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Transcript

Holiday Special 2025 Highlights · Partnerships Unraveled

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_05: After more than 200 episodes, we thought it was high time to take a look back at some of the highlights from our latest podcast.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_05: It was pretty much impossible to choose just a few out of so many standout moments.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_05: So we encourage you to check out the full episodes.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_05: We're incredibly grateful to all our guests who took time out of their day to share their perspectives on everything partner related, from enablement to AI and from marketing to ecosystems.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_05: And of course, a huge thanks to you, our listeners.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_05: So sit back, relax, and get inspired by this highlight reel.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_05: And from all of us at Janex, happy holidays, and thank you so much for being an active part of this community.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_05: Let's get into it.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: When you see keynotes about AI, uh, 90% are or too complex or too fluffy.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, and the question from the market is make it simple and concrete because I don't understand.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: I or think it's too complex and it's not for me, or I think it's too fluffy, I can do everything with it.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: AI should inspire, not intimidate, and that's what it's doing right now because all of the fuzz around uh AI.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and partners want clarity, not the hype.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_03: Good data, right?
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_03: How do I retain my customers?
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_03: Because in the old days, you know, of trust advisor age and business, I sell it on the front end and I don't necessarily know what I'm losing on the back end.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_03: I haven't spent the time to analyze that.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_03: Well, now, you know, in terms of maintaining my revenue and going from a smaller organization or a larger organization, well, I'm gonna stay flat if I keep losing it out the back door.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_03: So, how does AI help me, you know, identify terms, uh, cross-sell and upsell?
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_03: You know, all these things that feed into retention become critically important too.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_03: And that's another thing where I think AI is gonna play an important role.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_09: I feel scene, because you've shared that partner marketing is is maybe one of the most misunderstood elements of marketing uh within just any organization.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_09: I'm thinking about partner marketing.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_09: Let's maybe first ground on what partner marketing should be before we answer the second part of your question, because I think it's important.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_09: Partner marketing is go-to-market strategy.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_09: It's not just about executing at a point in time, it's about what is the end-to-end view of how it is that you're actually going to market with your joint message, your joint solution, whatever it is.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_09: But it is not, let's just throw together a few webinars and see what hits.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_07: They're so important and they're they're now becoming an imperative for every single organization.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_07: From its inception, it needs to have a strategy for partnering.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_07: And I think that's what we have to really instill in companies for growth.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_07: You know, we treat a customer not just for the transaction or the thing we do with them, we treat them for the lifetime of working with them.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_07: So, partner lifetime value is a force multiplier.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_07: So think about customer lifetime value, but it's that on steroids.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_07: Organizations that treated partnerships for invested for the long run, didn't treat them as a transaction, were very committed and very consistent, were the most successful, the most profitable, and actually had the highest growth.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_07: Now, fast forward, companies are really starting to get that, and private equities are starting to get that, and uh, you know, the VCs are starting to get that.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_07: So everybody knows they need an ecosystem for growth.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_04: When you're in this role, the number one thing that you need to be doing is building trust.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_04: That's the number one thing with the partner sales organization.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_04: So, how do you go about building that trust, right?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_04: You need to be strategic with them and you need to understand what their goals are.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_04: So I always tell my team that they need to work backwards.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_04: So, understanding what their objectives and priorities are, what are their goals?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_04: What are they trying to reach?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_04: And help them understand that you are trying to help them with that goal, right?
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_04: So, I think another important part is asking the why.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_04: Why do you want to do this?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_04: Why is it so important?
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_04: And I think a lot of partner sales individuals don't get asked that question, right?
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_06: When you're looking at enablement, and again, enablement's the hot buzzword of the past five years, and you've heard it is go to market, enablement, readiness.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_06: So there's a lot of terms that you use.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_06: But when you start, when you're asked to build such a program, the first thing you need to look at is what do you want to achieve?
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_06: So this could be within a partner program, it could be an initiative.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_06: Enablement is a tactical plan that you're going to be pulling together to drive certain behaviors.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_06: So I do have four pillars when I talk about enablement, but I bookend them.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_06: I'll read them.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_06: It's content, communications, education, and accessibility.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_08: I think another piece that's that's really tough in terms of the ROI is enablement, partner enablement.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_08: It is so critical.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_08: You know, as we just said, you're making sure that your partners are advocating for you and their customer base, you know, positioning you to help solve those customer problems, but they can't do that unless they're well enabled.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_08: And I think that that is something that is often difficult to quantify.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_08: I think, you know, at the end of the day, it demonstrates itself in revenue, but can you really pinpoint that that enablement session or that training that you did or that account mapping was really the thing that drove that?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_08: I think that's that's challenging.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_08: I think anytime you can tie something to an enablement activity, whether it's a spiff or an incentive that drives a certain outcome, I think you'll see better results in terms of tangible ROI for those specific activities.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: I've got a couple of phrases that I say all the time.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_02: And one of those is build the channel you want, not the one that you end up with.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so really starting from that vision perspective, right?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_02: We know what the board needs, we know what the company needs, we know what our key kind of metrics are going to be.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so you take that look out 18 months, three years, five years, um, and and you get started.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: Some things you have to stop doing, because you've been doing things to service a legacy model.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: So figuring out what you need to stop doing and where you need to double down.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: How do you reach those all types of businesses?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: How do you reach not only the mid company or the enterprise company that is now but this the smaller company that is there?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think that you need a capillarity, a commercial capillarity and commercial proximity that for us is given through our ecosystem of partners.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: And many of this may be small because they are serving mid-sized or small company in one part of the planet, whatever it is.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: So if you believe that that is the way to deliver enterprise security to all types of businesses, you need to take care of that long term.