Latest / Partnerships Unraveled / 054 - Winning the Race: Strategies from Formula 1 for Partner Programs

Transcript

054 - Winning the Race: Strategies from Formula 1 for Partner Programs · Partnerships Unraveled

• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Welcome back to Park Ships Unraveled, 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 Chennext, and I'm here together with Alex Wittford, vp, park Ships at Chennext.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: Alex, how are you doing today?
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: I'm absolutely fuming, Rick, because we've decided to record a podcast comparing F1 and I have a Mercedes hat that I basically wear to work every day because I can't be bothered to do my hair and I've forgotten it.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: So I'm devastated.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: I understand, but I also do understand why you're not wearing it that often anymore lately.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, I will wear it continuously because I love Mercedes and I love Lewis Hamilton, even though, I'll be honest, the Belgian Formula One legend that is Max Verstappen is absolutely killing the game.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: Again, this is unacceptable.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: No, no.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: But seriously, to give everyone some context, I live in the Netherlands and Max Verstappen is an absolute hero here, which makes it twice as bad because he's robbing Lewis of his eighth championship and everyone here loves him.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: So if I can get a cheeky dig in and call him Belgian because he was born and raised there, I will do.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we agree on a lot of stuff, but I think this will never be the topic where we're going to.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: We'll see sense or facts or data.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: It's weird, yeah.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Well, let's try and keep this podcast friendly and productive and not get into a Max versus Lewis debate.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: The context for what we're trying to do today is we are both F1 obsessed at, like a lot of people in the industry, and I think there's some really amazing laterals that you can pull from how F1s run the teams, the data, the management, the systems.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: They are the most high performing in their industries, especially Red Bull and Mercedes.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: I think we can agree on that.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: So what can we learn from F1?
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, 100%, and I think also why it's so interesting, especially with a lot of our listeners.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: We're all an enterprise, we're all on IT, and what logos do you see on every single car everywhere in the Formula One?
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: Our industry.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: So I think that's why we thought it was very interesting indeed, because we can learn so much from that.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: But also there is actually a lot of connection between the Formula One and the technology industry.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: And we're not sure our BDRs have just downloaded their prospect list of the F1 liveries on all the cars, because it really is just the whole IT industry.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure the only reason they sponsor it is so they can get free tickets, because they are a nightmare to get a hold of 100% Great event to take your parking to right.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: I think, there's something there as well.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the whole point of the channel right Bears and drivers, is this good?
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: Awesome.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: Well, let's dive into the first parallel, which we think is the car.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: Because when you start building your partnerships motion, then the first thing you really need to think about is what kind of program are we going to design before you're going to start getting your partners in there?
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: And I think, if you look at it from that perspective, like when you start building the car, if it's such a Formula One thing, like what kind of things are you start considering or what do you need to have in place when you want to work on that?
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, so let's draw the parallel.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: So there's been a recent change in the last couple of years that there's new limitations on how you've got to design the car, and so F1 decides a few things and then the engineers get to play around within that.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: You've got to decide a strategy what are we going to do for suspension, what are we going to do for braking?
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: And you've got to pull it all together Before you even think about the track and the driver and everything else.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: You spend your time obsessing around car design, and we fundamentally think that's how people should be building a partner program.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: You should be obsessing over the individual components, how you get them to work as effectively as possible together, ultimately performing an unbelievable machine that's going to win races and races, and that's what you want from a partner program.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: And that's.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: We were just discussing how crazy it is that companies or teams like Mercedes or Red Bull, etc.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: Mclaren they have like 1200 to 1500 employees just working on that one thing eventually building the car and everything is geared around building that ultimate car.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: And I think that's something very parallel to channel, where if we're working in a global organization, we're working with so many people but eventually we're all working on that program and making that as successful as possible, because that's what we need.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: It's a hard requirement towards success.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and our head of marketing, mayhog.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: She actually worked very closely with some of the F1 teams and she was giving us an insight before this podcast started about what are some of the things that they do and their data obsessed, right, it's no accident that, despite I think there's something like 1500 unique parts on an F1 car, but there might be only half a second between them on a lap and they share no parts together, right, which is crazy when you think about it, but it's because they're measuring the performance of every single element, which is exactly what you should be doing with your partner program.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: How is our marketing performing?
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: How is our partner recruitment going?
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: How's our top partners, middle partners, bottom partners, what is our acceleration looking like?
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: All of those pieces knitted together, focusing on the minute details, which is the difference between a champion.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: Unfortunately, in this case, max Verstappen and everyone else, because they built red bull, have built the best car.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: Right, they've optimized all of those individual facets and so they can handle everything brilliantly.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: And I think before they start building, there's so much strategy going into that, because before you start the new season or start building the car For the next season, actually you need to make some very important decisions already, like do we want top speed, do we want the best agility in the corners, etc.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: Where?
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: What do we want there?
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: Because you can't do everything right.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not just that you've got to, you've got to make a commitment and a decision.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: These are the ideas and the concepts that we're going to go.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: But then they test and improve, and test and improve.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: And for anyone who doesn't follow up one closely, a team will probably come out with five to six packages to improve over the course of a season.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Where they go okay, our top speeds great, but a cornering in slow corners is not as good.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: We want to fine tune the suspension, exactly what you need to be doing with your partner program.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: You make some strategic bets, some hypotheses around how you think it should work and then, when you go, oh, our time to value, for partner recruitment, to self sustainable revenue, is actually too long.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: We've got too many steps.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: Or we can consolidate these process or we can make this work more smoothly.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: That's what you want to be doing with both your car and your partner program.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: It's all about continuous optimization there, and indeed, I agree, the only way you can do that is by actually measuring, although separate components, and I think that's also from your partner program what I Feel in a lot of conversations I'm in like sometimes we're looking to helicopter view and therefore like yeah, we're working on this and that, but like we don't go into detail there.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: And I think that's so crucial, because the only Way you can optimize is by actually knowing every step of your partner journey and what are the conversion rates to the next phase and to the next phase and when is your current bottleneck, where do we need to optimize?
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: And I think that's the thing that we could do way more with our partner program, just as formula one is doing with their cars yeah, may hug, shout out again she.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: She gave us another great piece of information that Mercedes, at the time when she worked closely with them, was the best team in the world and they were looking for no big advancements.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: In fact, their whole philosophy was we improve every individual element 1%, and it led to them having a 15 mile an hour top speed advantage Over the whole rest of the field.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: Because very rarely is it about this huge feature or this huge thing.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: It's actually just in all areas we're just a bit faster, we're just a little bit better.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: When you add up that half a second here and the quarter of a second there in the 10th there, suddenly like oh my God, they are destroying the competition, which does make me a lot happier to think about the max recently.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: But that's what you've got to drive, you've got to instill in the philosophy, in the culture of your channel.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: How do we improve this each and every single day?
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: Because if you do make it, the difference might only be a second, a lap, the second lap over 52 laps.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: That she destroying the competition, that she lived in the championship at the end of the year.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: That's what we're all working so hard for, but sometimes I think we're looking for this magical cure when actually it's just hard word.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: Grit and focus on those small details.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: And I think that's actually very valid point, because what we usually tend to do when things are not working is we're stressed, we're panicking, we want to pivot completely, but that's actually not like.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: If you keep doing that, then you throw away all your learnings.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: It's as if in Formula one you would just throw away the complete car and start rebuilding one.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: But you can't do that during the season.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: So that's why it's so important indeed to look at where are the incremental improvements that we can make it, to make the small steps towards that big end result we're all longing for.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and even if you look at Red Bull this season, right, one of the most dominant performances from any car manufacturer ever in F1.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: And yet they're still improving, right, they are still coming out with new package designs, new wings, because they're like we've got to keep going.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: We not only do we want to, not only we're winning every race, basically, but we want to keep our competitive edge, we want to embarrass our opposition and continue to strive forward and that elite mentality like I'm a big sports reader and I think everyone like lots of sports you really get to understand that elite competitive mentality and what it really takes to be the best of the best.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: I think that's actually a mentality we can also really learn from Formula one.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: Indeed, like your competition, your competition is never sitting still.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: So you need to keep moving, you need to keep innovating.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: That's the only way you can stay in front of the track, because otherwise other other cars will keep up.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: That's what we see all the time.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: Right then there's been some improvements in a certain team and all of a sudden they are in midfield instead of At the bottom, etc.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: And that's also what's happening in the channel.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: Like all your vendors, they keep launching new products there, optimizing their program.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: They are also recruiting new partners, etc.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: Just a continuous motion of improvement.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, 100% good is not good enough, right, we've got to be striving for greatness all the time and guess what, once you found it, it's only then not good enough and we've got to keep pushing.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: And for me, what I love to see when you read about people like Christian Horner and total wolf they've been in the game there.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: They run Red Bull in Mercedes respectively.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: They are just fanatical about it.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: They love their process, they love driving it forward, and it's one of the things that makes me very obsessive around business, because it's the same game, right, we're just looking for that elite competition where we can continue to improve and innovate and make progress and strides forward, and I think the channel is one of the amazing places that you can do that, because the difference between us and an F1 team is it's their F1 team.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: Right, it's an encapsulated thing, whereas in our ecosystem it's actually more complicated, because you've got to work with outside parties, you've got to bring third parties in, you've got to bring partners into your program and make it work for them.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: There's an added level of complexity requires even more ruthless focus.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, 100%.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: And I think what you also always see within Formula One is all the logos and all the data points coming back, etc.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: Like, how big of a role does data play in Formula One and what role do you think it should play in your partner program?
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, 100%.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: If you look closely at an F1 car, you'll see that they are like sellotaping the, like very minor cracks in the car to help with aero efficiency.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: They'll change something on the floor like a very like a three millimeter cut and it might make half a second difference.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: That's the level of obsession that you require.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: If we look just at when you recruit a partner and you train them and onboard them and market with them and you might only have one small thing, that's the barrier and it could be 50% of your conversion is gone.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: You're creating such huge churn.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: Or in the UK you have a channel account manager who doesn't quite know how to do the training to the right level.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: Now training's being done poorly, people are getting misquoted, deals are losing and it might take you months to calculate where that issue has gone.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: If you don't have the data and the rigor embedded into your systems, you're going to find out way too late.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: The second, that Lewis Hamilton is half a second off the pace, that car's being pulled apart and they're understanding exactly where, because you've got to measure all the small elements and then put it all together to measure the big element.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if you really look.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: What those teams are actually doing all the time, continuously, is removing the friction.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: A couple of episodes ago we reviewed some of our episodes in our first year and the most popular one was actually number two remove the friction.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: That's what they're doing on their car and what you should do with your partner program.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: Where can we remove the friction and get our partners like move through it as seamless and smooth as possible?
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, they want everything to be as smooth and as easy for the driver, because that puts the driver in the most compelling advantage to win and that makes build the best opportunity for your driver to win.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: In this analogy, your driver is your partner.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: You're looking for the right partners who are going to take the car that you've obsessed about and spend hours and hours building and get them to win a championship.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: But if it's too complicated to drive, it doesn't work.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: If the left tire isn't coordinating properly with the right, doesn't work right.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: We need to understand how all of it gels together to put our partners in the best chance to win.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's also what, what I think is so interesting and why you need to start with the car or with your partner program.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: First, you need to very clear understanding with your partner program.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: What type of customers are we going to focus?
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: What is our ICP, what is our value proposition there?
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: What type of partners fit best?
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: And then you get to that next step and the just like formula one team start looking for the Perfect drivers.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: You want to look for the perfect or the best fit partners, and that all starts with your ideal partner profile.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: We're really going to roughly define what type of drivers, what type of partners do we need in this program.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and in fact, the teams will innovate the car based around some specificities from the driver right some like a tighter front end or a looser front end, depending on what their driving Style is and that's it.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: You can't build the program in isolation.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: You've got to build the program, put the driver in it, see how it works and cater the program to put your drivers in the best chance to succeed.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: So if you've got a very engineering focused product and proposition but your program is not well designed to hire engineering focused partners, you're going to fail right, and so you got to bring it all together.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: It's got to be that cohesive motion and that's where you get greatness, like we're saying from Max and Red Bull this season, where they've got the best car, arguably the best driver on the track, and it's all coming around for utter dominance, right, one of the most dominant performance we've ever seen, and that's what you know inspires me, and I think I'd love to see people within the channel really stepping up and and having that same level of ruthless focus on winning by one second is not enough.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: How do we win by two minutes?
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that's what's so interesting and where you see how connected everything is like.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: Even if you have the best car but a really bad driver, you still Can't win.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: And the other way around if you have the best driver but it's a really poor car, you can't win.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: And it's the same with your program and your partners, like it all needs to be balanced correctly and continuous communication between the driver and the car and the people who are building the car as well, just as between your partner and everyone working at your company.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: Like that's how you keep optimizing and then you hear another board radio communication.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: Sometimes it can be a bit tough.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: It may be a bit rough as well.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: I think that's good, open and honest feedback, but that feedback loop is crucial between both areas.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, in fact we can continue the analogy much further.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: Right, if you've got a crap car and a great driver, guess what happens?
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: George Russell is at Williams and he goes.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Well, this car's not going to get me a championship.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: I'm moving to Mercedes.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: Your partners will do exactly the same thing, right the end of the day, they don't care about the team winning, they care about them winning, and partners the same.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: And you've got to build a cohesive structure where your ambitions Match their ambitions and their delivery matches your delivery.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Then you've got a case of partnership that will really take you forward.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: But if you mistreat your partner program, if you mistreat your driver, they will go and drive for another brand.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Right, and it's and it's so true in the partner ecosystem.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, 100%.
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: While you're saying this, I have to think about a conversation I had with a partner that actually said that it happens the other way around as well, that programs keep evolving and they want larger and larger partners, those big companies, so they move out the driver.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: What do you think about that?
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's why I say your ambition and delivery has to match their ambition and delivery.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: There is no right, there is just balance Right.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: So sometimes, when you're an immature channel, your driver is the one that you can afford Right, and vice versa, if you're a small partner, the car is the one that you can attract Right and you're there.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: But as you increase and as you get better on both sides, suddenly you've got Max paired with Red Bull, you've got Lewis paired with Mercedes, you've got the best partners working with the best programs, driving success and going for championships.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: And that's what you're always iterating.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: How do you progress the driver talent and how do you progress the car so that, ultimately, you can really be there at the top competing?
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think for the driver, the partner, it's the same, like the learning never stops and they need to continuously improve as well, not just the car and the program in this example, like the driver, they are continuously in the simulator, they are trying, they are training, etc.
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: That's also what you really need to ingrain in your partner that you have as much airtime together as possible, like that's the way you keep improving, you keep getting that feedback loop, etc.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: And I think that's also really important with your partners, and for me, that's enablement Like how are you continuously going to enable, how do you get partners excited to participate in that?
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: Because you need to facilitate it.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: But if there's no excitement from the partner side, there will be very little engagement there as well and improvement, and I think that's that continuous motion you want to accelerate there?
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, and one of the most interesting things about F1 is you're not actually designing one car, right?
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: Well, there is one car.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: There are lots of things that they change from track to track.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: What similarities do you see from that and what we can learn in the partner program?
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's what I really like, indeed when I think about Formula One, is that every track is so different.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: So every time they're at the new track, like you, see them configuring the car again and they need to find the right balance and the right settings and everything around it.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: And when I was thinking about it I was like, oh, that's actually very similar to your partner program as well, because you can't create a one size fits all partner program for the whole world, for for for the GP and Zandvoort here in the Netherlands, but also for the one in the US, etc.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: Etc.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: What you really need is adjustments for every area, and I think that's very region and very industry or vertical based.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: But you need to facilitate that from a partner program perspective, because that's the only way you can win in that area.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: If you don't adjust, you won't win in a certain market and it costs more money.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: That cost more time.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: But you need to build your organization around that that you can facilitate your driver in the best way for every single track or, in this case, your partner, for every single market, which can be region or geography based.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you've said the perfect word is adjustments.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: Right, you build a generalized strategy.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: So for your car you have this is my hypothesis, this is roughly what we are building but then you build three variations, four variations of the wing, of the front wing, of the suspension, of the braking, of the ride setup.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: Because, you're absolutely right, if you're high altitude in Argentina or you're in the Netherlands, it's a very, very different set of circumstances.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: So what are we doing to adjust to the market that we need, to the track that we need?
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: And so, while you'll have a broad fit strategy you're not going to have a completely different car you've got to make sure that you're setting your driver up to win in each market, and that means making small adjustments to put them in the best chance to win that race consistently.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that's pushback.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: We got from quite some vendors where they say but we simply don't have the resources to make those adjustments for every region, every vertical, etc.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: And I think we just did an episode on AI and generative AI how you can actually leverage that to make those adjustments and give them much more personalized experience for every different parking segment that you have.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, look, I haven't spoken to Toto recently, but I imagine if I went and spoke to them, they are using AI in their practices as well.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: Right, they are looking at the most efficiency possible.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: So my pushback isn't is is not, well, we can't do it.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: My question is how do you do it?
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: And there is a way, right, we can always improve efficiencies and, like we were saying earlier in the in the episode, yet we don't need 100% improvement.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: We need a 1% improvement here and a 1% improvement here and a 1% improvement here, and that might all total a second elapsed, right, and then you are destroying the competition.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: So you've got to work back from the desired goal, which is the most effective car driver track combination, and how do you get those pieces right and how do you continue to evolve and iterate?
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: It's going to take you a few variations, right, it's taking Mercedes a few variations at the moment, but ultimately, you're striving to get back to the top.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: And I think that's to touch back quickly on the data part.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: I think that's why data is so important, because if you look at those three components, data is everything and data is everywhere Within your partner program.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: You want to analyze how are my partners engaging in every aspect of the program and converting to the next phases within your partners?
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: You want to measure that very, very significantly on an individual level.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: Is this the right partner?
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: Are they progressing as we would like it to be?
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: Are they going to the next level or do we?
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: Maybe?
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: Indeed, is this not the right fit anymore and do we need to look for another partner there?
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: And also for the tracks Like do very deep market analysis have a very clear understanding when you want to go into a new market, how many ICP customers are there potentially?
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: How many partners do I then need?
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: What type of verticals are we going to surface there?
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: And if you have all this data and take the right analysis and learnings, then you have a very predictable motion towards winning the race eventually.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and what can you learn from previous races that you can take forward into new ones, right?
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: I think that's one of the things that's really interesting about F1 22 circuits that they go around each year and they might be in different parts of the world, but actually there's very similar, right, uk and Italy.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: They have two very similar, very high speed tracks, and so there's certain wing designs that the teams will use for both of those.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: What learnings can I take from my history that I can transfer into this market If we need to break into Europe?
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: What can I learn from APAC, if we need to land in APAC?
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: What can I learn from LATAM?
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: What have we done well and where do we need to improve and continue to iterate?
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: Because that's where you then get global dominance, right?
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: That's really what you're after is that we have these adjustments, that we're measuring consistently.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: We've got driver, car and track working together and suddenly we're really making making progress.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I really liked that one, indeed Like also not just closing the feedback loop between a US vendor and your partners, but also between all the different regions, all the different markets.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: That's when you will get the best car eventually, because then you get to what Red Bull luckily for me at the moment has, where you are so dominant that you're winning everywhere just because you got all the data and the good driver and learnings from all the different tracks over the last couple of years.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: And yeah, I think that's that's super interesting to think in such a way when designing your partner program and building your channel.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we, we touched on AI in a previous episode and earlier on this, but this is where predictive AI can can really help you Right, if you've got thousands or millions of data points that you can then measure, we can start to get AI to gather those learnings and give suggestions, implementing those testing and embedding that into your continuous practice.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: That's going to drive you rate of innovation Awesome.
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: Well, I would say, let's hope for an exciting end of this season 2023,.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: I think, indeed, I really enjoyed talking about the Formula One.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: There are a lot of similarities with with the channel there, indeed, like your car the car that needs to be designed versus your parking program that needs to be designed, finding the perfect drivers, finding the perfect partners and adjusting per track, just like you need to adjust your partner program per vertical, per region, to make the best, to make the best to get to the best results.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: Thank you for sharing today, alex.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: I hope our listeners enjoyed this as well and see you next week.