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014- Why Partner Segmentation is Key for Channel Success · Partnerships Unraveled

• 0:07
  Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled.
• 0:10
  The podcast, where we unravel the mysteries of partnerships and channel on a weekly basis.
• 0:16
  My name is Rick van den Bosch, and I'm the CEO and founder of Channext, and I'm here together with my co host Alex Whitford, VP partnerships at Channext.
• 0:23
  Alex, how are you doing today?
• 0:25
  Yeah, really happy to be here.
• 0:26
  We've got a good topic today, so yeah, looking forward to getting going.
• 0:29
  Yeah, likewise.
• 0:31
  And what do you think about today's topic?
• 0:33
  I think we can take it away probably immediately towards the listeners.
• 0:37
  We're going to talk about partner segmentation today because I think if you get that right, it will have a massive impact on the success of your channel and your partnerships.
• 0:46
  But maybe before we start diving into tactics, could you give us the definition of what is partner segmentation, but also why is it so important?
• 0:56
  Sure.
• 0:56
  Partner segmentation is the process where a vendor or a distributor will categorize their partners into buckets to help them become to deliver a far more specialized strategy.
• 1:09
  So certain segmentation will require more end-users knowledge.
• 1:13
  Some segmentation will require more technology knowledge.
• 1:16
  Maybe it's pricing that changes however you need to do that.
• 1:19
  But that process of segmenting really, I think, is a great maturity model that you see within some channels, where it allows them to deliver far more partner focused experiences to ultimately drive the impact that they need through the channel.
• 1:33
  And before you start on partner segmentation, is it important to first look at your ideal customer there?
• 1:39
  Yeah, exactly.
• 1:40
  So I think there's a few different ways I've seen partners be segmented, but ICP is definitely a great way that you can segment your partners, because even if we just break it down into SME, mid Market, and Enterprise, the types of partners that cover those different segments vary wildly.
• 1:58
  Now, some partners will cover all three, and some partners will cover just one.
• 2:02
  And so if you've got a solution that hits all three of those segments in terms of mid market, SME, and Enterprise, you want to build a sales strategy or marketing strategy or partner strategy that effectively supports those type of partners.
• 2:17
  To get to that ICP, do you.
• 2:20
  Think it's better to have very specialized partners?
• 2:23
  So in terms of segments or partners who actually check a lot of the boxes for the type of things you're looking for in your partner strategy?
• 2:30
  Yeah, as is always the way with that sort of question, the answer is usually both have specialists because they can deliver unique and focused value and then have a broad brush approach that sort of covers all the gaps as well.
• 2:44
  It's very rare to find a partner that delivers specialism and scale, but certain partners deliver scale very well, and other partners deliver specialism.
• 2:53
  So if I'm building a sort of top down channel approach, I want to make sure I've got the best penetration possible, and that's hitting both categories.
• 3:01
  Yeah.
• 3:01
  So really look at it from a perspective.
• 3:03
  How can you get width but also depth into your channel and parking strategy?
• 3:07
  Exactly that and proactive design and is something that is almost a reoccurring theme on this podcast.
• 3:13
  When we talk about channel structure design, it the way you need to deliver the outcome.
• 3:18
  Don't just let it happen.
• 3:19
  And suddenly you realize, oh, hang on, we've got 15 specialists but no broad brush approach or vice versa.
• 3:25
  So the, the best way to do that is be very targeted in going after the specialist partners and going after the sort of broad partners so that you get depth and width.
• 3:34
  Yeah, awesome.
• 3:36
  I think for today, what I would like to do is to go like one by one through some specific variables you can actually segment your partnerships on, give some examples, but then also explain why it's important to go to that one.
• 3:47
  And actually the one I would like to start with is partner type.
• 3:51
  So maybe can you give us a little bit of insight.
• 3:53
  What type of parking types do you have?
• 3:55
  And also why is it so important to focus on such or do segmentation in such a variable?
• 4:01
  Yeah, exactly.
• 4:02
  So just to throw out a couple of buzzwords for the listeners.
• 4:06
  So you have partners like It resellers or you might have AV partners, SIS, global SIS.
• 4:12
  And they all operate in very different ways.
• 4:16
  Some are regional focused, very small, but very specialized.
• 4:19
  And some are might be global partners.
• 4:22
  So we have a world's largest IT reseller CDW, right?
• 4:26
  And they cover three continents, huge amount of sales people sell lots of different vendors.
• 4:32
  You could imagine a London based AV reseller as opposed to a global systems integrator require massively different enablement strategies.
• 4:41
  And so the reason it's important to categorize those differently is one you can align resources that are specialized in dealing with that particular partner type.
• 4:51
  And so categorizing that partners in separate buckets allows us to deliver the enablement strategy, sales and marketing strategy that's ultimately going to make them successful.
• 5:03
  And some of that's the really basic stuff like are you speaking the same sort of language?
• 5:07
  If I'm speaking to an It reseller, I'm going in with a very particular focus around how I'm going to enable them.
• 5:13
  It's not going to be particularly technical.
• 5:15
  I'm going to understand that I'm in a very competitive landscape and I need to remove as much friction as possible to make them successful as opposed to a very specialized route reseller, who's maybe only selling four or five different products there.
• 5:28
  We're going to go very, very deep on the technical capability.
• 5:31
  Why we're better from a product perspective, they're doing a lot of channel push down to end users.
• 5:37
  So really driving deal cycles.
• 5:39
  So I operate those two in very different ways.
• 5:42
  And if I'm a channel leader, the profile of salesperson I hire to manage those different partners is also wildly different.
• 5:49
  So it goes all the way down to your internal recruitment policy, all the way through to the marketing collateral that you develop for those partner segmentations.
• 5:58
  Yeah, I think it's safe to say indeed that like as I so system integrators or value added resellers, managed service providers, tech partners, they all need a wildly different approach.
• 6:08
  So that's like the first bucket you need because there you already have a very important piece of, okay, how are we going to enable them, how are we going to recruit the right partners there?
• 6:18
  And I think that's indeed, number one to start with, actually, when you look at your partner segmentation.
• 6:24
  Yeah.
• 6:24
  And even from business efficiencies perspective, if you've built the collateral and the go to market strategy to effectively target global systems integrators great.
• 6:33
  Go and recruit one, and then use a lot of that approach to go and recruit the rest of them.
• 6:38
  Don't then expect the person that's walking in and they've built the GSI model to then be able to go and target very regional specialized AV resellers.
• 6:46
  And it's going to be the same collateral, same sales process, same timelines, same targets, it's going to be wildly different.
• 6:53
  So any channel that's trying to reach maturity has to segment their organizational structure to help support partners most effectively.
• 7:01
  And I think there the second big bucket is actually regions because what you really want to look at is first of course on a more higher level, so EMEA APEC US or Americas for example, but then you also want to go a layer deeper where you go to more specific regions.
• 7:18
  So if we look at Europe, we have DACH, of course, with all the German speaking countries, we have France, we have UK and Ireland, we have Benelux with Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg.
• 7:27
  And those are all separate markets.
• 7:30
  And you want to very specifically know how many partners do we have there as well.
• 7:35
  Because there you can see based on the demand you actually have in that market to actually give the right supply on the parking site.
• 7:42
  Because what you don't want is having too many partners in a certain region, for example, because when there's not enough demand for all of them, a lot of the partners will actually churn out.
• 7:51
  Yeah, it reminds me of a really funny story.
• 7:54
  I was hanging out with channel sales leaders from a company I used to work with and he was like, yeah, it would be fine, you can just drive over to Spain and have the meeting.
• 8:04
  And I was like, sorry.
• 8:06
  And in his head, Spain, basically UK to Spain was about the same size as Texas.
• 8:11
  So he was like, well, you can just drive, right?
• 8:13
  And I was like, one, different language.
• 8:15
  Two, no idea on the relationships.
• 8:17
  Three, I'm definitely not driving.
• 8:19
  There's a C in the way.
• 8:20
  So having that real understanding that Europe works wildly different from how the US.
• 8:25
  Can because it's all same language, same tax code, and effectively can be managed at a more strategic level because you've got much better coverage.
• 8:33
  You're absolutely right.
• 8:34
  You've got to have the market penetration that you need.
• 8:37
  And some of that comes down to hiring the right people who really understand those territories far better than I'm going to understand how Italy works, because I've never managed that territory in depth like someone who's managed it properly.
• 8:50
  Yeah, you're touching upon a very interesting other variable language.
• 8:54
  And I think that's always when you go to EMEA, when you go to APEC, it immediately becomes a challenge, but also an opportunity because a lot of vendors actually have difficulties to fill in the language gap there in the right way.
• 9:06
  So indeed, when you go to Spain to have a Spanish there when you go to France to have a French speaking person because that's the thing, especially in Europe, within those large markets, the resellers or in the partners really want to talk in their own language and they also want to be enabled in their own language because then they can use that type of content for their end users again.
• 9:27
  And I think that's crucial because if you don't know what language your partner is communicating in to their end user, it's very hard to enable them in the right way because just giving English doesn't cut it in EMEA or APAC.
• 9:39
  No, absolutely not.
• 9:40
  And I've seen businesses slow down because they didn't think to translate all their marketing content into local language.
• 9:47
  And then you've got Cams having to do that on behalf of partners and it just never works.
• 9:52
  Partnerships are never going to do that work for you because unfortunately, most vendors don't have a fully unique solution.
• 9:59
  There's a competitor down the road that does broadly the same thing.
• 10:02
  And so the vendor that's going to win is the one that's gone through their checklist to say, do we have local language coverage from a salesperson perspective, from an enablement perspective, from a content perspective, from a marketing collateral perspective, are we building, to use the example, a Spanish channel, go to market strategy?
• 10:20
  If the answer is, well, we hired X person, so we're done, you're not done and you're really going to struggle.
• 10:27
  And I've seen things even to the degree of, oh, well, we'll just use the content that we use in Argentina.
• 10:33
  Well, granted, while Argentina and Spain, they both speak Spanish, the language doesn't work exactly the same way.
• 10:41
  And people have said, oh, hang on a second, this content looks really formal because in Argentina, my understanding is they speak a much more formal version of Spanish than they used to in Spain.
• 10:50
  So you've got to have those nuances to be able to accelerate through some of that's.
• 10:56
  Doing a lot of work at the front end to make sure you're ready.
• 10:59
  But what you don't want to happen is you've landed in a country trying to drive success and you realize you haven't done the basics and that's what's going to make you miss target.
• 11:08
  I think that's why it's also so important to actually have multiple buckets and eventually you are actually going to combine those buckets because indeed, Spanish can be a very big variable where, you know, okay, I can at least surface those partners, everyone in the world who speaks Spanish.
• 11:23
  But then you go one layer deeper where you go into regions or countries where you indeed have a big difference in your example between Spain and Argentina.
• 11:31
  And that's the level where you want to get eventually.
• 11:34
  And of course, it's a process like you can do everything at the same time, but that's where you should aim for because then you have local culture, local language, with the right type of partner and you're already miles ahead of the competition.
• 11:46
  Yeah, exactly.
• 11:47
  I think one of the things we actually spend a lot of time in this business talking about, which is how do we effectively enter a market?
• 11:54
  What is the white space analysis that we are doing to understand?
• 11:58
  What regions are we ready for, what content have we got in what language, what salespeople do we have, what's our technical process?
• 12:05
  All of those pieces need to be mapped out effectively and it can't simply be a sales decision of let's hire a Spanish person and expect them to deliver the same level of revenue when they haven't got any of the supporting infrastructure that the rest of the market has, let's say in English.
• 12:21
  Yeah, and I think from there indeed oftentimes also, especially when going into markets like EMEA and APAC, distributions plays a big role.
• 12:31
  How important is it to also segment your partners based on through which distributors they are buying their products?
• 12:38
  Yeah, exactly.
• 12:39
  So distribution is a really interesting one because distribution can massively be the shortcut for a lot of this stuff, which is they have local can you do that sentence again?
• 12:48
  Distribution is an interesting one because they very much have the capability to shortcut a lot of these processes on behalf of the vendor.
• 12:56
  So for example, they know the partnerships, they speak the local languages, they have the technical support, et cetera, et cetera.
• 13:01
  Right.
• 13:01
  So they can really accelerate your mechanism, but also decelerate it because if you don't enable the distributor effectively, things aren't going to be communicated effectively, they're not going to be clear on what the strategy is.
• 13:14
  It's a very complicated process to make that work, but it can absolutely be done.
• 13:18
  And for example, I know distribution businesses that offer marketing content translation services as a prime example.
• 13:25
  It's an expensive thing to do, but if speed is the priority, then absolutely that's a vehicle where you can suddenly shortcut a lot of it higher funded heads who just sell your product through the distribution network.
• 13:37
  And all of that process works very, very effectively.
• 13:41
  It's expensive, but for businesses, especially who are growing very quickly in the US.
• 13:46
  And they recognize they need to capture EMEA and APAC before a competitor can.
• 13:51
  Distribution plays a critical role into scaling that very quickly.
• 13:55
  And for listeners, a funded hat is someone who is paid by a vendor right.
• 14:00
  But on the payroll of a distributor, in this case.
• 14:03
  So the distributor hires the person and then the vendor actually pays for it.
• 14:08
  With MDF in that example.
• 14:08
  Yeah, exactly.
• 14:11
  And having been a funded head within distribution, you sort of get the best of both worlds because you've got 1ft in the vendor camp and you're driving their priorities and you've got 1ft in the distribution camp and you've got the scaling vector of distribution.
• 14:24
  And it can be as long as you hire the right person, you've got the infrastructure around them, it can be a very, very fruitful mechanism to really drive success.
• 14:32
  Yeah, and I think that's why it's so important to not just know who are my distributors, but also who are the partners of my distributors.
• 14:39
  Because if you get those on board and you take them in your CRM or preferably in your PRM, where you have a parking platform for it, you take them with which distributors do these partners belong, then you can actually collaborate, for example, with translation services, the distributor translates, we know which partnerships are attached to the distributor.
• 15:00
  It can go to market super quickly because you can actually use the services of the distributors.
• 15:04
  You know which partners there are and you enable them together.
• 15:07
  And then I think you really get to the best of both worlds.
• 15:11
  Yeah, exactly.
• 15:12
  Ideally, you don't want the distributor to go and have to recruit partners for you that's actually you want them to already have been recruited by the distributor.
• 15:22
  They already have a transacting relationship and they're going to add your vendor in.
• 15:26
  That's perfect.
• 15:26
  Right.
• 15:27
  And so if you're going to build a regionalized strategy and segment your partners, having an understanding where those partnerships buy from today from a distribution perspective is a critical step in accelerating a plan into a territory.
• 15:41
  Yeah, I fully agree there.
• 15:43
  And then I think the fifth one that pops up is actually what type of products are the partnerships selling crucial, of course, in many, many ways.
• 15:50
  You want to know when you're recruiting new partners so you get the right partners on board.
• 15:55
  Actually, you want to know when you enable your existing partners.
• 15:59
  So you really want to go deep when a partner comes on board.
• 16:01
  You want to know exactly which products are you going to sell, but also measure which ones are they actually selling.
• 16:08
  So there's a big difference, of course, with saying you're selling something and actually doing it.
• 16:12
  And I think there that's a crucial you want to have very clearly in your partner overview as well.
• 16:17
  With segmentation, how many partners do I have which sell product?
• 16:21
  A, how many partners do I have which sell product B, product C, et cetera.
• 16:24
  So you can quickly segment your partners on it, both for getting new partners on board, but also really for bringing the right communication to the right partners.
• 16:34
  Because if you're sending information about product B to partnerships who only sell product A, they are going to see it as spam and that's the last thing you want as a vendor.
• 16:44
  Yeah.
• 16:44
  And I think when you're doing your partner segmentation and channel people listen up because this is the critical bit.
• 16:51
  There's only three types of businesses, three types of business that partners do.
• 16:55
  They do net new, so it's a net new opportunity that they've never worked with.
• 16:59
  They do switch sell, so switching out a competitive vendor, or they do cross sell, which will be tying in an attachment vendor.
• 17:07
  When you segment your partners, understanding what they currently sell will help you to understand, are we going after net new cross or switch?
• 17:15
  And then you can drive your sales and enablement strategy around one of those three levers.
• 17:20
  And remember, focus is key depth into that.
• 17:24
  If you just want to go all out on an attachment play because you tie into a Microsoft or a salesforce, then drive your entire sales narrative into that partner because that's much easier for them to remember.
• 17:34
  And remember, partnerships sell lots of product.
• 17:37
  So while it's always front of mind for you because you wear the vendor badge on your t shirt, it's not always front of mind for them.
• 17:43
  So if they just think, oh, vendor X, attachment cell, or vendor X switch cell, that's really easy for them to digest and then you can drive your sales narrative around that.
• 17:52
  Yeah, and that's really when you get into the combination there together with indeed the type of products, but also countries, languages, et cetera, where you tie everything together for such a partner.
• 18:03
  Yeah, exactly.
• 18:03
  And the whole thing of understanding the partner is at the center of all of these sales.
• 18:10
  And so just put yourself in their position.
• 18:12
  Do they understand what the proposition is?
• 18:14
  Do they have everything to close?
• 18:15
  The proposition is and how easy is it to do?
• 18:18
  If you can focus on ensuring one, two and three are done effectively, that's going to put you in a really strong position over the long term to be successful.
• 18:26
  And I think one of the segmentations that we are very used to in the channel is partner tiering.
• 18:32
  So with several levels, we really love the platinum, diamond, gold, et cetera, in the in channel, of course.
• 18:39
  What is your vision on that?
• 18:40
  Like, we are already doing it.
• 18:42
  Most of the vendors like, should we keep doing it and what's the advantage of it?
• 18:46
  Sure.
• 18:46
  So there's almost two categories of that partner, that partner tiering, so there's the normal one or the one that basically everyone does, which is managed and unmanaged.
• 18:57
  And so by managed and unmanaged.
• 18:58
  Typically what you would see is channel account managers who work for the vendor will manage 20% of the partners who deliver 80% of the revenue.
• 19:07
  And then there will be the unmanaged partners, which is basically everyone else.
• 19:10
  And they will either be only managed by distribution or they'll be driven to a portal or a website.
• 19:16
  And effectively that's just done automatically.
• 19:19
  It's a good system because obviously Pareto's law works.
• 19:22
  80% of your revenue will come from 20% of your partners.
• 19:25
  However, one of the things I constantly see is people just accept the 80 20 rule and don't try and flatten the curve at all.
• 19:34
  And there are always missed opportunities at that, because if you have two vendors that directly compete against each other, they're never the exact same partner lists, which means someone is leaving a partner behind, not thinking they're a priority, and your competitor does think they're a priority.
• 19:52
  So really making sure that periodically you go through your unmanaged partner list and understand, okay, they might not be doing much business with us today, and that's because they're not in our top 20%, but why are they selling loads of our competitive products?
• 20:07
  How does that work?
• 20:07
  How are we managing?
• 20:09
  So you constantly want to be going through your unmanaged partners, filtering them to see where the biggest opportunity is, and then put them in your gold tier or whatever your tiering structure looks like.
• 20:19
  Yeah, true.
• 20:20
  And I think that unmanaged game is really together with your distributors.
• 20:23
  So we always call it the scouting vehicle, right, where you really look where are the biggest talents, which I'm going to add to my partner program, maybe a tier higher.
• 20:31
  But then you oftentimes also see within the managed partners, there are also several levels.
• 20:35
  So usually the top two or three levels are always managed partners.
• 20:40
  Like, why are we segmenting it there?
• 20:42
  And what do you think about that?
• 20:44
  So it depends on the maturity of your channel go to market.
• 20:49
  To be honest, when I start to see significant segmentations based on typically it's revenue right?
• 20:54
  There's revenue goals, then I, then that's really the sort of rubber stamp that, okay, we're dealing with a very mature market.
• 21:02
  So, you know, your Cisco's, Dells, HP's, that's the sort of structure that they will have.
• 21:07
  And that's because they've been doing this for a long time, 2030 years at this point.
• 21:11
  And so what they're looking to do is deliver a benefit to the partner for moving up a tier level.
• 21:18
  And that benefit might be more support, more rebate, more MDF, whatever the, the incentives are.
• 21:24
  And that's typically tied to revenue spend.
• 21:26
  Right?
• 21:27
  And so it's a really good system because effectively it allows you to, if you've got, you know, 20,000 global partners, you need a way of prioritizing them and incentivizing those partners at a macro level to spend more with you each year.
• 21:43
  And typically the two main drivers for that are MDF and rebate and that will move you from platinum to gold or whatever it is as you move up the ladder.
• 21:51
  It's a good system that clearly it works because businesses, if they drop down a tier, will actually lose a significant, sometimes millions in rebates and so it forces them to keep a prioritization around that vendor.
• 22:07
  However, I would only personally implement it if we really are starting to be very, very entrenched and in a very mature market.
• 22:15
  Because frankly, the difference for most businesses or most of those top tier businesses between earning 20,000 rebate and 40,000 rebate is negligible.
• 22:23
  So you need a massive carrot to really incentivize the behavior.
• 22:27
  And you can only do that if your channel is really doing billions in revenue a year.
• 22:31
  Yeah, that's true.
• 22:31
  And I also think it's excellent for internal reporting where you can actually see how bargains are growing through your tiering and getting on top and on top of the next one.
• 22:41
  Yeah, the absolute golden story, right, is distribution.
• 22:44
  Start working with a business and then it moves up to managed and then it moves up from silver to gold and gold to platinum.
• 22:50
  That's what you see.
• 22:51
  And that's the mark of a channel that's doing very well is if you've got this upward mobility of partnerships.
• 22:57
  So it's a fantastic structure to implement caveat.
• 23:02
  It takes loads of work.
• 23:04
  And again, this is why I talk about the maturity of the channel because everyone's got to understand the parameters.
• 23:09
  The parameters have to continually be reeducated into the channel.
• 23:12
  There has to be automation developed, it has to be very well segmented.
• 23:17
  Everyone from channel marketing, sales and all the way through to your partner ecosystem has to fully understand the rules and it has to be continually updated.
• 23:25
  The incentives have to be right.
• 23:27
  There's a lot of work that goes into it which means you very much need a massive partner program team to run that effectively.
• 23:35
  And yes, it's very valuable.
• 23:36
  But if you're not yet there in your journey, there are other ways that I think you can deliver revenue more efficiently if you're early on in your growth stage.
• 23:47
  Yeah, I fully agree there, and it is an excellent system, but it takes some time to implement it very properly.
• 23:52
  Yeah, there's a critical mass that's required.
• 23:54
  Once done well, it's brilliant, but the critical mass has to be there for you to be able to deliver it.
• 23:59
  And I think we started the podcast, of course with the ICP and I think that's also the variables that are crucial to understand towards your partnerships are what is their ICP?
• 24:10
  I think one of the things I always advise to vendors is you want to know very specific what is the target verticals of my partners, but also what is the target company size of my partners?
• 24:22
  Well, company size is quite easy.
• 24:23
  Is it SMB, is it mid market or is it enterprise?
• 24:26
  So you want to know when you go to market, whether you have the right balance there and then verticals is especially very interesting because a lot of times we are working with Parkins, of course, to bring a very strong proposition in a certain vertical as well.
• 24:39
  For example, healthcare or education, retail, government, those are usually very specialized partners in such an area.
• 24:46
  And I think that's definitely one of the things I really advise.
• 24:50
  Really add that to your partner segmentation know very well on what type of customers your partnerships are working and what type of customers they want to work with.
• 24:59
  Yeah.
• 25:00
  It's almost fundamental sales knowledge, right.
• 25:03
  Which is that if you bring a specialized offer, you can charge more money for it.
• 25:08
  So if I have a productivity tool and I say, oh, it's a it's a productivity tool, I can charge Alex hormones, he talks about this a lot.
• 25:16
  I can charge 15 quid a month for it.
• 25:17
  If I've got a productivity tool for B to B channel salespeople, suddenly I can charge 1500 quid a month for it because oh my God, it fits exactly my profile.
• 25:27
  Now my perceived value has gone up for that tool because I've cut out 99.9% of the market.
• 25:33
  But now my market's super niche that they're going to want to pay for it.
• 25:36
  The same works within channel directly, which is if I bring a, let's say, enterprise manufacturing solution, I give my sales messaging, my marketing all around enterprise manufactured the manufacturing vertical, suddenly my partner is going to go, hang on, we sell into that vertical.
• 25:55
  Oh my God.
• 25:55
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 25:56
  You've got content that's directly for the 15 enterprise manufacturing end users that I work with.
• 26:03
  Right.
• 26:03
  I'm taking that particular messaging and then the benefit also is the end user is going to say, oh my God, this is bespoke made for my area.
• 26:11
  It must be a fantastic solution.
• 26:13
  So the absolute gold standard of partner segmentation is to understand yes.
• 26:17
  What size of business do they work in, cross that with what verticals they work in, and then drive your sales and marketing messaging into just that.
• 26:26
  Not broad brush, but depth.
• 26:26
  Yeah.
• 26:30
  While we're talking about segmentation, I realized how brilliant it is to work with partners because you got local regions, so you got the local culture.
• 26:38
  If you work with partners towards end-users, you got local language, you got special sorry, specialization.
• 26:46
  Specialization.
• 26:47
  I'll do this one again.
• 26:49
  So while we're talking about segmentation here, I start to realize how brilliant it actually is to work together with partnerships.
• 26:56
  Because if you look at it in your gotomarket when working with partners, although segmentation we've just been talking about is crucial when going towards end users.
• 27:05
  So you got the local culture because the partners are local, you got local language, you got specialization in certain verticals partnerships who can make their unique value proposition.
• 27:15
  You can scale your distribution together with the distributors.
• 27:18
  And like all in all it's just super nice to think about it when going to market with your partners together is that if you facilitate your partnerships in the right way that will really amplify everything in those regions towards your end users.
• 27:32
  I think that's the thing that most people maybe intrinsically understand but maybe are unsure how to get there.
• 27:40
  The channel is the best vehicle for business, full stop.
• 27:43
  There is no better way.
• 27:45
  Now, is it probably also the most work?
• 27:48
  Yes, but it will allow you to access the widest market but with the most specialized focus which is how do you maximally deliver breadth and depth at the same time?
• 27:59
  Channel is the only way that you can do that.
• 28:02
  Now, the challenge with doing it is it's competitive and it requires a really long runway to get there.
• 28:08
  But once done perfectly you can deliver Spanish, but Spanish for Spain verticalized segmented content directly to the end users.
• 28:18
  With people who've had a long lasting relationship and are trusted advisors there is no better specializing.
• 28:25
  Google and Instagram wish they could target end users as effectively as that.
• 28:29
  That's perfect.
• 28:31
  It's very difficult to build but once done effectively, once you look at PRMS and tools to automate and manage the channel far better suddenly you start to realize oh my God, the channel is the best way to do business.
• 28:44
  Yeah and indeed you're touching open something interesting as last like where are you going to store all this information?
• 28:51
  So I think we're a bit biased of course but the best way is to do it in a partner platform so you can easily filter on it, you can enable them there, et cetera.
• 28:59
  If you don't have one, do it in your CRM.
• 29:02
  So create variable fields or sorry, custom fields there so you can actually put all the data in there and fill to your partner base.
• 29:09
  And if you don't have a CRM, do it in your Excel or save it there.
• 29:12
  But make sure you are starting to collect this type of data because you want to know this as you start scaling your channel.
• 29:19
  For sure.
• 29:20
  The ideal scenario is that I am able to look at a global directory of end users and understand what partners they buy for what distributors, what's the volume, what's the coverage map look like, when was the last time they sold to them.
• 29:34
  And the only way you can do that is to effectively track that.
• 29:38
  And businesses and automation tools like partner portals that can able to bring all of that together for the benefit of the partner so that the partner can sell the most and deliver the best quality of service to the end users are going to be the solutions over the long term that maximally improve the channel.
• 29:56
  And an improving channel is the winning channel.
• 29:59
  Yeah and when you're looking at improving the channel you can focus on your current partners of course, but there's also recruiting new partners.
• 30:07
  Maybe Alex, to close off this episode, could you give a final remark about why segmentation is so crucial for partner recruitment?
• 30:14
  And then I'll give a final remark about it for partner enablement.
• 30:17
  Sure.
• 30:17
  So partner recruitment is exactly the same messaging as I would take to the end user, which is focused around them.
• 30:25
  So if I'm targeting an It reseller that focuses on mid market, that's the message I'm going to take to them.
• 30:31
  Here's why we are brilliant at servicing midmarket It resellers and why our solution is going to make your types of businesses successful.
• 30:42
  And guess what?
• 30:43
  When you say your types of businesses, people think, oh, that's me, oh my God, now I'm part of the group, I'm going to be successful.
• 30:50
  They're designing content specifically around me and my end users.
• 30:54
  Right?
• 30:54
  Well, that's a business that I want to work with because it's almost guaranteed to be successful.
• 30:59
  And so that's focus, that depth of messaging rather than breadth of messaging is really critical to effective partner recruitment.
• 31:08
  That's how you get them on board.
• 31:09
  But then how you get them to stay and be successful is making sure that we've recruited the right types of partners because we know who the types of end-users we're going after us.
• 31:17
  So as long as you've not made a mistake and gone after mid market, It resellers and suddenly you actually, you're trying to target the enterprise.
• 31:23
  Well, as long as you haven't made that mistake, then suddenly you've got a very clear line from vendor to distributor to right type of partner to right type of end user.
• 31:32
  And ultimately, as long as you get your enablement right, you're going to be successful.
• 31:37
  Yeah, I fully agree there because I think if you look at it, the better you have qualified your partner in the discovery and when they are coming on board and when you recruit them also, the better you can actually enable them immediately.
• 31:49
  And I think from an enablement perspective, that's the thing we all have to be aware of.
• 31:53
  All partners are working with at least 20 to 30 vendors and they are getting bombarded by everyone with messaging, with emails, with notifications.
• 32:02
  So the crucial thing to do there is that you make your messaging as relevant as possible for your partners.
• 32:08
  They need to be longing for your next email or your next information that you're going to send to them.
• 32:13
  And the only way to do this properly is by very strong segmentation.
• 32:18
  So making sure that they receive it really when it's about them, about the products that they are selling from you in the verticals where they are active through the distributors that they are buying their products.
• 32:29
  So in this way, if you know all these variables, you can actually use this when you're enabling your partners to provide them with the right training, the right co marketing assets, the right sales enablement documents, and in that way, you really get partner enablement to the highest level as well, through partner segmentation.
• 32:46
  Yeah, and I think sometimes people misunderstand when we're saying, oh, hang on, segmentation.
• 32:51
  You're drawing sort of lines in the sand where they don't need to be.
• 32:54
  Because let's say our product works in all of these 20 different verticals.
• 32:59
  That's fine.
• 33:00
  But draw the line in the sand and explain why in this vertical it works.
• 33:05
  Because if I'm a partner that only sells into this vertical, it's the only vertical I care about.
• 33:09
  So if I have a product and I used to work for Zoom as a good example, well, Zoom Feasibly works in manufacturing and healthcare and legal and finance and all these different verticals.
• 33:19
  But what was great is you'd create a case study and marketing assets around one particular vertical.
• 33:26
  Because even if I had to have five different campaigns to the same partner, but one was healthcare and one was whatever else in legal and finance, I was like, Well, I know what content to take.
• 33:37
  To which end-users, it makes the partnerships life easier and allows them to deliver a more specialized message which closes more effectively.
• 33:47
  Yeah.
• 33:47
  And also good to remember, partners can be in multiple buckets.
• 33:51
  So it's not that if they are in one bucket, then they won't get any other information anymore, but they can be in the EMEA bucket and also in the healthcare bucket.
• 34:00
  So they will get it from multiple angles to communication.
• 34:03
  And in that way, you make sure that it's always relevant for them.
• 34:07
  But you have to write variables to actually use in your partner enablement.
• 34:10
  Yeah, it's better to send them five campaigns which are 90% identical, but the 10% deviation from manufacturing to healthcare is the 10% that might stop a deal.
• 34:22
  And that 10% deviation allows me to take this campaign to all my manufacturing end-users and this campaign to all my healthcare end-users.
• 34:29
  And so that gives me more security and gives the end users more security, which means your partner recruitment and enablement is going to be better, but also your end user recruitment and enablement is going to be better, which ultimately is the thing that both partners, distributors and vendors want is to do a very good job at the end user level and make a lot of money.
• 34:47
  Yeah, I think that's an excellent way to end this episode.
• 34:51
  So, indeed, segmentation makes everything better.
• 34:55
  Right?
• 34:56
  Thanks for listening, everyone, again today.
• 34:59
  We really enjoyed it.
• 35:00
  I hope you did, too.
• 35:01
  We hope to see you next week.
• 35:03
  And if you like this episode, please shoot Alex or me a message on LinkedIn.
• 35:06
  We love to get your feedback or share it with your colleague and see you next week.