince Menzione: and you’ll be there. So now we need to ask add one more
[00:38:38] Oguo Atuanya: person. Yeah. We need to add one more person. I’m thinking about that.
[00:38:42] MSB. Who’s become an MIPI
[00:38:46] Vince Menzione: love it.
[00:38:47] Oguo Atuanya: I
[00:38:47] Vince Menzione: would
[00:38:47] Oguo Atuanya: love to have him at the, or her at the table.
[00:38:50] Vince Menzione: Yes.
[00:38:51] Oguo Atuanya: And, and talk about what that journey was like.
[00:38:53] Vince Menzione: I love it. I love it. Well, that’ll be a fun dinner and I might come by and bring dessert or something.
[00:38:58] Oguo Atuanya: You,
[00:38:58] Vince Menzione: you, you,
[00:38:59] Oguo Atuanya: you’re
[00:38:59] Vince Menzione: always maybe just stop by and say,
[00:39:00] Oguo Atuanya: you’re always welcome.
[00:39:01] Vince Menzione: I’d love to meet your mom and your sister. So
[00:39:03] Oguo Atuanya: thank you Vince.
[00:39:04] Vince Menzione: Um, you are a great friend. I’m so excited to have you here in the room. Your organization is doing incredible things and we love having you as part of ultimate partner in our community. So, so great to see you again, my friend.
[00:39:18] Oguo Atuanya: Appreciate it, Vince.
[00:39:19] It’s always a, a pleasure being here with you and seeing you and, uh, I can’t wait to see you beyond.
[00:39:24] Vince Menzione: I love
[00:39:24] Oguo Atuanya: it folks out there. It’s selling out. So
[00:39:26] Vince Menzione: babe,
[00:39:27] Oguo Atuanya: get our,
[00:39:27] Vince Menzione: get your tickets
[00:39:28] Oguo Atuanya: soon. June 7th to ninth. It’s, uh, the biggest show in the MSU
[00:39:31] Vince Menzione: world. It’s the biggest show. And then we, uh, is also gonna participate, I believe, at our, at our Bellevue event, Bellview Forum, which will be an incredible event.
[00:39:39] Yeah. And May 13th, May 11th, through the 13th. I want to thank you for watching. I wanna thank you for listening to this episode of The Ultimate Eye, to partnering and following our YouTube channel, ultimate Partner, and for being part of our community at Ultimate Partner. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.
[00:39:55] Thank you. Don’t forget, ultimate Partner Live is coming soon, may 11 through the 13th in beautiful Bellevue, Washington. I hope to see you there.
Frontier Firms, SDC, Microsoft GM, Adobe Partnership, ServiceNow, AI Operating Model, Responsible AI, Co-innovation, Partner Value Chain, Organizational Alignment, Microsoft Marketplace, TCV, Data Sovereignty, AI Agents, Adobe Firefly, Azure, Ecosystem Growth, Digital Transformation, AI Governance, Strategic Partnerships, Tech Leadership.
Vince Menzione: [00:00:00] Honestly, it’s people. Yes, with agents. Um, and I know we hear that and it’s very like, oh, what does it mean? Are we really using it? I cannot tell you how many agents I use in a day.
We just finished Ultimate Partners Winter Retreat here in beautiful Boca to a sold out crowd. Come join me now for a compelling discussion on the impacts of the tectonic shifts we’re all seeing. We, we’ve talked about MSP, we’ve talked about channel. We’ve talked about marketplace. We haven’t really dug deep into the SDC conversation, and I still, that doesn’t roll off my tongue.
I still say ISV in my own mind, but the software development corporations, um, we’ve had several executives from that, from that world. Sandy Gupta has been. Um, many time guests, uh, at, at, at our events and we really wanted to double click. And I was so fortunate to meet Katherine Kennedy several months ago and learned about what [00:01:00] she’s doing and what the work that she’s driving.
So I wanna invite her on stage ’cause we’re gonna have a very intimate conversation by Yeah, we call these so great to have you here. And, uh, you’re a GM at Microsoft, which is a big deal, by the way. A lot of people don’t know that. Thank you. And you’re running, uh, two of, I’d say two of the most significant partners within the Microsoft ecosystem.
I would say obviously two. Now. Just one. Okay. We’re doubling down on focus. So nice to meet everybody. I, I wish there was a fire ’cause it did. What you Well come on. This goes off heat by the way. We get back off a little bit. This goes off our, so all good. So tell us, give us your, yeah. Give us your background and your role.
Katharine Kennedy: Sure. So Catherine Kennedy. Nice to meet you all. Um, I’m a GM at Microsoft previously overseeing both the ServiceNow and the Adobe practice. Um, spent the last four years building ServiceNow too. What now our previous guests got to refer to as our REO, you know, exciting, uh, big growth [00:02:00] partnership. Um, so we took that from, for them from $0 in terms of shared revenue to a billion dollars in TCV.
Um, and they have one of the largest Macs now with Microsoft. And we did that over the course of three years. So we’ll talk a little bit about. Um, the mindset, uh, and the operating models and things that we implemented with ServiceNow. Um, and then at the time, um, they asked me to take on Adobe as well. And when we saw the opportunity at Adobe, we said, wow, we really need to focus here.
And so I have the privilege of being able to focus on Adobe this year. And, um. What I’m most excited about is the ecosystem and the ecosystem opportunity with Adobe as we build them into the next frontier firm or Microsoft.
Vince Menzione: And of course we use the term spark, the ecosystem, so yes. Um, so let’s, let’s dive in [00:03:00] here.
Use the term mindset. I was thinking about mindset. Market shift, frontier Firm, how do those things align together? Microsoft has been talking, I mean, Judson up on stage and Ignite talking about frontier firms. Nina’s talked about frontier firms. This is a shift in how organizations operate. Yes. In for some, yes.
Uh, for others. I was thinking, what are you seeing across the SDC community specifically where you’ve managed before, where you’re managing now, but with ServiceNow and Adobe as an examples? What defines a company that’s truly making this leap?
Katharine Kennedy: So as we’re looking at these frontier firms, uh, especially in the S-D-C-I-C spaces, we’re looking at, um, how do they implement AI up and down their stack, but then across the operating system, um, and.
I refer to it in our business as the partnership value chain. ’cause we look at our SDCs and ISVs as partners. Um, and so the partner operating model between Microsoft and in this [00:04:00] case, Adobe or ServiceNow, has to be solely in lockstep and moving at warp speed. It’s as, as we’ve been talking about all day, it’s just moving so fast and so the tighter.
We’re connected. The Cohesity across the company, um, is absolutely critical, but it’s AI up and down, AI across, um, and what I mean by that is, uh. That’s from the UI layer to the agent layer down to the data layer. So unlocking all of the layers of the stack. And then across the operating model, how are we empowering each executive to buy in on that North star or that strategy that we have jointly?
And then how do we drive that operationally to execute at the field level? And that’s. Probably the biggest undertaking, um, I’ve ever done because it’s really you, your team becomes, uh, [00:05:00] these we’re like ants running between two giant companies. I mean, it’s just back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
And um, that’s really the art and the science of it is that honestly it’s people. Yes. Um, and I know we hear that and it’s very like, oh, what does it mean? Are we really using it? I cannot tell you how many agents I use in a day. It’s truly remarkable.
Vince Menzione: You mentioned North Star, so I wanted to Yeah. Can I double click on it?
Katharine Kennedy: Please do. Yes. Happy to.
Vince Menzione: Yeah. I think about mission and purpose and all that tying into North Star. Are, are you implying that an organization needs to get its North Star, right? First and then how, how, and what, what are most of these organizations you’re seeing today, not the ones you manage, but other organizations in the SDC portfolio?
Like where are they in terms of the continuum? How are, how are they moving along and what’s your guidance to them?
Katharine Kennedy: It’s a good question. So I’ll start by saying my observation, my opinion is [00:06:00] as I’m looking across the companies that are successful and the ones who are yet to be successful, um, the key differentiator is that there is a shared vision at the highest level of the company that drives all the way down to the field.
And what I mean by that is we’re taking two mission statements and we’re melding them together. Then we’re creating a belief system and it becomes a cultural shift across two companies versus, Hey, we’re gonna have all of these siloed, tactical, yeah. Operating units and they’re gonna do their own thing and maybe they’ll be successful over here.
Maybe they’re doing something different over here, but we’re really. I think I heard Nina say this also, we’re pulling that red thread through the company. Yes. Um, which is critical. And I’ve seen so many companies just show up for the revenue. And yes, that’s an absolute outcome and it’s a [00:07:00] tremendous outcome if you do it right, but you have to do it right.
You have to pull that red thread and you have to have every single part of the. Partner value chain buying into this strategy and this North Star, and if they don’t, if one piece of that chain is not bought in, you fail. Yeah.
Vince Menzione: Organizational alignment is what you’re saying and what, what I’m hearing is in order, in terms of getting the AI Strat, the North Star aligned.
Yes. You’ve gotta get the, I call the C-Suite aligned. Yes. You need to get all the functions of the organization aligned to the thread that you talked about. Yes. And then what does that look like? What does that North Star look like? What is it, what is the ideal example of what the North Star would look like?
I’m, I’m a frontier firm. I brought in on ai, music agent ai. I’m doing all the things that we’ve talked about earlier.
Katharine Kennedy: Yes. Um, so I think it, so operationally, um, it’s moving the operational rhythm from what used to be [00:08:00] qbr. Frankly, I think that’s outdated. Yes, it is. It is real time, constant communication.
And yes, there will be checkpoints and they could be weekly, they could be monthly, they could be quarterly, but this is just real time constant communication because the pace of business, the pace of innovation is going so fast. We have to have that direct line of communication product to product team.
We have to have that direct line of communication, engineering to engineering, because with everything going in on. Everything going on in the macroeconomic climate today, especially given concerns around sovereignty. Um, I run a global business, so we have customers saying, Hey, I don’t wanna host my data in a place where I don’t align with the values.
That’s a real situation. That was actually a topic at Davos, as you mentioned, um, Nina. And so, um, we’re rapidly addressing these concerns with our customers and meeting our customers where they are. [00:09:00] Um, but it’s that real time constant connectivity. Um, and we’re frankly. We’re seeing it across the board. Um, but the operating model has to change.
We have to look at more advanced, modern models, uh, for these partnership businesses to sustain in this next wave of transformation. Frankly,
Vince Menzione: you know, it’s, so, you talked about values? Yes. This is, this leads into another conversation, right? When we talk about ai, we talk about, we talk about AI and the use, use cases.
We skip over things like values and trust and governance.
Katharine Kennedy: Oh, good segue. This is, this is my passion, please. Oh, I get so worked up about this. Good.
So I, I had the privilege of, um, sitting, uh, with our SLC community a couple weeks ago, and, uh, they introduced, oh, here’s our amazing new, uh, pitch. We were just [00:10:00] speaking about it in the back actually. And, and it is, it’s amazing. And, uh, they said, do you have any feedback? And I was like, oh. And I waited and I saw everybody, every, you know, oh, we need to change this or tweak that.
And I, and I waited. And then at the last moment I stood up. I was like, okay, I gotta say it. I was like, you say intelligence and trust. I, this is a small tweak, but trust has to be first, foremost, first, last, center, everything. Trust has to be everything. And, um, and I truly mean that. And I think, you know. Of all the companies I’ve worked for and I’ve worked for quite a few, um, Microsoft is the company that I believe in the most that can do the most good in society and in the global.
Macroeconomic economy, a anything right in the world, in your communities. Um, and so one of the things that really struck me, and I keep coming back to with Microsoft and the, the topic of trust is how Microsoft, [00:11:00] um, was first to the table in this, in this, um, moment of ai. You know, introduction a few years ago to say, Hey, we need a set of core values and ethics and principles that we’re all gonna, we’re all gonna marshal around and I haven’t heard it as much recently, and now it’s coming back.
And, uh, you know, the, the six core principles that Microsoft used is, I’m just gonna tell you right now, our fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, inclusivity, um, transparency and accountability. And it’s not. Just six principles that you see on a poster in the offices. These are embedded, again, back to the operating model across every single aspect of our business.
So within our product, within our engineering, even just in our collaboration tools, you could be sending a teams message and you’ll get a notification, Hey, this is not aligned to the Microsoft. Core [00:12:00] values of ai. And so there are gates and governance and guardrails built into every layer of our technology stack and then across the company in our operating rhythms.
And that is what gets me so excited and gets me up at, at out of bed in the morning. Um. I actually got a call from Sila. No one wants a call from Sila. Does anybody know Sila? Uh, yeah. Yes. Okay. That’s our legal, that’s our legal team. Legal affairs. Sila. Yeah. No one wants that call. Uh, I actually, I got so excited.
I was like, are you calling about responsible ai? ’cause I was one of the first, um, I was one of the first to raise my hand to say. We will sign up. Was it Brad Smith calling you? Oh gosh. Oh, that would be a dream. I think he’s so, I’m, I love him. I think he’s so cool. Um, I love that you actually, sorry, side, I’m gonna take you on a side tour.
Next slide. Um, my favorite thing to do is pull up the news and you’re seeing something from the Prime Minister in, you know, Germany and Brad [00:13:00] Smith’s in the foreground Yes. Of every photo. You’re just like, wow, we’re influencing at such a global. Um, base that I could just, it’s hard to wrap your head around sometimes, but, so anyways, going back, I’m gonna take us back to trust.
Um, please.
Vince Menzione: Well, I just think we need to apply it back to ai, right? Because it is so important. It is. It is. These agents are out there and if they’re not governed and if you don’t Yeah, yeah.
Katharine Kennedy: I’m so, so, yeah, thank you. Keeping me on track. So, so why I am excited about it is, is because, um. As we’re going out into our communities, um, we’re here in the southeast and one of the biggest issues that comes up over and over again is, how do I trust that AI is not gonna learn off my data?
How am I gonna trust that it’s telling me the right information? And so on and so forth. And that’s when I get to this great conversation about trust and our responsible AI pact and, um. This is, this is truly what I mean, that it can be a force [00:14:00] multiplier, but it can be a force for good. And if you don’t have those guardrails and that governance and those principles aligned across the companies.
You fall down, right? You fall down with the customers, you fall down with the organizations you’re serving. And so going back to our North Star two, we align there, we align with the values and the ethics, and then we can start to really build a business together. And that’s how we were able to do it so fast.
And so, um, at such scale, at such global scale, um, with. ServiceNow, but now we’re going to take a mature partner in Adobe and we’re gonna take them to the frontier in a way you haven’t seen before. So. Just a little commercial. Adobe is gonna be announcing their Adobe marketing agent. I love it as GA next month.
So they are a frontier firm for us. Yes, very exciting round of applause for Adobe there. For Adobe. Yeah. And more to come. So we’ll be [00:15:00] having, uh, their firefly, uh, video models coming out on Azure and available through Marketplace as well, um, coming soon. So lots of exciting things happening.
Vince Menzione: Sounds exciting.
So let’s talk about those partner big wins that you’re saying. Give us some examples of those.
Katharine Kennedy: Now are you talking about from a Microsoft and Adobe co-innovation perspective? Yes, from the co-innovation perspective. Okay. Yeah. Um, so from a co-innovation perspective, this is. This is a labor of love. Um, I approach it in a very disciplined manner.
The way that we look at, um, these frontier firms is we’re leading with co-innovation versus leading with revenue. And it’s a, it’s, it’s a paradigm shift that takes everyone to buy in back to my earlier point, but also, um, the hardest part is. Teaching companies, um, to do things differently. Uh, so we start with [00:16:00] engineering and product.
And actually before we get there, we start with customer and we sit with our customers. We understand what our customers are asking for. We’re understanding the value that they need unlocked, and typically it’s at the data data layer. And so what we’re doing is we’re seeing, okay, what are the data things?
What are the data silos that need to be unlocked? And so we start to kind of build up from there, taking the customer perspective. Then we sit with engineering and product and we say, okay, what do we have on the truck today? How can we elevate this to an AI led AI first motion that meets our customers where they are in their AI journey?
And delivers value and business outcomes day one versus, hey, we have to go through this laborous process. One of the other things we’re seeing is forward deployed engineers. Um, so thinking about, Hey, how do we sit with our customers and start architecting. What they need to address their business challenges today, um, because AI [00:17:00] can solve a lot of this, right?
And so it’s a really interesting model shift that we’re seeing across the board within Microsoft, within our largest ISVs, and within our customer and our, um, ecosystem community with our GSIs, our sis, as well as our channel.
Vince Menzione: So I know we were. You’ve had a lot. We, we had Jason up here talking about marketplace.
Yes. And Jason Grey, Ja. Oh no, Jason. R Jason. R Jason. Yeah. We’ve had Jason Grey. He’s had Jason Grey. Yes. Well, we, um, you’re, you ServiceNow got called out in that last set session. I know. I was thinking about marketplace and co-selling. Yes. And then ecosystem. So I wanna like tie those three things together if that’s possible with you.
Like what are you seeing from a best practice perspective. Obviously ServiceNow has been a top a top partner. We’re starting to see a lot of, well, channel D, channel [00:18:00] resellers, and the like. What are you seeing from a best practice perspective and is there yes. Central opportunities there?
Okay. Three things. Um, one is AI led innovation. First and foremost, you gotta have the solution. You gotta have it. If you don’t have the solution, you don’t have something to sell. Second is a, um, AI led go to market hero motion. And what I mean by that, so in the, I’ll use ServiceNow as a, as a. Example ServiceNow.
We created a, the first, uh, copilot plus, um, ServiceNow assist agent to agent go to market hero story. It landed really well with our customers and so we started to build off of that and we integrated across, um, up and down the stack. Like I mentioned, the data layer, the agent layer, and the ui. Um, and our customers were thrilled.
They were like, wow. What else can we do with this? Can we unlock HR with this? Can we unlock. [00:19:00] What else can we do? Finance? Can we do finance? And so we started to see these, these moments in time where our customers were taking the technology and taking it to places we just hadn’t even thought about yet.
Um, so I would say those two. And then the third would be, uh, making sure that we’re enabling the field. In a way that they know that story, they can tell that story, and then they have access to people to support that story. Um, and then wrap that in marketplace leverage micro, uh, marketplace as a scale motion.
And now I know we still have opportunities to continue to improve around marketplace. Um, but we’ve come a long way and we’re seeing tremendous growth and scale out of this engine. So it’s, it’s definitely a hidden, um. I would say honestly, it’s still a hidden gem in the Microsoft. Uh. Bag, if you will.
Vince Menzione: $300 billion in total.[00:20:00]
Katharine Kennedy: Yeah, I seriously, yeah, but not anymore, I should say. Yes, I’ve been to Singing from the Rooftop. Yes.
Vince Menzione: And you’re gonna be back this afternoon, right? Yes. A session with Ashley, so, oh, okay. I think, was it with Ash? Maybe? Oh know, maybe. I don’t know. Maybe. I’d be delighted it’ll be back the same. I’m happy to be back.
I wanna make sure, I do wanna make sure, we’ll, we’ll cover some more of this there.
Katharine Kennedy: And then the last thing, yeah. Shared KPIs. Yes. Shared KPIs. We gotta track it. We gotta be accountable. So get your vision aligned. Get your vision, get your organizations across all of the disciplines aligned. Yes. And then have a set of shared KPIs and owners for each of those KPIs.
Yes. Right. And govern it. And govern it. Govern it, yeah. Report up to the CEO on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, on a quarterly basis. I started reporting up to our CEO and he was like. What is she doing? He’s like, this business is going really, it’s growing fast. What is she doing? Can we do this somewhere else though?
Um, it’s, you know, making sure people know the story, um, [00:21:00] and everyone’s buying in and they’re accountable. It’s, um, it’s a simple thing, but it’s powerful. Thank you for having me.
Vince Menzione: Thank you so much. I really, yeah. Appreciate it. Thank you everyone. Alright, thanks. You don’t forget, ultimate Partner Live is coming soon, May 11th through the 13th in beautiful Bellevue, Washington.
I hope to see you there.
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[00:00:00] Vince Menzione: Welcome to the Ultimate Partner Podcast. I’m Vince Manzione, your host, and today we have a special treat. I’m going to spend some time with you just one-on-one having a conversation that really I’ve been thinking about quite a bit lately. What is your reason for being not your job title, not your company’s mission statement, not your OKRs?
[00:00:30] Vince Menzione: Your reason for being, you see, there’s a Japanese concept that many of us follow or talk about. In fact, I have posted about this before. Ikigai. It means roughly reason for being or reason to wake up in the morning, and it’s represented over four overlapping circles. And I’ve talked about my icky guy extensively because I feel like I just found it over the last few years.
[00:00:56] Vince Menzione: An Iki guy is what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. We’re all four of these. Me? That’s your purpose. That’s your icky guy. So I first encountered this years ago. In fact, I was in search for my mission for so long. I spent time with Dr. Michael Vet. In the room trying to understand like where I took my career, where I took all the things that I was good at doing, leading partnerships and the things that I enjoyed doing and all the things that I could help the world doing.
[00:01:33] Vince Menzione: But something always felt incomplete about that. In all those conversations and building out my mission statement and my vision statement and some, some other capacities, and it took me, you know, 40 years in this industry, 290 podcast conversations. Dozens of events that I’ve either been on stage or the 10 and 11 that we’ve hosted ourselves and a career that took me from selling in the field, carrying a bag to leading a $4.6 billion partner business at Microsoft.
[00:02:06] Vince Menzione: It took me all of that to understand what was missing, and that’s what today’s episode is all about. Let me give you the full, icky guy picture before I tell you what I think is missing. The concept comes from the Okinawa Japan region. Famous for having one of the highest concentrations of centenarians in the world.
[00:02:26] Vince Menzione: Researchers have studied these people for a long time to understand why they’ve lived so long, and it comes down to purpose. What was their icky guy? The framework became popular in the west, largely because it gave people a practical tool. Four questions, four circles. Find the overlap. And it works as far as it goes, but I’ve seen executives use it in offsites.
[00:02:51] Vince Menzione: Coaches use it for clients. Leaders use it to navigate career transitions, and people talk about it on LinkedIn and on social all the time. The challenge is how it’s framed. It’s almost always framed in a solo exercise. You alone answering these four questions isolated from the people around you, you alone finding that intersection.
[00:03:14] Vince Menzione: You alone discovering your purpose. And for many things in life, that’s the right frame. Introspection matters. Self-knowledge matters. But for those of us who are building partnerships for a living, for partner leaders, ecosystem builders, hyperscaler, executives, ISV, founders, MSP operators, and people that build communities like Ultimate Partner, I wanna offer you a different frame.
[00:03:41] Vince Menzione: Here’s what I’ve learned, and I don’t say this lightly because it took a long time to articulate it clearly to me, and maybe it was my accident that made this really resonate. You don’t find your purpose alone. You find it in the room, the right room with the right people at the right moment. I can trace almost every significant turn in my career, every breakthrough, every reinvention.
[00:04:10] Vince Menzione: Every moment of clarity back to a room, a conversation at a partner conference, a dinner where someone said something that shifted my perspective, a coach that led me to the right conclusions. An event where I met someone who saw what I was building before I fully saw it myself. This isn’t luck, this is proximity.
[00:04:35] Vince Menzione: And in the decade of the ecosystem. And during these times of tectonic shifts, which is what I believe we’re living through right now, proximity is a strategic asset. Think about the best results you’ve driven in partnerships. Were they the result of a product strategy as a solo strategy exercise, or were they the product of being in the right relationship at the right time with the right, trusted?
[00:05:02] Vince Menzione: I know what your answer is because I’ve heard it 290 plus times. The guests on this podcast, the Tony Voyance, the Greg Serafin, the Jay McBain, the Dr. Michael DVAs, the Nina Hardings in the room, every one of them, when I ask about their greatest moments, they talk about people, they talk about the team, the partnership, the relationships that made it possible.
[00:05:28] Vince Menzione: That is the fifth circle, not just what you love. What you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for, but who you find it with. I wanna get personal for a second. Just over a year ago, on March 31st of last year, as you all know, I was in a very serious accident. I won’t go into great details about this, but it was the kind of moment that stopped me.
[00:05:55] Vince Menzione: It forced me to look up from the world and ask the hard questions. What am I doing? Why does this matter? Who am I doing it for? I spent a month basically in bed trying to work through getting ready for our event that year in Redmond. And during that time, I had nothing to do but think. And what I kept coming back to again and again, wasn’t the content I’ve created on the podcast.
[00:06:24] Vince Menzione: It wasn’t the leaders coming on stage. Oh, of course those were important components of it. It was the people, the community in the room, and when I had to get up on stage again, when I needed to go out to Redmond, it was those people that were calling me back. The leaders I’d sat across from for these five plus years.
[00:06:45] Vince Menzione: The conversations that have changed my thinking, the relationships that have made ultimate partners, something real, that was my icky guy. And I hadn’t built it alone. I had built it in the room with the most remarkable collection of partner leaders I could ever imagined when I came back, blue Cast and all, I knew more clearly than ever why I do this, and the answer wasn’t in a four circle diagram.
[00:07:14] Vince Menzione: It was in the face of the people that showed up in that room, and I could see them now in front of me to this day. So what does this mean for you as a partner leader, as an ecosystem builder? Someone navigating the tectonic shifts of AI marketplace co-sell and more. It means your Ikigai exercise needs a fifth question, not just what do I love?
[00:07:39] Vince Menzione: What am I good at? What does the world need? What can I be paid for, but also who am I finding it with? Let me make this concrete. The best partner leaders I know don’t just have strong strategies. They have strong ecosystems of people, mentors, collaborators, cos sellers, hyperscalers champions, and community members who amplify what they’re building.
[00:08:09] Vince Menzione: I see it in my friends that are building their communities like Christine Bonard at the Witt Network. I see it in those rooms. It’s not transactional. They’re relational. They don’t treat the hyperscaler as a vendor. They treat them as a co-creator. They don’t treat their partners as a channel. They treat them as an extension of their own mission.
[00:08:32] Vince Menzione: They don’t show up at events to collect business cards. They show up to find their people. That last one. Finding your people is where Ikigai gets activated in the ecosystem world. Proximity to the right people, ideas, opportunities, changes, everything. That’s not a tagline. That’s the operating principle behind everything.
[00:08:57] Vince Menzione: Ultimate Partner has built the podcast, the events up live in Bellevue, this May and our community. All of it is about creating the room. Because when you find the right room, when you’re in it, contributing to it, building in it, your purpose doesn’t stay abstract, it becomes real. It becomes results. It becomes the extraordinary.
[00:09:28] Vince Menzione: I wanna leave you with this somewhere in your career, maybe it’s already happened, maybe it’s ahead of you. There will be a room where something shifts, a conversation that reframes how you see your work, a relationship that accelerates everything. A community that makes you more than you would’ve been without it.
[00:09:51] Vince Menzione: That room doesn’t happen by accident. You have to pursue it. You have to invest in it. You have to show up even when it’s hard, even when you’re wearing a boot cast. Even when the timing isn’t perfect because nobody does the extraordinary alone, that’s what the Ultimate Partner framework is built on.
[00:10:15] Vince Menzione: That’s what the book that I’m writing is built on, and that’s what I believe with every conversation I’ve been privileged to have on this podcast and in the rooms at Ultimate Partner events. Find your room, build on it. And be the kind of partner, someone else’s breakthrough. Depends on. Thanks for being here.
[00:10:39] Vince Menzione: Thanks for being part of the Ultimate Partner podcast about being part of our mission, being part of our community, showing up in our room. Until next time, we’ll see you in person, hopefully at our next event. Ultimate Partner Live is coming soon, May 11th through the 13th in beautiful Bellevue, Washington.
[00:11:02] Vince Menzione: I hope to see you there.
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At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins.
Key Tags:
Integral, Spark, Marketplace as a Service, MaaS, Marketplace Operating System, Marketplace Strategy, Transactable Offers, Get It Now button, SI to ISV pivot, SDC, Microsoft Marketplace, AWS Marketplace, Google Cloud Marketplace, IP Co-sell, MAC eligible, Multi-party private offers, REO, Reseller enabled offers, Cloud Committed Spend, Frontier Firm, AI agents, Spark GTM methodology, Marketplace Optimization, Digital Sales Flywheel.
Transcript:
Dexter Hardy Audio Episode
[00:00:00] Dexter Hardy: AI in the hands of someone who has no idea what they’re doing is just a, it’s a faster way to failure, right? Yeah. ’cause they have, they
[00:00:06] Vince Menzione: still don’t understand the concepts.
[00:00:11] Vince Menzione: We just finished Ultimate Partners Winter Retreat here in beautiful Boca to a sold out crowd. Today I’m joined by Dexter Hardy, the founder of Integral for a compelling discussion. Dexter, welcome back to the podcast. Great to be here, Vince. It’s
[00:00:29] Dexter Hardy: always a pleasure.
[00:00:30] Vince Menzione: It is so good to have you back in Boca.
[00:00:33] Vince Menzione: Uh, we just wrapped up our ultimate partner executive winter retreat. We call it the Winter Retreat now.
[00:00:39] Dexter Hardy: Yep.
[00:00:39] Vince Menzione: It’s still February when this airs. It’ll probably be March or April.
[00:00:43] Dexter Hardy: Okay.
[00:00:43] Vince Menzione: But, um, yeah, the weather in the north has been, they’ve had a tough winter.
[00:00:49] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. It’s been brutal
[00:00:50] Vince Menzione: for, it’s been brutal. Even, even Atlanta where you are.
[00:00:53] Vince Menzione: Had a little bit of winter this year as well.
[00:00:54] Dexter Hardy: I was happy to get on the flight. Yeah. It was like 29 degrees the day out, so,
[00:00:59] Vince Menzione: so, um, this is your second time Yeah. On Ultimate Partner. And we’ve been friends for, we’re just talking about this. You’ve been to every single one of our Ultimate Partner events.
[00:01:10] Vince Menzione: Nine events,
[00:01:12] Dexter Hardy: yep.
[00:01:12] Vince Menzione: Three times here in Boca and then in other cities like Dallas and Las Colinas. Seattle, Seattle and Reston. Oh my goodness. And we’re back in Seattle again in May. So, uh, we’ve been, we’ve been busy. We’ve been busy. Both of us have
[00:01:27] Dexter Hardy: Scott Myer
[00:01:28] Vince Menzione: up and we’ve been, and we were introduced. We’ve been friends and worked together.
[00:01:31] Vince Menzione: And so I would love to get caught up on you and Integral.
[00:01:35] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:01:36] Vince Menzione: Um, the first time we sat down, we talked about Integral as a marketplace. Uh, customer base or, or, or vendor supporting the marketplace.
[00:01:45] Dexter Hardy: Yep.
[00:01:46] Vince Menzione: And you were, you’ve been, uh, showcased at Microsoft with the Marketplace organization. You’ve done some astounding things in terms of driving business without like a big sales force, you know, and driving marketplace sales, uh, to very high levels.
[00:02:02] Dexter Hardy: Yep.
[00:02:03] Vince Menzione: And, uh, and now you, I’ll call it a little bit of a twist and turn, but now. You’ve taken all the great learnings, and I’m probably sharing some of your thunder here, but you’ve taken all the great learnings that you’ve had in marketplace and your business
[00:02:16] Dexter Hardy: mm-hmm.
[00:02:16] Vince Menzione: And now you’re like looking at all these other companies, they’re probably trying to do the same thing and finding ways to help them.
[00:02:21] Vince Menzione: So let’s, let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about where you’re going.
[00:02:25] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. So, so thanks for that. And it’s always a pleasure to be, you know, in the room with you, especially on the podcast, uh, seeing it grow over the years. And, um, to kind of double click on. How did we get to where we are with, uh, spark Bi Integral?
[00:02:40] Dexter Hardy: Um, it’s our marketplace as a service offering. Um, we
[00:02:46] Vince Menzione: marketplace as a service. You get that? I just wanna make sure people are listening and watching. Get that. That’s a, that’s a new acronym for me.
[00:02:53] Dexter Hardy: That’s a new one. But, but what we, how do we get there? So to your point, yes, we. We’re a, um, marketplace first organization looking at the digital sales leaned in heavily on marketplace.
[00:03:08] Dexter Hardy: Um, and what we were doing internally was we created our marketplace operating system. Like literally, how do we run our business? How do we digitize, how do we get those, uh, how do we turn the marketplace into our 24 hour sales guy? Yeah. Taking all those lessons learned how you deal with the hyperscale or how do you understand, you know, the, the signals that’s happening in the market.
[00:03:33] Dexter Hardy: Uh, coupling that with, because we’ve been a member of this wonderful organization and getting into the partner community ecosystem, we get asked a million times, I bet. What do you do? How do you do it? That’s help us understand marketplace and so what we. What we saw there was an opportunity to both lean into the challenges that other partners are facing.
[00:04:00] Dexter Hardy: If you’re an SI that’s trying to pivot
[00:04:02] Vince Menzione: yep,
[00:04:03] Dexter Hardy: and be in the marketplace, you’re already established company, how do you create Transactable offers? How do we take the the marketplace opportunity and leverage AI and put our agents in the marketplace? Our aha moment was this is, this is an en enablement opportunity that we can get into and basically be the first ones in because we leaned into it, we understand it.
[00:04:35] Dexter Hardy: What makes us different from the other companies is we actually use that methodology every day.
[00:04:43] Vince Menzione: For those who maybe didn’t listen to the last podcast we did together, I know this story, but I want others to know the context of it. Tell us about your transformation to a marketplace firm.
[00:04:54] Dexter Hardy: Okay, for sure.
[00:04:56] Vince Menzione: Maybe the shorter version.
[00:04:57] Dexter Hardy: The shorter version,
[00:04:57] Vince Menzione: but I, I do know that there was some, you were in business for a long time before this became the business strategy.
[00:05:03] Dexter Hardy: Yeah, so the shortened version business founded 2002, Microsoft partner for many years. Yep. 2020. Si. Si as an si. 2020 COVID.
[00:05:16] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:05:16] Dexter Hardy: Consulting 2.0.
[00:05:17] Dexter Hardy: How do you do what you do at scale for others? Taking your ip, converting it. We did that at 2020. Embraced the marketplace. We created our solutions, deploy them to the marketplace. The rest is history. We leaned in how
[00:05:32] Vince Menzione: many solutions in the
[00:05:33] Dexter Hardy: marketplace, over 300 solutions. I wanna
[00:05:35] Vince Menzione: make sure people
[00:05:35] Dexter Hardy: got that.
[00:05:35] Dexter Hardy: Over a hundred, 300
[00:05:36] Vince Menzione: solutions.
[00:05:37] Dexter Hardy: Over 300 solutions. Yeah. Uh, we have. Customers in over a hundred countries. I mean, and
[00:05:42] Vince Menzione: yeah.
[00:05:43] Dexter Hardy: You know, continuing to build and expand our customer base on a daily basis. And so,
[00:05:48] Vince Menzione: and they’re, and they’re buying when you, while you sleep. I mean, we, we’ve known each other pretty well for a number of years.
[00:05:54] Vince Menzione: And
[00:05:54] Dexter Hardy: yeah,
[00:05:54] Vince Menzione: you have customers like, um, I’ll throw out a number, like 25,000 customers, probably, maybe beyond that. And these customers are buying your solutions. All hours of the day and night,
[00:06:06] Dexter Hardy: right? Yeah. I I love the get it now button in the marketplace. Literally all they have to do to work with us or transact with us is click on, get It Now, and that’s the transactable offer that everyone, there’s this mystique around.
[00:06:19] Dexter Hardy: People are like, well, we don’t have any leads. We can, you know, our, we have an offer in the marketplace and nobody’s clicking on it. And I’m like, Hmm,
[00:06:27] Vince Menzione: yeah,
[00:06:27] Dexter Hardy: we can help you with that. Right? And so, um, you know, that’s how we. Our, our story with that, our background with that was it’s our 24 hour sales guy. We drive our campaigns, we align with the solution plays.
[00:06:41] Dexter Hardy: We’re getting those clicks with, to your point, without this huge army of people. Yeah. And so now we’re saying from a marketplace strategic advisory, a lot of people were saying it earlier, like, you know, marketplace isn’t this adjacent thing to business. How do you strategically think about it as. Um, part of your business all up.
[00:07:03] Dexter Hardy: How do you add that as a revenue stream, uh, for your organization? And yeah, there may be some changes that you need to make, you know, how do you incorporate the channel? How do you add in all of the things that you’re currently doing, but create that as a flywheel for this. Get it now economy.
[00:07:22] Vince Menzione: So all the, I’m, I’m thinking out loud, like there’s probably a lot of people watching you up on stage at these events talking about how you evolved your company and grew it.
[00:07:31] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:07:32] Vince Menzione: Going, that’s me.
[00:07:33] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:07:33] Vince Menzione: That’s me. The old, the old version of you absolutely is them.
[00:07:37] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:07:38] Vince Menzione: And they all, they all want help.
[00:07:39] Dexter Hardy: They all,
[00:07:40] Vince Menzione: everybody wants help in marketplace.
[00:07:41] Dexter Hardy: Right. And
[00:07:43] Vince Menzione: yeah.
[00:07:43] Dexter Hardy: And, and to that end. Because I was them. I understand how their mind, it’s a mindset shift, right? You’re saying, okay, we have these traditional sales, we’re a systems integrator, we have all this ip, these, there are all these things that we can do.
[00:07:57] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:07:58] Dexter Hardy: I don’t, how do we convert this to transact ability? How do we get our sales teams enabled to sell it? And I was, and my, my feedback and my response to that is, well, one, we have a service for that. It’s our marketplace advisor services. I’m sorry for the plug, but not sorry.
[00:08:16] Vince Menzione: No, we’re, no, we’re gonna plug today as well.
[00:08:18] Vince Menzione: Much as you want.
[00:08:19] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:08:20] Vince Menzione: And then I think about this too, because a lot of these sis are developing, we’re just, uh, talking with Agua about MSPs, developing agents for their customers and then making ’em repeatable.
[00:08:30] Dexter Hardy: Yep.
[00:08:31] Vince Menzione: And so you have other sis that are creating AI tools and agents. Microsoft is created and the, and so has AWS and Google, they’ve created space in their marketplaces for agent AI tools.
[00:08:44] Dexter Hardy: Yep.
[00:08:45] Vince Menzione: And so now you’ve got all these companies that were traditional sis that are now becoming what we would call ISVs or, or SDCs. And they need help in getting these solutions to the marketplace.
[00:08:57] Dexter Hardy: Absolutely.
[00:08:58] Vince Menzione: So, so talk about what you’re doing with Spark.
[00:09:00] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. So our concept with Spark is. When you look at enablement, so you’ll have platforms that are enablers and a lot of people will say, well, what makes Spark different?
[00:09:12] Dexter Hardy: Why? Why you versus Tackle Or Sugar?
[00:09:15] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:09:15] Dexter Hardy: Any of the other work span. Work span or any, they’re all friendlys to us because we’re meeting you where you are. Right. In order for you to use their platform, you gotta already have the solution together.
[00:09:29] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:09:30] Dexter Hardy: Right. They can help you deploy. There’s Deploy. They are a deployment firm or
[00:09:38] Vince Menzione: they’re middleware in many respects. Correct. Between the, they’re,
[00:09:41] Dexter Hardy: they’re integrated into the marketplace. They’re highly embedded into the systems behind it, and we’re saying what happens before that? I have no idea what solution to build. I have no idea how we’re gonna take advantage of Marketplace.
[00:09:58] Dexter Hardy: How is Marketplace gonna change? Again, we had these conversations at dinner. Um,
[00:10:04] Vince Menzione: yeah,
[00:10:04] Dexter Hardy: all of the big players are saying, we have channel, we have our sales teams, we have all these things already. How does marketplace play into that for us? And so that Marketplace strategic advisory goes into it and says, here’s how.
[00:10:19] Dexter Hardy: Right. We have a. Our Spark GTM methodology goes into how do those things play together? What are your KPIs or what are your business goals as an organization all up? And then we marry this, basically a Venn diagram of how we marry marketplace with your current objectives. Okay. To not just be this, uh, ubiquitous thing that’s kind of sitting over on the side, like, let’s just put it in marketplace because we need to, and nobody knows it’s there and nobody knows it’s there.
[00:10:49] Dexter Hardy: It’s part of. Everything all up. Your messaging, your sales organization, your, um, documentation that you have for your organization. So now everyone understands, not just you as the, let’s say you’re an SI that you were, but you, the si with your agents and how that plays into your bigger value proposition.
[00:11:10] Dexter Hardy: So take
[00:11:10] Vince Menzione: us through the, go to the methodology you described the Spark methodology.
[00:11:15] Dexter Hardy: Yep. So, um, a lot of people, when they think about. The methodology, you’ll say we’re a, we’re an si. I’m just going to use an example. You’re an si. How, how do I get somebody to click on my, my opportunity? How do I get somebody to understand what we have as a value proposition?
[00:11:39] Dexter Hardy: And I’d say to people, well, there’s this, it’s part of the methodology. There’s product viability. Can you build something? Versus should you build something. Right.
[00:11:50] Vince Menzione: Interesting.
[00:11:51] Dexter Hardy: If you are, if you are out there today and you’re saying, I mean, everybody’s seeing Claude, the agents, you can, you can ask AI to build you pretty much anything.
[00:12:00] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:12:00] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:12:01] Dexter Hardy: Now the question scary and that, that’s a, that, that introduces a new problem. But it’s, can you do it or should you do it?
[00:12:08] Vince Menzione: Yes.
[00:12:09] Dexter Hardy: And and what I’ll tell people is part of our advisory, so the steps are. What is your North Star right now and what is the software that would enable you to get on that AI rocket ship to propel you even further with where you are?
[00:12:27] Dexter Hardy: Those are the solutions that we would try to
[00:12:29] Vince Menzione: Okay.
[00:12:30] Dexter Hardy: That out, pull out of, uh, as part of that marketplace. Um, advisory Second, what partner or partner organizations are you a member of? Is it Microsoft? Is it the AWS? Is it, you know, Google Cloud? Google Cloud, what have you, and let’s say Microsoft. What are solution plays?
[00:12:51] Dexter Hardy: What is Microsoft focused on? How does what you’re doing as an organization align with that go to market? Mm-hmm. Because now you have that jet power of what they’re, um, promoting along with your organization.
[00:13:06] Vince Menzione: Nice.
[00:13:07] Dexter Hardy: And then the final piece is, well, now that you’ve done that, how do I get it into market?
[00:13:12] Dexter Hardy: How do I, uh, get people to click on it? And that’s where some of the secret sauce that I won’t divulge on this,
[00:13:19] Vince Menzione: uh,
[00:13:20] Dexter Hardy: but there is some secret sauce to getting the ICPs to lean in, getting the
[00:13:25] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:13:25] Dexter Hardy: You know, you’re listing to light up inside of that. And so that’s. You know, that’s at a high level. That’s kind of how the marketplace,
[00:13:32] Vince Menzione: I think what you’re alluding to, and I, I don’t wanna put words in your mouth, but I do think you’ve done a very good job on what I would call maybe digital marketing, maybe.
[00:13:41] Vince Menzione: Would that be the right terminology? Yeah. To make your solutions discoverable, to make people understand that they’re out there and to lean in and be able to purchase them.
[00:13:51] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:13:52] Vince Menzione: Which I think I would say that’s probably part of the secret sauce, probably of Spark. That is what you’re saying because a lot of organizations struggle here.
[00:13:59] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:14:00] Vince Menzione: They put something in the marketplace and nothing ever happens with it. Even even big companies do that. They don’t know how to do it.
[00:14:06] Dexter Hardy: So, so yeah. Without divulging the secret sauce, I had a gentleman ask me yesterday, um, during the conference, so how is this different from SEO? I said, good question.
[00:14:20] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. Is is SEOS? Is, is SEO involved? Sure, but that’s not the final answer. Because you could do SEO, that doesn’t mean anybody. That just gets you, doesn’t mean anything. Doesn’t mean anything. And so. That’s why I keep going back to this methodology of really aligning it with, uh, what it is you’re trying to accomplish, who it is you’re trying to get to lean in, and then what is the value proposition?
[00:14:42] Dexter Hardy: Because at the end of the day, Vince, I think even with any service, like I said, we did our first offerings with our R zero offerings and now we’re doing this. It’s what is the value, right? Um, it’s a hard. Thing to do to really wrap your brain around how your, how your business is going to change from, if you’re doing direct sales and you got your bag and you’re out there selling to now, you mean I don’t have to pick up the phone and call you?
[00:15:15] Dexter Hardy: There’s not an email chain that goes out. It’s literally people are just clicking on Get it now to get it
[00:15:21] Vince Menzione: and getting it.
[00:15:22] Dexter Hardy: That’s a, that’s a mind shift change and that’s. To your point, there is some market, there is some marketing expertise that is required.
[00:15:29] Vince Menzione: And we’ve also talked about, I know you and I went down a journey on the co-sell business
[00:15:34] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:15:34] Vince Menzione: And how difficult it can be to get a, a seller from a Microsoft or a Google and Amazon involved, unless it’s, you know, a $10 million transaction, they don’t want to get involved.
[00:15:45] Dexter Hardy: Right.
[00:15:46] Vince Menzione: Uh, you really wanna reach the customer. Because you know, the hyperscalers is great. If you’re driving a ServiceNow or an ADO a big solution, it’s gonna be tens of millions of dollars.
[00:15:56] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:15:57] Vince Menzione: But if you are an SI and you’re selling this as part of maybe a services offering, or you’re selling it as, you know, you’re just selling as a standalone.
[00:16:04] Dexter Hardy: Right?
[00:16:05] Vince Menzione: Um, you want as much eyeballs and transactions as possible and you’re not gonna get that just going co-selling.
[00:16:12] Dexter Hardy: Right. And, and the other part of that I will say about co-sell.
[00:16:17] Dexter Hardy: I think co-sell has gotten like a dirty rap or bad rap around it. Co-sell is with the hyperscaler, but it’s with other partners too.
[00:16:28] Vince Menzione: Sure,
[00:16:28] Dexter Hardy: right? Oh yeah, absolutely. So, um, being in the marketplace gives you the option of co-selling would, not just the hyperscaler, but co-selling with other orgs. And so now anytime that you’ve give, you’ve given yourself that X factor on top of your existing ability to deliver.
[00:16:44] Dexter Hardy: That’s where you’re seeing the true power of marketplace.
[00:16:47] Vince Menzione: And yesterday you were on stage with Jason Rook.
[00:16:50] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:16:51] Vince Menzione: And this was part of the conversation. It was you, Jason Rook and Amit Sinha at, at uh, work Span.
[00:16:58] Dexter Hardy: Mm-hmm.
[00:16:58] Vince Menzione: And part of the conversation was around the, uh, reseller enabled offers. And I think what that’s somewhat of what you’re alluding to is that you have other wait routes to market channels to market.
[00:17:10] Dexter Hardy: Right
[00:17:11] Vince Menzione: through building other partnerships for co-selling. Yeah. That what you, you were alluding to. Yeah.
[00:17:15] Dexter Hardy: So, so yeah, there, there are a million ways to, once you’re in, once you have a transactable offer, that’s when you get the magic unlocks. Right. You, the barrier to entry is being in marketplace with a transactable offer.
[00:17:31] Dexter Hardy: And if you’re outside of that loop, again, the REO. You’re not available. Guess who? Guess who can’t do that?
[00:17:39] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:17:40] Dexter Hardy: If you’re not in the marketplace, you can’t do that.
[00:17:41] Vince Menzione: Can’t do that.
[00:17:43] Dexter Hardy: Multi-party private offers can’t do that. ’cause you’re not in the marketplace.
[00:17:47] Vince Menzione: No.
[00:17:48] Dexter Hardy: Right. And so what we’re saying is think about all up, how you’re missing out on.
[00:17:56] Dexter Hardy: All of these wonderful opportunities to, I think, I think the number got thrown out a couple of times. Jason ran away from it when you said it’s like a $300 billion number on, he
[00:18:07] Vince Menzione: didn’t want, he didn’t, he didn’t want me sharing or he wasn’t, he, he didn’t want to, uh, what, what did he say? Validate that that was the right number, but $300 billion in potential cloud budgets.
[00:18:21] Vince Menzione: That you could have access to. We know the number across the three hyperscalers is north of 500 billion.
[00:18:27] Dexter Hardy: Yep.
[00:18:27] Vince Menzione: It’s just that Microsoft doesn’t break out their numbers and make them public, and so we, you know,
[00:18:32] Dexter Hardy: and, and
[00:18:33] Vince Menzione: estimates.
[00:18:33] Dexter Hardy: What I would tell everyone that’s listening, I would invite you to consider
[00:18:37] Vince Menzione: Yeah,
[00:18:38] Dexter Hardy: the following.
[00:18:39] Dexter Hardy: If you’re not in the marketplace with a IP, co-sale or MAC eligible solution, you’re not eligible for that.
[00:18:49] Vince Menzione: That’s right.
[00:18:50] Dexter Hardy: Spend. And so is that worth it for you as an organization to say, yes, we need to figure out this and get involved with that?
[00:19:01] Vince Menzione: So I’m an SI and I raise my hand. I’m like, Dexter, help me.
[00:19:06] Vince Menzione: What happens next?
[00:19:08] Dexter Hardy: I would say. Let me introduce you to my team.
[00:19:12] Vince Menzione: I love it. I love it.
[00:19:13] Dexter Hardy: Um,
[00:19:14] Vince Menzione: and you’ve been building your team since, uh, we go back now four years, but like yeah. You, you’ve been growing your business, hired some incredible people in your
[00:19:22] Dexter Hardy: team. Yeah, we have some rock stars on our team. I’m really, really happy with my team.
[00:19:25] Dexter Hardy: Uh, you know, we’re still growing and it’s, it’s a wonderful thing to be in this economy and still growing. Yes. Um, and like I said, yes, we, I would introduce you to my team and my team would then help you, uh, through. The marketplace advisory. We can help you with the health check. We can do the strategic advisory, the alignment around, here’s what we’re doing.
[00:19:47] Dexter Hardy: Another thing that I’ll go ahead and put in here, if you already have listings in the marketplace and people aren’t clicking on them, we have marketplace optimization as well.
[00:19:58] Vince Menzione: I love that
[00:19:59] Dexter Hardy: because we, again, that conversation comes up all the time. Yeah. We put, we, we invested in Marketplace and we have our listing out there.
[00:20:08] Dexter Hardy: Nobody’s clicking on it. Well, we can help you with that too.
[00:20:11] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:20:12] Dexter Hardy: Right, because to your point, it’s not just building an ar, arbitrarily writing something about it, putting it in marketplace. Right. That’s, that’s an arbitrary approach. We’re saying how do you turn those into a lead gen, revenue gen, um, operation arm of your business.
[00:20:29] Vince Menzione: Nice.
[00:20:29] Dexter Hardy: Which is what we call market marketplace operating system.
[00:20:33] Vince Menzione: Marketplace operating. Okay. So we got another, I got another word I need to learn. Another acronym I need to learn.
[00:20:38] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. You know, I
[00:20:39] Vince Menzione: less,
[00:20:40] Dexter Hardy: I’ve been around Microsoft too long, I guess.
[00:20:42] Vince Menzione: Yes. I
[00:20:42] Dexter Hardy: created all these,
[00:20:45] Vince Menzione: so, um, just perspective could, because you’ve been in the marketplace since we talked about COVID.
[00:20:50] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:20:51] Vince Menzione: Really. So that’s five years. Five
[00:20:52] Dexter Hardy: years. Yeah.
[00:20:54] Vince Menzione: Um, talk about how it’s changed from your perspective. I mean, I, we talk about it all. We talk, we have leaders like Jason and Cyril comes here and. Does, uh, speaks about some changes going on, but tell us your perspective on how it’s evolved.
[00:21:08] Dexter Hardy: Um, so the marketplace is always evolving really.
[00:21:12] Dexter Hardy: Um, from, from when we got in early in the marketplace. Uh, REO didn’t exist. Multi, multi-party. Private offers didn’t exist. The amount of committed spend on hyperscalers little was, wasn’t there. Um, the seller, the field sellers within the hyperscalers. Marketplace wasn’t part of their thing. So, um, you know, when that, when that frontier, not just that, not to confuse terms when that frontier opened up Yeah.
[00:21:43] Dexter Hardy: Like there were, you know, it, it really wasn’t a clear path on how do you channel, how do you do sales, how do you integrate with the team? Um, and now there’s a lot more options, uh, for organizations that want to keep some of those motions together. Disti are now able to get involved with the conversation.
[00:22:05] Dexter Hardy: They were kinda locked out for a while, but now with the s and the multi-party private offers and disti are in the conversation,
[00:22:12] Vince Menzione: it’s lit up the disti like crazy. Yeah. In fact, we were, we just spent time with a few and some friends there and
[00:22:19] Dexter Hardy: yeah.
[00:22:19] Vince Menzione: Yeah, it’s been wild to watch this.
[00:22:21] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:22:21] Vince Menzione: We haven’t talked about AI very much.
[00:22:24] Vince Menzione: I mean, we talked about it from a solution and something you put in the, the market as an agent. But we haven’t talked about the change in a big way. Um, what’s your perspective for the partners out there and how they need to think about AI and embracing it and where they are in the journey?
[00:22:41] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. Um, I really, AUL said something, uh, in his, in the panel discussion that he had the other day and it, it just really resonated with me.
[00:22:53] Dexter Hardy: Uh, will AI take your job? Probably not. The person who’s using AI
[00:23:00] Vince Menzione: will take
[00:23:00] Dexter Hardy: the job. Will take you
[00:23:01] Vince Menzione: job. Yes.
[00:23:02] Dexter Hardy: Same thing. That’s really
[00:23:04] Vince Menzione: so true.
[00:23:05] Dexter Hardy: Same thing for, same thing for companies. Yeah. If you don’t have, and I, I’ll, I’m, I, I’m really gonna ask, I should have asked Jason this question. Why isn’t there a badge for frontier firms for SDCs?
[00:23:21] Dexter Hardy: That’s a solution. Partner badge, not a frontier firm.
[00:23:24] Vince Menzione: Yeah,
[00:23:24] Dexter Hardy: but I’ll say if your company isn’t investing in combining people and ai, you’re missing the boat.
[00:23:36] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So be a frontier firm.
[00:23:37] Dexter Hardy: Be a frontier firm where it doesn’t matter if you’re an si, SDC, if you are not leveraging that superpower of how do we do things faster, better, quicker.
[00:23:50] Dexter Hardy: Make that part of your go to market and your operating total operations, you’re going to get left behind.
[00:23:57] Vince Menzione: Yeah. We’re hearing it loud and clear. I mean, all the sessions we had yesterday.
[00:24:02] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:24:02] Vince Menzione: All the people like yourself that have been here are all frontier firms. They’re all companies that have leaned in, in a big way.
[00:24:07] Dexter Hardy: Right.
[00:24:08] Vince Menzione: Um, and in some respect, I mean, we we’re, I’m, I’m saying proceed with caution because I, I know by 2030 our world is gonna look very radically different than it looks today.
[00:24:17] Dexter Hardy: Yep.
[00:24:18] Vince Menzione: Uh, we just, I need to make sure we have the security and the governance and the data structure the right way so that we just don’t, things don’t just go crazy in some respects.
[00:24:27] Vince Menzione: Right?
[00:24:27] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. And I, I do think that, um, to your point, you have to, we still have to keep the human factor in everything that we’re doing. Um, there is, again, it’s AI plus your experience that makes you better.
[00:24:46] Vince Menzione: Yeah, agreed.
[00:24:47] Dexter Hardy: AI in the hands of someone who has no idea what they’re doing is just a, it’s a faster way to failure, right?
[00:24:53] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. Because they have, they still don’t understand the concepts. And so I really want to make sure that, you know, when you think about ai, think about it from the context of experience, right? Yeah.
[00:25:06] Vince Menzione: And yeah, we can go, we can go down a, a whole discussion point here about ethics and what I’ll call AI for good.
[00:25:14] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. Like I said, having the right approach, having an ethical approach. We talked about Microsoft on stage yesterday with people like Brad Smith, who, uh, there’s people that have this, this right philosophy and approach to ai. Right. That
[00:25:29] Dexter Hardy: right.
[00:25:29] Vince Menzione: It will do good for the world and not bad for the world.
[00:25:32] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:25:33] Dexter Hardy: And I think that has to be, well, I’ll just speak for myself. Can you do something and should you do something
[00:25:42] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:25:43] Dexter Hardy: You have to, that should be a question that you’re asking yourself. You should be evaluating and you have to have whatever your moral compass is that has to align with your moral compass.
[00:25:53] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. Because they’re, you know, because with AI the can you do something becomes a lot bigger. Yeah.
[00:26:02] Vince Menzione: Good point. Good point.
[00:26:03] Dexter Hardy: Should you do it well, you know, greater good. I think as a, as a collective, one of the things that’s. If it hasn’t rained true. Uh, we all live on this planet. We all are part of the, we’re all in part of a connected ecosystem.
[00:26:21] Dexter Hardy: Um, and so can we do it? Should we do it? Those are questions that we need to, you know, really think about as we continue to leverage AI and do the things that we’re doing. I mean, there’s, there’s a lot of opportunities.
[00:26:36] Vince Menzione: Good points, good points. So for partners watching, listening today, um, two, couple things.
[00:26:43] Vince Menzione: First of all, it’s changing fast. We need like, what would be, we’re at the beginning of 2026. We’re the first quarter, 2026, maybe the end of the first quarter at this point.
[00:26:53] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:26:54] Vince Menzione: What is the one or two or three things that partners need to go do differently or better? And then, um, what would you say to them about marketplace and embracing marketplace?
[00:27:09] Dexter Hardy: So I’m gonna answer the second question first.
[00:27:12] Vince Menzione: Okay. Sounds good.
[00:27:14] Dexter Hardy: Get in the marketplace.
[00:27:15] Vince Menzione: Get in the marketplace,
[00:27:17] Dexter Hardy: period.
[00:27:17] Vince Menzione: Like why wouldn’t you be in the marketplace?
[00:27:20] Dexter Hardy: Every hyperscaler has doubled down, tripled down. Yeah. On their marketplace. Microsoft had multiple marketplaces, now it’s just one.
[00:27:28] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:27:29] Dexter Hardy: Writing should be all over the wall. Not that
[00:27:31] Vince Menzione: one. There is, there is no market without marketplace. I mean, literally today, the old way, days of selling, the old days of co-selling are gone.
[00:27:39] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:27:39] Vince Menzione: Like the days when we, we got pos and we, we sent a, an Excel spreadsheet to Microsoft to tell ’em about the deals that were co-sell.
[00:27:47] Vince Menzione: Ready? Those days are gone. So you’re saying we’ve gotta be in the marketplace now and then, what would you say maybe the one thing that’s, let’s limit it to one for all of our amazing viewers, listeners, and ultimate partner guests, when when you, when I see you in Bellevue again, ’cause you’re gonna be in Bellevue, May 11th to the 13th again.
[00:28:08] Vince Menzione: Absolutely. With us helping lead the marketplace conversation. What do they need to be doing now? Right now? Besides getting the marketplace?
[00:28:18] Dexter Hardy: Besides getting the marketplace, I, I would, I would do a hard look at operations.
[00:28:24] Vince Menzione: Operations.
[00:28:25] Dexter Hardy: Like a lot of companies, they’re growing and they, what is it? How are we looking internally in our organizations to figure out again, can we do it?
[00:28:34] Dexter Hardy: Should we do it? Companies need to focus on their superpower, even, even the big ones, right? Um, being. Not having the focus, not look, looking at or listening to your why as an organization can, can put you in a, in a really weird space. And so, uh, with everyone being able to grow and do what we’re doing, I would say lean into your why,
[00:29:01] Vince Menzione: like into your why.
[00:29:02] Dexter Hardy: Lean into your why.
[00:29:03] Vince Menzione: I think too, I think what you, what you’re saying here, and I’m, my, my reaction to it too is that, uh, we’re, we’re so caught up in the moment right now. And things are changing, so it feels like they’re changing so fast, like coming back to philanthropic and
[00:29:20] Dexter Hardy: yeah.
[00:29:20] Vince Menzione: What’s evolved just in the last month or so that people are taking their eye off the why or the wall, so to speak and reacting?
[00:29:29] Vince Menzione: Is that, is that your point?
[00:29:31] Dexter Hardy: Yeah, that’s my point and, and I’ll give you an example. So AI is different from the following technology, but. And I both were around for the blockchain, blockchain, blockchain conversation.
[00:29:45] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:29:45] Dexter Hardy: And if you weren’t doing blockchain, you weren’t part of the conversation. I invite you to consider how many conversations have you heard about blockchain do?
[00:29:56] Dexter Hardy: Again, AI is a little bit different because it’s, it’s an enabler. It’s, it’s, it’s, it, it does a lot more than that. But I, I will say. AI is gonna become table stakes. And that’s why I say you have to, you have to embrace it as an organization. Yeah. And if you’re not, you’re gonna get left behind.
[00:30:13] Vince Menzione: Okay. It’s a drop.
[00:30:14] Vince Menzione: Drop the mic moment there. So drop the mic. I’m gonna ask you one more question, personal question. Yeah. I’d love to ask this of every single one of my guests.
[00:30:22] Dexter Hardy: Yep.
[00:30:23] Vince Menzione: I probably have asked this to you before, but I’m gonna ask it to you again.
[00:30:26] Dexter Hardy: Yes.
[00:30:28] Vince Menzione: You are hosting a dinner party. You can have this dinner party anywhere in the world.
[00:30:32] Vince Menzione: We could talk about locations as well, and you can invite any three guests from the present or the past to this amazing dinner party.
[00:30:41] Dexter Hardy: Mm-hmm.
[00:30:42] Vince Menzione: Whom would you invite today and why?
[00:30:48] Dexter Hardy: Wow. So the last time I answered that question, for those who didn’t hear the first podcast, it was Barack Obama.
[00:30:56] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Nelson
[00:30:57] Dexter Hardy: Mandela.
[00:30:58] Dexter Hardy: And my great-grandparents.
[00:30:59] Vince Menzione: Your great-grandparents. I remember your great-grandparents
[00:31:02] Dexter Hardy: In this conversation, it’s gonna be more than three people. I’m sorry.
[00:31:07] Vince Menzione: All right. But
[00:31:07] Dexter Hardy: it make
[00:31:08] Vince Menzione: some exceptions here. We’ll make them.
[00:31:10] Dexter Hardy: It would be my great-grandparents. Still
[00:31:13] Vince Menzione: nice.
[00:31:14] Dexter Hardy: My parents and my children.
[00:31:18] Vince Menzione: Very cool.
[00:31:19] Dexter Hardy: Because I want to look back and let them see the same reason that I had them there before.
[00:31:25] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:31:26] Dexter Hardy: Look at what you started.
[00:31:27] Vince Menzione: Nice. I love that.
[00:31:29] Dexter Hardy: Look at the continuation of your legacy in my parents.
[00:31:32] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:31:32] Dexter Hardy: Look at what I have been able to build because of the investments and the things that you’ve poured into the love, the energy, the effort, the sacrifice, and then the sacrifices that I’m making to pass into that legacy.
[00:31:46] Dexter Hardy: The next legacy. So this would be a. This is why I would say leaning to your why, like understand the importance of family.
[00:31:54] Vince Menzione: Tell us about your great, your great grandparents. You told me about this on the last podcast for those who didn’t, didn’t listen in.
[00:32:01] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:32:02] Vince Menzione: And don’t have the inclination to go back.
[00:32:05] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:32:05] Vince Menzione: But I think it’s a great story.
[00:32:06] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. So, you know, growing up in the south
[00:32:10] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:32:10] Dexter Hardy: Alabama specifically, uh, my great grandparents were part of, you know, slavery era.
[00:32:16] Vince Menzione: Yep.
[00:32:16] Dexter Hardy: Jim Crow. Jim Crow. Crow. Yeah. The whole.
[00:32:21] Dexter Hardy: The history of the United States and what, how it was built, you know,
[00:32:26] Vince Menzione: an important part of the history of the United States, by the way, that we all should never forget.
[00:32:29] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. So again, some of those, some of the ceilings that are out there now, there wasn’t even an option for.
[00:32:36] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:32:36] Dexter Hardy: And so that’s why I really wanted them to, I would really want them to be here to see something that they probably could never even conceive as an option of, of it being.
[00:32:47] Dexter Hardy: Uh, to be able to see where things are and then to, you know, why my kids, if this is where we are right now, I want you to dream big. The same amount of energy it takes to think small is the same amount
[00:33:04] Vince Menzione: of energy it takes to think big. Dream big. Dream big. Dream.
[00:33:09] Dexter Hardy: Dream big.
[00:33:10] Vince Menzione: I think we’re gonna leave on that message.
[00:33:12] Dexter Hardy: Yeah,
[00:33:12] Vince Menzione: that’s a great message.
[00:33:13] Dexter Hardy: Awesome.
[00:33:14] Vince Menzione: So great to see you, my friend. It’s
[00:33:16] Dexter Hardy: always a pleasure
[00:33:16] Vince Menzione: to be with you, so always a real pleasure for me as well.
[00:33:19] Dexter Hardy: Yeah,
[00:33:19] Vince Menzione: and I want to thank you for watching and listening and being part of Ultimate Partner and the Ultimate Partner YouTube channel and our great guest and friend, Dexter Hardy.
[00:33:30] Vince Menzione: Great to see you again.
[00:33:31] Dexter Hardy: Always a pleasure us. Thank you,
[00:33:33] Vince Menzione: sir.
[00:33:33] Dexter Hardy: All right. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks.
[00:33:35] Vince Menzione: Don’t forget, ultimate Partner Live is coming soon, May 11th through the 13th in beautiful Bellevue, Washington. I hope to see you there.
At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins.
Key Tags
ServiceNow, Marc Monday, Ashleigh Vogstad, Ultimate Partner, AI Fatigue, Agentic AI, Control Tower, Trust Economy, Knowledge Graph, Workflow Engine, Gen Z B2B, Marketplace, Hyperscalers, Machine-to-Machine, Data Governance, POC Fatigue, Substack, LinkedIn, Digital Transformation, Co-Selling, Partner Programs, ERP Intelligence, Uncanny Valley, Marketing Lag, Shared Business Planning.
Transcript
Ashleigh and Marc Monday Audio Episode
[00:00:00] Ashleigh Vogstad: But the reality is, if you’re not using AI in a very meaningful way in your sales and marketing functions of your businesses, I mean you’re just way behind.
[00:00:13] Vince Menzione: We just finished Ultimate Partners Winter Retreat here in beautiful Boca to a sold out crowd. Come join me now for a compelling discussion on the impacts of the tectonic shifts we’re all seeing. Maybe just a second about roles and responsibilities. Most of you know Ash from previous, uh, things you’ve been doing with us.
[00:00:34] Vince Menzione: But, but maybe for you, Martin, this is your first time.
[00:00:36] Marc Monday: Where should I
[00:00:37] Vince Menzione: look there? Alternate partner. Their lives
[00:00:38] Marc Monday: there?
[00:00:39] Vince Menzione: Uh, yeah, over here is good. Either one.
[00:00:41] Marc Monday: Look over there. Which would you prefer?
[00:00:43] Vince Menzione: Um, this is good.
[00:00:44] Marc Monday: Great. It’s,
[00:00:45] Vince Menzione: and, but right now I’m just asking you for everybody, tell everybody who you are in your role.
[00:00:49] Vince Menzione: ’cause you just shifted roles at ServiceNow. It’s
[00:00:51] Marc Monday: true. It’s true. Hello everyone. My name is Mark one day and I lead the America’s partner business, uh, partner sales business at ServiceNow today. And effective Monday I’ll lead the global partner team. Uh, Jen Odes, who’s been on the podcast. Yes. She’s been and I are switching roles.
[00:01:07] Marc Monday: Jen’s gonna go run the patch and I’m gonna run the programs, uh, effective next week.
[00:01:11] Vince Menzione: That’s fantastic.
[00:01:12] Marc Monday: And I live in Seattle.
[00:01:15] Vince Menzione: You live in Seattle. Yeah. And you made the trip out here. I really appreciate that. It’s a long journey. And Vancouver or Whistler? So both of you came from the, from the West coast.
[00:01:23] Marc Monday: This may be the first snowboarding panel in history of ultimate partner.
[00:01:29] Ashleigh Vogstad: I liked the question earlier. Somebody asked, did anyone leave the snow to be here? It was literally a blizzard. I did not know if I would make it driving at 4:00 AM to the airport in a total whiteout.
[00:01:41] Marc Monday: You’re getting zero sympathy from me Live in Whistler.
[00:01:44] Vince Menzione: So, so Service now has been, uh, I would say on the forefront of this AI thing. I mean, like you were early in and control towers, that I always get the, the nomenclature wrong, but I do feel like we are seeing some, a level of fatigue right now. And I keep seeing, I mean, it feels like every, we’re getting whiplashed at least the last few weeks.
[00:02:03] Vince Menzione: Are you seeing that? And what are the two or three biggest blockers you’re seeing now in the market?
[00:02:10] Marc Monday: I think there’s, there’s a lot of excitement obviously in the marketplace, but there is a bit of AI fatigue. There’s a POC fatigue, I think that’s going on. I think the reality is we have to make AI real, and the reality is it starts with good data, uh, a, a central, uh, a database, and really making sure that that’s extensible through a knowledge graph.
[00:02:31] Marc Monday: And then that provides us the ability to identify that workflow. Then importantly, um, making it real and, and as fast as possible. And I think that’s really important for the customer. One of the value props of ServiceNow, of course, is that we’ll meet the customer where they are with whatever their estate has,
[00:02:47] Vince Menzione: right?
[00:02:47] Marc Monday: So any hyperscaler, any workload, any core dataset, um, any LLM and, um, our history is as a workflow engine, and so we can bring that level of knowledge to their business. And then importantly, we bring together the governance and orchestration from a control tower perspective.
[00:03:08] Vince Menzione: Nice. Ash had perspective on this, on the kind of the whiplash we’ve been feeling.
[00:03:13] Vince Menzione: From From the marketing agency side?
[00:03:15] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah. I mean, what comes to mind is the Miriam Webster dictionary said that LOP is the 2025 Word of the Year lop and Satchin Nadella actually came out with some press immediately following on that, saying that essentially that LOP is an exactly a useful construct to be having a conversation around the future of media.
[00:03:37] Ashleigh Vogstad: But I think what this is pointing to is just we’re all navigating. Exactly how much AI is good ai, and maybe we will get into a little bit later, but what is the difference between selling to a human being and selling to a machine? Um, and really when we’re getting into this age agent landscape, it’s much more about that machine to machine conversation.
[00:04:01] Ashleigh Vogstad: It’s not necessarily. Human eyeballs on recommendation links that is paid for by advertising. It’s more of a trust economy actually, where machines wanna be able to make decisions on our behalf with high trust so that you continue to enable that machine to make those decisions for you.
[00:04:22] Vince Menzione: We talked about the data.
[00:04:23] Vince Menzione: I thought we’d double click a little bit on that. In fact, that point it would normally have been here, but because of the snow wasn’t able to, they focus in on this governance and this data element. I was thinking maybe we could talk a little bit about that, because it doesn’t seem like AI will work properly if we don’t have the data to stay governed and clean, right?
[00:04:42] Marc Monday: I think this is the amazing opportunity for the partners out there. They do this already. This is one of those assessments that’s so quick and not easy, but clear to deliver a value prop as a partner. Let’s get you ready for ai. Let’s make sure that we’re ensuring that your data’s in a extensible in a way across, uh, some sort of knowledge graph that can be accessed across a number of different, um, use cases.
[00:05:09] Marc Monday: And oftentimes that’s multiple data sets. And so how do you get those columns and rows organized in a way that’s extensible for an agent, that we’re basically asking to do something that is an unique opportunity for partners right now. And I, I think that we maybe missed that step. So I see what I see happening right now is we’ve gotta come back to that as a starting point for the partners.
[00:05:31] Vince Menzione: Let’s talk about agent ai or you also have orchestration AI as well. I wanna talk about their, your new service platform specifically, but maybe if you could double click with this on that.
[00:05:42] Marc Monday: Well, I think that, you know, everyone is kind of trying to figure out how do we get there and who’s gonna orchestrate and govern what AI agent is calling on, what data set at what time, and what sequence.
[00:05:54] Marc Monday: You may have a mission critical application that needs to have immediate access, and you may have other agents that have casual access. How do you control that in a meaningful way is gonna be become increasingly important. So we have the idea of this product that we call control tower. The control tower gives you the ability to manage that orchestration as well as the governance.
[00:06:14] Vince Menzione: Any perspective on this?
[00:06:17] Ashleigh Vogstad: I think I’ll share the perspective. As an entrepreneur, I know many people here represent. Companies that are our clients and are, are massive in scale and, and hyperscalers. But I think there are some people in the room who are running their own organizations. I think when I came out, Vince asked, you know, Ash growth mindset, how are you actually living this?
[00:06:36] Ashleigh Vogstad: And we’re going through a journey in my business right now around what are all of the data sources that we have and how can we get that into an enterprise resource planning type system so that we can then overlay more intelligence. And that’s kind of where we’re at in the, it’s funny ’cause when you look at those maturity curves, they try and fit you in a box.
[00:06:57] Ashleigh Vogstad: Nobody here likes being in a box. Um, and we’re in a corner. Yeah. In some ways it’s like we’re in that agentic box. I built an agent last week, funny enough for Microsoft actually, um, an executive comms agent, but in one hand we’re on that end and on the other, our data’s a mess and we really can’t apply a lot of intelligence to the majority of the data sources within our organization.
[00:07:20] Ashleigh Vogstad: So we’re getting that all together right now.
[00:07:22] Vince Menzione: When you came out, we talked a little bit, you were, you were mentioning having an advertising agency, marketing agency. The changes that are going on right now. Right? The attention economy and the trust economy. And I thought maybe you could double click with us on that.
[00:07:35] Vince Menzione: ’cause that’s, uh, very interesting to see this shift.
[00:07:39] Ashleigh Vogstad: It’s a huge shift. So, uh, 1964 Canadian philosopher, Marshall McCluen, he comes out and he says The medium is the message.
[00:07:49] Audience Question: Yeah.
[00:07:49] Ashleigh Vogstad: And so you wanna think about how is agenta a different medium and what are the biases that this medium inherently has? So in my media world, you know, you get these storytelling tools rolling out at Speed Chat, GBT, soa, and in the beginning they’re really at that low end of the curve.
[00:08:08] Ashleigh Vogstad: You know, they can produce a shitty first draft, uh, but the content that they’re creating is really low emotional resonance. If you take kind of a neuroscientist perspective on this, and I’m definitely not a neuroscientist, but the part of your brain that’s responsible for that pattern recognition, your cortical sal circuit, that’s what’s kicking in.
[00:08:29] Ashleigh Vogstad: And when you’re looking at, say, an advertisement, you’re starting to think, you know, is what I’m looking at actually commensurate with what I expect to see? And when it’s not, you can trigger that what psychologists call your uncanny valley. Now some will argue that on County Valley is really diminishing these days because AI generated media is getting better and better.
[00:08:52] Ashleigh Vogstad: And I do think that it’s something you want to lean in, but you also wanna think intelligently around how you’re using this new medium and exactly what its, what its biases are.
[00:09:03] Vince Menzione: Is that the gut syndrome? Like when you feel something in your gut? Is that what you described?
[00:09:07] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the classic example is Coca-Cola.
[00:09:10] Ashleigh Vogstad: So 2024 Coca-Cola rolled out their very nostalgic for many of us holiday campaign, and they decided to use tools like Luma Dream Machine to make this whole Santa Claus North Pole, but AI generated universe. And it had that classic stuff around, you know, six fingered people and it gave you this. Kind of creepy post-apocalyptic vibe and the campaign completely tanked in market.
[00:09:37] Ashleigh Vogstad: Or more recently, last year, mango rolled out a new fashion line Mango’s a huge global fashion retailer. They rolled out a new fashion line, and in their advertisements they had AI generated models and AI generated clothing. Like to sell a real line. So, you know, you, you have to really be thinking about, again, when we come to an attention economy based on human beings or a machine economy based on trust, many of these companies are still selling to us human beings.
[00:10:09] Ashleigh Vogstad: And I, I think they can forget that at times.
[00:10:12] Vince Menzione: So what’s your guidance to customers today and to this audience and viewers watching us today from a go-to market motion? In this world of ai, like what? What are you telling? What? How are you counseling these organizations?
[00:10:25] Ashleigh Vogstad: You need to have an authentic voice.
[00:10:27] Ashleigh Vogstad: We, we’ve heard this a million times, so I’ll try and put a bit of a, a different spin on it at platforms direct to fan platforms, things like Substack. Substack grew 48% last month. I mean, we are seeing this skyrocket, and that’s a new channel where you can have an authentic voice. Many people in this room, myself included, we live on LinkedIn as the business to business platform.
[00:10:50] Ashleigh Vogstad: Consider expanding out into, into a new channel, um, would be one of my recommendations. Interesting.
[00:10:57] Vince Menzione: Any, anything else from, uh, what you developed or what you use and ai and what do you, what, what tools do you recommend they use and what.
[00:11:06] Ashleigh Vogstad: There.
[00:11:06] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:11:06] Ashleigh Vogstad: What are we seeing with our, so I can give this example of this executive comms agent that we built.
[00:11:12] Ashleigh Vogstad: Or even part, yeah, we’re building agents all the time, so what we try to do is think about what is our customer seeking to solve. We heard a lot today about outcomes, and then we challenge an AI first lens, which is how can we build something with AI to make this easier, better, faster, more creative? We’ll even do things, we’re a marketing agency, so we’ll even do things like beat the bot, pitch competitions.
[00:11:37] Ashleigh Vogstad: So this is where you’re inviting your agent into the room and you’re asking it to put the pitch together, say for ServiceNow and Microsoft, and what can it come up with? And then we put it in a room of human beings and see who can out pitch. Bot, um, and come up with a more novel, creative idea. But the reality is, if you’re not using AI in a very meaningful way in your sales and marketing functions of your businesses, I mean, you’re just way behind.
[00:12:07] Ashleigh Vogstad: And I see it a bit more advanced in all honesty and sales because I think some of your large. Organizations push the AI down to the sellers. Mm-hmm. Um, so they’re somewhat forced to use it, but in marketing, I’m still seeing a real lack, which is funny since generative AI came out in 2022 and everybody thought the marketing function was the one to really be disrupted and displaced.
[00:12:30] Ashleigh Vogstad: I do think your marketing teams need to be leaning in more.
[00:12:35] Vince Menzione: We were talking about trust earlier. I wanna weave this into the conversation. Right. How do, how do you. How do you think through trust and applying trust in the area I world, I’ll ask you both this question under service. Now think about it. How do you think about it or transcend?
[00:12:54] Marc Monday: Maybe I’ll take a step back. I, I think just to kind of go back to the previous question, I think we’re in this age of massive complexity. Incredible complexity. Nina said it earlier, the customers kind of want us to tell them what to do. What are the steps? We’re at this dichotomy of this level of complexity that’s almost unimaginable and we have to make it simple.
[00:13:18] Marc Monday: I think that’s the first one. And then that, that is put up against this notion of we have to go incredibly fast ’cause the market’s moving faster than we can even understand it.
[00:13:28] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:13:29] Marc Monday: And then we have to add on this veneer, and this is where the partner community becomes so important of how do we scale?
[00:13:35] Marc Monday: So how do you take simplicity, speed, and scale and bring it to market? It starts with the data, of course it starts with the workflow, but I might just take a giant step back and say one of the things that another partner opportunity you might run to really consider is automating a bad process, even with AI is still a bad process.
[00:13:58] Marc Monday: So again, a partner opportunity is, let’s zoom back out and say if your approval. Takes 13 steps in 27 days, building an AI process around that. Without rethinking it might not be the right solution. So I think part of it is also like rather than just dictating all of the steps, part of it, to the point of telling the customer the steps is getting them to participate in that conversation.
[00:14:29] Marc Monday: Why do you have 27 approval layers? Well. It’s the most dangerous thing in the language. It’s because we’ve always done it that way. Well, what if we did it differently? Yeah. And so I think that’s an area where the trust is a two-way street and you can’t just the part, the customer shouldn’t just outsource all of their decision making to you.
[00:14:50] Marc Monday: At the same time, you have to bring them into that discussion of what are you trying to accomplish and what is your, um, risk appetite relative to that.
[00:15:02] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah, that, that’s great, mark. I mean, trust is a really important conversation. I think about the Amazon versus Perplexity lawsuit right now that some are headlining the end of commerce.
[00:15:14] Ashleigh Vogstad: Um, and so really this precedent setting case, what this is about is perplexity. Essentially is disintermediating the Amazon platform. So you know it’s making purchase decisions on your behalf, so, so this idea of trust in the agent world is something I think about a lot. And how do you optimize trust for this agentic world?
[00:15:36] Ashleigh Vogstad: The professor I was mentioning, Eric Zow, who has this attention economy and the trust economy for agents where my research is leaning in is really around what is the hyperscaler layer on top of that. My working theory is that hyperscaler partnerships are just gonna become more important because the machines need to verify via trusted third party data sources what it is that you’re up to.
[00:16:02] Ashleigh Vogstad: So how many deals have you done? Uh, what is your win rate percentage? This kind of information is incredibly valuable to the agent world, and so I think we’re gonna see an. Increasing lean in to these third party validation co-selling systems like partner center.
[00:16:22] Marc Monday: I mean, just to add onto yeah. This idea, I mean, we do talk a lot about trust, but attention is probably underserved if I think about the role of a partner manager or an alliance director, it’s all about the trade-offs of what am I gonna spend my time on today?
[00:16:37] Marc Monday: And you’re being pulled in a million directions, and I dunno about you, but it’s probably 900 to 10,000 unread emails and maybe you’ll respond to your immediate messages and if something happens, you’ll respond in in text. Part of it is also delineating between the busyness and the impact, and I think a lot of that’s also part of this discussion of how do we get focused on the outputs that matter.
[00:17:02] Marc Monday: Really helping the customer get there through that discussion, which again goes back to it has to be a dialogue with the customer rather than just, this is the solution. Here’s our SOW. We’ll see you in six months.
[00:17:14] Vince Menzione: Agree. We have a couple extra minutes. I was thinking of maybe opening it up for you. Any questions?
[00:17:19] Vince Menzione: We have a mic in the back and I’m sure people have questions about this topic is, is fascinating to me and I wanna make sure that we’ve covered any of the questions we have. We have one right in the front from Shannon.
[00:17:30] Marc Monday: Send the hard
[00:17:31] Vince Menzione: questions over there. Not Yes. I’ll take the Easy books. Yeah.
[00:17:36] Audience Question: You referenced marketing lag.
[00:17:38] Audience Question: I think all of us would love to see marketing leading.
[00:17:41] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yes.
[00:17:42] Audience Question: Um, so how are you infusing within your marketing team at different levels around content creation? Um, there’s so much, uh, ego right on being a graphic designer or an editor, a copy editor that they. The human inflation in that conversation is a, is a hard thing to get them over.
[00:18:02] Audience Question: And now AI can help this. How are you?
[00:18:04] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah, let’s have a conversation after. But you just brought up a funny No, I’m gonna answer as well, but you brought up, brought up a funny, uh, conversation we had internally, just in the last 24 hours we’re interviewing for a new creative director and one of our candidates said, yes, but I don’t do Figma.
[00:18:20] Ashleigh Vogstad: I’m not a UX person. I just laughed and I said, you know, the day is coming where It’s a designer, it’s a UX person, it’s a project manager, a program manager, a copywriter. You know, AI is condensing a lot of roles in that way. So I think being multidisciplinary in your skillset is, um. Is quite valuable, but I’ll also take this into a hyperscaler direction and say, no.
[00:18:46] Ashleigh Vogstad: Here audiences, 75% of it buyers are going to be Gen Z by 2030. They have 12 trillion in spending power. I was in Silicon Valley yesterday, uh, helping a customer with a wind story. They did a $12 million transaction through Marketplace. Now that’s very impressive, but it would’ve been more impressive two years ago.
[00:19:06] Ashleigh Vogstad: There are more and more, 10 million plus. Deals happening through marketplace. And so if you look at that Gen Z and start to understand them and their buying behavior, like another example is, I think it’s 80%, no, no half, sorry, half of Gen Z last month made a purchase via Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube. They are used to making these online transactions and average purchase price is going up.
[00:19:35] Ashleigh Vogstad: You know, $500,000 plus is starting to be the average in some of these enterprise selling platforms. So as a marketing team, how are we kind of going in and leading the marketplace? Conversation I think is really critical and there’s technical elements to that.
[00:19:52] Marc Monday: Maybe the caveman view of that would be, um, the other side, which is I think someone earlier said, we have to know where our customer is at.
[00:20:00] Marc Monday: And a lot of our, we are very lucky. We live in this very insular tech bubble and we’re thinking about, you know, where we are 10 years from now and the customer’s gonna are gonna get there eventually, and it’s gonna happen faster. But I would say in marketing, I mean the two easiest use cases right now are around localization.
[00:20:16] Marc Monday: Language localization and then specific market localization, like we don’t have to solve world hunger right now. There are some steps and those steps are some of the easy things. Localization probably is a big component of your marketing budget. That’s something that you can get really good, really fast language localization, addition market localization.
[00:20:35] Marc Monday: This market is a healthcare market. This market is an SMB market. Those are two areas where that through partner marketing motion can to get accelerated very quickly and has a tremendous ROI.
[00:20:47] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Great one. Nina, you had a question
[00:20:50] Audience Question: three Mark. You, you just, you just hit on part of it is that value proposition message is, it’s really easy in AI to, to fine tune that.
[00:20:59] Audience Question: The other thing that I’ll be very transparent about, um, at least in my organization and America’s partner, we only work with um, third party. Marketing vendors now that are AI first period.
[00:21:12] Audience Question: Nice. We
[00:21:12] Audience Question: completely cleaned out who the vendors are that we will approve to work with. Wow. Um, so because we can also see the cost reduction, but it is a mindset change.
[00:21:22] Audience Question: They have to, they, if, if they’re gonna be positioning this, it has to be inherent. It has to be part of their culture of, at.
[00:21:29] Marc Monday: Ashley made a really wonderful point. I mean, this bad first draft is so key and so, you know, in the past we would’ve spent. A couple days or maybe even a week on a really bad first draft.
[00:21:40] Marc Monday: And the bad first draft is just to generate feedback. You can generate a bad, a good, bad first draft in a couple of minutes with the right prompts.
[00:21:48] Vince Menzione: Yeah, good. Point. Point questions to the back, Steven.
[00:21:55] Audience Question: Mark, as you guys are building out agents, the orchestration to manage them, is that taking you into workflows outside of ServiceNow?
[00:22:05] Audience Question: Yes.
[00:22:07] Vince Menzione: Repeat the question, sorry. Yeah. Just in case people aren’t getting
[00:22:09] Marc Monday: Yes. The question is, um, for ServiceNow specifically, um, is that taking you out of your traditional business? And I think he, he means it’s probably business in it, and the answer is yes. So our value promise is that we can go north, south, east, west, across the estate.
[00:22:24] Marc Monday: Regardless of the workflow. So there are scenarios where we are expanding. Of course, we have a commitment to driving the CRM business, moving beyond just customer service management, but all the way through the process to CPQ and we’ll productize many of those things. But the reality is, if the workflow touches, let’s say.
[00:22:42] Marc Monday: Uh, a, a big database, you know, from one of your known providers, uh, an HCM system, your our traditional IT system. This is maybe around service delivery of a particular set of kit to a new employee for onboarding or offboarding across a number of those systems of record. Yes, we’ll continue to do that, and honestly, it’s the value promise for us that because we are capable of working with.
[00:23:06] Marc Monday: Every hyperscaler, every application, every data set, we can go up and down and across the state.
[00:23:12] Audience Question: Hi everyone. I’m Jen Pauls. Hey, Jen. I have a um, I have a question for you. So when you’re incorporating AI, and also you mentioned trust, how do you make sure that the offerings that you’re coating on are feasible specifically for that whole individual partner and client?
[00:23:34] Audience Question: And you’re not repeating. Something. Does that make sense to you? Yeah. Like how do you make sure that there is an individualized component that is original in thought, even though you’re feeding this pipeline, all these combined thoughts?
[00:23:51] Marc Monday: I, I don’t wanna push back on the premise, but I do think in some instances, partners, implementers will have competing solutions that do effectively the same thing.
[00:23:59] Marc Monday: Ideally they’re differentiated, but I do think publishing a, a standard. Particularly from a security and a reliability perspective, what that traditionally we would’ve called that API standard, and then a level of validation, either via human validation or systemic AI validation is really key. Um, the solution that gets marketed, let’s say, in our marketplace should work and it should be secure and it should be reliable.
[00:24:25] Marc Monday: So we processes to manage that, if that’s the question.
[00:24:29] Audience Question: Right? Well, it would, you know, yes. Yes. But. Um, when you’re trying to create a dispute or an offering, right, that’s specific to that particular partner, this is where I’m going. How do you make sure that the thoughts that are coming in are specifically, I guess, individualized for that one partner and what they’re doing and how they’re going to make a new, um, new, uh, track or a new journey in what you’re selling?
[00:24:57] Ashleigh Vogstad: I mean, I would answer that I think with differentiation is still really important. And if anything, if we had an 80 20 rule for 80% of the lift is coming from ai, we’re all still here and employed because there is a rule for the, the human, at least currently in that 20%. And I would say. Running teams who are often building new offers and products, both on the ISV and SI side of things.
[00:25:25] Ashleigh Vogstad: Getting that unique differentiation is critically important. Like that’s where a lot of value is created. Or you could look at, I mean Nabil probably has stories about this all day in the MSP world is it’s really challenging for MSPs to differentiate on top of their core offering, but that is where value creation happens.
[00:25:44] Audience Question: just piggyback on that. My recommendation to a lot of, of our partners today is build out agents at that 80% watermark. Right? And that’s a little bit what you were talking about, the 80, 20, 80% of that functionality. Quite honestly, if you’re looking at an call center or something, is something that can be ported.
[00:26:05] Audience Question: The, the magic is working with the partner on what X 20 is that differentiates their business, their experience, how, uh, the applicability to. So I, I will, I, to your point about ology, the premise, I mean it, to me, I think repeatability is, is awesome. It’s a superpower. It’s gonna get us there faster. It’s in that 20%.
[00:26:36] Marc Monday: Maybe I’ll close with with one really simple use case just for all of us that are in the partner profession and we work in alliances or partner management. The easiest and best, most effective use case for us as power users today is a shared business plan. Here are the goals and objectives of us as a vendor or a platform provider.
[00:26:57] Marc Monday: Here are the goals and objectives of us as the implementer or a resell partner. Um, and in the past I used to describe this as a really complicated bow tie. On one side, you’d have our goals, and on the other side you’d have the, the, the implementer’s goals. And you’d spend all this time weaving together a knot and try to tie it together.
[00:27:16] Marc Monday: That activity can happen in about five seconds with the right prompt. And you can very quickly say, oh, you guys think about a CV. We think about a RR Oh, your fiscal year is, is offset. Your fiscal year isn’t, oh, you call this product something different. Um, we care about platform revenue. We care about services revenue.
[00:27:35] Marc Monday: You can reconcile that into a pretty darn good shared scorecard and business plan in a matter of seconds. Yeah, and that is a huge time saver. I
[00:27:45] Vince Menzione: love that.
[00:27:47] Ashleigh Vogstad: It’s just an ama uh, it just thumbs up for me because that joint business planning just doesn’t happen enough. I, I’m in some of the biggest alliances on, on the planet really, and it’s shocking to me how little joint business planning is done.
[00:28:00] Ashleigh Vogstad: And for the marketing question, Shannon, like how can marketers lean in? I mean, market development funds are made available based on things like joint business plugs.
[00:28:09] Vince Menzione: That’s right. Yeah, really great point. Great voice. Thank you so much. So good to have you finally have you here. Thank you, mark and Ash.
[00:28:17] Vince Menzione: Thank you so much
[00:28:18] Audience Question: Owens.
[00:28:19] Vince Menzione: Don’t forget, ultimate Partner Live is coming soon, May 11th through the 13th in beautiful Bellevue, Washington. I hope to see you there.
At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins.
Key Tags
Rebecca Jones, Bridge Partners, Chief Growth Officer, co-selling, Power of Three, Hyperscaler, GSI, ISV, SAP, Microsoft, agentic AI, AI experimentation, pipeline velocity, pre-sales workshops, account-based marketing, ABM on steroids, GTM strategy, executive sponsorship, partnership ecosystems, B2B growth, tech industry trends 2026, Ultimate Partner, Vince Menzione, orchestration, value proposition.
Transcript
Rebecca Jones Audio Episode
[00:00:00] Rebecca Jones: Because most of the agents I’ve seen drop into um, a lot of the areas where you and I can download are features.
[00:00:07] Vince Menzione: Yes,
[00:00:08] Rebecca Jones: they’re really feature agents. I love where we are ’cause we’re starting to tackle real business problems.
[00:00:17] Vince Menzione: We just finished Ultimate Partners Winter Retreat here in beautiful Boca to a sold out crowd. Today I’m joined by Rebecca Jones, the Chief Growth Officer of Bridge Partners for this compelling discussion. Rebecca, welcome to the podcast.
[00:00:33] Rebecca Jones: Thank you, Vince.
[00:00:34] Vince Menzione: I am so thrilled to have you in Boca in the studio.
[00:00:37] Vince Menzione: We’ve been working together now for a couple of years. We
[00:00:39] Rebecca Jones: have,
[00:00:40] Vince Menzione: and yesterday we were at the Ultimate Partner live executive winter retreat here in Boca. Uh, we’re recording in late February, early March timeframe. And, uh, just it was so thrilling to have everyone in the room yesterday.
[00:00:55] Rebecca Jones: Was it? I mean, the energy.
[00:00:56] Rebecca Jones: It was amazing.
[00:00:57] Vince Menzione: Yeah,
[00:00:58] Rebecca Jones: it was amazing. And thank you so much for having me. I mean, Florida’s gorgeous this time of year. It’s nice to get outta Seattle.
[00:01:04] Vince Menzione: Well, it’s, it’s always, I, I, we, we love Seattle. Yes, we love, we do love to be in Seattle and especially in the spring, which we’ll be there together. We’ll talk about that in a little bit, but, um.
[00:01:14] Vince Menzione: This is our first time actually having an interview. I mean, we’ve had you on stage. Yes. We’ve had Bridge as a part. Bridge Partners has been a partner. It’s ultimate partner. How’s that? And, uh, you’ve led some workshops. You help organizations to be successful and I thought just like to start out like, tell us more about you.
[00:01:32] Vince Menzione: Yeah, bridge Partner and your role at Bridge Partners. And, uh, just to frame, to frame the conversation today.
[00:01:40] Rebecca Jones: Okay. Of course. So let me tell you a little bit about my background. Um, I’ve been in the technology industry for a few decades now, and I started within the product and go to market, side of the house.
[00:01:54] Nice.
[00:01:54] Rebecca Jones: And I’ve navigated across a number of functional areas. From product to partner and sales.
[00:02:02] Vince Menzione: So product development,
[00:02:07] Rebecca Jones: Yes. And so when you look back on the areas of where I focus my time, it’s really how do you help customers grow and how do you help companies grow?
[00:02:17] Rebecca Jones: Um, and a lot of my background is in B2B.
[00:02:20] Vince Menzione: Very cool.
[00:02:21] Rebecca Jones: Yeah.
[00:02:21] Vince Menzione: And where’d you get your start?
[00:02:23] Rebecca Jones: I started actually in the financial sector.
[00:02:26] Vince Menzione: Very cool.
[00:02:27] Rebecca Jones: Yeah,
[00:02:27] Vince Menzione: very cool. That’s, well, that’s a good grounding and
[00:02:30] Rebecca Jones: it’s an excellent grounding. And when you look back, and when I look back at what that provided as a foundation, it’s really the economics of a business and how do you help a business and what are the trend lines behind that by industry and and whatnot.
[00:02:45] Rebecca Jones: And so I moved from that over to. More agency view, and so the real market facing view and then back inside to really look at how companies develop their products and bring ’em to market.
[00:02:56] Vince Menzione: That’s an exciting, well, I think it’s exciting. I hope our listeners and viewers think it’s exciting and I know Bridge Partners because when I was at Microsoft, we worked with Bridge Partners.
[00:03:06] Vince Menzione: But for the listeners and viewers that are with us today, maybe a little bit of background about the company and its, and its structure and go to market.
[00:03:13] Rebecca Jones: Yeah, of course. So Bridge Partners is almost 20 years old.
[00:03:18] Vince Menzione: Wow.
[00:03:19] Rebecca Jones: Wow.
[00:03:19] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:03:19] Rebecca Jones: Can you believe it?
[00:03:20] Vince Menzione: We were newbies when I was working with you.
[00:03:22] Rebecca Jones: We, we were newbies and uh, the company was really founded on the principle of how do you connect strategy to execution.
[00:03:32] Rebecca Jones: And within that, our first customer was Microsoft.
[00:03:36] Vince Menzione: Interesting.
[00:03:37] Rebecca Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, and that was an incredible spot to be and an incredible time to be in a company that started to evolve and grow with one of the titans in the industry. And obviously a incredible market leader in the tech industry.
[00:03:56] Vince Menzione: Well, and that time 20 years ago, ’cause I was, I was along for that journey.
[00:03:59] Rebecca Jones: Yeah.
[00:04:00] Vince Menzione: Uh, it was a time of tumultuous change at Microsoft.
[00:04:03] Rebecca Jones: Yes.
[00:04:04] Vince Menzione: Uh, in fact, we were talking about the, uh, entrepreneur’s dilemma earlier, uh, today, and Microsoft was going through that period where, you know, we, everyone loves Steve Bomber, but there was a time within the organization that it was stuck.
[00:04:18] Rebecca Jones: Mm-hmm.
[00:04:19] Vince Menzione: And it had to transform as an organization.
[00:04:22] Rebecca Jones: A hundred percent. And so when you think about companies like Microsoft, it’s not only what they do, but how they bring that to market. Yep. And uh, so when you think about where Bridge Partners started and having the privilege to be in Microsoft of all places to, um, cut your teeth on you look at where we started and where we’ve grown from there.
[00:04:44] Rebecca Jones: Uh, within the tech industry, we’ve worked across, um, multiple hyperscalers. We’ve worked across, uh. Really the top tier tech and telco, those top 100. Yep. And all the household names. And then throughout that, across the partner ecosystem, because you and I both know these companies grow and scale their businesses through the partner ecosystem, and so we’ve been privileged to work across.
[00:05:08] Rebecca Jones: Multiple depth and breadth partners in that play.
[00:05:12] Vince Menzione: And as an agency, are you more known for project management go to market? Uh, what, what are the areas and focus where the outcomes that you achieve?
[00:05:21] Rebecca Jones: Yeah, so we’re known for. Being on the growth side of the house. And how I define that is you find us in marketing, but that center of gravity is in product marketing.
[00:05:32] Vince Menzione: Yes.
[00:05:32] Rebecca Jones: And then how you scale that through partner ecosystems and then supporting that field or that sales organization. So when you think about those three pillars within the organization, that’s where you’ll find us.
[00:05:43] Vince Menzione: And why would I choose Bridge Partners?
[00:05:46] Rebecca Jones: Oh, well, um, based on experience. Um, and then when you think about Bridge Partners, it’s not, um, just what we do, but when you take a look at our engagements and background, we’re over 90% referral.
[00:06:01] Vince Menzione: Wow.
[00:06:02] Rebecca Jones: And so people take us with them and um, what I look at is have we actually moved the needle or driven the customer outcomes? And when you think about the customers that we’ve worked with and the companies in this industry. It’s quite a roster and I don’t take that lightly because if you’re going to help support these companies and help them grow, it’s a testament to how we were able to accomplish that.
[00:06:27] Rebecca Jones: Because all these companies have complex enterprise organizations. Their go to market is nuanced and how they want to, and then, um, get and grow. And so these are just a couple of the different ways that we’ve been able to be successful.
[00:06:42] Vince Menzione: Fantastic. You know, you’ve done workshops at our events and talked to our community about how to help them achieve their greatest results.
[00:06:50] Vince Menzione: What would you say to them? Now we’re living in this time? I, I I, I said this earlier, I don’t want to use the term tectonic shifts, but I’m running out of words to describe how tumultuous this time feels right now to me.
[00:07:03] Rebecca Jones: It’s interesting you say that. I was thinking about that. ’cause both you and I have been in the industry for a bit.
[00:07:08] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. And, um, there’s some pattern recognition happening right now for me and how I look at the go to market and these, these points in time and the evolution and. This point in time, it is a tectonic shift. But a lot of companies have other, have had to go through these challenges before. If you think about, um, the migration to the cloud and
[00:07:33] Vince Menzione: yes,
[00:07:33] Rebecca Jones: all of the unlocks that it has, and at the end of the day it’s, it’s shifting and thinking about new business models and it’s shifting and thinking about go to market, but there is.
[00:07:43] Rebecca Jones: There are things that ring true no matter where you are. And one of the things I’ve always taken a look at is, do you know your underlying value and relevance in market? And are you being customer centric? That never goes outta style, right? Do
[00:07:58] Vince Menzione: you know your value and are you customer centric? That makes a lot of sense, right?
[00:08:02] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And do they, what do you do? And, and do they, how do what, how do they answer to that question?
[00:08:07] Rebecca Jones: Well, that’s a, that’s a thinking question. Yes. Right? Yes. It takes a minute to think about that. Um, where is your moment of relevance with a customer?
[00:08:16] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:08:17] Rebecca Jones: Where is your moment of relevance with a customer?
[00:08:19] Rebecca Jones: And when you think about your reason to exist as a business, you have a really defined ICP, an ideal customer profile, and where’s your moment of relevance and. Yes. There’s a lot happening right now, and I think also because of where we sit in the industry and being in the midst of all of these giants with incredible technology to bring to market.
[00:08:44] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. We’re, we’re in the front end of this wave or the, the, the tectonic shift that you’re talking about. It’s just, you know, it’s unsettling to a certain degree, but it’s really energetic and it’s. Dynamic and, and there’s so much opportunity out there. So
[00:08:59] Vince Menzione: much so, you know, you had me thinking about the $600 billion that’ll be invested this year and just in cloud infrastructure and chips, right?
[00:09:08] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So data centers and chips, and talk about that being like kind of creating this wave, this huge tsunami that’s coming for the beaches and, and everything seems to be. Every week there’s a new announcement, and recently it’s been philanthropic and clawed. And yes, uh, the markets are reacting. They’re, um.
[00:09:30] Vince Menzione: They’re almost, uh, imploding in some ca in some cases because they’re trying to react the financial analysts, they’re trying to react to what’s happening right now.
[00:09:38] Rebecca Jones: It, the investment is massive and it’s, it’s incredible and it’s massive. And over the last year, you saw a lot of experimentation. Yeah. And you saw a lot of dabbling, a lot of, you know, quite.
[00:09:52] Rebecca Jones: Frankly, a little bit of concern about is this gonna pay off?
[00:09:56] Vince Menzione: Yes.
[00:09:57] Rebecca Jones: And when you look at where we are in this chain cycle and this adoption cycle, we’re right at the front end, the early adopters. And so a lot of the work that we’re doing, and where I’m focused on is how do you move from experimentation? To truly having some movement over into MVP and scale.
[00:10:18] Rebecca Jones: And so I’ll just harken back to Yeah,
[00:10:19] Vince Menzione: please.
[00:10:20] Rebecca Jones: That product mindset of when you’re looking at opportunity within the business, there was a lot of, um, there was a lot of pockets of experimentation just for fun. Just for fun. And so when you look across the business, um, and what, what we observed was, um, businesses of all different sizes, experimenting and, and some were just, they’re fun, they’re dabbling, right?
[00:10:45] Rebecca Jones: But it, it changed in the second half of last year, people became much more thoughtful, much more purposeful, um, thinking forward about how would this be applied to my business? Yeah, because the question now isn’t. Could we do this? It’s really, should we do this
[00:11:03] Vince Menzione: right? And and there was a period of time, I don’t mean to interrupt you, but there was a period of time when we were talking about earlier in in last year, we were talking about halluc hallucinations still.
[00:11:13] Vince Menzione: Yes. So there was a lack of confidence on the platform side. Yes. Microsoft had brought out. Uh, it’s copilot solutions early to market. And there was some, uh, pushback from the community saying, we’re not seeing the results of that. Yeah. From the financial community specifically. And then I think what you said is then the second half of the year things started to change.
[00:11:35] Vince Menzione: There was greater confidence. The
[00:11:36] Rebecca Jones: Yeah,
[00:11:37] Vince Menzione: I’d say the models got better.
[00:11:38] Rebecca Jones: The models got better. But when you think about innovation, that’s inherent risk,
[00:11:43] Vince Menzione: right?
[00:11:43] Rebecca Jones: Right. Yes. When, when you’re on an innovation curve, yes, that’s risk. And so you have to look at as any great CFO will tell you diversification innovation.
[00:11:56] Rebecca Jones: When you start to look at that market landscape, you’re creating risks. Yes. So they’re investing a lot and they wanna know when the payoff is coming back into the business. Right? Or back into the market.
[00:12:08] Vince Menzione: So Rebecca, where is the AI market right now?
[00:12:13] Rebecca Jones: Oh, that is a tough and great question, Vince.
[00:12:18] Vince Menzione: I mean, we’ve gone through it and I’ll, I’ll kind of frame this for, yes, for, for everyone, at least from my perspective of what’s happened, right?
[00:12:24] Vince Menzione: So, uh, September, 2022. Chat, GBT. Yeah. So we get into chat bots or chat bot, chat bot, chat bot, chat bot the first year or so, beginning of last year, 2025. A agentic AI really starts to take hold. It’s, it becomes a new term. In fact, I don’t think we were even using the term agentic AI before the end of 24, beginning of 25.
[00:12:47] Vince Menzione: And then agents have really proliferated, um, all of the marketplaces now have agents and people are developing their own agents and so on. And all the tools, like all, all the cloud tools have agent capabilities. And now, um. We’re in 2026 and we’re still in the first quarter. It feels like the agents are starting to rule the world and maybe taking over the world
[00:13:10] Rebecca Jones: they might be.
[00:13:11] Vince Menzione: Yeah,
[00:13:11] Rebecca Jones: right. There is definitely a proliferation of agents and I’m anticipating a lot of consolidation of that. ’cause most of the agents I’ve seen drop into, um. A lot of the areas where you and I can download are features.
[00:13:26] Vince Menzione: Yes.
[00:13:26] Rebecca Jones: They’re really feature agents and those will get consolidated ’cause the where we are and you ask where we are in the market.
[00:13:33] Rebecca Jones: What I love. I love where we are ’cause we’re starting to tackle real business problems. And what I’m observing and what we’re working on is really helping connect back into the business to really start that transformational work.
[00:13:48] Vince Menzione: So take us through that. I’d love that. I’d love, give us a scenario or
[00:13:51] Rebecca Jones: give us a use case.
[00:13:52] Rebecca Jones: Do this. Yeah. I think’s really great scenarios here that I can walk you through. And first and foremost it is, and I’m gonna go back and I talked about specialization in specialty areas. Yes. That’s really important. Um, we talked yesterday during the conference around, um, industry. What industry are you in?
[00:14:11] Rebecca Jones: You know, I’m in tech and that’s, that’s, we know that industry, we know those business models really well. That’s extremely important. And then you move within that. And what functions do you know and functions in this, you know, order are the product marketing function, how does that work?
[00:14:30] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:14:30] Rebecca Jones: How does that work in an enterprise organization or a sales function or a.
[00:14:36] Rebecca Jones: Partner function. And within that, what are all the workflows? How do these teams operate together? And so that’s where that curiosity comes in of not just how you did the work. How is the work orchestrated?
[00:14:49] Vince Menzione: Inter orchestration is a huge topic area.
[00:14:51] Rebecca Jones: Orchestration is a huge topic. Let’s, let’s go
[00:14:53] Vince Menzione: there.
[00:14:54] Rebecca Jones: E Exactly.
[00:14:55] Rebecca Jones: And that’s where that curiosity, you know, I was talking about pattern recognition comes in how is the work designed? And that becomes. The blueprint for how you start to think about agentic workflows. And if you don’t have a great workflow, you don’t wanna replicate that in an agent, but Exactly. You definitely need to understand that.
[00:15:18] Rebecca Jones: And so why don’t I take something that, um, I think will resonate for anyone listening to this podcast, because everyone is probably looking for growth this year and wanting to accelerate
[00:15:28] Vince Menzione: Yes.
[00:15:29] Rebecca Jones: Sales. Their pre-sales funnel. So if we just take that pre-sales motion and specifically now with where partners might play in that or where, um, technology companies might want to enable their partners better.
[00:15:47] Rebecca Jones: When I start to break down a pre-sales function, you have areas within that. Whole workflow that your marketing department might be driving. They might be driving top of the funnel or or demand programs. And then as you move down the funnel, let’s call it mid funnel, that really has opportunities for partner and field sellers to come in and.
[00:16:07] Rebecca Jones: You might be seen or observing that your, um, pipeline velocity is not where you want that, right? Mm-hmm. You might be, you know, as they say, stuck. Stuck.
[00:16:18] Vince Menzione: Yep.
[00:16:19] Rebecca Jones: And so when you start to look at what agents could do within that, I’ll use a real use case, um, around pre-sales workshops. You and I are both familiar with that.
[00:16:28] Vince Menzione: We, we are, we were just talking about this last night, in fact, at dinner, about pre pre-sales workshops and how this is still such a vital component, how organizations work together.
[00:16:37] Rebecca Jones: Such a vital component, um, for multiple reasons, right? You get to engage directly with the customer. You get to spend time with that customer.
[00:16:46] Rebecca Jones: You get to ensure you understand what are their most pressing use cases and really help them design and buy into a solution far before you get to a proposal. And quite frankly, if you do this right. You also have an adoption plan, and then think about it from other functional areas in the organization.
[00:17:02] Rebecca Jones: You start to pattern match across those presale workshops. You can start to see the use cases that are most valuable in market and start to put that into your messaging. So you think about presale workshop, it’s just not the activity of having a workshop, but if you could build an agent. To really help design around partners, enabling partners to deliver better presale workshops.
[00:17:27] Rebecca Jones: Interesting. And how are you ingesting information that goes into the workshop? How are you helping, um, develop materials and first drafts faster for proposals post? How are you. Data is informing this. What are you collecting and what are you providing, and then what are you delivering? If you take that one simple component in a pre-sales process, you can see where I’m going.
[00:17:53] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. All of a sudden, an ecosystem starts to show up around how could you connect better back with product marketing? What are they doing? What could you inform them with, with the data that you’re bringing in?
[00:18:03] Vince Menzione: Interesting.
[00:18:03] Rebecca Jones: And then what are the. Deterministic pathways outside of that, that you could be informing downstream down to first, first stress faster on proposals.
[00:18:13] Rebecca Jones: Are you helping those partners with an adoption plan? The service partners in there. And so that is the designer and the architect of understanding how that workflow comes to life. And then you can really start to think about the outcomes that you wanna drive. And that’s where I love to start the conversations.
[00:18:31] Rebecca Jones: That shouldn’t be an afterthought. That should be where you start.
[00:18:35] Vince Menzione: So how do you, how do you, how do you start with this? You gave me a great example, but how do you apply this in the business? Like what do you take when you meet with a client to talk about pre-sales workshops as an example?
[00:18:47] Rebecca Jones: Yeah.
[00:18:47] Vince Menzione: You take a proforma of what a pre-sales workshop would look like.
[00:18:51] Vince Menzione: I’m, I’m, I. I might be wrong on this, but you have, like, you, you now have, uh, AI or AI that they go out and pull the data that you would normally ask maybe in some, some, uh, process, uh, information flow process that we grab and, and pull this into the, to the, to the form. The
[00:19:10] Rebecca Jones: first question I always ask is, why.
[00:19:12] Rebecca Jones: Why is this so important and valuable? I might have an assumption why, based on my experience, but I want the facts, right? I wanna know how they’re measuring it today, so we have a baseline and I wanna understand what their goals are.
[00:19:28] Vince Menzione: Okay?
[00:19:29] Rebecca Jones: Are they looking to increase revenue? X percentage. Uh, how many deals are they anticipating?
[00:19:38] Rebecca Jones: How many presale workshops do they typically deliver through partner a year? Are they looking to scale that? Probably, yes. Are they looking to increase the value that they’re getting into contract post presale workshop? Probably yes. But I want that empirical data. And then I also wanna know where are they storing that?
[00:19:57] Rebecca Jones: Where are they sourcing that? And so it, it really. The question and the question set really is understanding the business outcomes and the why. I, I ask a lot of why, and it really helps you frame in what would be the best outcome or the best solution, and then where do you start? Because there’s a lot of appetite for a.
[00:20:21] Rebecca Jones: A transformational workflow from A to Z. And that’s a hard place to,
[00:20:26] Vince Menzione: it’s hard show momentum. It’s hard. It’s hard,
[00:20:27] Rebecca Jones: right?
[00:20:27] Vince Menzione: It’s, it’s hard to document your current workflow flows.
[00:20:30] Rebecca Jones: Yeah.
[00:20:30] Vince Menzione: Let alone come back and do this ally.
[00:20:33] Rebecca Jones: Yes.
[00:20:34] Vince Menzione: And create the best outcomes.
[00:20:36] Rebecca Jones: Yes.
[00:20:36] Vince Menzione: So I go back to this and I go, well, what, what creates the best outcomes?
[00:20:39] Vince Menzione: Where the customer signs at the dotted line, and then how do you work back from that to the pre-sales workshop? Is that how
[00:20:46] Rebecca Jones: you do it? A hundred percent. It’s a hundred percent. And then where do you start? How do you show, um, progress, not perfection. And so in this world, there’s a lot of, um, pressure. To show progress, outcomes, momentum.
[00:21:00] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. And these very significant investments that are being made. And so how do you get them to quick wins? And so you know this, for any new executive coming into role, what are your quick wins? Yes. Right? Yes. You need to transform an organization, you need to transform a function. How do you set them up for success?
[00:21:19] Rebecca Jones: And that’s always in my mind, that’s always in the mind of. The bridge partners, leaders of how do you set this leader up for success? And it’s that point between strategy and execution. How do you help them show quick wins? And so I broke you down that process. Yep. Of how would you think about in that use case, how to bring that back and help them show quick wins?
[00:21:42] Rebecca Jones: Not in six months or a year, but in six weeks to eight weeks. How do you, how do you get them on that journey and then help them build to that next slide. And
[00:21:51] Vince Menzione: in fact, that’s how you, you, you’ve made your, your name or your fame in the industry is really coming in and helping some of these executives, especially when they’re newer in role.
[00:22:00] Rebecca Jones: Yes.
[00:22:00] Vince Menzione: And those of us who’ve been around the Microsoft ecosystem know this well. Like you get asked day one, what’s your plan? The, while the fire, while the fire hose is blowing in your face at a hundred, a hundred miles an hour? Uh, what’s your plan?
[00:22:14] Rebecca Jones: What’s your plan? What’s your
[00:22:14] Vince Menzione: plan?
[00:22:15] Rebecca Jones: What is your plan?
[00:22:16] Vince Menzione: Yeah, yeah.
[00:22:16] Vince Menzione: And then you have to show some measurable results fairly quickly.
[00:22:19] Rebecca Jones: You have to
[00:22:20] Vince Menzione: because you’re asked to get up in front of everyone. Yeah. Very soon.
[00:22:23] Rebecca Jones: And that’s a blueprint that we have. We have, it’s a quick win. And when you think about all of these organizations that we’ve worked with, um, speed to market is a value signal.
[00:22:36] Vince Menzione: Yep.
[00:22:36] Rebecca Jones: Right? And that speed and quality. Where are you willing to take the risk? Where are you willing to fail fast? And what outcomes are non-negotiable and what are, and so when you look at that, there’s, there’s conversations that need to be had on. And being able to filter out the noise to get down to what’s really gonna move the needle, um, for our clients and for the executives that we work with.
[00:23:06] Rebecca Jones: So they can show momentum and progress quickly. And then we talked a lot about it. We don’t do three year plans, right? We’re gonna help you show progress in months,
[00:23:16] Vince Menzione: nice.
[00:23:17] Rebecca Jones: And in quarters, right? It’s not, um, 10 years.
[00:23:19] Vince Menzione: Can anybody even have a three year plan anymore?
[00:23:22] Rebecca Jones: Who’s got one?
[00:23:23] Vince Menzione: I’d love to spend some time on co-selling with you.
[00:23:25] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Just because I know this was a topic that came up one of our workshops in the Yeah. We hosted, yes. Last year we hosted a session. With another partner. Bridge Partners.
[00:23:34] Rebecca Jones: Yes.
[00:23:35] Vince Menzione: And you talked about the power of three and I know you’ve published some information about the power of three. I thought maybe we’d talk about that.
[00:23:41] Vince Menzione: ’cause I think that is fascinating and it seems very relevant even in yesterday’s conversation. Uh, there was a conversation about another partner, uh, that is looking to build an ecosystem that hasn’t really thought about building out an ecosystem before, as an example. And this, this, I think is some of the work that you do really applies against this.
[00:24:01] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. This, I mean, it, it’s a hot topic, right? Yeah. Power of three, which fits under the umbrella of co-sell Yes. And co-selling. And everyone has a slightly different definition, so I’ll define where we play. Good in there. Um, and then I’ll talk to you about the power of three, um, because that’s one of. Um, I’ll call it the scenarios under co-selling.
[00:24:23] Rebecca Jones: Yes. And it’s a very popular one. It
[00:24:24] Vince Menzione: is pop Well, it is for v various reasons too because, and I’ll just set the context for this. We were used to co-selling being a technology organization and a and a hyperscaler, like a Microsoft.
[00:24:37] Rebecca Jones: Yes.
[00:24:37] Vince Menzione: Going to do something together and driving direct output or sales. Now we have finally seen where marketplaces, which has become the co-sell engine, have now enabled the channel.
[00:24:49] Vince Menzione: Um, the reseller enabled, uh, offers now to now, uh, operate on behalf of, and so at least in that case, that’s three right there. Now, there might be more than just three. We talk about the seven seats of the table, but the power of three is palpable right now.
[00:25:04] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. Let me tell you about that concept of the power of three.
[00:25:07] Rebecca Jones: ’cause when you think about the classic one
[00:25:10] Vince Menzione: yeah,
[00:25:10] Rebecca Jones: it’s a hyperscaler.
[00:25:11] Vince Menzione: Yep.
[00:25:12] Rebecca Jones: A GSI. And then an ISB.
[00:25:15] Vince Menzione: Yes.
[00:25:15] Rebecca Jones: Right?
[00:25:16] Vince Menzione: Yes.
[00:25:16] Rebecca Jones: I mean that’s the, that’s the power, the powerful power, the three three,
[00:25:19] Vince Menzione: the three giants in the
[00:25:20] Rebecca Jones: room. The three giants. Yeah. And that’s rarefied air.
[00:25:24] Vince Menzione: It is
[00:25:25] Rebecca Jones: very
[00:25:26] Vince Menzione: verified air. It’s,
[00:25:26] Rebecca Jones: yeah. Right. And, uh, we do, we have a published article on that, um, and running a power three with SAP, uh, and it is, um, it changes the dynamics.
[00:25:41] Rebecca Jones: Of how companies are gonna scale and grow in this market, right?
[00:25:46] Vince Menzione: Yes.
[00:25:46] Rebecca Jones: Because we know, um, that what got you to this point? Is likely not gonna get you to that next stage of growth. And all the conversations around the platform play is the partner ecosystem, right? And I look at the opportunity, not just with the power through, I’m gonna talk to you a little bit more about that story and what we’re doing there and how we’re looking at that.
[00:26:12] Rebecca Jones: Um, but it is the ultimate. Design for your go to market. Yeah. When you think about how partners and the various types of partners can help you scale, but you need to know what you need. You absolutely need to know,
[00:26:29] Vince Menzione: yeah.
[00:26:30] Rebecca Jones: What are you trying to achieve in your go to market and what’s missing?
[00:26:34] Vince Menzione: What are the gaps?
[00:26:34] Vince Menzione: Gaps?
[00:26:35] Rebecca Jones: What are the gaps? Are the gaps before you apply? Yes. The power of three, or I’ll talk to you about a couple other use cases within that. So the power of three. Has long been on everybody’s, you know, can, can we get this done right? Can you pattern match the customer set? I’ll often refer to it as a BM on steroids, account-based marketing and on steroids.
[00:26:59] Rebecca Jones: Can you pattern match, um, the, the hyperscaler, let’s just use Microsoft in this scenario, the, the. High potential customers of Microsoft Joint with SAP joint, with A GSI. And the more specialized and specific you get in there, it’s not just any, because think about the size of these, you know, companies. Yeah, right.
[00:27:24] Rebecca Jones: Then you start to look at, well, let’s get a little bit more specific on these product sets, these industries, these use cases. And then you start to refine that where you can start to identify your greatest opportunity for growth. So that’s the first stage of that. And it is, you know, we, we think about where is that overlap and where is that opportunity, but how do you activate that?
[00:27:51] Vince Menzione: And it’s complex because, uh, as you, as you mentioned those three. Organizations, each of them have different go to markets.
[00:27:59] Rebecca Jones: They do,
[00:27:59] Vince Menzione: they have different, a different mapping of their geographies and their ideal customer profiles.
[00:28:05] Rebecca Jones: Mm-hmm.
[00:28:06] Vince Menzione: Um, and they, yeah, and they apply different tactics and selling tactics and channel tactics and so on that you have to layer in or you have to take into account when you build this.
[00:28:15] Vince Menzione: And SAP’s a very different go-to market motion than a Microsoft, than a, than a, an EY or any name the GSI percent. Yeah.
[00:28:23] Rebecca Jones: And so that is why not only is it, um, complex from a. Sharing and figuring out what data you’re going to share. Yeah. But how do you activate it? How
[00:28:35] Vince Menzione: do you activate it?
[00:28:36] Rebecca Jones: And uh, and that is what all companies are striving to do.
[00:28:41] Rebecca Jones: Who are you gonna go to market with? Yeah. What is your best play in the industry? And so I, you know, while this one. There’s very few companies that are gonna be able to activate directly with the hyperscaler, right? Yes. Uh, Microsoft AWS or Google. Um, but there are ways in which you can apply this strategy no matter the size of your organization.
[00:29:05] Rebecca Jones: And so when you think about. The power of three. It could be any combination. You are the designer, you are the decider of who is in your power of three. And when you start to kind of unpack that a little bit, it could be Microsoft, SAPN one ISV, or it could be a combination of complementary I ISVs that unlock a play.
[00:29:28] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm.
[00:29:29] Rebecca Jones: Like migration to the cloud.
[00:29:31] Vince Menzione: Right.
[00:29:31] Rebecca Jones: Like it, it could be
[00:29:33] Vince Menzione: backup and recovery. I could rattle off the different types of solutions. Yeah.
[00:29:37] Rebecca Jones: What is, where are you seeing the greatest opportunity to scale and what ISVs could come in to help you do that? So when you extract that from the power of three, the classic power of three of Costone, you brought that down to, you know, how do you think about that in the masses of marketplace?
[00:29:56] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. Or partners of any size. I like to bring this back to. Where do you believe your greatest opportunity is? Do you have, um, opportunity or weakness in your portfolio, your product set? Could a partner come in and help augment that? Do you have a tech platform and you need a services arm to help extend that?
[00:30:19] Rebecca Jones: I I mean the, it it, the world’s your oyster. Yeah. You get to kit this together any way you need and then. The power of bringing these companies together. And you and I both know, and that was much of the conversation yesterday, is, um, the greater goodness of companies coming together Yes. To compliment one another to solve a customer problem.
[00:30:39] Vince Menzione: How do you take it from concept to execution? Because to me, that’s. Especially when you’re talking about not just one organization like a micro, you’re working with a Microsoft or an SAP, but you’re layering in three types of organizations and you’re going across different sales motions. How do you get them all?
[00:30:58] Vince Menzione: How do you get them all aligned in working together the right way?
[00:31:07] Vince Menzione: Nine nine nine five five five five.
[00:31:09] Rebecca Jones: Let, let, let me, uh, let me talk about that because
[00:31:13] Vince Menzione: Yeah,
[00:31:13] Rebecca Jones: it’s one, there’s the good work, there’s the good thought work and the strategy of how to ensure you’re, you’re pointing and you’ve got the team lined up, right?
[00:31:22] Rebecca Jones: Right. And the players lined up. But activation of that. Oh,
[00:31:28] Vince Menzione: massive work.
[00:31:29] Rebecca Jones: It’s massive work. Yeah. And it’s not a set it and forget it.
[00:31:33] Vince Menzione: Right,
[00:31:34] Rebecca Jones: right,
[00:31:34] Vince Menzione: right.
[00:31:35] Rebecca Jones: And when you think about the alignment, and you talked about we, we’ve got different fiscal year ends and we’ve got different sales and center plans. I will talk about a few things.
[00:31:45] Rebecca Jones: One, executive sponsorship, top down.
[00:31:48] Vince Menzione: Yep.
[00:31:48] Rebecca Jones: Right. Um, ensuring, you know, compensation. You gotta get rid of the blockers and the barriers.
[00:31:55] Vince Menzione: Yep.
[00:31:56] Rebecca Jones: And you have to make it easy and you have to create that space because it’s really, and I’ll talk to you about some of the platforms and technology behind it, but it’s humans working together.
[00:32:07] Rebecca Jones: There’s a lot of power in what we’re able to do now with, um, part tech platforms and with agentic solutions. And how do you automate this and how do you bring more power and visibility? Better than ever and, and more than ever. But at the end of the day, we’re activating teams. Across companies. Yep. To work together to bring this together.
[00:32:34] Rebecca Jones: And there are playbooks, um, and any, there’s great playbooks out there, but you need to activate that.
[00:32:41] Vince Menzione: You need to activate it. And you, you said you gotta get the executive commitment at the top?
[00:32:45] Rebecca Jones: Yeah.
[00:32:46] Vince Menzione: Not just at the CEO level, but across the leadership team. That’s right. In every silo. Uh, you’ve gotta get, uh, the organization, you have to get compensation taken care of because those, those can be blockers, those could be real blockers from getting the results you want to get.
[00:33:00] Vince Menzione: And then you gotta get activation.
[00:33:03] Rebecca Jones: Yeah.
[00:33:03] Vince Menzione: Right?
[00:33:04] Rebecca Jones: You gotta get activation and you have to be really clear on how you’re gonna activate what’s gonna move the needle. And you have to be ready to test, learn, optimize, and you need to put those into sprints. So I’ll give some examples around that.
[00:33:20] Vince Menzione: Please do take us through the sprints.
[00:33:21] Vince Menzione: ’cause this is, this is getting beyond the theory now. This is what I really wanted to capture with you. Take us through it.
[00:33:28] Rebecca Jones: Yeah.
[00:33:28] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:33:29] Rebecca Jones: So let’s just say we’ve got, we’ve got a power of three.
[00:33:32] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:33:32] Rebecca Jones: You know, um, ready to roll and, and we’ve picked our industry and we have our use case. Um, between the three of us, the three players, you’re gonna start by allowing someone, and in this case it’s been Bridge Partners to really ensure we have a joint value prop, um, proposition for that end customer.
[00:33:54] Rebecca Jones: Mm-hmm. And, you know, you gotta take a little ego out of the room. Typically on the power of three, you’ve got the leading companies coming in. But at the end of the day, if you’ve done this right, it’s, it’s customer first. It’s what’s gonna help solve this customer pain point in that language. And then when you think about activation, it’s who’s, who’s in role first?
[00:34:20] Rebecca Jones: Right. And who’s taking point in these customer conversations. Right. Okay. And that is really, really, that’s important. Important. That is important. Who has the relationship? Yeah. Who is going to take lead and who’s gonna follow? And it gets all the way down to whose paper. Is this on? And that’s, that’s sometimes hard.
[00:34:41] Rebecca Jones: You’ve got three players in the room, but it’s incredibly important to have those conversations and ensure that this is really end state for the customer. Yeah. So really going through roles and responsibilities and how are we gonna architect this for the customer’s success. Yeah. So that is a critical component of the playbook and then understanding.
[00:35:02] Rebecca Jones: Where and what programs are we gonna drive, and then who’s taking what actions. And so I, I mentioned a BM on steroids a little before. Yes. There’s amazing things that you can be doing in market,
[00:35:15] Rebecca Jones: m account-based based marketing, you dunno. Um, account-based marketing and there are some amazing things.
[00:35:20] Rebecca Jones: Really truly connected sales and marketing, in this case. Connected sales, marketing and partner. Yeah. And how do you activate these partners together?
[00:35:27] Vince Menzione: You used the term part tech, which. Not everyone understands partner technologies. Yes. Organizations like Partner Tap, work Span. Yeah. Tackle.
[00:35:37] Rebecca Jones: Structured. Yeah.
[00:35:38] Vince Menzione: Structured. If you, these are companies that help with co-selling methodologies, marketplace methodologies.
[00:35:44] Rebecca Jones: Yes.
[00:35:45] Vince Menzione: Or combining all of those,
[00:35:46] Rebecca Jones: if you know, uh, J McBain, uh. Beautiful visual flat map of, um, it looks a little, the 28 moments. Yes. I was just, well, the 28 moments and he’s got the part tech landscape.
[00:35:59] Vince Menzione: Oh,
[00:35:59] Rebecca Jones: the islands. The islands.
[00:36:00] Vince Menzione: Yes. The islands.
[00:36:00] Rebecca Jones: Yes, we got it. But there are part tech solutions that support
[00:36:03] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:36:03] Rebecca Jones: Partner programs, co-sell programs, partner marketing, you know. Yes. And really help to automate a lot of those processes.
[00:36:11] Vince Menzione: Yes.
[00:36:12] Rebecca Jones: Um, and a lot of those programs.
[00:36:13] Vince Menzione: So Rebecca is such a great conversation today.
[00:36:16] Vince Menzione: I mean, we can go. Thank you so deep on this.
[00:36:18] Rebecca Jones: I know.
[00:36:18] Vince Menzione: Which means that we’re all gonna have to be back together in Redmond. You live in the Seattle area? I do. And you’ll be with us. Um, we’ll be hosting the Ultimate Partner, live in, uh, may, May 11th to the 13th. If you’re marking your calendar as listeners and friends, uh, and you’ll be there and.
[00:36:36] Vince Menzione: Probably driving some more of this conversation in a workshop format, I hope.
[00:36:41] Rebecca Jones: I hope so too. Yeah, it was really rewarding last year. I mean, there’s nothing more powerful to be in the room with partners because the partners are frontline to customers.
[00:36:51] Vince Menzione: Yes.
[00:36:51] Rebecca Jones: And understanding what they’re seeing and hearing.
[00:36:53] Rebecca Jones: And I always think voice of the customer is your ultimate signal. Yeah. So I can’t wait to be there.
[00:36:58] Vince Menzione: Very cool. And I have a favorite question I ask all of my guests now. Uh, it is a favorite of mine. You are hosting a dinner party and you can choose where in the world you wanna host this dinner party, and you can invite only three guests, though from the present or the past to this amazing dinner party.
[00:37:18] Vince Menzione: Whom would you invite Rebecca and why? And why?
[00:37:22] Rebecca Jones: Yeah. Yeah. I’d, um, this is such a great question. I think on every single day I’d have a different collection of folks that I’d want at my home. Uh, I’ve had dinner at some amazing places for me. I would love to host this at my home.
[00:37:38] Vince Menzione: Very cool, very
[00:37:39] Rebecca Jones: cool. Uh, and the people that I would want there for this particular dinner party, I’m gonna pick, um, three iconic women.
[00:37:51] Rebecca Jones: Coco Chanel,
[00:37:52] Vince Menzione: Coco Chanel very cool
[00:37:54] Rebecca Jones: designer.
[00:37:55] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:37:56] Rebecca Jones: Um, really changed how women thought about an identity and wardrobe. Um, I would invite Georgia O’Keefe. Wow. She’s my favorite artist.
[00:38:07] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:38:08] Rebecca Jones: Um, she is one of my favorite artists. Uh, I’m, uh, art and history background. And, uh,
[00:38:22] Rebecca Jones: I love her view on landscapes and. She,
[00:38:26] Vince Menzione: that’s why I know her as, you know, landscapes
[00:38:28] Rebecca Jones: a landscape artist, um, and much more behind that. And then I would bring one of my favorite authors in, who’s Tony Morrison?
[00:38:36] Vince Menzione: Tony
[00:38:37] Rebecca Jones: Morrison.
[00:38:38] Vince Menzione: I don’t know Tony Morrison.
[00:38:39] Rebecca Jones: Oh, um, I would, beloved is her book and Oh, yes. When you think about.
[00:38:45] Rebecca Jones: Um, and this is really my passion, my background in art and literature and design, and to have three, three women there, that voice of Tony Morrison, you’ve put that book on your list. Okay. It, it, it changed my life. Uh, and, um, Coco Chanel and, um, Giorgio O’Keefe, I think it would be a really interesting conversation.
[00:39:07] Rebecca Jones: I love very cool trailblazers, women who really helped. I don’t know how much they recognize how much they really changed the narrative for other women, um, in their fields and together. But I think it’d be a really fun evening.
[00:39:23] Vince Menzione: Very different. Very different. Uh, I was, I know a little bit about Cocoa Chanel ’cause my mom was always in the beauty and fashion industry.
[00:39:31] Vince Menzione: So as a kid growing up, I mean her shoe was iconic.
[00:39:34] Rebecca Jones: Yeah.
[00:39:34] Vince Menzione: Iconic. Chanels an iconic brand was iconic. And, and she was a, wasn’t she a survivor of the. Of, uh, Nazi Germany maybe or something. There’s some, there’s some background or there’s
[00:39:44] Rebecca Jones: some background. Flee. Flee
[00:39:45] Vince Menzione: Nazi Germany
[00:39:46] Rebecca Jones: or something. And what she’s really known for is, um, well many things, but yes, as a designer, really changing the tone and temperature Yes.
[00:39:56] Rebecca Jones: Of um. How, you know, fashion and female identity. I think she, um, created the, what everybody knows is the little black dress and really got all that more structured and more modern look and feel of how to, how to wear and just really created a powerful path.
[00:40:14] Vince Menzione: Very cool. Yeah. Very cool.
[00:40:15] Rebecca Jones: So that’s who I’d have it, this one.
[00:40:16] Vince Menzione: That will be a funer.
[00:40:17] Rebecca Jones: Next time I’m on your podcast, I’d have a whole new crew.
[00:40:21] Vince Menzione: Okay. Well I might. Bring dessert. If you don’t mind, I might bring a little, maybe a little chocolates I think maybe might be very appropriate would for this group and just maybe pop in for a few minutes.
[00:40:29] Rebecca Jones: That would be great.
[00:40:30] Vince Menzione: Because I don’t wanna inter interrupt the flow my, because this is be a great conversation. Oh my,
[00:40:33] no,
[00:40:33] Rebecca Jones: you would, I think you’d have a ball.
[00:40:34] Vince Menzione: Okay. I,
[00:40:35] Rebecca Jones: I mean, I know how close you were to your mother.
[00:40:37] Vince Menzione: I am.
[00:40:37] Rebecca Jones: And so, yeah.
[00:40:39] Vince Menzione: So, um, this isn’t, again, I use this tumultuous term, but we are living in interesting times right now.
[00:40:47] Rebecca Jones: We are.
[00:40:47] Vince Menzione: And for all of our viewers and listeners. What is your advice to them? What is the one thing you would say? We’re in the first quarter of 2026. Yeah. This ball is moving fast or this puck is moving fast. Yeah. If you were a hockey player, um, what would you say to us now? What, what, what is the one thing you would go do if you’re not doing it now that you should be doing?
[00:41:11] Rebecca Jones: Take a moment. Take a moment. As leaders. Your company and your organizations are looking for clarity. They’re looking for a path forward, and there’s a lot of energy out there, which is very exciting, but it can be also very distracting.
[00:41:30] Vince Menzione: Yes.
[00:41:31] Rebecca Jones: So hold some confidence and clarity for your organization and figure out where you need to be and where you’re going.
[00:41:39] Rebecca Jones: That’ll help set your strategy, and this will all come into view. And so what I look to is how do we help enable the organization to grow? And by doing that, you ha you have to put the oxygen mask on yourself. Yeah. Take a moment.
[00:41:53] Vince Menzione: Pause.
[00:41:55] Rebecca Jones: Pause. Reflect, reflect. I told you I walked down to the beach this morning.
[00:41:59] Rebecca Jones: It’s a great moment. Take a moment for yourself. It’s not passing you by. We’re just getting started.
[00:42:06] Vince Menzione: Did you hear that? My friends and listeners? Take a moment. And so great to have you here in the room. Yeah.
[00:42:13] Rebecca Jones: Thank you so
[00:42:14] Vince Menzione: much. Thank you. And I want to thank our listeners, our viewers, for following along, ultimate Guide to Partnering and our YouTube channel Ultimate Partner.
[00:42:23] Vince Menzione: And please, please, please come join us. We have an incredible year ahead. This was our event, number one of five. And Ultimate partner Live will be in Bellevue on the 11th through the 13th of May.
[00:42:36] Rebecca Jones: Yeah, I’ll
[00:42:36] Vince Menzione: see. You’ll see you there. Rebecca will be there. It’s
[00:42:38] Rebecca Jones: in my backyard.
[00:42:39] Vince Menzione: It’s in your backyard. And we are gonna have incredible leaders in the room.
[00:42:42] Vince Menzione: So thank you for watching. Thank you for listening to The Ultimate Partner.
[00:42:47] Rebecca Jones: Don’t forget, ultimate Partner Live is coming
[00:42:50] Vince Menzione: soon, May 11th through the 13th in beautiful Bellevue, Washington. I hope to see you there.s I, as I wrap up here, I just wanna make sure that what, where
Key Tags
Nina Harding, Microsoft AI, artificial intelligence ROI, AI agents, Agent 365, Copilot Studio, outcome-based selling, verticalization, healthcare AI, retail AI, Cognizant, Davos 2026, AI governance, AI security, technology transformation, Ultimate Partner Live, enterprise AI adoption, digital transformation, system integrators, AI pilots
Transcript
[00:00:00] Nina Harding: More importantly, we want to serve more and more people faster, and AI is coming in and having a very practical approach in healthcare alone.
[00:00:14] Vince Menzione: We just finished Ultimate Partners Winter Retreat here in beautiful Boca to a sold out
[00:00:19] Vince Menzione: crowd. Come join me now for a compelling discussion on the impacts of the tectonic shifts we’re all seeing.
[00:00:27] Vince Menzione: I feel incredibly fortunate, uh, to have this, this, this friend Nina who came into the studio here for the first time, actually earlier, well last year, geez, earlier this year.
[00:00:38] Vince Menzione: It was last year, right after my accident I think. And, uh, we gotta spend some time together. And she was so good to, uh, make her time available and her team’s time available to come down here to be with us today. Ne I’m so thrilled to have you. I am going to turn over the stage to you. Uh, you’ve got some incredible learnings.
[00:00:57] Vince Menzione: I know you’ve been on the AI tour with Microsoft. Yeah. And you’ve got some great learnings you’re gonna share about what’s happening. Absolutely. So it’s so great to have you.
[00:01:05] Vince Menzione: It’s nice to see you.
[00:01:06] Nina Harding: Nice to see you.
[00:01:07] Nina Harding: Thank you. Well, thanks everyone. It’s great to see so many familiar faces and then some new faces as well.
[00:01:15] Nina Harding: Um, because we’re in a little bit more of an intimate environment, I thought I would approach this a little bit differently. Give you some better insights into what we’re actually hearing at Microsoft with our customers, some of the things that are actually moving the needle that we’re seeing some of our partners do.
[00:01:34] Nina Harding: So really to share some of the best practices out there, and hopefully you’ll leave with some more insight or tips and tricks, um, is really what I would love to do because our job. Collectively is really this transformation and to take a advantage of it out there in the market right now.
[00:01:57] Nina Harding: Let’s see
[00:01:57] Nina Harding: here.
[00:01:59] Nina Harding: I can move slides. Well, this one isn’t moving. Any slides?
[00:02:07] Nina Harding: No. Okay, great. So, um, some of you might. Uh, know that I’m a Floridian now, right? So I just live right up, up the way in Palm Beach. Um, so not too far, but I still wouldn’t miss this opportunity to be with all of you. Um, there is an energy that I think that we’re all feeling right now, and, uh, it’s, it’s palpable.
[00:02:32] Nina Harding: We’re finding right now that our customers are really going from this landscape of experimenting with ai. Really to looking at the outcomes and having expectations around the momentum that they’re seeing. Right. That’s a big shift, right? We, and things are going pretty quickly, so I look at things almost quarterly now on what is that core message and what are, what is the difference in the tone from our customers of what they’re expecting?
[00:03:06] Nina Harding: What we’re gonna talk a little bit about today is how all of you, our partners, are such a critical part of that journey. Actually, sometimes the most important part. You’re on the front lines with the customers. You’re the ones having those conversations. You’re the ones that are in there arm to arm with their teams, listening to what they’re experiencing, their challenges that they’re facing, and they’re really wanting now to go from this world of, Hey, we have lots of different pilots.
[00:03:41] Nina Harding: Right? A lot of us know that right into, oh my gosh, it’s not about pilots anymore. They really want that ROI story. They want those outcomes and it’s looking very different for all of us. The way that we sell, the way that we go into our engagements, the way that we even price things, the way that we, meaning Microsoft partner and customer are locking arms is fundamentally very different.
[00:04:15] Nina Harding: We have to go in collectively. We have to also be responsible for the outcomes and deliver on those. ROI is that headline that we’re all after. Right. It is the most important part of the puzzle right now because there isn’t a single boardroom that isn’t talking about AI and you guys are all experiencing it.
[00:04:39] Nina Harding: It’s easier than ever to go in and have the conversation. The hardest part is how do we quickly get to an ROI study, so you or ROI case so that we can continue to build on that. And when you’re looking at this every. Customer is providing signals out there to help you grow that penetration into the account.
[00:05:04] Nina Harding: And I’m gonna share some of the signals that I think that are really meaningful. But that’s the most important thing is we’re no longer, and I know you guys all know this, we’re no longer selling product at all anymore. We’re selling those outcomes. And I can tell you at Microsoft, we’re spending a tremendous amount of time retraining all of our sales reps.
[00:05:25] Nina Harding: Really to be focused on how do you listen and do that consultative signal based sale. How do you actually go in and start selling, not selling, but I mean it is selling, but listening to the journey that they want to go through. What are the challenges that they’re facing and what’s the transformation that we’re able to kind of go and be a part of together with our partners?
[00:05:54] Nina Harding: Notice it’s not about product. Product is just the tools in your tool chest to create those outcomes. So that’s gonna be really important as we go through this journey.
[00:06:09] Nina Harding: Uh, so I saw the, the title of the session, uh, mentioned Davos and Davos was an interesting time. Uh, Microsoft has a very, actually, a very big presence at Davos and, uh, we had over 300 customer meetings there, uh, where we were meeting with some of the top companies around the globe. And it was very much affirmed that.
[00:06:34] Nina Harding: Uh, the, the concept of AI we’re past, like curiosity stage, right? We’re way past that and we’re even past that. The art of the possible discussion, right? Uh, what the, the customers are almost at the point is, is come in and tell me, tell me what to do. Show me how to do it. It’s a very different position than, Hey, we’re presenting you with all these different possibilities.
[00:07:08] Nina Harding: They’re They’re tired. They’re tired of all the possibilities. They wanna get to the brass tacks of how are you gonna change my customer service department? How are you gonna make it easier for my hr? How am I going to derive growth? What are some of the other things that you guys are experiencing out there?
[00:07:23] Nina Harding: Like what are some of those other ROI drivers that people are asking, where am I gonna find the money? What for? For doing the project or out of the project? Other people? I Okay. To do the project. Okay. Resourcing. Okay. So what we’re seeing here is that, uh, the conversation is very much now focused on, okay, I need sec, I need security.
[00:07:50] Nina Harding: That has been louder than ever before. So, Vince, the one thing I would say about that slide where you had those five different pillars, I’d put security on the bottom. Understanding your data, your data platform on the bottom, those are consistent across all those pillars. And then you can kind of hit at them.
[00:08:10] Nina Harding: But, uh, there’s a lot of energy, there’s a lot of excitement, but it’s rooted in what are you materially going to do to change my business, and is your skin in the game to help me do it and I’ll pay you for that outcome? The concept of this time and materials approach gone. Gone. Even at Microsoft, we’re adjusting to the fact that the customers aren’t like, oh.
[00:08:35] Nina Harding: Just hand it over to a system integrator and they’ll deliver on it. They’re like, oh no, we want you accountable too. You’re accountable for the outcomes as well, which is, oh gosh, okay. How do we do that in a partnery model that makes sense where we’re not tripping over each other, but we’re going in stronger together.
[00:08:54] Nina Harding: We have one message together and we’re really focused on driving that. They’re also really concerned around the governance of all these agents, right? I see a lot of heads shaking on this. I mean, there’s a lot of proliferation right now. There’s a lot of excitement. I mean, I don’t know in your companies, but people are building agents faster and quicker, uh, than ever before, and some of them are really, really cool and they’re making huge point savings of times.
[00:09:22] Nina Harding: Everything from. You know, some of you guys have probably heard me talk about everything from, uh, working on performance reviews to what are all of the incentives that we have for partners and making that easy to understand to, uh, to helping me understand patterns in our financials and what partners are really performing and growing.
[00:09:45] Nina Harding: All of these agents are just popping up everywhere, but that creates a real governance issue and a real security issue for a lot of companies as well. So you take all of this and you hear this momentum and I think, uh, that together we’re really well poised. I think Microsoft is in a unique position together with you.
[00:10:07] Nina Harding: On this frame, we have Agent 365, which helps you manage all these different agents, right? So that’s an exciting. How many of you’re familiar with agents? 365. Great. And I promise I’m not a product person. I’m not gonna do a lot of pitches, so don’t worry about that, um, at all. But, uh, we also have copilot studio and foundry, and so we have this whole, uh, set of capability, but that capability only comes to life if we’re able to connect with the customer, build the outcome, and making sure that the CEOs see all of us as their partners on that strategy and journey.
[00:10:47] Nina Harding: So what does that look like? So I talked a little bit about signals, and signals, is that ability to listen to the, to the customers, what’s really, really me, uh, meaningful and frontier firms are doing this on a consistent basis all the time. Listening to the specific needs use cases, et cetera. So we at Microsoft have been trying to not only share all these different use cases that we have exposure to, but in addition.
[00:11:17] Nina Harding: We turned on functionality, and I’ll talk about that in a little bit so that we can also share amongst each other as a community and understand those use cases. Uh, what’s really important is that, um, we’re moving from this world of all these like little one-off projects to a strategy and a platform that everyone wants to move to, but it’s all also getting powered by agents.
[00:11:42] Nina Harding: That’s, that’s where we are today. So.
[00:11:49] Nina Harding: Having a little trouble. I’m not gonna go through this too. Everyone’s familiar with this in, in here, the Frontier overview. If you’re not, let me know. Um, but basically one of the things that we find is really helpful is, is just sharing where we have seen proof behind having the conversation around the AI journey.
[00:12:12] Nina Harding: Around the, the customer journey as you’re going out there. Um, there are really four different areas that we’ve talked about, and I’m not going to drain this ’cause there’s lots and you can, you can, uh, go onto the internet. You can see me talking about all these different areas. I don’t wanna spend too much time here, but these are four of the different.
[00:12:33] Nina Harding: I would say categories where when you’re looking at different ways that you can make a material difference with the, the, the customer that we find the most momentum. So around enriching employee experiences, changing the way we, uh, engage with customers. Uh, changing processes as well. And then, uh, the outcomes, like really transforming the way we go about business.
[00:12:59] Nina Harding: And we wanna do something about bringing it in to the flow of the work, everyday work. How many of you are finding that you’re actually using agents in your day-to-day workflow? Isn’t that cool? And then as you continue to use it, it becomes easier and easier and easier. And. I know from my team, I’m starting to look at what is the e everyday usage versus the monthly usage, right?
[00:13:26] Nina Harding: It’s the every day. It’s become almost, uh, your second hand. And what’s important, uh, on this is that we’re giving, uh, listening to all these signals giving, um, the consistency, um, of the, the engagement with. With the clients, we’re able to all share the same stories and be able to scale at a much faster pace.
[00:13:54] Nina Harding: So what does that look like? Here we go. Um, one of the things that we talk about at Microsoft, and the reason why I have this up here is that we’ve moved the conversation away from product into these customer outcomes, which really becomes about. Industry discussion. You have to speak their voice. You have to understand their business problems.
[00:14:21] Nina Harding: You have to listen for what is materially different. So I’m actually sharing this, which you don’t normally see in a lot of presentations out to Microsoft about the structure of the organization, the takeaway. This is a sales organization in enterprise. The takeaway that I want you to have from that is look at the verticalization.
[00:14:43] Nina Harding: We’ve done. It’s no longer by territory. The ball has moved, the conversation has moved entirely. So what does that say to all of you as well? Your value proposition as you’re working with our field has to be verticalized. The way you engage has to be verticalized. What you say, um, what the, the outcomes that you think differentiates yourself.
[00:15:12] Nina Harding: Verticalized. So there isn’t the approach of like doing this like mask gorilla campaign across, for example, the Americas. And I’m just using this as an example on, um, the small and medium business side as well. Um, the, they’re a little bit more territory based still, but um, at least at the enterprise, everything has to be about customer value.
[00:15:38] Nina Harding: Customer value. So, um, what this also suggests to me is the way we’re working and where we’ve seen a lot of success is when all of you are starting to tailor your messages and differentiate yourselves by customer success stories. Use cases where you’ve had premise, uh, penetration as a software partner, but you have to tie it back to the industry again.
[00:16:05] Nina Harding: It’s just different. And so if I’m very transparent that that’s become, has gone from a nice to have to critical as the field is looking at, who are those go-to partners? It’s the go-to partners that speak retail. It’s the go-to partners that speak oil and gas and I don’t know, I, I, I see some nodding of heads.
[00:16:27] Nina Harding: Some people know this, some people don’t. But I can see the shift tremendously over the last six months. So, um, hopefully that’s helpful in, in, in kind of sharing just how we’re walking the walk and talking the talk. So as I go back to industry, um, I thought what would be helpful is to take a few examples so you have a chance to see.
[00:16:52] Nina Harding: In life, what are, what are we actually seeing at Microsoft? And if you guys are seeing something else, I would love to hear that too. But these, this is an example in healthcare and when we’re looking at, uh, a particular industry, we’re looking at what are some of the pain points? What are the top trends?
[00:17:11] Nina Harding: What are some of the challenges folks are, are facing? And then what are the use cases that are really making traction here? This is a different way of taking that frontier vision and doing that click down by industry. And so what we’re also doing is we’re looking at who are partners that can help us in healthcare that can help answer some of these key challenges.
[00:17:35] Nina Harding: Who are the ones that have the ability to have those material conversations in that trust? In healthcare, for example, there’s a ton of pressure. I mean. We all are consumers of healthcare. Hopefully we, all of us, have been lucky enough to have healthcare, um, in the, in this, uh, forum, but there’s a lot of clinician burnout, rising costs, right?
[00:18:01] Nina Harding: The, the expense for, uh, medicines and so forth. But more importantly, we want to serve more and more people faster, and AI is coming in and having a very practical approach. Healthcare alone. So many of you, I talk about, um, the fact that at one point I was paralyzed, right? So I was paralyzed from T two down and, um, I go in every six months for an MRI, uh, to check, to check if everything’s still functioning.
[00:18:32] Nina Harding: And the nervous system is going well. My doctor has had to manually look at that. Now he’s using AI to look at. History and the progression since 2008. That’s game changing. And on top of that, he is looking at me and having a conversation and looking in my eyes and observing me instead and using Dragon to have it feel epic to really think about how that’s changed my personal experience with the healthcare system and changed how a physician can show up.
[00:19:09] Nina Harding: So there are many, many, um, many use cases around like patient access and, uh, innovation that we’re trying to do, surgeries, uh, being able to do clinical, clinical trials, but AI is everywhere and that’s what’s really important is that we’re figuring out for all of you what your software solution. Services offering, or even if you’re selling that, you have that value, value proposition down at that level.
[00:19:43] Nina Harding: So let’s take a look at retail, for example. We have a short little video. Are we gonna be able to run that video? This is where we’re seeing a lot of shrinking. Margins, people wanting more, uh, intimacy with their customer. Here we go.
[00:21:09] Nina Harding: Are we good? Well, that was a quite, uh, quite a nice, uh, uh, digital response to the end of the video. But what you’re seeing is people are using it in all different facets as we go into an example. I always love to do, use examples of partners that are hitting the mark ’cause we can all learn from ’em and myself included.
[00:21:30] Nina Harding: We’re partners that are really successful. I chose to use Cognizant. Cognizant was actually our partner Si of the year, um, at the Americas level. And one of the things, and I won’t drain it on, um, the right hand side of this, uh, the slide, but they really are helping the customer’s move in a framework approach by industry, uh, to an AI landscape.
[00:21:58] Nina Harding: Uh, they, they have secured an end-to-end solution and they’re focused on real business outcomes, and they have been growing at over 30% year over year. Huge. That’s great. Right? That’s what we all want for our businesses. And so what you’re seeing here is. They have a narrative around the frontier firms and they pull that through when they’re engaged in the clients and with our field.
[00:22:27] Nina Harding: And then they’re using the incentives that we have. And don’t worry, I have a slide on some of the incentives we have, um, to actually make sure that they’re using those effectively in the pre-sales motion, but most importantly on the adoption and the change management after they’ve actually, uh, built out the solutions.
[00:22:45] Nina Harding: And that’s really, really, really key here. So here’s an example of, um, of Cognizant at Coldwater Creek and Soft Surroundings. They had two different platforms and they brought it all together and then they brought Dynamics in as well. And what they have actually been able to do is improve a lot of the inventory management, the visualization, um, of all the inventory around.
[00:23:14] Nina Harding: Around all of their stores and their warehouses, and they’ve been able to streamline the fulfillment and improved, uh, reduced back orders. What you’re seeing is those are all concrete examples of the outcomes that they were trying to drive for at the beginning, and those were all. Key pain points. And so they go in, cognizant will go in and understand with what are the material things that you are, that’s keeping you up at night, that is creating that drainage, uh, in your accounts or if you could transform, what does that look like?
[00:23:52] Nina Harding: And so there, they spend the whole conversation together with Microsoft focused on doing that. And then we do the outcome based proposal. Very different, right? It creates for a much stronger vendor relationship, and the customer feels like they really have in the essence of the word partners, helping them to be successful.
[00:24:15] Nina Harding: Right.
[00:24:20] Nina Harding: Here we go. So I promised you some of the incentives, and I know you might just take a, a quick peek at some of these. These are, these are, um, some of the incentives that. Microsoft has put forward to help our partners on this journey. Uh, this is a slide that we’ve created from the America’s perspective to try and simplify it.
[00:24:42] Nina Harding: Now there’s a lot behind it, right? But to try and help simplify, um, where are the incentives available? And I think this is one of the first times you’re actually saying what’s available for the sis. Versus for the software partners. And then we’re gonna hear more today about what’s also available for the channel partners as well.
[00:25:03] Nina Harding: Um, it’s really thinking about what is your behavior as a partner? How are you showing up? How are, uh, you making a contribution to that customer? And then how can Microsoft best support you in that journey? So there’s all sorts of, uh, all sorts of incentives here, and it’s really, uh, designed to be flexible to what you need.
[00:25:24] Nina Harding: But for the, I, I think it’s very focused on the value proposition as well that you bring to the table. So, um, I encourage you to take a look at this, make sure that you have this in your diary or your flipping of, of how are we maximizing, um, deals. And we can certainly go through a lot more of this. And we have webinars and so forth that will take you through all of that.
[00:25:52] Nina Harding: Alright, so. I’ve talked a lot about this outcome-based selling, and that’s, it’s literally how Microsoft is starting to move forward on how do we go about engaging with the customers and with our partners. You’re gonna see, because our customers are asking more Microsoft involved and for us to go jointly into the opportunities.
[00:26:16] Nina Harding: Not that we necessarily, we’re not building out a larger consulting force or anything like that, but. We want to make sure that the customer ask that Microsoft is engaged in working with our partners, is honored, um, and that we’re, we’re part of that, and that we’re also sharing our, our experiences and learning from all of you at the same time on who has the best, uh, approach, Beth best, best methodologies and best practices to light up our customers together.
[00:26:51] Nina Harding: But the ROI doesn’t really show up just in dollars alone. We all know this, right? Um, it could be in, uh. Satisfaction it could be in care. So as you’re starting to look at this new evolution of how we’re really landing the value proposition of ai, we have to think outside of the box that it’s not just monetary and it’s not, I think you said savings or securing funds and so forth, but it’s really of how do I leapfrog into the modern world?
[00:27:22] Nina Harding: How do I change that entire experience and think outside of the box? And, uh, make sure that the conversation is not just about how do we optimize certain practices, but how do we have this more executive level strategy conversation on the future of how we’re gonna engage with our clients, uh, their clients in a much more, um, I think transformative and personal
[00:27:51] Nina Harding: way as we go forward.
[00:27:54] Nina Harding: So we know that if the outcomes are the, what we’re looking to go drive, the next question is really how do we go do that? And that is gonna be through the agents on here. You’ll see just from from out in the market, what we see will light up the market. We think that, or I can’t even say we, IIDC says 81% of leaders are expecting agents.
[00:28:24] Nina Harding: Full utilization in the next 12 to 18 months. And to be honest, I think this quote is probably even two months old. So we’re already, we’re probably down to like, you know, eight, eight to 12 months. And what I’m seeing that proliferation happening, it’s crazy. So understanding that value proposition, um, whether you’re from a software company or a services company or even some of our resellers, what’s that niche?
[00:28:52] Nina Harding: What’s that industry or sub-industry? What is that? Horizontal. I go after customer service within, uh, the manufacturing vertical. Right. And then are you building out agents or do you have capability? And that’s what we’re doing internally at Microsoft as well, is to help make that really visible to the field so that you’re differentiated.
[00:29:15] Nina Harding: Differentiation is gonna be really key right now because there’s so many people that say, oh, I do migration services, or I can help with data, or I can do security. But it’s the specificity around the industry and what you are truly known for within that space. So one of the things that we look to do is, is looking at all of the different areas where we see agents popping up.
[00:29:44] Nina Harding: And this is a helpful slide. Sometimes I think, um, it starts to highlight, um, where we’re seeing some traction in financial services. Or in healthcare manufacturing. And then when I talk about the horizontals or the personas, you start to see some of the um, really repeatable, high return on investment type of things.
[00:30:08] Nina Harding: Is this resonating with some of you guys? Yeah. I’m seeing a hit, a lot of head nods. This, if you’re on the services side, right? We’re in an intimate setting. This is where I encourage you to try and build an agent, right? Package that agent, put it on marketplace, make that available, and then make that known to our field sales organization.
[00:30:27] Nina Harding: ’cause they are looking for quick wins along those lines.
[00:30:31] Nina Harding: So on that, um,
[00:30:36] Nina Harding: uh, one of the things that we’re along the journey for is the skilling. This is moving at such a fast pace, right? Um, so you’re looking at. Um, anthropic is really a big topic right now, right? Gemini, you’re looking at cloud, you’re, um, or Claude.
[00:30:55] Nina Harding: Um, you’re looking at all of these different, uh, scenarios and one of the things at Microsoft is we really wanna be open to all of these different technologies because our customers are open. So we want to be part of taking you on that journey. And one of the things that we invest in white.
[00:31:12] Nina Harding: Significantly is all of the training. Um, and I wanna encourage you guys to take advantage of it. Training is not a one-time thing. It is, it is a constant muscle that you must exercise. So as I come to my conclusion, I have a couple three key things, right? One is really understanding what your superpower is, right?
[00:31:33] Nina Harding: The partners that I’m finding are really aligned well with the field are really winning. Those stories are the ones that have. Know and can articulate their superpowers. What am I known for? What are the use cases I can either build to or have agents against? And where have I done this consistently? And packaged really, really concretely, right?
[00:31:55] Nina Harding: Um, this, this proliferate of like, I can do everything. Unfortunately, you get lost a little bit in the noise, right? So clear positioning, proof point’s, so critical right now, and reinforcing that credibility with the clients that have adopted. The second thing is that you’ve heard a little bit about this hopefully.
[00:32:16] Nina Harding: How many of you have heard of the part partner success story? Okay, this is really, really key. We launched about maybe a month ago, and we already have over a hundred, uh, stories from partners, and the field is loving it. What it is is it brands the stories with your brand if you submit them. So what? Talk about credibility, um, with the field and with our marketers to have your name and that recognition picked up.
[00:32:45] Nina Harding: It’s really, really fantastic. So I encourage you to do that. For those of you taking quick snaps, I did put a code on here, so if you wanna go straight to it, uh, you can take it. Um, and go explore with it. What’s nice about it is it’s AI based, so it will help you write these stories very, very quickly.
[00:33:04] Nina Harding: There’s no reason why your sales reps can’t be writing these stories, and then yes,
[00:33:11] Nina Harding: uh, yeah, you can do no meaning like from enterprise. No. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You can do it on any, on any, there is a different level of fidelity of if you have the customer’s permission. Right. Um, to pu to publish it or not. And that’s some functionality we’re working on. If there’s enough traction of, of this is to help you guys.
[00:33:32] Nina Harding: Secure that with Microsoft. Yeah. Um, but yeah, it can be any customer there. But I encourage you to take a look at that. And I know I’m two minutes over here, so I’m just gonna leave you with this. Um, at the end of the day, as I, as I wrap up here, I just wanna make sure that what, where we’re going and we’re going together, that it’s simple and actionable between us and it’s easy for our field to understand.
[00:34:00] Nina Harding: Where you play the value proposition you play so that we’re going into deals even more effectively together. Right? So you heard industry, sub-industry, persona level or horizontal. Put that in if, um. Figuring out what your superpower is, making sure that you’re trained, that there’s evidence around the success, and capturing that in ways, uh, that are critical to not only your business, but giving us the visibility of that success.
[00:34:31] Nina Harding: Like scream from the rack rafters. Use these tools to make sure that we know just how transformational you’ve been in some of the customers and where you’re uniquely winning. So, so important. So keep investing in the skilling. You can see my kind of like five power plays, right? And the last one always being that superpowers.
[00:34:56] Nina Harding: So with that, um, if we do all of these things consistently, you won’t just be keeping up with ai. I think we will all be leading on that AI mission. So thank you very much. I appreciate it.
[00:35:14] Vince Menzione: Don’t forget, ultimate Partner Live is coming soon, May 11th through the 13th in beautiful Bellevue, Washington. I hope to see you there.
Transcript
Asleigh Vogstad Audio Podcast
[00:00:00] Ashleigh Vogstad: The attention economy is about selling to human beings. Now, if you look at something like the Amazon versus Perplexity lawsuit, the whole underlying premise is around the shift of no longer selling to humans directly, but of selling to machines.
[00:00:19] Vince Menzione: We just finished Ultimate Partners Winter Retreat here in beautiful Boca to a sold out crowd. Today I’m joined by Ashley Waad. The CEO of transcends for this compelling discussion. Ash, welcome back to the podcasts.
[00:00:34] Ashleigh Vogstad: It’s so good to be here, Vince. Thank you. Uh,
[00:00:37] Vince Menzione: so well, we’re back in Boca again and we were just here yesterday for the Ultimate Partner Executive Winter Retreat in person.
[00:00:44] Vince Menzione: What a great event we had together.
[00:00:46] Ashleigh Vogstad: It was phenomenal. Thank you so much for having us there and on stage and, and genuinely the community is like a family, so seeing so many familiar faces and spending some quality time was just great.
[00:00:57] Vince Menzione: It has really, truly become like family. It really, I’m, I’m, I’m having so much fun with this and getting to watch.
[00:01:04] Vince Menzione: Not just our business grow and our community grow, but to see all of our friends and, uh, organizations like Transcends that have been with us since the beginning, since the very first ultimate partner acting even before the first ultimate partner. And, uh. We were just talking about. I’d love to catch up with what you’ve been doing.
[00:01:22] Vince Menzione: Like you just came, you’ve been on a whirlwind. I mean, you’re always, every time like it’s, where’s Ash? She’s, uh, she’s on a plane again, or she’s on, she’s on the slopes. But tell us where you were just this week.
[00:01:34] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah. The week started in a snowstorm, actually transporting myself from Whistler. I didn’t know if I would make it to the airport, but then down to Silicon Valley and
[00:01:45] Vince Menzione: Nice.
[00:01:46] Ashleigh Vogstad: Wow, that place is just inspiring and eyeopening. I mean, seeing the Nvidia campus, a MD, it’s really just other worldly and it had me reflecting on, it’s
[00:02:00] Vince Menzione: not Whistler. Yeah, it’s
[00:02:02] Ashleigh Vogstad: definitely not Whistler. Definitely not Whistler
[00:02:05] Vince Menzione: about,
[00:02:06] Ashleigh Vogstad: um, yeah, it just had me reflecting on being down there. I used to spend a lot of time in the Valley around 2017 and.
[00:02:13] Ashleigh Vogstad: In this theme of AI and kind of what’s really coming, I was, I was thinking about, I had met this woman, Julia Moss Bridge, who’s a neuroscientist studying ai. She had a project called Loving Ai, and I was down there when they had borrowed Sophia, this humanoid robot from S and Robotics.
[00:02:32] Vince Menzione: Oh yes. Yes.
[00:02:33] Ashleigh Vogstad: Really interesting.
[00:02:34] Ashleigh Vogstad: Sophia’s actually a citizen of Saudi. Mm-hmm. First, first robot to actually be made citizen of a country. So they had Sophia set up and the part that was just mind boggling at the time was that Sophia was hosting in real life therapy sessions with actual human beings sitting across the table. And what really struck me as.
[00:02:59] Ashleigh Vogstad: Kind of just, you know, that was only eight, nine years ago. And that was esoteric. Wacky and
[00:03:05] Vince Menzione: eerie.
[00:03:05] Ashleigh Vogstad: Weird.
[00:03:05] Vince Menzione: Eerie at the time.
[00:03:06] Ashleigh Vogstad: Incredibly eerie. Yeah. I mean, a, a human getting, uh, you know, therapy sessions from a robot sitting across the table. Yeah. And it just had me thinking how far we’ve come today. In 2025, Harvard Business Review said that therapy is actually the number one use case for ai.
[00:03:26] Vince Menzione: I’ve heard that. That is striking. I go back to COVID. We were having this conversation last night at at the dinner for the Ultimate Partner event, and I think that COVID allowed us to transcend,
[00:03:42] Ashleigh Vogstad: mm-hmm.
[00:03:42] Vince Menzione: No pun intended there, but actually accelerate where we are today, that the acceptance of AI and the acceleration, or the ability to accept change so quickly.
[00:03:56] Vince Menzione: Started with COVID because we were so, so we were forced on whatever it was, March 10th I think, here in the United States to shut down everything and move to this remote life.
[00:04:08] Ashleigh Vogstad: Mm-hmm.
[00:04:09] Vince Menzione: And I think we’ve been shocked by that. I think our systems have all been shocked by that. And then here comes chat GBT in November of 2022 and we’re like.
[00:04:20] Vince Menzione: Shocked in some respects, but like really everyone has embraced it in such a strong way, and now we’re getting. It’s almost daily update. You know, we’re gonna talk, I know we’re gonna talk about Anthropic and some of the things that’s been happening just in this last month that are striking and changing that have a lot of organizations trying to navigate, which is what, you know, you, you help organizations do.
[00:04:43] Vince Menzione: But it feels like this is happening so fast and will continue to happen so fast. And as I said yesterday, I don’t know what this world’s gonna look like by 2030.
[00:04:53] Ashleigh Vogstad: You know, and I think the thing is, is that nobody knows what the world is gonna look like in 2030. I’ve been reading Ray Kurz Well’s, the Singularity is nearer, so the original book, the Singularity is near and he’s known to be a very accurate predictionist on the future.
[00:05:11] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah. But even with someone like that, you know, there, there nobody really knows what the world is gonna look like. And when you talk about COVID. At transcends, we have a value of digital freedom. So I founded the business in 2018, which was pre COVID. I as a fully remote organization, and at the time that was, you know, more groundbreaking, but then very quickly with CI that, that became the so-called new normal.
[00:05:37] Ashleigh Vogstad: But we’re always thinking about. You know, remote first doesn’t mean remote only, and I think in this tide of what you’ve talked about, technological change being more acceptable and the pace of change. One of the interesting things that we see as a go-to-market agency is that in-person events are increasing.
[00:05:56] Vince Menzione: Yes.
[00:05:57] Ashleigh Vogstad: People want and crave the face-to-face. Just like with the ultimate partner series.
[00:06:02] Vince Menzione: I felt it. So it was striking yesterday. It, it seems like it’s, again, this was event number nine for us, but to see the, um, uh, receptiveness isn’t the right term, but it was this, uh, people, the, the embracing. Of seeing each other and hugging each other and being in the same room with each other.
[00:06:22] Vince Menzione: And even people that didn’t know each other, like by the, the, as the day evolved, this, uh, connection that they all seemed to have with one another during the sessions and participating, everyone actively participated in the sessions. And, um, I said this in the beginning, we’re not a Slack channel and we’re not like some post on LinkedIn.
[00:06:43] Vince Menzione: Uh, we’re there, there’s no playbook that’s set today around partnerships or even go to markets and marketing that we could espouse and say, this is the playbook for the next year. Right. It’s, it’s changing so rapidly.
[00:06:55] Ashleigh Vogstad: So rapidly,
[00:06:57] Vince Menzione: and you’ve embraced it. And I, and what we’re gonna talk about right now, I mean, I, I, you know, you’ve embraced AI in such a strong way.
[00:07:04] Vince Menzione: Um, personally and with your business, I want to, I wanna dive in here a little bit. First of all, a couple things For those of those who are listening who don’t know you, I think maybe just a moment about transcends and your role, and then I wanna dive in on how you’re thinking about ai because I know you’re doing some things personally.
[00:07:22] Vince Menzione: I want you to share that with, with our listeners and viewers today.
[00:07:25] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah, great. And I just wanna comment that it was a cool moment yesterday being up on stage with yourself and Mark Monday from ServiceNow and having the audience so engaged and active and Nina Harding from Microsoft stepping up and entering the conversation.
[00:07:40] Vince Menzione: So cool.
[00:07:41] Ashleigh Vogstad: It just made for such a collaborative experience, which was a cool moment, but yeah. Um, so. I founded this business, transcends a go-to-market agency after being at Microsoft myself. And really our differentiation is deep strategic partnerships with hyperscalers, whether that’s AWS, Google, Microsoft, and you know, that.
[00:08:03] Ashleigh Vogstad: It comes with a challenge to be on the leading edge of technology.
[00:08:08] Vince Menzione: Yes,
[00:08:09] Ashleigh Vogstad: it, it’s really an imperative for our business and we are an AI first firm. Microsoft talks a lot about Frontier Firm, and I’ll take a, a different kind of angle on it. You know, when I think about Frontier. I now think about it as instead of the growth mindset, I now think about a frontier mindset.
[00:08:28] Vince Menzione: Frontier mindset. You have to change my principles.
[00:08:32] Ashleigh Vogstad: You know, maybe, like you said, the world is changing so rapidly. Yeah, it’s
[00:08:36] Vince Menzione: changing rapidly.
[00:08:36] Ashleigh Vogstad: And what a frontier mindset means is that as we’re approaching work for our clients, we are thinking about AI innovation in every single customer. Interaction, customer innovation.
[00:08:49] Ashleigh Vogstad: So today we’re building AI agents into much of the work that we’re delivering for clients. And as a business owner and leader, I’ve been challenged to also think critically around how I’m choosing to run the company. And right now we’re going through a huge overhaul of where we have data sitting in silos and different applications.
[00:09:09] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yep. And getting that into one place with one view so we can start layering on more insight. AI innovation.
[00:09:17] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And data’s such an critical part, part of this, as we, we talked about yesterday. But you know, even the, what you said, which is, would, would’ve been striking a year ago to say, we’re an AI first, uh, agency isn’t as striking anymore.
[00:09:32] Vince Menzione: Uh, we heard Nina when we were having this conversation on stage yesterday, say that it’s an imperative at Microsoft that the agencies that they choose to work with, the third party vendors that they work with have to be an AI first organization. I have to be a frontier firm, and so I’m a, I am sensitive to the word frontier firm.
[00:09:53] Vince Menzione: I understand why Microsoft uses it and I understand the value of what we used to call, you know, customer zero or back in the day we used to say eating your own dog food, but essentially being an organization that has leaned in, in a way, and with ai. Even more so, so important to do it. So tell us, I know you’ve done some things personally as well, but tell, tell us what you’ve done with the organization.
[00:10:18] Vince Menzione: Uh, you talked about data and making data available and having, having a true data state as opposed to silos of data, but then you also made some personal investments and sacrifices. I would say.
[00:10:30] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah.
[00:10:30] Vince Menzione: Yeah. In terms of what you’re doing around ai,
[00:10:32] Ashleigh Vogstad: so I mean, let’s start on the personal side. I’m the CEO of my organization, and you can read in books or news articles that it is critical for AI transformation to start at the C-suite and specifically in the CEO seat.
[00:10:46] Vince Menzione: Yes.
[00:10:46] Ashleigh Vogstad: And that really. Landed for me and so I’m personally leading in About two weeks ago, I built an agent, just end-to-end on my own, got into copilot studio. Wow. Got comfortable with the interface. You know, I was clunky moving around in there at first, chose my model. You know, I went with one of the anthropic Claude models for this particular project and built up an agent that can deliver executive communications like.
[00:11:14] Ashleigh Vogstad: Thought leadership blogs, uh, LinkedIn posts, but in a particular human being’s voice by ingesting things like their social profiles, their SharePoint sites, where they live and work. And it has been so surprising doing an ab test between just what a chat GBT or a copilot could produce.
[00:11:32] Yeah.
[00:11:33] Ashleigh Vogstad: In comparison with the authenticity of the voice coming from the agent.
[00:11:37] Ashleigh Vogstad: Uh, it was just a really cool experience to roll up the sleeves and get in there. But also I think the, the investment that you’re referring to is, I made a big decision to return to school and uh, got accepted to go to Oxford.
[00:11:52] Vince Menzione: Wow.
[00:11:52] Ashleigh Vogstad: And I’m studying artificial intelligence there.
[00:11:54] Vince Menzione: That is incredible. That is incredible.
[00:11:57] Vince Menzione: Oxford, uh, we’ve heard of that school before here in the United States.
[00:12:03] Ashleigh Vogstad: You know, it’s been a really great experience. It’s in person, so I’m traveling there about every 60 to 90 days and living on campus. I mean, really, Oxford isn’t. Formally a campus, it’s sort of a, a city and a university all, all ruled into one and the experience has been really powerful.
[00:12:21] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yes. One of the things I wanted to get outta the program was a more global perspective, and it’s been fascinating to me that about half the faculty so far, or or professors, guest lecturers that have been coming into the program have been from China or very direct experience working in the Chinese market.
[00:12:38] Vince Menzione: That is fascinating.
[00:12:39] Ashleigh Vogstad: It’s been a completely different view. Or for example, you know, really digging into some of the legal cases that are driving precedence for how AI is interacting with corporations.
[00:12:51] Vince Menzione: Mm.
[00:12:51] Ashleigh Vogstad: One of the big ones for me has been looking at Amazon versus p perplexity. This is still a live case that’s happening right now.
[00:12:58] Ashleigh Vogstad: And you know, I think it was Forbes magazine that the headline was the End of Commerce for this case because it’s really about. How human beings are being replaced with machines and hearing some of the world’s leading thinkers, leading AI researchers on these topics has just been really expansive.
[00:13:19] Vince Menzione: It’s fascinating.
[00:13:20] Vince Menzione: I mean, it’s, this started a couple years ago with, uh, Hollywood, in fact. Suing the industry or suing the technology companies with regards to, uh, employment, right? Mm-hmm. About the, the, uh, copyright infringement and what’s gonna happen in the entertainment industry. And I think that was just a one very small example.
[00:13:40] Ashleigh Vogstad: You know, voice people think about DeepFakes. Yeah. And they think about video, but actually voice is a big issue. And you look at the, um, you know, the what happened between Scarlett Johansson and her voice in her, and then open AI rolling out a voice that sounded identical. Sounds like her.
[00:13:59] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:13:59] Ashleigh Vogstad: To Scarlett Johansen and, and where that went.
[00:14:01] Ashleigh Vogstad: It’s, it, this is a new ground for, for everybody that we’re going through right now.
[00:14:07] Vince Menzione: It is. We can dive and go in so many different directions, but let’s talk about marketing and advertising since that’s kind of. Transcends core, and a lot of the people that watch and listen to us are in the partnership world.
[00:14:22] Vince Menzione: They’re leading organizations, they own organizations, the the chief executives or CVPs of organizations. Let’s talk about advertising and where that’s going.
[00:14:32] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah, great.
[00:14:33] Vince Menzione: Yeah,
[00:14:33] Ashleigh Vogstad: I mean, uh, I love Marshall McCluen. He’s a Canadian theor, uh, media theorist, and in 1964, he very famously said, the medium is the message.
[00:14:43] Ashleigh Vogstad: And what that really means when you peel back the layers is that every type of communication medium has these inherent biases. And I think what we’re experiencing right now is this new medium of artificial intelligence, and I’m really interested in exploring what that means for the media world. So. If I gonna take you back to 1997, there’s this really famous, the Innovator’s Dilemma.
[00:15:10] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yes. Kind of a classic business 1 0 1 type book by Clayton Christensen. Yes. And he talks about this theory of disruption where new technologies, emerging technologies start at the low end of the market. They gain this momentum and they eventually displace incumbents. And you know, sometimes seemingly out of nowhere.
[00:15:28] Vince Menzione: Yeah. And Microsoft was a good example of this at that time.
[00:15:32] Ashleigh Vogstad: Def,
[00:15:32] Vince Menzione: yeah.
[00:15:33] Ashleigh Vogstad: All the big players. All the big players. I mean, Google go for search as well, right? So that’s one of the classic examples. And so. If we look at storytelling technology, you have things like chat, GBT and Sora entering the scene. And in the beginning, you know, they’re producing a shitty first draft.
[00:15:51] Ashleigh Vogstad: Uh, you know, it’s things like post-apocalyptic dogs with five finger human beings. Yeah. Things like this. But, you know, and they really lacked emotional resonance. But as we all know. That’s not the case anymore. No, it’s
[00:16:05] Vince Menzione: not.
[00:16:06] Ashleigh Vogstad: AI is increasingly producing content that is very powerful and is starting to resonate with people.
[00:16:13] Ashleigh Vogstad: You know, I’m definitely not a neuroscientist, but if we, we look into the neuroscience, it’s your cortical sal circuit that. Kind of is responsible for pattern recognition and it compares what you’re seeing in the real world with what you expect to see. So when you take this into a space of advertising, you know, if there’s an ad that is AI generated, that is just weird and kind of.
[00:16:38] Ashleigh Vogstad: Tweaking for you.
[00:16:39] Vince Menzione: Like that robot we were talking about earlier,
[00:16:41] Ashleigh Vogstad: like the robot we were Exactly, yeah. Like Sophia, you enter what psychologists call the uncanny valley, so it’s like what you’re looking at isn’t exactly what you’re expecting to see and the Spidey sense is, is tweaking. You know, that’s a low place of emotional resonance.
[00:16:58] Ashleigh Vogstad: This world is changing really, really quickly and we’re seeing AI generated media make huge impacts in the market Now, tools like Luma Dream Machine, I mean, it’s incredible what they can achieve today.
[00:17:11] Vince Menzione: It’s fascinating. We see it in, you know, I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. That’s sort of the world of our business community, and you can very easily detect when someone is doing a post.
[00:17:22] Vince Menzione: Or they’re writing an art, whatever they’re doing. Right. Some type of draft of something. Uh, and you can tell when it’s ai, I mean, it’s so easy to tell, and even people are generating reports and claiming that their research papers or studies or whatever they call them, uh, and it’s AI generated and it’s just the authenticity isn’t there.
[00:17:39] Vince Menzione: The, the sense that this is real. That it can be trusted is not there. And I think trust is what we’re talking about here too, as well.
[00:17:47] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah. I mean, let’s go to authenticity ’cause that’s super important. Yeah. And I know a lot of your listeners, you come from the hyperscaler world of partnerships. You need to have that differentiated, better together story.
[00:17:59] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah. It’s really important to have an authentic voice in market. And I think about that also in terms of platforms and channels. We’re seeing a decrease in certain major social media platforms, and yet Substack spiked 48% in monthly active users last month.
[00:18:15] Vince Menzione: That’s
[00:18:16] fascinating.
[00:18:16] Ashleigh Vogstad: Um, you know, and I think that one of the reasons is it’s viewed as a more authentic channel where you’re getting thought leadership from people that you’re, you know, genuinely interested in hearing their, their points of view.
[00:18:28] Ashleigh Vogstad: And I think that’s really an important piece in here.
[00:18:31] Vince Menzione: Yeah, you mentioned this yesterday and you had me thinking about it as well because we have used LinkedIn for everything internally, our newsletter, which has been around for six or seven years now. But that Substack is really, and I go to Substack too, to, if I really wanna dig in on a topic.
[00:18:47] Ashleigh Vogstad: Mm.
[00:18:47] Vince Menzione: And there’s a particular author that I like their point of view, I’ll follow, I’ll follow them on Substack.
[00:18:53] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah. I mean, and this comes, maybe brings us around to who is the buyer and who is the audience, and who do we need to be thinking about when we’re designing sales and marketing programs. And really we’re, we’re shifting into the place of the Gen Z buyer by 20 30, 70 5% of buyers are gonna be Gen Z.
[00:19:12] Ashleigh Vogstad: They’re gonna control 12 trillion in. Spend
[00:19:16] Vince Menzione: by 2030. ’cause we, we’ve been, we’ve been saying that the millennial is the new buyer the last three years. I think Jay said it right here at this stage.
[00:19:23] Ashleigh Vogstad: Mm.
[00:19:24] Vince Menzione: Um, so now it’s Gen Z.
[00:19:27] Ashleigh Vogstad: And they’re buying online. Yeah, they’re buying in marketplaces. Yeah. So a stat recently was that roughly half of them made purchases on the social platforms of YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok in the last month.
[00:19:39] Ashleigh Vogstad: I mean, that buyer behavior of being inside. Social type application and directly making a purchase. And I think in the B2B world, we need to take lessons from here and start thinking more front and center than we even have been around marketplaces. I mean, part of my reason for being in Silicon Valley this week was to celebrate a $12 million transaction that happened via Marketplace and two years ago that would’ve been a huge deal.
[00:20:06] Ashleigh Vogstad: Huge,
[00:20:07] Vince Menzione: huge.
[00:20:07] Ashleigh Vogstad: And, and it still is a really big deal, but these things are becoming. More and more common experiences. Very much so. We need to be there and in that conversation.
[00:20:16] Vince Menzione: So how are you thinking about it? How are you directing your clients to behave or act around it? What are you, what are you doing exactly that we could take to this community perhaps and share with them.
[00:20:28] Ashleigh Vogstad: I’ll bring it back to the authenticity piece because you need to have a product that delivers value first and foremost. There is, there is no substitution for that. Yeah, and what I would say is. One of my professors at Oxford, Eric Zow, he has this theory that I’m really digging into and finding very fascinating, which is that for the last several decades we’ve been in the attention economy, and that’s shifting to the trust economy.
[00:20:55] Ashleigh Vogstad: Now the attention economy is about selling to human beings. Yeah. It’s about the, the business model is essentially that you need human being eyeballs on lists of recommendation links. Yeah. Whether that’s from Google or from, you know, searching, shopping on Amazon, you get this list of recommendation links and the economic engine that drives that business model is advertising.
[00:21:19] Ashleigh Vogstad: Now, if you look at something like the Amazon versus Perplexity lawsuit, the whole underlying premise is around the shift of no longer selling to humans directly, but of selling to machines, or in other words, agents who are making purchases, s on behalf on your behalf. And an agent isn’t going to be razzle dazzled by some inauthentic story.
[00:21:44] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:21:44] Ashleigh Vogstad: They’re gonna be looking for third party validation on Exactly. You know, they need to be sure that they’re making the right decision.
[00:21:51] Vince Menzione: They’re gonna look at surveys, they’re gonna look at customer comments. Like if I went through my Amazon site and I was looking to see what people said about the purchase or the product and specifically Exactly.
[00:22:01] Vince Menzione: The agent’s gonna do this on my behalf, is what you’re saying.
[00:22:04] Ashleigh Vogstad: This is what I’m saying. Yeah. And, and. I believe that to layer on top of, you know, Eric Z’s philosophy, I’ve been thinking about this in terms of the hyperscaler world, and I think that this is the time to lean into co-selling partnerships.
[00:22:18] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah, because being third party validated by somebody like AWS Microsoft and having all that co-sell data, what are your recent wins? Yes, that’s really high integrity, trusted data source for an agent to make a purchasing decision, and marketplaces are a key part of that.
[00:22:35] Vince Menzione: So we’ll move from AI will take a, a more active role in the marketplace.
[00:22:40] Ashleigh Vogstad: I definitely believe so.
[00:22:42] Vince Menzione: Which makes total sense. I, you know, we’ve been doing this for nine or 10 years now, and when I was at Microsoft, we started co-selling. In fact, it was, uh, Aaron Feiger was up on stage yesterday talking about it. Right? January of 2016, co-selling began.
[00:22:55] Ashleigh Vogstad: Mm.
[00:22:56] Vince Menzione: And there were only a few companies doing it.
[00:22:59] Vince Menzione: Right. So she worked with one of the very first ones that were doing it. Uh, the challenge we have today is there are tens of thousands of partner organizations in the marketplace that are all trying to get the attention of the Microsoft sellers. Hmm. As, or the Google sellers or the AWS sellers and tell their story.
[00:23:19] Vince Menzione: And a seller only has so many minutes in a day, they have a quota that they have to hit. These quotas are tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars of annual quota of cloud consumption. And I wanna sell my $50,000 widget, whatever it is. Yeah. Right. And I, I don’t understand why I’m not getting a callback.
[00:23:38] Vince Menzione: And this, this is the dilemma we’ve faced because of, because of this, uh, scarcity of time and this over overwhelming of tech, you know. Tech, tech buyers trying to make this all happen, so now the AI can come in and help me solve for it as a seller, right?
[00:23:55] Ashleigh Vogstad: The AI is definitely acting as an interface to make recommendations to field sellers in different organizations and.
[00:24:04] Ashleigh Vogstad: To, to kind of take this on a, a tangent. Dupes. So a dupe. I know people of my generation, we’d think about this like a knockoff Right. You know, a knockoff handbag.
[00:24:15] Vince Menzione: Yep.
[00:24:15] Ashleigh Vogstad: Dupes have exploded.
[00:24:16] Vince Menzione: Fake. Fake Rolexes.
[00:24:18] Ashleigh Vogstad: Exactly. The fake Rolex for sure. And I think it was in December, P WC rolled out a survey. 81% of Gen Z were planning to purchase a dupe this holiday season.
[00:24:29] Vince Menzione: That’s wild.
[00:24:30] Ashleigh Vogstad: Dupes can be, you know, we gave luxury, good examples, but Louis
[00:24:34] Vince Menzione: Vuitton and yeah. So,
[00:24:35] Ashleigh Vogstad: but furniture, these sorts of things. And the important takeaway here for tech is the same principle will land, is that people are looking for value out of a product, not necessarily a name brand. AI is accelerating this whole process, and agents are gonna be looking at the same thing.
[00:24:56] Ashleigh Vogstad: They’re looking for that authenticity in terms of the actual product value. So, you know, beware there’s lots of disruption happening in the market right now with this dupe mentality, which is actually a cultural shift talking about I appreciate value over a superficial. Brand name. In some cases, there’s also a, a small contrary trend where certain luxury goods are rising because yes, things are never that simple.
[00:25:22] Vince Menzione: So you work with a lot of these tech companies, a lot of SaaS companies, is we, we call them ISVs, we also call them, uh, software development companies. Now we keep changing these acronyms around. Uh, there’s been a lot of, uh, consternation in that segment, I would say, around ai. Right, because a lot of them are getting told that they’ll be outta business in a few years.
[00:25:43] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. I think Satya Nadella famously said this last year that SAS will go away. Right? He’s predicting the demise. How do you help some of these organizations to differentiate? And there’s some of these are huge value organizations. We have have them in the room with us, ServiceNow and Veeam and Adobe.
[00:26:01] Vince Menzione: Um, how do you help them achieve their results? ’cause that’s what you, you know, your organization is really helping these organizations to achieve their pinnacle as a partner. What do you, what do you say to them now and how do you help them through this time?
[00:26:16] Ashleigh Vogstad: I’m on the side of the fence that I really can’t see an organization ripping out something like Salesforce, Adobe, ServiceNow.
[00:26:24] Vince Menzione: Agreed.
[00:26:24] Ashleigh Vogstad: I mean that the amount of change management and. The extent to which these, these platforms are embedded, actually running and operating organizations. I personally, if, if we’re calling those companies, SaaS companies, I don’t agree that that layer is gonna go away. I mean, we’re seeing these organizations lean into AI in a huge way to borrow Microsofts.
[00:26:50] Ashleigh Vogstad: Term, you know, they’re all becoming frontier firms.
[00:26:54] Vince Menzione: Yes.
[00:26:54] Ashleigh Vogstad: So where I would go to, to answer that question, we do work with many, you know, organizations on that caliber, on things like their marketplace strategy on how to light up the fields of different hyperscalers. It really does come down to things like having a strong drumbeat with the Microsoft field, celebrating your win stories.
[00:27:15] Ashleigh Vogstad: Maybe that’s where I’ll land as Please do the marketer, because it sounds so simple, and I don’t know why we kind of continue to come back to this, but we’re talking about that third party validation and really, um, in order to have that, like what the hyperscalers want is you jointly celebrating success.
[00:27:36] Ashleigh Vogstad: Here’s the kicker. Publicly.
[00:27:38] Vince Menzione: Publicly,
[00:27:39] Ashleigh Vogstad: you know, you need a customer story on your website, a press release that contains a quote from your customer. Ideally, also a quote from an executive at one of the hyperscalers. Like, actually lean in to live the value of your better together story. And when you do that, when you, when it comes around to partner of the year time, and we talk to you about, okay, what client stories are we gonna feature?
[00:28:03] Ashleigh Vogstad: We’re even gonna know because when we Google you, we can see the public press of the joint wins that you’ve been celebrating. And I can tell you that that is a huge indicator on whether or not you’re well-placed to be in the 4% of partners who actually win Partner of the Year award’s.
[00:28:20] Vince Menzione: Fascinating to me.
[00:28:21] Vince Menzione: ’cause to me it would feel like table stakes maybe ’cause where we sit is ultimate partner and where this room sits with all the top partners that I just assume that everybody follows that. That, that guidance.
[00:28:34] Ashleigh Vogstad: Mm.
[00:28:34] Vince Menzione: And so this is really impactful and I want to get here because I know you spent a lot of time here and we’ve talked about it before, but I think the partner of the year awards, when we first met many years ago, that was a you, you’ve expanded the business, but that’s still a core mission and and value that you bring to the community and to the partner ecosystem is helping them through this process.
[00:28:55] Vince Menzione: So I know that that’s gonna be coming up soon, so I thought maybe we’d spend a couple moments on that.
[00:29:00] Ashleigh Vogstad: Partner of the Year awards, regardless of which partner, I mean, Salesforce has their own awards there. There’s more and more award programs coming out, and they’re a great way to celebrate the incredible work that your organization has done.
[00:29:13] Ashleigh Vogstad: Jay McBain is brilliant on this. He’ll talk a lot about the increase in valuation. Yeah. The, the increase in stock valuation or the likelihood that if you’re looking to be acquired, that you’re acquired within 12 months of a partner of the year win it. It’s really impressive. There is strong business value there.
[00:29:33] Vince Menzione: He like, he likes, he likes to tell the story of that when the award is handed to them and they go back into the audience, that the private equity people are all over them right then and there and making offers. I mean, that’s the visual that you get
[00:29:47] Ashleigh Vogstad: and it’s very powerful. Yeah. Very powerful. It’s very powerful and it, it can make it worthwhile to invest in the process, but don’t invest in the process if you haven’t been investing in the process for the 12 months.
[00:29:57] Ashleigh Vogstad: Prior,
[00:29:58] Vince Menzione: exactly.
[00:29:58] Ashleigh Vogstad: The Microsoft field or you we’re talking about Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards. They need to know about your win that that needs to be top of mind for them. Yeah. How much Azure revenue is it driving? Was it a huge marketplace? Build sales and. You know, one of the questions I get asked a ton, everybody wants to know how do we get money out of the hyperscalers?
[00:30:20] Ashleigh Vogstad: How do I get access to marketing development funds or all these different programs? Yeah. You know, at Microsoft, some of these programs are like EI and customer investment funds or Azure Accelerate, you know, and there’s millions and millions and millions of dollars in these, these buckets of funds, but.
[00:30:36] Ashleigh Vogstad: An interesting point of view is that it’s actually a scorecard metric for many people at Microsoft who have partnership roles for you to be drawing down those funds.
[00:30:45] Vince Menzione: Yes.
[00:30:45] Ashleigh Vogstad: You know, your interests are actually aligned here, and so again, when it comes to Partner of the Year awards, how much money have you pulled down?
[00:30:54] Ashleigh Vogstad: How much have you been an activating partner of key Microsoft programs that they’re pushing? What are you doing with marketplace rewards? How are you resing? Those into your business. These are the types of things that you really wanna be thinking about. Sitting it. You know, this time of year we probably will get the awards were likely be due in July.
[00:31:13] Ashleigh Vogstad: They haven’t officially announced timelines, but you’ve got a few months to start moving these pieces into place.
[00:31:18] Vince Menzione: And there are quite a few of them. And to your point, Nina, when she was up on stage here yesterday, there were at least 10 or 12 award. Uh. Funding categories that were on her, that were on her slide.
[00:31:31] Vince Menzione: Her partner, her partner slide. So,
[00:31:33] Ashleigh Vogstad: and what great looks like for a partner is that you understand your end-to-end funnel as it is mapped to Microsoft’s SEM model, the Microsoft customer Engagement model. Mm-hmm. The first stage there, inspire and design. That’s really the marketing space of lead generation.
[00:31:50] Ashleigh Vogstad: So how are you generating leads with webinars, in-person, event activations, digital campaigns, and then at the very end, in the fifth column, you have the Microsoft outcomes that you’re driving. Yes. Whether that’s Azure consumed revenue, marketplace build sales, co-pilot, monthly active usage, these sorts of things.
[00:32:10] Ashleigh Vogstad: And in each of those SEM swim lanes. There’s Microsoft funding associated to it. And that’s one of the things that Nina Harding was showing yesterday. When and where does it make sense to make requests for EA funds versus Azure accelerate the MCI funding? There’s different workshop proof of concept funding, and those all fall at specific stages in that EM model.
[00:32:33] Vince Menzione: And what you’re also pointing out in this conversation is that the co the partners need to understand that mm, they need to understand MM. We talked about it years ago. I’ve had, haven’t had anybody on stage recently talk about m You could probably take us through that if we wanted to devote some time here, uh, and then understand all of those categories and how to access those funds.
[00:32:52] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah, it’s critical and. The number one place we point partners, if you want a quick overview of what that looks like is to Microsoft’s FY 26 solution playbooks. Nice. They’re available on the web for download. There’s, well, there used to be three, but they’ve added a few agen being, being one. So, so there’s a handful of, they had
[00:33:11] Vince Menzione: simplified it, now they’re, now they’re expanding it back again.
[00:33:14] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah, exactly. I think there’s now a breakout for security as well. Yes. So take a look at those playbooks. It will map programs and incentives very specifically to each solution area and to each sales play that are gonna be available to you. And then we’re always happy to guide people through the details
[00:33:32] Vince Menzione: as well.
[00:33:32] Vince Menzione: I love that. I love that. And reach out to the. Ashley is just amazing at this process. I’ve, I’ve watched her for years now, work with some of the top, what have become the pinnacle partners of Microsoft and with the award season coming up. So we wanna make sure we have a plug there. But I also wanna talk about like, podcasts with you.
[00:33:50] Vince Menzione: Um, you’ve been on this podcast multiple times, been in the studio before doing this, and I understand you have your own podcast now. So tell us about that.
[00:33:58] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah, Vince, I just wanna say. As a friend and a mentor. You’ve been so inspiring. Thank you. And I think from years ago when we met, there was this seed in my brain of, you know, I, I should really get out there.
[00:34:13] Ashleigh Vogstad: And you talk a lot about growth mindset and fear setting is, is one of Tim Ferriss’s terms? Yes. And models.
[00:34:21] Vince Menzione: I love Tim Ferris. I’ve been, been a fan of his for 10 years now. So that’s settled. We all got started with this. Sorry. Sorry, I
[00:34:26] Ashleigh Vogstad: interrupt. No, no, not at all.
[00:34:27] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:34:28] Ashleigh Vogstad: And. I think it’s just been, it’s been back there.
[00:34:31] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah. That I’m really passionate around having voice is how I think about it. And as a marketing agency, we’re really amplifying the voice, um, or helping companies to find their voice, particularly in hyperscaler partnerships. And what better way to assist, you know, authentically the amazing people in our network, in our community and our clients than with our own channel where we can celebrate their stories and success?
[00:35:00] Vince Menzione: Very cool.
[00:35:01] Ashleigh Vogstad: So the podcast is called Transcending Tech. It’s about
[00:35:06] Vince Menzione: very cool transcending tech. Just so you don’t
[00:35:08] Ashleigh Vogstad: transcending tech.
[00:35:08] Vince Menzione: It’s out there now.
[00:35:10] Ashleigh Vogstad: It, we just released our first episode. Okay. I think two days ago.
[00:35:13] Vince Menzione: So by the time we’re live, yes. We’ll, we’ll be able to access it. Good.
[00:35:17] Ashleigh Vogstad: You will be able to access it.
[00:35:18] Ashleigh Vogstad: The first episode is with Alyssa Fit. Patrick from Elastic.
[00:35:21] Vince Menzione: Oh my goodness.
[00:35:22] Ashleigh Vogstad: And the concept of the podcast, it’s long form and it’s really about getting to the people behind the platforms.
[00:35:29] Vince Menzione: Very cool.
[00:35:29] Ashleigh Vogstad: And to the stories that transcend technology. So we’re here to get to know the human beings behind. Agents.
[00:35:38] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:35:38] Ashleigh Vogstad: And taking the time to, to go in deep and really explore that.
[00:35:43] Vince Menzione: So I am excited to see all the developments here with the, with the podcast. And you’re gonna be joining us again. You were just here, you in Boca. But you’ll be joining us again in Bellevue. Not too far a little bit. Closer ride or travel, uh, for you to come to Bellevue.
[00:35:57] Vince Menzione: We’re gonna be hosting the first ultimate partner live, which is our larger events in this beautiful facility, this new Intercontinental hotel, which is fabulous. And, uh, you’re gonna be taking a more active role. Your leadership around AI is. Palpable and we’re gonna love to have you on stage and talking through some of the changes.
[00:36:17] Vince Menzione: I, I suspect by the time we get to Bellevue we’ll have a lot more to talk about. That hasn’t even happened yet.
[00:36:23] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah, I’m really excited. I’ll have been through my next cohort at at Oxford, kind of coming out hot from there back to the Pacific Northwest, and really excited to just share the learnings and Awesome.
[00:36:35] Ashleigh Vogstad: Genuinely. It’s also helping me in my own research, really formulate particularly around the role of ag agentic AI in hyperscaler partnerships.
[00:36:43] Vince Menzione: That’s so cool. And then what I’ll say is this, and I don’t know, we on the space perspective, and I’ll, the team will probably hang me for this because we haven’t done it yet, but if you wanna bring the podcast along with you, there might be, we’ll see if we can find an extra room for you to set up.
[00:36:58] Vince Menzione: If you wanna do some interviews while you’re. In, at the event. So
[00:37:02] Ashleigh Vogstad: you’re so generous, Vince.
[00:37:03] Vince Menzione: That’s
[00:37:04] Ashleigh Vogstad: amazing.
[00:37:04] Vince Menzione: Thank you. Again, I can’t say for certainty yet, but, uh, let’s see, let’s see what happens with that. So, uh, let, let’s, uh, you know, I always, we, we have known each other for years and I just assume everybody knows this amazing Ashley sda.
[00:37:19] Vince Menzione: But, um, we always, I like to ask this question because it helps us kind of dig in a little bit about you personally. And it’s my favorite question. I ask all my guests this question now, and it’s, um, you’re hosting a dinner party, Ashley, you are, pick a pace, place, you wanna have this dinner. We could talk about parts of the world.
[00:37:36] Vince Menzione: You’ve traveled all extensively. Uh, and you can invite any three people, guests from the present. Or the past to this amazing dinner party you’re throwing. Whom would you invite and why?
[00:37:52] Ashleigh Vogstad: It’s a beautiful question, Vince and. Instantly I go to a place in terms of the location, since you asked that part, which was surprising.
[00:38:01] Ashleigh Vogstad: I, I like that is my home. I, I love where I live up in Whistler, Canada and
[00:38:08] Vince Menzione: I hear it’s beautiful. I haven’t been yet,
[00:38:10] Ashleigh Vogstad: it’s so gorgeous and it’s, it’s my own sanctuary. You know, I live on a plane 75% of the time and coming back to that place is really grounding for me. Yes. So, so I would love to have it at, at my home and to invite.
[00:38:24] Ashleigh Vogstad: Pippa Malrin would be one. She, Pippa
[00:38:26] Vince Menzione: Malrin.
[00:38:27] Ashleigh Vogstad: Yeah. She’s sure. I get an advisor to the White House for many administrations. Okay. She’s an economist and she just has really interesting perspective on geopolitics. Uh, I follow her on Substack ’cause she’s a big substack. Okay, now
[00:38:41] Vince Menzione: I need to look. This is awesome.
[00:38:42] Vince Menzione: The
[00:38:43] Ashleigh Vogstad: mal, she’s fantastic. I would say Dr. Lisa Sue, the CEO, Dr. Lisa of a md.
[00:38:49] Vince Menzione: Okay. Yes, yes. I know a little bit about her.
[00:38:51] Ashleigh Vogstad: So she was one of Time Mag, I think she was the only woman in Time Magazine’s, group of people of the year, which was basically this AI cohort in including, you know, the Elon Musks of the world.
[00:39:03] Ashleigh Vogstad: Uh, it’s just so impressive what she’s doing with leadership in a MD. I don’t think it’s as public as. Anybody else who is on the cover of that magazine, but it’s incredibly powerful.
[00:39:14] Vince Menzione: Yeah, they’ve made a com uh, turnaround’s probably not the right word, but it seems like they’ve made a tremendous, uh, gains turnaround probably in the last few years.
[00:39:23] Ashleigh Vogstad: I would say that many would say turnaround. And then lastly is Dr. Fefe Lee, who. For those in the AI space, particularly AI research space. I mean, she’s arguably number one. Um, she’s leading at Stanford currently.
[00:39:37] Vince Menzione: Wow. This is gonna be a heady conversation, but you know, I love conversations. So if you don’t mind, maybe I’ll bring dessert and come, come in for a few moments, maybe do some podcast interviews there.
[00:39:48] Vince Menzione: How’s that?
[00:39:49] Ashleigh Vogstad: That sounds absolutely perfect, Vince,
[00:39:50] Vince Menzione: so, so good. So good to have you here today. So great. Good to have you in the studio again, and, uh, excited for transcends and all the great work you’re doing. Um. This time with ai. I think you, uh, we talked about this a little bit last night. I think you’ve made some really wise, personal and professional decisions about how to lead and how to take this forward and not kind of rest on your laurels, which you see so many organizations do People fear change
[00:40:17] Ashleigh Vogstad: Hmm.
[00:40:18] Vince Menzione: And you embrace it, which is just, it’s astounding to me that you do that and, um. I look forward to working with you in the future and for years and years to come. So I will ask you one more question though, because we are still at the precipice of these tectonic shifts and we’re still early in 2026. And so for our listeners and our viewers today, what would be the one thing you would tell them that they need to go do now that possibly they haven’t done yet as they prepare for 2026 and beyond?
[00:40:52] Ashleigh Vogstad: The generic phrase would be, be curious, but if we want an action, it would be go build an agent.
[00:40:59] Vince Menzione: Go build an agent
[00:41:00] Ashleigh Vogstad: if, if you haven’t already. Yeah. And, and I’m, yeah. Speaking hopefully to like a business audience, you know, to, to anyone. Yeah. Really, um, find something that is interesting that you’re passionate about.
[00:41:12] Ashleigh Vogstad: A, a use case that it doesn’t have to be some big thing. It could be quite mundane, but just something that’s gonna help you in your role. It’s, you know, what is creativity is an interesting question, and I can tell you that sitting down and hands-on keys and actually creating something is, is a beautiful, powerful experience.
[00:41:32] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Awesome. All right. We’re all gonna go create agents this weekend, so thank you for listening. Thank you for viewing the Ultimate Partner on our YouTube channel, ultimate Partner, and on each end of your platforms at the Ultimate Partner. Thank you for being with us and supporting us all these years.
[00:41:50] Vince Menzione: Thank you. Don’t forget, ultimate Partner Live is coming soon, May 11th through the 13th in beautiful Bellevue, Washington. I hope to see you there.
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Jay McBain: So if you’re a vendor trying to get into that seven layer stack and you don’t have that relationship, or you don’t have the knowledge that NTT or software one is going in, this will have been a deal that would’ve never hit your pipeline and you’ll have no knowledge. So you will have lost this deal without knowing there was a deal.
[00:00:19] Vince Menzione: We’ve been talking 28 moments, but you have a slide. I thought we’d spend some time here because, you know, every conversation with you is about 28 moments, but you finally took the time to analyze one of your deals or one of the deals that was going on with one of your clients and come up with the 28 moments.
[00:00:36] Vince Menzione: I thought we’d spend a little time here because this journey slide is a wake up call. Uh, it’s, it’s, it’s all around. Why, why we need to think about all of those. Points we need to think about communities and analysts and marketplaces and proof of concepts and architecture and everything else. I thought maybe you’d take us through this a little bit.
[00:00:53] Vince Menzione: ’cause this was for a client, AstraZeneca, by the way. This was, uh, if you don’t know this, ICI Americas was the precursor of mm-hmm. AstraZeneca. It was the first SAP customer in North America.
[00:01:03] Jay McBain: Nice. I did
[00:01:04] Vince Menzione: not know that. That’s why Microsoft and SAP both headquartered. In that area, near nearby, that client.
[00:01:10] Vince Menzione: That’s, uh, news, new news.
[00:01:11] Jay McBain: And by the way, this is an SAP deal we’re looking at. Yeah. Uh, so two things here. One is that, um, while I was declaring the decade of the ecosystem, you know, spending time with you and Boca, in between that time we got acquired. Canals, which was Latin for channel, got acquired by oia, part of Informa TechTarget, part of this bigger informa company, which is a Fortune 100 company outta the uk.
[00:01:32] Jay McBain: Fantastic. You know, we’re part of this massive organization that is really around buyer intent. How, you know, a tech target and, uh, running hundreds of magazines like Information Week and Computer Week that customers and partners read running hundreds of events, the biggest events on the planet.
[00:01:49] Vince Menzione: Crazy
[00:01:49] Jay McBain: in B2B, like Black Hat and all these things are run by
[00:01:52] Vince Menzione: Yeah,
[00:01:53] Jay McBain: informa.
[00:01:53] Jay McBain: So it’s got this massive mountain of data. About the 28 moments. So when you start to think if you’re a CMO and you start to think about the early moments, you, you think about somebody reading an ebook or, um, going to a, a webinar or going onto a LinkedIn live just like this one. Yeah, going to a major event and getting a pair of socks from you.
[00:02:13] Jay McBain: Um, but anything early in the journey. These are the m qls. These are the things that I need enough of them to be credible before I hand them over to my sales team. ’cause I don’t wanna be laughed out of the room. Hey, they read an ebook. They must, AstraZeneca must be buying millions of dollars of stuff.
[00:02:27] Vince Menzione: Traditional marketing lead.
[00:02:29] Jay McBain: Traditional marketing lead. So they’re a bit nervous about sharing that. And then later on, the sales motions, the demos and all the progression of the sales. This was the two decades before us, the decade of sales, decade of marketing. But the 28 moments, just to take a step back, if you haven’t heard, it is just a considered purchase.
[00:02:46] Jay McBain: It’s about psychology, human psychology. When you go and buy a car, second most expensive thing that you will purchase you on average will go through 28 moments getting ready for that purchase. Some people go through two moments and they just drive to the Cadillac dealership to see Larry, who’s been selling Cadillacs to the family for 80 years.
[00:03:04] Jay McBain: Yep. Some people spend 58 moments. That’s probably me.
[00:03:07] Vince Menzione: That’s you, a,
[00:03:08] Jay McBain: you know, going through all the depreciation, watching every YouTube video, you know, going to the end of the earth. But the average is 28. So you start to think about this, this is the same buying a car considered purchase, that you would buy a million dollars in software.
[00:03:21] Jay McBain: From Microsoft or SAP. So when you look at these moments, you start to think, you know, how is you before you buy that car, downloading the invoice price, downloading this month’s backend rebates. Should I buy it in January? Should I buy it in February? All these decisions you make before you get to that dealership, you’re smarter than the salesperson, smarter than the sales manager.
[00:03:39] Jay McBain: You know what 5,000 people bought the car for within 50 miles of you? I mean, you’re just so smart. You actually don’t need the dealership anymore. Just Carvana to me, hand me the keys. Exactly. But now in buying technology, hardware, software services, customers are getting this smart. And here’s all the moments they take to get this smart.
[00:03:57] Jay McBain: But the thing we always had in mind in this decade of the ecosystem was the 96% there are trusted people. Yeah. Spending decades building that trust that come in in critical moments. They’re not marketing moments, they’re not sales moments. They are fully partnership moments. Yeah. And they’re on this slide in light blue.
[00:04:15] Jay McBain: So if you were to look at this deal and, and somebody in marketing is finding these eBooks and webinars and they think there might be something, AWS got a direct hit on their website. So there’s something brewing at AstraZeneca. It, it might be in, it’s a big pharmaceutical company, so you’re probably spending millions of dollars if something’s brewing.
[00:04:31] Jay McBain: Yep. But guess what? At the same time, in December on this six month journey. Partners come in with five different paid projects, consulting, advisory design projects, and in this case it was NTT software one, Yash and uh, ISV was there. Yep. But NTT won three different. Deals right at that critical stage. It wasn’t Accenture, it wasn’t Deloitte, NTT at this particular department of AstraZeneca had spent the decades building those relationships.
[00:04:58] Jay McBain: So they were the one, and they won critical part of this. And so that’s when the deal is won. And it’s not at April when the money’s being spent. Yeah, it’s, it’s not in March when a couple more ISVs joined the mix, that seven layer stack that solves this particular problem, it was right there. So if you’re a vendor trying to get into that seven layer stack and you don’t have that relationship, or you don’t have the knowledge that NTT or software one is going in, this will have been a deal that would’ve never hit your pipeline and you’ll have no knowledge.
[00:05:30] Jay McBain: So you will have lost this deal without knowing there was a deal, which makes up again, the majority of your tam.
[00:05:34] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:05:35] Jay McBain: But what if I did have this agentic ability to see this deal coming, and I’m a cybersecurity company, I’m just competing for layer five of the deal, but I know that it’s all happening in December.
[00:05:46] Jay McBain: So the two things that jump out on this particular slide is one, they don’t just show up in December.
[00:05:51] Vince Menzione: Yeah,
[00:05:51] Jay McBain: this went closed one in their Salesforce CRM in August, September, well, before the customer ever read an ebook. So now you’re not dealing with a flimsy MQL. You’re dealing with a couple of great, you know, top partner 1000 sized firms.
[00:06:09] Jay McBain: One of them is a partner, 30 firm.
[00:06:11] Vince Menzione: Exactly.
[00:06:12] Jay McBain: That is absolutely going into and earning hundreds of thousands of dollars in services to guide the customer to a millions of dollars in purchase. And, and you can imagine in that boardroom. With A CMO saying, Hey, I got this stuff here. And the head of channels or partnerships saying, no, no, this is real.
[00:06:32] Jay McBain: Here’s the names, faces, and places. Yeah. And here’s how it’s happening. And this is exactly, this is the Gantt chart, this is the show up, this is the project, this is the outcome. This is exactly how it’s playing out. Now if I could go back and the board and the C-suite should be asking us, well, how many more deals like this can you see?
[00:06:50] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:06:51] Jay McBain: If our TAM is, you know, how many billions of dollars? Could you double our pipeline by seeing more of these middle moments? And if we got a couple of months to spend with these partners before they get in front of the customer, could they build more of our portfolio into the deal so we’re not just layer five, maybe we’re layer three and layer five.
[00:07:10] Vince Menzione: This slide screams at me. Integr Tech integration Cha. A partner channel integration of tech, uh, whether it’s Crossbeam, whether it’s Partner Tap, whether it’s work span, or any of these other technologies, tackle any of these technologies that are tracking marketplace, that are tracking partner to partner, co-selling.
[00:07:30] Vince Menzione: Getting the integration points. The only way to really understand the situation here, because this is a multinational company. Yeah. It’s being touched at all PO points around the globe. And to understand who’s calling who, who’s influencing who, and getting a real view, you know, a uber view of what that looks like is super important.
[00:07:47] Jay McBain: It is. And you know, if I’m trying to sell like a cross beam or partner tab or work span or something into my executive team, I’m just showing them this slide.
[00:07:54] Vince Menzione: Exactly.
[00:07:54] Jay McBain: Would you like to know about this deal? Like you see, October is the start of the timeline here. Would you like to know about this deal in August, September?
[00:08:00] Vince Menzione: Yep.
[00:08:01] Jay McBain: Would you like to know about it automatically? Again, we’re not waiting for somebody, a human in a cubicle to go fill out a form. We’re not waiting for them to call somebody at our in, in a cubicle at our company. Yeah. We’re literally age genically sharing platforms, and so when this triggers that AstraZeneca and now triggers in our CRM system as well, our team on AstraZeneca gets notified and it gets notified in September before the 28 moments even starts.
[00:08:27] Jay McBain: This, the power of this, of doubling, tripling your pipeline and then winning a bigger yield, a bigger percentage of that pipeline. This is the holy grail of our industry, and no one’s gonna get to a hundred percent. You’re not gonna have a hundred percent of your tam covered by your pipeline. No one’s gonna win a hundred percent of that.
[00:08:43] Jay McBain: But again, we only have to be 10 or 20% better than our competitors and we need to start moving on this now.
[00:08:50] Vince Menzione: So your imperative for the partners here, well everyone watching here today, I mean, this screams to me build your ecosystem strategy in such a strong and succinct way. What else would you say to them?
[00:09:00] Jay McBain: I mean, the second thing that jumps out, you see two AWS direct touches here. This is something that this would be inbound. This AWS would see this deal in their pipeline.
[00:09:09] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:09:10] Jay McBain: Because the customer came to them. AWS lost this deal. Crazy. So Microsoft won this deal. I, I mentioned Microsoft outgrowing AWS Yeah.
[00:09:19] Jay McBain: ’cause in this particular case, NTT and Software One and Yash came in with Microsoft. Yeah. To solve an SAP optimization, Microsoft, and, you know, seven layer deal. So whether you’re in AWS, whether you’re in Microsoft, whether you’re anywhere else in this industry, you’re thinking like, you’re not gonna probably overtake what happens in December.
[00:09:39] Jay McBain: These are the most trusted, smartest people in the room. And whatever happens in those projects is the seven layer stack the customer’s gonna buy in March, April. So I, I start to think about this and go, I need to win. ’cause NTT has a wonderful relationship with AWS.
[00:09:55] Vince Menzione: They do,
[00:09:56] Jay McBain: I mean, partner of the year level.
[00:09:57] Jay McBain: I mean, they’ve got 10,000 people certified. I mean, there’s just a, you know, there’s no one at AWS that, um, you know, would take a, a loss here because it’s a wonderful relationship. And Software One, they
[00:10:09] Vince Menzione: go back to Microsoft actually 30, 40 years though they do. They were Dimension data before that. Yeah.
[00:10:14] Vince Menzione: And they have the long hit Legacy And Software One. Software one as well. You,
[00:10:19] Jay McBain: you know, well Software one is Microsoft’s biggest reseller, uh, in Europe. And now with Crayon, you know, one of the biggest in the world. So I would be nervous if I was looking at this and saw Software one coming in with NTT and watching these things take place if I were able to see this back in September, October and work with these companies.
[00:10:38] Jay McBain: That’s where kind of Microsoft came into the picture. And this never hit Microsoft’s pipeline. No Microsoft salesperson ever worked on it, but millions of dollars came to Microsoft. Yeah. Uh, out of this deal. So there are examples of where Microsoft gets touched and AWS wins the deal. So this isn’t meant to say that it happens in every case, but it’s meant to say data rules the future, and agent ai, the ability to plumb in these boxes.
[00:11:00] Jay McBain: Working with Informa tech, target people that can plumb in the boxes for you with third party data, helping you with the light blue boxes. We gotta be obsessed over these light blue boxes.
[00:11:11] Vince Menzione: It’s incredible. The Ultimate Partner Winter Retreat is gonna be here in the Boca Studio. This is the third year that we’re gonna be here in Boca.
[00:11:21] Vince Menzione: This is always a favorite of our community members, our executive members, our sponsors and speakers. We’ll all be here in the studio, which is a really intimate setting. We can see upwards of 40, 50 people. Uh, we’ll be hosting an incredible dinner at the Boca Resort overlooking the golf course. That’s an incredible property and, uh, we’d love to have you join us.
[00:11:45] Vince Menzione: Thank you for being part of the ultimate Partner community, and I hope to see you this year at one of our events. Thank you.
