Latest / Partnerships Unraveled / 033 - Bridge the Partner Recruit -> Revenue Gap - Part 1/5

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033 - Bridge the Partner Recruit -> Revenue Gap - Part 1/5 · Partnerships Unraveled

• 0:07
  Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries of partnerships and channel on a weekly basis.
• 0:15
  My name is Rick van der Bosch, and I'm the CEO and founder at Channext.
• 0:19
  And I'm here together with Alex Whitford.
• 0:21
  VP partners at Channext.
• 0:22
  Alex, how are you doing today?
• 0:22
  I'm doing well.
• 0:24
  I've just about got my face paint off from Kings Day, which is good, because I was looking like an orange mess.
• 0:30
  Definitely cheque out my LinkedIn for a highly embarrassing photo, but, yeah, it was a good day.
• 0:35
  How was yours?
• 0:35
  What's?
• 0:36
  Your first Kings Day, wasn't it?
• 0:37
  Yeah, which is terrible form for me, because I've been together with my wife for now nine years and, yeah, she's Dutch and it's my first ever Kingsday.
• 0:46
  It was well worth the wait, though.
• 0:46
  It was good fun.
• 0:48
  Yeah.
• 0:49
  For our listeners who are not acquainted with what King's Day is, we live here in the Netherlands and we still have monarchy.
• 0:55
  So our king, Willem Alexander, it was his birthday on the 27 April, and then it's a very weird occasion, like, the full country turns orange.
• 1:04
  Like, literally the full country turns orange.
• 1:06
  But it's always a really fun day.
• 1:06
  It was really good.
• 1:09
  And, yeah, I've never seen more bright orange suits in my life.
• 1:13
  I saw, I think, maybe 40 people in bright orange suits.
• 1:17
  Yeah, it was good fun.
• 1:17
  Good fun.
• 1:18
  Yeah.
• 1:19
  It's a bit similar to world championships, but then timestamp.
• 1:22
  Yeah, exactly.
• 1:23
  It's like the football, but yeah, everyone is doing it.
• 1:26
  Yeah, it was good fun.
• 1:26
  Yeah.
• 1:28
  Awesome.
• 1:28
  I think we also have something fun to announce, actually, because today marks the kick off of our five part series around the topic that we hear time and time again with every vendor we're speaking with at the moment, which is the partner recruit to revenue gap.
• 1:43
  And, Alex, in your words, what is the partner recruit to revenue gap?
• 1:47
  Sure, it's the process where you go from recruiting a partner to self sustaining revenue, how you get them through the onboarding engagement training cycle to selling and marketing for their first opportunity and ultimately closing that first opportunity and into that sort of self sufficient revolution.
• 2:07
  It's never quite fully self sufficient, but it's that journey time between there.
• 2:11
  And I think it's a wonderful sort of barometer on a channel health to see how many of your partners get to self sufficient revenue, what the dropout is, but also how long does that process take.
• 2:24
  And really, you're looking to drive the tightest funnel, so there's almost no dropout, but also the shortest time frame from recruiting the partner all the way through to self sustaining revenue.
• 2:35
  Yeah, I think actually, that's a super important metric.
• 2:37
  We need to start measuring, like, end to end.
• 2:40
  Indeed, how many partners registered for my programme and how many partners eventually got into that self sustainable revenue motion.
• 2:47
  Because that's your conversion, right?
• 2:49
  Then you can literally create forecasts for next year.
• 2:52
  Like, how many partners do we need to register to eventually get to the revenue target we need to hit?
• 2:57
  Yeah.
• 2:58
  Channext Partners Velocity and Channext Partner Conversion.
• 3:01
  Incoming trademark.
• 3:02
  I think absolutely.
• 3:03
  For me it's one of the most critical metrics that you can have, and I know it's a metric.
• 3:09
  When I was at Zoom, I think we recruited something like 1200 partners in two years.
• 3:14
  And actually we should have been tracking partner velocity and partner conversion because they're two critical data points that really say, do you need to recruit that many partners?
• 3:23
  Or actually could you have recruited half those partners?
• 3:26
  But massively improved conversion and massively improved velocity.
• 3:29
  And I think those two pieces are so critical.
• 3:32
  If you speak to any SaaS organisation out there, they'll talk about deal velocity and deal conversion as even just as important as total revenue, because the ability to do it very efficiently means you can have a small sales team or a lean sales team.
• 3:46
  And really the ambition is to have a lean channel that effectively recruits the right type of partners, actively gets those partners through onboarded engaged, self co-marketing, co-selling and ultimately to that self sustaining revenue.
• 4:00
  What's the conversion through that whole process and how quickly are we taking partners through that process?
• 4:05
  Yeah, and I think the reason why we're kickstarting this series actually is that we call it the Partner Recruit to Revenue Gap.
• 4:12
  So there is a gap between the two of them.
• 4:14
  And what we talk about a lot with our customers and the people who are in our sales cycle as well is that they tell us we want to focus on breadth, like we want to get more partners, but we also want to focus on depth.
• 4:26
  But almost no one really knows.
• 4:28
  How do we make sure that we keep both of them in balance?
• 4:31
  I think we also did an episode around this, a couple of episodes back, like Partner Recruitment quantity or quality?
• 4:37
  How do you make sure that you get the right quantity, but at the same time maintain the right level of quality and therefore indeed bring those partners, make sure they don't fall into the gap, but you actually bring them from recruit to self sustainable revenue as quick and as smoothly as possible.
• 4:51
  Yeah, for sure.
• 4:53
  For me, I just call it operational lag.
• 4:53
  Right.
• 4:56
  The more failure there is, or the slower the partner moves through the process, the more partners you have to speak to, the more partner managers you have to fight, the wider the channel you need to build.
• 5:07
  I would much rather hit my target with ten partners than 100 partners.
• 5:11
  And so if I can build a process that really actively I recruit the right partners and I take them through that process very efficiently and very effectively, means I need less partners to hit target, means I can drive a tighter level of focus.
• 5:24
  It means each partner is going to have a bigger wallet share of the total channel.
• 5:27
  All of those are huge benefits and really what you want to be striving to, but every time you speak to a partner, and that partner ultimately doesn't convert, is some lag involved into that process.
• 5:39
  Now, a bit of lag is always advisable.
• 5:41
  You want to make sure that you're qualifying each other in and out, but also you want to make sure that you're driving at a velocity that really helps your business scale.
• 5:49
  Yeah, I fully agree there and I think that's one of the things I hear all the time.
• 5:53
  We are recruiting all those partners, but they are turning inactive again, a lot of people are asking, how do I keep the attention of partners?
• 6:02
  And time and time again, we keep saying that the number one way to keep the attention of your partners is by generating revenue with slash for them, because that's what they all are longing for.
• 6:12
  And if you can show them that with you, they have the highest opportunity of growing their business in the optimum way, that's the ultimate way to keep their attention and therefore you can guide them through your partner programme.
• 6:23
  Yeah, for sure.
• 6:23
  We talk a lot, right?
• 6:24
  Revenue drives engagement and engagement drives revenue.
• 6:27
  The trick is you've got to get them into that flywheel initially and that really is the recruitment to revenue gap.
• 6:35
  How do we get them in that flywheel?
• 6:36
  And then maybe we can do another part further down the line where we talk about spinning that flywheel as fast as possible so that partners are consistently getting revenue, which is keeping them engaged, which is driving more revenue.
• 6:47
  You want to keep that spinning very, very quickly, but until then, you want to make sure you get partners into that flywheel very, very effectively.
• 6:55
  Yeah, I actually like that idea and that's maybe also for our listeners, like the key focus of the upcoming episodes, and today as well, is how do you get your partners as quick as possible once you've recruited them towards its self sustainable revenue.
• 7:09
  And we have four topics there.
• 7:10
  Next episode we're going to talk about onboarding, then we're going to talk about training and enablement, then we're going to talk about co-marketing and finally around co-selling.
• 7:19
  So indeed with the end goal that your partners really knows how to find, close, renew and upsell a customer on their own.
• 7:28
  Yeah, for sure.
• 7:29
  And that's really what we're all striving for.
• 7:32
  It's been brilliant over the last few months because me and you have been working on this theory and working on this plan and working out how to sort of drive channel behaviour.
• 7:40
  And then we've branded it and explained this to lots of sort of channel leaders and we've just seen light bulb after light bulb turn on as they suddenly recognise the problem that we're talking, that I don't think really anyone has been talking about, that actually there's two phases to building the channel.
• 7:56
  There's the building phase, which is the recruitment to revenue gap, and then there's the self-fulfilling fufilling revenue phase, which is that flywheel that we're talking about.
• 8:03
  And actually, you need a strategy for each and you need to be measuring and managing each.
• 8:09
  And I'm really excited over the next four episodes to get into some really actionable points to attack those next four steps.
• 8:16
  Yeah, I think what I also really like is the next episodes we're going to be super practical and tactical.
• 8:22
  So really per step, like, what are our top three tips to really make sure you take your partner through that phase as quick and as smoothly as possible?
• 8:30
  I think maybe for today, it's nice to start with, what is the impact of the partners recruiter revenue gap?
• 8:36
  So when we are looking at when it's not working so to say you.
• 8:40
  Want me to be a Negative Nancy?
• 8:40
  Understood.
• 8:42
  So, yeah, basically what we're talking about is the failure that occurs when you recruit partners and the impact of that failure.
• 8:50
  I think the first one that always speaks to me is there is no re recruitment.
• 8:55
  I found that once you recruit once and it doesn't work almost nine times or maybe even 99 times out of 100, there is no re recruitment.
• 9:04
  You can't get that partner on board.
• 9:06
  Once they've had their fingers burnt, it's done.
• 9:08
  And so if you recruit a partner, treat them like the valuable asset that they are and get them to that self sustaining revenue as fast as you can.
• 9:16
  Because if they get to onboarding and the onboarding is not very good.
• 9:20
  And then they don't really understand how to market your products.
• 9:22
  And the training is not there.
• 9:24
  The partner is going to think your product's rubbish even if all your programmes rubbish or your channel team doesn't know what they're talking about.
• 9:29
  And that's it.
• 9:29
  That partner is done.
• 9:31
  And we know not all partners are equal and if you cock it up with the wrong one, guess what?
• 9:36
  You're never going to be able to sell to them again.
• 9:37
  Or it might take you three to five years to get in front of that partner again.
• 9:41
  Actually, what you want to make sure is you are handling that partner with care, so you never have to cross that bridge.
• 9:46
  Yeah, I think that's a super interesting one and very relatable, actually, to working with customers as well.
• 9:52
  Right.
• 9:52
  Like once you've sold it and the beginning of the experience was not optimum.
• 9:56
  It's so much harder to reposition yourself and your proposition, et cetera, and really build that relationship again than when you're coming into a new partner where everyone is excited, where everyone wants to start and get it going, and you can immediately give them the experience you want to give.
• 10:11
  And I think I fully agree there that's such a crucial part of making sure that you actually do that from the get go with every partner you get in, because indeed, once you burn the boats, then it's very hard to eventually get them back again.
• 10:24
  Yeah, we're learning a lot from customer success and from Mick, our CS leader internally, and he talks a lot about the renewal is one within the onboarding.
• 10:33
  Well, your partners retention is also run one within the onboarding as well.
• 10:38
  They've got to be understanding your value, understanding how to be successful, because if they get six months down the line, they haven't really done any business, guess what?
• 10:45
  They're just going to think not that your programme wasn't well designed, that there's just not product market fit, or that that brand is not very successful, or the account manager is not very good, and suddenly you've just got a nasty reputation for no reason.
• 10:57
  Which brings me on to my second point.
• 10:59
  Partners speak to partners.
• 11:01
  You can build a reputation accidentally by recruiting a whole bunch of partners, let's say in the UK, not doing a good job with any of them.
• 11:10
  And suddenly it's not just those partners that don't think you're very good, the wider channel market doesn't think you're any good because that reputation builds.
• 11:17
  We talk a lot in the channel that your reputation is everything.
• 11:21
  It will follow you from job to job, from opportunity to opportunity, from customer to customer.
• 11:26
  And that is so true within that partner recruitment stage.
• 11:29
  You want to be winning because referrals people speak to each other, good reputations follow, but so do bad ones.
• 11:35
  Yeah, I think that's an interesting one indeed.
• 11:38
  And what I also really see is what you see a lot on a macro level as well, within your strategy, so to say, and within a specific company, we see that a lot of the resources are actually going towards partner recruitment.
• 11:50
  So we have partner development reps, we're spending a lot on events, on marketing, et cetera, to make sure we get in contact with as many partners as possible.
• 11:58
  So I think, in essence, I hear from a lot of companies that actually the majority of their channel budget goes to recruiting new partners.
• 12:06
  But what we see there, if you have the partner recruit to revenue gap, all those partners are churning.
• 12:11
  And I think the metric that keeps resonating with me is that 80% of partners in the average partner programme are not generating revenue and are inactive.
• 12:20
  So just think about it, all those resources you spent on new partner net, new partner acquisition, then churn like it's crazy if you think about it.
• 12:29
  Yeah, you just wasted 80% of your budget, right?
• 12:32
  Imagine if I said to you, oh, I'll forex your recruitment budget or your channel budget next year, you'd be like, oh, my God, yeah, brilliant.
• 12:39
  Well, no, in fact, what you've done is the reverse.
• 12:42
  You've burnt most of your budget because you've recruited partners and you've not kept them in that self sustaining revenue of course there's always going to be a failure.
• 12:49
  But 80% is mental, right?
• 12:51
  You'd never build if you built a business plan and said, we're going to do all this work and 80% of it's not going to do anything, you'd be like, well, no, I'm just not going to back that.
• 12:58
  I'm not going to fund it.
• 12:59
  And yet that's how most channels are built out there.
• 13:02
  And to me, it's a symptom of we're not measuring the data effectively, right?
• 13:05
  If you really measured velocity conversion and retention properly, not just within customers, but within partners, you would start to see that data and find it unacceptable and you'd work on a plan and that's really what we're going to spend the next four episodes covering.
• 13:19
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 13:19
  I think that also really comes to your point, what you said in the beginning of this episode where you said indeed that if you have the partner recruit to revenue gap, you get a very big channel because you need more partners, you need more partner account managers, et cetera.
• 13:32
  While indeed if you increase that conversion rate from recruit to revenue, then all of a sudden if you double that, then you need half the partners, have the resources to manage those partners, et cetera.
• 13:42
  And you get into a wildly different motion than what you would have if you would do mass recruitment with a lot of partners dropping out because of the gap.
• 13:50
  Yeah, we've been reading a lot about sort of innovative sales strategies and there's a few sort of global sales leaders that I'm speaking to and reading about at the moment who are talking about halving the size of their sales team.
• 14:01
  Because if you hire a salesperson who costs twice as much, they deliver ten times as much.
• 14:07
  And so they were going, well, sod this we'll just get rid of most of our sales guys, double the salaries of the key ones, and bring people in at that level and actually our channel will grow or our sales will grow.
• 14:16
  I think the same is true of partnerships, which is focus on having a really lean channel that can still get you to the same number.
• 14:23
  Don't sacrifice on the number, but just pour all your focus into driving highly efficient, highly effective partners.
• 14:30
  And you do that by recruiting really accurately and taking them through that engagement, crossing that revenue gap as effectively as possible.
• 14:39
  And what will happen is you can pour resource and time into the partners, getting the maximal value out of those partners.
• 14:46
  Yeah, that's a good one.
• 14:47
  I was just thinking indeed, like in this series, we're really going to talk about that.
• 14:52
  Onboarding training and enablement, co marketing, co selling.
• 14:55
  There's a crucial part around recruitment.
• 14:58
  You need to get the right partners on board.
• 15:00
  You need to have the right ideal partner profile, the right strategy to get into those partners.
• 15:05
  I think we've recorded multiple episodes.
• 15:08
  We'll add them in the notes of this episode as well, if you want to listen specifically around that topic there.
• 15:14
  But that is definitely a crucial thing because if you get the wrong partners into your programme, then the rest doesn't really make sense anymore.
• 15:22
  Right?
• 15:22
  Yeah, exactly.
• 15:23
  You want to find your IPP and then build a list and then go and target that very effectively.
• 15:28
  We've done a lot around that process, but I think the next critical step is once you've got that targeted list, once you've sold them the dream at the right level, don't oversell.
• 15:37
  Once you've sold them the dream, then it's really, really important to deliver on what you've promised and that is getting them to revenue very, very effectively.
• 15:45
  And the best way to or the impact of not doing that, we've already spoken about you're going to build a negative reputation and there's no re recruitment.
• 15:54
  But the third is we're talking about having that very fat, heavy channel that's very inagile.
• 16:00
  I speak to a lot of channel leaders, or I speak to a lot of direct leaders who say, oh, the channel is so slow.
• 16:06
  And I think that slowness is a habit of having a channel that's far too big.
• 16:10
  And actually channels can be really, really quick if you've got that one to one messaging, that one to one control and that one to one conversation.
• 16:17
  And you do that by being very, very targeted in who you add bringing the right people on and getting them to deliver the value effectively.
• 16:24
  Right.
• 16:25
  If there's less partners, there's more revenue to share within those partners.
• 16:29
  So you get even more top of mind and mind share there because they do a lot of revenue with your brand.
• 16:34
  Yeah, for sure.
• 16:35
  And you get more agility in the channel, right.
• 16:37
  If I'm speaking to 1000 partners or 100 partners and we bring a new product out, we've got a new strategic direction, it's far easier for me to communicate with less partners.
• 16:47
  And that really is the impact of having that fat, slow, heavy channel is if I've got thousands or hundreds of thousands of partners and actually I don't need that many, I only need 20% of them, think how much more agile we could be.
• 16:59
  And that to me is such an important thing.
• 17:01
  We are seeing consistently, especially in the SaaS space, the debate do we need to really build a channel?
• 17:07
  Can we just go direct versus indirect?
• 17:09
  A really big impact of this revenue to recruitment gap is it feeds the fire of oh, maybe we'll just go direct because I've got to employ all these people, I've got to have this big, slow, heavy channel.
• 17:20
  Actually, if you get this process right and you can sell the Dream into the CRO of a lean channel, you get all the upside low risk, highly scalable, highly effective, highly profitable, and you minimise the downsides of that heavy cost in agile, ineffective channel.
• 17:35
  Suddenly you can get the best of both worlds which is really what you're trying to strive for.
• 17:39
  Yeah, it's what they always say about channel, right.
• 17:41
  It's one of the hardest codes to correct but if you've got it then it's the ultimate way to scale your company.
• 17:46
  Yeah.
• 17:46
  Go far with channel, go fast direct.
• 17:49
  Right?
• 17:49
  And that's the blend that you want to take and for me it's how can you go fast with channel because you know channel is going to take you really far and you can only do that by being lean.
• 17:58
  That's why direct is so effective in the short term.
• 18:02
  I can hire three BDRs, give them the exact messaging go, go, go.
• 18:05
  Well actually if I go and hire three partners, go and bring them into the system, get them up to speed incredibly efficiently, guess what?
• 18:13
  I've just done the same thing just at a slightly wider scale.
• 18:17
  Yeah.
• 18:17
  If we would try to look at it from the perspective from a partner for a moment what is the reason why they are dropping out between that recruit to revenue.
• 18:27
  Ineffective communication will be the number one reason and that's either from the partner to the vendor or vice versa.
• 18:33
  Right.
• 18:33
  We haven't set the right expectations, they're not clear on the plan, they're not clear on who owns what responsibility, there's not a clear schedule put in place.
• 18:41
  All of those in effect, in my opinion, just bad communication is meaning that people aren't sure where the responsibility lies, what the next steps are and if you get that done and we're talking basics right?
• 18:53
  To me it's not a very complicated thing to do.
• 18:55
  I know I've recruited thousands of partners in my sort of career but to me it's just very, very clear expectations.
• 19:01
  Where are we going, how are we going to get there?
• 19:03
  When are we going to get there by?
• 19:04
  If you do that effectively and then you cookie cutter that you can start to do that at scale.
• 19:09
  Hire the right people to really drive the cadence.
• 19:11
  Typically not the same profile as recruitment managers and you've got more sort of customer success minded people, account manager minded people who are going to drive the cadence of success forward.
• 19:21
  That's how you really can build a tangible plan but you've got to make sure your communication is absolutely bulletproof.
• 19:28
  Yeah, I think actually when I think about that towards that communication indeed the expectation thing you touched upon is very interesting because that's one of the most crucial things, literally because if indeed they expect it to get towards revenue within X amount of time but it takes y then immediately you can lose their attention because that was what promised, et cetera.
• 19:48
  But also very important indeed what we see a lot is that we sign a partner agreement but then everything is a bit like out in the open, right?
• 19:55
  Like what are we going to do?
• 19:56
  Maybe we do a bit of an initiative like this, maybe some co marketing, maybe you need to follow a training, but you really need like a super precise plan where it's like, okay, as soon as you sign a partner agreement, this is what's going to happen in week one.
• 20:09
  We have this, then we have that.
• 20:11
  And our goal is to get you towards your first two, three opportunities that we're working on within the first three months.
• 20:17
  And then it's very tangible for the partner, it's what gets them excited and then I agree.
• 20:22
  Indeed, you need strong account management where you really drive that forward on a weekly basis as well with your partner.
• 20:28
  Yeah.
• 20:28
  And the other bit that I think I would really sort of stress to people is invest in the right tooling.
• 20:33
  Right?
• 20:33
  I think the difference and I've spoken to some amazing BDR leaders over the last few weeks for some research I'm doing and they just spoken to me about the efficacy of outreach as a tool, how that revolutionised their good practises in place.
• 20:47
  Then they implemented the right tooling and suddenly everything ten x overnight almost.
• 20:52
  And that's what you can do.
• 20:52
  Right?
• 20:53
  The right technology won't sort your problems out if there's foundational problems, but if you've got the right communication, you got the right plans, you got the right structure in place, the right automation will allow you to now do that at ten x scale.
• 21:07
  And I think that's the bit for me that I'm really starting to see in the market now is there are tools out there which will allow you to cascade sales, cascade marketing, cascade programmes so much deeper and wider than we've ever seen before.
• 21:22
  I'm also thinking, like what we also see in here a lot is that there's a bit too much focus in the beginning of the recruiter revenue journey on the training part, so to say.
• 21:33
  Because I think that's the thing, if you know that revenue is what keeps the attention of your partners, you need to think about what can you realign within your partner journey that you get that revenue opportunity forward as much as possible.
• 21:46
  And I think that's also a very interesting thing to think about because what's always very important to remember is that the partner you just signed is working with a lot of other vendors as well.
• 21:56
  And your competitors probably also want to work with them.
• 22:00
  And they can only pick per like category.
• 22:02
  They only oftentimes pick one or two vendors that they are working with.
• 22:06
  So you really need to show them that you help them progress towards growing their business as soon as possible because if it takes too long, they'll lose attention and they'll swap to a different type of vendor.
• 22:17
  Yeah, for sure.
• 22:18
  And I think the impact of that is partners get bored, right?
• 22:21
  They want to see the impacts of the work they're doing as quickly as possible.
• 22:25
  We're all lazy, right?
• 22:26
  We all want the reward immediately.
• 22:28
  I know, every person has gone to the gym and gone, oh, how do I not have a six pack?
• 22:32
  I've gone three times already.
• 22:33
  Partners are exactly the same way.
• 22:35
  They want that instant gratification for the work they're doing.
• 22:39
  So build the programme in that way because otherwise what you'll get is I feel like I've been on like, ten trainings and I don't even have a deal to talk about.
• 22:46
  I've not even spoken to one customer about this.
• 22:48
  Well, guess what?
• 22:48
  You've not designed your programme effectively and that's how you get a bad reputation.
• 22:53
  The partner doesn't see any value, the partner speaks to other partners, right?
• 22:56
  This is this cyclical effect that will happen.
• 22:59
  Whereas if you build your programme in two phases or three phases, how are we going to recruit?
• 23:04
  How do we get them from recruitment to revenue?
• 23:06
  How do we keep them in self sustaining revenue as effectively as possible?
• 23:10
  You're just going to minimise dropout through that process.
• 23:12
  Upside leaner channel, deeper relationships, better mind share within the partners, faster scale.
• 23:19
  It's all there for you.
• 23:20
  But you've got to break your programme down into those three sections and hire the right people, implement the right toolings around each part of that section so you can do it effectively.
• 23:29
  Yeah.
• 23:30
  I'd like to touch upon the last piece for a second.
• 23:32
  I think we've spoken a lot about it and how do you get them to self sustainable revenue?
• 23:38
  Like, what does self sustainable revenue mean for you and what kind of motion do you need your partners to be able to do?
• 23:43
  Yeah, so the way I would define self sustainable revenue is in two parts.
• 23:47
  We have closed some volume of deals and you need to sort of define what that volume of deals is.
• 23:52
  And the partner understands completely how to find open, close, renew and upsells opportunities, either on their own or where needed, in conjunction with the vendor.
• 24:05
  I e.
• 24:05
  The vendor might be in charge of presales and support, but everything else the partner does by themselves.
• 24:10
  You've got to very clearly define what that goal is at the point of recruitment, not somewhere down the line.
• 24:17
  You've got to set very clear expectations.
• 24:19
  But if partners know how to do those five steps, and they are doing those five steps, you're now into a very different phase of partnership management.
• 24:28
  They now know what they're doing and now you're trying to add fuel to the fire.
• 24:31
  You're trying to get that number to grow as quickly as possible.
• 24:34
  But if you've got those five steps, you're measuring those five steps with the partner, then you know what to influence and you're very much into a partner success motion, as opposed to a partner recruitment or a partner engagement motion.
• 24:47
  I think if you think about that, actually, the steps we're going to take everyone through in the next couple of episodes are literally the things you need to teach to your partners to.
• 24:56
  Get them to self sustainable revenue, because the co marketing piece is to find new customers, then the training and enablement is around sales enablement, how do you pitch, how do you close our product, et cetera.
• 25:08
  But also, of course, implementation.
• 25:09
  Once the deal has been finalised, you do co selling together with your partners and then within that co selling motion, you also need to learn them.
• 25:18
  How do you renew and upsell?
• 25:19
  Because for a lot of partners, that's actually quite new, they are not that used yet to actually subscription based revenue.
• 25:26
  So you really need full focus on that because there's a big lag as well, not just a recruit to revenue gap, but there's also a big lag in terms of renewals within SaaS and channel.
• 25:36
  And that should be a core focus of a programme as well.
• 25:39
  Yeah, and to me, it goes even one step toward that, right.
• 25:42
  You outline, find, open, close, renew, upsell, you find what you need to do.
• 25:48
  That's also what builds your ideal partners profile, right?
• 25:50
  Because you need to find partners that are able to do those five things.
• 25:53
  Some partners aren't able to do all five, and then you're going to need to pivot your programme.
• 25:57
  Well, some partners will be perfect to do exactly five.
• 26:00
  That builds your recruitment strategy, that builds your recruitment to revenue strategy, and then ultimately, that builds your self sustainable revenue strategy.
• 26:08
  All has to come down to those sort of five key pillars.
• 26:11
  And, yeah, you want to orientate your training, you want to get the partner to zero, to hero as fast as humanly possible.
• 26:17
  And don't forget, measure those stats, right?
• 26:20
  You've got to build the measurement tooling through there and hopefully the tooling that you've invested in is going to do some of that measurement on your behalf so that you can really see how many partners do we actually need?
• 26:30
  Like, oh, we might oh, we need 20 partners in each country.
• 26:33
  Is it 20, or are you just basing that on previous experience?
• 26:36
  Because what I'll tell you is most partners programmes and most channel programmes aren't efficiently designed for the criteria that we've just spoken about.
• 26:43
  And with proper design, you can run leaner channel, which will help you grow faster.
• 26:48
  Yeah, and I think that's good.
• 26:48
  If you like.
• 26:50
  Think about it, in the partner journey, then you can literally create a partner funnel where you can measure every step.
• 26:56
  You need to track indeed which partners is registered, which partner got to the onboarding phase, training and enablement, co marketing, co selling, how many dual registrations did they do then?
• 27:05
  And what is the conversion there?
• 27:07
  And then indeed, you can literally, towards the future, start reverse engineering.
• 27:11
  How to get to your number.
• 27:11
  Yeah, exactly.
• 27:13
  To me, it works the exact same way as direct sales, right, except we're just putting it through the lens of, rather than the end user being our focus, the partners being our focus, and you track all of those things as you would as an Ae.
• 27:25
  Right.
• 27:25
  And so my philosophy is, how do we take the best bits from being in direct sales?
• 27:30
  How do we take the best bits from customer success and orientate that into a partners programme?
• 27:35
  Awesome.
• 27:35
  I hope our listeners are looking forward as much as we do to the next couple of episodes.
• 27:40
  I think the crucial thing we're going to discuss is how are we going to bridge the partners recruit to revenue gap?
• 27:46
  So we make sure that you don't have 80% partners churn, but that we're going to make that a lot lower so your channel will be a lot more lean.
• 27:54
  You will make sure that your partners are a lot happier in your programme and that your reputation only grows like that's.
• 27:59
  The programme where partners want to be.
• 28:01
  Thanks for today, Alex.
• 28:03
  Thanks to our listeners and see you next week.
• 28:05
  Bye.
• 28:37
  Subscribe our channel.