Latest / Partnerships Unraveled / 013- How to win with Partners in 2023

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013- How to win with Partners in 2023 · Partnerships Unraveled

• 0:08
  Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled. The podcast where we unravel the mysteries of partnerships and channel on a weekly basis.
• 0:17
  My name is Rick van den Bosch, and I'm the CEO and founder of Channext.
• 0:20
  And I'm here together with Alex Whitford, VP partners at Channext.
• 0:23
  Alex, how are you doing doing today?
• 0:25
  Yeah, I'm doing really well.
• 0:27
  I think it's the first podcast of the new year, so yeah, it's a great time.
• 0:32
  Yeah, likewise.
• 0:33
  2023 already.
• 0:36
  The 2022 year definitely has flown by.
• 0:36
  Yes.
• 0:39
  Moved country, moved jobs, it's been a hectic.
• 0:42
  I can't believe I've been here six months.
• 0:43
  It's flown by.
• 0:46
  Yeah, likewise.
• 0:47
  Just looking back at also for our company, like raising a series a round and just a lot of things have happened, but really happy where we ended the year.
• 0:56
  And of course, what's always nice from a new year, you start looking forward a little bit and I think that's what we also want to do a little bit today is, okay, where is 2023 heading and what are our predictions or the key trends that we are seeing for next year?
• 1:14
  Yeah, I think for a lot of people, 23 is going to be a tough year.
• 1:18
  Right.
• 1:18
  There's obviously a global recession here.
• 1:23
  In most places it's arrived and certainly I think it's going to be lasting all of 23 and some way into 24 as well.
• 1:31
  Pandemic and inflation on the rise and that presents challenging economic factors and it presents a downturn in business.
• 1:38
  However, I always like that philosophy around the recession, which is the best will always grow.
• 1:45
  And so what happens in a recession?
• 1:46
  Rather than all the leads being handed out to everyone, all the leads go to the best people.
• 1:51
  So for the people to attack 23 in the right way, they can actually be really aggressive.
• 1:57
  And today we're going to talk about some of the trends and I think some of the ways in which you can really start to capture that growth cycle through through a recession.
• 2:06
  Yeah, I agree there.
• 2:07
  I think that's the first trend we're going to dive into.
• 2:09
  Indeed.
• 2:09
  Like the recession, what does that mean and how do you need to make sure especially let's start internally, maybe?
• 2:16
  What kind of language do you start to speak?
• 2:18
  How do you protect your partnerships department?
• 2:21
  How do you make sure you get the budgets?
• 2:23
  And I think when we are thinking of that, it all goes to the CFO, right.
• 2:28
  I think if you look at the recession, then most of the decisions are made by a CFO, so maybe it's nice to think together.
• 2:34
  What kind of language do you need to use when you speak internally?
• 2:38
  How do you show the impact of what you're doing and how do you position it in the best way?
• 2:43
  Yeah, I think whenever you're dealing with any sort of CFO or anyone in that sort of realm, you want to be super analytical, right?
• 2:50
  Focus on upside risk cost and make sure they fully understand what you're trying to deliver, what the potential risks are.
• 2:59
  And I think as salespeople, sometimes it's really easy to ignore risk and just be like, we're going to do it, we're going to make it, it's going to be great.
• 3:05
  And actually that won't work.
• 3:08
  When you're having a conversation with a CFO, it's really important to understand how much investment are we going to take, what's the process, what's the downside, the potential risks factor?
• 3:18
  But hopefully, what's the upside if well executed and building that continuous relationship, giving constant feedback on that, that's how you get a larger wallet share in, let's face it, a decreasing budget.
• 3:30
  We're seeing cost cutting happen all across.
• 3:33
  If we look at largest SaaS companies in the world, right.
• 3:36
  Huge layoffs.
• 3:37
  Now that doesn't mean in every area of the business, those are strategic layoffs.
• 3:41
  They're picking the areas.
• 3:42
  And some teams are growing because they've managed to build the right internal relationships and sell them on the fact that, hey, we can do this more efficiently than other areas of the business.
• 3:53
  Yeah, I think it's good to step into the mind of a CFO for a second and did you say reduce risk?
• 3:59
  I think that's exactly what it is.
• 4:01
  They are busy continuously like how can we reduce risk throughout the business and throughout the ecosystem that your company is?
• 4:09
  And as a CFO, there you are looking indeed at how can we reduce risk in terms of cutting costs.
• 4:15
  So also what they are thinking of is what's happening not just with new investments, but also with current investments.
• 4:21
  And a question that I have heard a lot from CFOs as well, okay, what happens if we shut something off?
• 4:28
  Like literally not just what's the upside of things when we start new things, but what happens if we shut things off?
• 4:33
  And I think that's why it's so important that you think within everything, what's the impact that we make, what do we expect?
• 4:39
  And that you have numbers to prove it and to show that that will massively help you if you start speaking in their language.
• 4:46
  That's your biggest chance to get the budgets that you need to hit your targets.
• 4:51
  Yeah.
• 4:51
  And I think one of the really common misconceptions in a recession and through budget cutting is that all budgets are cut equally and it just simply isn't true.
• 5:01
  Some budgets grow and you see a lot of resource reallocation, which is we're going to shut down this entire team because we don't think that's going to be fruitful in the short to medium term, but actually we still need to grow.
• 5:13
  And so we're going to have to reallocate resource to this other team.
• 5:16
  And so I can absolutely say if you're able to really drive the right messaging into the CFO and they have trust in you that you're able to deliver it a more efficient way than other teams.
• 5:29
  You are able to get growth in budget because you're going to have to carry more of the number.
• 5:34
  And so, as you say, it's a really stressful time for CFOs, right.
• 5:38
  They're really carrying the business on their back to ensure that it comes out the other side of the recession safely.
• 5:43
  And so they're looking for help and speaking their language is critical to making that happen.
• 5:49
  Yeah, I think I couldn't agree more there.
• 5:51
  And if I look at that, I think you have built quite some partner programs yourselves as well.
• 5:56
  How would you approach that if you would have to report it internally or create a proposition, where do you start and how do you make sure until the numbers that you expect of course, it's always a forecast, so we are never 100% sure.
• 6:08
  But how do you make sure your case is as strong as possible?
• 6:12
  Yeah, so there's lots of things you want to analyze, right?
• 6:15
  Which is one, what is the cost of running the current channel as it stands?
• 6:20
  Because that's very binary and the CFO will know that.
• 6:23
  And then you need to talk about where are we trying to get to and what is the cost of that expansion.
• 6:29
  A lot of time through a recession there is just an expectation to run faster, to do more with the same or to do more with less, but then being very precise around where you are going to grow and what's required.
• 6:42
  So for example, we're going to enter a new market or we're going to enter a new geography or we're going to double down on partner recruitment, but being very, very precise around how those top of funnel activities then impact middle and bottom of funnel.
• 6:55
  And once it's very mathematical improvement, we love a bottom up model.
• 6:59
  Once you can prove your customer acquisition cost, then it becomes very easy to have a conversation around, well, actually, if we just put money here, we're going to grow in this way and let the CFO wants to grow, they've just got to do protection at the same time.
• 7:14
  So if they understand that your area of the business and calling out sort of channel leaders and partnership leaders, if your area of the business is more efficient at growing, that's great because they are going to pull money into the most efficient growth strategies.
• 7:30
  And when I'm thinking about that, I think going into a specific region is a good example.
• 7:34
  It's also very important.
• 7:36
  How do you frame it and how do you think about it?
• 7:38
  Like if you have a certain plan to enter a certain region where you know that you need a full package of activities that you have thought of, you can better position it as that full package because you know that you need that to drive the impact.
• 7:51
  You need then, for example, to go that level deeper where you split it up in a lot of activities within that region because that's where you will get to the discussions very quickly, like oh, then I think maybe that one can get out.
• 8:02
  One can get out.
• 8:03
  That might be the good approach actually.
• 8:06
  If you're a little bit unsure if you will get any budget at all for such initiatives, then you want to split it up so you have a higher probability of actually getting there.
• 8:16
  But I think if you have a certain project and you know you need a full package there, then you can better position it like that to drive the impact forward.
• 8:24
  What do you think about that?
• 8:26
  Yeah, it's sort of a key principle of negotiation, right?
• 8:29
  You want to ask for the most amount possible that doesn't get the door slammed in your face because if you ask for too much, you can get just a hard no.
• 8:37
  But then as much as possible, if I'm entering a new territory, I'm going to tell them a macro cost one because that gives me flexibility down the line to reallocate resources.
• 8:47
  So I might put more in inbound as opposed to outbound or vice versa, depending on what that growth lever looks like.
• 8:53
  But absolutely approach that in the right way.
• 8:56
  It very much depends on what your relationship with the CFO is.
• 9:00
  If you've got a very good relationship and there's a good amount of trust, you've been there for a while and you've built a significant book of business, you're going to have a lot more leverage than if you're brand new into the business or it's a brand new CFO and you haven't got that ingrained trust.
• 9:13
  In which case it may be worth taking them through detail by detail, what the investment strategy is and asking for feedback.
• 9:20
  Because sometimes I think it's really easy from a salesperson's perspective to say, oh, the CFO is being tight or the CFO is being overly cautious, but you don't particularly have a good steer on what is happening really at a PNL level.
• 9:35
  And so having that conversation to really understand what is going on, how can I help grow and where can we reallocate resources together, that's going to be a really positive way to have that conversation.
• 9:47
  Yes.
• 9:47
  And I think even if you don't have a direct relationship with the CFO or the finance department, but you report into your manager, it's still so good to try to dive into that finance mindset.
• 9:59
  Because also, if you create plans to your manager that eventually has to report it or has to deliver the plans to the finance department, the more you can help them to position it in the right way, the more proof you have of what you want to do.
• 10:13
  The better forecast and the more numbers you can show, the better it is for them as well.
• 10:18
  I think if you really take that mindset, like the mindset of the CFO, let's call it like that, that it will massively help you to get more of your projects to move more of your projects forward and get the budget you need to achieve your revenue targets with your channel.
• 10:33
  Yeah, I saw a really good thing on LinkedIn the other day talking this guy was taking his audience through his career and he got a lot of promotions, and he effectively said, hard skills got me the job and soft skills got me every promotion possible.
• 10:47
  And you're sort of hitting the nail on the head there, which is, if I make my manager's life easy, if I make the decision maker's life easy by presenting them all the information that they need.
• 10:57
  So saying a yes is simple.
• 11:00
  Your close rate is going to be easier, your manager is more likely to improve, your relationships are going to get stronger.
• 11:05
  And so I think it's not necessarily the person who shouts loudest gets what they want.
• 11:11
  It's the one who presents the plan in the way that it's easiest to say yes.
• 11:15
  Because then it's like, oh, I can see you've done your due diligence.
• 11:19
  I'm now going to verify.
• 11:21
  Do I agree with your hypothesis?
• 11:23
  And if I do and it's a logical plan, then most likely I'm going to say yes, unless someone else has a better strategy.
• 11:29
  So you've just got to blend those two approaches.
• 11:31
  Is your strategy a strong one?
• 11:34
  And can you make this process of saying yes as easy as possible?
• 11:38
  Which, ironically, that's how you deal with the proper sales cycle.
• 11:40
  Right.
• 11:41
  So almost treat your CFO in the same care that you would treat your customers?
• 11:46
  Yeah, I think there you're touching upon something very interesting because indeed, there's the internal CFO, but there's also the external CFO.
• 11:55
  Like, we're all indeed, we still want to sell, we still want to grow our revenue.
• 11:59
  But at the other side of the customer, they have the exact same issue that they need to prove why they are doing what they are doing what they want for the future, why they think that this is a strong case.
• 12:12
  How can you take a little bit of that CFO mindset into your channel and into your sales approach?
• 12:18
  Yeah, weirdly.
• 12:19
  I actually think selling in a recession in some ways can be easier.
• 12:23
  And that's because there's such a focus on certain types of product that it becomes very easy to sell into that market.
• 12:31
  And typically the product is cost saving.
• 12:31
  Right.
• 12:34
  So can you prove that your product is going to generate a cost saving that is effectively what the CFO is going to ask for.
• 12:42
  So what's the upside?
• 12:42
  Will we save a load of money?
• 12:44
  And what's the downside?
• 12:45
  Well, almost none, because it's not going to cost us anything unless we prove X or Y ROI criteria or whatever the construction of the deal.
• 12:52
  And because people are going through their business and prioritizing things based on cost saving, it becomes very easy to sell into that model.
• 13:02
  So for any of our partners, out there who are a lot of my base.
• 13:06
  They come from video conferencing.
• 13:08
  Okay, well, if I'm selling Zoom or Microsoft Teams or any of those, I'm selling it in a way that proves that reduction in travel and better coordination, more efficiencies, all of that good stuff, that's a really good sales process in a recession.
• 13:22
  Because if I can prove that one of your highest expenditures is travel and this is the way we can stop that and therefore there's going to be a 30% reduction in travel costs and therefore this project will be cost negative or cost neutral.
• 13:35
  That's something the CFO is going to want to purchase because they're looking at every cost saving measure possible.
• 13:42
  So you need to put that CFO mindset at the core of your sales strategy.
• 13:46
  Yeah.
• 13:46
  So looking at it from that perspective, you don't have to change your product, but you change your positioning.
• 13:52
  So from that you really look into where does our product make impact on the PNL of a customer?
• 13:59
  That can be on revenue or on costs.
• 14:01
  But a lot of your positioning actually goes towards debt messaging because you know for sure that there's little room for mistakes during a recession within your customers.
• 14:11
  So they want to be sure the investments that they make, that there's a very high likability that it brings what they are expecting and what they need actually.
• 14:20
  And the better you can create that case and help your customers create that case together with your channel partners, that's where you will really have the most success in 2023.
• 14:29
  Yeah, I'm sure the guys from our own office who are listening, they'll be laughing because we love data so much.
• 14:36
  But I love a data driven sales process because to me, that's exactly what I want to do.
• 14:41
  If I, if I tell you your current cost is a thousand, our product costs 500 and we're going to save you 600, that's just a mathematical decision.
• 14:50
  Either you disagree with my maths, in which case, okay, let's hash that out as part of the sales cycle.
• 14:55
  But if you agree with my maths, you're always going to do that because the business is going to save money.
• 15:00
  And hopefully there's an upside around efficiencies because of the environment we're in now, everyone is proactively looking at that.
• 15:08
  So that's your low hanging fruit.
• 15:10
  How do I tie our product into that positioning statement?
• 15:15
  And the thing I would balance that with is it's incumbent on vendors to drive that positioning through the channel.
• 15:22
  So educate your partners on how your product can be positioned in such a way.
• 15:28
  Two things will happen.
• 15:29
  One, they will drive better closure, so you'll have a better conversion rate and deal, which will help grow revenue.
• 15:35
  But second, you'll have more adoption.
• 15:37
  Because while every vendor is talking about features and benefits, you're talking about positioning.
• 15:42
  And that's just going to elevate you above your competition.
• 15:45
  So in terms of the growth lever there.
• 15:47
  That's such an important one to pull because you're going to drive better conversion and better adoption, hopefully really generating a significant impact in revenue performance.
• 15:57
  Yeah, I think through the partner.
• 15:59
  That's what makes it difficult.
• 16:00
  Of course, that's the extra point of view you always have in the channel.
• 16:04
  So you can create this incredible positioning towards the end user, but then how do you cascade that through the partner?
• 16:10
  I think what are some best practices that you have seen on how do you educate those partners and how can you help them to actually bring that messaging to market?
• 16:19
  So there's a couple of ways in which I would do it.
• 16:22
  First, bring your partners in when you are closing those deals.
• 16:25
  So sometimes what I see is high touch account managers who work directly with the end user for the sales cycle and then hand a deal back through a partner.
• 16:33
  They do that because they can be nice and agile and I can understand why that's a benefit.
• 16:37
  The problem is you lose your scaling vector, which is if you educate a partner on that sales cycle, they can replicate that sales cycle in other customers.
• 16:45
  So make sure that they are coming with you, handing glove into every meeting and really drive that forward.
• 16:51
  So that's option one.
• 16:53
  Option two is when you are doing all training, it is focused around positioning, not product.
• 16:59
  And so often I see this just handed down to partnerships because channel account managers aren't taking enough focus or program managers haven't done the due diligence to really wrap the product into a positioning statement.
• 17:13
  And instead what they do is go here's feature one, here's feature two, here's feature three, over to you.
• 17:19
  You work out how you'll fit that into your customer.
• 17:21
  That's not good enough.
• 17:23
  That's that's fundamentally wrong.
• 17:25
  What you need to be doing is going here's how we want X type of customer, here's how we want Y type of customer.
• 17:31
  How do we think that can fit into your customer set?
• 17:35
  And let's have a discussion around how we build that positioning statement together so that they can take that at scale to market.
• 17:41
  Yeah, I think I would like to challenge our listeners a little bit.
• 17:44
  Review all your sales enablement documents, your presentations, your trainings and look at it and how are we positioning our solutions or our products at the moment?
• 17:55
  And is it really driving towards that impact?
• 17:57
  Because you should have it everywhere, you should train them, you should take your partners with you.
• 18:02
  Your marketing materials should be all about driving impact in a recession and like how to save costs, how to increase revenue and then continuously train your partners on it.
• 18:13
  And I think that's where you will really head into the right direction.
• 18:16
  Yeah.
• 18:16
  And I think it comes down to a bit of that humility that we speak about pretty regularly.
• 18:20
  You've got to recognize your partners, sell a lot of products, sometimes very different types of products to different types of customers.
• 18:27
  And if you're asking them to be experts in all of those different fields, that's really difficult.
• 18:32
  Whereas I've sat in that world, and I know if a vendor comes to me and says, here is how you are successful with this sale, here is the secret sauce.
• 18:42
  Now just go and take that to market.
• 18:42
  Brilliant.
• 18:44
  That's what I love.
• 18:44
  I love that you're telling me not just why this product is good, but how to be successful selling it.
• 18:51
  Now I've just got to go and rinse and repeat.
• 18:53
  And let's be really clear, if that's done well, you're going to get the scaling vector of channel, which in a recession is doubly important.
• 19:03
  What you're touching on in your last sentence, doubly important.
• 19:06
  I think there's also a very positive sight about being in Channel at the moment, because in the past, channel has always shown to be really recession proof.
• 19:14
  Why do you think that is?
• 19:16
  And how can you best utilize that as a channel person?
• 19:20
  Yeah, it's SaaS Tailwind 101, right?
• 19:23
  Which is, okay, we've proved product market fit, and now we want to grow really fast.
• 19:28
  Cool.
• 19:28
  How do I hire 1000 BDRs, right?
• 19:31
  That's basically what every SaaS brand goes through.
• 19:33
  Let's triple our BDR team enter a new market, triple our BDR team and go, go, you can't do that now.
• 19:40
  Now you're getting rid of BDRs and it's becoming a much tighter sales force.
• 19:44
  And that's why channel teams are really recession proof, because, well, you've been hiring.
• 19:49
  It crazy.
• 19:50
  Your competitor down the road has instead been recruiting partners like crazy.
• 19:54
  And a channel rep delivers far more revenue per head than a direct rep.
• 20:00
  Because if I run ten partnerships and they all have 1000 gen users, I can manage effectively 1000 end users, whereas my direct counterpart can maybe manage 50.
• 20:11
  And that's why the scaling vector is so channel.
• 20:13
  When you've got my CFO hat on, I'm sat there going, hang on a second.
• 20:17
  I just pay one person and I get access to 1000 end users.
• 20:21
  Where I pay one person, I get access to 50 end users.
• 20:24
  Think of the efficiency model.
• 20:26
  CFO is choosing channel every time.
• 20:28
  Yeah, and especially when you think about reducing the risk again, like the risk when you hire a massive direct sales team is much bigger because indeed, once a recession hits or whatever, it's very hard.
• 20:39
  We see it right now with the huge amount of layoffs.
• 20:43
  It's such a big step and it makes such an impact on the company when all those things are happening.
• 20:48
  Well, in the channel, it's the other way around.
• 20:50
  Indeed, you have your channel team that's managing the channel partners, but the channel partners get revenue if they actually sell.
• 20:56
  And I think there we actually find a very interesting hedge, so to say, for a CFO, where they actually know, okay, we have this huge amount of channel partners, there's a massive upside.
• 21:07
  But if things don't work out, of course there's a cost.
• 21:10
  But the risk is a lot lower as well than in direct sales.
• 21:14
  Yeah, exactly.
• 21:14
  Like I've sometimes heard senior leaders talk about channels expensive because of the reduction in margin.
• 21:21
  But it's not when you factor in cost per head.
• 21:24
  Right.
• 21:24
  It's much cheaper.
• 21:26
  And like you say, risk is immediately mitigated.
• 21:29
  My advice for any businesses that don't really have a channel or a partnership division today and they're wondering how to grow in a recession immediately start to look at fundamental channel principles, build a referral scheme, build an alliances division.
• 21:44
  Those are although you might have to hire a very expensive head.
• 21:49
  You're talking about one head.
• 21:51
  It's not 40 BDRs, ten AES, big sales funnel.
• 21:56
  Now you've got to do it multilanguage.
• 21:57
  How do we scale effectively?
• 21:57
  No.
• 21:59
  Instead you can set up a referral model, hire a couple of channel BDRs and suddenly you've got a real engine that at worst, if it doesn't work, it's a few heads.
• 22:09
  But more likely if well executed with the right partner program behind them, the right automation tools suddenly you can start to drive scalability in a way that you've never done with a direct organization.
• 22:19
  Yeah, we always say that it's a marathon, not a sprint.
• 22:22
  Right.
• 22:22
  With channel, I think if you keep that in mind and in that you build it up, then there's such a huge uptake for it that it's worth all the effort that companies put into it.
• 22:31
  Yeah.
• 22:31
  And I think with the marathon, it's not a sprint.
• 22:33
  Absolutely.
• 22:33
  A macro level.
• 22:35
  But I've seen channel teams do wonders within three to six months when they're incredibly focused.
• 22:40
  Right.
• 22:40
  It's one thing to try and build the Microsoft ecosystem, 500,000 global partners, massive scalp.
• 22:46
  Yes.
• 22:46
  That's going to take you ten years and awesome execution through ten years.
• 22:51
  However, it's another thing to say actually we need to create a small amount of business very, very quickly.
• 22:58
  Yes, we could do it direct.
• 22:59
  The trouble with doing it direct is immediately you're going to drain resource because what happens once you acquire those customers, you got to manage those customers.
• 23:06
  It becomes very difficult.
• 23:08
  Was one focused partner manager can start to get deals on within months, like three months.
• 23:15
  And yet they can still keep closing deals because the partners are the customer success agents, they're the guys that do it themselves and you can start to really churn that engine.
• 23:24
  So a good amount of focus and the right partnerships manager and don't forget the partners are going through a recession as well.
• 23:30
  They're also evaluating how do we grow within this?
• 23:33
  So the right conversation there to say, hey, look, we've got to buckle down is going to be tough times, but we've got this proposition which we know is recession proof and we're willing to pull time into the relationship.
• 23:44
  Not money, but time suddenly really low risk investment that we know we can continue to grow with.
• 23:51
  Yeah.
• 23:51
  And that's all that we want for 2023.
• 23:54
  Of course.
• 23:55
  I think the final trend that I would like to discuss is of course we've been speaking a lot about it, but alliance/tech partnerships where you have vendor to vendor relationships and channel partnerships coming a lot closer together.
• 24:10
  We've been seeing that trend going on for a while already, but I think especially with where we're heading when we want to do things more efficiently, higher impact with the same resources, achieve higher targets, what opportunity do we see there for alliance partnerships and channel partnerships to work a lot closer together?
• 24:28
  Yeah.
• 24:28
  So for any alliance managers out there who aren't considering this today, bring your channel leaders together and have a conversation around how we bring these two ecosystems together.
• 24:40
  So just as a rough explanation, you have vendor A, who builds an integration into vendor B, rough alliance management.
• 24:48
  Effectively, what you do is you look at white space analysis between your endusers and their end users and who can we cross sell into?
• 24:55
  Effectively, that's 101, that's 90% of an alliance manager's job, which is fantastic.
• 25:01
  What you're missing is the scaling vector of channel which is rather than 100 end users, 100 endusers, you can do 100 partners with 1000 end users and do that same white space analysis.
• 25:13
  Yes.
• 25:13
  There's a bit of a longer runway because you've got to get the partners on board, you've got to understand, you got to teach them how to do the sales cycle.
• 25:19
  But that for me, we're starting to see the really dynamic alliance guys build really successful partnerships but they haven't yet managed to do that at scale through channel.
• 25:32
  And I've got a real feeling that 2023 is going to be the year of bringing channel and alliances together.
• 25:38
  Which makes me really excited because there's partners out there who are desperate to be able to work in conjunction with two power vendors and drive that sales cycle through.
• 25:48
  They've got huge end user lists and end user customers that they want to do that with and with effective coordination, probably with the help of some marketing automation tools and tools like Reveal to do proper account mapping, cross functionally.
• 26:02
  If you can bring that all together, suddenly I think you've got a proposition that we really haven't seen outside of maybe a Google marketplace and a Microsoft marketplace.
• 26:12
  If we can start to do that across the channel is going to be amazing.
• 26:15
  Yes, and I think partners also really love it because they want to bring solutions to the end user market.
• 26:21
  And when you have alliance partnerships you already get so much closer to a solution than separate products.
• 26:27
  And I think one of the opportunities I really see is also in terms of partner recruitment still, many, many channel people I talk to, one of their main goals is still recruiting new partners.
• 26:37
  But your.
• 26:37
  Alliance partners.
• 26:39
  Your alliance vendors actually have a big database as well of partners which is probably very closely aligned to the type of partners that would suit you because otherwise there wouldn't be an alliance connection.
• 26:50
  So there's also a massive opportunity to get not only referrals into end users but also into each other's partners where you look at each other, okay, whom are we working with, where is the overlap, where can we introduce each other?
• 27:02
  And that can actually be a massive entry point there to make sure you scale your channel even further but get partners into your ecosystem that fit your ideal partner profile very well.
• 27:14
  Yeah, I think we absolutely need to do a full podcast on how you build a real alliance channel together but yeah, fundamentally what you want to be doing is building a positional approach.
• 27:26
  So not just talking about features and benefits but bring two to three, four vendors together, a positional statement, then start to do a white space analysis on partner profile.
• 27:35
  So what partners do we all sell to and we think are low hanging fruit to start cross selling into and then who are those endusers and how do we do that at scale?
• 27:44
  But that really for me is now the sharp end of channel and alliance sales and I don't see it happening well enough in today's market and the vendors that get that right bring on the right tools and support and consultancy to really make that happen.
• 27:59
  If they do that well, I think they are going to dominate the market.
• 28:03
  It's not going to be a five or 10% improvement.
• 28:07
  It's going to be they are going to be the most fundamental growth lever in those businesses which for me as the sort of alliance and partnership evangelist is really exciting because we've seen partnerships grow from strength to strength over the last sort of three to five years.
• 28:21
  But we haven't seen that bedded into channel which is the largest scaling vector.
• 28:26
  So whoever gets that right, I'm excited to see just how much they win.
• 28:30
  Yes, and I think also when I look at it from a marketing perspective, for example, and when we were a little bit in the efficiency topic today, of course there's also massive efficiency in there because if you create an alliance campaign together and there's always massive budgets for alliance campaigns it's already created, but then usually that's where it ends.
• 28:51
  You send it to each other's end users, you try to do some extra activities around it but then cascading it through the channel was always very hard and you just said it as well like your channel should actually be your scaling mechanism there and that's where you also do here.
• 29:08
  You already created that campaign.
• 29:10
  It's a type of campaign that partners love because end user, they like full solutions for the end user, and then you can escape it through each other's partners, where you really get a double network effect, so to say.
• 29:22
  In such a way, including a very efficient way of creating the content because you created it for alliances but then can just copy it almost one by one for channel partners.
• 29:31
  And I think that's also an interesting way to position it internally, why there should be a lot more cooperation, partnership, but also budget cooperation and sharing between alliances and channel.
• 29:44
  Yeah, it's actually one of the things that I'm forever surprised that we don't see more of because I think what alliance managers want to do, but potentially have challenges because they've got to work with different vendors and maybe those vendors aren't all sold through the same partners or the same distributors to get slightly complicated.
• 30:02
  But the ideal scenario is, let's say you've got four vendors who get round a table, they decide, yes, we want to work together, but most importantly, we want to market together.
• 30:11
  They come up with a really good, let's say, positional statement around how these four vendors working in collaboration can reduce cost for X and Y.
• 30:20
  Brilliant.
• 30:20
  That's going to work really well in 2023.
• 30:22
  And then you want to cascade all of that marketing through every single one of your partners and then have an intrinsic understanding that if partner A doesn't sell vendor one two, but it does sell vendor 34, that we've got a way of procuring that together.
• 30:38
  Then you just want to do that dynamically and automatically and you want that to come out of a centralized budget.
• 30:43
  That is the ideal world, right?
• 30:46
  That is the thing that everyone wants to happen.
• 30:48
  Fortunately, we work at a business where that's fundamental to what we're trying to achieve.
• 30:52
  But I think that is the absolute utopia of partnerships and channel coming together.
• 30:58
  And people who focus on doing that, they are going to take leaps and bounds forward for a couple of reasons.
• 31:05
  Number one, the end users are going to receive a holistic solution around a positioning.
• 31:11
  Number two, it's going to be unique because you're bringing together two, three, four vendors and that's going to be a better proposition to the end user.
• 31:20
  And the third thing is it's something the channel has never seen.
• 31:23
  And so that's why I'm so confident channel partners will resonate so hard with it, is because while everyone else is going, no, but this is what we do.
• 31:31
  Look, this is the solution that I sell.
• 31:33
  Please like us, you're going to be going, no, absolutely not.
• 31:36
  This is how you win with all of us round a table.
• 31:39
  That's going to help you access new entries, that's going to help you upsell and cross sell more effectively.
• 31:44
  If I'm a partner, I'm jumping up and down for that proposition.
• 31:48
  Final question about this topic, I'm very curious which role or which team should own this collaboration?
• 31:56
  So for me, it has to sit within the alliances division, right?
• 32:00
  So if we look at some of the big tier one vendors out there.
• 32:03
  Either they have a consumption team who drive consumption of their product or they have an alliances division which is designed to bring a more holistic solution to the end user.
• 32:14
  Those are the ones that if they're listing out there, they're the ones that have either access to direct budget or can go and get budget that understand that bringing a more well rounded solution to lots of end users are the ones that that really is the name on the job.
• 32:31
  That's what they have to do and the best way to do that is through channel.
• 32:35
  Now I understand that there are challenges to doing it through Channel because there's a long runway and how do we get them on board.
• 32:42
  But my recommendation is come and speak to us, send us a DM on LinkedIn and we can have a conversation around.
• 32:49
  Here's how you automate it.
• 32:50
  Here are the companies that I'd speak to.
• 32:52
  Here's how you can cascade that message via distribution or via partners.
• 32:56
  But there are ways to shortcut that process that they're probably not aware of.
• 33:00
  But imagine if overnight they could cascade an alliance marketing bundle with a positioning statement to tackle education in a recession.
• 33:10
  Imagine if you could turn on every single partner to cascade that message all at the same time.
• 33:15
  That is the utopia of channel and partnership marketing done together and we're really passionate about making that happen because it makes everyone win vendor, disti, partner and end user.
• 33:26
  I think we have a lot of listeners and a lot of our network is in tech partnerships as well, especially in SaaS.
• 33:33
  And I think indeed for the tech and alliances people there's a massive role already for you guys to tie together all the departments, of course, but really tying together the tech partnerships with channel.
• 33:44
  There's such a massive opportunity there.
• 33:46
  And I think secondly for the companies who are already a bit more in an enterprise environment, it might also be interesting to put it in the partner program team that you literally make a program around it that somebody owns.
• 33:59
  Because I think if there's one thing clear, especially if I hear you as well, it must be owned by somebody who is responsible in the end.
• 34:06
  Like how are we collaborating?
• 34:08
  How are we leveraging both channel and alliances together?
• 34:12
  Yeah, exactly.
• 34:12
  And it's got to come down to who is running those strategic initiatives, right?
• 34:17
  Certain businesses are much better than others at going, hang on, what's a bet that we can make this year that could go big.
• 34:25
  And that's not just recruitment partners, that's something strategic.
• 34:29
  Whoever owns that in your business or whoever's considering that needs to be spending time thinking how do we bring these tech partnerships and channel together tighter?
• 34:39
  Because I know we've gone over it and gone over it through this podcasts but to me that's the golden ticket.
• 34:46
  That's the one where suddenly you are going to win not one or 2% better, you're going to win 100, 200% better.
• 34:53
  Because partners are clamoring for a bundled solution that delivers more value to the end user that they can easily market.
• 35:01
  That just doesn't exist today.
• 35:03
  And unfortunately, there are a few vendors that can offer end to end solutions, but those are oversold, right?
• 35:10
  People understand who those vendors are and so they are massive.
• 35:13
  And you've got to be doing business with them for years and years and years to get on those radars.
• 35:18
  So if you're in that competitor position and you want to attack one of those goliaths, you've got to do it via alliances and then use channel to.
• 35:25
  Scale, really finding the smartest way to market.
• 35:28
  And I think we really see this as one of the crucial ways to go.
• 35:32
  I think.
• 35:32
  To summarize, to win in 2023, put on your CFO cap or your CFO head where you really are very strong into your internal communication and find, okay, how do I position everything?
• 35:46
  How do I make sure I have a strong case that I show the impact, but also do this external.
• 35:51
  So know for sure what is the positioning of ourselves to the channel, but also very important to the end user to make it all impact driven?
• 36:00
  How do we make sure they get more profit, more less, lower cost, more revenue?
• 36:05
  Also, never forget that channel is actually a great mechanism during recession.
• 36:10
  So make sure you keep evangelizing that internally as well, so they see the value of it and see the opportunity there.
• 36:17
  And finally, really think very strongly how can we leverage alliance and channel together.
• 36:23
  And if you focus on those three things, it's going to be one hell of a year.
• 36:28
  I would like to wish you a very happy 2023.
• 36:31
  Hope to see you next week again.
• 36:33
  And as always, let Alex and me know what you think of today and see you next week.
• 36:39
  Bye.