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049 - The Ins and Outs of Creating a Successful Channel Team · Partnerships Unraveled

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to Parking Ships Unraveled, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries of parking ships and channel on a weekly basis.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: My name is Rick van de Bosch and I'm the CEO and founder at Chennext, and I'm here together with Alex Wittford, vp Parking Set, chennext.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Alex, how are you doing today?
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: I'm doing really well.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: It's Friday, I mean it's terrible weather, but weekend's almost upon us on a great mood.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Likewise.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Unfortunately, that's the thing of living in the Netherlands, right, the weather is regularly terrible.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, although I'm from England, right, so it's literally no difference, but yeah.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Excellent.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: We're already at episode number five today of the series around building a channel, or starting a channel from scratch, and we've touched upon the strategy already, the architecture of your channel, the compensation for the partner, and today we're going to talk about the team.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: So how do you construct your channel team there as well?
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: And I think maybe first of all, what does a channel team usually look like, and then from there maybe we can go into the specific roles and also, when you want to hire such a person like, what type of characteristics and experience does such a person need to have?
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly so.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: I think we've talked a lot around building a channel.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: You always split it down into sales, marketing, technical and operations.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: That's the four functions of the channel and in doing so, you're going to need to, at some point, hire individuals in each of those areas to cover the basis and then, ultimately, as you grow and scale, you're going to build basically entire business units and teams under each of those pillars, so that you can drive those four individual aspects as effectively as possible.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so for the sales role we have the channel account manager, For the marketing role, we have the channel marketing manager, Then for technical we have the channel enablement manager or the solution engineer and then for oftentimes we call it the partner program manager or channel operations, who really runs the program as such.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: And then of course we need a leader, which is the head of channel who runs the team.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the head of channel is absolutely your most critical hire when you're building a channel first.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: They're the ones that are going to set out the design.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: They're the ones that are going to build your channel strategy.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: Come up with the architecture that you need.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: Start to look at the compensation strategy.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: Really, the first hire that you want to make when you're building a channel and here's my root advice Pick someone who's done it before, and I don't just mean run an existing channel.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: Pick someone who's built a channel, because the personality and the characteristics and the skill set required to build versus run is wildly different.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: And what you will find and we see this in VC backed companies right, your CRO to take you from A to C is not your CRO to take you from series C to IPO, right, those are different skill sets, very typically different pay grades and everything else.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: And so if I'm hiring a channel leader, I'm picking someone who's built a channel before, because then they've encountered these problems, they've listened to this podcast, they understand what they should be doing, they're building that process through, and so, really, you want to start with a builder first and then ultimately, as you scale, if that person's got the capability to pivot to also being someone who can run a high-performing channel.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: Excellent.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: If not, at that point you're going to want to hire a different profile of channel leader.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's the most important but also the most difficult hire to get, because I think if I look at head of channels, they are usually really like Swiss army, nice right, Like they need to have so many capabilities because in the beginning you almost never have resources to hire all five roles at once that you would want in that channel team.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: So you start with one person who needs to do it all and slowly but steadily you build it up.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, we were speaking the other day in terms of profiles of salespeople and it was the hunter, the analyst and the strategist, and it's really hard to find a salesperson that does all three.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: The exact same true, if the same thing is true for a channel leader, except you also somehow need to be a technical person and a marketing person and also have operational design in mind.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: It's a very complicated role to do, which is why my gut feel is your two early hires needs to be a channel leader who's going to architect the strategy, and the channel account manager to be that focused and dedicated hunter, and then between those two you've got two sort of working forces.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: Those would be my preliminary hire.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: But you're absolutely right, that channel leader is such a specific skill set to really, in my mind, go for that builder first and then you can work on from there.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: I think builder is the right word for it.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: Indeed, you really need a very entrepreneurial person, because they have to build a lot from scratch.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: They have to be great networkers within your organization and outside, because in the beginning, the channel team always needs resources from the rest of the company because it's still one or two persons who are running it.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: So that's a crucial thing like look for someone who can really build like momentum within the company and get the buy-in from the different departments, but also someone who's indeed like the first period of building your channel is all about networking, getting into the right partners, building the joint failure proposition, etc.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: So there's a lot of work to do actually when you hire that person.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think what I want to be seeing in the way I'd be interviewing that candidate is to get them to present their plan.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: They should be able to prep, especially if they've got experience at it.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: They should be able to prep a two hour presentation where they run you through how they're going to cover sales, marketing, technical and operations, what the two year plan is, what the key things they're going to analyze, what's their partner acquisition strategy, what's the way to sort of build that plan out in detail.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: And you should be able to present them very, very specific problem statements that they have an exact idea of how to solve, so that you can analyze two things One, get an understanding of how they think.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: And two, do you agree with the conclusions that they're landing on?
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: And ultimately, if they present a good plan you've got a good idea of are they able to attack these problems well and are they landing in line with your vision for the design of why you want to start a channel?
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: Those three things together.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: That would be what I'm trying to sort of analyze for in that interview process.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: And in that interview process, how much information do you or don't you give to such a head of channel?
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: Let's say you want them to prep that case.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: Like what do you give them as input for them to build that case?
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I was actually speaking to a VP of sales the other day who was giving us tips on how to hire a really good VP of sales, and I really liked his process for how he analyzes those hires.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: What he would do is he'd give them 10 minutes of information, get them to go away, have a think, and then he book a half an hour session with them where they can ask all the questions they like.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: So the only thing that session is for Is for the candidate to interview you so that they can get as much information to build out a business plan so that they can then present their case.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: Why I love that strategy is you're actually interviewing them without interviewing them.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: Based on the questions they ask, you get a real understanding for how are they thinking and what are they analyzing.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: And then, if they get, when they present they haven't got to the right conclusions.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: Well, you know why is because they didn't ask you the right questions and actually that is enough of a breakdown then that you can really judge someone very effectively.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: So I think that's a brilliant protocol for hiring anyone at that very senior level.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: Because then you can really like evaluate how quickly they think, but also, like, with a little bit of information, what type of questions do they ask?
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: And usually you can see how good someone is by the questions they ask and from there and need, like, how do they then take those conclusions from the answers towards a full plan to actually build the channel?
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, to me I think that's the perfect way to do it.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: And then if, fundamentally, they've landed the wrong conclusion, but you understand, ok, they've misunderstood a piece of information, fair enough.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: But if you for me it's rather than is the business plan perfect do you understand the mechanism that they got to those conclusions?
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: And if you're pretty well aligned on that mechanism, then I think you're in a really good position to hire that person.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and then, once you find the right head of channel, what?
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: What would you give them as their first like assignment, or would you just leave that with them?
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so that that's exactly like if I'm hiring ahead of channel, I'm waiting for them to present me their strategy, right?
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: So the very first thing and that's what you're interviewing on is taught me through your 30, 60, 90.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: And then you're one to two year plans that you've got an idea of how they're going to accelerate and what they're aiming for.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: Obviously, the business is going to present them Typically revenue goals that they need to achieve within a six months, 12 month and 24 month period, and so they've got to work back from those numbers.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: But the idea of hiring that person is you can step out of the way and let them really run it, but I would absolutely be making sure they understand sales, marketing, technical and ops and do they have a plan for ultimately, how they are going to Drive the behavior initially and then ultimately recruit and delegate as you get further down the maturity model.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: And would you say there are some red flags.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: Maybe someone comes with their 3060, 90 plan or the other plan that if you see that in their plan that you like, oh, watch out.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: So one of the things that you really want to be very conscious of is what the hiring plan looks like.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: So some people and it depends on where you are and how well funded you are, etc.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: Etc but some people are gonna say, right, we need to hire 30 people that to me is a red flag immediately because it's like, well, no, we're not gonna hire that amount of people until we've really proved the hypothesis, and then we want to hire all those people.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: That's excellent, but if you're hiring before we've really got a working model in place, to me that's going to cause confusion in the market.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: There's not an aligned strategy.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: So first I want to be talking about how do we get those leading indicators of success?
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: What's the right ideal partner profile?
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: How we targeting the end users effectively, what's my proof point that is predictable, and then I want to hire if anyone wants to hire before that proof point.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: That always puts alarm bells in my mind.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: I agree there.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: I think that some of the things you really want to go into very deep in your hiring processes are they willing to get into the weeds?
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: Because head of channels just have to like almost never in the during the Luxury position, where the model is already proven and it's just okay.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: We hire a bunch of people and we scale it.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: You, especially when you're building a channel, someone needs to enjoy that process of building, of talking to a lot of partners, of understanding the market, and I think if you have a good feeling around that and Qualified that properly, they might have a good candidate there yeah, exactly, and that's why I think ultimately the profile of someone who's going to build a channel versus run a very scaling channel.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: It's very rare that you find someone who can cross to yeah, I like in it to.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: It's very rare that you find a founder who can build a very successful business and then be the CEO, the IPOs right, because the two skill sets are wildly different.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: The skill set to build a 10 person business versus runner A thousand person business.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: Those are two completely different in, in fact, polar opposite, skill sets and it's very rare that you can find someone who can transition before between the two.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: And, by the way, really good head of channels know that, right.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: I know VPs of partnerships and VPs of sales that specialize between seed and series B right, and they just do that over and over and over and over again because they've worked that out into a science.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: They really know what they're doing.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: And the same is true of heads of channel.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: So they're going to be brilliant for that zero to two year plan.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: They're going to build it and then they're going to exit because they know, actually, you know, my skillset is not then running Running a channel.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: To me, those are the candidates that you want to be looking for, who've done it two or three times because they've seen all the problems before they.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: They know the warning signals before everyone else done, because they just got the experience at seeing them.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and there also comes a big benefit that they usually know those partners very well, so you can really get a quick start when they come on board, getting into the right partners and also scaling from there and getting traction quicker than what you would do with someone who does not have that network.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, and so the one thing I would caveat and I am we talked about this earlier in the series is when you interview If they are interviewing or they're trying to get the job on the basis that they have a good relationship with ex partner, before qualifying that that partner fits the ideal partner profile that is something that would trigger alarm bells, because what you want to be doing is seeing that they're building an agnostic strategy and then driving the partner relationship in there, not putting all.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: We should work with this partner, because I know them really well.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: That's a terrible way of going about business and ultimately becomes very unscalable, because what happens once you've made that partner successful?
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: Oh well, you don't have a mechanism of breaking into other partners.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: You want to build it the other way round, and so but you're absolutely right, what you want to be?
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: Build the strategy, then execute, then you can exit.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I like that.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: And then I think we go actually into the first pillar of sales and that's the channel account manager.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: Right, like, what kind of role are you looking for?
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: Like, okay, so the head of channel is on board, we have some traction, or they do get their first hire the channel account manager immediately.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: What type of person would you want there and how would you specify that role?
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: So for the channel account manager once you're in a scaled engine, you want your channel account manager dealing with partners itself, sustainable revenue, right.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: So they're great at guiding the ship.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: Minor corrections, minor stuff to keep the partner moving at a really great speed that isn't what you want a channel account manager to do at the beginning.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: What you want a channel account manager to be able to do at the beginning is kick the door down on board the partner, keep the partner excited, deliver first revenue and shrink that time to value down.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: So they've got to be a bit of a you know all skills jack of all trades, because they've got to be able to recruit a partner, which is a bit of hunting.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: They then got to be able to train and enable the partner, which is a bit of farming, and then they've got to be able to co-sell with the partner, which is again a bit of hunting and sales process.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: So I'm looking and interviewing for how do you tackle those three very different phases?
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: Because if you've only got one or two cams, you need them to be able to do all of those three bits.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: Well, so in your interview procedure, when you're profiling people, make sure they understand that the job requires you to do all three and that you're interviewing based on the criteria that they will be able to be successful in all three.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's correct.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: I think indeed you have to look very well at your hiring plan for those first two years and see like maybe if you only have room for three hires, even if everything goes as planned, it's exactly like you say.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: You really need to find channel account managers who can do it all, even maybe have a bit of marketing grip there as well, because then they need to support the partner with that motion as well, and I think that's the hard thing of when you're building a channel.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: You need to find people indeed who can do it all a little bit, and they are usually quite rare to find right.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, to me.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: That's why I've always loved the channel, because I find it's very entrepreneurial, you're very building things right.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: We're trying to access a new market, we're trying to go after new partners, and it's not just sales, right, there's a lot more to it than just that.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: And so, yeah, I would be interviewing people on the credibility of how well can you give coverage?
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: Because it's no good finding a channel account manager.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: It might be the best partner recruiter in the world.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: That's one percent of the problem.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: You need to take them through enablement, training, co-marketing, co-selling, sustainable revenue Everything we've spoken about in previous series.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: You need a channel account manager that can do all of it.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: So, while it would be great to have a 10 out of 10 partner recruiter, I'd rather have a 7 out of 10 in everything, because then I know I'm going to get some level of revenue.
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: And then, once we hit the maturity model, then I can start to hire super specialists in each area, someone that's focused on enablement, someone that's focused on marketing, someone that's focused on co-selling, because then we can get to that maturity cycle.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: But you can't do until you've really fleshed out the channel for that one to two year period.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: So probably the first, indeed the first two years, you would just do with the head of channel and some channel account managers, but everyone is very entrepreneurial, very much like building a lot of projects, getting things off the ground that are not there yet and indeed at the same time run business as usual, recruiting partners, onboarding them, etc.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: And scaling the channel.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: Exactly that, yeah, nice, and maybe it's also nice to touch upon a little bit when you get a bit more mature, and then I think we can go to the next phase as well within the architecture of sales marketing, enablement and ops.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: And then I think usually enablement is one of the first that you want to hire, right, because that's often quite specialized, also depending a little bit on how technical your product actually is to implement there as well.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: What does a good enablement person look like, and indeed like when?
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: What's the moment when you need to hire that person?
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: So one of the things that your channel leader should be evaluating immediately in fact, they should be asking the questions in the interview process is what resources can I steal from the direct go to market motion?
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: So technical and operations ie order fulfillment and technical, either installation or management of the end user.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: If you have those resources embedded in your direct go to market motion, these can be the last hires to make, because sales and marketing you need specialists in those areas.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: But I'd be borrowing the resources from the direct go to market motion.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: That's my first piece, and then the second bit is hire based on the feedback from those individuals right, so get them involved in the interview process.
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: So if you're looking for solution engineers great, or get your current solution engineers that deal with your direct end users involved in that process as well Then you want to be hiring specialist that are great at enablement, right.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: The whole point is, once you want to transition from your direct solution engineers just getting involved with channel end users.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: Let's say You're hiring someone to train the partner to do the work on behalf of you.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: So then you want a very enablement focused S E so that they can stop dealing directly with the end user and instead deal.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: You know, train the trainer effectively, right?
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: How do we train the partner so that the partner can do the work for you?
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: So that's what you want to be interviewing for them.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: I'd be getting them to do a dummy training session.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: Talk about how they're going to manage those partner relationships, because you've got to blend the technical aspect With your ability to network into partners, keep the partner excited, you know, really support that partner motion.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: You need to blend those two things together.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think here again, especially when you're still in that building the channel motion, again, you need someone with a White skillset, because on one hand they usually when you're building your channel you want to do a lot of go selling, so where your solution engineer in the beginning that of channel, participate in the sales motions of the of the partner, but that's a very different skillset, like being able to explain it properly to the end user, maybe sell it a little bit, etc.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: Let's say solution engineer, then indeed training the actual partner.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: But you want both because in the beginning you need someone who can do both.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: And I think that's again when to look at, like which person likes to talk to end users a lot, so doing A bit of sales work, but then with the partner together, but also who is then the right person to train the partners and build a, because that's what you really need to make it a scalable motion eventually.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and one of the things I would say is this can be such a revenue driver, especially if you've got a very technically pro, a technical product.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: So what I very often see is that you know, within partners, the account managers hold the relationship with the end user and the end user puts their hand up and says I've got this problem, and then the account manager will just take advice from the partner solution engineer, say all this is the product of the solution to fix that issue.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: So if you get your s e coordination done perfectly, they will actually become a key revenue generator.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: But you're absolutely right, they've got to be experts at building those relationships with the partner, driving the value messaging into the partners so that the engineers understand okay, this is the right product for those problems, and then the s e will just position that all the time right.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: So you've got to get that relationship done right.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: But if done right, there's a huge upside.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, 100%, and I think also partners are always quite technical and technical people just love to talk to technical people.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: So it can really leverage the relationship you build into that partner a lot.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: It can, it can be sped up a lot by having such a role in place engineers love engineers absolutely.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: And I think the fourth one is actually the channel marketing manager and that's also crucial one, obviously very close to my heart what I see there.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: You have two motions there as well.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: So you need A lot of two partner communication, because all the partners work with multiple vendors and everyone is sending them communication.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: You're doing events, your is a massive thing in partnerships, doing webinars, etc.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: So how are we going to do that?
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: Get the right information to the partner at skill, because at a certain moment, you need to do that from a marketing perspective, because you simply can't be in touch every single day or every week via your channel account manager or your channel enablement manager in such a way anymore.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: So that's, on the one hand, of channel marketing, so making sure you have the proper to partner communication, but on the other hand, it's also and user demand generation.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: So how are we going to help our partners to find new customers and to activate their communication?
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: And I think there again with the channel marketing manager role, it's quite an interesting role and but also complex role to hire, because you need someone who's good at both so and activating the partners with their messaging, but also facilitating them and driving and use the demand.
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah to me.
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: When I'm interviewing that role, I'm interviewing on one thing scalability, scalability, scalability.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: At the beginning, you've got such limited resources to drive success, so I want to know if the marketing person only has time to do three things that quarter, what are the three things that are going to drive the maximum output?
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: And do they have the strategic mindset to be constantly evaluating the impact of what they're doing?
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: And then that's the person I want to hire, because what you'll find is lots of very average marketing managers.
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: Just respond to what the partners say hey, we need this.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: The problem is, when you're at the beginning, you need to be driving the narrative down to the channel to deliver the impact that everyone needs, and so how are they evaluating that that layered with?
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: Do they have the competencies from a creative perspective or from a marketing perspective to execute that strategy?
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: You're looking for both, because you need someone who can straddle both over time.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: You then need strategists and executions executioners underneath, but, like we say all the time at the beginning, right, you need someone who can do both very well.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Yes, I believe prioritization is actually the superpower a channel marketer has to have, because what you see in almost every channel team, whether it's a region or a vertical, is that there's only one channel market there, and that's why scalability is so important, but also being super strict in what are we going to do and what are we not going to do, because there could be 10 10 channel account managers but only one channel marketing manager, so that person really has to be extremely good at evaluating what are we going to do.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: Right now.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: That moves the needle the most and that's really the mindset you need when you're building your channel.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that's the mindset you need, not just in marketing, right?
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: You're going to need it in right across that initial channel team.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: So embed that into your channel culture, because there's loads of things to do but, as we know, 80% of impact comes from 20% of actions.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: So what is that 20% that's going to deliver the outsized return, and you need to be so, so, ruthless with your time, because there's going to be loads of partners.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: Hey, we want to do this event and we want to have a golf day.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: We'd love you to sponsor it.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: And it's like okay, is that the most effective way to spend our money, or actually just do we just want to be doubling down on how we deliver revenue to partners as effectively as possible?
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: Yes, because you're going to have lean budgets, lean resources, so prioritization is key.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: Fully agree.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: I think then we're already up to the final role within that channel team for the operations actually, which is usually the partner program manager or the channel operations manager.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: What type of role is that, and when do you need it when you build your channel?
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so for me, the programs manager, again, a bit like the SE, scale.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: Your operations function through your direct organization initially, but the goal of the programs manager is how do we take the learnings from our initial people and then drive scale from that role, right?
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: So how do we turn marketing content into scalable marketing assets?
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: How do we turn sales process into scale, scalable sales assets?
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: That's the person that's going to take you from 20 partners with three people to 100 partners with four people, right, that's the mindset that you want to be interviewing for and they should also be, and this is what you need to interview for.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: Looking at technology right, there is a way for technology to support a programs manager, because you only need one programs manager and the right tooling to really scale their efforts really, really wide.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: So, are they investing in a partner success platform?
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: Are they invest?
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: Investing in the right to partner communication tooling?
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: Are they investing in whatever the necessary criteria is to take the great initial work that your sales and marketing leads have done, but take it out to the masses?
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: I think what we see almost everywhere is that always the partner program manager or the channel operations manager is the person who owns the technology within the team.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: So let's say, you have partner management software with a partner portal or something like that.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: That is the person who's really owning and driving that throughout the team as well, because that's how you get the most skill right by automating things.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and what you again want to be doing is and this is something that again, you want to be sort of driving into the interview process is what's the measurement?
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: What's the measurement criteria?
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: Right, they implemented something.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: How do we know it was successful and how can we improve it over time?
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: Right, we're getting greater visibility on deals because we've been implemented a partner portal and now we've got more access to deal reg Excellent.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: Now how are we fine tuning that?
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: How are we driving adoption?
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: That's what they want to be.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: You want that programs manager to be networked into your salespeople and your marketing people and your SEs to get the right metrics and the right tooling driven into your channel at scale.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that they are really responsible for the data hygiene and your CRM hygiene, etc.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: Of your partners, which I think is actually nice bridge to our next episode, where we're going to talk all about data and measurement, and that's crucial.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: At a certain moment, you want that operating model to know, step by step.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: What do we need to do today to get success in the future, and I'm looking forward to that.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: I think we shared a lot today on what type of roles you have and also a little bit in what order you need to hire them.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: Thanks for sharing today.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: Again, I hope our listeners enjoyed it.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: If you want to find out more, please check out the description and see you next week.