Latest / Partnerships Unraveled / 042 - Closing opportunities within the channel

Transcript

042 - Closing opportunities within the channel · Partnerships Unraveled

• 0:07
  Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries of partnerships and the channel on a weekly basis.
• 0:15
  My name is Rick van den Bosch, and I'm the CEO and founder at Channext.
• 0:18
  And I'm here together with Alex Whitford, VP partners at Channext.
• 0:22
  Alex, how are you doing today?
• 0:23
  I'm way too hot, Rick.
• 0:25
  We need to do this podcast in record time because for those not in the Netherlands in early July we are having an absolute heat wave.
• 0:31
  So we're melting in here.
• 0:32
  It's always extreme weathers in the Netherlands, either very hot or immediately a storm afterwards, whatever.
• 0:38
  We don't do a regular good weather here.
• 0:40
  Yeah, we had basically a tornado and then 32 degrees heat two days later.
• 0:44
  So yeah, the quicker we do this podcast, if one of us passes out, apologies but yeah, we need to fly through it.
• 0:50
  Interesting times.
• 0:51
  Just as today we also have an interesting topic.
• 0:53
  Again, obviously excellent segue, well done.
• 0:57
  I think last two episodes, actually two episodes ago we kick started our new series which is about self sustainable partner revenue.
• 1:06
  So how do you make sure that your partners can find close, renew and upsell opportunities on their own and in such really create a scalable channel?
• 1:15
  The first episode was around the total concept.
• 1:19
  The last episode, one episode ago was around finding opportunities.
• 1:23
  And today we're going to talk about closing opportunities and I think maybe to kick start this episode today with closing opportunities within the channels, what are some of the challenges you have seen there that channel teams face and partner teams?
• 1:36
  Sure.
• 1:36
  Let's map out the partner horror story when it comes to closing deals.
• 1:40
  So the absolute worst case scenario is you've got unpredictable revenue deals, forecasted that aren't closing or even no forecast at all, miss sold solutions that ultimately are guaranteed to churn and partners not able to escalating to the vendor whenever they need help.
• 1:56
  All of those together.
• 1:57
  That's absolutely the partner horror story.
• 1:59
  And hopefully today what we're going to discuss is how we can turn that horror story upside down and into the exact perfect renewable motion that you need.
• 2:07
  So really a lack of visibility into the deals that you have with your partners, but also really a lack of control I think.
• 2:14
  Is that what you're saying?
• 2:14
  Yeah.
• 2:15
  So the sort of three pillars that you want is lack of visibility, lack of control and miss selling.
• 2:20
  Right.
• 2:20
  So yes, the deal might come in, but especially in the SaaS world, the last thing you want is those deals churning out and incorrect closing motion is what ultimately will cause churn.
• 2:32
  So what you want is a predictable view on what's coming in sold effectively and the escalation and the control when and where you need it.
• 2:42
  Ideally not much needed because if your partners are correctly onboarded and know how to sell effectively, that should be done very predictably.
• 2:49
  So what we're trying to do is delegate the control down to the partners, but have an escalation mechanism back when they need it.
• 2:56
  Yeah, it's a good point, I think indeed nowadays with all the subscription models, it's so important that you get the right customers on board.
• 3:02
  And that's also something that's sometimes already difficult when you work with a direct sales team, let alone if you need to teach your partners, like, there's a certain amount of customers that we want to get in.
• 3:13
  Yes.
• 3:13
  Or no, but also they need to have the right sales promise, which we can also achieve for them in the short term so we can help the customers in the best way and make sure that they renew or upsell eventually.
• 3:23
  And I think as a result of that, it's very important that we are super clear on our ICP and our sales journey there.
• 3:29
  So our ideal customer profile, but what do you think there?
• 3:33
  Why is that so important, especially in the channel?
• 3:36
  Yeah, 100%.
• 3:37
  I think what you need to worry about when you're driving that sales motion is there's two things you're trying to prevent sales churn, so end user maturn, customer churn and partners churn.
• 3:47
  And if you churn too many sales, the partner will inevitably churn because they lose faith in your product and proposition.
• 3:54
  And so having a very, very clear ICP, not only does that help close deals, because you can drive or find deals because you can drive very targeted messaging, but also you want to be able to close that as well and having very specific targeted messaging towards that ICP and case studies and social proof that will allow you to drive significant closure at scale, which is obviously what we're after.
• 4:15
  And I think as a result of it, it's so important that you have figured out this in a good way before you really scale your channel.
• 4:22
  Right.
• 4:22
  I think we as GenX also experience a lot here.
• 4:25
  Like how do you build your ideal customer profile and what does the sales journey look like and in what phase or what meeting with a potential customer?
• 4:32
  Do you tell what part of the proposition, so to say, like it needs to be how do you always say it?
• 4:37
  Cookie cutter.
• 4:39
  I think that's so crucial to have that before you can actually start getting your closing opportunities with partners into a self sustainable motion.
• 4:47
  Yeah, exactly.
• 4:47
  It's the sort of scaling Proposition 101.
• 4:51
  You want a scalable and predictable revenue motion.
• 4:54
  The difficulty in the channext is you want a scalable, predictable revenue motion done by other people.
• 4:59
  And that's really, really hard to do and really, really hard to embed.
• 5:02
  So like, we always talk about get depth first and then we can add breadth and go wide when we need to.
• 5:07
  But when we talk about the closing motion, you want to have a clear understanding end to end of who the customer is, your defined OTCP, what they need and how we close them.
• 5:18
  And so we talk about this all the time on this podcast.
• 5:21
  It's not just what you sell, but how you sell it.
• 5:23
  And so into that closing motion, into that ICP.
• 5:26
  It's not just who the ICP is, but how do we sell to that ICP?
• 5:29
  What's the particular messaging?
• 5:31
  What's the typical deal size?
• 5:32
  What's the closing points?
• 5:33
  How do we close that what that looks like?
• 5:35
  You want to be able to take that and explain that to a partner.
• 5:38
  And that partner has to be able to do that as much autonomously as possible.
• 5:42
  Because, again, we're looking for a scalable motion.
• 5:45
  In fact, we're looking for hyperscale.
• 5:46
  And the only way to hyperscale is, is the partner be able to do this autonomously and independently.
• 5:53
  Yeah, I think the step before scalable is repeatable.
• 5:56
  And I think that's indeed what we really have to look at.
• 5:59
  When you're drafting your partner program and you're really finding out the mechanics and how to go to market optimally, that's where you really need to look.
• 6:06
  I think we did another series prior to this, getting your partners to first revenue.
• 6:11
  With every partners you do that, you have to document everything.
• 6:13
  You have to see what's working.
• 6:14
  Is there differences between certain partners and where are the similarities?
• 6:18
  And the more and more data points you get, the more you can really go towards a repeatable sales motion where, you know, this is the type of ICP you need to target on.
• 6:28
  And then those are the five steps you take that ICP prospect through to eventually go towards a closed deal.
• 6:33
  Yeah, I love that you said the best word, which is data.
• 6:36
  Right?
• 6:36
  I think so much of this stuff is done on gut and feel, which is not the right way to do it, especially not when you've got thousands of data points to measure.
• 6:44
  But realistically, in the same way you would with a direct organization, you'd have, like here's your closing persona, here's the questions that we need to ask.
• 6:51
  Here's the study, here's the sales criteria, here's the success criteria we need to embed into the sales cycle.
• 6:57
  All of those pieces need to be documented when you go direct, and yet we sort of just hope it happens when you go via the partners.
• 7:04
  That's crazy.
• 7:04
  You want it even more documented so that you can train and drive the salespeople within the partners to go through those same steps, tie it into the ecosystem, drive better conversions.
• 7:14
  All of that stuff has to work via your partners.
• 7:16
  And you've got to be educating them.
• 7:18
  You've got to be seeing the proof that they can do it.
• 7:20
  And then you can start to relax and wind back, but only once you've seen them go from first revenue to predictable and self sustainable revenue.
• 7:28
  Yeah, I'm just thinking, like, there's different roles in the sales cycle.
• 7:32
  Of course, you have the account executive, you have sales engineers, et cetera.
• 7:35
  Is there a certain order that you would advise in terms of who should be trained in what order, or so to say, or what are you still doing yourself?
• 7:45
  Maybe because I can imagine in some sales motions it's also a joint sales motion between your team and the partner.
• 7:52
  Yeah, that's a great point.
• 7:52
  Right.
• 7:54
  So we're talking about self sustainable revenue, but that doesn't mean it's not a co sell, it just means it's sustainable.
• 8:01
  So in some brands and in some vendors, it will always be a co sell motion.
• 8:06
  And then you need roles and responsibilities.
• 8:08
  Right.
• 8:08
  You need to understand what is the vendor doing, what is the distributor doing, what is the partner doing.
• 8:13
  And then that's very defined in a sort of Gantt chart where you understand when does each part or each party enter the sale cycle and what is their roles and responsibilities, and at what point is it handed over.
• 8:24
  That has to be documented.
• 8:26
  And if that's a consistent process, it needs to be done consistently.
• 8:30
  Right.
• 8:30
  So if the vendor is doing all the sales engineering work or the solution design or whatever it is, they have to be doing that at every single point.
• 8:37
  And they have to be introduced at the same point with the same amount of documentation, with the same type of introduction.
• 8:43
  That consistency is what drives the scalability and predictability.
• 8:48
  If that consistency is not there, it will never scale wide.
• 8:52
  Because if an Se doesn't really understand at what point they're meant to be in, or the partner doesn't understand what their roles and responsibilities are, you can see how that's just going to massively impact your conversion.
• 9:01
  And you're looking for high conversion through partners.
• 9:04
  Right.
• 9:04
  A much higher conversion than you should expect.
• 9:06
  Direct.
• 9:06
  That's what the data suggests.
• 9:08
  That only works if you've got this predictable motion.
• 9:11
  Yeah.
• 9:12
  So really extreme clarity throughout the sales process on who's doing what.
• 9:16
  And indeed also from that perspective, I can imagine if you have a bit more of a technical product, then you can decide for the first year or a couple of years that actually your sales engineers are attached to every single sales cycle that your partners have.
• 9:30
  Is that the case?
• 9:30
  Yeah, 100%.
• 9:32
  I know brands and partners who've been selling the product together for 1015 years and the vendor is still doing all the solution architecture, which is absolutely fine because they've just got clarity and accountability.
• 9:46
  Right.
• 9:47
  So if the partner is not doing what they should do, the partner is brought up to task very, very quickly to say, hey, you should have done X, Y and Z.
• 9:53
  You only did X and Y.
• 9:55
  We need Zed to be able to push this forward to get it done or vice versa.
• 9:58
  Right.
• 9:59
  Architects not designed it optimally or we think there's stuff missing.
• 10:03
  Well, we're a team, we're working together.
• 10:05
  Even if we're two different businesses and we're all focused on the outcome, which is what we want, which is closing deals consistently at scale.
• 10:12
  And let's say we have a hypothetical sales process.
• 10:16
  So it's a SaaS product and indeed, first we have a discovery meeting, then we have a demo meeting, then we have a solution fit or a business case meeting.
• 10:25
  And eventually with the decision makers, is there a difference when you do those different type of meetings with partners or when you would do it with a direct sales team in terms of how you design such a sales process?
• 10:36
  No, it's exactly the same and it has to have the exact same level of care, the way I would think of it about it, when you're designing it the same way you design it for your team, your direct team.
• 10:46
  Well, just think of your partners as an extension of your direct team.
• 10:49
  They should be going through the same gates and if it's very well set up, you should be tracking the success of each of those gates because that's what gives you your pipeline and your forecasting.
• 10:59
  And done accurately at scale, it gives you very, very accurate forecasting.
• 11:03
  And what you really want is an escalation if something's not gone well.
• 11:08
  Oh, we seem to always be falling down at demo.
• 11:11
  Why?
• 11:11
  Excellent.
• 11:12
  Well, let's do a training demo.
• 11:14
  If you record those sessions, let's go through it together and we can understand.
• 11:17
  But you see, we're really solving the problem at its source there and having that two way relationship where the partner has the confidence to say, hey, we're struggling here, can you help?
• 11:26
  And suddenly you can see how your resource scales so far then, because you're being brought in to solve the problems at each area and drive closure in the exact same way you drive a direct sales organization.
• 11:37
  Yeah, that's a very good point.
• 11:39
  I think something that immediately resonates with me is how important trust is together with that partner because they are your direct feedback loop from all those conversations, especially if you don't have a co sell motion.
• 11:52
  If your partner, let's say you have more like an SMB proposition with high volume so the partners are mostly doing it.
• 11:58
  You need to be very close to your partners, just as close as you would be to your AES or to your SDRs, where you continuously get what messaging is resonating.
• 12:06
  Where are we getting stuck?
• 12:08
  Are there certain features that we are missing in those sales cycles?
• 12:11
  And the more closer you are to the partners there, the better it actually is and the more you can improve your closing motion and get it towards self sustainable revenue.
• 12:21
  Yeah, your win is their win.
• 12:21
  Right.
• 12:22
  And I think the quicker we stop treating partners as a separate business and as an extension of our team, the better we're going to be able to optimize the process, which is to the benefit of all of us.
• 12:33
  Right.
• 12:33
  What we want is a high converting high velocity process that wins very consistently.
• 12:38
  That's a benefit for the partner and for the vendor.
• 12:41
  But you've got to build that trust and you've got to understand, look, we want your feedback, we want to support you so we can continue to optimize.
• 12:47
  And if a partner finds out, oh, actually this language, this presentation, this messaging is working much better here.
• 12:53
  Great.
• 12:53
  Share that feedback with other partners because then suddenly you can see, even though partners might occasionally compete against the partners, we're all winning together.
• 13:02
  The growth of the brand, the growth of the closing mechanism is beneficial to all.
• 13:07
  So how do we share and collaborate?
• 13:09
  So ultimately we can all win.
• 13:11
  And if we would go a little bit more micro.
• 13:14
  So focus on a specific deal.
• 13:16
  Let's say there's a very, like, we've just had the find opportunity episode before.
• 13:21
  We found a very interesting opportunity that could be game changing for you as a vendor and for the partner.
• 13:27
  Are there certain frameworks that you can use that can bring the highest probability of closing that deal?
• 13:33
  Actually, yeah, 100%.
• 13:35
  So most enterprise channel businesses, they have either a high touch team or an end user team.
• 13:41
  They are there not to close the deal, direct the deal still flows through the partner, but they are there to support the deal.
• 13:48
  And so they are an Ae that works directly into the end user, but the deal flows back through a partner.
• 13:55
  You need an escalation mechanism to bring those types of people into those deals.
• 14:00
  Typically they're very verticalized, so they'll look after manufacturing or healthcare or whatever.
• 14:04
  They speak that language, they've worked with other customers of that type and they are brought in to help the partner close that deal.
• 14:11
  They can show proof of concepts, they can show demos, they can put discount structure in place if needed.
• 14:16
  They are there to help drive conversion and closure and then it becomes a joint sale.
• 14:22
  And that to me, is the epitome of what you want your channel to do.
• 14:25
  Your channel is there to drive you as far and wide as possible, but also to highlight the highly important, highly valuable opportunities so you can tackle those with greater care.
• 14:35
  Right.
• 14:35
  We've seen that time and time again work so so effectively, Microsoft, who's the biggest channel in the world, they still have high touch people who are going to come in and work with partners to close the largest deals.
• 14:47
  Yeah, because those are usually the make or break deals to have a great quarter.
• 14:51
  Right.
• 14:51
  If you get the wheels in, then your full quarter can be saved as such or like you can highly overachieve.
• 14:58
  Yeah, there's an 80 20 rule within partners, but there's an 80 20 rule within endusers.
• 15:02
  80% of your revenue is coming from 20% of your end users, even in the SME and mid market space, but certainly in the enterprise.
• 15:09
  So, you know, hang on, we really, really need to win within, let's say, the Fortune 500 companies in the US.
• 15:17
  Those ones are really, really valuable.
• 15:19
  We've got to make sure we're winning there.
• 15:21
  So if a partner has a good relationship but doesn't necessarily have all the expertise, not a problem.
• 15:26
  Partner's got the relationship.
• 15:27
  You bring the expertise in terms of your high touch model and then we get involved and really close that deal together.
• 15:33
  Yeah, I think that's interesting, especially what you see now, especially in those Fortune 500 deals where it's not just one partner working on that deal anymore, but multiple partners.
• 15:41
  So therefore, indeed creating a joint closing plan where you literally figure out indeed, which partners do we all need to attach in this deal?
• 15:49
  What is our role and what partner is going to play what role in that full sales cycle?
• 15:54
  I think there you really create that joint closing plan with very clear roles and responsibilities and also highly increase the likability of you closing the deal in such an enterprise motion.
• 16:04
  Yeah, the thing I always sort of speak to businesses on is, remember, if they're not playing with you, they're playing against you.
• 16:09
  And so having that multi partner approach is sometimes really important because let's just take a fairly simple use case.
• 16:17
  You've got an AV partner who does all the meeting rooms.
• 16:20
  You've got an It partner who does all the desktops, and then you've got the vendor.
• 16:23
  Well, this is going to be a multiparter approach because the AV partner is going to have a voice in the meeting room technology, but the It partner is managing the desktop.
• 16:32
  Okay.
• 16:32
  These two partners need to work together on behalf of the vendor to ensure that the sort of cross communication platform, let's say, is implemented.
• 16:40
  Excellent.
• 16:41
  Well, you need to work out how they're going to play together because guess what?
• 16:44
  If one partner is being cut out, suddenly they're going to put their hands up and say, no, you shouldn't be working.
• 16:49
  We need to be cut in on the deal.
• 16:50
  That's going to drive bias.
• 16:52
  It's actually one of the main reasons that lots of businesses start building a channext is because they find unless they've got a channel model, those partners are detrimental to their success in the enterprise.
• 17:02
  Okay, well, we need to bring people together.
• 17:04
  But you're right.
• 17:05
  The next evolution is what happens when there's multiple partners.
• 17:08
  Okay?
• 17:08
  How can we get them to collaborate?
• 17:09
  Who is providing what value?
• 17:11
  How do we make sure they're both benefiting financially from this proposition?
• 17:14
  And suddenly you can work in conjunction.
• 17:17
  It's not particularly scalable, but this is the one instance where you don't need it to be in that top 20% of end users that you're highly, highly focused on.
• 17:25
  Let's take the Fortune 500.
• 17:27
  It's only 500 and you're never closing all 500 in one year.
• 17:30
  You can do a little bit of unscalable stuff in those end users because that's where you want to be focusing.
• 17:37
  So I think that the larger and more complex the deals are, the more important it is to get such a joint closing plan in place.
• 17:44
  And indeed, maybe it's not necessarily the most scalable motion, but it is a very repeatable motion.
• 17:48
  And as such you can also drive more repeatability in your sales process in the large enterprise deals.
• 17:54
  But it's exactly why you should be investing in scalability because if your cams on your high touch team are tied up in all of the unscalable stuff that should be scalable, they don't have the time and attention to spend on the unscalable stuff that should be unscalable.
• 18:09
  So if they're worrying about non Fortune 500 companies because you don't have the automation in place, it means they can't be worrying about the Fortune 500 companies that make the incremental difference.
• 18:19
  So build the scalable process, build the repeatable processes in every area you can because it frees up time to focus on the really important stuff that's going to make or break your quarter.
• 18:32
  Yeah, I like that.
• 18:33
  I think indeed we touched upon quite deeply already on the lack of control and scalability repeatability of deals.
• 18:40
  Maybe it's also nice to touch upon the visibility a little bit.
• 18:43
  I think that's one of the issues, right?
• 18:45
  It's very hard usually to predict future revenue within the channel.
• 18:49
  What are some of the main challenges you have seen there in terms of visibility, of pipeline, of forecasting, of deals?
• 18:55
  Yeah, I spend a lot of time talking to businesses about maybe why they should build their first channel or where their channels are going and I hear the same thing, Alex, I can't see where my deals are and it's the number one reason why people do not like working with the channel.
• 19:12
  Because if you've built a direct go to market motion we see it here at Channext.
• 19:15
  Right?
• 19:16
  I can see exactly, just based on how many SQLs created, how much revenue we should see in three to six months time in the channel, that becomes so much harder.
• 19:26
  Because deal reg is a thing, but actually lots.
• 19:29
  Of people don't do deal regis or they wait till the final day when they know the deal is coming in to put the deal reg in.
• 19:35
  And it just doesn't scale properly.
• 19:37
  Until you hit the super scalable channels and the super wide channels, then you can actually have a very, very accurate because you've got a million data points out there.
• 19:45
  But what you need to work on is educating your partners on why, what's in it for them in terms of driving a predictable motion, how you reward them for forecasting accurately and what's the problem or what's the downside if they don't forecast accurately.
• 20:01
  And so often what I see is the vendor talks about themselves, what they need to be educating the partners on what's in it for them, as why they should be forecasting more accurately and what's the downside for them if they don't.
• 20:12
  Because the partner's got their own priorities and it's very helpful for me, is a terrible argument.
• 20:18
  And instead you want to be monetizing it for the partner, putting incentives in place for accurate forecasting, rebates in place for accurate forecasting, driving the behavior that you need to see.
• 20:28
  Because you're absolutely right, the number one problem with working with the channel is lack of visibility.
• 20:33
  And I think you've touched upon it a bit already.
• 20:36
  Like dual registration is the measure that they've tried to implement to solve for that.
• 20:40
  But I think what worked out with dual registration is that we have more insight into who is the end user that's actually using our product because that was really missing beforehand.
• 20:50
  But what it completely not solved for was indeed forecasting because what happens, they get a discount if they do the partner gets a discount if they do the deal registration.
• 20:59
  They do it two weeks maximum before the actual deal is there.
• 21:03
  So then still you don't have like a clear view on okay, but what's coming in two months or in three months, for example.
• 21:10
  And I fully agree with you there that's what you really need to solve for within your deal registration mechanism.
• 21:15
  You should think about things like when does the partner get the full discount?
• 21:19
  Do they get more discount if they register the deal?
• 21:22
  You first need to have a clear view, of course, of what your sales cycle looks like and how long it is.
• 21:27
  But if you know that it's always longer than three months, give a partner a bigger deal discount when they register it three months upfront versus when they do it four weeks upfront.
• 21:37
  And indeed even consider like if it would be two weeks upfront, do you still want to give a big discount or is it then just more nice to have?
• 21:45
  And I think as such, you can really reward your partners indeed in a monetary way, but also fully agree with you.
• 21:51
  It's crucial to explain to them why it's important for them that you can help them way better.
• 21:56
  If you have early insights into a deal that partners who have start measuring everything, like maybe you can give them benchmarks after a while where you say, hey, partners who register the deal three months upfront are two times more likely to close the deal than partners who do it one month upfront.
• 22:11
  And that's indeed what you said, like when you turn the messaging around.
• 22:14
  Because how I started with the monetary was still very much about the vendor, I want it and therefore but if you work out that that's where you can really drive certain behavior but also make it exciting for partners to start working on such a thing.
• 22:28
  Yeah, I love your metrics, right?
• 22:29
  Because if you've got really good data around why a vendor should be or why a partner should be putting deal registers in earlier forecasting, more accurately and how that helps their own conversion.
• 22:41
  Well, guess what a sales director and a partner will do?
• 22:43
  Enforce it.
• 22:43
  Because if he knows, oh actually we're twice as likely or 10% more likely to close a deal if we forecast it three months ahead of time because the vendor is involved they will make sure it happens because it's inherently beneficial for the partner.
• 22:57
  So often I hear so many channel account managers saying calling round, chasing deal information which is just a terrible waste of time, that should be automated and then they've got the information, they know where they need to dive in and help.
• 23:10
  We're chasing the wrong things, right?
• 23:13
  We've got swivel chair processes when automation and technology can solve all those issues for us that's what we want to be doing from a program design perspective that's where we have to focus and I think if you can incentivize and drive the behavior in the right way, the partner should want to do it.
• 23:29
  It is a partnerships and if they're unwilling to forecast or maybe they're not a very good partner and maybe you should be prioritizing your time elsewhere.
• 23:37
  Yeah, and it's a good point on indeed the systems and the automation you need to make it as easy as possible for your partners to update you to forecast.
• 23:45
  And I think that's where we should be heading.
• 23:47
  Like a lot of companies have a PRM partner relationship management software where you do the deal registrations, where you do the tracking but you really need to go deep there.
• 23:56
  Like think about it as your CRM with your partners.
• 23:59
  So within every funnel stage you want to see where's the dropout but also if deals go to close lost, let partners give a close lost reason so you can start figuring out what the reason is for it.
• 24:10
  But also for partners they have to update it in a lot of places towards the future we should have that partners can actually integrate their own CRM as well so they don't have to manage it in multiple places and I think that's really where we as an industry need to think about and start working towards.
• 24:26
  And yes, it's going to be a big leap because it's quite complex to get everything together but that's like the North Star we should be working towards.
• 24:34
  Yeah, 100%.
• 24:35
  There's no good talking about partners sales team being an extension of your sales team and then them not having any of the tooling required.
• 24:44
  Like we have HubSpot internally, right?
• 24:47
  Great tool for driving sales performance.
• 24:49
  We can see absolutely every metric that we need to see but if I can't see any of that with my partners and I don't have the interlinking mechanisms to get that same level of feedback that is what a Cam is going to be doing.
• 25:00
  Now imagine a world where a Cam didn't need to do any of that.
• 25:03
  They had the visibility on everything they.
• 25:05
  Need.
• 25:06
  The technology doesn't exist yet at scale, but you can absolutely see a year down the line, two years down the line, that's what it's going to be doing.
• 25:14
  Cams can focus just on the pieces they need to.
• 25:17
  And the way I always think of it, you don't want a machine gun approach, you want a sniper approach to Cam's time.
• 25:23
  They want to be diving into the exact partners to the exact rep, to the exact deal at the exact moment they need.
• 25:29
  And that should be being flagged by the technology.
• 25:32
  Yeah, I think indeed there you really get to the best of both worlds where you have the automation and the scalability and your high run rate deals and stuff like that.
• 25:39
  But then they'd really have the camps go all in on the deals that should close because we know that those deals, the large deals are the make or break deals for the quarter.
• 25:48
  Yeah.
• 25:48
  And I want to be knowing who is my rep that's actually got the most deal registers in and I haven't had an update after three weeks and on average this rep gives me an update after two weeks.
• 25:57
  Right.
• 25:57
  I should be proactively chasing him.
• 26:00
  A Channext account manager who's managing a computer center is responsible for 40 to 50 salespeople in one team and they probably have six to ten accounts.
• 26:10
  It's just too many people to speak out to.
• 26:12
  So unless I've got a technology reinforcing that messaging consistently out to those sales teams and I know exactly what I should be doing with my diary based on the data.
• 26:21
  Data informed decisions drives the output you need.
• 26:24
  Yeah.
• 26:25
  Lots of work to do for us in the channel and partner for all of us, also our listeners, but I think very exciting times ahead.
• 26:32
  Thank you for sharing again today around self sustainable partner revenue.
• 26:35
  Today about closing opportunities.
• 26:37
  We've touched upon the importance of having a very clear view of your ICP and the sales journey.
• 26:42
  So you can really see at what moment does the partner fit in and then where do you support with your channel team?
• 26:48
  We've talked about the joint closing plan, how important that is, especially when you work on larger enterprise deals and also the crucial capabilities of tracking and measuring everything.
• 26:58
  So you really get all the learnings and make sure that you continuously improve the motion.
• 27:02
  Next week we have our next episode around the renewal crucial in today's subscription episode.
• 27:08
  Thanks again for today, Alex.
• 27:09
  Thank you to our listeners and see you next week.