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037 - Co-selling: Success through Collaborative Partnerships - Part 5/5 · Partnerships Unraveled

• 0:07
  Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries of partnerships and channel on a weekly basis.
• 0:15
  My name is Rick van den Bosch, and I'm the CEO and founder at Channext.
• 0:18
  And I'm here together with Alex Whitford.
• 0:20
  VP partners at Channext.
• 0:21
  Alex, how are you doing today?
• 0:21
  I'm doing great, thanks.
• 0:24
  How are you?
• 0:24
  The doing?
• 0:25
  Well, it's a great weather here.
• 0:26
  I'm going on a holiday tomorrow, so almost ready.
• 0:30
  Yeah, you're right, I'm doing terrible because I'm jealous.
• 0:32
  You're off to Ibiza, which is basically the best place to go on holiday in the world.
• 0:35
  And I'm stuck in the Netherlands.
• 0:39
  Rubbish, actually, but in the Netherlands with good weather and that's not standard here.
• 0:44
  True.
• 0:44
  And luckily where I'm staying, we have a pool, so it's not all that bad.
• 0:48
  Not that bad.
• 0:48
  Awesome.
• 0:49
  Yeah.
• 0:50
  We're already in part five today of our five part series, the final episode of bridging the partner recruit to revenue gap.
• 0:57
  Or in other words, how do you get your partners from net new recruited to the first revenue as soon as possible?
• 1:05
  And today in episode five, we're going to talk about co-selling.
• 1:09
  Yeah.
• 1:09
  To me, co-selling, that's the epitome of what we've all been working towards.
• 1:13
  Right.
• 1:13
  You recruit the right partner, you get them on boarded, you enable them, you start marketing together.
• 1:18
  But the co-selling motion is the bit that caps everything off because that's really where you're going to teach the partner how to sell effectively.
• 1:26
  So once they cross that revenue gap, they can get into self sustainable revenue fairly easily because they know how to co-market, but most importantly, they really know how to find open and close opportunities effectively.
• 1:39
  Yeah.
• 1:39
  And that's indeed really where the partner also gets their proof, where it's like, oh yeah, there is a lot of future and a lot of potential in this partnership because I know that I can close a deal and I can do this more often as well.
• 1:52
  Right.
• 1:52
  Yeah.
• 1:52
  Partnerships are driven by engagement and engagement is driven by revenue.
• 1:55
  And revenue drives, engagement becomes very circular.
• 1:58
  So this is the moment where that partner is going to see what can be a month's long process to get from recruited all the way through to that first deal.
• 2:07
  This is where they're going to see the first real return on that investment.
• 2:11
  Yeah.
• 2:11
  After a beautiful attack in football terms, now it's really time to score goals together with the partners.
• 2:17
  Yeah.
• 2:17
  Goals change games.
• 2:18
  Right?
• 2:18
  So let's score as many goals as we can.
• 2:20
  And this is that critical moment.
• 2:20
  So maybe.
• 2:23
  To start with because we've been talking a lot around the full onboarding process, of course, and getting the partner towards that first revenue.
• 2:30
  And we're going to dive a little bit into the mechanics in a moment, but when should you start with the co-selling motion?
• 2:35
  Like once you've signed the contract immediately or what is like the ideal moment there?
• 2:40
  Well, a good rule of thumb because it is going to vary depend on sort of product set and how complicated it is, what the actual sales process looks like.
• 2:49
  But as early as humanly possible is when you want to start selling because you want to shorten the time frame down to when they can close their first deal.
• 2:57
  So if you've got the ability to feed a lead in or get into involved in a deal very early on, potentially there's some really low hanging fruit in the partner's existing end users.
• 3:09
  You want to get into that sales motion very, very quickly, as long as their support provided by the vendor, which is that co-sell motion, because you want that revenue to happen very early on in the process so that they're constantly engaged.
• 3:23
  So I would be asking yourselves, as a vendor, when you're designing your recruiter revenue gap, how do we shorten this as much as possible?
• 3:31
  What is the earliest realistic point where we think we can get involved in a sales cycle and be successful?
• 3:37
  Because what you don't want to do is get involved in a sales cycle really early on, before the partners had any level of enablement.
• 3:43
  They don't really understand the process, don't really understand the product and suddenly that deal falls to pieces and now you've got a really bad reputation and potentially you've spoiled a relationship with the end user.
• 3:53
  You've got to avoid that.
• 3:54
  So the needle to thread is how do we balance that risk but also drive engagement and drive revenue quickly?
• 4:01
  Yeah, that's a valid point.
• 4:03
  I think in the third episode we spoke a lot around enablement and indeed when to enablement at the right time for the right partner as well.
• 4:10
  And I think if you look at it from that perspective, indeed before you start the sales cycles, that's what you really want to enable them with, right, with the sales enablement and then later on you can dive into the specifics of technical implementation, et cetera.
• 4:22
  But when you start working on those deals, you want your partners to feel confident as well when they start talking to end users.
• 4:29
  Yeah, we've spoken a lot in this series about explaining to the partner what's incumbent on them versus what's not required.
• 4:36
  Right.
• 4:36
  Where does the responsibility lie for different products and different solutions?
• 4:41
  The responsibility is going to lie more or less with the vendor.
• 4:44
  Some sales processes the partner simply has to open and find opportunities.
• 4:48
  Others they have to open, close, deploy, maintain, manage.
• 4:52
  That's obviously a far more complex sales cycle.
• 4:55
  And so when you can start that co sell motion changes depending on the complexity.
• 5:00
  Would you say that you almost start co-selling a little bit already in the recruitment phase, even before signing, where you start thinking with your partner like who are we going to approach and doing some first conversations?
• 5:11
  Or is it always after signing the agreement.
• 5:14
  When you sit down and you recruit a partner.
• 5:16
  We've spoken about this a lot.
• 5:17
  There's three things that the partner is going to want to understand.
• 5:20
  Who am I selling to?
• 5:21
  How easy is it to sell and how much money am I going to make?
• 5:23
  The most important point for that, for the co-sell, is who am I going to sell to?
• 5:29
  If they already have landed end-users and it's an attachment play into an ecosystem that they already manage and maintain, then you can start your co-sell journey really early on because it's a very easy upsell, it's a very easy cross sell motion.
• 5:43
  And so from that point on, once you've got contract signed, because you need to get contract signed right, then you can almost immediately get into a co-sell motion.
• 5:52
  As long as it's explained to the partner that the vendor is going to be heavily involved and heavily supporting that motion, a partner should be fairly comfortable.
• 6:01
  So that's something you're going to want to talk through.
• 6:02
  But if you can get into that motion really early on, get into it immediately, that's what you want to be doing.
• 6:08
  Yeah, I like that.
• 6:09
  And therefore you also see how important it is in the beginning to build a relationship and to build that trust because your partner is going to introduce you as a vendor towards their customer base as well.
• 6:20
  And therefore indeed, the better you do that early on, the earlier you can start your co-sell motion as well.
• 6:25
  Yeah, and I've been involved in sales cycles from a channel perspective and it's amazing.
• 6:30
  You really build your reputation in that first couple of co-sell motions.
• 6:34
  And I've benefited from that, where we won a couple of key deals really early on and suddenly that partnership is really, really strong because they go, oh, Alex is really good.
• 6:43
  Oh, Alex helped me hit my target last month.
• 6:45
  Alex has driven this deal through and in fact, all I was doing was deal facilitation, right?
• 6:49
  It was fairly easy work.
• 6:50
  But for them, it's a new vendor, it's a new product, it's a new revenue opportunity and so the partner is really on board with that motion.
• 6:57
  Suddenly you've really fostered the relationship in the best way and it's a really easy platform to then kick on into that self sustainable revenue and drive for that massive growth.
• 7:05
  Yeah, I like that one.
• 7:07
  I think when we talk about co-selling, it often always starts with account mapping, right.
• 7:12
  Really seeing within your partner and your own customer base, like, where's the low-hanging fruit where we could start because that's what we've been talking about a lot in this series.
• 7:20
  It's like, how do you get your partners to first revenue?
• 7:23
  Because that is such a critical moment to get your partnership rolling and indeed eventually bring them towards a long term successful partnership.
• 7:31
  Could you maybe dive into a little bit like, why is account mapping so important?
• 7:35
  And how do you approach it.
• 7:36
  And then after I can dive a little bit deeper into what can you do to make that process easier as well.
• 7:42
  Sure.
• 7:43
  So the best thing whenever you're building a plan is you've got to decide two things, what you are going to do, but what you're not going to do.
• 7:51
  Lots of vendors out there have multidimensional products, lots of routes to market.
• 7:55
  You've got to decide which element of your product or your platform are you going to sell as a first route and what you're not going to sell.
• 8:04
  I see so many vendors trip over this piece because they're so proud of their platform and so proud of their technology, where they go, I'm going to teach you everything, all the things that we do, all the things that we sell, all the ways we work.
• 8:17
  Dial that down, get really specific, get really deep and narrow first before you go wide.
• 8:24
  So map out the opportunity in terms of what end users do you work with.
• 8:28
  Understand is this a replacement cell?
• 8:30
  Is this an attachment cell?
• 8:31
  Is this a cross cell?
• 8:33
  If you understand that first understand the exact proposition which is going to work within their existing end users and just farm that first.
• 8:42
  Don't go wide, go really really narrow and then you can get very very into sales cycles very effectively.
• 8:48
  And the easy motion for the partner and the easy motion for you as a vendor is you can explain very, very realistically to an end user why this solution is going to work for the exact issue that they're doing and then cookie cutter that across to other like minded opportunities.
• 9:04
  Yeah, I'm just thinking now like we do co-selling as the last part of this series, of course.
• 9:09
  And that's also when you look at typical partner journey.
• 9:12
  It's just the last part.
• 9:13
  But actually that account mapping piece is so crucial early on because it completely determines what your sales process is going to look like and then how you need to enable your partners, what the joint value proposition is, which we've spoken about in the previous episode.
• 9:27
  So indeed, if you know what I liked as well, what you said, where it's like attachment seal, et cetera, replacement seal, it's a wildly different play from each other.
• 9:35
  So if you know that upfront already, you can very proactively help your partners get into the right motion and give them the right enablement and value proposition to bring to those endusers.
• 9:46
  It's a bit chicken and egg, right?
• 9:47
  Because what you don't want to do is assume that you understand the partner's base and the partner's needs and go, we've decided the right methodology for you as attachment because it might not be it might be cross or it might be replace.
• 9:59
  And so part of the onboarding and part of the enablement is to go a bit wide so they understand, so that they can then position it into themselves around the account mapping but again, we've talked about minimum viability, right?
• 10:14
  The least amount of knowledge for them to be successful because we've gone a little bit wide doesn't mean we now need to go wide and deep.
• 10:21
  You go wide and shallow just so they've got a basic understanding of the wider proposition.
• 10:26
  Then they can say, oh, this works really well with this type of customer that we have a lot and this type of proposition attachment, let's say.
• 10:34
  And now we can go really deep on that unique play, that unique proposition into those end users, pull together a high priority list and go from there.
• 10:43
  When you start with that account mapping, do you look at the full customer base or do you first interview and qualify your partner?
• 10:51
  Like, what are the verticals that you are specialised in?
• 10:53
  And then go all in on a very specific segment within the account mapping?
• 10:56
  Or what's the best Practise there?
• 10:58
  Like building a business, go as niche as you possibly can, right?
• 11:01
  So I would say pick a niche, pick a sub niche in that niche and pick a sub niche in that sub niche, right?
• 11:07
  Go really, really specific.
• 11:08
  So if a partners has 500 endusers and you go, oh, we can do business with all of them, that's great.
• 11:14
  You can work up to working with all 500, but instead go and pick ten that your proposition is bulletproof for.
• 11:22
  Train the salespeople on just winning in that proposition.
• 11:25
  Because remember, the journey isn't to hit all 500.
• 11:28
  The journey for now is to close the first few deals to get the partner in the rhythm and then you can start to go wider.
• 11:36
  And I think that's the misconception that lots of partner managers, lots of channel account managers, lots of programme managers, misunderstand, they are looking at the top of the mountain rather than understanding, we need to get to base camp first, right?
• 11:49
  And that's the journey you're getting to.
• 11:51
  You're getting to base camp, then you're getting to stage two, stage three, stage four, right?
• 11:55
  That's the journey you want to go on.
• 11:56
  And so build your plan accordingly for your next goal, which is to get the first few deals over the line.
• 12:02
  Yeah, that's a good analogy, I think, when I think about that.
• 12:05
  Indeed, like you have for example, let's say your own product is very good in the banking sector, but then you find a partner that has indeed a lot of end users, but then specific ones in the banking, then you can best to make it a repeatable process as well.
• 12:18
  Focus on those first, show the partners how it's done and from there start building and start expanding into more verticals.
• 12:25
  Yeah, I used to work in used to work a lot in video, right, in video conferencing.
• 12:29
  And video conferencing is a very sort of unilateral product.
• 12:33
  It works in lots of different verticals, right.
• 12:35
  Works in manufacturing, works in healthcare, works in finance, works in corporate lots.
• 12:39
  Right.
• 12:39
  But I remember when I started with a particular partner, we just focused on manufacturing.
• 12:45
  They had all of those types of customers.
• 12:47
  But what was brilliant is we trained the salespeople on the exact case studies, the exact customers that we'd worked with, the exact types of opportunity, the language to use, so that when they went into manufacturing, they were very, very easily able to explain not just why this product was good, but why this product was good for that exact end user.
• 13:08
  Obviously, conversion grows.
• 13:10
  Suddenly they think the product is amazing because they've won lots of new opportunities.
• 13:13
  And then we're just doing conversion language right here's where manufacturing is different to finance and you just train them on the change.
• 13:21
  Not a new proposition, it's just here's the language you need to use for manufacturing versus here's the language you need to use for legal, here's the collateral you're going to need, here's the case studies, here's the customer references that you want and it becomes a crossover training session.
• 13:34
  But that was done in month three, month four, after we'd already closed several opportunities.
• 13:38
  Yeah, I think when you're starting with account mapping, like, you don't just need the company name, but also indeed vertical, like is it Enterprise, is it a mid market or an SMB end user, et cetera.
• 13:48
  So you can really do a good analysis based on that database and help them with it.
• 13:53
  Yeah.
• 13:53
  You want vertical segment and buying persona.
• 13:56
  Right.
• 13:56
  Who is the decision maker and what is the catalyst for change as well as the proposition, the model that you're going to get in?
• 14:04
  There's obviously a very different sales process to go in for CFO replacement based on cost saving versus it manager, based on attached, based on value add.
• 14:13
  Right.
• 14:13
  Those are two wildly different mechanisms.
• 14:16
  And it's so, so important that you're not just teaching the partner what to sell, but how to win.
• 14:22
  Right.
• 14:22
  Those are two wildly different things.
• 14:24
  And I think people so easily fall into the rhythm of going, here's why our product is brilliant, not here's how to win with our product.
• 14:32
  Yeah, that buying persona is also an interesting one and I think that's often missing.
• 14:37
  Like, I've seen a lot of account mapping excels as well, where you are just putting in the company names and maybe vertical, et cetera, and then start looking into it.
• 14:45
  But you really want to know, who does my partners know within that account?
• 14:48
  And I think that touches upon how do you make it easier to do account mapping nowadays?
• 14:52
  You have some very cool tools like Reveal or Crossbeam, where you and your partner both connect your CRM to that tool and you can actually map together.
• 15:01
  Like, which accounts do we have commonly?
• 15:03
  So where we could immediately start co-selling, but also your partner can share very specifically in the vertical banking I have these accounts and then indeed within this segment, but also which buyer personas are connected there.
• 15:17
  And that can be an excellent start of your co-selling motion, but I think also very much of your recruitment motion, where you can even prior to actually going fully into a partnership, qualify which segments and which verticals is this partner actually strong in?
• 15:34
  And does this fit our ideal partner profile as such?
• 15:37
  Yeah, exactly.
• 15:37
  And then you also want to understand, and it's a common mistake that I see people do they go, oh, yes, so and so works with this, this and this top customer that we're interested in working with.
• 15:48
  The question you need to ask yourself is, why are they working with those end users?
• 15:52
  And does it fit our go to market motion?
• 15:54
  Because I see so often people go, yeah, we'll recruit you as a partner.
• 16:00
  Really excited to work with you.
• 16:00
  Brilliant.
• 16:02
  Now can you get me involved with Rabo Bank?
• 16:04
  And they go, no, we already sell product which is a competitor to you, to that brand, and we are not replacing it.
• 16:13
  Oh, and suddenly the whole relationship is misaligned because you've recruited that partners just to get into those three or four end-users because they're really important and you didn't ask the key critical message, which is, what do you already sell?
• 16:27
  Are we attaching, are we replacing, are we adding?
• 16:30
  What does that look like?
• 16:31
  And if you misalign expectations to say, oh, it's replacing, then suddenly you can just break the whole relationship down.
• 16:40
  Yeah.
• 16:41
  So expectations in the beginning are crucial there.
• 16:44
  Absolutely.
• 16:44
  Because if you misalign the expectations, and we've talked about this so much, it's about conversion percentage, not just about how big your channel is, but how many partners are really delivering value, really delivering consistent revenue to you.
• 16:58
  You've got to maximise that and the best way to do that is just to be open and honest, round the table.
• 17:02
  Why do we both want this partnership?
• 17:04
  And can this partnership be beneficial for the both of us?
• 17:07
  Yeah, 100%.
• 17:08
  So I think after the account mapping, once we've got that and we know which accounts do we want to attack as the first accounts with our partners, then the sales process is starting to kick off.
• 17:19
  Like, what are some best practises there to make sure you have?
• 17:21
  Let's say we've selected ten accounts that we want to go for.
• 17:25
  What can you do as a vendor to ensure that you help the partner in the most optimal way, but also that you get the highest conversion?
• 17:32
  Really, really simple.
• 17:33
  Break down the entire sales cycle.
• 17:37
  Vendors will have a very comprehensive understanding of what that sales cycle looks like.
• 17:41
  So it's going to be first intro meeting with this type of ICP, right, who do you need that champion to be?
• 17:48
  What collateral is required?
• 17:50
  Is the vendor joining that session?
• 17:52
  If the vendor is joining that session, what support is required from the partner?
• 17:56
  If the vendor isn't joining that session.
• 17:58
  What does the partner need to do?
• 17:59
  You're going to break out the full sales cycle.
• 18:02
  Train the partner on it so they have a comprehensive overview of what the deal is going to look like and make sure against each one of the touchpoints there's comprehensive supporting architecture, either personal or data or articles or whatever it is through that process, so that the partner has full security and confidence.
• 18:22
  You know what you are doing because then they are going to be super proactive for you.
• 18:26
  If there's any doubt they will protect their end user from you.
• 18:31
  Yeah.
• 18:31
  Is it then that the partner like they're scared to break trust with their end user, so therefore they are very cautious to position something or to make certain steps.
• 18:41
  No new vendor is more important than any existing end user.
• 18:45
  Right.
• 18:45
  That's something that's really, really important to understand.
• 18:48
  The partners make their money through their end users and they probably sell multiple vendors to all of their end users and that is their core asset.
• 18:59
  So if you say, oh it's fine, just introduce me and I'll handle everything, that might be fine.
• 19:05
  If you've built up enough trust, they might just hand you the keys to the car.
• 19:09
  But you wouldn't do that unless you've got that relationship, you've got that trust, you've got the data that really backs it up and shows that you know what you're doing.
• 19:15
  Instead they need to be really secure that if I invite you in that you are really going to understand and really be protective to what we do.
• 19:22
  And that mapping out that full sales cycle, explaining to the partner exactly what you're going to do, exactly what the partner needs to do and what the outcome is, is going to be really strong in building that relationship.
• 19:35
  If we're being honest, before anything's really even been achieved, like having a really strong plan just builds that confidence going through that process.
• 19:43
  Yeah, I think that mapping that sales cycle is indeed a very critical one because if you look at it from that perspective, you can look, okay, who's going to do what and then it's okay.
• 19:52
  For example, setting up the introduction that's the partner, they have the worm relationship already.
• 19:56
  We provide them with the right template with a short elevator pitch to set up the meeting.
• 20:01
  But then for example, in the demo meeting, it's a lot more technical.
• 20:05
  The partner has never done it before.
• 20:06
  So that might be an excellent piece to tag along as a vendor and do the demo on behalf of the partner.
• 20:12
  For example, am I going into the right direction with those kind of actions?
• 20:17
  For sure, I would think of it the same way.
• 20:19
  And sometimes I think us in the channel and us in partnerships, we overcomplicate this.
• 20:24
  HubSpot and salesforce have had this worked out for years.
• 20:26
  Right.
• 20:26
  It's really simple.
• 20:28
  You have a process to get to SQL, you have a process to get from SQL to Opportunity.
• 20:33
  You have a process to get from Opportunity to Closure.
• 20:36
  All of that is mapped out and all of that architecture in there in terms of documentation and supporting requirements are built in.
• 20:43
  We know that model works direct.
• 20:46
  The only complexity is you have to add what does the partner need to do versus what does the disty potentially. What does the vendor need to do?
• 20:53
  And you need to explain it to all parties, but then you just run the process.
• 20:57
  And what's really, really great about being a vendor is you've got much more data than a partner will ever have because you are doing it with potentially hundreds of thousands of vendors partners, so you understand that full sales cycle and so you can give context to the partner when you do it.
• 21:14
  Trust me, we know this works.
• 21:16
  We're really, really excited to get this started.
• 21:18
  The reason we know this works is we've done this with you in 20 other countries, so we know this process works and we're really excited to take you on this journey.
• 21:27
  That's going to give them confidence.
• 21:29
  Yeah, you can really guide them throughout the process.
• 21:31
  And also, partners love to hear how they are doing compared to the rest of the market.
• 21:36
  So also, if you start like giving them benchmarks, what you see in terms of conversion in certain stages, et cetera, that's really where you can bring something extra and help partners as well to improve their sales process and to continuously improve how they go to market.
• 21:50
  Yeah.
• 21:51
  Partners are going to care about four key metrics.
• 21:53
  They're going to care about deal size, deal margin, deal velocity, deal conversion.
• 21:59
  As long as you can give them generalised benchmarks for that and then track it on a quarterly basis, how they are performing, that's going to give them, one, a real strong indication that you know what you're talking about because you're measuring those points.
• 22:13
  And two, how are they performing and then what do we need to change?
• 22:17
  We measure it all the time internally here at Channext.
• 22:19
  Oh, deal conversion between SQL to Opportunity is up, but Deal Velocity is down.
• 22:24
  Why do we think that is?
• 22:26
  We test a few things and we try and improve that continuous iteration is going to drive your programme, your process and ultimately your revenue forward.
• 22:34
  Yeah.
• 22:34
  And I think it's also an excellent way for yourself indeed, as a vendor to qualify your partners.
• 22:39
  So in terms of if you have all those metrics, also internally, you're very clear on them.
• 22:44
  You see immediately which partners are the overachievers, which partners might need a bit of a boost as such.
• 22:50
  And there you can also, like indeed within your programme, then say, oh, we need a bit more enablement in this piece or we need this partner is doing very well.
• 22:57
  What can we learn from them to then teach that to other partners as well?
• 23:01
  For sure, you'll see, we used to see it a lot in the data all the time, where certain partners have really great revenue, really high deal conversion.
• 23:09
  Turns out all the deals were lumpy.
• 23:09
  Right.
• 23:11
  And it was just three or four deals.
• 23:13
  And the question you want to ask that partners is, are those deals going to happen again next year?
• 23:18
  Do you have the process in place to find those four or five multi hundred grand multimillion pound deals that are going to mean that we're confident this revenue is going to continue long term?
• 23:29
  If you're not measuring those data points and you're not tackling those in the co sell process, you don't set the partner expectations early, that these are the questions that we are going to be asking.
• 23:39
  And then you get this drop off after six months, after a year, when you start to pull away from the partner because hopefully they're now starting to be self sustainable.
• 23:47
  And then suddenly it all comes crashing down.
• 23:49
  You want to set those expectations during the co-sell motion that you're going to be tracking this together.
• 23:53
  Yeah, those expectations are really what makes it a success eventually.
• 23:58
  I was just thinking, I was on a podcast lately with Barrett King on his podcast, and then he was asking me as well around this topic, like, activating your partners towards first revenue.
• 24:07
  And I borrowed your Three Times Tree Rule, which you taught me based on how to onboard people or how to delegate things.
• 24:15
  But I thought it was also very relevant for co-selling.
• 24:18
  Like, could you briefly explain to our listeners, like, what the rule is and how you could utilise that in a co-selling motion?
• 24:25
  Sure.
• 24:26
  So I was always taught from a delegation perspective, but you're absolutely right, it works from a partner delegation perspective, three by three by three.
• 24:33
  So we're going to do nine sessions together.
• 24:36
  The first three sessions I am going to run and you're not going to say anything or almost nothing.
• 24:41
  And I will run those sessions entirely.
• 24:43
  Instead, me being the vendor, the second batch of three, the partner and I will 50 50 it, and so the partner will run some of it.
• 24:53
  I'll chime in when I need to and we'll just do it and then we feed back after.
• 24:57
  And then the last block of three, partner does everything and I'm just there to witness and feedback.
• 25:03
  And if a calamity comes up, I'm there to support.
• 25:06
  The idea being after nine sessions, the partner knows what they're doing.
• 25:10
  And really, if you've done nine intro calls together in this model, three by three by three, the partner knows what they're doing after nine sessions.
• 25:18
  And I've used this to train hundreds of people in my career.
• 25:21
  It's a system that just continually works because they really see what you're doing, then they sort of test it, then they really run it.
• 25:29
  And by the end of that, that 10th session, then they know what they're doing and they can run it autonomously.
• 25:34
  Yeah, I really like that rule, because indeed, the first three, it's all about learning and seeing how the vendor does it, who dated hundreds or maybe thousands of time before.
• 25:43
  Then it's like learning by doing in the second session, where you can already practise as a partner, but still, if you don't know a certain answer or whatever, you can fall back on the more experienced vendor in this specific product area, of course.
• 25:56
  And then the final three times, they are doing it completely by themselves and you as a vendor, can give them feedback on the final details to get it completely right.
• 26:07
  And I think indeed, in such a way, if we started this session with the account mapping, you've selected ten accounts, let's make it nine.
• 26:13
  Yeah, I was going to say you've done that beautifully, because what happens is the 10th account becomes self sustainable revenue, right.
• 26:21
  That's the point where they become self sufficient.
• 26:23
  But, yeah, if you've picked those ten accounts, you can really walk them through this process.
• 26:27
  And if you've got a really high conversion right from intro calls all the way through, which is what you're aiming for, you are aiming to close ten deals.
• 26:34
  The ideal would be that that partner is able to close the 10th one fully, independently, and that is that journey through.
• 26:41
  Right.
• 26:41
  I don't know if you architected it deliberately quite like that, but that was nicely done.
• 26:46
  Not deliberately, but I like how it's coming together.
• 26:49
  Awesome.
• 26:49
  Yeah.
• 26:51
  I think this is a great rule of thumb.
• 26:52
  Like indeed when you're co-selling with your partners to really get them to the level you need them to be and indeed the self sustainable revenue which we're going to do a future series about that's, like where you want your partners to get and this is, in my opinion, the way to get them there.
• 27:06
  Yeah, 100%.
• 27:07
  I think the goal of any programme we've discussed this a lot, is to get partners from recruited to that first revenue and then all the way through to self sustainable revenue.
• 27:17
  But what we've covered over the last five episodes is the foundational process that's going to drive very high conversion, but also going to drive enablement in such a way that the partner fully understands the entire motion from co-selling, which is obviously going to cover the account mapping element, to finding and opening and closing those first deals.
• 27:38
  The one element that is often talked about is, do we need to drive partners leads?
• 27:44
  Do we need to feed them leads early on to even shorten that time frame?
• 27:49
  What's your thoughts on how should we feed partners?
• 27:52
  Yeah, I think that's a great question.
• 27:54
  To me, it really is a two way street.
• 27:56
  So I think if it's only the vendor feeding the partner leads, that's not good, but it's also not good if it's only the partner doing all the account mapping and almost providing the leads towards the vendor.
• 28:07
  Right.
• 28:07
  So I think from that perspective, that's why I really like that account mapping in the beginning where indeed you don't just look who do you have as end users, but also who do we have that you are specialised in your vertical that we can actually feed into you.
• 28:20
  So from that perspective, I think that's the ultimate way indefinitely, you want to get your parking to first revenue as soon as possible.
• 28:27
  If you have a certain lead that fits them, I would definitely give it to them.
• 28:31
  But then again, with the three times three rule, especially with the leads you're giving themselves, show them how it's done.
• 28:36
  Like that is your ultimate route to actually practise with your partners but also be involved so you have higher conversion rates in the beginning.
• 28:45
  Yeah.
• 28:45
  My rule of thumb is basically a couple of things.
• 28:49
  If your product is really good, your comarketing is really good and your lead generation is really good, you don't have to feed partners.
• 28:55
  As a rule of thumb.
• 28:56
  I don't think it's a mandatory requirement.
• 28:58
  When should you do it?
• 29:00
  If you want to speed up the enablement process, if you want to speed up the revenue process, if you want to drive certain bias into the partner, then leads will obviously grease the wheels and make everything move very quickly.
• 29:13
  But and here is the critical thing that I see vendors mess up all the time.
• 29:19
  They don't say when the leads are going to end.
• 29:21
  They don't set the expectation.
• 29:23
  We're going to give you three.
• 29:25
  We know these three all work, we know these three are closing and that's when the gravy train stops.
• 29:30
  The amount of relationships I've seen, especially with key, key partners that I've just seen fall over and break the second the lead stopped coming, they went, oh, we're not actually interested in selling you.
• 29:40
  We'll facilitate anything you give us, but we're not really going to proactively push it.
• 29:45
  If they'd asked that question early on, they know they should have fed the leads to someone else.
• 29:49
  So it's really, really important.
• 29:51
  Again, expectation setting comes intrinsic to what you do with partners.
• 29:56
  But look, we're giving you these three leads because we think they're a brilliant training opportunity.
• 30:01
  They think they're a brilliant way to trigger engagement.
• 30:03
  Here's our expectation of you.
• 30:05
  Once we give you these three leads and then the leads are going to stop.
• 30:09
  Okay?
• 30:09
  If you're in after that point, excellent.
• 30:11
  And I think feed them leads.
• 30:12
  But if you haven't had that eye to eye conversation to set those expectations, don't give leads away unless you are sure there's going to be reciprocity.
• 30:21
  That's a very valid point, I think from that perspective indeed, vendors maybe sometimes shy away from saying it because it can sound negative.
• 30:28
  Like you get leads only temporarily, but then not anymore.
• 30:32
  But I think you can position it in a very good way.
• 30:35
  Like we want to kick off this partnership as good as possible.
• 30:37
  But it is our objective that within the first couple of months we train you that you can completely do the full cycle of indeed finding, closing, renewing and upselling customers on your own.
• 30:50
  And that's the goal of our partner onboarding.
• 30:52
  And as such, we're going to give you a flying start with those three leads I'm going to provide you.
• 30:57
  But from there you need to be able to do it yourself because that's important for yourself to have a self sustainable business as well.
• 31:04
  Yeah.
• 31:04
  And to be blunt, if you aren't able to have a conversation with a partners to say, we're going to give you leads, but only at the beginning so that we get you off the runway quickly and so you're up in the air and self sustainable, if you don't feel you're able to have that conversation, you're not in a real partnerships, right?
• 31:19
  Because a partnership is about honesty, it's about integrity, it's about being able to have that one to one communication and all partners will understand.
• 31:27
  Right.
• 31:28
  You are in a relationship where they hold the majority of the end users.
• 31:32
  If you're giving them leads as a training vehicle, they will get it and they will be very thankful because you are paying them to train.
• 31:40
  Basically they're all on board with that, but they've got to understand that you are providing them support so that they can find open and close opportunities independently.
• 31:50
  Yeah.
• 31:50
  And every partner loves leads.
• 31:52
  So if you dish in it in the right way, then they'll be happy with any lead as such.
• 31:57
  For sure.
• 31:57
  Awesome.
• 31:58
  Well, I highly enjoyed this series.
• 32:01
  I think we've touched upon a lot of topics in the last couple of episodes.
• 32:05
  Really how do you get your partners from that recruitment phase to their first revenue?
• 32:10
  We've discussed onboarding.
• 32:12
  We've discussed enablement, comarketing and today co-selling.
• 32:16
  Thanks again for sharing all your knowledge about the channel, Alex.
• 32:20
  I enjoyed it a lot.
• 32:20
  I hope our listeners did as well and looking forward to the next series and for everyone.
• 32:25
  See you next week.