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Varshaa Pallaath - Intentionality & Engagement in Partner Marketing · Partnerships Unraveled

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled, the podcast where we dive deep into the mysteries and the secrets of partnerships and the channel.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Michel, and I'll be your host for today.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm excited to sit down with Varsha Palath, the director of global customer and partner marketing at ConnectWise.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Varsha, how are you doing?
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really good.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: How are you?
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: I am doing well.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: The previous couple of podcast episodes I've recorded were very early morning, so this is a breath of fresh air in this freezing afternoon.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh it's very cold in the Netherlands where both of you are, both you and I are currently at, and yeah, I'm just glad I'm indoors versus outside.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: I hear you.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a secret little space heater under my desk right now, but don't tell anyone.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um Hey, it's wonderful to speak with you.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um could you tell us a little bit about yourself and about ConnectWise?
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sure.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: So uh my name is Varsha Pilat.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm originally from Sydney, Australia, and now, as mentioned earlier, I've been living in the Netherlands for the past uh eight years.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um from a career standpoint, uh I've been in tech for the last 15 years, kind of started my career uh in big tech at Apple and Microsoft, and very early on, I wanted to get the opportunity to work at a startup, and I was very lucky at the very beginning to join a company called SkyKick, where for over a decade I saw it um work with thousands of partners, uh raise 180 million, and ultimately get acquired by ConnectWise.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, during that period of time, my career moved countries.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I moved from Sydney to the Netherlands.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: It uh moved from an IC role to leading people and teams initially in sales and then later in marketing, and then fundamentally then moved me into marketing around product marketing for our solution.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so I've been at ConnectWise for the past uh 18 months, and today I lead customer and partner marketing globally.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: And what that really means is that it's focused on retention, expansion, advocacy across some of our key programs, including partner program, IT Nation, um, email marketing, as well as key segments such as office technology.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: And overall, ConnectWise is all about helping partners run, grow, and transform their business.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that's what I'm here to do, and that's what we're all about.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: That was a super sharp introduction.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: And uh you mentioned IT Nation.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure we'll get to that uh later on in this conversation because uh I think everybody listening knows uh IT Nation.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: But uh something you said uh uh triggered a thought.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: So you mentioned that you've worked with thousands of thousands of partners over your career.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm sure you have a pretty good read on what they actually care about.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Looking at your career, right, from uh uh pre-acquisition to post-acquisition, what are some of the recurring themes or like pain points that you're hearing across the uh partner ecosystem right now?
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it's actually interesting because uh yesterday I was on the old LinkedIn and learning about the fact that partners are still concerned about growth and whether they're growing as um fast as their peers.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I think across all the different roles I've had, I'd like to say it comes down to happiness.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh question one, do you have a happy team?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: So are the people that are in your team, are they happy as a partner?
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: Number two, do you have happy customers?
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have customers that are excited when you pick up the phone, that are willing and open to listening to how you're gonna help them change their business?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then the third one, which is often the most important, can you get more happy customers?
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: So as we start to look at those, I think for me, from a uh happy team standpoint, and it's been the same since the very beginning, service desks are continuing to get tightened.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of context switching that happens whenever even one individual ticket needs to be resolved.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: And as we start to think about how do we drive efficiency, what we're really trying to do is also make the engineer that's working in the partner organization be a little bit more happy, which will hopefully result in um faster time to resolution.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm seeing at the moment partners addressing this happiness of their team through looking and leveraging uh and starting to dabble in agentic AI.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: So just about two weeks ago, we uh ConnectWise acquired a great company called Zofic, which is all about that AI agentic workflow where partners do their work and do their business.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: And what I really like about it is not only the fact that the technology gets smarter, um, learns from its behaviors and creates the workflows that make sense, but it also reduces the pressure on the engineering team.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: So they have more time to do higher value activities like talking face-to-face with their customers, which I think is really, really cool.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: When I start to think about um specifically happy customers, you can kind of see it globally.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, in the last 10 years has been a lot about data, but then as data, as our CEO says, is the new oxygen for AI, um, how do you protect that data?
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: How do you secure that data?
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because those customers, at the end of the day, can't be the regulation experts or the cybersecurity experts.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: So, how as a partner do you continue to drive value-added services, which has continued to be cybersecurity and data protection focused?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then I think finally, in terms of acquiring net new customers, really it's about do you have a strong understanding of who your target audience is?
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: Do you understand how marketing dollars are spent?
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: Quite often, many partners don't spend all that much money in sales and marketing.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: And when they do, they don't get the returns they expect.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: So, how do you make sure you're getting the value from every dollar?
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: So, in my head, if you're if you have a happy team, happy customers, and you have more of them, theoretically you'll have a happy life as well.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: I hear you, I hear you.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's something interesting you mentioned there because it's it's almost like a web, right, of changes that are happening and improvements that are going on.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because on the one hand, obviously you have the partner operations that are improving with the use of agentic AI and things like that.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: But then again, they also need to stay abreast of all this new information that they then need to coherently translate to their end customers.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: And this just came into my head like, how would you at ConnectWise empower them to continuously learn and continuously grow with the content you're sharing with them?
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I think for us, and it's really been one of the marked changes, we're all about creating a common data platform.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: So from all the different solutions that we offer, we've been on this mission to create one common data platform where you can use that data to learn from and become smarter and become more accurate and drive more agentic workflows across.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: The challenge is that if you have your data across multiple different silos, even for the engine, forgetting about trying to get smarter with it, even for the engineer to context switch across multiple different applications becomes a bit harder, let alone AI trying to help you rationalize the whole thing.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: So we've been on this uh mission to kind of get to a common data platform where we can do unified workflows and drive automation at scale.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then in terms of how some of our other services work, say like within the partner program, we then work one-to-one with the partner, look at the customers that they're acquiring, the industries they're focused on, and start to focus on very deliberate sales and marketing activity that could potentially be funded through some marketing development funds or otherwise, but that way we kind of connect the fuzzy data into actionable insights that drive fundamentally outcomes and revenue.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's fascinating.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think we were starting to move across that tipping point where at first people were just trying to string AI tools together to get results that they I don't think really even understood.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: And now you're seeing that blend of very outcome-focused uh initiatives, but also the value of the of the human in the loop, right?
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: So we, when we were doing the prep call for this for this podcast, we agreed that even as AI and these agentic workflows evolve, humans are still an essential part of this process.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not all automated, and maybe that's a good thing, seeing as we are still humans after all.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: So could you talk a little bit to that?
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do you think balancing automation and the human touch works in partner engagement?
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so for me, from a ConnectWise standpoint, we have ZoFIC as an AI solution that we're going to help uh technicians, you know, drive more value and outcomes.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: When I start looking at different areas of the business, I personally think of myself as a student in AI, not necessarily an expert.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um and for me, specifically, it's the same, it's the same equation.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: How do we reduce the tax on administrative low-value activities in turn to create more moments that matter where you're face to face with the customer, you're able to see their emotions and see the why behind the why and be part of that human interaction?
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: So we were very lucky, even as a marketing department at ConnectWise, to be able to leverage some AI tools very early on.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: And what that's enabled us to do is drive a lot of efficiencies around some of those low-key admin tasks, like even in partner program, thinking about like MDF approvals or how do we help them with a very basic like website review.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: The idea is you try and do all that work through automation and AI and you learn over a period of time.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: But then what you're really not missing out on is that face-to-face interaction.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: So for me specifically, it's about how do we create more of those moments for people to show up smarter, better, and drive more value to the end customer and the MSP.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: No, that makes total sense.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: That you actually emphasize those human moments even more by taking away the weight of everything surrounding those human moments.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: I I think that uh I think if we as a group of people come to that, I think that's going to be incredibly valuable.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this might be a slight tangent, but I was um talking about this role I'm hiring for right now.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: I was speaking to someone and they said, How much experience do you think someone has to have with certain AI tools?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, they need to understand the value of AI, but how much experience can someone really have with a tool that's been out for nine months?
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, no, it's a it's a very good point.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I think that I think as you're hiring for those roles, and I'm I'm very similar at the moment, I'm not necessarily looking for competency as much as I'm looking for curiosity.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what you're starting to see uh, well, just first of all, kids in university and high school, they're using um large language models and tools to get through homework assignments and show up a little bit different.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, it's permeating in that way, in one way, shape, or form.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: They may not put that on their resume at the end of the day, but they are leveraging those solutions.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: When I start to look at uh the next generation, I'm I'm really looking at that curiosity.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think for most of us that have used tools like ChatGPT, there's this idea of you prompting it.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: But then when you uh look at what different markets are doing, there's this idea of reverse prompting, which sounds a bit woohoo, but essentially the idea of it is can you have ChatGPT prompt you?
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: Can you have it ask you the right questions?
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: So, from a curiosity standpoint, at some point you realize that ChatGPT and other AI tools only get you so far.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's all about reverse prompting and being like, what can I do to show up better?
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so even with the people in my team at the moment, we always talk about, you know, you could get an answer within five minutes through AI, but maybe you should spend half an hour just hoaxing the right answer by reverse prompting so that way you're asking better questions for yourself versus just asking the questions to something that might not have as much context or experience as you do.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I I love that perspective.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's really all about uh thinking differently, right, with these with these tools, but also not forgetting who we are as people and that we all kind of have unique insights.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I think that's that's one of the challenges when you look at budgets, and you you mentioned earlier on in this conversation that budgets are scrutinized, they're shrinking, like every dollar is flipped over, um, and everybody needs to show ROI.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think that there is an over-expectation on streamlining everything.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but there are there obviously are things that we can do better and that partners can do to feel supported in actually kind of applying these MDF budgets more effectively.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe you could share what types of strategies and tricks you would apply to ensure that your partner marketing spent gets buy-in from uh from your peers from uh Connect Wise.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 100%.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: So look, I think on my side, I have a very interesting purview in terms of seeing all the thousands of MDF requests we get, um, you know, seeing all the activities that we're doing, trying to understand um, you know, the motivation behind some of these.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: And look, there's one element of me um within the business where it is very much financial.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm looking at payback period, return on investment, you know, when does that marketing activity have an impact?
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's all operational.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, um, my goal is to continue to have more and more MDF to provide to partners in general.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's the idea to show that we can push more money to partners and they can drive more value.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: But from a partner standpoint, it's really about driving intentionality around activities.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: So even when I was a sales guy, and I remember a long time ago, as a sales guy, I would always scrutinize, you know, what is the difference between an MQL and an SQL?
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, is that marketing activity something that's going to drive into revenue and pipeline?
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so for me, one of the key um behaviors I try and motivate, especially with our marketing consultants that work one-to-one with partners globally, is what is that intentionality?
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: If we're at an event or we're doing an activity, what are we trying to drive?
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: What workload, what is our motivation?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: What do we think we will get?
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: Because uh in the in the uh art of estimating and forecasting, you kind of learn something about it.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: If you make no assumptions and you have no idea.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so for me, it's about how do you drive intentionality behind marketing dollars?
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because we aren't expecting every partner to know, you know, what the uh the the um row ass is for every single thing that they do.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: But what we want to ask is those curious questions like, will this dollar get you three dollars in how long?
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think?
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then we learn with the partner.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really intentionality versus just activities for the sake of random acts of marketing.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I I love that word, and I think we should use it more often, uh, intentionality, because it goes both ways.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: It kind of reminds me of uh what I used to discuss with when I was running larger marketing teams.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: I I they would say, What are we focusing on?
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: I said closed one.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we're working on because all other numbers you can finangle and change to mean whatever you want them to need to mean.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: But when you focused on closed one, there's no denying it, right?
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you commit, then you have to commit.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um sorry, go ahead.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I I I think around that, um uh just it just to add on, I feel like uh quite often marketers in general think that they can hide behind big numbers, but actually what shows more honesty and transparency to the business is small numbers, small, meaningful numbers moving the business in the right direction.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so one of the key arts I think I've found of driving uh stakeholder alignment is not necessarily hiding behind the biggest number, but actually showing the key number that drove the business forward.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: Because there's a difference between big numbers and small numbers that are actually meaningful that you can kind of hold your hat behind and say, like, this is how the business moved forward.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: No, absolutely.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: I I think the there's an inherent lack of value to big numbers in that space because someone will ask, what does that mean?
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: If you say I had 175 million impressions, that there's so little context for someone to understand that that anybody will ask, okay, what does that mean?
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: But when you say direct marketing contribution to five closed one deals valuing X million euros, nobody's gonna ask what does that mean because you've already told them what it means.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: So a hundred percent.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: I I feel I feel that even as people like grow their marketing career, it is not net it might be about managing a bigger budget number, but it's really about driving very small incremental improvements overall.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: And quite often when you start a marketing career, it's about to your point, it's like millions of impressions, thousands of leads, but everyone knows there's only a few that are really going to drive the needle forward.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: So how do you not only show like intentionality is a big thing, but like how do you show intentionality in the numbers that you're showing to add that credibility across, say, finance and sales and all your other stakeholders?
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it gives a lot of um peace of mind in some way to no longer have to hide behind numbers that you don't even fully understand.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I can imagine that that's uh when it comes to through partner marketing as well, right?
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: That if they focused on end customer revenue increase, end customer demand, like clear metrics, they can also look at the numbers and say, we're doing well.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: We're not doing as well as we want to, we need to focus on this area, we don't need to focus on that area, as opposed to uh we got uh a thousand likes on this type of post.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what that means, but it sounds like a high number.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: So for for really for me, like when I'm looking at like say MDF approvals, outside of the dollars being asked for, I'm looking for the clarity of thought that went into it.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: And if the partner needs support in getting it in, you know, getting to that place, we have like a marketing team globally that can kind of help them answer those key questions because really the idea of marketing isn't to just do it like a one and done sort of situation.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: Marketing is one of those crafts that you learn from every like every day, every week, something's changing.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what's what's relevant last week won't be relevant this week.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: So you kind of have to stay on top of it.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: But to create any clarity from it, you need to know what you're driving.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because otherwise, when you come to the next week and you're trying to do another marketing activity, you won't really know what you're pushing and why.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so for partners in general who typically skew a little bit more techie and might have grown their business through word of mouth, or you know, as they become more mature, um, may acquire companies, you then start to look at not only the marketing that you're spending, but what it where are the dollars coming from?
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like what is the retention?
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: What is their bundle that they're selling?
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: What is their renewal rate?
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: And those are all like very much hardcore SaaS metrics in general.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really nice when uh like in our standpoint, we have um something like IT Nation to kind of get us a lot of that partner feedback at scale.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that that's a fantastic transition to the next topic I wanted to raise.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so you at ConnectWise, you organize IT Nation.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's pretty simple to say that it's one of the most well-known partner events in the in the tech space.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um now, from your perspective, uh, besides obviously having that connection with partners, what makes it stand out, both as a conference, but also as a way to drive longer-term partner engagement and build the partner community?
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I'd say um Peter Kajawa on our team that leads um that leads the initiative for ConnectWise uh has done an amazing job with driving community at scale.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: And for me, IT Nation Connect, the conference, is a great um opportunity.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's a great feedback mechanism where we see thousands of partners globally uh across AMIA, AMER, APAC.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, we have our AMIA conference happening in March for those that are interested in London between March 9th and the 11th.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: And essentially, that event is a culmination of continuous community engagement throughout the year.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: So the way that I see IT Nation is almost like a trifecta.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's like three different elements.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: The first is could be, you know, the event.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: The second element is around benchmarking.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: So we have a part of our business called service leadership, which works with partners to benchmark their financial metrics, very specifically, you know, adjusted eBid R service multiple of wages.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: Once all that data is in one location and normalized, um, partners then have a very qualitate quantitative way of knowing which numbers are there to move the business forward.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: So we learn, you know, the heuristics of that business.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: But the third element of IT Nation outside of um community uh events and benchmarking is peer groups.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: So we have uh a peer group called Evolve, which is our longest standing peer group.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's been around for 25 years.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's brought in partners of all shapes and sizes through, you know, first dollar of revenue all the way to exit.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: And what you learn in those communities is that idea of shared accountability.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I think of that more as a um qualitative.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: So when you combine the quant of SLI.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: And then the call of Evolve, what IT Nation Connect ends up being is us synthesizing all the learnings that we have and bringing it to the forefront where we can hear from partners what's top of mind for them and really drive that continuous community engagement throughout the year.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I know from the outside it looks like it's just one event, but for us, it's like our largest feedback mechanism to the community.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: And we use it as such to kind of inform as a business where we're heading and to make sure that we're helping me partners where they are.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: So would you say that the um the qualitative uh the quantitative aspect is basically the what and the IT nation, the connection they build there, the peer groups is almost like the how?
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, I would say that.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh like in in in in in very thank you for simplifying it.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I would I would exactly say that.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I think specifically, because we have great leaders all across the globe that kind of help us service that in each of the regions.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: We have like Dan Scott that runs Europe, we have Nick Moran in APAC.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they're out there in the market talking to partners every single day, but they have the benefit of having the quantitative data to see how partners are performing, and then they're in the room, um, hearing what part what comes top of mind.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: So when we think about our conferences, um my team is specifically focused on getting more partners to the event and making sure that they have a very valuable time when they're there.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: Specifically for me, I'm always thinking about what is that engineer that leaves the conference going to do when they get back to work?
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: What are they gonna say that they learned?
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: What value are they gonna drive?
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: What competitive advantage are they gonna get?
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: So by being so close to the channel and community, we're able to get that insights a little bit quicker and through that speed, we're able to react to the market a lot faster.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, that that makes total sense.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: I I think there's such huge value in kind of showing people, partners, companies that the world is changing and taking them by the hand in that change, like providing them the tools and the discussions to kind of build that change, right?
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because honestly, I I think a lot of people are in some ways scared that they have to move from a traditional sales model to an augmented sales model where they have to rely on tools, where they have to be more efficient, but where they also have to think almost um more deeply about how they manage their strategy as opposed to tactical execution, right?
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: For smaller partners specifically, right?
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: You normally they were just focused on, hey, I know the people I work with, like I know my customers, their long-term customers, but now as the world changes and companies consolidate, I think they uh they really need to kind of move forward together with technology and with these new paradigms.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think it's so valuable to then also come together in person and be able to lead them through and discuss with them these changes in just general thinking.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um I don't know if you have any thoughts on that, but that's something I'm I'm seeing happening.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like we're we're again over that tipping point where everybody now understands that this change is upon us and there's a lot of value there, but it's still it's just still a change.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I would say that um, and we have a lot of great literature and partner case studies around this, but really at the very beginning of most MSP life cycles, whether they came, whether they're they started ages ago or they're born in the cloud, um, you get to this point where you have to graduate from founder-led sales, which is kind of weird when you bring up in the partner world founder-led, because it seems very startup-ish.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: But the idea is at what point do you drive, do you graduate from founder-led sales and hire someone else that can help you drive that sales and revenue pipeline that you need?
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: As the partners begin to mature, what I've noticed is that the mix of revenue often changes between project services or break fix and then into managed services.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: And when you start to move into that element, um, you're really looking at am I doing the right projects?
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: Am I, is my team working on the projects that are going to drive the most value?
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because often project-based work um is very hard to drive profitability because it's you don't know enough about the customer to make it be delivered on time and under budget.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so a lot of these concepts and a lot of these learnings, you kind of have to hear firsthand.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I like the fact that um while we do have many digital touch points, we make it a statement to kind of be out there in the market and kind of meet partners face to face.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: Not necessarily only for us to kind of learn what's going on, but to hear other partners talk amongst themselves, to hear what they're saying collectively.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: Because quite often in in face-to-face interactions, ideas are more challenged, they're more tested, they're more digested, which might not be the best word to use at this moment because I'm hungry.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: But like overall, when you when you kind of see it, when you see an idea kind of show up face-to-face and you have a community giving it the time to actually focus versus being on a Zoom call where everyone is doing a thousand things at the same time, you start to see that that's like the differentiator.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: The face-to-face interactions give us that information way earlier.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: We're in the room where it happens, as I like to say, and then we're able to take that and scale it out.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I I I fully agree.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think that that unstructured nature of human conversations can add so much to the way we think and how we come to uh how we come to conclusions, and then feeding that into all the tools that support us on a day-to-day basis really is almost like the best of both worlds.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and and look, I think, I think as time goes on, we there is there are so many partner models that are yet to be discovered and created.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like on uh outside of work, I'm you know dabbling in all sorts of you know AI agentic frameworks and vibe coding all sorts of stuff, and that um distance between technology outcomes and customer awareness is really shrinking.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so as that continues, where partners have a role to play is essentially driving the change, making sure that that data, that IP is locked and secured and protected.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um and for me personally, I'm just excited about all the new business models that are kind of out there.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like you can kind of see it in the agentic space in general, like charging based on uh monthly or charging based on outcomes, charging based on activity.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: You can kind of see that the whole business model is changing altogether.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: So to be close to that and to be near where that change is going to happen is really exciting.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because I think this is a period of time where we're gonna see tremendous change and you just have to be curious, once again.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: Going back to hiring the person, you kind of have to in general, you as an individual need to be curious, but so does your business as well.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: Curiosity, intentionality, and connection.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think those are the three things that that really matter most these days.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: If I can condense our entire conversation into three buzz words.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: If those are the buzzwords, I would agree with them.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: No, I I yeah, I I think I I think it is it's yeah, it's all about being deliberate at the end of the day.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: No, I love it.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, I don't want to keep you from your lunch for too long.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: I want to ask you uh uh two quick questions.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, always ask our guests to invite the next guest on the podcast.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: Who should we have next, in your opinion?
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so in my opinion, uh I reckon Catherine Rose, um, who runs Channel Marketing Association would be a great next guest.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: I actually met her uh about a year ago at ITNation uh Connect last year, and I think she's doing amazing work in getting the word out there about channel marketers, creating content around it, driving summits for that.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: And um yeah, I feel it's like an underserved part of the industry, and she's doing great work, so I would definitely recommend her as a next guest.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'll definitely reach out to her.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure we'd have a lot to discuss.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, with that being said, to wrap this up, do you have any uh final insights, tips, tricks that you'd like to share with the audience?
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: I I genuinely genuinely feel that most people need to find time to continue to be curious and beyond the latest and greatest.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um I feel very fortunate at ConnectWise that we're you know working with some of the latest and greatest technologies, um, you know, are open to leveraging AI in a safe and secure way.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: And uh there might be people in the industry that don't have that same opportunity.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I like to say that it's good to try and get a little bit dangerous, like kind of learn enough, um, even if it doesn't show up at work, because um it's almost like, you know, not using the calculator when it was first invented, or not using the cot the copywriter when it like not photocopier when it was first invented.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: That time that you spend learning um really drives your own professional competitive advantage.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd just say um even outside of work, just be comfortable using the tools just to learn where where it's all going, because that will really shape your opinion.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, you might just be saying words that don't necessarily make sense.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: No, I I love that.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I think also a huge value in learning is learning limitations that'll help you ahead as well.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I always think like you can't be you can't be an expert.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: You have to be a student.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's no just that you can't there's no um LinkedIn title that you can put next to your name that kind of says that you're an AI expert.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's too soon.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like the world hasn't changed yet.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's a level of humility in that is key.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but at least once you know a little bit more, you can kind of get into the conversation, which I think is where all the fun and innovation is happening right now.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I love it.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: I I think the title of this uh this episode is gonna be humble slash dangerous.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, exactly.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds good, sounds good.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, thanks so much for sharing your thoughts and taking the time to speak with me.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: And uh for you, dear listeners, thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you in the next episode.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for watching.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: Bye.