Latest / Partnerships Unraveled / 055 - Asaël Akkerman of Spacewell - Trust, Energy and Partner-Driven growth

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055 - Asaël Akkerman of Spacewell - Trust, Energy and Partner-Driven growth · Partnerships Unraveled

• 0:07
  Rick van den Bosch: Welcome back to Parking Ships Unraveled, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries of parkingships and channel on a weekly basis.
• 0:14
  Rick van den Bosch: My name is Rick van den Bosch and I'm the CEO and founder at Channext, and I'm here together with Asaël Akkerman, SVP Partners hips at Spacewell.
• 0:21
  Rick van den Bosch: Asaël, how are you doing today?
• 0:24
  Asaël Akkerman: It's Monday in the beginning of the week, so I'm pumped.
• 0:27
  Rick van den Bosch: Excited to go.
• 0:28
  Rick van den Bosch: Yeah, same for me, and especially for today's episode where we're going to touch a bit more on your parkingships journey that you've had at Spacewell and also how you're developing your channel at the moment and scaling that globally.
• 0:41
  Rick van den Bosch: So I'm very excited to share more about that with our listeners.
• 0:45
  Asaël Akkerman: Yeah, and especially nice to be a guest on your podcast, where it was a podcast that guided me to contact you.
• 0:52
  Asaël Akkerman: So it's kind of a small circle, but we're going full circle here, 100%.
• 0:59
  Rick van den Bosch: I recall we got in that call together and then you said Rick, I've listened to your podcast and you've almost like.
• 1:05
  Rick van den Bosch: All the things you said were the opposite of what I thought we had to do, but I'm loving it.
• 1:15
  Asaël Akkerman: Yeah, and in a few months I might take up a role in which I need your knowledge and possibly your software tool.
• 1:22
  Asaël Akkerman: And here we are one year later, year and a half later, in your studio and me using Channext as a tool.
• 1:33
  Rick van den Bosch: Yeah, that's awesome indeed, I think in the Dutch Compounder.
• 1:36
  Rick van den Bosch: That's actually a very interesting thing for our listeners as well, because you got into parkingships actually one and a half years ago, and into SaaS specifically, I think, and maybe can you tell us a bit more on that journey, on how you got there.
• 1:51
  Asaël Akkerman: So how far back do you want to go?
• 1:54
  Asaël Akkerman: I mean, when I started my career at Stork in 2005, I was working internally with a lot of departments, so that has had a bit of closeted partnerships in it.
• 2:08
  Asaël Akkerman: Afterwards I went to the blood bank where I had to work with eight regions that later became four and I was part of the central governing body within the organisation.
• 2:19
  Asaël Akkerman: But I of course had to partner with my peers in the region and I think intrinsically I've always been working on partnerships and building bridges and connecting teams and forming teams and alliances internally and later externally as well.
• 2:38
  Asaël Akkerman: So from the blood bank on to JLL and fast forward to Kushman and Wakefield where I was before I joined Spacewell, we were expanding our methodology on workplace strategy, on how to approach workplace environments and improve them, with other teams in Europe.
• 3:01
  Asaël Akkerman: So the knowledge on workplace strategies lay sat within London and the Dutch team and we and a bit of a bit in the Polish team, and so we actively engaged with countries in the Nordics and in Southern Europe, spain and in Portugal and Turkey to explain the methodology and a bit of land and expand from there.
• 3:26
  Asaël Akkerman: So intrinsically that was a bit of it's super comparable to SARS where you sell, because those those was actively selling parts of Kushman and Wakefield that they were doing consulting and I was on the back of that, and it was almost through partner sales and through partner consulting, where the teams in Lisbon and in Istanbul were like internal partners, that we had to enable.
• 3:56
  Asaël Akkerman: So when I arrived at Spacewell and listened to almost a thousand hours of podcasts and read even so many books now, not so many, but a lot of books as well and gazillion LinkedIn articles we I learned that there are a lot of elements that are comparable inside the SARS world and outside of the SARS world.
• 4:26
  Rick van den Bosch: And what specifically was so comparable that I think it's super interesting that, if you look at its core, all the previous jobs were already partnering, indeed, with different regions, different cultures, different interests, and tying all those together.
• 4:39
  Rick van den Bosch: I think that's one of the learnings I can extract immediately.
• 4:42
  Rick van den Bosch: What other type of similarities did you see there?
• 4:45
  Asaël Akkerman: At the end of the day, you're working with people, so it's it's not tools working with tools.
• 4:51
  Asaël Akkerman: It's unless the people's people are tools, of course that's, but if it's a stupid joke.
• 4:59
  Asaël Akkerman: But you're working with people, so it's a it's a human connection and you're building human connections, facilitated and enabled through technology, of course.
• 5:09
  Asaël Akkerman: But I think the human connection there, and understanding the human connection, and understanding that working with a partner, that partner thrives if, if that partner is successful.
• 5:20
  Asaël Akkerman: So making somebody successful let's say you and I were to partner, if I make you successful, I'm successful because of the fact, merely because of the fact that we, solely because of the fact that we, partner and and work together.
• 5:35
  Asaël Akkerman: And I think that human connection, if you don't, if you keep that inside, that that that is a massive enabler.
• 5:43
  Rick van den Bosch: Yeah, I think indeed, if you can really find out what's driving the other and facilitate there as good as possible, that's where you got the reciprocity and also get the the partnership going as such.
• 5:53
  Asaël Akkerman: Yeah, exactly.
• 5:53
  Asaël Akkerman: And, of course, within, when I joined Spacewell and I had absolutely no clue what I was getting my was what I was getting into and listening to to literally thousand hours of podcasts I quickly found out that I, that we at Spacewell had to spend a lot of time on the fundamentals, so we started literally from the ground up and starting to build our partnership program and our layers and our contracts and the legal and the enabling and the academy name it.
• 6:29
  Asaël Akkerman: It wasn't there, and while, at the same time, we had 20 partners already in place that we had to retain and that we had to keep.
• 6:38
  Asaël Akkerman: So I think, when we started last year in June, yeah, the team, which was only two and a half people at that time, focused on partner retention, resulting into a low and a 1% turn at this moment, so of which I'm very proud, of course.
• 7:01
  Rick van den Bosch: Yeah, that's a really good thing.
• 7:02
  Rick van den Bosch: One of the hardest things is keeping the attention and the engagement of the partners, and if you manage to do that for such a long time, that's beautiful.
• 7:08
  Rick van den Bosch: I think one of the questions that comes up in my mind is one of the first things is you were hired because the company wanted to focus a lot more on partnerships and really build out that department.
• 7:18
  Rick van den Bosch: What was the reason for to gear shifts to shift gear, sorry.
• 7:24
  Rick van den Bosch: What was the reason to shift gears more and more from the direct sales motion, also looking a lot more at partnerships there for Spacewell?
• 7:33
  Asaël Akkerman: Well, I think part of the narrative of the company to also move towards indirect next to a direct approach was the notion that you could build something that is bigger than the sum of the parts, and intrinsically they weren't after an ecosystem approach.
• 7:59
  Asaël Akkerman: But that is an approach that completely aligns to that line of thinking.
• 8:04
  Asaël Akkerman: I mean trying to fight your way through in a direct manner.
• 8:09
  Asaël Akkerman: You're going to encounter your counterparts and you're all aiming at the same pie, whereas if you share that pie and partners have part in a different pie as well, you can have multiple pies and multiple flavors and grow fat from there.
• 8:28
  Rick van den Bosch: I think there's a beautiful way of saying it and actually it's true indeed, because we're always talking about the market as one pie, but it's actually multiple pies where your partner is active in this part and that's where you can align together.
• 8:40
  Rick van den Bosch: But it can also help you bring and elevate you into different markets or pies.
• 8:44
  Rick van den Bosch: In this example, Exactly.
• 8:47
  Asaël Akkerman: We're now opening up verticals that we had no presence in last year and I think that's proven and that's proven attested that a partnership approach, if approached right, will open new markets for you.
• 9:05
  Rick van den Bosch: Yeah, very interesting and I was also thinking about I know Spade was part of a bigger group.
• 9:11
  Rick van den Bosch: Does that also play a role there or have some similarities?
• 9:17
  Asaël Akkerman: But there are loads of similarities.
• 9:19
  Asaël Akkerman: I think the most powerful thing of being part of the Nemechek group is that, in order to explain that, I have to explain a bit what the Nemechek group is.
• 9:30
  Asaël Akkerman: It's a SaaS company.
• 9:35
  Asaël Akkerman: It's a technology company that's mostly manager, has multiple brands in it that are super strong in architecture, engineering and construction, and a few years back they acquired MCS, and MCS was a Belgian company that shortly after acquired Exerion in the Netherlands, and those two companies, together with the recently acquired Plantatis from Exerion, rebranded to Spacewell and in 2020, spacewell acquired Dexmine Barcelona to complete the Spacewell brand.
• 10:17
  Asaël Akkerman: And with the acquisition of Spacewell and the partnership with our sister company within the Managing and Operating Division, crem Solutions in Germany, we are the only two parties within that Managing and Operating Division, but the combination of architecture, engineering, construction and Managing and Operating makes that Nemechek now is a full life cycle company, so they have got products and solutions that span across the complete building life cycle, which is unheard of, which is a market first and is super unique.
• 10:53
  Asaël Akkerman: Now about partnerships.
• 10:57
  Asaël Akkerman: Then you look at the Nemechek Group as a whole.
• 11:02
  Asaël Akkerman: All the brands were individual brands operating on an individual manner and had notion of their counterparts in the same field of work, but we now see a dynamic where NACCHEC is opening up, the brands internally are opening up.
• 11:20
  Asaël Akkerman: So we have to partner with our sister brands and we are now actively partnering with our sister brands to basically create an internal ecosystem approach.
• 11:32
  Rick van den Bosch: I think that's beautiful, because what you really get there is you're aligning a lot of the internal software and solutions with each other, where you can create a better together story towards your end customers, and you also create like a network times network effect, because every company is working with their partners.
• 11:49
  Rick van den Bosch: And then how can we indeed help each other, like get in touch with more partners, help more end users and really elevate the whole group as such?
• 11:57
  Asaël Akkerman: Yeah, and it's.
• 11:58
  Asaël Akkerman: It's a double whammy as well.
• 11:59
  Asaël Akkerman: It's a double, a double edge sword because of the fact that, from a space war point of view, we're building our, our alliances and partnership team and the methodology and the way to go about and that is really a greenfield approach and and having the chance to apply that internally with your internal NACCHEC brands is a blessing because it gives you a head start, because you're actively thinking about how do I enable my internal counterpart or my internal sisters, nacchec sisters and brothers to become successful.
• 12:39
  Rick van den Bosch: Yeah, and I think what you, what you touched upon earlier around the partner program or when you started, where you had to lay a lot of the foundational work first, what were some of the challenges that come to mind first that you faced.
• 12:52
  Rick van den Bosch: Also for other people listeners who are going to start a partner program.
• 12:56
  Rick van den Bosch: What was the, what were some of the difficulties there?
• 13:01
  Asaël Akkerman: So a lot of difficulties, of course, and it's never an even even road, but what I found out, at least what I'm sensing in the market is, is a bit of change in channel, where and you you got to correct me on this, because this is where I'm going out on the limb but at least what I'm seeing in the market of what I see as market developments is that in the past you, every partner organization, or a lot of partner organizations, took the Oprah Winfrey approach yes, you're a partner, you're a partner, you're a partner and blindly making everybody a partner and then expecting those partners to sell and tell them look, hey, we've got this beautiful pitch decks, they're on the portal, you just have to log in and next to you there are 10 other vendors that basically have the same story.
• 13:50
  Asaël Akkerman: So that channel is completely congested.
• 13:52
  Asaël Akkerman: And I see a change.
• 13:55
  Asaël Akkerman: And I also try to apply that strategy or that philosophy to space.
• 13:59
  Asaël Akkerman: Well, where I say, no, we don't have to acquire 1000 partners or even a few hundred partners, let's start with 40 or 20 very viable partners that we, that we co sell with, that, we co brand with that, we go in deep with and and and become sticky and skill from there, because then you know the client and clients pain, you know where you're, you know the vertical in and out, you know the end client's pain, you know where your, your software or your tool has a value out, add or not which leads to lower churn and retention and all better sales metrics that we're all after.
• 14:41
  Asaël Akkerman: Yeah, and now you have to tell me if I'm right or if I'm making this up.
• 14:49
  Rick van den Bosch: I think I fully agree there and I think what you see, especially within your team as well within your channel, is that you stay way more agile, like I've seen many examples and many conversations have, for example, with venture backed software companies.
• 15:01
  Rick van den Bosch: Yeah they get investors, they need to go all in on partnerships.
• 15:04
  Rick van den Bosch: They say go and recruit as many partners as possible.
• 15:07
  Rick van den Bosch: They recruit 100, sometimes even 1000 partners and then all of a sudden it's like, oh, we created this ginormous channel where we don't know how to manage it.
• 15:16
  Rick van den Bosch: We actually there's too many partners to really find out.
• 15:20
  Rick van den Bosch: Where are we doing the right things, what are we doing wrong, etc.
• 15:23
  Rick van den Bosch: There's too much, there's too big of a gap between us and the end user, because that's what it's all about.
• 15:30
  Rick van den Bosch: So I think, indeed, definitely there.
• 15:31
  Rick van den Bosch: If you keep it lean and mean and with a small set of partners, and make sure that they become successful, that's when the rest will start flowing as well.
• 15:38
  Rick van den Bosch: Because if there's one thing that's hardest is that if you recruited a partner and then for a long time nothing happened for them, then at a certain moment that partner has something like well, maybe there's other vendors that are more interesting.
• 15:50
  Rick van den Bosch: Well, if they feel they are successful with you and to your beautiful, where actually the retention is so high, that can only happen if the partner actually feels like hey, there are my partner, I can do business with them and we can grow together.
• 16:03
  Asaël Akkerman: Yeah, and From a space well point of view, I think a lot of that retention will lie in in actually being a thought leader in the market and actually knowing where that market will evolve towards and then Back with that knowledge and back with those insights, builds technology that is aligning with that market dynamics and is ahead of that market dynamics, even though you're building a tool.
• 16:32
  Asaël Akkerman: You're having a tool that is that might not be up to date, that has Lagging, lagging code or code depth.
• 16:40
  Asaël Akkerman: That's that will separate us.
• 16:52
  Asaël Akkerman: And enabling partners to access that knowledge and and give them that knowledge to help them better sell and enable them to better perform, will always be one of the key, key pillars of our partnership program.
• 17:09
  Rick van den Bosch: Yeah, 100%.
• 17:10
  Rick van den Bosch: And what type of activities do you enroll or what do you do to enable those partners?
• 17:16
  Asaël Akkerman: We have a portal now.
• 17:17
  Asaël Akkerman: I'm kidding.
• 17:17
  Asaël Akkerman: Yeah, we started last year with rebranding or repositioning space.
• 17:29
  Asaël Akkerman: Well, the brand is there, but we started with the repositioning of Spacewell and that repositioning had to reflect the complete movement that Spacewell went through.
• 17:40
  Asaël Akkerman: So MCS acquiring X-Aerion Plantatis is a part of that and Dexma were basically four companies, five products or six products, even under a single umbrella and had a beautiful logo, but there was no soul underneath.
• 17:54
  Asaël Akkerman: So we started there because in my head, in my mind, you have to start from a recognizable brand, that a recognizable brand has to have a recognizable story and that story needs to be conveyed.
• 18:10
  Asaël Akkerman: I need to be able to convey that.
• 18:11
  Asaël Akkerman: If I'm unable to convey that, how the hell am I expecting my partner to convey that same story?
• 18:16
  Asaël Akkerman: It's going to be deluded.
• 18:18
  Asaël Akkerman: The best brand story you'll get from me or from any other representative of Spacewell anybody else will have a deluded version of that and after watering it down seven or eight times, if your clients can still get the core of that story, then you've got a solid brand.
• 18:39
  Asaël Akkerman: And I think that with our repositioning to the market, we now have a solid brand story and a good story and aligned with the go-to market that addresses very specific to verticals supported by solid data from our own software, where we can extract data from and the insights from our own software.
• 19:09
  Asaël Akkerman: Yeah, I think we're at the dawn of a new Spacewell area where the next goal is, of course, world domination.
• 19:24
  Rick van den Bosch: I think the last point you made is actually very interesting, also for our listeners.
• 19:27
  Rick van den Bosch: If you can find something in your software that you are selling together with your partners for example, in your example data that they can actually utilize and help to make their end users and customers more successful or attract new prospects, etc that's very interesting.
• 19:43
  Rick van den Bosch: I've seen multiple examples of that.
• 19:45
  Rick van den Bosch: I think HubSpot is one of the best examples.
• 19:48
  Rick van den Bosch: They really help their agencies become successful and then take all those learnings and data towards the end user market etc.
• 19:54
  Rick van den Bosch: But I think for you guys it's the same indeed, like if you can show, based on all the data that you have around workplace management, like how do you do that in the most optimal way?
• 20:03
  Rick van den Bosch: The best way?
• 20:04
  Rick van den Bosch: That's creating yourself as a thought leader and helping your partners become a thought leader as well.
• 20:09
  Asaël Akkerman: Yeah, I think I was surprised by myself that our energy branch alone has 80,000 buildings connected to its software, so 80,000 buildings collecting data on a 24-7, 365 basis, and we have around 400,000 sensors live in our own workplace analytics and an experience platform, which is massive.
• 20:35
  Asaël Akkerman: So all in around, we've got around 90,000 buildings connected to our software gathering data, and that data is only worth something if you're able to connect it to your end market.
• 20:49
  Asaël Akkerman: And for me, as a responsible person for indirect my market is are my partners.
• 20:57
  Asaël Akkerman: So how do I use that data, the insights from that data, to enhance the performance of my partnerships?
• 21:06
  Rick van den Bosch: And to make their life a bit easier indeed, both in terms of helping their customers, getting more customers, and I think that's if you can combine the two of them, it's super interesting value proposition.
• 21:16
  Asaël Akkerman: Again, if you and I were to partner and you were successful, I'm successful.
• 21:20
  Asaël Akkerman: So that's all about making your partner successful, right?
• 21:23
  Asaël Akkerman: That's the ultimate goal, at least for me 100%.
• 21:28
  Rick van den Bosch: We always say we're within Chenix Parking.
• 21:30
  Rick van den Bosch: Success is your success, like the more you focus and keep focusing on that which your whole team, actually your whole company, gather around that, then you will make your partner successful and therefore, eventually everyone will win.
• 21:44
  Asaël Akkerman: Yeah.
• 21:44
  Asaël Akkerman: So while you said that, it made me think of I can't name the company, but while we were in a pitch last week where they challenged us and asked as well, why should we take you and not another company?
• 21:57
  Asaël Akkerman: And I think the answer back was that we have an understanding of business context.
• 22:04
  Asaël Akkerman: So, yeah, we are a tech vendor, yes, we are a SaaS company and, yes, our competitors are tech vendors as well and our SaaS company as well.
• 22:14
  Asaël Akkerman: But we understand business context.
• 22:16
  Asaël Akkerman: So we have architects, we have workplace strategies, we have people that actually understand how work happens, so the body of work and with that knowledge, we develop tech tools and those tech tools will help you better drive your business, will help your business better, perform better, and that's the ultimate goal of partnerships.
• 22:40
  Asaël Akkerman: I mean, yeah, we're selling software, but that software should enable something, should have an impact with the end client, and that if my software enables my end client not the partner, but the end client to perform better, to have a higher avatar, to have smoother running operations, I'm successful.
• 23:03
  Rick van den Bosch: I think that all comes down, indeed, to being able to show your parking.
• 23:06
  Rick van den Bosch: Like I speak your language, we've walked the walk, and that creates a lot of trust and eventually, all partnerships are based on that trust.
• 23:16
  Asaël Akkerman: Trust is a marketable commodity almost.
• 23:21
  Rick van den Bosch: Also true and the most important one, but it's also indeed the one where everything is geared around.
• 23:26
  Asaël Akkerman: That makes me think of a Dutch saying it comes on foot and goes by horse.
• 23:31
  Rick van den Bosch: Very true as well.
• 23:32
  Rick van den Bosch: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you need.
• 23:34
  Rick van den Bosch: To don't take it lightly.
• 23:35
  Asaël Akkerman: Yeah, and don't Google translate that Excellent.
• 23:40
  Rick van den Bosch: So, and then you laid the groundwork, and then it was time to start looking at the game.
• 23:44
  Rick van den Bosch: Now we're going to scale and build further.
• 23:46
  Rick van den Bosch: So you went into different regions, you hired people like how did you approach that?
• 23:50
  Rick van den Bosch: What were your next steps?
• 23:53
  Asaël Akkerman: Oh, that's difficult.
• 23:53
  Asaël Akkerman: My first highest came out of my own network and I'm blessed with to have a massive network.
• 23:59
  Asaël Akkerman: But we hired a country manager in the UK, hired a country manager in France, and that's it's difficult to find a person that is that.
• 24:14
  Asaël Akkerman: That that things ecosystem.
• 24:15
  Asaël Akkerman: And what I found out is that a lot of people listen to maybe not a thousand but 500 hours of podcasts or a bit less, and go into a job interview when they speak the lingo.
• 24:31
  Asaël Akkerman: So they speak of ecosystems or they speak of, of, of ARR and MRR, and they have the lingo already.
• 24:41
  Asaël Akkerman: Yeah, but I think the key here is to really look for that human connection and look behind the lingo and see if that person is actually thinking about ecosystems.
• 24:54
  Asaël Akkerman: And well, there's this word ecosystem.
• 24:58
  Asaël Akkerman: What does an ecosystem mean for you?
• 25:00
  Asaël Akkerman: What does it look like and how do you enable that ecosystem?
• 25:04
  Asaël Akkerman: How do you grow your ecosystem and are you willing to give up your brand in order to advance the ecosystem?
• 25:12
  Asaël Akkerman: Where, let's say, a major real estate firm wants us, wants our product, but it requires them to, requires us to to white label our product, are we still going with that, yeah or nay?
• 25:25
  Asaël Akkerman: I think those type of questions and really tell a lot about the feasibility of the fit between a company and a person.
• 25:39
  Rick van den Bosch: So you qualify a lot deeper actually, especially around that ecosystem and partnership approach with, with a lot of extra question for context and indeed in terms to find out like because those people that that you were coming more from a direct environment and heading into partnerships or was their background partner?
• 25:57
  Asaël Akkerman: So I've got.
• 25:58
  Asaël Akkerman: I've got one VP in France, one in UK and two that are Dutch based.
• 26:09
  Asaël Akkerman: Two of them have channel experience and the other ones don't.
• 26:13
  Asaël Akkerman: But especially with with the ones that don't didn't have SARS experience per se or partnership experience per se, I was looking for those traits that open us that connection, the the possibility for them to see what that, through partnership sales, meant.
• 26:40
  Rick van den Bosch: Yeah, I'm a big believer in hiring for aptitude as well, so I think that's a very interesting like certain character traits and you're already touching upon some of them and need like that openness, like likeliness, like in terms of do I want to?
• 26:53
  Rick van den Bosch: I always try to think of it for myself, maybe for listeners good question to ask yourself as well, like would I want to work with this person every single day?
• 27:01
  Rick van den Bosch: Do I get excited about it?
• 27:03
  Rick van den Bosch: Etc.
• 27:03
  Rick van den Bosch: Because probably that's what they can bring to the potential customer or partner as well.
• 27:09
  Asaël Akkerman: Well, yeah, so when I, when we started growing the team, the first person I hired was a former intern of mine, why I met in 2013 when I was at a company.
• 27:19
  Asaël Akkerman: We kept contact ever since and when I had had her, I asked her every year to join JLL, to join Cushman away field.
• 27:30
  Asaël Akkerman: She, every time, she said no, no, no, no, thank you.
• 27:33
  Asaël Akkerman: When I joined space, well, it was maybe said that's not a no, so let's have a coffee.
• 27:38
  Asaël Akkerman: And ultimately she she's now working within my team.
• 27:42
  Asaël Akkerman: She's a manager of partner success, and I said, ok, now we're going to grow the team together with another person within space.
• 27:50
  Asaël Akkerman: Well, that has challenge, that has a channel experience.
• 27:53
  Asaël Akkerman: We said, ok.
• 27:55
  Asaël Akkerman: The preconditions to join our team is one you need to be fun.
• 28:00
  Asaël Akkerman: If you're not fun, we don't want you in the team, because if you're not fun, you can't laugh, we can't joke around.
• 28:06
  Asaël Akkerman: I don't want you working with this because it needs to be fun.
• 28:10
  Asaël Akkerman: Second is you have to love food.
• 28:14
  Asaël Akkerman: And the third precondition was do you have some actual qualifications that allow you to work in this job?
• 28:21
  Asaël Akkerman: And of course, it's said jokingly, but that's a sense of truth, a core of truth in there, and I'm really glad that we applied that line of thinking because I remember quite well for the France position there was one person that had all the right papers with saying all the right things.
• 28:43
  Asaël Akkerman: The vibe was super off.
• 28:46
  Rick van den Bosch: Yeah, it's all about core values eventually, and you can have that on a company level, but also in your team.
• 28:51
  Rick van den Bosch: I have an example here from Chenix.
• 28:53
  Rick van den Bosch: Like her number one, core values bring your energy and the one question we always ask after every first round to each other like, okay, was this good energy, yes or no?
• 29:02
  Rick van den Bosch: And no matter how good the qualification is or resume or whatsoever, if the answer is no, then we won't proceed because we know that in the end, no matter how good qualified person that is, it won't be a fit within the company or the team.
• 29:17
  Asaël Akkerman: Yeah, it's energy is everything 100%.
• 29:20
  Asaël Akkerman: Energy makes you wanna work on a Friday night until 11 o'clock to get something done, and energy is also what allows you to take Monday off until 11 because you've delivered, and trust is something it what enables that.
• 29:37
  Asaël Akkerman: So it's trust and energy.
• 29:39
  Rick van den Bosch: Yeah, indeed, walk the extra mile for the partner, like building, building.
• 29:43
  Rick van den Bosch: I think that's eventually when you're building whether it's a new company, a team or whatsoever you need so much energy and I think the more you have that with your team, the better you can show that to the outside world as well and your partners will feel that as well and they will get excited to work with you.
• 29:57
  Rick van den Bosch: And that that's where the magic happens eventually, great.
• 30:01
  Rick van den Bosch: And then, I think, finally also when you're scaling and I don't want to make this too much of a marketing thing, but we are very happy to have you as our customer here as here at ChenEx, you need partner management, partner marketing software.
• 30:15
  Rick van den Bosch: At a certain moment.
• 30:16
  Rick van den Bosch: What was, for you, the reason to start with a tool like ChenEx to scale your program?
• 30:23
  Asaël Akkerman: Okay, I think the key USP that we now have is the partnership pipeline.
• 30:32
  Asaël Akkerman: So we use ChenEx.
• 30:35
  Asaël Akkerman: Chenex has multiple functionalities, like the media and the landing pages and the campaigns that you can run through ChenEx.
• 30:44
  Asaël Akkerman: Those are lovely, but we're not in that phase yet.
• 30:46
  Asaël Akkerman: So the first phase was to recruit an onboarding of partners, and that was a super smooth process within ChenEx.
• 30:55
  Asaël Akkerman: And then the second thing is once you've onboarded a partner, once you've contracted a partner, how do you manage their pipeline?
• 31:03
  Asaël Akkerman: So, from a space for a point of view, we incentivize our partners to upload their pipeline into ChenEx, then monitor that pipeline, allowing our partner managers to have into the weekly discussions with the partner on hey, these are the deals in the pipeline, these are at a certain stage, what do you need from me?
• 31:22
  Asaël Akkerman: What can I do to progress those deals through the pipeline and bring them from top of funnel to bottom of funnel?
• 31:31
  Asaël Akkerman: That is a major feature that we're using within ChenEx that I absolutely love.
• 31:39
  Asaël Akkerman: The download of the pipeline allows me to have a weekly pipeline review with the team.
• 31:46
  Asaël Akkerman: We are now integrating ChenEx with Salesforce and that is near life.
• 31:51
  Asaël Akkerman: But on the sandbox environment it works perfectly and it is smooth.
• 31:57
  Asaël Akkerman: So, yeah, that's, I think, chenex.
• 32:03
  Asaël Akkerman: And yeah, I don't wanna, yeah, we can do some marketing.
• 32:07
  Asaël Akkerman: I can boast about your company.
• 32:10
  Asaël Akkerman: I think ChenEx for us has been a game changer because otherwise I would have gone down the path that YouTube videos that I watched all advised me to go build a portal.
• 32:24
  Rick van den Bosch: and if you build a portalcom, no, I appreciate that and I can imagine, especially around the pipeline for you in your senior role in managing a bigger and bigger team, you need to be on top of okay where do we have what opportunities and quickly be able to sit down with partners, just as your partner managers need to have that insight with their partners when they have their weeklies or biweeklies or QBRs that you can always analyze where are we standing right now and where do we project to go?
• 32:57
  Rick van den Bosch: Yeah, Great.
• 32:59
  Rick van den Bosch: Awesome, Azel.
• 32:59
  Rick van den Bosch: Thanks a lot for sharing today.
• 33:01
  Rick van den Bosch: I learned some new things, I think, or listeners as well.
• 33:06
  Rick van den Bosch: Likewise, I really enjoyed the conversation today for listeners.
• 33:10
  Rick van den Bosch: If you want to find out more about Azel or about Space, we'll check the description of the podcast of the day.
• 33:16
  Rick van den Bosch: Thanks for listening and see you next week.