Latest / Partnerships Unraveled / 031 - Gear your Partner Journey towards TTV

Transcript

031 - Gear your Partner Journey towards TTV · Partnerships Unraveled

• 0:08
  Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled.
• 0:11
  The podcast where we unravel the mysteries of partnerships and channel on a weekly basis.
• 0:17
  My name is Rick van den Bosch and I'm the CEO and founder of Channext.
• 0:20
  And I'm here together with Alex Whitford, VP partners at Channext.
• 0:23
  Alex, how are you doing today?
• 0:23
  Yeah, really good.
• 0:26
  One day before I go on annual leave to get married.
• 0:28
  So yeah, nerves are high, but apart from that we're doing well.
• 0:31
  I can imagine the big day next week.
• 0:34
  Yeah, seven days and yeah, I'll be a husband.
• 0:36
  That's a crazy thought.
• 0:36
  Very happy for you.
• 0:38
  Yeah, thanks man.
• 0:38
  Yeah, I'm excited.
• 0:40
  Love it.
• 0:40
  Well, let's dive into the topic of today because lately we've seen a lot of LinkedIn posts, a lot of chatting, also between the two of us, but also with customers around the topic of time to value in partnerships and the importance of it.
• 0:57
  What would your definition of time to value be?
• 1:00
  Yes, so time to value is the metric that we see a lot in sort of direct sales, which is sort of time to first deal.
• 1:06
  And I think that's a really good metric to sort of position within the channel.
• 1:10
  So when is that first revenue achieved by a newly onboarded partner?
• 1:15
  Yeah.
• 1:15
  So how do you bring them?
• 1:17
  As soon as possible from signing the partner agreement to that moment where they have that first win, that milestone of signing the first deal.
• 1:24
  Yeah, and that's important for a couple of reasons.
• 1:27
  I think there's an internal reason and an external reason.
• 1:29
  The internal reason is it's a metric that you can discuss internally around.
• 1:34
  Okay, we recruited this partners and their TTV was three months and our TTV average is going down.
• 1:41
  And that's a really great barometer to sell internally around the success of your new partner programme or your new philosophy or your new approach.
• 1:49
  But today we're going to discuss the external reason, which is why it's important for the partner.
• 1:54
  Right.
• 1:54
  And there's a couple of reasons.
• 1:56
  Revenue drives engagement, engagement drives revenue.
• 1:58
  That's a circle.
• 1:59
  And that TTV is that first view on that first deal.
• 2:03
  That's something to work towards and something to celebrate.
• 2:05
  We often talk about in customer success, the renewal is one in the onboarding.
• 2:11
  The same is true within partnerships, which is the sort of success long term is one within the onboarding.
• 2:18
  And in some ways the onboarding is finished to a degree or you enter the second phase of onboarding.
• 2:24
  Once you've hit TTV, once you've closed that first deal.
• 2:28
  I think it's very close.
• 2:29
  If you look at the customer success, but also maybe more general in life, it's really that first impression.
• 2:34
  Right?
• 2:35
  Like someone gets on board, you are massively excited.
• 2:38
  That's always like when you build up towards signing the partner agreement, you get more and more excited together with your partner.
• 2:43
  But then I think that's what we see a lot.
• 2:45
  If you haven't got that piece sorted properly and the partner doesn't feel that excitement and that engagement, then the engagement will drop and you will lose the partner again.
• 2:54
  Well, what's crucial there in that time to value is, okay, how can we speed up that process as much as possible?
• 3:01
  Where we get the partner from our first touchpoint to eventually getting their first revenue.
• 3:06
  Because that's where you will get into a more self sustainable way of working, so to say.
• 3:11
  Because then they are excited, they start looking for customers, they start closing customers and you get more in like a real partnership in the beginning.
• 3:18
  You're very much like getting to know each other and really working towards finding the right fit there.
• 3:23
  Yeah, 100%.
• 3:24
  I think we speak a lot about this in entrepreneurship.
• 3:27
  That naivety bias.
• 3:29
  When you first start something, you go, oh my god, it's going to be so easy.
• 3:33
  We're going to become a billion dollar company in three years and everything is really easy because you don't understand the challenges.
• 3:40
  The same is true of the partnership, right?
• 3:41
  When people sign a new vendor, they go, this is going to be great, we're going to conquer the world, everything's going to be easy.
• 3:47
  And then through the onboarding and through those first initial sales cycles, you realise, oh, okay, there's challenges that we didn't understand fully and now we understand them.
• 3:57
  Our perception and our understanding means, okay, this is going to be a lot more difficult than we first thought.
• 4:02
  That TTV is so critical because that's the win.
• 4:05
  That's that, okay, we're through the initial challenges, we've got some revenue flowing into the business, that drives engagement, that drives continuous progress, that drives excitement.
• 4:14
  And so shortening that onboarding period to as small as possible to drive towards TTV is critical.
• 4:21
  I also liked what you were saying about time to value for internal reporting because of course, a lot of our listeners are also building their programme or creating a new programme and then it's always internally, right, reporting on the ROI and what do we see as a result of there?
• 4:34
  So that TTV actually is a brilliant metric to focus on, especially in the beginning of building your partner programme, because you can massively increase the speed there in terms of showing internally, like, hey, look, guys, I'm bringing a lot of partners in a short period of time towards their first revenue, which is first revenue for us as a programme as well.
• 4:54
  Yeah.
• 4:55
  And I think more and more as we get into discussing channel and discussing partnerships in total, we're able to draw similarities to other forms of business.
• 5:04
  But when we look at our as Channext's pipeline, we measure a few different things, right?
• 5:09
  And one of them is deal velocity, which realistically is the same metric as TTV.
• 5:14
  And you will make changes to speed up deal velocity because it's important, it helps you grow more effectively.
• 5:19
  TTV is exactly the same way, we've done loads of podcasts around the importance of driving more data into the channel and how that can allow you to be very precise with your actions.
• 5:30
  And so if you're not measuring TTV today, you should be because that's going to get a really clear understanding.
• 5:36
  How quickly can we scale when we need to, and then how much effort do we need to put into the onboarding?
• 5:43
  And if that is six months, and actually we think it can be three months, you want to be working very, very hard to streamline that process.
• 5:49
  You get to TTV more effectively.
• 5:51
  Yeah, I agree there.
• 5:52
  And I think it's also a really great metric, actually, within your programme to continuously measure.
• 5:58
  I think if I look at us here at Channext, for example, we are onboarding hundreds of partners as well per month.
• 6:04
  And what we see there is that what we are measuring is also time to value, which for us is a partner that actually connects.
• 6:10
  And I think that's a great way, for example, for me as a CEO that I have, like, I don't know it exactly on a daily basis, of course, like how are we doing it, et cetera.
• 6:20
  But it's a brilliant way for me of seeing is the time to value shortening there for the partners, because then we know that our messaging is getting better, we are helping the partners quicker, it's getting easier for them.
• 6:32
  So there are a lot of learnings there.
• 6:34
  When you see that it's continuously decreasing or the other way around, of course, when it's increasing, is it like, hey, do we need to tweak some things again?
• 6:42
  Yeah, 100%.
• 6:43
  And even we do deal analysis on our side and we see that, oh, actually deal velocity is different for outbound deals as opposed to inbound deals.
• 6:51
  Well, understanding those metrics and not just measuring TTV, but the impact of TTV, what affects that differently?
• 6:59
  If inbound partners are onboarding really quickly, well, great, then maybe we need to focus on more two partner marketing so that people go, oh, actually, I'd love to sell this brand, that speeds up TTV, that speeds up conversion, that speeds up growth.
• 7:14
  Those are all the measurement points you want to understand.
• 7:17
  And then you can become a very strategic programme director, right where you go, I'm going to make these three precise changes to impact, not just the top line number, not just the breadth of partners, not just the depth of partners, but time to value as well, because that's going to drive sustainable growth.
• 7:33
  Yeah, I think I dare to say that time to value is the number one metric you should measure in the partner onboarding phase.
• 7:39
  Yeah, I think so, because I think if your TTV is really short, you know, you can scale wider.
• 7:44
  If your TTV is really long and you've got lots of manual intervention because typically that's why TTV will be quite a long process, then you know, you can't scale wide.
• 7:52
  Right?
• 7:53
  And we talk a lot about only scale what's winning, only scale what works.
• 7:58
  And so if you're going, oh, well, it takes us nine months to get the first deal over the line, well, that's okay.
• 8:04
  If a sales cycle is seven months, well, okay, that means it's two months to on board and then from there you get first deals in.
• 8:10
  But really you want to make that as short as possible, as automated as possible, because then you can scale wide.
• 8:16
  And if I try to put myself in the shoes of a partner for a moment, that's literally the number one thing they want as well.
• 8:23
  We always keep saying it, right.
• 8:24
  Where revenue goes, attention flows.
• 8:27
  And that's so true in the channel.
• 8:28
  So within that onboarding phase, that's like your first impression and you can only make one first impression.
• 8:35
  So, like, you get a new partner on board and the quicker you can bring them to time to revenue and time to value there, then the better you actually engage them as well, because the partner then feels that buzz.
• 8:46
  Well, if it's the other way around and the time to value is very long, then at a certain moment, the partners gets distracted, they become unhappy and they start looking at other vendors because maybe there they feel they can do the actual revenue.
• 8:59
  So the quicker you can get attraction, the more engaged you will get your partners.
• 9:03
  Yeah, exactly.
• 9:03
  And I think you want to be focusing on the dynamics that drive that forward very effectively.
• 9:10
  Right.
• 9:10
  It becomes once you're measuring that data and once you understand how you can influence the market, you can prioritise the partner's benefit.
• 9:18
  And the partner's benefit is revenue.
• 9:20
  It's always revenue.
• 9:21
  They want to see growth very quickly.
• 9:23
  And that's why I love working within the channel, because we're actually all on the same team, right.
• 9:27
  Partner's win is my win and vice versa.
• 9:29
  And so let's gear our partner programme to make us successful by making the partner successful.
• 9:34
  Yeah, the partner success is your success, right?
• 9:38
  Yeah.
• 9:38
  There we go.
• 9:39
  It's on our T-shirts, it's on our branding.
• 9:41
  We love that message.
• 9:41
  Love it.
• 9:43
  I think what I was thinking to just make this a super practical and technical podcast as well.
• 9:48
  So I think it's quite clear why time to value is so important.
• 9:52
  And we just like to brainstorm a little bit, like, what kind of things can you do to reduce the time to value?
• 9:57
  And maybe let's start with once you have signed the partner agreement, or like you always say, it starts before that a little bit already.
• 10:05
  But what's the first thing that you need to have in place to make sure you get the right time to value there?
• 10:12
  Yeah, the number one thing you want to do to improve time to value is set clear expectations.
• 10:17
  Right.
• 10:17
  That's the first thing you always have to start with if your projected time to value is three months, tell them it's three months because then that puts a gate on the actions that need to be done leading to that deadline.
• 10:29
  We talk a lot within the business and it's part of the mentorship programme that I run around what makes up a business plan?
• 10:35
  Three things where are we going, how are we going to get there and how long will it take?
• 10:39
  You need to define how long will it take?
• 10:42
  Because then you can define the steps to getting where you're going.
• 10:44
  Right?
• 10:45
  And so TTV is first deal, then you work backwards in terms of deadline.
• 10:49
  What are the individual steps that we need to take to get to there effectively?
• 10:53
  That's going to involve training, marketing, sales, enablement, content, all of the pieces together, but you're working back from that deadline.
• 11:02
  So you really start with a partner success plan there indeed with those very clear expectations.
• 11:06
  I really like what you're saying, like tell them where the finish line is because that's always very motivating, right.
• 11:12
  That you know where you are working towards, but also when do you need to get there?
• 11:16
  Just starts when you are running a marathon.
• 11:18
  You want to do it within 4 hours, then you run very very fast in the end to make sure you get it to 4 hours.
• 11:24
  And I think that's really the thing there.
• 11:26
  Indeed if you have those very clear expectations, but also the milestones in between.
• 11:30
  So you can have some wins because usually in partnerships the time to value is not two weeks.
• 11:35
  So it's very important to keep that momentum right.
• 11:37
  That you have the in between wins as well.
• 11:39
  Certain actions of maybe a first demo towards a first prospect together and things like that.
• 11:46
  I think there's a lot to win there if you do that properly because oftentimes we sign the partner agreement and then hope that the success will follow.
• 11:54
  But it's actually the other way around.
• 11:55
  You need to start with what the success needs to look like and then work in the process to make sure you get the success.
• 12:01
  Yeah.
• 12:01
  And be able to course correct as you go.
• 12:04
  Right.
• 12:04
  Very rarely will an automated plan work at scale flawlessly.
• 12:10
  In fact, when I say rarely, I mean literally never.
• 12:12
  Right?
• 12:12
  That doesn't work.
• 12:13
  But just simple maths for you.
• 12:15
  If there's ten steps in a plan, you need to get it done within twelve weeks.
• 12:18
  You're averaging a plan every week.
• 12:20
  Every step, every week.
• 12:20
  Right.
• 12:22
  And then what happens if between week four and week six you haven't done any movement for whatever, someone's on holiday or something wasn't done, something fell through the cracks.
• 12:30
  You need an alert system, whether that's automated or manual to flag to someone to say we are behind track now.
• 12:37
  We need to work twice as fast for the next couple of weeks to get back on track and really drive the progression forward and having that measurement system.
• 12:44
  I talk a lot when we talk about how to build a business plan.
• 12:47
  Where are we going?
• 12:47
  How are we going to get there?
• 12:49
  When are we going to get there?
• 12:49
  By think of yourself like a Satnav, right?
• 12:52
  Satnav does a few things, tells you the direction, tells you when you're going to get there, but it course corrects when you deviate from the path or you took a wrong turn and need you to turn around.
• 13:02
  That's important whenever you build a business plan, because no one will follow the map flawlessly.
• 13:08
  And I think there what triggers me there, indeed, first of all, what's a Satnav?
• 13:14
  Satnav is like Google Maps, so, yeah, that's an old word.
• 13:17
  I'm showing my age now.
• 13:17
  Satnavs don't exist.
• 13:19
  It's just what your iPhone does.
• 13:21
  Awesome.
• 13:22
  But I really like the analogy and I think there's a lot to learn there.
• 13:26
  And then my question at the moment so you have the plan, you also have the triggers and what's, like the ideal reporting and meeting cadence with your partners during that onboarding to get them to that time to value.
• 13:38
  Yeah, exactly.
• 13:39
  And the other bit you want to do is roles and responsibilities, right?
• 13:41
  Because the vendor is going to play a role, a distributor may play a role and a partner is going to play a role.
• 13:45
  And that's also a cross functional role.
• 13:47
  It's salespeople, it's marketing people's, technical, It's operations.
• 13:50
  Right.
• 13:50
  And so whether that's a Racy document, whether it's a Gantt chart, you want the mechanism to be able to break down all of those steps with clear deadlines, with clear roles and responsibilities, with a clear action plan for each of those steps.
• 14:02
  It becomes very, very easy to execute if the plan is very detailed.
• 14:09
  And the best way to make the plan detailed enough, if you want a litmus test, give it to someone who doesn't work in the channel, get them to explain it back to you.
• 14:17
  If they can't explain it back to you, your plan's not good enough.
• 14:20
  Right.
• 14:20
  It's the old Albert Einstein quote, if you can't teach a six year old the thing and then get that six year old to teach another six year old, you didn't explain it well enough.
• 14:28
  And I like that philosophy because it forces the programme manager or the programme director or the salesperson to be able to outline incredibly clearly all of the steps.
• 14:39
  And that's one of the things then, that becomes very easy to automate because you've broken down exactly what you need to do.
• 14:45
  Yeah, I think with roles and responsibilities, that's actually a very good tip as well.
• 14:50
  Like, if you look at the partner journey and you are looking especially then at the beginning of the partner journey, you're onboarding.
• 14:56
  Like, how do you get your partners to time to value as quick as possible?
• 14:59
  You need to figure out which stakeholders do you need, in which part of the partners journey.
• 15:04
  Because if you find out that and you know, okay, I know I need to do these five steps to get my partners from signing the agreement to their first revenue.
• 15:14
  But in what order do you need them and which stakeholders do you need early on?
• 15:17
  Because if you know that in the second step you need sales and sales, you haven't networked into the sales team of the partners yet, then you are already for sure going to get delay there in that part of the onboarding.
• 15:28
  So that's also a thing you can be super proactive in if you have such a clear success plan, but also a clear view of your partner journey.
• 15:35
  Who do I need to involve at what time to get my partners to success and time to value as soon as possible?
• 15:41
  1000%.
• 15:42
  I can't tell you how many partner plans have fallen over because we didn't get the right senior stakeholder buy in.
• 15:47
  It not just stakeholder buy in, oh, we didn't get sales suddenly, oh, we need sales to do this.
• 15:52
  And the sales director goes, I've never even heard of this brand, I've never approved that we were doing this.
• 15:58
  And it was someone else within the business who said, oh, we need to go this direction or vice versa.
• 16:01
  Sales want to do it.
• 16:03
  CEO is not bought in, marketing's not bought in, tech's not bought in.
• 16:06
  And suddenly step six, seven and eight, which sit with tech, we're going, well, no, I've got other priorities.
• 16:12
  And so getting senior buy in, making sure that everyone is baselined on the plan, everyone has very clear expectations, but why they are doing it as well, then it's much easier to get the buy in, right?
• 16:24
  It's not just, oh, we think this is a good brand, we think this brand is going to deliver us x amount of value over this much time.
• 16:30
  That's why clear expectation setting is so important.
• 16:33
  Yeah, I like that executive stakeholder as well and it makes me think of how we do sales.
• 16:37
  For example, we're always asking our customers, like, what does the buying process look like, who needs to be involved?
• 16:43
  I think that's a crucial part pre signing the agreement as well, that you really get a very clear view of your partner.
• 16:49
  What does your partner process usually looks like in terms of collaboration?
• 16:53
  Who needs to be involved, who are the key influences in your organisations that make vendor relationships successful or less successful?
• 17:02
  And I think then very quickly you will find out what you say, who are the executive stakeholders as well, who are the salespeople, et cetera.
• 17:09
  And you have like a full account map of your partner already before you even start the partner agreement.
• 17:15
  And that will really help you to be very strategic and proactive in your approach towards them.
• 17:20
  Yeah.
• 17:21
  What's interesting there is you touched on we ask obviously buying questions, right?
• 17:25
  In terms of who's got to sign this off.
• 17:28
  When does this need to go to legal?
• 17:28
  That's actually one step.
• 17:31
  The other step that we always do is here's the operational rollout right here's when we're going to recruit partners in Germany versus here's when we're going to recruit partners in the US versus Australia and we roll that out sometimes that plan is a three year recruitment and enablement and driven plan that's done pre contract.
• 17:49
  Why?
• 17:49
  Because we know a fast start is critical to success.
• 17:53
  And so we want the stakeholders bought in before the contract's even done.
• 17:57
  Because that allows us within month one to already start to deliver some level of progress and some level of value.
• 18:03
  The amount of times I see a contract signed in December, nothing's happened in March, guess what?
• 18:08
  You shouldn't have signed the contract because if nothing's happened for three months, you've now got to go and get buy in and you're actually starting from a negative position because people have already written you off to some degree.
• 18:18
  So again, TTV is so important for that reason and you want to be doing that not just in the onboarding process ahead of even signing.
• 18:26
  I like that.
• 18:26
  And I think it's also very similar there to direct sales where you really want to have everything on the table before you sign and have the start date of your contract because they are going to evaluate you from the start date of your contract.
• 18:40
  That's literally also in partnerships and that's also again with that time to value if you know they are not going to do anything until the 1st of February, put the start date on 1st of February with a very clear success plan.
• 18:51
  Make sure you have all the stakeholders there and then you can really kick-start very quickly and also show your partner all the time hey, look at this, we're only two weeks in.
• 19:00
  We already have done this, this and that, or we're one off and we're already achieved this result.
• 19:05
  And I think there you can really show the partners and your internal team as well the success that you're having there.
• 19:11
  Yeah, an under promise over deliver, right?
• 19:13
  I know it's an overused and almost obvious statement, but if you set out a twelve week plan and you set the expectations on twelve weeks, build some fat into that plan so that you know you're going to hit a twelve week deadline and then try and hit it in eight.
• 19:26
  Right.
• 19:27
  Don't just move the deadline forward and use that as a time pressure to move the process in a way that's going to fail expectations internally and externally.
• 19:36
  And I think you raise a really great point when you're doing direct sales.
• 19:40
  You sign a contract, the contract has a start date, therefore has a billing date.
• 19:44
  Right.
• 19:44
  And so there is an incumbency on that agreement to deliver value very, very quickly.
• 19:49
  Because if you're paying for it and you've not made any progress for three months.
• 19:52
  That's how you churn.
• 19:53
  What's interesting is some people don't take the same level of care with a partnership because there's no billing involved, right?
• 20:00
  You're not charging the partner anything and therefore, oh, we can move a bit slower.
• 20:05
  What you don't realise is resource expectation and opinion are the cost that you're paying, right?
• 20:11
  If you're using up tech resource that could be being done elsewhere and then there's no value driven from that.
• 20:18
  In a quick period of time you have cost the partner money and that partner's perception will drop and that will impact your ongoing relationship.
• 20:26
  So regardless of if there's dollars flowing between you and the partner, there is a cost associated.
• 20:32
  Yeah, I think that's a great one indeed.
• 20:34
  And that's also how they are continuously evaluating you there.
• 20:38
  Just while we're talking, I got a tip, I think, for our listeners in my mind where I'm thinking, okay, how do you speed up time to value as quick as possible, align your partner onboarding journey as much as possible with your customer journey.
• 20:52
  And that's what I see going wrong a lot or going wrong like I think it should have a different approach because what do we see as soon as a partner gets on board?
• 21:02
  We start with the technical training so people understand the product, then we start doing some sales enablement so the salespeople can talk about it and only then we start thinking about can we do some marketing, et cetera.
• 21:13
  Well, if you look at what a customer journey looks like, you first do marketing to find new customers, then you do sales to close customers and then you get implementation and customer success where you need the technical knowledge as well.
• 21:24
  And that's something where I'm thinking about a lot in partner onboarding journey we should swap a lot of things, so we should start with marketing.
• 21:32
  Find customers together as soon as possible.
• 21:35
  So create a joint value proposition, send that out to your combined end users, make sure you get new meetings, conversations, et cetera.
• 21:42
  During that process, parallel, make sure you enable the salespeople in the correct way.
• 21:47
  So yes, of course, do some product training, but only the things they really need to know to position it and only then start doing all the technical training, et cetera.
• 21:55
  So you're ready once that first deal is signed to actually provide value as well and implement it.
• 22:02
  And I think if you align your partners journey with your customer journey there, there's a lot of value for the partner and for the end user.
• 22:09
  Yeah, and there's a really key reason why people don't do that, the way you're talking, which I think is the right way, and that's because there is a lack of support given to partners, right?
• 22:18
  So partners don't want to market something that then lands at a salesperson who doesn't know the problem or the product, or they sell the product and the technical team aren't there to do pre and post sale support because they're not on boarded.
• 22:31
  Right.
• 22:31
  And so you can absolutely understand why partners go, no, I need tech onboarding first because they're going to need to be able to support the product.
• 22:37
  Then I need sales and then I need marketing, obviously horrendous for TTV, right.
• 22:43
  Because like you say, that means we're going to do six months of work and then we're going to start marketing the product.
• 22:47
  Right, well, okay, then it's the three month sales cycle.
• 22:49
  That's how you get a nine month TTV.
• 22:51
  And you're right, you want to do it the other way around, but partners are going to be super defensive to say, no, we're not doing that because I'm going to get a bad reputation then because we don't know how to technically support it or sell it effectively.
• 23:02
  Right.
• 23:02
  How do you solve that?
• 23:04
  Easy.
• 23:04
  The vendor has very clear expectations with the partner.
• 23:08
  Here's how we will support you for the first 2345 deals from a technical perspective, and here's how we will support you for the first 2345 deals from a sales perspective.
• 23:17
  Oh, great, I can just hand the opportunity over to you.
• 23:20
  We'll co sell it together.
• 23:22
  We can in fact use that as a training experience tip and then a technical perspective, we can use that as a training experience tip.
• 23:28
  Right.
• 23:28
  That's the whole purpose.
• 23:30
  Then you can, invert the entire game, start marketing day one.
• 23:34
  And then as the opportunities start being generated, you've got a co sell and a co tech proposition and it becomes super, super tangible.
• 23:42
  That's how you radically shorten TTV.
• 23:45
  It's a great point, Rick.
• 23:46
  Yeah, I also like this last one because what you get there, again, as comparable as when you onboard a new customer in the beginning, you have much more touchpoints than later on.
• 23:56
  And I think there's a lot to learn there from your 3 X 3 rule.
• 23:59
  Would you share that with our listeners as well?
• 24:02
  Like, how could you implement the 3?
• 24:04
  What is the 3 X 3 rule and how could you implement that in your partner onboarding journey?
• 24:09
  Sure, it's a philosophy that I have for management and it's also a philosophy I have for sort of channel drivers because I think it's the same thing.
• 24:15
  So there's a nine step process to fully delegate something down and it's three by three by three.
• 24:22
  And so what I do is we'll sit together and we'll co sell a proposition and so we'll go into a meeting but you won't do any talking.
• 24:29
  I will do all the talking, all the sales, all the process for the first three steps.
• 24:33
  Then for the next three meetings, we'll do it about 50 50 and you'll try and take on much more of the conversation.
• 24:40
  And then for the next three meetings, you'll do all the conversation.
• 24:43
  I won't say a word.
• 24:44
  I'm there as a supporting mechanism if needed, but realistically, I.
• 24:48
  Shouldn't have to say anything because we've done six meetings together and I just feedback afterwards.
• 24:53
  What's really great about that is for the 10th meeting, I don't need to be involved.
• 24:57
  It's fully delegated.
• 24:59
  It's a great way to train people in your business, and it's an even better way to train businesses.
• 25:04
  And like you say, what's great about marketing first is we can do the three by three by three because they're there, right?
• 25:11
  They're there.
• 25:12
  We can actually get on the presales call together.
• 25:14
  We can get on the post sales call together.
• 25:16
  We can do an installation together that speeds up TTV, speeds up vendor growth, but it also gets partner buy in just absolutely rocketing.
• 25:24
  Yeah, I think that's a great one because then you can start marketing immediately.
• 25:28
  But give your partners also the assurance like, hey, don't worry, I'm going with you.
• 25:33
  All the first calls we're going to have, we're going to do the sales together, et cetera, I'm going to teach you as well.
• 25:38
  But you can massively increase that time to value because actually you push it forward.
• 25:44
  Like, maybe it should be your first milestone.
• 25:46
  We communicate to our customer base together that we have this new partnership, that we're going to launch it, et cetera.
• 25:51
  And from there on, don't worry, we'll make sure to allocate some resources for you to join sales calls if we need it.
• 25:58
  We can even put like a technical engineer or sales engineer from us in those calls.
• 26:05
  And I think there you have the assurance for the partner that they are not worried of that and the advantage for you as a vendor and the partner that you start going to market as soon as possible.
• 26:15
  Yes.
• 26:16
  This is why TTV is such an important thing to track within your channel, which I'll be honest, I would suggest about 95% of businesses aren't tracking TTV at all.
• 26:26
  They're tracking deal reg, they're tracking revenue, they're tracking growth, but they're not tracking the efficacy of widening their channel base.
• 26:36
  And a great way to widen your channel base is to reduce TTV.
• 26:39
  And all the sort of areas that we've discussed today, I think are phenomenal barometers to bring that forward.
• 26:45
  But it's focusing on that partner proposition, right?
• 26:48
  It's focusing on getting the partner successful as quickly as possible.
• 26:51
  That's why TTV is such a great barometer.
• 26:54
  Success of partnerships is created during the onboarding, and that a successful onboarding is created by decreasing the time to value as much as possible.
• 27:03
  Thank you very much, Alex, for today.
• 27:05
  Enjoy your wedding next week.
• 27:07
  Thank you to our listeners and see you next week.