Latest / Partnerships Unraveled / 059 - Rob Spee of Beyond Trust - Decoding the Transformation of Channel Strategy

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059 - Rob Spee of Beyond Trust - Decoding the Transformation of Channel Strategy · Partnerships Unraveled

• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Welcome back to partnerships and revels, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries of partnerships and channel on a weekly basis.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: My name is Rick van de Bosch and I'm the CEO and founder at Chenix, and I'm here together with Rob Spee, svp channel and alliances at Beyond Trust.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: Rob, how are you doing today?
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Hey, rick, I am doing fantastic.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Great to chat with you finally on the podcast and congratulations with the show.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: It's really going well.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Thanks so much.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we've been chatting for a while and now, finally, we're recording together right, we have been yes.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: Awesome, and actually there's something more we have in common besides both of us being hosts of a podcast, because your channel, Journey's podcast is a podcast I love as well and I've been listening to for a long time.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: But actually we both have Dutch heritage, right.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Yes, I have some Dutch journeys in my blood as well.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Excellent, yeah, yeah, I am for most of our listeners, know, but I am actually from the Netherlands, so I live in Amsterdam and the office is here in Utrecht.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: But what about you, rob?
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, my grandfather was born in Rotterdam and then he came over to the States.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: I think it was a farmer.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: He started a farm, he was like a gentleman farmer or something and then my dad was born here and then my wife just so happened to be have Dutch heritage as well.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: So both of her parents were born in Holland and then came to the States and we have a ton of cousins still in Holland, so we were there over the summer and got a chance to meet with all of them, and they're scattered all over the country.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: Excellent.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I studied in Rotterdam and lived there for seven years.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: It's a great city as well.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so, and I have a love for a lot of the Dutch food.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Stroopwafels, oh stroopwafels, those are my bike energy food now.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: I love them.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: I filled up my suitcase with stroopwafels that I brought back.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Love it Of course povertias and rice stoffel and all of that, just such great foods that you have.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: All the good stuff.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Love it, Rob.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm really looking forward to today's conversation and maybe for our listeners, Rob, could you maybe introduce yourself a bit more how you got into channel as well and your current role before we dive into the topic of today.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, so I lead all of the channels and alliances at Beyond Trust.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: We're a cybersecurity software company focused in the area of identity and access management, but I got into the channel years ago.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: I was not originally in the channel.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: I was a petroleum engineer working out on the rigs, actually trained and did offshore training in Rotterdam once and was in a pool where they put you in a helicopter and flip you upside down in the pool and you have to try to get out.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: That sounds like fun, totally different from the channels.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: But when I came back, I worked overseas, came back and then got involved in channels as an international channel manager and just loved it.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: And I've just been in the field ever since and seen a lot of evolution of channels and now, of course, into partnerships and much broader and diverse partnerships and this whole ecosystem strategy that we're all promoting now.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that and indeed, once you go into channel you don't want to leave anymore, right.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: No, no, most of us really love it.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: We love the relationships that you build, we love the diversity of the business and really, just kind of, I think we're all entrepreneurs at heart and living vicariously through our partners and love helping them grow their business 100%.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: I love the way you state that because it's so true and like there's so many things every day it's changing so quickly, so many things we need to figure out all building on relationships with people.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, it's a beautiful thing within the channel.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is Awesome and you're definitely an entrepreneur at heart, not even that hard.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: You are an entrepreneur building channel next.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: I can combine best of both worlds for myself.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: I love entrepreneurship.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: I love channel and now doing best of both worlds with with GenX indeed, yeah, awesome, yeah.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: And I'm super curious Like you're also doing a lot of podcasts, talking to a lot of people, like what are some of the topics that are very hot at the moment with other channel peers that you are talking to?
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of hot topics.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Certainly, everything's around this evolution that has been driven by the transformation to the SAS world right and that's totally transforming the buyer's journey, which totally transforms the partner journey, the importance of partners, the types of partners that we need, how we change our partner programs to support those different partner types, how we change the conversation internally.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: You know most companies, if you had a traditional partner program, it was a transactional program.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: So how do you change the language and mindset of everyone internally in the company?
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: And that's a huge shift and it's some people are easier to shift than others in your company and so that is a kind of a constant mission of evangelism for the partner ecosystem, not for the channel.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: So much people get the channel but they still have the channel mindset with channel expectations, and you have to shift your expectations and reasons for having the partner ecosystem and that's that can be a difficult task.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's something interesting you're stating there.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: What would you say is the difference between channel expectations and maybe the expectations we should have for certain other partnerships?
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the channel expectation is very transactional.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: What are my partners going to bring me in terms of new customers, new logos, new deals, or how are they going to help me close that win, that transaction?
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: That's the traditional channel flavor, right?
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: The new partner ecosystem flavor is much more about how are my partners going to help me surround the customer and provide much greater customer value throughout the buyer journey pre sales, at point of sale and post sales.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: And it's a really different language, really different motion of the partners and expectation of partners.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: And so the old metrics of how you measure the performance and ROI of your, of your channel is different than that of an ecosystem.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: And so having conversations with folks internally and your CFO is can can be challenging.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I understand what you mean.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: Explain them Well.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: This is actually not where the revenue flows, but I can show you how.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: Eventually here, indeed, this is where it will come back together, but indeed it's like a very different attribution model as well.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: It's a bit.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: It's a bit softer of an ROI and a little bit longer term vision to see what's happening.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: But that doesn't suffice.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: When you're leading the business from a partner perspective, you have to show that hard ROI.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: So I think those are things that we're all challenging with the finding the right metrics of beyond just partner originated revenue.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: How do you show the return of your influencers, of your service delivery partners, of all those partners that are surrounding the customer when you can't even see it?
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: You know, but you need them there, you need them surrounding the customer.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: So those, those are all the things that we're grappling with and changing them, metrics, changing how we track partner value in our systems.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: So we're making headway, but it's it's a it's a long journey.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I like them.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: And what have been some of the metrics that have been well received?
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: Maybe the newer metrics than just the revenue?
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: Indeed, like like by management teams or what you hear from other peers in the channel, yeah, well, there are a number of things that we measure.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: We look at, of course, partner originated, but beyond that we're looking at Influence.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: For example, what is the influence of our technology alliance partnerships?
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: So we try to track on a deal, what role did the technology Alliance partners play in the equation?
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: We're tracking service delivery.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: So what impact are our service delivery partners having?
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: We now track who is actually doing the implementation.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: Is it us, is it the partner?
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: Is it a combination?
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: Which partners are doing that delivery?
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: Probably a lot of folks are already measuring that, but that was totally new for us because we had purely a Transactional channel before and now we have a much broader Ecosystem.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: So, and it's been very helpful to measure and see who are those partners how do we concentrate more of that professional service work on certain focus partners?
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: Because we want to build their expertise across all our products, as well as across our products in combination With our Alliance partners.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: It it takes a full complement of solutions, not just from BeyondTrust, for a customer to really implement a zero-trust strategy, and so we have to have those partnerships and Delivery partners who can do those integrations for the customer.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, and I think it's very interesting that you track that.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: Indeed, because if you start and I would advise all listeners to start tracking as Much as you can as soon as possible, because I think eventually if you track it for every deal etc.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: Then later on you can start doing all the calculations, like if we see that there was an implementation partner involved, was the Customer lifetime value higher, eventually in the net revenue retention?
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: Or if there was a tech Alliance partner involved in the sales cycle, was the customer acquisition cost lower or was the the deal velocity a lot has faster, etc.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: I think that's super interesting information.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: Like if you start collecting the data, you can later on do your analysis with.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Exactly that's what we need to do.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: You'll see, in an opportunity now where we track by Opportunity, all the partners involved and it's not uncommon to see you'll have a var, you'll have a bad, you'll have a technology Alliance partner or several, you'll have a service delivery partner, you might even have a GSI, so four or five partners in the same opportunity Working together.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: And then you're right now we're gonna start doing analytics to see, okay, what impact is that having?
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: Is it a shorter sales cycle or longer?
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: Is it a bigger deal, volume or smaller?
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: Those are things we want to prove.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Hopefully, we short, we hope, and it's a shorter sales cycle with a bigger deal?
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: Right, that's, that's what folks want to see.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: But we're just now starting to do those analytics to see the comparison.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely I love that and indeed, indeed, if you can start showing that, then you can all of a sudden make it show how all those other partnerships are actually influencing the core business metrics.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and then you get beyond the conversation of just partner origination, you know, and driving those transactions Awesome you just mentioned quite some partner types and I also saw in your LinkedIn you work with distribution, with value-edit resellers, oems, global system integrators, marketplaces, technology Alliance, partners like it's a lot out.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: How do you manage and how do you balance working with so many, working with so many different types of partners?
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Well, it is a lot, Rick and I was.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: I was laughing because I was watching your episode, listening in where you guys were fighting about formula one, you know, and who's winning, right, and we have a very similar conversation because our CFO, yoast, is Dutch, so of course you know who he supports yeah, max, and then Jody, our VP of channel marketing.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: She's always been a long-term Mercedes Hamilton fan, so and then we had formula one was the theme of our big customer event that we did in Miami this year and we got to go to the formula one race, which was max one, of course, but I use that, that analogy at at our event and Talking about you think of the pit crew, right, and everyone has a role the guys that are swapping the tires in, swapping the tires out, everything in that, in that organization, and it's such orchestrated teamwork that they have and that's what we're trying to drive in the channel.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: So we have your orchestration that we've got to do between maybe there's a small reseller working in the account and then the Distributor who they work with, but then the boutique delivery partner that we might bring in to do the services, who might also be working with a GSI if it's a larger account, the GSI that's in that account.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: What influence can they have and what there?
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: What is their stake in this and what's what's their, what's their value add?
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: But also, what do they get out of it?
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: You know, long term, in working with us, we have MSPs, managed service providers as well.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: A lot of times it's the GSI who who can act as an MSP or a boutique provider.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, we have all these different partner types who want them to work in an orchestrated fashion, just like that pit crew in F1, so that the customer is kind of a driver, right, and he's surrounded by this pit crew who is helping him get value faster From the solution.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: Just like the, the pit crew is trying to get the driver out of the pit as quickly as possible, right, and it's amazing how fast they can do it.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: We got a chance to go out down on the, on the what do you call it?
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: Just right on the floor to see the pit crew practicing and Mercedes practice just over and over and over again.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: It was just awesome to watch.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: But that's what I want our sales reps to see.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: I want them to see the, the partners, in action and what they can do Surrounding the customer and working with them.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: And so then, yeah, we had to upgrade our partner program to support all those different partner types.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: We had to upgrade our, our contracts and Before we were having all these different partner agreements for all those different partner motions, we combine those all into one, and so a partner can just start by signing just one agreement that gives them the ability to operate in different business models, and that's the other thing you're seeing is, of course, the transformation of the channel of the traditional transactional partners, who are more and more adding services to what they do.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: They're starting to add even managed services to what they do.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: Or you have a, an MSP, who wants to become an MSSP, a security MSP.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: So we've got to provide a Fairly simple and easy path for partners as they change motions, and we also didn't want to have to manage, you know, 10 different contracts.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: We just put one simple click-through agreement in our partner portal.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: We can send every partner there, no matter what business model they have.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: It's the same agreement.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: They can go to it.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: You.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: I love that.
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: I think that that's one of the questions I actually had about that Indeed, like how do you make sure that still remain scalable?
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: Because getting more and more personalization and segmentation within your partner base is really strong, like time and time again, I see it with our customers and with partners I'm speaking with.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: They love it the more tailor-made it is for them.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: But then there's also this balance you have to keep right, Like how do we make sure it's maintainable for our channel team, for our partner operations team?
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: That's one of the things you're actually doing making sure that you can bundle all your partners in one contract, but still and from there you start personalizing and optimizing the partner journey to the specific needs.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the important thing, Rick.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: How can you customize that experience depending on their business model?
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: When I first joined, we were trying to treat every partner the same.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: You know, and you can't treat a GSI like a VAR or a VAD like a boutique delivery partner.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: You really got to customize this.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: We're getting better at that.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: Our partner program is more customized to the motion in terms of the incentives that they get, as well as the value and benefits that we provide to those partners.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: We're getting better at customizing our enablement for those different partner types.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: Our head of enablement is really a very active member of my team.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: We just did a leadership team meeting for 2024 planning last week here in Atlanta.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: I invited our head of our enablement.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: He does both customer and partner enablement.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: It's all rolled up under his domain.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: It was so important to have him there to hear us talking about our strategy, because enablement is so interwoven into the strategy.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: We can't be successful without really good partner enablement and driving that partner experience, which then translates to customer experience.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, 100%.
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: Everything stands with that enablement.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: If the partners really adopt that, then the customer experience gets better, the sales cycles go faster, etc.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: That's really the kickstarter of everything.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: What makes me curious immediately is, for example, with enablement, what types of variables do you use to segment or to personalize the enablement?
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: I think partner type is one that we just discussed.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: Are there other ones as well that are important?
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: Well, it's primarily by the motion within the partner account.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Obviously, you have sales training we're really trying to improve upon that Then pre-sales, which is the technical pre-sales training, then the delivery training for delivery partners.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: Now we're also trying to improve upon things like our support and admin training, particularly for MSPs, and what they need it's not just implementing the product, but how do they really maintain it on an ongoing basis and provide a better experience and have more knowledge as well, because they often play the front line tier one support to the customer, because it's not just our product and their MSP offering.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: They've got a whole suite of products in that offering.
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I actually really like that.
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: Always when we are talking about in our podcast around the partner journey and what place does a partner have in your full go-to-market, then we always say try to map your full customer journey and just start putting with every touch point you have with the customer.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: Eventually, where does what partner play a role?
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: That's what I actually really like.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: If you split it up, like what you guys do with pre-sales, the sales cycle itself, delivery, you can see, oh, those three types of partners are all involved in delivery.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: So we can actually use that module for all those type of partners etc.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: That's an opportunity to make it more scalable again.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: You know what touch points are they delivering in that full partnership and then we give them the right enablement.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and what we talked a lot about last week was we still needed to simplify but also expand our enablement for partners.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: Even though we had the three categories, it was still one size fits all, which was not the right approach.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: So we only had one option for pre-sales certification or one option for IE implementation engineer certification, and that just wasn't enough.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: So we're going to be adding to that and having different levels, because there are some partner types that will never need to do the full blown demands of that one certification.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: So we need something between kind of kindergarten and college or university what's in between that we can provide for the partners.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: And it also was putting a huge demand on very expensive enablement resources internally that really weren't needed for these different partner types or different types of individuals within the partner accounts.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: So we want to provide a better service to them, which also help us too.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: That way we can reserve those highest end enablement for the people that really need it.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, and I think that's indeed the balance we need to find in the channel.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: How do we make sure we make it as tailor made and personal as possible, but still indeed do it with the resources we actually have within that, because there's only so much we can do within the day, right?
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: Yes, we always want more, but there are always a limitation to what we can get.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: As we talk about budgets for next year, that's an important topic.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: What role do you see for Gen AI, for example, within that enablement space and personalizing the segmentation?
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, rick, I have not explored that as much as I need to.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: I think I'm so heads down on everything else that we're trying to get going.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: I think it could certainly play a role in enablement.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: I'm really eager to see what role it could play, definitely a role in our marketing, you know, just overall as a company, not just channel marketing.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: I think overall, and I really like to see what folks are doing from the tool vendor side, you know, from your side, of starting to add AI into the products, into the technology, because it has to be easy to use for us.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: We just don't have time to go out and do it ourselves.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: So the more it's built into the tools and applications that we use, the better.
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: I think there's indeed lots of progress to make there still also to make it like completely relevant etc for your specific program.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: But if we get it right, then there's definitely massive opportunity there to utilize, like, let's say, your example, the delivery training you created to then just let AI do the like segmentation towards a specific partner type, but like the opportunity is massive.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: We do, so.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: I'm counting on you to show us the way, let me say it like that, we'll do you.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: You just touched upon that.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: You just had your 24 planning session as well.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: I think we're recording this podcast now, end of October 2023.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: Like, what are some of the hot topics at the moment and how do you approach such a 24?
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm following a bit of a road for the partner ecosystem transformation, the whole kind of a maturity model, and we've transitioned fairly well out of the pure transactional channel to an ecosystem strategy approach.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: But we kicked off the meeting really just talking about and kind of looking at all the different elements of where we think we are in the journey and finding out and hearing from my team what's really happening.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: You know, feet on the street we're not as far as long as I thought, in certain pockets of the country or of the world.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: So we had a really good conversation around that is a okay.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: How do we bring everyone up to where we need to be, just on that kind of middle stage of the journey?
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: And then how do we move to the next stage, which is more of a mature stage in the journey?
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: So we had a lot of conversation around that.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: And then another big theme was simplification, and so we can really quickly get way too complex in a lot of areas.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: We got too complex on our on our compensation plans.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: We got too complex in our strategy and in our tracking and you know all that tracking that we were talking about earlier, so important, but it can also get your folks just totally wrapped around the axle of administrative work trying to track the partners.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: So we're doing things now to automate that, to make it simpler.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: So when you make one selection, that automatically fills in the next three boxes, that type of thing and and building it also so that it's much more integrated into our go to market strategy Not an afterthought, but it's and I shouldn't even say that it's not just our go to market strategy, it's our company business strategy.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: You know that it because the ecosystem cuts across everything.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: It's no longer just how you go to market from a sales perspective.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: So those are the, those are the key things that we are talking about.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: I think we came up yeah, absolutely three days.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: We came up with a lot of good plans and ideas for how we're going to do that, how we're going to evolve to the next stage in the ecosystem strategy, but also how we can do it through simplification in a lot of areas.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, indeed, you're completely right there.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: Once the administration is going to take too much time and like is going at the expense of the relationship that's where you really need to start looking into how can we automate more within this, because you want your salespeople to focus on the relationship with the partners there, but indeed, at the same time, you want to track it so you can make sure you absolutely in the right salespeople.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: It's your partner managers.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Oh, that was another topic too.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: Just the name partner manager.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: We still have titles that are all channel oriented.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm the VP of channels and alliances.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: We have our channel account managers, so we're shifting that language in January and moving to the partner title.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: So, partner managers, I'll be head of partner ecosystems, so that I think that's important and I've heard a lot of podcasts lately just talking about the importance of the language.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: Right, and because Absolutely.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: It starts there like the more you start integrating that in everything, the more the rest will follow as well.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: If you're talking to someone in finance and they hear the word channel, well then they have that transactional mindset.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: And if I can shift the language to partner, then that, I think, has even different implications and can shift the conversation.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: You touched upon something interesting at the beginning, which was your ecosystem maturity model, like is it a model you created yourself or is it some model you utilize and make sure, with your team, you analyze, like, where are we at in that food journey?
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: Another tool vendor who created it, and so I found it.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: They posted it on LinkedIn and I reached out to them, chatted with them about it and it's been very helpful for me to have that language internally at the company and it kind of creates a vision of where we want to go.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: I modified it slightly but really what it takes you from is the channel transactional channel all the way through to a very mature, well orchestrated partner ecosystem.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: That really is a partner or a platform ecosystem strategy.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: Really, it's based on a platform, a product platform that is a driver for innovation, and then leveraging the ecosystem for not just customer experience but even innovation out there, so that you're you're co-selling, you're co-marketing, you're co-delivering and co-innovating with your, with your ecosystem.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's great actually because, like we at Chenix, for example, we always work with OCR.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: So I need you to set your full OCR for 2024, maybe where you say this is the level we want to go from this phase to that phase and then per quarter you can just analyze like what steps are we making?
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: What types of things do we need to change?
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: And I think I liked your example of changing the wording.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: Already that's already a big shift in mindset within the company.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: But then also, what kind of systems, processes and everything around it are we building to really steer us towards the most mature level.
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: Awesome, nice, and for your 2024 planning as well.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: How do you approach?
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: Because eventually, definitely, we're looking at different attribution models etc.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: But revenue is still the name of the game, of course.
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: How do you approach that, like when you have your certain revenue number you need to hit?
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: How do you then reverse engineer towards your strategy?
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: and the steps that you need to make to get it.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: Well, it's been an interesting conversation that I've been having with all the sales leaders and our CRO that I report to, and talking about over-complicating things.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: This year we way over-complicated the comp model, which was very much tied to all those different partner motions, and you can get yourself in a bind there because you can be doing very well in those motions but if you're not hitting your sales targets, then are you really successful or vice versa?
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: So we've decided for next year we're going to have one comp plan for sellers and it's the identical comp plan for the partner team, so that we all because the whole idea here is we're all in the same boat and the partner strategy isn't a separate strategy, it's all one.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: And so our sellers, who we've been training to leverage the ecosystem and we still need to do more around that and getting them comfortable with this surround strategy but I think they're more comfortable when we're all paid the same way, and so we're all going to be on the same number.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: The partner managers will carry the region's sales number and their goal, their role, really is to be the custodians of the ecosystem, the orchestrators of the ecosystem, managing that ecosystem and also helping the sellers learn how to be members of that ecosystem and leveraging the ecosystem in their accounts, and then we can set up quarterly bonuses and things like that.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: For certain things we need to push forward in the strategy, for example, getting more partners engaged in delivery, we could set up a quarterly bonus tied to that to drive some of the right behavior.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: But we want to keep it as simple as possible.
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a really strong thing to do and eventually, that's also what I strongly believe.
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: We're all within channel or partner ecosystem, whatever we want to call it but we're all in a very commercial environment and there's simply no better way than to steer behavior through either the incentives or the compliance, et cetera.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: So the better you align that with the company strategy, but also, in this case, indeed very much aligning direct and indirect together.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: I think that's a beautiful way of approaching it and the best way to really align the interests of the partners together with the interest of your own organization.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really interesting, rick, when they're not aligned, the thoughts that can go through a seller's head working with their partner manager or channel manager and thinking, oh, you're just trying to play your comp plan, whether or not the partner's adding value or not, so it becomes a compensation fear, not a positive conversation about the value that the partners are adding, and so we want to just take that off the table.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: Absolutely Awesome, rob.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: I learned a lot today actually, and I think our listeners did too.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: Thanks so much for sharing.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: My pleasure Rick.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: If our listeners would like to learn more about you or your podcast, where can they best find you?
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm on LinkedIn.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: They certainly can reach out and connect to me there.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: They can go to channeljourneyscom and listen to the podcast.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: And I just love this, rick.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: I love these conversations that we have.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: We learn so much from doing these podcasts and I constantly learn more and more listening to your podcasts and other podcasts that are out there.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: It's really fun to see how much knowledge sharing there is today that we didn't have not that long ago.
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I fully agree there.
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: That's just a brilliant thing.
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: Every time, with every conversation Afterwards, I always go away like energized, like oh yeah, I'm a spoke about this and we need to do more about that, et cetera, and yeah, I really hope for listeners it's the same.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: But indeed the feedback I'm getting but also from other podcasts is definitely that that's the case.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: So let's continue together and looking forward to jump on your podcast in a while as well.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: And I'm curious, Rick I really find so much value from these podcasts and it helps me run my business better.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: Do you find the same thing that you're learning, things that you're applying?
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: I got certain podcasts that I just have constantly on replay some channel podcast also definitely some other podcasts about building go-to-market in general or marketing et cetera, and it's just crazy how much free knowledge there is in those conversations.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: All right, excellent.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: Well, we'll turn the tables, Rick, soon and get you on channel journeys Awesome.
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much for your time and thank you for the listener, for listening, and see you next week.