Latest / Partnerships Unraveled / 035 - Mastering Partner Enablement: Driving Success in Marketing, Sales, and Tech - Part 3/5

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035 - Mastering Partner Enablement: Driving Success in Marketing, Sales, and Tech - Part 3/5 · 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, VP partners at Channext.
• 0:22
  Alex, how are you doing today?
• 0:23
  Yeah, really good, thanks.
• 0:23
  How are you?
• 0:25
  I'm doing good as well.
• 0:27
  I think we are really into this new series we're doing.
• 0:30
  Right.
• 0:31
  It's our five part series, actually, of bridging the partner recruit to revenue gap.
• 0:36
  Or in other words, how do you get a net new partner to their first revenue as soon as possible.
• 0:42
  And today we're already at part three.
• 0:42
  Halfway through, yeah.
• 0:45
  And it's been really great to get sort of very deep and very practical around.
• 0:51
  What are the things that you need to be doing to design the optimum partner programme.
• 0:55
  So if you haven't listened to the last two episodes, please go back and listen to them.
• 0:58
  We think they're really great.
• 0:59
  But just very quick synopsis, we covered why it's so important to minimise the time to value for a partner.
• 1:06
  One, it massively reduces churn and you need to measure conversion and the best way to do that is shorten your recruitment to revenue cycle.
• 1:15
  We tackled onboarding last episode and today we're going to tackle enablement.
• 1:19
  Yeah.
• 1:20
  And what does the word enablement mean for you?
• 1:23
  For me, enablement is the process for maximising the chances of partner success.
• 1:27
  Right.
• 1:27
  So last episode we covered onboarding and that's really setting out the partner success plan.
• 1:32
  Today we're going to tackle the elements that really live within that partner plan to really drive marketing enablement, sales enablement and technical enablement.
• 1:41
  Meaning that partners are going to be very successful finding, opening, closing, renewing and upselling deals.
• 1:50
  Yeah, I really like that one.
• 1:51
  I think in last episode within the onboarding, we went very deep into, okay, why is it so important to create a very good partner success plan that the partner signs into as well, and you make sure that you get them through it as soon as possible and set the right expectations.
• 2:06
  And indeed, for now.
• 2:06
  Okay.
• 2:07
  But then once you have the success plan and you have the different aspects of it, you repeat that time and time again as well.
• 2:14
  Like, you have sales, you have marketing, you have technical, you have operations.
• 2:17
  We've got those covered for operations.
• 2:19
  I think there's not really enablement necessary or do you think otherwise?
• 2:23
  Yeah, there's just some very minor stuff like how do you place an order, what does the renewal cycle look like?
• 2:28
  There's very brief things, but typically I would just spend a couple of days putting that into an automated process.
• 2:35
  Right.
• 2:36
  Videos and documentation so that you can send that through and just being very clear whose responsibility is to do that training.
• 2:43
  So sometimes that will be distribution, sometimes that will be the vendor and you just need to map that.
• 2:48
  But it's not a particularly onerous complex process.
• 2:51
  For today, we're very much going to focus on sales, marketing and tech.
• 2:54
  Yeah, I love it.
• 2:55
  Then I think when you think about enablement, what is crucial there?
• 2:59
  If you think about it, like in terms of the concept of enablement yeah.
• 3:03
  So for me, I always talk about minimum requirement, right?
• 3:07
  So don't do enablement for enablement's sake.
• 3:10
  I think a lot of people go, oh, we're going to build the most comprehensive library of assets and it's like, well, you can sure, partners are busy, partners have lots of vendors to sell and just because you have content there does not mean it will be used.
• 3:24
  And so instead reverse engineer it from the outcome you're trying to deliver and then work that way.
• 3:29
  So if it's the responsibility for a partner just to find deals, only teach them how to find it.
• 3:35
  If they need to manage the full sales cycle, including implementation, deployment and architecture, then you've got to enable them to do that bit successfully.
• 3:43
  So work backwards from the outcome looking to deliver.
• 3:46
  Yeah, I really like that one.
• 3:47
  I think indeed if you look at it from that perspective, then you see there like, what does the partner really need and indeed what does the outcome of that specific enablement need to be?
• 3:56
  I think that's what you're saying, right?
• 3:56
  Yeah, exactly.
• 3:58
  And so that's going to massively vary around what your sales cycle looks like, what your deployment cycle looked like, what your renewal cycles look like.
• 4:05
  I call that the sort of more commercial elements.
• 4:08
  But also what type of partners do you have?
• 4:10
  Right, so that will also massively depend on the enablement you need.
• 4:14
  A referral partner needs a wildly different enablement strategy than an ISV and so work back from the outcome you're looking to deliver and make it as simple as possible.
• 4:24
  So if they just need to find an open deals and then hand everything back to you, then you want to build your full enablement strategy around how you do that, most effectively minimise the amount of time it takes to do that, maximise the output.
• 4:39
  Yeah, I'm just thinking now, like, what if we would look at some of the most common partner types, so maybe we go for resell, referral, tech, partner and alliances.
• 4:50
  Like what specific enablement do you need per such a partner type?
• 4:55
  And maybe if you have them, am I missing?
• 4:57
  No, those would be the four main ones.
• 5:00
  Then you can have some really complicated ones like telco, but that's typically like a two year enablement plan so we probably don't have time in the next 25 minutes to get that done.
• 5:10
  So yeah, on referral, because that's typically the easiest.
• 5:14
  There's no technical enablement required typically because they are not managing the deployment that will be done by the vendor directly.
• 5:20
  And so you're just looking at sales and marketing and sales is a really good example.
• 5:25
  I see lots of people misunderstand how referral deals should work if they are only responsible for finding an opening and not closing.
• 5:33
  Don't teach them how to close.
• 5:34
  Focus all of your time, all of your value, all of your inertia on getting them to be optimum at finding and opening deals.
• 5:42
  So amazing elevator pitches, amazing opening introductions, amazing stakeholder management, focus their amazing marketing collateral to deliver inbound demand.
• 5:52
  That's where you want to pour all of your time.
• 5:54
  And I know so many people who go, oh, we'll just reuse the resale model for the referral model, that's fine.
• 6:01
  But if you're telling partners that they need to know how to close and manage deal cycles when they don't, you're just wasting the partner's time.
• 6:08
  Yeah, if you look at those referrals, indeed, I think there you have two flavours, right?
• 6:11
  Like either it's a referral where a partner refers a customer, they send an introduction or whatever, or they sign up, but then your direct sales team completely takes over.
• 6:20
  But there's also referral where the partner refers you into it, but then it becomes like a co selling motion and indeed, if you just have the first part, then it only makes sense to give them like the marketing piece.
• 6:30
  What's your value proposition, the elevator pitch, everything around it.
• 6:34
  Well, indeed, if it's a co selling motion, then you want marketing and sales both.
• 6:38
  And I think that's really the way to look at those type of enablement, in my opinion, towards like, what does the partner really need and where do I enable them?
• 6:46
  And then focus all in on that enablement because you better have that your partners are extremely good at one thing because they only have to do that thing than that they are good at three things that you enable them with while they actually only have to focus on one.
• 7:00
  Yeah, exactly.
• 7:00
  The way I always talk about self sustainable revenue, which is the goal of any partner programme, is to maximise your efficiency and your scale within self sustainable revenue.
• 7:09
  It's broken down into five pillars to find, open, close, renew and upsell deals effectively.
• 7:15
  You want to build your enablement strategy around those five pillars.
• 7:18
  But exactly in the two referral instances you use, there are some referral programmes they only need to find opportunities and some referral programmes they need to find an open opportunities.
• 7:28
  Well, if you only need them to find, just give them marketing because that's all they're going to do.
• 7:31
  If you need them to find an open, you give them marketing and sales, but only the first bit of the sales motion because the co sell motion is then going to very much be handled predominantly by the vendor, right?
• 7:42
  You're going to attend the meetings or whatever else.
• 7:44
  There's not much to do else in there.
• 7:46
  That massively difference.
• 7:48
  If we now pivot into the second section on resale, well, they're going to have to learn how to find open, close renew and upsell.
• 7:55
  So they're going to need a much deeper level of enablement that's going to cover marketing and sales, but the whole marketing and sales package, and it may also include some technical, depending on what your product complexity is.
• 8:08
  Some resale deals are still technically handled by the vendor and some resale deals aren't.
• 8:14
  A good example would be Zoom had a resale programme, but the technical deployment of that was always handled by Zoom.
• 8:19
  It's a cloud product.
• 8:19
  Right.
• 8:20
  So there was no real necessity for a reseller to have to do that technical onboarding or technical enablement.
• 8:29
  However, they may choose to do it to offer value added services to the end user.
• 8:34
  Right.
• 8:34
  And so then that's where you can start to deepen and really prioritise that level of understanding.
• 8:40
  But start with minimum requirement first so you can get real depth and breadth at the same time.
• 8:45
  And then for a select few partners who choose to take that further, offer that collateral, offer that one to one training because that's going to deepen your relationships with those partners in particular.
• 8:54
  Yeah, I was recently visiting a distributor and they were telling me that they are doing almost all the technical implementations for the resell partners.
• 9:02
  Indeed.
• 9:03
  And I think that's really interesting when you're like creating your partner programme to think about things like that.
• 9:09
  Okay, my resellers yes, they are going to do, for example, for the more easy to implement tools, they can do products, they can do the full cycle until implementation.
• 9:20
  But maybe indeed, when it's already a bit more complex, you can say, okay, my distributors will do the implementation so they need the technical enablement.
• 9:27
  But my resellers then only get the marketing and sales.
• 9:29
  And those are really like the levers you have.
• 9:32
  And indeed your example with Zoom, where the vendor does just complete technical implementation, where you could say, okay, technical enablement can actually be quite low.
• 9:42
  Like, of course we explain you the product, what it works so you can sell it properly, but the implementation is a very different thing than being able to sell it.
• 9:50
  Right?
• 9:50
  Yeah.
• 9:51
  And tech teams will love you for this, right.
• 9:53
  When you are able to give them a very clear answer on roles and responsibilities for deployment.
• 9:59
  And then ultimately in the post sales, tier one, tier two and tier three support, if the answer is you do tier one, but you offset everything else back to the distributor of the vendor, tech teams will go fantastic.
• 10:11
  So the second we diagnose that this is a Zoom issue and we just backload it to the vendor, great, then that's all I need to do.
• 10:18
  I don't need to take any extra work on.
• 10:20
  And remember, tech teams can be prohibitive to sales going ahead if they don't feel like they understand the support requirements.
• 10:28
  And so even if the technical enablement is as simple as you don't need to do anything that's important because the tech team will then say, that's fine, then we don't need to get involved.
• 10:38
  We just offload this back to sales.
• 10:40
  Sales and marketing do what they need to do, and it's not going to slow us down.
• 10:43
  We're not going to get in the mire and pulled into deals that we don't need to be involved in.
• 10:47
  Yeah, I agree there.
• 10:48
  And then I think, of course, there's also a lot of examples where resellers are doing everything.
• 10:53
  So, for example, with a Cisco or HPE, et cetera, where they also do the implementation.
• 10:58
  And that's where you create your training and certification on the technical side.
• 11:01
  So you make sure that your partners have to upgrade it every year.
• 11:04
  You give them the enablement, but there's also a lever that they or how do you say that?
• 11:09
  Almost like a carer they get for it.
• 11:11
  But it's actually a necessity to stay in a certain partner level.
• 11:14
  So then you have the loop ready again where it's okay, we enable them, but there's also certification they need to do it every year.
• 11:21
  So we get everyone into the right cycle of being enabled in the right way.
• 11:25
  Yeah, and that's very much a maturity conversation around where your channel is.
• 11:29
  And we've touched on this in all of the podcasts, but I'll briefly touch on it again.
• 11:34
  When you're recruiting a partner, the partner cares about three things.
• 11:36
  Who do they sell to, how much money are they going to make, and how easy it to sell.
• 11:39
  If we take the Cisco example well, obviously there's loads of certification that goes on there.
• 11:44
  So the ease of sale is not very easy because there's lots of hoops you have to jump through.
• 11:49
  But the pivot is you also make a crazy amount of money, right?
• 11:51
  Partners are making a huge amount of money selling Cisco and the professional services around that product.
• 11:56
  And so that balance for those partners is there.
• 11:59
  They are willing to go through that process.
• 12:01
  So when you're doing your enablement, if there's lots of hoops that you need to jump through, you just need to sense cheque.
• 12:07
  Is there enough in it for the partner for this to be successful?
• 12:10
  Or is this going to be the point that partners start to churn out because they think, hang on a second, I've got to take on all this responsibility.
• 12:18
  How many deals are we expecting to make?
• 12:20
  How much margin are we going to make?
• 12:21
  What's the three year revenue plan?
• 12:23
  That number needs to make sense here.
• 12:25
  And so you've just got to make sure in your recruitment process, you got your IPP and your balance right.
• 12:30
  In your own onboarding process, you're explaining to the whole team within the partner what this is going to look like.
• 12:37
  And then in your enablement process, you need to make sure that that process is simple and easy as possible.
• 12:43
  Even the Cisco example I make, my dad's actually a Cisco infrastructure architect.
• 12:47
  So I know it fairly well.
• 12:49
  While it's a long certification process to go through, the actual mechanism to make it happen is amazing.
• 12:54
  Right.
• 12:54
  There's online portals, you do training, there's schools everywhere, there's exam places that you need to go to, like the infrastructure there is wonderfully set out.
• 13:02
  You got to set that expectation out early so people know exactly what they're going through.
• 13:06
  Yeah, I really like the one.
• 13:08
  I think indeed Cisco is one of the ultimate examples, right, where they really got the enablement engine running every single day, every single second.
• 13:16
  Yeah, exactly.
• 13:16
  They've got complete it's a university broken down into security and networking and everything.
• 13:21
  They really, really understand what they're doing, but they do that to ensure the right quality of care to the end user, but also the right quality of sales cycle within the partner.
• 13:30
  So it's a wonderfully architected system.
• 13:32
  I'm always really impressed by their programme design and it's something that I would really highlight.
• 13:37
  Microsoft do a very similar thing where they've built a university around the different pillars and specialisations that they have.
• 13:44
  But they've taken real care to understand what does the end user need to be able to manage and have these products developed and implemented effectively?
• 13:55
  And then what does the partner need to be able to do that successfully?
• 13:58
  And then they've orientated their programme around that, which is the most effective way to make that happen.
• 14:03
  Yeah, it's a win win for everyone.
• 14:05
  If we look at the ISVs, for example, what type of enablement do they need?
• 14:10
  It's like they need the full spectrum, right, because you really start it's different because it's really that co-selling motion there.
• 14:18
  Yeah.
• 14:18
  So ISV is one of the deepest levels that you'll find and also much more on the technical side.
• 14:26
  Right.
• 14:26
  Because they are going to, in some instances, being quite building, quite complex technical architecture and integrations between multiple product types.
• 14:36
  And so in that instance, you want to be giving yourself a very long runway, almost starting with technical to ensure that they understand how the end user product merge will look and then feeding that back into the sales team.
• 14:52
  So the sales team have a very easy job co- selling and co-marketing these solutions.
• 14:56
  Yeah, I think that's the deal there.
• 14:58
  Indeed, you have so many different departments to make sure to include when you are building a tech partnership.
• 15:03
  It really starts on the technical side there, where indeed you build the integration, but then you need marketing to create the joint value proposition to communicate it to each other's end user base.
• 15:14
  Then you need to enable sales and make sales very much ingrained as well.
• 15:18
  Like how do you sell this product, how do you sell the integration?
• 15:21
  And of course, it's not for the enablement podcast today, but it's very important to get the right incentives for the sales teams there as well, to make sure that they are incentivized to actually position the integration or the tech partnership you have together.
• 15:33
  Yeah.
• 15:34
  To me, you can always ask yourself one question to improve enablement.
• 15:38
  How can we make this easier?
• 15:38
  Right.
• 15:40
  If you're asking yourself that around your programme design and your enablement strategy, over time, you will improve consistently, because you're going to think, oh, we could have made that better, we got to make that better.
• 15:51
  That consistent learning is going to allow you to mature and hopefully get to a position like a Microsoft or a Cisco, where they've got a referral programme, a resale programme, an ISV programme, a tech programme.
• 16:03
  It's all segmented wonderfully.
• 16:04
  They understand the enablement protocol, they understand the certification levels.
• 16:08
  That's the level of maturity you want to get to.
• 16:10
  Obviously, that takes years to get there.
• 16:12
  And so instead, you want to really get depth.
• 16:15
  First, work on getting your enablement structure really well designed consistently, and then we can go on to the growth and the broadening of the programme that you need.
• 16:25
  Yeah, that's a great one, actually.
• 16:28
  How can I make this easier?
• 16:29
  Like, ask that to your partners all the time.
• 16:31
  Once you have your first partners enrolled through a specific piece of enablement, get the feedback, keep improving.
• 16:37
  That's really how you optimise it and get it to the standards that you want eventually.
• 16:41
  Yeah.
• 16:42
  Do you know why asking partners are the best people to ask?
• 16:44
  Because they work with loads of partner programmes.
• 16:46
  Right.
• 16:47
  I know so many brilliant hires that have been hired from this company because that partner programme was really well designed.
• 16:53
  They get headhunted pulled across.
• 16:53
  Yes, brilliant.
• 16:55
  Definitely do that.
• 16:55
  It's a great tactic, but partners, like a technical team, will have been on boarded to 20 to 30 different vendors.
• 17:02
  They'll tell you what was good and they'll tell you why it was good.
• 17:05
  So get in the habit.
• 17:06
  Build a culture that continually asks for that partner feedback.
• 17:10
  On the last podcast, we talked about asking for the no in a sales cycle.
• 17:14
  Why wouldn't this deal go ahead?
• 17:16
  What are the skeletons?
• 17:17
  Where can we find the challenges?
• 17:18
  Do the same thing from a partner programme.
• 17:20
  Why is our partner programme not the best?
• 17:23
  How could we improve?
• 17:25
  What have you seen in other programmes that worked really well?
• 17:28
  Steal the information.
• 17:28
  Right.
• 17:30
  Get that information back.
• 17:31
  Redesign your programme.
• 17:32
  Because if the engineers love your product, if the marketers love your product, if the salespeople love your product and your programme, they are going to be successful and then you can drive huge scale.
• 17:43
  I feel like this is really the golden nugget of this episode for our listeners.
• 17:47
  Like, make sure that you get that information because that's where the knowledge is with your partners.
• 17:51
  Yeah.
• 17:51
  And from my experience, right, I think I've probably recruited maybe over 1000 partners in my career.
• 17:57
  Lots of partners will tell you they're unique and from their perspective, they are.
• 18:01
  Right.
• 18:01
  They've not worked with lots of other partners.
• 18:03
  I'll tell you that there's hardly any partner that's truly unique.
• 18:07
  There's lots that you can pull together and understand, oh, well, if it works for this demographic of partners, it will work for this demographic of partners.
• 18:14
  And there's lots of cohesive learnings that you take.
• 18:17
  Then you can build a better recruitment strategy, a better onboarding plan, a better enablement plan, and you can just build a programme that has depth and breadth, is consistently driving partners towards self sustainable revenue as effectively as possible.
• 18:31
  And that's a channel that ultimately will be highly, highly successful.
• 18:36
  I'm fully on board there.
• 18:37
  You are touching on a very interesting topic with demographics.
• 18:40
  I think one of the most crucial things in enablement is personalization.
• 18:45
  And what do we mean with that?
• 18:47
  You start on a partner level, so make sure indeed you personalise your enablement based on is this a reseller, a referral partner, an ISV, et cetera.
• 18:54
  But then you go a level deeper already.
• 18:56
  Okay, but within our full product suite, which products is this partner actually going to sell?
• 19:01
  And then from there you keep building, right?
• 19:03
  And then within that partner, you start to look at more like an employee level, where it's like, which partner employees are getting involved?
• 19:12
  Is this a technical user, is this a sales user, a marketing user?
• 19:15
  And those are like all the filters you want to put on top of your content.
• 19:19
  Because what we have seen, and we've interviewed hundreds of partners on this, and when we ask them, like, what's the reason why you don't interact with enablement?
• 19:27
  Or when you go to a portal, for example, and you don't start with it, they feel overwhelmed.
• 19:32
  They get into portals, there's thousands of assets, they don't know where to start.
• 19:35
  A lot of it is not relevant for them.
• 19:37
  So think about that.
• 19:38
  Like, how can you really personalise it?
• 19:40
  So it's very relevant all the time.
• 19:42
  Yeah, I've got a really good one.
• 19:45
  A vendor I used to work very closely with, they knew I was a sales user, right?
• 19:50
  They know, because when you go onto the partner portal for the first time, they ask you what type of user, they ask you for your role.
• 19:55
  So they knew I was a sales user.
• 19:57
  Then when I went into their university to go and get my level of certification, they then showed me all of the certification types and they all had funny codes and it was all very complicated.
• 20:08
  But they know I'm a sales user.
• 20:10
  They also know what certification level I have.
• 20:12
  So why didn't they just show me what they knew I needed to get done, right?
• 20:16
  It's that level of complexity and unnecessarily.
• 20:20
  It's just bad design.
• 20:20
  If we're being blunt, if you know I'm a sales user and you know I have no certification, why are you not showing me Product Sales 101 and then Product Sales 201?
• 20:29
  And we can continue to drive it through.
• 20:32
  That's what you should be designing your programme to be as easy for the user and as specific to the user as possible, right?
• 20:39
  And so you've absolutely touched on the right ones.
• 20:41
  Programme type, partner type, role type within the partner.
• 20:45
  Those are the language basics.
• 20:48
  But if you get it done right, it just minimises churn, it minimises friction.
• 20:52
  And the more that we minimise the friction, two things happen.
• 20:56
  You improve time to value for the partner and you improve conversion.
• 21:00
  Those two, the things are the two biggest blockers to scaling channels wide successfully.
• 21:06
  And I think that this is a perfect summary, indeed, of what you want to improve, actually, in that bridging the partner recruit to revenue gap.
• 21:13
  Like, if you increase the velocity there and you increase the conversion, then partners will get way quicker throughout your onboarding, throughout the partner journey, through that first revenue.
• 21:23
  Let me give you an example.
• 21:23
  This is literally what happened, so I can speak from a complete position of truth and authority.
• 21:29
  I tried to do the certification, couldn't do the certification because I didn't know which one to pick.
• 21:34
  So I pinged a channel account manager.
• 21:37
  They didn't respond for three days.
• 21:38
  Maybe they're on holiday or they're busy, they're trying to close revenue.
• 21:41
  I forgot about it.
• 21:43
  And then it wasn't until six weeks later someone chased me, went, Alex, why haven't you done this?
• 21:47
  I don't know which one to do.
• 21:48
  We're all busy in partner world, right?
• 21:51
  There's so much stuff to do, there's so many vendors to drive.
• 21:53
  If that happens, that just causes stagnation.
• 21:56
  And then you're measuring, if you are measuring, which you should be your time to value on a partner, based on all of that latency, based on all of that lag, based on all of that stagnation, and instead, if you can just make small, optimised, automatic changes, what you will see is massively.
• 22:13
  It starts to drop massively, it starts to improve.
• 22:16
  Because I had the impetus I wanted to do the certification, I understood why it was important, but the second I hit any sort of barrier, I'll forget it, I'll do it another time, then.
• 22:25
  And instead, if you could just remove those barriers, you'll massively improve conversion.
• 22:29
  And that's going to allow you to focus resource and manpower, not on explaining to me where I need to go and what the code is of the certification, but doing the two things that partner people should only focus on, relationship and revenue.
• 22:45
  I think this is actually a really good example of what happens when you create or when you have friction in your partner journey, right?
• 22:51
  Because you come there with the best intentions.
• 22:53
  You want to get certified, you start looking, but it's very complex, you don't know where to start, et cetera.
• 22:58
  A human interaction is necessary there for a thing where you usually would not want that, actually, because the Channel Account Manager maybe also, even though doesn't know where to start specifically with the certification or they have to ask internally again and then it goes back to them and then it goes back to you.
• 23:14
  Like there's so many steps happening there that you want to prevent.
• 23:17
  And I think that's indeed you can really prevent a lot if you do it with the right type of enablement there.
• 23:22
  Yeah, and I love it, right, because I've spoken to thousands of partners in my career and I really believe that partners are going to be and are the most valuable asset to scaling big, especially in the enterprise and especially in the commercial space.
• 23:37
  And for me, putting the partner at the heart of everything you do in a channel and a partnership strategy is the way to be successful.
• 23:46
  And the recruitment to revenue gap is the epitome of that.
• 23:49
  Because what we are effectively saying is we don't want to waste your time and we're not going to waste your time by ensuring we have the highest conversion we can possibly deliver and assuring you're as successful as fast as humanly possible.
• 24:01
  And to prove that we've done the due diligence in recruitment, we've done the due diligence in onboarding.
• 24:07
  And today we've discussed how you do the due diligence in enablement to make it as effective as possible.
• 24:12
  What I really like in your example, and we had a chat lately right around what we call just in time enablement.
• 24:19
  And I think this is such a good example for that.
• 24:21
  It's so crucial not just to personalise the experience, so based on what type of content is necessary, but also even go one level deeper where you can unlock next type of enablement.
• 24:32
  Because indeed, in your example, you come in, you want to learn, how do I sell this one on one.
• 24:37
  So that's like the first step and then as soon as you've unlocked that one, you get the next one and the next one.
• 24:42
  And I think that's such an interesting thing that's in the beginning phase of coming in.
• 24:47
  But I think it's also really in terms of when you look at the full partner journey, like that full partner recruit to first revenue gap there, it's also so crucial, like what if we would really go into a mode where it's like, okay, once a partner gets on board, we first need to find the first customer.
• 25:02
  So you get the enablement around that.
• 25:04
  Once you've actually uploaded a first lead, you get the next one.
• 25:08
  How do you open a deal?
• 25:09
  What's the elevator pitch?
• 25:10
  What's the actual way we're going to position this?
• 25:13
  Once you've actually opened a deal, you get the next one.
• 25:16
  So how do we close this but then also, specifically, how do we implement it once it's closed and then to the right users within that partner?
• 25:24
  How amazing would that be if we would go to such a level where you really have that just in time enablement?
• 25:29
  Yeah.
• 25:30
  It makes me want to throw my shoes at programme managers.
• 25:32
  I remember sitting in a meeting a few years ago where we were talking about a product that has a seven month sales cycle and we didn't start marketing until we'd done technical enablement and the technical enablement was for installation.
• 25:47
  So a seven month sales cycle before the installation training was even required.
• 25:52
  And by the way, we obviously had to do the training again because no one had looked at it for seven months and you're absolutely right, just in time.
• 26:00
  Just like manufacturing, you want to be doing the enablement that's most relevant for the upcoming process.
• 26:06
  So what's the first step?
• 26:06
  Finding.
• 26:09
  What's the second step?
• 26:09
  Opening.
• 26:10
  What's the third step?
• 26:11
  Closing.
• 26:13
  Organise your onboarding, organise your enablement in the area that's most required.
• 26:18
  Well, obviously you want to get partners selling as effectively as possible or achieving revenue as effectively as possible.
• 26:24
  The first step is finding deals.
• 26:26
  So get that process going quickly and effectively.
• 26:29
  Now, of course, if technical comes really close after that and technical has a much longer time that it needs to be done yes, you're going to want to start that, but make sure there's some design to the process.
• 26:41
  And you're not just going, oh, we're doing all the onboarding and all the enablement in the first two weeks, because what actually had to happen in the example I just gave is we didn't start because technical was being done, and then we had to do the technical again anyway, because no one had looked at it for seven months.
• 26:56
  Well, then we could have just waited seven months, not slowed down the process, had a faster time to value and minimise the resource within the partner and the vendor for having to do the training once completely wasted time and then had to do it for the second time again because then it was actually relevant.
• 27:13
  Yeah, I'm so on board of this idea.
• 27:15
  I think when I think about it in terms of just in time enablement, there indeed like set the date, when do you want the first revenue together with your partner?
• 27:23
  It should be in your partner success plan that we discussed in the previous episode and once you know that, start reverse engineering.
• 27:29
  What needs to happen when?
• 27:31
  So you start at the end.
• 27:32
  When does the first revenue need to happen?
• 27:34
  Actually then indeed, in your example, technical enablement, it takes two months.
• 27:38
  Okay, so our goal is to have first revenue by end of month six.
• 27:42
  So end of month three, we're going to start with the technical enablement but we know as well we need to start with the marketing enablement immediately.
• 27:50
  Once we've got the operational and the onboarding, like the legal stuff, et cetera, we got that done.
• 27:55
  So then you really get into a mode, but then also determine what triggers the next type of enablement.
• 28:01
  So if this action happened, which is in a success plan.
• 28:04
  In that phase, the next enablement triggers and then you almost get towards like, a Gan chart where you have the full enablement journey within your partner with the different type of roles, the different type of enablement.
• 28:16
  I think that will be amazing for a lot of partner programmes.
• 28:19
  Yeah.
• 28:19
  And I'm going to steal a tip out of next week's co-marketing podcast, but for me, blend enablement with co process.
• 28:29
  Right.
• 28:29
  So I love on the job training.
• 28:32
  To me, I don't want you to teach me how to sell the product, I want to go and sell the product together and use that as teaching.
• 28:39
  And so what we want to do from a co-marketing element is, yeah, how do we do the enablement?
• 28:44
  So they got the assets and the pieces, but then also sit down and put together a marketing plan which is part of the enablement process and you can start to fuse those things together.
• 28:54
  Why is that important?
• 28:55
  One, it drives better conversion.
• 28:55
  Two, it's faster.
• 28:58
  Just get to success as quickly as possible.
• 29:00
  Yeah, that's the deal.
• 29:00
  Right.
• 29:02
  I think that's the full reason why we're doing this series.
• 29:07
  How do you get your partners to success as quickly as possible?
• 29:10
  I love that you touched upon the episode of next week already.
• 29:13
  A little bit.
• 29:14
  And next week we're going all in on co marketing.
• 29:17
  I think.
• 29:17
  To briefly summarise today with enablement, we've talked about how important it is to focus on the outcome of enablement.
• 29:23
  That personalization, is crucial and that just in time.
• 29:27
  That that's the future of enablement.
• 29:29
  Thank you, Alex, for today.
• 29:30
  I enjoyed the conversation.
• 29:31
  I hope our listeners did as well and see you next week.