Latest / Partnerships Unraveled / 025 - Partner Recruitment: Quantity or Quality?!

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025 - Partner Recruitment: Quantity or Quality?! · 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.
• 0:19
  And I'm here together with Alex Whitford, VP partners at Channext.
• 0:22
  Alex, how are you doing today?
• 0:24
  Well, we're discussing my favourite subjects in the world today.
• 0:26
  So yeah, really pleased to be here.
• 0:26
  Likewise.
• 0:29
  I think lately there's been a lot of chat on LinkedIn and discussion around when should I recruit new partners, but also how many?
• 0:37
  And not just that, if I know how many, how should I then recruit them?
• 0:42
  And I thought for today it might be fun to dive into specifically that topic.
• 0:46
  Yeah, for sure.
• 0:46
  I think recruiting partners is one of the absolute best ways to scale your partnership and your channel model.
• 0:53
  It's something I've spent years and years, I think, perfecting the art of doing that well, both at a micro level and a macro level from doing it at distribution across Europe.
• 1:06
  But also I ran distribution strategy at Zoom where I think we recruited almost 1200 partners in the time that I was there.
• 1:12
  So really macro recruitment strategy.
• 1:15
  And so that's really taught me a lot in terms of the way to do it effectively, depending on the maturity model of your channel.
• 1:23
  If you look at partner recruitment as such, and that's the question we get so often where people ask like, how many partners should I recruit, how many partners should I have?
• 1:33
  What's your vision on that?
• 1:34
  Where would you start if you would have to analyse that as a channel manager or head of channel, head of partnerships, where do you start in terms of determining what you should focus on at that moment?
• 1:44
  Well, the first thing I do is analyse where I am in the maturity of my channel design.
• 1:48
  Right.
• 1:49
  So I think the mistake most people make is one, they recruit too many partners and two, they start the recruitment process too early in their own maturity model.
• 1:58
  So what you want to be really just coherent and thoughtful about is if you recruit a partners and they are not successful, they are very unlikely to partner with you down the line.
• 2:09
  And so what you want is the minimum amount of partners that you can almost guarantee success with.
• 2:15
  So if you're in the early stages, you're in your startup phase of building your channel and your partnerships model.
• 2:21
  You want to test with a few partners, the fewer the better that you know are selling to the types of end-users you want to sell to and really be proactive around defining what your ideal partners profile looks like your IPP and then start there and build agnostically is the other thing I'd say.
• 2:41
  So often people go, oh, I want to work with this partner, usually because they've worked with them before, which is not a great design, but also they start with that partner and potentially it was the right partner and it works.
• 2:54
  But that means that needs to define your IPP.
• 2:57
  So build your IPP agnostically, don't have a partner name in mind, more have the partner responsibilities in mind and then recruit a few partners that fit that profile to test if that profile is correct.
• 3:09
  Yeah, I fully agree there and I think it's something we spoke about in previous podcasts as well.
• 3:13
  The number one thing is to keep in mind is that you should never want to skill what's not working yet.
• 3:19
  So that's why it's so crucial what you are saying there, where you start with a select amount of partners, you make them successful in a repeatable way, that is not just a one time lucky shot and only if you figure that out, that's when you start scaling to the next phase, right?
• 3:34
  Yeah, exactly that.
• 3:35
  I think there's a lot of synergies to be blended with sort of building a startup business.
• 3:41
  Once you've found product market fit you can start to really invest in inbound marketing and really try and drive hyper scale.
• 3:50
  But until you found product market fit you can't and shouldn't do those activities.
• 3:54
  The same is true of partner market fit.
• 3:56
  Unless you know, you've got a repeatable and measurable and predictable business flow.
• 4:00
  You shouldn't be looking to add volume, you should be looking to be really, really targeted.
• 4:05
  Remember the first few months or even years of building your channel and your partner program are designed around building the program.
• 4:14
  So learning and building the most accurate and best process you can and then you look to add volume.
• 4:21
  And I think that's why it's so important in the start of your program, right, that you don't start automating everything yet, but that it's indeed very much a human to human process where you learn as much as possible where you get as much feedback from your partners as possible, work very closely with them, preferably have many one to ones and catch ups together and getting back the feedback.
• 4:42
  Quarterly Business Review so to really get into the right zone and find out as much knowledge about the partners and the market together as possible and then utilise all that information, turn it into processes, automation and really start working towards a future scaling channel.
• 5:02
  100% and I love that word feedback.
• 5:05
  We talk a lot about in this business that negative feedback isn't negative, it's positive.
• 5:10
  Right?
• 5:10
  It's the fact that if a customer tells you your product doesn't work here or a partner tells you the process doesn't work, that's not negative feedback, that's an opportunity to improve the process.
• 5:21
  And right now, if you're in that early stages of building your channel or building a partners program, what you should be much more focused on is not the revenue.
• 5:30
  The revenue is the outcome, but instead the process and perfecting that process.
• 5:34
  Because once you have a perfect process, the revenue will be amazing.
• 5:38
  Right?
• 5:39
  And too often I see partner teams patting themselves on the back because they hit number, which is obviously important, but it might just have been a bluebird deal that landed in your lap and you didn't really do anything for that.
• 5:50
  Doesn't mean your partner program works well.
• 5:52
  That didn't mean your partners were really effective, it just meant you hit the number.
• 5:56
  Conversely, you can absolutely smash the number if consistently you're over improving and delivering on the process.
• 6:03
  And so that has to be everyone's first priority and feedback is the best way to do that because partners will tell you where you're winning, where you're losing and how to improve.
• 6:13
  Yeah, they are closest to the market and the end user so they are your most valuable resource to learn those things.
• 6:20
  And they're probably selling your direct competitor or they're selling your alliance product.
• 6:24
  They're aware of the partner programs that are working versus aren't working.
• 6:28
  Asking questions like who do you like working with and why will give you a really clear indication around that partner's priorities and then how you can build your partner program around their success.
• 6:39
  Remember, partner success is your success.
• 6:42
  If you can build a strategy and a process and a product that enables them to be very successful, you in turn will be very successful.
• 6:51
  So if we look at that partner maturity model probably we could say that phase one, sorry, it's even partner program maturity level.
• 7:00
  I think phase one of your partners program maturity is startup.
• 7:04
  Indeed.
• 7:04
  Start with a select number of partners, make sure you make it work, that you get success together with them, that they stay your partner, et cetera.
• 7:12
  Then the second phase is ramping up.
• 7:14
  So you found initial partners market fit where you see that some things are repeatedly winning and then you start trying to do it with more partners.
• 7:22
  And then the third phase is really doing it at scale, right?
• 7:25
  Where you get in as many partners you need as possible but also are capable of making all those partners successful and not see many of those partners turn inactive eventually.
• 7:35
  Yeah, exactly.
• 7:35
  And I think partner churn is a really great barometer for where you are in that maturity model.
• 7:42
  If you're experiencing a lot of partner churn, you haven't found partners market fit.
• 7:46
  And so one of the things that we see a lot in partner programs and in business is people think they are further along that maturity model than they are.
• 7:55
  They've closed two or three partners.
• 7:56
  They believe oh we found partner market fit and now we're going to chuck scale.
• 8:00
  What actually happens is they haven't churned yet but you're yet to give them enough time to see if they churn.
• 8:06
  And if instead what you do is then recruit another 100 partners who dilute the wallet share of all the partners, then you get mass partner churn.
• 8:12
  You've ruined your reputation and it can in fact, spell the end of that entire partner program.
• 8:18
  So you want to be really cautious in guaranteeing success in a small base before you look to start adding volume.
• 8:27
  Yeah, I think you're touching upon the first phase in a very nice way already.
• 8:31
  Maybe it's nice that we start there.
• 8:31
  Indeed.
• 8:33
  And I think that's probably answering most of the question, when should I not recruit new partners?
• 8:39
  Right?
• 8:39
  Yeah, exactly.
• 8:40
  So I think, look partnerships and any revenue business is all about the number at the end of the day.
• 8:46
  However, if you're designing a partners program, there has to be an understanding that there is going to be a longer runway than direct sales because you're less in control of the deal cycle.
• 8:55
  What you want to do is understand who your ideal end user is, your ICP, and then who is the ideal partners who sells to that end user.
• 9:03
  Go and recruit.
• 9:03
  And I really mean like five partners tops, maybe even just one, as your initial outset and beta test the program.
• 9:13
  Right.
• 9:13
  Run a couple of deals through them, maybe deals that you've generated to feed them and understand, do we have sales, marketing, technical and operations covered?
• 9:22
  They really understand how to be successful and they start to become self sufficient.
• 9:27
  They are not a successful partner if the only thing they do is facilitate deals you've generated.
• 9:33
  You still have not found partner?
• 9:33
  Market fit.
• 9:36
  Even with one partner, they have to be capable of finding opportunities, opening and closing those opportunities almost independently.
• 9:45
  If you've got there, great.
• 9:47
  You've got partner market fit with one partner that still isn't partner program market fit.
• 9:51
  You need to expand that out, maybe cover a different territory, cover a different language, maybe try and automate some of that process.
• 9:57
  And that's how you start to pivot from that startup to preliminary scale up phase.
• 10:04
  I think the number one way to achieve partner market fit is by making sure you close the partner recruit to revenue gap.
• 10:12
  And what we mean is that is that you create a repeatable process where you have it from partner agreement signed until self sustainable revenue.
• 10:21
  So that's the onboarding, that's the training, that's the co marketing, the co selling together, that you really have a very strong process there to guide your partners throughout that process and bring them towards self sustainable revenue.
• 10:33
  And I fully agree there with you.
• 10:34
  Like, if you have that with multiple partners, not just with one, but really with a significant amount of partners, that's when you can start seeing, oh, now we really are getting into that repeatability traject.
• 10:46
  Yeah.
• 10:46
  And what I love, and it's something we're really, really passionate here at Channext is that self sustainable revenue model.
• 10:53
  Right.
• 10:53
  Having 100 partners who you have to feed deals to and really manage sales cycles with and do a lot of work, to me is worse than having two partners who just independently generate and close revenue on your behalf because that really is what the whole partnership model is about.
• 11:10
  You might have to feed them in the outset to close that sort of engagement gap but the idea is that they become self sufficient.
• 11:17
  Why is that better?
• 11:18
  Because the one person who closed and generated and made those two partners self sufficient can now go on to another two partners and another two and another two and another two.
• 11:27
  And that's how you get that hockey stick growth because after a while you don't have two partners who are self sufficient, you have 20.
• 11:33
  And that really is dangerous.
• 11:36
  And the whole idea is if you can get to that self sufficient model, you can then automate as much of that process as you can.
• 11:43
  So instead of that one person recruiting and enabling two partners and then two partners and then two it looks something like two partners and then three partners, and then five partners and then seven partners and then ten and then 20 and then 40, and then you really have exponential growth because you're driving all of those partners to be independently and self sufficiently successful.
• 12:03
  And I think with self sustainable revenue we mean that partners can find new customers, close new customers, implement those customers and make them successful on the long run.
• 12:13
  Right?
• 12:13
  Yeah.
• 12:14
  And get the renewals at the end of the year.
• 12:16
  Right.
• 12:16
  That's also such a key critical bit that's driving your hockey stick and why so many VCs are so focused on making sure that all the businesses they invest in have these partnership programs.
• 12:29
  Is the data is clear, partner led sales wins time and time again in the long run.
• 12:35
  Right.
• 12:35
  Loads of businesses do a really good job in their first funding round because they just hire a direct sales team and they close, close brilliant, works really well.
• 12:45
  But if you want to hit really significant levels of revenue, partner led sales works because of that self sufficient program which is you can scale your sales team so much further through partnerships and that's why you've got to be driving towards self sufficient revenue.
• 13:01
  Otherwise you haven't scaled your sales team.
• 13:03
  No, fully agree there.
• 13:05
  I think once you got through phase one so you see some first repeatability, not much yet, but you are ready to start recruiting some partners.
• 13:14
  Like also there where people say, yeah, I think I got my process for the number of partners I have right now, I think I got it sorted quite well.
• 13:22
  But then they still have that question but how many partners should I recruit now?
• 13:26
  Where would you start with that?
• 13:27
  Like you go into second phase of ramping up your partner program.
• 13:31
  Yeah.
• 13:31
  So first a bit the the first piece of advice I'd give everyone is the least partners possible because the reason I say that is it's better for everyone involved.
• 13:41
  One, it's better for you because I would rather hit my target with three partners than 100 partners, it's much easier to manage.
• 13:49
  Second, it's better for the partners because they're splitting less of the wallet around.
• 13:54
  They're not going to be coming up in competition against seven other partners who are all positioning the same product.
• 13:59
  And third, it's better for the end user because the partners live and die by that product.
• 14:05
  They understand that product better and so they know who to go and speak to.
• 14:09
  So first, focus on the minimum partners possible.
• 14:12
  The second calculation then is how much revenue do you need to achieve and work out how many deals?
• 14:17
  That is, if a partner is capable of closing, for simple math, one deal a month.
• 14:22
  So twelve deals and you need to close 100 deals in a year.
• 14:26
  Well, you need eight partners then because that would be eight deals a month.
• 14:29
  Eight times 1200, you're there.
• 14:31
  And that's the level of sort of detail I'd be working back with.
• 14:35
  Build in a little bit of fat because obviously not all partners are going to close at 100% success rate.
• 14:40
  But you want to be focused on the minimum viable until you work out how to get into phase three, which is then automated recruitment, automated closing and really scaling that process.
• 14:51
  But the last thing you want to do is just suddenly start recruiting a load of channel account managers, then recruit hundreds of partners and then you end up diluting your channel and killing yourself.
• 15:01
  Yeah, indeed.
• 15:02
  If you have that then you get to what a lot of companies are struggling with that are actually already in skill but don't have their full process ready yet, where you see that 80% of the partners are inactive in the average partner program.
• 15:14
  And that's such a pity indeed because then all your recruitment efforts together with your team, 80% of that goes down the drain.
• 15:21
  Yes, it's operational lag and it's really, in my opinion, one of the things that kills partnerships because the partners will remember you.
• 15:28
  You might think, we recruited them, then they turned, it's fine, we'll reengage with them.
• 15:32
  No, it won't work.
• 15:33
  Most of the time those partners think, I've tried you once, we did a couple of deals, then you left me alone, you treated me really badly.
• 15:41
  They're left with a bad taste in their mouth.
• 15:43
  In fact, they're probably going to replace you once the renewal comes up with a competing product.
• 15:47
  And maybe that other vendor has spent far more time getting them engaged and self sustainable and suddenly you've burnt that bridge.
• 15:53
  And I've seen people do that at a country level, right where they went and targeted all the top AV partners, burnt them.
• 16:01
  And then now they really, really struggle in that area because now they've put more money into their partner program and they've reinvested.
• 16:08
  They have to spend six to eight months going back into all those partners and promising them, sorry, this time we will do better.
• 16:14
  So less is more until you've really worked out how to automate that process and really done some analysis to say actually we want to pivot from ten partners to 150.
• 16:26
  We're really confident on the revenue capability and we're really confident our partner program to not just recruit 150, but make 150 partners really successful so they're all fully bought into our proposition.
• 16:39
  That's crucial because if you've burned a partnerships, it takes so much energy to get them back on track again.
• 16:45
  Sometimes it's literally impossible because they don't feel about it anyhow.
• 16:48
  But if it's still possible, then it's three times as much as work than getting into a new partner where you have a strong proposition, a strong onboarding process, a strong process to make them successful and get them to self sustainable revenue.
• 17:01
  Because that's what we keep saying again and again, the best way to keep the attention of your partners is by helping them to generate revenue and continuously making them feel that they can grow their business together with you, right?
• 17:14
  Yeah, 100%.
• 17:16
  And the other thing that's really important to remember in your recruitment strategy is not all partners are born equal, right?
• 17:22
  Some partners are really high value and high priority.
• 17:26
  And I've seen it time and time again where you moved for one of the big boys too quickly.
• 17:31
  You went after a Deloitte or an Accenture one of the big GSIS, and you moved too quickly when you didn't really have your ducks in a row and you weren't ready.
• 17:39
  You burnt that bridge.
• 17:40
  That's never coming back.
• 17:40
  Right.
• 17:42
  Because no one internally in those businesses is going to stake their reputation on bringing a vendor on board that ultimately failed.
• 17:50
  They look embarrassed, they're never going to take that risk again and probably they're going to be quite annoyed with you.
• 17:54
  And so in those instances, I would be spending far more time guaranteeing success within those high value, high priority partners because you can get your macro recruitment strategy right and that's really great if you can do that.
• 18:08
  But there are micro focuses that you want to allow a lot of time and a lot of resource to win with because there is always an 80 20.
• 18:17
  Even if none of your partners have churned, there's always going to be a 20% of partners that are delivering your 80% of revenue.
• 18:23
  And usually when I look at a list of partners, I can give you very clear answers on the ones that if you get it very right, will deliver the volume of revenue.
• 18:31
  And most of the people who have any real level of experience within the channel in EMEA can tell you that list.
• 18:37
  And if you've got any question, please chuck me a DM.
• 18:39
  But there is a list of partners that you know if you get it right, they will be key players.
• 18:45
  Don't recruit those too early before you've really got your program in place.
• 18:50
  Preferably really start with boutique partners.
• 18:53
  Who are very specialized in a certain vertical, in a certain type of product solution they're offering to the market because there you can really try and work together as well.
• 19:02
  Usually those partners are a little bit smaller than the really large ones, so you give yourself some more slack.
• 19:07
  But also those partners love to work with new type of products because that makes them unique to the market as well.
• 19:13
  When you're just entering there.
• 19:15
  I think maybe for our listeners, it would be nice to discuss a case.
• 19:19
  So let's say I am in ramp up phase and I want to enter the UK market.
• 19:24
  Specifically focus with the partner revenue team on banks and insurance company.
• 19:29
  Like, where would you start if you would have to, and you would have to give me a calculation or a number, like how many partners do you think we should recruit?
• 19:37
  Like, what process could you take us through that someone can take there?
• 19:41
  Sure.
• 19:41
  So first I'd go, right, how many customers end users do we need to close?
• 19:45
  What's the average deal cycle?
• 19:47
  What's the average deal time frame?
• 19:49
  It takes eight months to close a deal.
• 19:51
  And how many deals is an individual partner capable of closing on a yearly basis?
• 19:57
  If we're talking about a year target, I then work that number backwards.
• 20:01
  So if we need to close ten deals and each partner can close three deals, well, it's pretty simple math.
• 20:08
  Three partners can close three deals each, that's nine partners.
• 20:11
  I'll probably recruit five partners to give myself a bit of tolerance.
• 20:16
  I then invest all of my time and resources into defining what type of partner we need to what my ideal partner profile is.
• 20:25
  And I go and very strategically recruit five partners.
• 20:29
  I do not recruit six.
• 20:32
  The bet is made at the start of the year and full focus on making that bet happen.
• 20:39
  If at the end of the year my maths was wrong and my calculation was wrong for whatever reason, fine, we'll understand that and we'll discuss that internally as part of the business.
• 20:47
  But I will get everyone internally baselined on, here's the reason I've chosen five, here's the reason I've chosen these five partners.
• 20:55
  Here's the resource I need to make that happen.
• 20:57
  Here are the lead and lag measures I'm tracking to ensure success over that time frame.
• 21:02
  And I really, really drive focus the amount of times I've seen people do that calculation and then get distracted and recruit more partners because some other partners put their hand up and supposedly were interested and really committed and then it turned out they weren't, they just heard of a deal and they wanted to get involved.
• 21:19
  And then what happens is you almost guarantee failure.
• 21:24
  Precision is the art of the startup, right?
• 21:27
  You want to be really focused and accurate early on and then later down the line, once you've got a volume of accuracy, you can then just start to chuck more things at the program and have a go and really drive expansion, but only once you've found real partners market fit.
• 21:43
  Yeah, and if you go into a new market and you want to find out which partners do I need to recruit?
• 21:49
  Start with the market.
• 21:51
  So start talking to the ideal customer profile you defined, talk with many of those customers, ask them which partners are you working with already?
• 21:59
  And then do some mapping and see is there an overlap between one partner that is working for multiple customers there.
• 22:05
  And if you get into that motion, then you find out which partners are very strong in that region and in that vertical and those are the partners you want to try and build relationships with and preferably enter that partnership where you can immediately give them something so an interesting customer in their area you're already working with.
• 22:22
  I think that's really important.
• 22:23
  If you are going into ramp up phase with your partner recruitment.
• 22:27
  I think, that's a really great point to walk back from the end user.
• 22:31
  I know something we've spoken a lot about is how do you think you should also handle the alliance co sell proposition when you're building your channel together?
• 22:41
  Yeah, I think that's indeed one of the most important, most interesting things.
• 22:45
  If you're going channel plus alliance look, which alliances you might already have, let's say you're already working with some alliances in the US.
• 22:53
  And then you want to move towards the UK.
• 22:56
  Look, if there are already alliances who have a strong position in the UK, then see how you can bring that joint value proposition in their channel partners that they're already working with.
• 23:05
  And then you can do a tag along sale where you can move very quickly in terms of recruiting the partner, but also probably higher deal velocity because they can accompany your proposition in their proposition they're already working on with your alliance partner.
• 23:19
  For sure.
• 23:19
  And the thing that's really important about that alliance proposition is if you have to have a speed to develop a partner program, that speed to market is amazing.
• 23:30
  You can shortcut a load of partner market Fit work by doing that co sell motion.
• 23:36
  So the example I always use, if you've got an Azure product and it works into Azure and it's a great upsell for Endusers in terms of it really builds into the Microsoft ecosystem and it's a great upsell for partners who can build into that Microsoft ecosystem.
• 23:50
  Great.
• 23:50
  You can shortcut a load of the work, you can go and find out who the key Azure partners are who are selling into your ICP and then go and build a proposition.
• 23:59
  You can find partners market fit much faster doing that.
• 24:02
  So if you have high targets or a really high pressure situation where you need to deliver an immense amount of partner value quickly, think alliance first, not just ICP, because if you can fold those two strategies in together, you can shortcut a lot of work.
• 24:18
  Yeah, I fully agree there.
• 24:19
  And then you've got like two engines running there and you can go twice as fast in many cases as well.
• 24:24
  Yeah, you've got the double network effect which VCs are usually very focused on because if you've got one network effect you can grow quickly.
• 24:31
  If you've got two, you can go really fast.
• 24:31
  All right.
• 24:34
  And then I think finally then we got towards partner market fit or at least we got there closer to there.
• 24:41
  So we have a program that makes our partner successful.
• 24:43
  We're also seeing some good traction where we can go into new regions or new verticals and implement it there.
• 24:50
  And then the final phase is partners recruitment at skill.
• 24:53
  What do you need to have in place to start with mass recruitment?
• 24:57
  Sure, so I'm going to just give you a little sales analogy because I think it's the thing that most people will understand.
• 25:04
  When you start doing direct business and you try and hit hyperscale, you do not triple the amount of BDRs you have.
• 25:12
  You focus on inbound demand generation because that's got the real lever that you can drive a significant amount of value.
• 25:20
  The same is true of partner recruitment.
• 25:23
  If you want to drive hyperscale you need to focus on automation.
• 25:27
  What some people will do is go I'm going to hire four times the amount of cams I've got and that's going to drive hyperscale.
• 25:33
  One, no it won't because it just means you've got four times the operational lag, four times the cost and then you're not actually delivering hyperscale because hyperscale is the outsized return that's inside return.
• 25:45
  It's going to be the same base.
• 25:46
  You've just got wider cost base and therefore higher growth.
• 25:49
  Instead, focus on automation.
• 25:51
  So what can you automate in terms of partner recruitment?
• 25:53
  What can you automate in terms of the engagement process?
• 25:56
  Meaning we can go from having three cams who have ten partners to five cams who have 100 partners because you want to automate as much of the process and leave the people focused on the people management, the relationship aspect and automate almost everything else.
• 26:14
  Yeah, and I think there indeed one of the things I would also like to add is how crucial it is to have a strong end user awareness and demand generation process because if all your recruitment at skill needs to be outbound, it's going to be very expensive to have your channel team do that.
• 26:29
  Well, if you have very strong end user awareness, partners start hearing about you everywhere in the market as well and you'll get a lot of inbound recruitment as well.
• 26:37
  And I think that's where it becomes very interesting because you get the best of both worlds there where your partner managers are proactively working on certain accounts to get them on board as partners, but also that you're starting to create your own funnel where partners request you to become a partner.
• 26:53
  Yeah.
• 26:53
  And you need an acceleration model within the partners.
• 26:56
  Right.
• 26:56
  So the partners have to generate success with end users quickly and easily and at scale.
• 27:04
  And so one of the things that I very often push back on when people say yes, this year we're going to quadruple the amount of partners that we have.
• 27:12
  Fine, that's acceptable.
• 27:14
  But how much extra end user business is going to be asked for?
• 27:18
  Not pushed, but pulled.
• 27:19
  If end users are asking for your product all the time, great.
• 27:24
  Then you can probably afford to recruit lots of partners.
• 27:28
  But if you're going to recruit 100 extra partners and hope that all of them at scale, fairly automated, are going to be proactively positioning your product into the end user base, you're insane.
• 27:40
  It will never happen.
• 27:41
  I've never seen it happen.
• 27:42
  You need to be ensuring that the partners have demand generation tools, ideally automated ones, and have a vehicle that lots of end users are asking those partners because that's how you guarantee success.
• 27:54
  I stress this.
• 27:55
  It is no good recruiting 100 partners and 80 of them churning.
• 27:59
  You will just have wasted twelve months of resource instead, if you're not confident you can recruit 100 partners and they'll all be successful, just recruit less.
• 28:08
  You're going to generate more success that way.
• 28:11
  Yeah.
• 28:11
  I think to summarise this phase.
• 28:13
  Indeed, if you really want to recruit at Skill, you need to make sure that you have a strong end user brand because that will bring in new partners but also really help you to drive deals together with the partners and make them successful.
• 28:25
  You need your partner program as automated as possible.
• 28:28
  So as the third point then, so your people can really focus on building the relationships and work on the sales deals because that's where you want your channel team to work the most and therefore point two is so crucial that you have your training, your onboarding, your co- marketing, co-selling as easy as possible and as automated as possible.
• 28:47
  Yeah.
• 28:47
  I think a good barometer of a well designed partner program is how much fun channel account managers have if they really enjoy their job because they're spending their time networking and doing sales presentations and driving deals, that's awesome.
• 29:01
  That means you've got a really well designed partner program.
• 29:03
  If they're chasing through orders and they're apologizing for lots of bad deals and they're not sure where the content is and they're getting lots of basic FAQs, well then your partner program is not well designed.
• 29:15
  So a really good place to see if you're ready for hyperscale.
• 29:18
  Go quiz your channel account managers on what do you spend your time doing.
• 29:23
  If you find that they are taking their partners out for beers and they're having a really good time, good probably means you've got a relatively well designed partner program and you've automated a lot of that.
• 29:31
  It probably means you're ready for the next level?
• 29:34
  Yeah, I really like that one.
• 29:34
  Indeed.
• 29:36
  Like asking them how are you spending your time to also analyse if they have to spend a lot of the time, all the time on getting the partners to the trainings to do marketing together, et cetera, then there's probably a lot of efficiency improvements to make there.
• 29:51
  Yeah, if they're spending their time doing manual actions that aren't people orientated.
• 29:55
  You haven't automated your partners program to a level that will satisfy hyperscale because if you don't have that ready and you hit hyperscale, your channel account managers are all going to quit because suddenly they're going to hate their jobs because they've got such inbound requests from partners that hasn't been automated away.
• 30:13
  Yeah, very good one, I think.
• 30:14
  To come back to the question which we started with when should I recruit new partners?
• 30:19
  In phase one of your maturity model, when you're starting up, you should not recruit new partners if your partners program is not enabling multiple partners already to be successful.
• 30:30
  In the second phase, when you're finding partner market fit, you should really calculate it in such a way where you look at the end user market and then calculate backwards, combined with your revenue target how many partners you actually need for every market, vertical and region you're aiming for.
• 30:47
  And then for mass recruitment, you need to make sure that you really have your automation and processes in place together with a strong end user brand and then you can start recruiting at scale.
• 30:58
  And for our listeners that are interested in this topic, we are hosting a webinar on the 5th of April especially about how to recruit partners, when to recruit partners and how many.
• 31:09
  We've got Jay McBain there.
• 31:10
  We got Ben Wright there.
• 31:11
  We've got Niels Bergman's there.
• 31:13
  I'm joining and it's hosted by Bart, so it's really going to be a very fun session.
• 31:17
  And if you go to Channext.com and then to the webinar section, you can register and follow the full discussion there.
• 31:23
  I'd like to thank you Alex, for being a part of today's discussion again and I'd like to thank our listeners, of course, and see you next week.