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085 - Kathyrn Rose - SMB Channel Partner Marketing · Partnerships Unraveled

• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries about channel and partnerships on a weekly basis.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: My name is Efe and I'll be your host in this episode.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: I'm excited to announce our special guest, Catherine.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Catherine, how are you doing?
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Hi, great Efe, Nice to be here.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, nice to have you.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: I'm very excited for our episode.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: We've talked quite a long time ago and we couldn't schedule this episode for a while now, but I'm really excited that we have a chance to speak now.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Catherine, for those who may not know you, or maybe those who know you but need an update, would you please give us an introduction?
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Who are you, what do you do and why should people listen to you?
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Great, so my name is Catherine Rose.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: As you mentioned, I am the CEO and founder of a company called Channel Wise where we provide on demand access to experts to help MSPs and also vendors and suppliers with answers to their critical business questions.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: With answers to their critical business questions also resources and education.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: We also do live on-site coaching sessions through our vehicle called the Coaching Cafe, so a lot of people know us through that.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: At the conferences, we bring our coaches or we work with the conference experts to facilitate one-on-one live sessions.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: As you know, there's many, many shows in the channel and so we do the coaching cafe and also the co-founder of the Channel Marketing Association, and I've been in the channel for quite a long time, probably over 15 years, various different roles.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: I was in telecom, I worked in the AV channel and also in the IT channel and I've worked with VARs, resellers, MSPs, ISVs you name it all the alphabet soup of the channel.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: Great, amazing.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: We'll definitely come back to the great things that you're doing at ChannelWise and also the Channel Marketing Association, but I want to start with a question that we really like to talk about in the Partnerships Underworld podcast, and that is the long-tail partners.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: So not so long ago, I ran a poll on my LinkedIn and 86% of the respondents agreed that vendors should be investing more in their long-tail partners.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: I remember when we had our initial conversation, you mentioned that you love the long tail.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: Now why do you think is the long tail so important for a channel organization and where does that love come from?
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm a huge fan advocate for small businesses, period right, and the vast majority of channel partners are under 10 employees, about 2 million in revenue.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: You know painting again with a broad brush there.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: And so they're all going to be these small businesses, and they are the long tail and I think the for me the investment because they can always get to that next level right, and I always look for programs and ways to influence, empower.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: What have you what I call the cuspers people who would do more business with you if you help them do more business, and you know a lot of vendors.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Because of either financial resources, human resource constraints, constraints or whatever, a lot of folks focus on those top partners that have large staffs because it's easier to enable them, but at the end of the day, the vast majority of the partners that really need your help aren't getting it.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: So I try to find ways to support them and that's what ChannelWise does ways to support them, and that's what ChannelWise does.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: Also.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: I think, when I often talk with vendors, it's a trend that we've been seeing lately, especially some of the biggest tech vendors out there.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: They're now heading down market and targeting those SMB partners and the SMB end users.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: But the thing is, I think, what you said about focusing too much on the top partners.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: I see that very often.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: I think that vendors they typically chuck their best people, their top talent, all their MDF funds into these top partners and they create a really competitive scape.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: But actually those SMB partners, I think if you nurture them, if you enable them, then there's a lot of value to be realized there.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: How do you see this shift happening?
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: Do you feel like vendors are paying enough attention to these SMB partners or do you think do you see the trend as in the same way that I'm seeing it?
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: I hear a lot of vendors and suppliers talk about it.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: I think the biggest challenge is they don't understand.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: I know what it's like to be a small business owner, right Bottom line, and you know I've owned my own consultancy.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: I've owned an SEO agency back in the day and now I own my own startup, so I get what it's like to start, build and scale your own business.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: A lot of the folks that are, you know, these bigger vendors who are looking to into this market, they don't really understand what it's like, so they think it's a one size fits all approach.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: They try to do the same sorts of programs and things with these smaller partners.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: And you mentioned MDF.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: You know there's all these stats about 80 percent of MDF goes unused and you know some say 60, whatever it is, it's a.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: It's a fair amount of MDF that goes unused.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: It's a.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: It's a fair amount of MDF that goes unused.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: And you know the fact is is that it's it's it's hard to get.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: It's hard for these smaller partners, especially to quantify, provide those those things, and sometimes they have to put the money up front in order to get the money back and they just, they just don't have it.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: They're trying to make payroll.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: They're trying to, you know, get out there and get more customers.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: Focus in marketing and doing the things that they just every day to get their, their businesses, going and running.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: So you know, yeah, unless and until vendors and suppliers look at partners and understand what it's like to be that and develop programs specifically tailored to those people, I think you're going to have a challenge.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that at Channelwise, the company that you founded, that you're the CEO of, I think you do a lot of help to these SMB partners.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: So could you please tell us how does ChannelWise accelerate business growth for the SMB, MSBs, VARs, solution providers, whatever you call them?
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they call them a lot of different things, right, I think when I started ChannelWise, one of the things I've built over the years is a very, very large network and people are always asking hey, can I, you know, have five minutes of your time, 10 minutes of your time, 30 minutes, whatever it is to chat through Like I?
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: I've been in enterprise sales for almost 20 years, so enterprise, mid market, I mean, you know, I've sold, I've sold a lot of different things over the years.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: So people are always asking, like what do you, you know, what do you think about my sales deck?
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Or can we walk through our script or things like that.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: And for me it was like, especially on the long tail side, they don't have time for like, or sometimes the funds, quite frankly, for long-term coaching programs.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: You know, there's this one vendor we were talking to and in their partner university they have a 20 hour sales course, 20 to zero.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: And I was like there is no way someone's going to sit through a 20 hour sales course.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: Give me the, give me the phone, a friend, give me the.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: I need an answer now and I'll take that Right.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: So that's what we aim to do.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: We work also with vendors and suppliers by lending our thought leadership.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: So we have very large vendors who we have.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: We bring our experts to do ask me anything sessions or office hours with their partners, because that's what the partners need.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: They don't need a long-term sales process.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: So, like, I need to sell what I've got today, I need to sell it tomorrow.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: So how can I do that?
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: So that's what we try to do.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: So our experts run the gamut between hiring you know all the major pain points sales, marketing, hiring, finances.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: You know, in order to scale, you have to make sure how are they going to change if they have to.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: A lot of bars that are moving over or adding managed services to their menu of services.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: How does that work, you know?
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: And there's a lot of partners out there that still haven't made that full transition.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: So you know, what we try to do is give this actionable, practical, tactical advice on demand.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you also made a lot of noise recently with the Channel Marketing Association, which you co-founded.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: A couple of weeks ago you hosted the event.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: Could you also tell us about what is the Channel Marketing Association and the things that you provide to the community?
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: So the Channel Marketing Association basically came from the frustration that my co-founder, amy Bailey, and I had when we were working in that realm of you know, there's best practices.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: People are always asking us like, what are best practices?
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: What do you see out there?
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: And I was like you don't talk to each other.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Well, they don't, because typically when they're at events, they're talking to their partners or they're supporting sales and different kinds of things.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: But these are the people who are developing programs for the long tail, developing programs to enable and activate and reactivate their partners.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: So we decided that, because of our expertise and our networks, that we were going to help these folks as well.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: So we started the channel marketing association and we just launched in January and we had our, our very first summit and it was all.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: We had a partner panel.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: It was like from the voice of the partner, and that was one of the most highly rated panels, cause they were like we just, you know, thankfully, partners were willing to come and give their and voice their opinions and, um, and I think it only helps the industry to hear from partners, to hear about programs and things that are working out there, like what's next, what's happening, what's working um it just helps the whole industry, so that's why we decided to do it I think that's also very valuable and, to everyone who's listening right now, I will place Catherine's LinkedIn in the description.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: Go connect with her, ask her about ChannelWise, ask her about Channel Marketing Association.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: Reach out to her.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: For my next question, I want to focus a little bit more on the SMB partners and type of problems that they have, because you mentioned that I think you work a lot with these SME partners.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: You own SME businesses, so what is what type of problems make them come for you for help, come to you for help?
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: Mostly sales and marketing, although with the past year it has really been a lot on the hiring front because they're you know, the lack of skilled workforce out there they're finding challenges with.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of MDF folks out there.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: They're looking for help with MDF and how to get it, how to report out on it.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: Events there are thousands, literally, of events in the channel Like what one should I go to?
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: Should I have my own?
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: A lot of SMB partners you could have a lunch and learn right At your in your local area.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: So that's most of the things that folks come to us with.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: I see, and I was browsing the ChannelWise website and then I saw this statistic where it said that less than 15% of partners engage in the marketing programs their vendors deliver and only about 17% of partners log in regularly to vendor-provided PRMs partner portals.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: And we always hear very similar data from our customers here at GenX, and it kind of reminds me of what Jay McBain said once in one of the webinars that we hosted.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: He said that if you remove mandatory actions from partner portals, such as deal registration or claiming money, and there will be zero logins left.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: So you work with partners every day.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: You talk with them very often, so could you please tell us why don't partners engage in marketing programs and also why don't they use the partner portals?
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: I have not heard that quote from Jay.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: I'm definitely going to use that one.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: I'll attribute it to him, of course, but that's a really that's that's.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: He's absolutely right, you know.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: I think it's.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: The challenge is, is that people are selling solutions.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: Now I mean and I'm talking way back in the day I mean you, you know, you were, you were a partner of a, of an organization, of a, and you would actually like wear that on your shirt.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: You put that on the logo on your storefront like come see us because we are, you know, partners with this, this company.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: It's not like that anymore, you know, I think it's important to show that you have, you know you have a level that you can partner with these bigger vendors.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: Right, that you have the certifications and things like that if it's necessary.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: But most of the folks out there today sell solutions, so they're not leading with a specific vendor, they're selling a solution.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: So when you have, you know it used to be around you'd have 30 vendors on your line card, meaning that you're probably affiliated with about 30, and then you're strategic with like seven to 10.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: And those are the ones you, you know, you put in your tech stack and you go time and again.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: But if every one of them has their own portal and every one of them has their own marketing materials, and you know, that's where it becomes challenging, because now the SMB partner has to then gather all that and then put it into one package and one message and get it out there.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: And I also think a lot of these SMB partners I mean, when people come into the coaching cafe at events, you the the vast majority of the of the conversations we start with, or who's your ideal customer, and they don't know.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: Because when you first start out with a, with a small business, you take anybody's business.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: You're like I need revenue, right, I need, I need money, so.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: But then as you start to scale, you can't be everything to everybody.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: You kind of have to pick a lane.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: So that's where you have these challenges, because the vendor wants you to go to market for them and you need to go to market in your specific vertical or your specific niche and you need to market a solution set of different folks.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: So it does become a challenge on both sides because from the vendor perspective, they need to gather data, roi, they need to provide marketing materials and through channel things.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: But on the partner side.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: They're like wait a second, I can't just take your email campaign and send it out.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: I have 10 other people that want me to send their email campaign out and I can't send 10 emails a day, so I think that is the particular challenge that they face.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I fully agree.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: So the PRM is essential.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: So you need to have a PRM, I think, because the deal registration, claiming money, those kinds of things.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: But I think the problem that I always had with PRMs is that which I could never understand, or maybe I understand it, but it's a one-way street, so it's it's a one way street, so it's like there's a portal for everyone there.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: So I always try to like envision a future where maybe there's a platform where partners come in and they can interact with multiple vendors from one place.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: I don't disagree with you.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think that that's one of the challenges that partners do face is that they have to log in and out of different of different portals.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: But it's when they get in there I mean, you know, I had very large vendors as clients of mine that I worked with and they had like 20,000 pieces of content in there it's like no, no, no, you know, you have to go through and get rid of stuff.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: You have to look at, like I said that, one vendor who had a 20-hour sales course.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: Is that what your partners really want?
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: No, think through, figure out what they're using, what they need, and then supply that to them instead of making them either log in and out of a bunch of different things or, once they log in, make it easy for them to find things.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: What are the key things that they are looking for?
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: And today we can gather so much of that data through large language modeling, through AI, whatever it is that you know when you're following folks around, you know inside your application, you know what they're looking for, so give them more of that.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I always say I think when partners log into the portal they kind of start playing the game versus Waldo.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: They have to find the assets, locate the assets.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: It's kind of a hide and seek game.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: You mentioned at the beginning of the episode, I think you mentioned that the average partner has about eight employees, and am I correct on that?
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, under 10, typically yeah.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: And also you know Janet Shine.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: She also made this uh research a while ago, which I often cite.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: And because the they're the partners, 81 percent of partners claim that they are not getting the marketing support that they need from their vendors.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: So how do you think vendors can better enable their smb partners, their their long tail partners, because you mentioned that.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: So they have very few employees, they don't have the marketing expertise or the know-how.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: The MDF is hard to manage, hard to get.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: There are financial problems because you pay the cost and then you get the money later, which no small business wants to do, so it's quite complicated.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: So what's your vision in terms of how to enable these SME partners in marketing and getting them to generate demand for a vendor solution?
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to push back a little bit on that because, you know, 81% of partners say they're not getting the marketing support.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: But from the marketing side they would push back and say, well, we're giving you all the stuff you need, you just don't use it.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: Right, so that that?
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: Um, I mentioned that we had a partner panel at the at the channel marketing association.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: I actually was the moderator of that and I kept.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: I heard over and over again from a couple of them you know, teach us how to fish.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: I'm like we're you know that old acronym or whatever that old saying of you know, teach someone to fish and they eat forever or something.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: And I was like I've heard that for 20 years in the channel Like we're teaching our partners how to fish?
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: No, you're not, cause they're not fishing.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: I said to him I'm like we're teaching you how to fish, you're just not fishing.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: So I think it has to be.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: There has to be a two, it's a partnership, right?
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: So the table.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: And say I, as a small business owner, I'm willing to invest in a marketing person.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: That is the biggest challenge because they want to get sales.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: So they're they, you know, they want net, new logos, they want sales and all these kinds of things and on the flip side of it, that's what the vendors are rewarding them for.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, the vendors are rewarding them for net new sales, net new logos and things like that.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: So the the and they're not really rewarding them per se for marketing campaigns because MDF, their market development funds, they're not marketing dollars, so it has to be tied to ROI.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: So if you, if I give you ten thousand dollars in marketing market development funds excuse me, market development funds, you have to then they want 10x usually return on that and typically the fastest way or used to be the fastest way to pipeline was phone calls.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: That's a sales function, that's not a marketing function.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: So the MDF has to be better aligned with the goals of the partner.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: And yes, you want to have, you want to have more sales.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: Of course that's the end.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: Even marketing, that's the end goal, right?
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: But in the meantime the buyers have changed.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: It used to be 100 dials, 10 appointments, one sale.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: Now it's 300 or more dials to just get the 10 appointments because of all the noise that's out there.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: So investing in longer term plays on marketing and you know, taking away, oftentimes MDF is given on a quarterly basis so that you know you have to.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: You have to look at it from a much longer term.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Play and reduce the amount of requirements for them to turn that $1 into $10 in 90 days.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: Then maybe we can all work together right.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, if you're a small business owner and you're not willing to make that investment into a funded marketing head, I can give you all the campaigns you need.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: I can call you every day and say, hey, I'll send your emails out for you.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: But if no one's paying attention to that demand generation function inside the MSP, you're not going to get anywhere.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I fully agree.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: I think the marketing function is very overlooked on the partner side.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: I remember the data.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: To be honest, don't count on me on this one, because I can't remember where I heard this from, but I think, for a SMB business, I think you get a first head of marketing when you reach to 49 employees and, when you think about it, the average channel partner is typically between 8 to 12 employees so, and they're far away from that maturity in marketing knowledge and expertise.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: So, catherine, I'm going to put you on the spot here and before I let you go, we always like to ask our guests'm going to put you on the spot here, and before I let you go, we always like to ask our guests to invite the next guest on the podcast.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: So who do you think would be a good guest to have on Partnerships Unraveled podcast?
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: Preferably someone who's well-versed in the SMB channel, that long tail play.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: Do you have some name in mind?
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: I absolutely do, michelle Accardi.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: She's the CEO of Lion Guard and I've worked with Michelle since her CA days, so that's a pretty long time.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: But, michelle, she ran, she was the president of Star to Star and so she all of those agents were small businesses and she her father owns a small business.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: She's worked in the SMBs for a really, really long time and, yeah, she's amazing, so I think she'd be a great guest.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: Thank you for the suggestion and, michelle, if you're listening to it, I will reach out to you and let's have a chat.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: All right?
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for your time, katrin, and thank you for the insights that you share with the SMB channel partners, how to engage Longtail, and the great things that you're doing at Channel Marketing Association, as well as Channel Wise.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: Once again, to all of our listeners, I will make sure to leave Catherine's LinkedIn in the description.
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: Please reach out to her.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: See you in the next episode.