Latest / Partnerships Unraveled / Asher Mathew - Decoding the Chief Partner Officer

Transcript

Asher Mathew - Decoding the Chief Partner Officer · Partnerships Unraveled

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries about partnerships, and channel on a weekly basis.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: My name is Alex Whitford, I'm the VP of Revenue here at Chanix and this week I'm very excited to welcome our special guest Asher.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: How are you doing?
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Good man.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Thanks so much for having me.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: I've seen your podcast over the last I want to say maybe a couple of years and then I was always wondering when are we going to have a chat?
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: And I think we found a topic to have an awesome chat about.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: So let's do it.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny because it's called Partnerships Unraveled and we talk about partnerships and channel, but we're really speaking to the partnerships guy this week.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: Maybe, asher, for the uninitiated, you could give us a bit of a rundown of who you are and where you've come from.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, totally so.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: My name is Asher and I am the CEO and co-founder of Partnership Leaders.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: I'm extremely proud to say that we today are the largest community focused on partnerships and ecosystems.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: For us, partnerships includes technology partnerships, channels, alliances.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: If you're working on an indirect go-to-market, we are going to be serving you and business leaders who are interested in it.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: Just a little bit about partnership leaders we are today 2,000 members in 92 countries.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: We have an amazing digital community product.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: We have an amazing events product where we have our big conference called Catalyst, and we have advisory, research, training and talent services as well.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: So the portfolio keeps getting bigger and bigger as our members keep guiding us on the things that they need and how we can help them crush their goals.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: On the things that they need and how we can help them crush their goals, and someone actually said that it feels like this is now turning into the Gartner for partnerships and I was like you know what You're right.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: That's probably a good way to think about it.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Nice.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: I think it's funny because partnerships is all about building a community in terms of the role and you're building a community about a community, so I can imagine that's quite a circular process sometimes.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, maybe we can sort of start from the top and then work down.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: So we're hearing lots around direct businesses building channels or building partnerships, go to market and once that sort of hits some level of maturity, they typically invest in a chief partnerships officer.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: That role is sort of booming.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: I'd love to understand from your perspective why.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, totally so.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: If we go back to 24 months in the history, right, there was Microsoft and SAP created this role called chief partner officer, and my good friend, amit Sinha, I believe, had an instrumental role in creating this role, or at least nominating this title when he was at SAP.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: And so this role came to the market and it was right at the same time that companies there was this big boom in just partnerships info.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: We had Crossbeam got funded, reveal got funded, workspan Tackle they all got funded.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: There's just fresh money in this market, right.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: And then all of a sudden, you have this role created, but the role was created by enterprise companies.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: Right, and you have this role created, but the role was created by enterprise companies.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Right, this is not some category creation, role formation thing where you can go create a category and own it, type of thing.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: This was like large companies.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: So then we stepped back and said, well, why is this role created?
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: And the reason why this role got created, from my research, is because companies wanted to prioritize relationships and to do that they needed to bring all the partnering functions under one umbrella so that they could create a very scientific view of a way of managing all partnerships, not just one type of partnerships, partnerships, not just one type of partnerships.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: And so what we realized is that the chief partner officer is the person responsible for all partnerships and, for the very first time, they actually have an executive seat and these people have broad remits, but they're also operational PLL owners.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: So that's the history of how this role became what it is today.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: Now the interesting thing today is you have almost a thousand chief partner officers in the market and these people are again getting appointed at larger companies.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: Normally, what happens is you have this CRO movement.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you were following the CRO movement, but the CRO movement started in SMB.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: It was like, all of a sudden, startups have this CRO movement.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you were following the CRO movement, but the CRO movement started in SMB, like it was like all of a sudden, startups started creating CROs, or mid-market companies started creating CROs, and the large companies created chief commercial officers and you know that's how this thing went, came about.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: But in the chief partner officer journey, you've got large companies investing in these roles and also there's another role called chief business officer, which is analogous to the chief partner officer role, and in totality, there are 11,000 of these people in the markets no-transcript.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, 100%.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: I think I was always taught executives run three things, which is sort of strategy, data and learning, because you end up threading all of those pieces together.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Right, because if you're CRO, let's take that as the example.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: It's where you going.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: Well, partnerships is one wildly complicated right, like it's not just hey, this direct, like to market.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: It's complicated, and so the strategy has to be bulletproof, the data has to be bulletproof and the learning has to be bulletproof.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: So I can really understand why these enterprise businesses are investing in that role and in those departments, because that route to market is so valuable, yeah, yeah that role and in those departments, because that route to market is so valuable.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'm curious what you've heard from your guests over the past like, let's say, year or so and what do they think about the CPO role and its existence.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's really interesting because we sort of you know, in my world we sort of look at horizontal partnerships and vertical partnerships, right, vertical partnerships being your sort of channel.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: How are we selling indirectly your?
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Your horizontal partnerships would then be your tech alliances, right, and so what?
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: What I see and what I hear guests saying so often is you have your tech integration right, that's how our technology actually you know ones and zeros works with each other, but that's not go-to-market alignment, and so what I really see that chief partner officer looking at is the unification of horizontal and vertical partnerships working together.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: So how do we build tech integrations and go-to-market alliances?
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: How do those two knit together?
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: And that's sort of where that CPO role comes in.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, I mean, that's a good mental model.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: I'll share one with you.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: So, you know, if you look at the partnerships economy, right, and in an economy, you have people that produce things, people that distribute things and people that consume things Right, and so if you look at the partnerships economy, you've also got the people that produce the partnership, people that distribute the partnership and people that consume the partnership Right, and so the production of the partnership is technically an integration or a co-built software or piece of software or hardware to, or a service to, and then you've got the distribution of this, which is really where the channel plays a role, because it's one directional today, and then you've got the consumption of this thing, which is where those alliance partnerships come into play, which is where solutions and services partnerships all live.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: So I've started to talk about the partnerships economy and hopefully, at one point in time, we can actually get a point of view on what does the partnerships economy as a whole look like, and it has all of these parts to it.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: That's one of the things that we'll actually focus on in 2025.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: Spl.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sort of fascinated.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: Well, I quite literally have a podcast on it, right.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: So it'd be rude if I wasn't sort of fascinated with the subject.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: The way I sort of liken it in the B2B world especially, is the consumer has got so used to the iPhone and the app store which is like how do I get the best individual product but housed in this thing, where it's deployed perfectly and I know it works, and oh, by the way, it also integrates with all the other pieces?
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: The consumer understands and wants that, and so we're now looking at B2B, turning around and going no, no, but I want that as well.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: And so then we've got this whole partnerships economy, maybe to use your terminology.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: That's almost working backwards from Steve Jobs' vision in 2003 and going.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: We need to somehow build this for the enterprise, the mid-market and the SMB, because that's what our consumption model has grown into.
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: And if you plus or double take on that, then naturally you need a leader who is broad enough and well-versed to think about the partnerships economy, for and what part of that partnerships economy are you, as a company, going to said?
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: A leader that understands the strategy, the data and the learning and can actually execute on it.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: And to me, that person needs to have a seat at the table.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: And because we've been talking about the seat at the table for like, I think, 15 years or 20 years, ever since I've been in software sales and at least for partner teams and now we are at a moment where the world has created an environment that it warrants a seat at the table, because talent and technology are both expensive and the market is rewarding companies who are efficient with their resources but still delivering results.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I just think that dedicated view, when things get that high level and that complicated right in my world, how you thread together horizontal and vertical, like that's not a one person or one department job, right, that's so cross-functional.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: And so if you have executives defining sort of strategy based on data and you don't have someone who represents that ecosystem, it's very easy to understand oh, you're going to fall behind, because either your tech alliances is going to grow really well but your go-to market is not going to work with it, or vice versa.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: And suddenly you're like, oh, and now Microsoft are winning.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: Right, if you're up against Microsoft or Google winning or whoever it is who've made these investments?
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: Right, if you're up against Microsoft or Google winning or whoever it is who've made these investments?
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: Because I think you know we've had a lot of guests from AWS on the podcast.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: I think they do yeah, they do a lot of partnerships stuff.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: Well, because they've got this principle, paul, around customer obsession and what customer obsession has taught AWS, which I think is so critical and obvious, but somehow we all seem to not think about it enough is what's best for the customer, and when we talk about the customer, we mean the end customer right, nothing in the partnership space.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: And then you start to make partnerships orientated decisions.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: How do we build a marketplace?
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: How do we build the right teams and the structures and comp plans?
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: And that has to be housed by someone who's thinking about it in that sort of very holistic way.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: I think ultimately, that's what your CPO is going to spend their time obsessing over.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: Now maybe we can double-click a little bit on the CPO role versus the current channel leader role and I'm interested in hearing your point of view on what you're seeing, where the channel leaders are today and what's the opportunity for them in the next 10 to 15 years.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: So my bet is that chief channel officer for lots of businesses is going to become the chief partnerships officer in general and it's going to become a chief channel officers.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: Focus on your distribution element right, which is the how do we go to market as effectively as possible?
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: And so they're a route to market lever, in the same way that a revenue officer is a route to market, whether that be direct or indirect.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: They're responsible for driving those ones and zeros right.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Where I think partnerships is going to change is we often hear in the channel and we can use Microsoft as an example that hey, our strategy is a Microsoft attachment strategy and so Microsoft sell Office 365, we plug into that technically and we build go-to-market around microsoft.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Now what I think the chief partnership officer is going to do, or that growth from channel to partnerships, is they aren't just approaching this, for how do we build around microsoft, it's how do we build through microsoft.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: So not just building parallel go-to-markets, but integrated go-to-markets, and I think that's where that evolution is going to come from.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: Spot on, because my hypothesis and it's not my company's hypothesis that we've learned over the last couple of years is, at some point in time you have to make a decision of are you building an ecosystem or are you participating in it?
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: And if you are participating in one, well, which ones?
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: Are you building an ecosystem or are you participating in it?
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: And if you are participating in one, well, which ones are you going to start with?
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: And what does that roadmap look like?
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: And how do you do that?
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: And this is complex work, because if you are going to decide to become one, that's one part of the journey, and if you're going to participate in somebody else's, that's also another part of the journey.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: Then the resourcing comes about, the org alignment comes that way.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: And what I found?
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: That historically, channel leaders don't have the skill set to become chief partner officers because they're missing the product piece of the puzzle and in some cases they're missing the services piece of the puzzle because they're so focused on just the distribution piece.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: And so to me there's a big opportunity in the market for channel leaders, which there are some amazing channel leaders, very qualified, very experienced, making a huge impact.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: Say, look, how about?
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: I think about taking a direct line into the C-suite and also becoming a participant in building the business at that level, versus orchestrating how we're going to build the business one level below.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: Maybe that's because we've had lots of chief channel officers on the podcast and certainly I know that we have lots that listen.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: Maybe, Ash, it would be great if you could walk us through your mental model.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: How do they reinforce their CV experience quality to go from chief channel officer to CPO?
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: So to me, one of the most important things for a CPO to do is to understand how the build by partner strategy works and to become really good at articulating and presenting it.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: And the reason why I say that is because if you are on this journey and you look at what I just said as a destination, you will then start speaking the language of the other business leaders around that C-suite table and you'll also start participating in deeper conversations with their CEO.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: That allows you to build this trusted relationship with the CEO that is built on understanding the short-term priorities of a business and the long-term priorities of the business and the long-term priorities of the business.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: And then, as you demonstrate success because you've already demonstrated success with execution then now you've basically positioned yourself as a leader who can talk about the buy, build and partner strategy and also execute on your own piece of the business.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: That allows you to get an audience with your peers, and then your peers on that C2 table will pull you in, because in at least this is my belief in senior leadership roles, you need to get pulled in.
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: You can't just barrage your way into those conversations.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: You need to get pulled in.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: The other leaders need to feel like you've got their back and also that you're going to build with them, because that's what they're all trying to do, because that's how their compensation models are.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: Now, what is interesting in the marketplace this happened, I want to say, six to eight months ago is there was this narrative that a channel leader needs to fully understand how integrations work.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: And while that is true that they do need to understand how integrations work, they don't need to fully understand it.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: They just need to know how it works.
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: And they also need to understand how developers that persona works.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: And this is no different than a channel leader saying I'm going to work with resellers versus I'm going to work with referrals, whether I'm going to work with OEMs because they understand how to persona map, I'm going to work with OEMs because they understand how to persona map, right.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: So I think the channel leaders are much closer to becoming a partnership leader, but they do need to rebrand themselves, because that's an identity thing, and if they don't rebrand themselves, I feel like then they get bucketed in this box called channel and that feels like legacy and now you're part of the past versus creating the future.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: So, just to quickly summarize, as a channel leader looking to move to the CPO level.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: You've got to understand the buy-build-partner strategy and become a participant in that conversation with the other C-suite executives and start making your way there.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: So that, to me, is foundational.
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: And start making your way there, so that, to me, is foundational.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: The other thing that I think is foundational for challenged leaders is understanding and fully knowing how your P&L works.
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: And they're pretty good, right, because they have to borrow money from the CRO's budget.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: They have to borrow money from CMO's budget.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: They have to borrow money.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: So they've been through that process of like where's all the budget that could be allocated to us?
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: And then it becomes about allocating that capital to other people or programs which I believe they're also decent at, and some of them are really good because they have larger teams.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: And so for the majority of the channel leaders out there, if they get really good command of their P&L and are able to explain and make bets, that can be explained to the CFO, not the ROI of the channel program.
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: Right, because the conversation is just different, right, and so because the CFO in that conversation is your friend versus you're trying to look for approval, and so to me, the operational skill sets and the P&L skill sets are a must, and then after that you just have to pick any one of the big frameworks that are out there that tie strategy to execution, and you need to be heads down and execute.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I really think this is a difference.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: It's a nuanced difference because I think a lot of the raw skills are similar, right?
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: Everyone?
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: You know, I often hear around great CMOs make great CROs, make great COOs.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: Right, it's a lot of the same strategic executive skill set.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: But I think the piece that I find really interesting is the difference between how we go to market and how we build towards market, and I think that is a very nuanced difference because I think a chief channel officer wants to understand what roadmap and what the customer needs and then builds backwards from the customer or certainly that's what the best chief channel officers do.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: They go okay.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: Who are we going after as an end user and how do I build my channel in a way that in three years we are going to be able to get to that customer consistently at scale where I think the chief go on?
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: I'm just going to say I really love your point and I was just going to say, like, the advice that I think we're sharing right now is for the emerging channel leader who potentially could just pivot from where they are into the cpo role.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: There are a number of extremely senior channel chiefs let's call them who I believe are looking to spend the next two, three, four years in the workforce.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: I don't think that they need to do anything different than what they're doing, because I believe they are looking at this as the last, maybe the last gig before they experience true financial freedom and live a fantastic life.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: But for the emerging folks that are listening to this podcast, who really are aspiring to be that, I think for them it would be a critical mistake to just position themselves as a channel chief, because that role doesn't actually exist on an org chart.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: Right, it's like it's a celebratory title they're almost vps of channels or svps of channels and but the chief partner officer is an actual title on the org chart yeah, I, I.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: And it's funny because I think if you go and look at the crn top 100 right, the largest channel companies in the world you you just see chief partner officer.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: Chief partner officer.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Chief partner officer because I actually think the role is a nuanced difference between how we go to market and how we build towards that market, which the difference is how do we work back from the customer and build a channel that allows us to get there at scale, or how do we involve product engineering strategy and direction so that we build towards the customer and then build a channel backwards from it?
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: And so if you connect those two dots together, I think you know I used to work for Zoom.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: I ran Zoom's distribution strategy for Amir Laura Padilla was chief partner.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I love Laura.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, laura's great, laura's really good right, but that's how you build product towards your customer and then build channel backwards and those two sort of as a pincer movement.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: Those are the two things that you must do.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: I think to be that chief partner officer who is also in charge of a huge channel, because I think yeah, there's a new what's difference in terms of how you bring those together?
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: yeah, have you had laura on the podcast?
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: I have.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, laura, okay, okay, so people should go listen to that podcast, because her journey and what she did at Zoom Now let's say part of it was just luck as well because of the timing of the market, but also she had to do a lot of work to take all this demand and like route that demand through the channel as per se right or through the different partners, and also solve for customers' problems through integrations and create this amazing thing which, if you look at the Zoom product today I was just looking at it yesterday the apps have like music in them and they have all these other things.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: I mean all of that is like partnership work.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: And then she built this amazing partner strategy deck when she was at Sapphire Ventures which is widely popular right now, so like the playbooks right there.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, laura, laura Laura's a killer.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: She was, uh, yeah, I, we uh rode through some tough times.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: We shared a lot on the podcast, obviously, cause we went through it and through a lot of it together, but uh, it was a wild ride dealing with the greatest tailwind I think anyone's ever had.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: I think even if you look at, NVIDIA now and the AI bubble, right, but it was just how do you operationally, at scale, deal with that level of demand?
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: It was, it was a great episode and it was a great experience.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: Super, super.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: Okay, good.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm glad that you had her on the phone For sure.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: Well, in true partnerships fashion, it is about building an ecosystem, and that's something that we're doing on this podcast, asher.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: We always ask our current guest to recommend who they should have on next.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: Who do you think we should have on next?
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: So on this topic of chief partner officer, I would say you should bring on Greg Serafin, who has actually done a lot of work on just this role and just building ecosystems, because you also have to go from channels to ecosystems, which is another part of this journey, and I would recommend that you actually spend time with Greg on just understanding how to transform a channel into an ecosystem and then how do you manage that?
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: Because he can go into a lot of detail and Greg's like a no BS guy.
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: He'll just straight up tell you the things that are on his mind, which again is also great qualities in a chief partner officer.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: They just don't go, like you know, dodge a question or talk around it.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: They just go tackle it straight up.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: And so I would.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: I would recommend Greg you have Greg on on the uh the podcast to continue this conversation a little bit further.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: Awesome, Greg, we're coming for you to chat all all things ecosystem.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: Asha, thanks so much for coming on.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: Thanks so much for coming on.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: Thanks, Horace, for having me, man.