Latest / Partnerships Unraveled / 005 - How to start a channel - 3 key focus areas for success

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005 - How to start a channel - 3 key focus areas for success · Partnerships Unraveled

• 0:07
  Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries of partnerships and channel on a weekly basis.
• 0:16
  My name is Rick van den Bosch, and I'm the CEO of and founder of Channext.
• 0:20
  And I'm here today with Alex Whitford, VP, partners of Channext.
• 0:23
  Alex, how are you doing today?
• 0:25
  I'm doing really well, thanks, Rick.
• 0:27
  Yeah, excited to be here, excited to record another episode.
• 0:30
  How are you doing?
• 0:30
  Yeah, I fully agree.
• 0:32
  It's been about for us, not for the episode, but for us a couple of weeks ago before we recorded, but really much looking forward to dive back into it.
• 0:41
  Absolutely.
• 0:42
  I think we've been talking about it, Alex, the last couple of episodes.
• 0:46
  We've been talking mainly about channel in the enterprise as well.
• 0:49
  Of course, that's where both of us are very active, but of course there are also a lot of listeners and a lot of people who are currently building a channel or actually thinking about building a channel.
• 0:59
  And I thought that could be a really interesting topic for today, actually.
• 1:02
  What do you think?
• 1:02
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:04
  I think we spend a lot of time talking about SaaS vendors and how they're going to attack partnerships and channel and scale across different areas of the globe.
• 1:17
  And for those people in particular, it's, okay, well, where do I start?
• 1:22
  And typically that's go and hire someone.
• 1:22
  Right?
• 1:25
  That's usually a strong place.
• 1:27
  Go and hire a head of channels who's worked at a channel organisation.
• 1:31
  But I do think it's a very different process starting a channel versus running a channel.
• 1:37
  And so I think it's a great topic for us to sit down and really discuss what are the key areas in which you do that.
• 1:43
  Yeah, looking forward to it.
• 1:45
  And then I think, Alex, nothing can become a success without a good plan or without a good strategy.
• 1:52
  And I thought maybe you can take it away a little bit.
• 1:54
  Like, where would you start?
• 1:56
  If you had to build a channel, where would you start?
• 1:59
  I'm glad you've been listening to my rants about planning in the management meeting.
• 2:03
  Clearly it's taken place, but yeah, the first thing, if I'm building a channel plan, I work back from the end-user.
• 2:11
  Right.
• 2:11
  So what is our go-to-market messaging from an end-user perspective so that we can then correctly build the channel to find end-users and then also deliver value to those end-users.
• 2:23
  So start there and then from their work backwards in terms of finding your right end-user profile and finding the partners that support that.
• 2:33
  I found channels that have been built very organically, very successfully.
• 2:37
  They've got a direct end-user model and then they've had to add a channel.
• 2:41
  The best people to speak to are those end-users and who do they buy from and why do they buy from them?
• 2:47
  And building your proposition around that messaging so that you've got a very distinctive end-user profile and a very distinctive partner profile.
• 2:57
  And then put yourself in the partner's position.
• 3:00
  Before you start to look at what type of partner am I looking for?
• 3:04
  You really look at what type of customer, what type of ideal customer am I looking for?
• 3:09
  Yeah, exactly.
• 3:09
  You'll find when you speak to your typical end-user and the end-user that massively fits your go-to-market message, they will have a typical partner and not just partner name.
• 3:21
  I think that's really important to understand when you're speaking to your end-user.
• 3:25
  Ask them who the partners they buy from are and why they buy from them.
• 3:30
  Because what you'll find is partners are providing value in different ways.
• 3:34
  Some are very much facilitation and they sell everything.
• 3:37
  And then they're getting economies of scale, easier purchase flow.
• 3:41
  And for some products, that non specialized approach is really useful.
• 3:45
  Right?
• 3:45
  If you've got a very commoditized product having breadth and scale, that's probably your number one target audience.
• 3:53
  Okay, fine, we can target it that way.
• 3:55
  But in terms of building a particular value stack, if we look at someone like Salesforce, their partners are integration partners.
• 4:02
  They've got a very specific value in terms of deploying and managing that product.
• 4:07
  And so those partners provide a unique value in that area.
• 4:10
  So it's really important to understand when you're speaking to your end-user, the reason behind the purchase conversation.
• 4:18
  And from there you can start to define your ideal partner profile, your IPP, and then once you've got your IPP, put yourself in that partner's shoes and start to build a partner orientated strategy around recruitment, around enablement, around scale, so that you can understand, I know who the right partner is to hit my end-user, but now I've got the right message to hit that partner.
• 4:43
  And then it's important to break down those elements into two very distinct structures.
• 4:49
  I so often find that the biggest mistake channel-orientated organisations can make is they only solve one of those problems.
• 4:57
  They solve the end-user message or they solve the partner message and that they hope that it works or they hope that the channel takes the partner message and converts it to an end-user message.
• 5:07
  No, let's break those down into silos, treat them as very different strategies and then connect the two through our scaling process.
• 5:16
  Yeah, so first of all, you really look at who is our ICP?
• 5:20
  Like, who do we want to work with?
• 5:22
  Then you look at which partners are working with my ICP.
• 5:27
  And based on that, you make an analysis of those partners that you hear the most.
• 5:31
  Like what kind of competencies, what kind of kind of variables do they have in common together?
• 5:36
  And that is what will really form into your ideal partner profile.
• 5:40
  And from that perspective, for a good strategy, your ideal partner profile is so important because then you are just like you only want to look for customers that fit your company, that you can provide the most value with.
• 5:54
  That's the same thing you want to do with partners.
• 5:57
  Exactly.
• 5:57
  And what's super important to understand is that just because you've decided on your partner profile, now understand what you're bringing them.
• 6:07
  And I think so often people misunderstand we want to work with you versus you want to work with us.
• 6:14
  And so you've got to build a proposition that's engaging so that they understand we're not just closing a deal together, we're building a partnership.
• 6:22
  A partnership that's going to get me closer to my goals and you closer to your goals.
• 6:27
  And what's the framework that the partnership is based on?
• 6:30
  What are you providing?
• 6:30
  What am I providing?
• 6:32
  What's the plan?
• 6:32
  How do we scale this?
• 6:34
  Having all of those composites put together so that people understand true value, that's critical.
• 6:40
  And if you're going to win at a macro level, that's got to be easily digestible for two sets of people, your partners and your channel team.
• 6:50
  They've got to intrinsically understand the go-to-market motion as well.
• 6:54
  And if they don't, you're never going to work.
• 6:57
  Yeah, I think you're touching on an interesting one, the channel team.
• 7:02
  Where would you start when you are structuring your channel approach?
• 7:06
  And I think what's also interesting to dive a little bit into the geography team because of course, a lot of companies, especially SaaS, SaaS, you don't need partners anymore to distribute your products.
• 7:17
  You really need them for value.
• 7:19
  You need them to be your local point of contact.
• 7:21
  And that's why I see so many SaaS vendors as well looking at channel right now to go to Europe, to go to APAC and play such a crucial role there.
• 7:29
  Like, how would you approach that, both from a channel team structure but also very curious, your experience with Geographies.
• 7:36
  Exactly that.
• 7:37
  I think when you look at, let's say the United States, right?
• 7:40
  That's where the bulk of a lot of SaaS revenue comes from today, that they've got ever increasing targets.
• 7:46
  Some of them have had a brilliant tailwind because of COVID and now they've got to pivot out of that and understand how to continue to grow and conquering Europe.
• 7:55
  Latin, APAC, Middle Eastern Africa.
• 7:58
  Those territories are crucial to continue to scale.
• 8:01
  Like you say, hang on, we've got to deal with tax, legal language, introductions.
• 8:06
  I've got to hire so many people to manage that if I want to do it fully internally, or I can delegate the responsibility down to the channel.
• 8:14
  But then how do you guarantee contact point?
• 8:16
  How do you guarantee continuous flow of information reciprocity?
• 8:20
  How do you manage all of that together?
• 8:22
  That's really challenging.
• 8:24
  And so you've got to strike the balance between delegation and responsibility.
• 8:29
  And the businesses that do that very well are very clear in terms of their recruitment strategy internally to help support the channel.
• 8:38
  So often I see we're going to hire one guy for Europe.
• 8:41
  Brilliant.
• 8:41
  Probably based out of London.
• 8:43
  Okay.
• 8:44
  How are you going to manage different languages?
• 8:45
  Not very sure, but hopefully we're going to generate enough business in England or in the United Kingdom for us to grow.
• 8:51
  Well, that's not a sustainable strategy.
• 8:54
  It's fine if that's your short term play, but you've got to understand how are you going to hit your key markets in each major territory and then land and expand from there?
• 9:03
  Right.
• 9:03
  I think most SaaS vendors, if they're looking at let's take Europe, is the place we're in.
• 9:09
  Right.
• 9:09
  And a territory we're very familiar with.
• 9:11
  I can understand you're going to start with UK, France, Germany, right.
• 9:15
  As your three, major three, and then from there probably land and expand into Benelux, Nordics and south.
• 9:22
  And tackling the sales strategy through that, making sure content is available in multiple languages, strategies available in multiple languages and points of contact is available in multiple languages is super critical to ensuring that the partner journey is an enjoyable one.
• 9:39
  Because partners today can make money in lots of different areas, lots of vendors want to play with them.
• 9:45
  And so having an enjoyable partner journey is critical to guaranteeing success over the long term.
• 9:52
  And how would you determine what markets or what territories to go for first?
• 9:58
  Easy.
• 9:58
  Start at the end-user.
• 10:00
  Right.
• 10:00
  That's always my theory, is you've got to start with the customers you want to work with.
• 10:05
  And when we talk about customers, I don't mean the people that are necessarily buying from you, the partnerships, I mean the end-users.
• 10:12
  So once you've defined who the ICP is, your ideal customer profile, where are they based?
• 10:20
  Right, if we're talking about finance well, yes, there are finance hubs, right.
• 10:24
  Benelux here, there's lots of fin tech companies.
• 10:27
  Right.
• 10:27
  That's a logical place to start, whereas in other territories there might not be.
• 10:32
  So you've got to start at the end-user and work backwards from there.
• 10:36
  That's critical to scaling effectively and resource in the areas where you can hit the ground fastest.
• 10:44
  We've talked a lot about how channel and partnerships are the way for sustainable long term growth, but it's a long runway to get there, so getting early wins is paramount to generating success in the short term.
• 11:00
  And focusing on your ideal customer profile at the end-user level is how you do that.
• 11:05
  It's like you always say, right?
• 11:07
  It's a marathon, not a sprint.
• 11:07
  Absolutely.
• 11:09
  And channel is the way.
• 11:11
  Channel is the ultramarathon, right?
• 11:13
  It's the 200 kilometer.
• 11:15
  I'm always saying, Goggins bang on about how he's done another ultra marathon.
• 11:19
  That's what channel is.
• 11:20
  But that's really where the true winners are born out.
• 11:24
  And if you can do that, consistent progress, small win on a daily basis, small win on a daily basis, ultimately you're going to build this Goliath that no one else can match.
• 11:34
  Yes.
• 11:35
  I think, actually, that quote, like, it's a marathon not a sprint, is also very close to something that's very close to my heart as well.
• 11:43
  What I see in channel.
• 11:43
  And that's how important it is to start small when you go into a new territory, when you go into a new market.
• 11:50
  And I think what I see happening all the time is that we assume that more partners automatically equals more revenue.
• 12:00
  But that's simply not true.
• 12:01
  And what's happening all the time is that we are scaling something that's not working yet.
• 12:06
  And therefore I really advise it's so important you can better start with five partners, make them super successful, and then start thinking about scaling.
• 12:15
  What do you think about that?
• 12:17
  100%.
• 12:18
  One of the things that I think we talk about in this business a lot and I don't think it's discussed often enough is something called operational lag.
• 12:27
  Now, what that means is the operational cost of doing any business activity.
• 12:32
  So you've talked about an easy one.
• 12:34
  Oh, partner recruitment.
• 12:36
  We'll just add more partners and then hopefully we'll get more revenue.
• 12:38
  Yes, that can happen if done well.
• 12:41
  That's a good strategy.
• 12:43
  However, there's a huge operational lag with recruiting more partners, which is we've got to hire more people to look after them, or I've got to hire more distributors to help us scale or whatever the operational cost is of that activity.
• 12:56
  And what you don't want to do is get that operational lag wrong because one of two things will happen.
• 13:02
  You will either recruit partners who failed, in which case you've wasted time, or in my mind, worse than that, you will recruit partners and then you let those partners down.
• 13:13
  Because two things happen.
• 13:14
  One, you don't make any revenue, which ultimately means it was a waste of time.
• 13:18
  But two, you turn those partners off.
• 13:21
  It means once you've got your operational structure and your scaling mechanism in place, those partners are less likely to work with you.
• 13:27
  So focus and recruit a small number of partners and win with those partners is such a key mentality and focus to achieving that longterm growth.
• 13:36
  Yes, I strongly believe that attention span of like a Channel partner is probably around three to six months where they really want to see, I'm starting to get traction with this vendor, and it can be revenue or a lot of nice conversation with end-users about it.
• 13:50
  And if you don't show them that value within those three to six months, that's when you will lose them.
• 13:55
  And if you start too big, if you recruit many, there's not enough market share to actually distribute among your partners yet.
• 14:04
  And that's when you will see the partners dropping out again.
• 14:07
  And that's such a pity.
• 14:07
  Yeah.
• 14:09
  We always track in Channel three to five opportunities created within the first three months.
• 14:15
  That's the goal.
• 14:15
  And so once you put that metric in front of Channel leaders and say, okay, so the plan is to recruit, what, 200 partners.
• 14:24
  So you've got to generate between 600 and 1,000 deals opportunities that's tough and suddenly you start to see, okay, well, okay, hang on a second.
• 14:33
  Recruiting 200 partners maybe isn't the best idea because actually, how many end-users, realistically, are we going to be able to convert?
• 14:41
  You're going to turn those partners off, they're not going to believe in your product or your strategy or your vision, and to rerecruit them is really, really difficult.
• 14:51
  And so having that focus and having that partnerships where you're convinced the partner is going to provide you value and you're going to provide value to the partner that reciprocity that deal, that two way flow, that's what starts to build the foundations of a long term partnership.
• 15:08
  So win small, win fast, win cheap in a very select group and then worry about scaling.
• 15:15
  I think what you just thought is, again, an excellent example of how important it is to start with the end in mind.
• 15:21
  Because, indeed, if you don't do it, you think 200 partners is an excellent idea, but if you think about it more and it's like, hey, how many customers do we want to close?
• 15:29
  We want to close ten customers in the first year.
• 15:31
  What's our average close rate?
• 15:31
  Oh, it's 30%.
• 15:34
  And we know that through partnerships it's usually even higher.
• 15:38
  Then you get to a whole different equation where it's like, oh, we only need to generate 50 or so pipelines, sorry, opportunities to actually get to our target, and then you completely draught, oh, maybe we only need ten partners.
• 15:52
  Like, it's such a different way of thinking about it if you start with the end in mind.
• 15:56
  Yes, and I've seen that operational lag almost break channels because suddenly you get a reputation.
• 16:03
  And reputation is such a key word within the channel because partners.
• 16:07
  Well.
• 16:07
  They might compete with each other.
• 16:08
  They also talk to each other.
• 16:10
  Lots of them are good friends and they'll give each other warning signs.
• 16:13
  Hey.
• 16:13
  Don't work with this vendor.
• 16:14
  Or this vendor screwed us out of a deal.
• 16:16
  Or this vendor took three weeks to close the deal.
• 16:19
  Even or worse.
• 16:21
  Three weeks to turn the licences on.
• 16:23
  They have the order, but they haven't done it.
• 16:25
  And that's because those businesses weren't operationally set up to facilitate business quickly enough for the exact reason you're talking about, which is, hang on, our business can only turn on this many end-users of engineering Resource or whatever it is, what?
• 16:38
  Our channel team has gone and generated business that we can't facilitate.
• 16:42
  And nothing kills a relationship faster than an end-user blaming a partner for a vendor's mistake because their reputation is on the line as much as yours.
• 16:52
  And if they feel like you're not the vendor to trust, guess what?
• 16:55
  Bang, you're done.
• 16:57
  Yeah, that one hits home.
• 16:59
  I must say, I think if you look at it, you could really say how closely channel is to what personal relationships are, right?
• 17:08
  Like if you break the trust, people step away from you.
• 17:11
  People talk to each other about everything.
• 17:14
  So you really need to keep that in mind always.
• 17:17
  Trust is your number one thing you need to focus on when you're working and building a channel.
• 17:24
  Absolutely.
• 17:25
  This podcast is called Partnerships, right, for a reason.
• 17:29
  It's because Channext is a function of partnerships.
• 17:32
  And those partnerships, whether they're at home, in business or in the channel, it's that two-way trust and that two-way agreement that we all have, right?
• 17:41
  If you've got a colleague and you're always helping them out and they never help you out, you will only put up with that for a certain amount of time before you just get annoyed.
• 17:49
  And the same is true within business terms.
• 17:51
  If I'm making lots of money and you're not making any and you're putting loads of work in, it's probably not going to work, right?
• 17:56
  And so finding partnerships where we both win, finding win-win deals is critical.
• 18:02
  And the other thing I would say, and we talk about this a lot fail fast, fail cheap.
• 18:08
  Right.
• 18:08
  Partnerships and channel is almost around putting a hypothesis together around what will work.
• 18:14
  And you spoken about focus winning with a few partnerships or sometimes that hypothesis is wrong.
• 18:19
  Very often that hypothesis is wrong.
• 18:22
  And business is the game of testing something, failing, going again.
• 18:27
  And the businesses that win are the businesses where that time period of understanding failure and going again is shortest.
• 18:35
  Very often I see that businesses aren't right.
• 18:37
  More often they're just quicker to find out when they're wrong.
• 18:41
  So test your hypothesis, speak to the partner, understand where you were right, understand where you were wrong, fail fast, fail cheap, go again.
• 18:48
  And suddenly in a much shorter period of time, you can find out, okay, we were correct.
• 18:54
  Whereas if you recruit 200 partners and only then begin your analysis where it might take you twelve to 18 months and you might be no closer to your goal.
• 19:02
  Whereas if you go with five, okay, we think these are the right ones, hang on, we're not winning.
• 19:06
  We need to understand why we're going to redesign.
• 19:09
  You could do that in six weeks.
• 19:10
  Not six months, not a year and a half.
• 19:13
  And so that process of iteration and reiteration is what's going to make channel successful.
• 19:18
  Yeah, it's just like in the startup world.
• 19:21
  You're much more agile if you're smaller than if you have many people and many businesses to get along with your new vision or a new strategy.
• 19:29
  Startup world is actually a great example because in a startup world you have an idea, you typically prove that idea in your local market and then you go and get funding, which is the scaling, right?
• 19:42
  It's the bang.
• 19:43
  We're going to grow really fast because we've proved it works.
• 19:46
  Channels should be designed exactly the same way.
• 19:48
  In some ways it is a start up within a business.
• 19:52
  We think this is the right way to go-to-market, let's go and prove it with a very small subset.
• 19:56
  And now that we've proved it, well, we want ten X funding now let's go and recruit all the people we need, let's go and recruit the partners that we need and let's really hyper scale.
• 20:05
  But you need to prove that in a very focused area and test your hypothesis.
• 20:09
  Improve it.
• 20:09
  Improve it.
• 20:10
  Improve it.
• 20:10
  Until you've got a working go-to-market motion and then you can really drive.
• 20:16
  Yes.
• 20:17
  What I think about that specific topic, while you're saying it like also startups getting funding and really scaling fast, should you always start small and going into a new territory or going into a new market?
• 20:31
  Or if you proved it, let's say, in your home country in England, you proved it over there, you have some excellent partners, you have to prove you are scaling it there.
• 20:40
  But now you think, now we go into Europe, we take France and DACH to start with next, what would you do?
• 20:47
  So I'm going to use one of my favourite examples.
• 20:49
  Uber started in San Francisco, feasibly, they proved the model in that city, and then with funding, we're able to scale globally because they proved it in one micro market.
• 21:01
  But Feasibly, if it works in San Francisco, should work in Paris, should work in Berlin, should work in London, should work in New York.
• 21:06
  Right.
• 21:07
  There might be very small subsets of territories that don't work for whatever reason it's legal or whatever, those markets won't work.
• 21:18
  But if you have proved it with your end-user and you proved it with that part of demographic, then Feasibly, it should work in other territories where those types of partners exist and those types of end-users exist.
• 21:31
  It's not saying, Right, let's go global all at once, but you should have relative confidence to land in a more aggressive way.
• 21:39
  And then the interesting thing is you can get good at landing.
• 21:42
  So Uber is a great example.
• 21:44
  They started to cover the US and then they landed super aggressively in Europe because they understood they polished that landing motion in new territories.
• 21:53
  And so that companies that hit that hyper scale channel is that they've won in the US, maybe they've won in the UK.
• 22:00
  That's a relatively logical transition, partly because of language.
• 22:04
  And then they think, oh, well, actually, we've done this right now, let's really land aggressively in Europe, and they might tackle South France, Benelux, Nordics Germany, all in one go, because they proved the model.
• 22:16
  That just requires resourcing in a very particular way.
• 22:19
  Right, which one piece of advice whenever I do consultancy for American fast companies and they're building a channel in Europe, I tell them the resource required is much heavier in the US, you might only need one or two people from your partnerships and channel perspective to run the entire territory, a very valuable territory, because it's all the same language, it's roughly all the same time zone.
• 22:42
  Whereas if you're going to effectively resource Europe, you're going to need people in local language, ideally local relationship and experience as well.
• 22:51
  Yeah, I actually love the word landing, because I think from that perspective, indeed, by starting small, you can create your ultimate Landing playbook and as soon as you have it, you might test it out small one more time in another region or another market.
• 23:05
  But if it works again, you can take more risk and then you can take your Landing Playbook and go to Germany, go to France, go to Southern Europe and you can really start making big steps and big marks there.
• 23:18
  But I think that starting smarts, it's startup, finding product market fit, finding partner market fit, that's what you're doing eventually.
• 23:25
  Absolutely.
• 23:25
  And then the only thing to pair with that, and you're well versed in this, right?
• 23:29
  Building a startup yourself, you pair strategy with recruitment.
• 23:34
  And by recruitment, I remain recruitment of people because there are going to be nuances in managing France versus Germany versus UK.
• 23:43
  There are nuances to culture that are required.
• 23:46
  And so recruiting the right people in territory to run that landing strategy is critical because they will tell you, hang on, this works here, but won't work here.
• 23:55
  We run partner recruitment right across Europe and our call scripts and our recruitment process for Germany isn't the same as UK, right.
• 24:04
  There are language differences, and I don't just mean linguistically, I mean formality and things that you need to change to target those types of partners that you won't have to do in a different territory.
• 24:14
  So recruiting Channel managers and channel leaders in those territories, that can take your blueprint landing strategy, but Frenchify it or Germanify or Britishify and make it more culturally relevant, that's going to be how you deal with some of those nuances effectively.
• 24:32
  Yes.
• 24:32
  I think to finalise this topic, I once spoke to a very successful entrepreneur who rolled out his company across the world, like did an IPO, etc, and I asked to him, like, with every territory you entered, and there was still also in a time when it was not, we do everything from one local office, but what was the thing that made it a success or not?
• 24:54
  And he said it was always the first hire.
• 24:57
  The first hire in the new territory made success.
• 25:00
  If you have to write playbook, it's the first hire that makes a success.
• 25:04
  He said, as soon as I found out, that's why I put all my time in finding the right person in that area or in that territory if.
• 25:12
  We wanted to go there.
• 25:13
  And that's one really clicked with me and always stayed.
• 25:16
  And I think it's crucial in partnerships to think about it that way.
• 25:19
  And in fact, it's doubly crucial because I think in Channel and in partnerships more than just business in general.
• 25:26
  It's such a tight, almost incestuous family, never annoy anyone, because you'll probably be working for them down the line.
• 25:33
  That first hire knows the next hire and the next hire, and maybe even hires in other countries.
• 25:39
  Right?
• 25:39
  So that's the interesting thing, is I've done it before, where we've hired someone in Germany who's given me a great referral for someone in Austria, who's given me a great referral for someone in France, because we've all worked together and you've seen excellence at different organizations and so I'm constantly getting hit up on LinkedIn.
• 25:56
  Hey, Alex, I'm hiring in Paris and I need a regional manager.
• 25:59
  Do you know anyone?
• 25:59
  Yes, absolutely.
• 26:01
  You should speak to this guy, he's really good.
• 26:02
  You should speak to this lady, she's great.
• 26:04
  And those referrals in that contextual piece is so critical that first hire is so important.
• 26:11
  Love it.
• 26:12
  I think the next topic I would like to discuss is indeed, we now got a strong strategy, the team, the territories we want to aim for.
• 26:21
  We know that we need to find partner, market fit and start small because of it.
• 26:27
  And then, of course, you have your strategy, but you need to start executing on it.
• 26:32
  And it all starts with recruitment.
• 26:34
  And I would like to first dive a little bit deeper into how do you recruit your first partners?
• 26:40
  So the partners you are going to try and find partner markets fit together.
• 26:45
  And then also, how do you start recruiting afterwards?
• 26:49
  Could you take us along a little bit in your thought process, how you did that in the past?
• 26:53
  Yes, sure.
• 26:54
  So the way I'd start, if you're literally at first page and you're like.
• 26:59
  Zero partnerships, zero partners.
• 27:00
  So you've got your ICP, you've got your ideal end-user, I would literally ask for an introduction.
• 27:06
  So let's just take KPMG, big finance firm, we sell to them directly as an organisation.
• 27:14
  They love our product, it's really good and we say, fantastic.
• 27:18
  Who do you buy from?
• 27:19
  And can you talk me through where do you think we would fit?
• 27:22
  And in fact, are you interested in purchasing this product and actually migrating the contract underneath a partner?
• 27:29
  And if so, why?
• 27:31
  Just so we can contextualize and understand that.
• 27:33
  Go-to-market motion.
• 27:34
  And ideally, that conversation should be had with someone who's in channel.
• 27:39
  So someone who has a channel understanding, so they can really start to ask within the customer, within the vendor.
• 27:46
  So if I'm a vendor, I want to make sure that isn't being had by an end-user salesperson, but it's being had by someone who works in partnerships or works in channel, so they can ask the more channel orientated questions.
• 28:00
  So it's not just a buying decision, but there's more context to it.
• 28:04
  So you need a very strong first hire.
• 28:04
  Exactly.
• 28:08
  It's the route to business.
• 28:08
  Right.
• 28:10
  Get that first hire.
• 28:10
  Right.
• 28:11
  Someone who really understands.
• 28:13
  And in fact, I've sometimes seen this done by consultants where they have the breadth of experience of building that sort of one-to-ten plan.
• 28:22
  And so they go in and they say, look, we're building a channel strategy so we can deliver more value to you as an end-user and more engagement, more product delivery, more support.
• 28:32
  Who do you buy tech from and why?
• 28:35
  And get that understanding.
• 28:37
  They can then walk you in, and especially if there's a chance to migrate that contract underneath that first partner as an initial, hey, we're really keen to work together and start to then have a discussion around, right, this is our ideal end-user.
• 28:54
  They have recommended you because you deliver X, Y and Z.
• 28:57
  We need to build a channel and a partnership organisation and we believe that this is how you can support us.
• 29:03
  How can we support you?
• 29:05
  Do you have more of our ideal end-users?
• 29:08
  And potentially, we can start to build this blueprint in this end-user and migrate it to the weather end-users and push that business through you.
• 29:15
  Does that sound like something that's interesting?
• 29:17
  And suddenly you can say, oh, hang on, we've been recommended.
• 29:21
  The end-user is telling us this is a great product, we're seeing a lot of value out of it, and now they want to work with us as quite a generous message into a partner.
• 29:30
  And most partners will say, yeah, that makes sense, actually.
• 29:35
  That's something that can work for me.
• 29:37
  Yes, it's give first.
• 29:38
  I think that's the true thing here.
• 29:40
  But that's so crucial, actually.
• 29:42
  What I love when your example with KPMG, I haven't thought about it like that before, but you already have that customer.
• 29:49
  But what if you would give it away to that partner?
• 29:52
  And, yes, it will cost you some margin, but what is the upside?
• 29:57
  Actually, a really good way to think about it, because you start a relationship by giving a customer, like, how strong is that if you're going to build a channel?
• 30:06
  Exactly.
• 30:06
  And, look, there's a way to do this, just give it away, build the plan and then hand it over, which is right, let's just take it.
• 30:15
  I agree.
• 30:15
  Only if you really go for the partner agreement together, but it's part of the deal with the first outreach to them is a really warm one.
• 30:26
  Yeah, exactly.
• 30:27
  And suddenly they can say, right, you're fully invested in this relationship and you've won this big contract and it's a big end-user and it's a high value end-user for us and we have other end-users that fit that profile.
• 30:39
  Great.
• 30:39
  Suddenly we can work on a three to six month strategy to say, we're going to walk you into a load of end-users like KPMG and suddenly you've got a landing print, you've got a blueprint for how you're going to win with this one partner, and then you go and find, do we need more partners?
• 30:56
  That are the same potentially.
• 30:57
  Let's take, let's say you're working in the US as an example, right?
• 31:00
  Well, this one is based in California, so let's go find one in Miami and one in New York and get a territory difference.
• 31:07
  Or is there a different type of partner that we need?
• 31:09
  Maybe it hits a different enterprise versus midmarket, whatever that looks like.
• 31:14
  But be very tactical in your approach.
• 31:18
  Right now, you want almost 100% win rate, which is if we're going to sign a partner agreement and build a business plan together, we are going to win.
• 31:28
  That's the level of care you want to take at this early, early stage for two reasons.
• 31:33
  One, it's more likely that you're going to succeed on any individual partner basis.
• 31:38
  But two, there's no operational lag.
• 31:38
  Right.
• 31:42
  You're going to have a very underresourced channel team.
• 31:44
  There's probably only one person you want to waste the minimum amount of time possible.
• 31:50
  So be very, very tactical in terms of who you recruit, why you recruit them, and the plan that you work on together.
• 31:57
  Yeah.
• 31:57
  So if you look at recruiting those partners, they could really say that you find the right ones to your existing customers.
• 32:06
  You make sure you get to know them, preferably via warm introduction, because then you get to partner in a much stronger way.
• 32:15
  And then from there you say, hey, I might have a very interesting opportunity, let's work on a plan together.
• 32:21
  And if you really get all the stars aligned, so to say, and you get to that magical plan, then you can have like, as part of that plan, have that customer in it, and you really have a very good kickstarter of your partnerships in that way.
• 32:36
  Nothing drives focus like revenue.
• 32:36
  Simple, right?
• 32:38
  So if you can have that olive branch of hey, look, we've done this deal and it really is our deal, but we see such value in the relationship, we want you to take one of our most important customers on, helps you understand the support mechanism, helps you get into the flow of the conversation.
• 32:56
  But we're doing this because we think that we can go and win another 10 20 of these deals.
• 33:02
  That's the way to resource the channel effectively.
• 33:04
  Yes, you're going to drop a little bit of margin on one deal, but if they can give you warm introductions and warm closing motions into another ten or 20 end-users, that's the deal I take every day of the week.
• 33:16
  Yeah, I really like this one.
• 33:17
  I never thought about it like that.
• 33:19
  And I think it's such a good way of both finding partners very closely aligned to your ideal customer and at the same time having such a much more better introduction and like already a warmer relationship, so to say.
• 33:32
  You always like someone who if somebody you likes someone, you like them more as well.
• 33:38
  Right.
• 33:38
  And I think it's the same with partner as well.
• 33:41
  So with your customer, they introduce you to that partner and the customer says, I like this company, I like this vendor, would you like to talk to them?
• 33:50
  You are in a really good way there with a partner.
• 33:54
  And also, it's absolutely not what most channel organizations are doing and that's really important.
• 34:00
  Right.
• 34:01
  While everyone else is going left, you go right.
• 34:03
  It's important.
• 34:03
  If you're going to make a big difference in a big wave in the market, don't do the same thing everyone else is doing.
• 34:10
  And so they're doing mass recruitment strategies, hit and hope, chuck everything in the wall and hopefully it'll work.
• 34:15
  Well, you do that.
• 34:15
  Well, they do that.
• 34:17
  Be tactical.
• 34:18
  Get the buy in of the end-user get the buy-in of the partner and win with minimising any operational lag by just focusing on real winning opportunities and suddenly you can build this little ball of fury that's just going to ultimately drive the channel forward.
• 34:34
  And once you win in that pocket, if I'm a channel leader and I'm looking for more resource, more headcount, more scale, being able to say, hey, look, look what I did with just a little bit of focus and a little bit of time and a little bit of care with one partner, imagine if we had ten.
• 34:49
  And it's not imagine if we had 100 or imagine if we had a thousand.
• 34:52
  Imagine if we had ten.
• 34:54
  Five to ten, real focus.
• 34:56
  I'm going to need the right amount of headcount, probably another two people, so that we're only managing one to three partners each, but we're providing such immense value that both the partners and the end-users are really seeing the value of this relationship.
• 35:11
  And that's how you can scale, especially if you're dealing in the enterprise.
• 35:16
  Yeah, so you are really building the budget and the resources for your channel strategy.
• 35:21
  Like that, like step by step, that's what every like, that's what every CEO, every C-level loves.
• 35:26
  Like, if you have a plan, you see how it works and you start scaling it in that way, like step by step.
• 35:32
  It's very strong, I think.
• 35:34
  And I think from that perspective, maybe to dive into recruitment at Skill a little bit later, but like, then you have signed that partner, like that magic partnerships.
• 35:44
  And there's also something that needs to happen there, of course, which is enablement.
• 35:48
  And I think that's the thing what I actually really like what you said about the operational lag.
• 35:52
  So we do something, but we don't realize what comes after it.
• 35:56
  So who takes care of the partners?
• 35:56
  Who guides them?
• 35:58
  Who enables them?
• 35:59
  I think that's where we have a lot of steps to make in channel.
• 36:02
  And if you do that right, once you start building a channel, you will get so much impact.
• 36:07
  Because one of the things that I always say to people who are talking to me about building a channel, starting it or scaling it is, watch out for the partner engagement gap.
• 36:19
  And what I mean by that is that what I see so often with vendors is that we recruit partners and recruit more and more of them, or even if it's just a little, but then we don't have the resources to actually enable them in the right way.
• 36:33
  Because even if your market is big enough, it still doesn't mean that the partner is capable of selling to them, are capable of implementing and providing value.
• 36:42
  And I think that's such a crucial way to think about it.
• 36:44
  Like how immediately, as soon as you sign your first partners, have the process ready, how are you going to enable them?
• 36:51
  How are you going to train them?
• 36:52
  How are you going to help them go-to-market and actually reach the end-user?
• 36:57
  And how are you going to help them close the deal?
• 36:59
  And once the deal is closed, how are you going to train them to actually implement and provide the value?
• 37:05
  And if you do that, right, you make sure that you don't go in the partner engagement gap, where you recruit a partner, but you don't enable them and it drops off again.
• 37:14
  So it sounds like when you talk about the partner engagement gap, you're breaking it almost down into sort of four pillars, which is sales, marketing, technical and operational.
• 37:23
  Can we operationally deliver this product?
• 37:25
  Whether that's ship it or fulfil it, or whether it's enable the licences or whatever it is, if it's software, from a technical perspective, pre and post sales, can we support it?
• 37:35
  Can we manage it?
• 37:36
  From a marketing perspective, we've got the right level of content to find new end-users or to deliver the messaging into existing end-users from a sort of customer success journey.
• 37:46
  And from a sales perspective, are our sales guys trained on everything that they need to be to recruit end-users and manage end-users?
• 37:54
  And to me, we've both seen it as so frustrating.
• 37:58
  Loads of effort goes into recruitment, vanity metrics.
• 38:01
  They recruited some partners, maybe they got certified, maybe they signed up to the portal and then guess what?
• 38:07
  Nothing happens.
• 38:08
  Yeah, it's the most painful thing there is.
• 38:10
  They're so excited about a new partnership, they are going to change our world, we're going to conquer the world together and then nothing.
• 38:18
  And then people start asking questions.
• 38:20
  You recruited all those partners, right?
• 38:22
  What's up with them?
• 38:22
  I don't know.
• 38:25
  Yes, I think it's evidence to just poor planning, right?
• 38:28
  You've literally thought one step ahead, which is, right, we need to recruit partnerships and now what?
• 38:34
  And that's part of having we're talking about landing strategy.
• 38:37
  That's part of having a go-to-market motion, which is understanding the partner journey from partners not interested to partners interested, to partners on boarded to partners actively selling and supporting your technology and that actively selling and supporting new technology.
• 38:53
  That's the partner engagement gap.
• 38:54
  That's the okay, they've onboarded and maybe they've done our certifications, although I've still never seen a certification programme that is to the level of detail whether they're just full self sufficient.
• 39:04
  Now, they always need support and they need support in the four pillars of sales, marketing, technical and ops.
• 39:10
  If you get those four right so that all the key stakeholders within the partners understand their roles and responsibilities and understand who to escalate to, right?
• 39:19
  Suddenly you've got to go-to-market motion.
• 39:21
  That doesn't require day to day hand holding, but I think it's super important to understand it's a two-phased approach.
• 39:28
  There is a day to day hand holding and then there's the handover to, okay, you guys are now self sufficient.
• 39:34
  And so often I see partners never get any hand holding and just they're expected to be self sufficient and that never works or maybe just as bad from an operational lagperspective.
• 39:45
  They never get out of the day to day hand-holding rhythm.
• 39:47
  And you can't scale that way because you just have to keep hiring people.
• 39:52
  And that's not the function of channel, right?
• 39:54
  The function of channel is that ultimately you hit this scaling mechanism of, well, these guys are now self sufficient.
• 40:00
  I can go and recruit and enable more partners and that's how I continue to grow.
• 40:06
  Yes, I believe that partner enablement is so important to also start with the end in mind because if you look at your own current, like, sales flow, maybe if you have a direct organisation, how are you selling to the customer?
• 40:18
  What kind of touch points are there?
• 40:20
  Like in the early stage when it's still marketing in sales and customer success?
• 40:25
  And that's what you need to extrapolate where you really think, okay, what parts of that customer journey do I want my partners to fill in for me?
• 40:33
  And if you do that properly, then you can see, oh, there are like eight touch points where I want my partner to play an important role.
• 40:40
  And this is the way within each touch point, the playbooks I can give to them to fulfil the need of the customer, of the prospect at that moment.
• 40:47
  And I think if you do that well and think about it like that, how can I remove the friction from my partner for my end-user and continuously help them to actually get better at those touch points with the customer?
• 41:00
  That's what true enablement is about.
• 41:00
  Exactly.
• 41:03
  And I think listen up channel or listen up sales leaders.
• 41:07
  One of the things that I think you've missed there is not just evaluating your own sort of customer success journey, it's evaluating where the partner can provide value that you can't.
• 41:19
  So an absolute typical one is, well, we integrate well, okay, you don't do the integration or you don't do the delivery of both product sets.
• 41:27
  So there is value in partnerships that even the vendor cannot deliver.
• 41:32
  And so targeting partnerships where there's a real win-win-win.
• 41:37
  The vendor wins, the partner wins and the end-user wins because they're getting better quality of service because it's an integrated solution and it's all glued together really well.
• 41:47
  Those are the key metrics there that I would be very much focused on if I am a sort of leader of a business that's targeting my ICP, is looking at hang on, the partner can do things that we literally can't do.
• 42:00
  They're not just scaling our own capability.
• 42:03
  Yes, I fully agree with that part and I think that's a very strong way to look at it actually.
• 42:09
  Where are we missing it?
• 42:10
  Because on the one hand it's what are we doing right now and what can we have them like have been replaced or something like that.
• 42:16
  But there's also very specific things.
• 42:18
  Customization is an excellent one.
• 42:20
  There's almost no sales company who does customization for their customers and I think there's a lot to win there.
• 42:27
  Maybe to go towards the final part of today's podcast, alex, maybe it's fun that you end with a statement about what would you do?
• 42:35
  Okay, we got the fundamental right now.
• 42:37
  We got a good strategy.
• 42:39
  We started small, we found Parker Market Fit, we do recruitment in a good way and we are enabling our partnerships properly.
• 42:46
  The small parts, let's say you're at Ten partners right now, how would you scale the recruitment?
• 42:52
  And then I will tell how would I scale the enablement?
• 42:55
  Yes.
• 42:55
  So there's two ways you hit scale, right?
• 43:00
  There's resourcing and there's automation.
• 43:02
  It's a fundamental to any business scale.
• 43:04
  And so resourcing is very effective and fast if done correctly.
• 43:11
  The trick is hire the right people, right?
• 43:13
  Which is a very easy sentence to say and very hard to achieve.
• 43:17
  But if you can hire the right people and here is the key piece of advice go and find consultants.
• 43:22
  Go and find channel people in business and ask for their recommendations locally if you don't know them, if you are a US vendor and you're going oh, I need to build a European plan, don't just interview, go and speak to partners, go and speak to end-users and find out who they rate and find out why they rate them and hire accordingly.
• 43:44
  And then look at automation.
• 43:44
  Right?
• 43:46
  There are tools both from a partner portal perspective.
• 43:49
  Channext is a great example of one which will help you understand how to scale a recruitment and an enablement strategy effectively.
• 43:58
  But those are the two parameters you want to look at resourcing, better and automation.
• 44:04
  I think that's actually very closely aligned to what enablement is all about.
• 44:07
  Because on the one hand, enablement is all about content.
• 44:10
  Like enablement is content.
• 44:11
  If you train someone you need content.
• 44:13
  If you want to do marketing, you need content.
• 44:15
  If you want to make someone better at sales, you need sales enablement content presentations, white papers, etc.
• 44:21
  For so I think on the one hand.
• 44:23
  You really have that resource.
• 44:24
  So how do you build your team that it becomes scalable from an enablement perspective?
• 44:30
  Very important in Europe and APAC.
• 44:32
  How do you do that from a language perspective?
• 44:35
  And then finally you need that automation.
• 44:39
  It's all about removing the friction for partners.
• 44:42
  Make it easy for them.
• 44:44
  Co brand the assets.
• 44:45
  Make sure you do the training in their own way of working.
• 44:49
  Make sure they can connect their own CRM so they don't have to fill in the registration from all titles places.
• 44:55
  And that's really how you bring the enablement to the next level.
• 44:58
  And you can reach true skill if you get skill in your recruitment.
• 45:01
  So getting many partners while scaling and automating the enablement part, that's when you can hit true skill as you build your channel.
• 45:09
  Sounds like a really easy plan.
• 45:12
  Let's go for it.
• 45:13
  Thank you for listening again and very much looking forward to the next one.