Latest / Partnerships Unraveled / 094 - Christian Goffi - Modernizing Partner Engagement With AI

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094 - Christian Goffi - Modernizing Partner Engagement With AI · Partnerships Unraveled

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries about partnerships and channel on a weekly basis.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: My name is Alex Whitford and I'm the VP of Revenue here at Channex, and I'm really excited to welcome our special guest, christian.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: How are you doing?
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm doing great, Alex.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a real pleasure to have you on.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: And for the uninitiated, christian, how are you doing?
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: I'm doing great, alex.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a real pleasure to have you on.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: And for the uninitiated, maybe Christian, you can give us a bit of a rundown of who you are, where you've been and why they should be listening to you today.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, indeed.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: So today I have the pleasure of leading the channel organization in the Americas for Nutanix, which is a data center software company very relevant today.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: I you know very long career in the telecom, networking and now data center industry.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't be what you might call a career channel leader.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: I've really been a jack of all trades.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: I've spent quite a bit of time working in direct sales, in business development, in professional services, distribution.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: So channel is where I find myself today.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: If you ask me who I am, I'm more like a business consultant, but today I have the pleasure of leading a channel organization.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: And it's funny you talk about a few different areas of business there in terms of how the markets change, data centers being one of them, and data and consumption is the name of the game, especially as the world pivots towards an AI model.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Everyone's baking that into not only their products, but how they go to market.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: I think I just saw Apple's announcements from yesterday.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: They've rebounded their Apple intelligence, but it's still AI.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: What do you foresee in terms of how AI is going to affect the way that we work within channel organizations?
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: Oh boy.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: So that's a big question and one that we're all excited about, we're all frightened about and everything in between, but it is one of those really big milestone moments for us in our lifetime.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: I think we're going to look back on it and compare it to the introduction of the internet, right?
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: And compare it to the introduction of the iPhone.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: Do you remember before we had AI, what did we do?
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: Or before we had email, how did we communicate?
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: I think AI is one of those things.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: I think those who adapt the best to these changing conditions are going to be the ones that get ahead.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: But right now there's a lot of noise out there in the pipe because I think every vendor and every integrator and distributor everybody's trying to attach themselves to the word AI because you know it can help you with your perception out in the market that you're forward looking.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: But you know you got to really look under the hood and see what it means to everybody and you asked specifically what can it mean to the channel?
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: It really can mean anything you want it to, right?
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: But if I give you my answers now, I think there's two ways of answering that question.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: The first one would be to look at.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: You know what are you doing for your customers as it relates to AI.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: The second one would be more along the lines of how are you going to be using AI in order to improve?
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: You know your operation.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: I think the first one is a lot simpler than the second one, but they're both kind of stuck together because your proficiency in using it yourself is going to help you be a better service provider for others.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: But, simplistically speaking, and in my world and what we do in our company, it's really it's about helping.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: Phase one is to help customers understand how do you get your infrastructure ready for AI so that when that beautiful use case you choose comes to life, your infrastructure can support it.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: Right, it's, I mean right now.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: If you look at it simplistically, ai it's just another workload.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: It's just a very demanding workload, right?
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: They say, for every time you ask a question to JalGBT, it needs to drink a gallon of water to cool itself off because it's so energy demanding.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: It needs to drink a gallon of water to cool itself off because it's so energy demanding.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: But it is just a workload.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: So, right now, the focus if I was to advise a reseller, an integrator, on what should I be doing about AI is to really understand the infrastructure implications of AI readiness and to create a plan that you can support your customers.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: Do that Now.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: How do you use AI yourself?
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: I think the use cases are, you know, are really starting to pop up left, right and center, and I think a lot of it is going to be slowed down by our ability to really have structured and consistent data to tap into those infamous language models I think are going to be the key right.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: You could say you know, I want to be quicker at answering RFPs or I want to be quicker at providing support For me as a vendor working with a channel.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: I would love for AI to lend a big hand in introducing agility in the way we work together and doing discovery for customers and doing quoting and accelerating discount and things like that, but you're only as good as your data right.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: So it's an exciting time.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: I'm very much looking forward to it and personally, I'm somebody who wants to be a thought leader in this space and I think we're in a moment where any of us can become a thought leader, because it's just so new that it's just exciting and fearful at the same time.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, I think one of the really interesting use cases about AI.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: There's a company called Clary Copilot and they or Clary, they have a product called Copilot and what they do is they do recordings of sales calls right, and what they do is they do recordings of sales calls, right.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: Now, the really clever bit about their technology is they are then able to route specific parts of those conversations back to different departments.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: So a customer talks about a particular use case oh, product and engineering need to know about this.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Or a customer gives feedback oh, we can sample that as part of our marketing.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: Oh, there's a raised voice and angry.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: Right, we better send that to leadership so they can jump on it.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: That routing of information very, very dynamically, I think, is one of the most interesting parts of large language models, right, because they're able to AI is able to process the exact content of the information and push summaries and capture that data.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: Where that becomes extremely interesting interesting, I think is in the channel, because there's levels of segregation between a brand and, ultimately, the end user, right, that might go through a distributor and a reseller and then ultimately an end user, and so the level of feedback is very, very difficult, right, I was just speaking to the global channel leader of barracuda and he tells me he spends all his time speaking to partners and customers because he has to get that feedback to him.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: Ai is a really interesting model for how you can drive that efficiency through different layers of business so that products are getting the consistent feedback and data leadership's getting the consistent feedback, engineering, salespeople, that bilateral flow of communication.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: I think that's where AI can really help grease the wheels.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: No, 100%, and it's like I said, it's exciting and even, I mean, the coolest thing of it all, Alex, is that you don't really have to be a data scientist to be able to tap into a lot of this knowledge right, and even in the way you just explained it right to the common consumer.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: It could be very intimidating to hear that because it's complex.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: It's oh my gosh, you got to have, you know, a PhD in analytics to be able to grab onto that information.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: But that's what AI kind of represents, and even in the simplest forms, I'll tell you a quick use case.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: For me, that's given me an edge is, you know, leveraging ChatGPT to be able to absorb investor calls and 10K reports from companies before you meet with them and getting an executive summary about what they announced on their latest announcement, which before was another topic that was intimidating to most folks that don't really understand how to read balance sheets and 10K reports.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: Ai is making that simple right and it's giving the power to the user.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: So very, very cool time.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: One of the things that you touched on when you were talking about AI is the ability to sort of help work more closely with your partners.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: I know something that we've discussed previously is the importance of enablement and how you really maybe transition from the old school days of everyone jumping your bmw or certainly that's what we do in the uk and drive up and down the m1 and we've got I've got the same powerpoint.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: I could take the same people through every three to six months, right.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: That's sort of how I built my credibility as a, as a junior channel account manager.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: I think those days, days are dying right or I hope they are because it's certainly not particularly enjoyable and I think there's a much more productive way that we can drive that enablement.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: What does partner enablement 2.0 look like in your mind?
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: That's a great question and it's good to hear that in the 1.0 days every channel manager got a BMW.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: That's great, I mean that never hit the.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: Americas, but I'll take your word for it.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: So no, look, think about it like this.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: Last time you bought a product of some type it could be an electronics device or it could be a table that you're putting together you know when was the last time you read that manual about how to put it together?
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: We just you got to understand the psychology of the learner.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: And it's not even a generational thing.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: I used to blame that it was a generational thing that we take information differently and the generations different.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: Generations are doing it differently and we don't understand each other.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: I don't think it's a generational thing anymore.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: I think all of us have accustomed ourselves to take in an overload of information and to also do that in micro pieces, right?
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: So if we get overwhelmed with any piece of information that is too long to read or even watch or even listen to, we just flat out, tune out.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: So I mean, I think the days of here's a portal, here's your username and here's a password, they need to evolve.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: I think a partner portal still has its use, like you still need it to be a repository of the in-depth training that I think is needed.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: That's not going away.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: However, it's almost like you have to be able to prepare yourself with layers that are before.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: If you look at it as level 100 training, level 200 training, level 300 training, I think the portal could be the 300.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: But upfront, I think the new way of enablement, the new way of learning, is really meeting the users where they are, as opposed to trying to convince them to come to where you are.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: So where are they?
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: You know, this is a social media, youtube-like culture where you know we're accustomed to going after videos and short talks that are maybe three to five minutes at a time and it's a culture that likes to give feedback, receive feedback, comment like dislike.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: I think that's the future of enablement.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: I think if you really wanna strike a chord, you got to do your best to meet them where they are and at the same time, you know, make it fun, don't make it something that's boring.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: It's not work.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: If it's fun, it doesn't feel like work and people want fun.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: So if you can combine those two things of learning and having a little fun while you're doing it, building a little bit of that emotional connection to the content, I think you're going to be ahead of the game and then your message is going to land and the other company's message is just not going to land.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: So those are some of the things that, at least you know, I'm leading the charge in my team.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: What we're trying to do differently is to really understand the psychology of my target audience and the fact that we all have I don't want to label people with having attention deficit disorder, but we all have a very short attention span right now.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: So either you fight that or you embrace it.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: And I say we embrace it, and I think we should tailor our content and our delivery vehicles to match what's on the other side of the fence 100%.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: I think we've spoken a lot about this podcast around two things the timing of enablement and the depth of the enablement.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: Ie.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: The analogy I like to use is if I'm going to put together a piece of IKEA furniture, best will in the world, I don't read all the instructions right.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: I might read step one, two and three there might be 100 steps but I'm never reading that far ahead because I I don't need to know what step 78 is.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: We're nowhere close to there, right, and so that that's what's really important about timing and depth.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: Ikea's got it perfectly down.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: You get the instruction manual with the table, so we put it together at the exact right time.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: But what?
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: What program people and brands need to be focused on in terms of enablement is how do we make sure that the exact moment that they need step one, two and three, it's there and that we aren't overloading them with taking them through thousands of steps that we need to retrain them on in three months time, because then they're at step four, five and six?
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: Right, it's that that continuous drip feed is far more serviceable than bringing people in, giving them an MBA in your product that they then don't sell for nine months, a hundred percent and look, we can't.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: and in understanding the world of the channel right, on average I think it's something like in the neighborhood of 25 to 50 vendors that they sell, right.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: So how naive are we into thinking that they're really going to, you know, reach the depth of expertise in your product?
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: You know you just can't.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: So the goal really should be of you know how do we get to a minimum acceptable standard that will engage more sellers and more engineers to have the courage and to be able to be able to introduce you into more places.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: Then, once you get into that gate, that's where true expertise will come in and then, on the job, training will take you to the next level, right.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: So now, the first time you have to position that one particular product and you get the questions and answers from customers, then that's going to take you from level 100 to level 200, right.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: And then eventually level 300 when you sell multiple projects.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: But it's situational.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: I think it's naive and unrealistic to think that the goal should be straight to level 300, you know, from the get-go and meeting an institution, I think it should be a drip mode, little by little.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: You know I'd rather do 20 minutes a day three times a week than four hours a day once a month.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: And that's what you were saying, alex.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: I completely agree with that 100%.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Now, one of the things that we're so passionate about here on this podcast, and why I love building channels, is because we end up having very business conversations with partners.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: There's another layer.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: We're not just talking about product and fit and value.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: There's a business application, almost a mathematical application, that wraps around that I'm a big believer in.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: I like that mathematical formula to make sense, right?
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: How easy is it for them to acquire business?
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: What's the lifetime value of a customer?
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: What's the upsell potential?
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: All of those good things.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: But that's got to be balanced with hey.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: Do they like doing business with us?
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: How often do we go for a drink together?
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: Are we friends in certain instances?
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: In your vision, christian, when you're building channels, how much do you balance that sort of hard value and that emotional value?
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Where's your priorities?
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: What's your mix there?
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's one of the things that we very often forget, and I think, if I give you the vendor view about this, the higher up you go in the corporation of a vendor, the more you lose touch of the importance of the trust factor.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: Because you could do everything else right, you can have the best enablement program, you can have the best incentive stack, but if there's no trust at the local level, you really get nowhere.
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: So you know, the answer to your question is really it's more of an art than it is a science.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: I highly favor the.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: You know I never forget the fact that people like people will do business with people that they like, and that comes from spending the time in building a relationship.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: So on one side, as a channel leader, you want to make sure that you have the right programs with the right integrity and that you're consistent in your approach, right.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: So can I make money with you?
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: That has to be checked right.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: Is it easy to do business with you?
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: That has to be checked.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: But then I think the number one reason why partnerships work is can I trust you?
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: And that only comes from effort.
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: One of the biggest challenges, alex, that you have as a channel leader is that you know you're only a part of the equation, right?
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: So the channel organization has to collaborate with the frontline sales organization and our job is to connect them so that the trust can be built at their level.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: Right, and you know, very often you run into account teams on both sides that might think that they don't need the other and there's just not enough engagement, there's not enough time being spent on building a relationship.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: So anytime I get a call about, hey, this isn't working, I'm blaming the channel.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: Anytime I get a call about hey, this isn't working, I'm blaming the channel, you know.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: My question back to my team is well, can you tell me how often are you speaking to your partner, and are you calling only when there's an opportunity that's open, or are you having relations when there isn't an opportunity in play?
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: Because that's a determining factor of are you making an effort in order to build this partnership up?
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: So that's why I say it's more of an art than a science.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: The most successful reps I've ever met have been the ones that spend maybe 20 to 30 percent of their time just keeping that fire going on that relationship with maybe two to three partners, and those two to three partners are going to give you 30 to 40% of your business almost autonomously, and then that allows the rep to focus on not getting to 100% attainment.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: But how do you get to 200% attainment?
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: The ones that don't see it like that?
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: They seem to get stuck in a treadmill where best case scenario is maybe they hit their target, and that's because they take on the entire onus of getting to their number by themselves, because they're not getting others to swim with them, right?
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: So, like they say, if you want to go far, go.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: I mean, if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together, go with a partner.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: So that's what partnering effectively is all about in my eyes.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think what's really important there as well to understand is I firmly believe you actually build your reputation in the tough times, right?
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: We all know salespeople, that when everything's going their way I know a few of these at Zoom through COVID they're getting all cocky because they're sat at 500%.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: There's the greatest tailwind of all time.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: There were tons of super talented salespeople all cocky because you know they're sat at 500.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: There's the greatest tailwind of all time.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: There were tons of super talented salespeople.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: And then there were a few that once, hey, the bubble had calmed down a bit and then suddenly they really had to work.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: It was a very different story.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: It's the customers and the partners that really gravitated towards those channel account managers, the ones where, when a deal went wrong, when something happened, when a partner needed something urgently and they needed a bit of that support, they were there.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: Because when you really build it in those tough times, when something goes wrong, and that's when relationship really matters.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: As you say, program design is sort of when things are going very well, right, here's how your rebate structure is going to work, here's the incentive program, here's our MDF plan, all of that.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: That's when things are going perfectly.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: Your channel account manager is there to ensure that that goes as smoothly as possible.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: Brutally speaking, they're there to handle the other side right.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: It's when something goes badly, when someone's done something they shouldn't have, there's a conflict between two partners, that sort of stuff.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: That's when channel account managers and relationships really come together.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no 100%.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: So I don't have anything to that statement.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: I thought that was beautifully said.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Perfect.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: And then, in terms of, we've touched on a few different key parts of a program, I had Janet Shines on.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: She runs a consultancy company who helps design partner programs called JSG, and we were talking about how MDF can be well used and how we sometimes see MDF being extremely poorly used.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: How do you make sure that marketing is really helping you get to your goals?
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: Christian?
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, even and I'm going to give the same answer for MDF or SDF, right, which MDF tends to be a little bit more about generating end customer demand through the partner, whereas SDF could be used a little bit more toward enablement of the partner, right.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: But you put them both together and these let's call these business development funds.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: I think if you want to have any kind of feeling of how well you're doing, you got to have a mechanism that has the capability of looking backward.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: And let me tell you what I mean.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: Most companies suffer from the same syndrome, which is, hey, let's do an event and then we become really good at running that event, ok, and then, after we run the event, we high five each other and then usually that's the end of the cycle, and then we let's go run another one and then let's go run another one and let's go run another one.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: So what I mean by being able to look backward is, you know, to me, the end of running the event.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: It's almost like halftime of a football match.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: You still need to play the second half, and in the second half of the match is really where the ROI comes from.
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: The first half is not where it comes from.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: It's the second half, so it's not.
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: We need to look beyond just MQLs and SALs and even pipeline.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: We need to look into conversion, and this takes time.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: So one of the biggest things I always hear from my team is hey, what do I need to do in order to get more MDF?
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: And my answer is, hey, listen, that comes with credibility, and credibility comes from looking backward and showing your proof point as to what you did with that money in the previous event and the one before that, and then if you can quantify that in a manner that aligns with the business objectives.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: I mean, don't look at MDF as a limited allocation that you get for a period of time.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: It's really unlimited.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: It's really based on whoever has the strongest business case is going to get all the money.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: So that's my philosophy on how to look at MDF as well as SDF.
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: But it's a quality in our industry that is not widely used, all right, so we don't do a good job of looking back and measuring it in the right way.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: So we try to be different.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: We try to be able to do that.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: I can't tell you that it is perfect, but I think that's the key for getting good usage out of the MDF.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: Now, what is good use of MDF, this type of event versus that type of event?
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: Again, some are more measurable than others I tend to lean on.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: You know, to me the no-brainer activities that always make sense and give me a high ROI are bootcamps, technical enablement.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: Those things I never say no to.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: It's more the you know, the fluffier the event type, the more difficult time I have to approve those.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: But a big picture answer is you got to have a way of measuring ROI over time.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: So I don't want to hear so much about this proposal that you have.
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: I want to hear about that type of event that you ran two quarters ago and show me how you did on that one and your approval for this one is.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: You did on that one and your approval for this one is contingent on that one, and it's always beautiful to see the deer in the headlights.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: Look, when I asked that question at first about let's go back and see, because it's just not something that the industry is too used to doing, yeah, I think you're absolutely onto the right, uh, the right, thought there, because I I constantly get sort of confused where I I hear people talking about.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: So mdf is a flat structure and we're going to give each partner one percent of the mdf and I just sit there and go.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: Don't you just give it to the highest roi, like that's it, like I want.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: If one partner is getting a 10 to 1 roi and one partner is getting a 3 to one ROI and one partner is getting a three to one ROI, let's optimistically say they're both positive.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: We both know that there are loads of just money pits, of bad ROI performance, but and we just I, I I don't want to share that.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: I want to give it everything to the 10 to one, because if that partner and that channel account manager and that marketing account manager have come together and put together a really good plan, great, let's triple the money into there.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: Like you say, it's not really.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: I've never experienced in my life someone saying no to an MDF submission that was actually really high quality.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: The money is always available because if the proof case is there, hey, we've done this once, twice, three times.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: Every time we see this uptick in deal regs.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: Our conversion goes up.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: This is the revenue impact of that thing.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: Here's the ROI percentage.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: That money is always available.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: Every CFO in the world is going, yeah, yeah, let's do more of that stuff, right?
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: No one is saying no to that.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: We're doing this golf day and there's going to be some end users and we're not sure who the end users are.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: Those are the ones that get very challenging to sign off.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and don't even get me started on sales kickoffs, uh, sponsorships, right I mean, yeah, yeah, there's a badge above a salesperson of a bar.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: It's going to really, you know, after their sick jager bomb, it's really they're going to start thinking nutanix is absolutely the brand I need to be selling, right, it's?
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: Uh, there are some black holes and I just think if we can save all the money there and really back the partners and the programs that are really generating the value, that's the bit that's really important.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: Indeed, and in our prep call, christian, you mentioned a subject that's very close to my heart.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: You said distribution is critical, and you love distribution.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: You think it's heavily misunderstood and you think it's critical to how you go to market.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: As someone who spent eight years either in distributors or running distribution strategy, that's excellent to hear.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: Please can you expand on those thoughts?
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: yeah, uh, and this is a topic that's near and dear to my career, and early in my career I spent a lot of time with distribution.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: I was at a company that we were actually in danger of closing down an entire theater operation because the cost structure was just too high, and it was only because we instituted a two-tier distribution model that we were able to survive.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: And then, after we did that, not only did we survive, we thrived.
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: So it was an experience that really opened my eyes to what distribution can be, and this is many, many moons ago.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: However, the concepts still apply, right.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: I think the biggest fallacy you might think of in distribution is that, hey, this is just where partners go to get credit lines and logistics support to move boxes.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: Ok, you know they do that, of course they do that and they're really good at that.
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: But it doesn't stop there, and you know, back in the day we used to use this term called that right for value added distributor.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: I don't know why it fell off the face of the earth, but I still seek it.
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: You know I still look for the V in my relationships, but the value to me has a lot more to do with distribution and a vendor need to be yin and yang, so I need them to be strong where I'm weak.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: I need them to listen to me when I have a need.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: I need them to give me scale, I need them to give me flexibility, and this is a mechanism that has always been receptive to playing that role.
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: I've been lucky to have really, really good distribution relationships where there's nobody on the other side that says, hey, listen, that's just the way we work Take it or leave it Quite.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: The opposite, they're like tell me more, how can we do this?
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: What if we added people that did this?
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: What if we created an SLA that did this?
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: And then the art of creating a profitability formula to sustain it is also a bit of an art.
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: Distribution program can provide what you need to fund on your own and what the distributor is going to fund on their own.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: You really have a beautiful relationship and distribution has.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: You know, for my entire career, distribution has always been in a mode of evolve or die, which you know, as they say it's.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: You know necessity is the mother of all invention, right?
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: So they're constantly, you know, being attacked from others that have figured out a mode that they don't need them anymore, either taking partners going direct with vendors in a DVAR model or, you know, the latest one is, you know, in an AWS and Microsoft, assure and GCP world, do you even need distribution?
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: I think the answer is still a resounding yes, which is need to adapt, and I'm seeing my distribution partners doing that.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: I think also the Microsofts and AWSs of the world are, you know, probably realizing that they were being naive into thinking that they didn't need distribution?
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: Know, probably realizing that they were being naive into thinking that they didn't need distribution and they're turning toward the idea that they do.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: So I'm a big believer in this.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: You know we've done a lot of creative things that if I was to sit here and list all the ones we did, you probably would be surprised.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: I didn't know that distribution could do that, and that's who they are.
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: To me, they're an easy button, they're an agent of simplicity and they're a big mechanism to de-risk my operation as a vendor.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: So that goes far beyond just doing logistics and being a bank.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: Awesome, christian.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: That's an amazing answer of how distribution has provided value, and I certainly agree with you on that and having spoken to plenty of people at Microsoft, google and AWS, I know that they value distribution enormously because of the value of what distribution can provide.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Obviously, they're not shifting boxes, they're all cloud companies, but there is a huge amount of value that those distributors can and I'm sure will provide over the next years.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: Christian, it's been excellent having you on.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: We are a partnerships podcast through and through, so we'd be remiss if we didn't ask for a referral.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: I'd love to hear who you'd think we should have on next.
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, without getting their blessing, it's hard to say their name.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: But I do have somebody in mind that I can submit to you.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: I just wouldn't want it to be published in case that person is not up into it.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: But I do have somebody for you.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: I've given this a lot of thought and somebody that's going to enjoy this dialogue and bring a lot to the table as well.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: So if you don't, mind, let's do that one offline.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: Perfect.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: Thanks, christian Well to our listeners.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed and we'll see you next week.
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Alex Cheers.