Channel Journeys Podcast: Recent Episodes

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One of the most rewarding yet most challenging partnerships I’ve seen over my career is working with the massive Global System Integrators, also know as GSIs. Many vendors embark on this journey looking to cash in the attractive potential of multi-million $ sales in the world’s top accounts. Unfortunately, many vendors struggle for years and eventually give up. What is so different about GSIs that makes them such a challenge to work with? And what can you do to capture the power of GSIs?

To answer these questions, I turned to Raj Gupta, the head of global partnerships at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). We delved into Raj’s take on partnerships and the nuances of working effectively with TCS. Raj’s insights serve as a comprehensive guide for building successful partnerships with TCS and other GSIs.

Key TakeawaysHere are the top ten tips I learned from Raj’s experiences and insights:

Appreciate the Breadth and Scale of GSIs

Founded in 1968, TCS now has nearly 600,000 employees worldwide with close to $30 billion in annual revenues. TCS is the trusted advisor to more than 2,500 clients around the globe, with a 95% repeat business.

Understand the Unique Nature of GSIs

TCS, like many other Global System Integrators (GSIs), should not be treated like resellers or boutique delivery shops. GSIs function more as brand ambassadors for their partners, leveraging their extensive relationships and industry expertise to amplify the value of partner technologies.

Focus on Long-Term Relationships

TCS has relationships spanning decades with their clients. To successfully partner with TCS and other GSIs, it’s crucial to align with this long-term vision rather than pursuing short-term gains. Building lasting partnerships based on shared goals and mutual trust is key.

Effective Use of Market Development Funds (MDF)

Raj advises that market development funds should be strategically used, primarily for joint events and creating solutions integrated with existing platforms. Providing GSIs with MDF can drive mindshare and foster collaborations that ultimately result in significant business growth.

Embrace Storytelling

Raj shares a compelling story about a young boy’s interaction with Alexa to illustrate the power of technology in everyday life. He stresses the importance of storytelling in conveying the value of your solutions to clients and partners, making complex concepts more relatable and compelling.

Align on Shared Goals and Objectives

It’s crucial for partners to work in sync with TCS’s internal teams and practices. Creating a joint business plan with clear objectives and regular accountability checks can help ensure both parties are aligned and working towards common goals.

Leverage TCS’s Ecosystem

TCS has a vast ecosystem of 220 strategic partners that they have been trimming down to focus on quality over quantity, ensuring that partnerships are strategic, scalable, and beneficial across different industry verticals. Vendors should consider how their solution integrates within the GSI’s ecosystem for maximum customer benefit.

Importance of Partner Excellence Framework

Make sure you understand what’s important in a partnership to your GSIs. TCS uses a Partner Excellence Framework to evaluate and measure partner performance. Key metrics include stability, market presence, openness to collaboration, and the ability to provide significant extensions of funding and resources.

Building Heart Share and Mind Share

Raj introduces the concept of heart-share (emotional trust) and mind share (cognitive recognition among stakeholders). The goal is to get the mindshare within the GSI organization and within their enterprise customer base. But Raj says that before the mindshare comes the heart-share.

Consider Using Funded Heads

Having a dedicated person who works to build the heart-share and mindshare within the GSI organization around the globe can have a powerful impact. Raj has seen the pipeline build up very quickly with this approach. Going after the wallet share before gaining heart-share and mindshare can slow down and even break the opportunity.

LINKS & RESOURCES* Connect with Raj on LinkedIn * Hear how GSI’s fit into BeyondTrust’s strategy to Drive Growth with a Partner Ecosystem * Try Impartner Partner Management

The post 10 Tips for Successful GSI Partnerships with Raj Gupta first appeared on Channel Journeys.

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In addition to meeting new people and learning new ideas, one of the things I enjoy the most hosting Channel Journeys is the interesting personal stories I hear from my guests. Today’s guest, Jeff Heilman, has one of those amazing stories. It’s how he was the first employee working for Elon Musk’s first startup, Zip2 Corp. But then the story gets even better.

Jeff, a serial entrepreneur, sales master and host of The Jeff Heilman Project, goes on to share his philosophy on productivity, influenced by concepts such as “maker vs. manager” time and having a side hustle. The meat of his story is when he shares his approach to winning eight-figure sales and building nine-figure sales channels.

Throughout, Jeff’s stories of working with giants like Elon Musk and Larry Ellison, coupled with practical advice on channel management and life balance, make this a valuable listen for all channel professionals.

KEY TAKEAWAYSHere are 6 important tips I learned during my conversation with Jeff:

Distinguish Between Maker and Manager Time

A significant part of Jeff’s productivity comes from separating ‘maker’ time (for creative, uninterrupted work) from ‘manager’ time (for administrative and meeting tasks). Allocating specific times for deep work and separate times for administrative tasks can enhance productivity and creativity.

Importance of Side Hustles

Jeff highlights that having a side hustle can provide not only financial security but also diverse experiences and skills. Side hustles encourage innovation and can act as a safety net, ensuring one remains adaptable and resilient through career uncertainties.

Leverage Channels for Large Deals

Jeff shares how focusing on large deals (eight-figure sales) has been more profitable than multiple smaller deals. By nurturing channel relationships and leveraging partners’ extensive networks, businesses can achieve more substantial and lucrative deals.

Focus on Value Over Volume

In channel sales, it’s more beneficial to aim for meaningful engagement and value creation rather than sheer volume of contacts or superficial interactions. Jeff’s method involves personalizing pitches and proving value, which resonates more effectively with clients.

Support and Empower Channel Partners

Jeff advocates for empowering channel partners by providing them with leads and doing the heavy lifting first. By showing tangible value and support, vendors can build stronger, more productive partnerships where both parties thrive.

Personal Well-being and Family

Despite his professional rigor, Jeff underscores the importance of personal well-being, family, and taking time to disconnect and unwind. This balance is essential to prevent burnout and maintain sustained productivity and creativity.

LINKS & RESOURCES* Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn * Listen to The Jeff Heilman Project podcast * Watch to Elon Musk on the History of Zip2 * Watch David Allen on The Art of Stress-Free Productivity * Learn more about Maker Time and Manager Time with Alex Hormozi * Try Impartner Partner Management

The post The Art of Building a 9-Figure Channel with Jeff Heilman first appeared on Channel Journeys.

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After the last episode with Jason Beal where we talked about Barracuda’s Partner Success Program, it got me thinking about the book that was recently released with groundbreaking research on how partner success drives customer success. I interviewed the book’s authors when it first came out back in episode 132. Today I’m relaunching that episode for those of you who missed it and as a refresher to those of you who heard it the first time.

In this episode, Nancy Ridge and Norma Watenpaugh, share the findings of their groundbreaking research on Partner Experience. They are the authors of an eBook titled Partners are the Customer Experience, brought to you by the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals, also know as ASAP.

Their research arms you with information and data you can use to gain the internal support and budget you need to develop a partner success program in your company.

KEY TAKEAWAYSHere are ten takeaways from my conversation with Norma and Nancy that you need to know:

• Partner Influence on Customer Success: Their research highlights the critical role that partners play in the overall customer experience. Partners not only scale sales but are crucial at every stage of the customer journey, from pre-sales to post-sales.
• Research and Validation: Nancy and Norma conducted groundbreaking research showing that nearly 100% of respondents believe customer business outcomes are better through partners. This research emphasizes the need for a mindset shift regarding how businesses view partner contributions.
• Diverse and Complementary Roles: The ecosystem involves various types of partners including GSIs, ISVs, MSPs, and vendors. Each plays a unique role at different touchpoints of the customer journey, collectively enhancing the customer experience.
• Ecosystem-Orchestration: Effective partner ecosystems require orchestration, often handled by a major solution provider or integrator, who brings together the various partners and aligns their efforts with the ultimate goal of improving business outcomes for the customer.
• Customer Experience Focus: The transition from a transactional model to a subscription-based model places higher importance on customer retention and experience. This shift is reflected in the evolving role of partners, who now focus more on providing ongoing value rather than merely closing deals.
• Importance of Partner Enablement: 82% of partners expressed a strong need for continuous sales and technical enablement. This includes training, certifications, and clear communication of value propositions, which are essential for partners to effectively drive customer success.
• Business Outcomes Over Products: The research shows that today’s customers seek business outcomes rather than just products or solutions. Partners help deliver these outcomes by integrating multiple solutions and building strong relationships to retain and grow customer accounts.
• Partners Need Customer Success Services: While partners are key to implementation and managed services post-sales, only 49% provide ongoing customer success services, pointing to a gap that businesses need to address. Efficient tracking of customer success and partners’ role in it is still an area of developing focus.
• Financial Benefits of the Ecosystem: Strong partnerships not only enhance customer outcomes but also improve deal sizes, closure rates, retention rates, and overall customer lifetime value. This demonstrates tangible financial benefits to adopting a partnership-based go-to-market strategy.
• Cultural and Organizational Shift: Implementing a successful partner ecosystem requires an organizational shift, with buy-in from leadership across all functions, including sales, marketing, finance, and professional services. This ensures that the entire organization is aligned towards enabling partners and delivering superior customer outcomes.

LINKS & RESOURCES* Connect with Nancy and Norma on LinkedIn * Get your copy of Partners Are the Customer Experience – Second Edition * Hear How to Build the Ultimate Partner Success Program with Jason Beal * Learn how to gain Capital Efficient Growth with Partnerships * Try Impartner Partner Management

The post How Partners are Driving Customer Success with Nancy Ridge and Norma Watenpaugh first appeared on Channel Journeys.

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If you’re a SaaS vendor, partner success is the most important factor in your company’s growth. And your partners’ success in driving customer success is the biggest lever you have in driving more partner originated business. When partners are doing the services work, they’re gaining real life experience. They have stories of solving business problems that they share with their sales reps and their other customers. That leads to more new customers and account expansion for you.

How can you make sure this is happening? You need to change your partner program to one that drives partner success. And how do you do that? That’s what you’ll find out in today’s episode with Jason Beal, VP Worldwide Partner Ecosystems at Barracuda. Jason shares the insights and strategies behind Barracuda’s new partner success program that is built upon a foundation of deep partner empathy, comprehensive enablement, and strategic, data-driven support. By fostering quality partnerships and accommodating local market needs, Barracuda is creating a robust ecosystem of partners are well-equipped to deliver customer success.

KEY TAKEAWAYSHere are the top 10 lessons I learned from Jason about building an effective Partner Success Program:

1. Partner-Centric Approach:
   Barracuda’s program emphasizes a deep understanding of partner needs and business models. The core principle of “partner empathy” underscores the importance of viewing challenges and opportunities from the partner’s perspective. This approach ensures that the program is mutually beneficial and aligns with partners’ goals and operational realities.
2. Global Scale with Local Adaptation:
   The program’s global nature requires it to be versatile yet adaptable to local markets. Barracuda builds frameworks that achieve around 80% standardization but empowers local teams to make necessary adjustments. This balance allows for broad scalability while respecting the unique needs of different regions.
3. Quality Over Quantity:
   Rather than amassing a large number of partners, Barracuda focuses on the quality of its partnerships. This involves nurturing fewer, more productive partners, which ultimately leads to more meaningful and higher-value relationships.
4. Comprehensive Partner Recognition:
   The program acknowledges all aspects of a partner’s business, including resell, renewal, managed services, and marketplace engagements. This comprehensive recognition incentivizes partners across various business models and engagements, reflecting a true measure of their contribution.
5. LAER Model Framework:
   The program is structured around TSIA’s “LAER” model: Land, Adopt, Expand, and Renew. This model ensures that partners are supported and rewarded throughout the entire customer lifecycle, fostering long-term collaboration and success.
6. Enablement Over Incentives:
   While financial incentives like discounts and rebates are a part of the program, Barracuda places significant emphasis on partner enablement. This includes access to training, telemetry, and the facilitation of more project opportunities. The focus on capability building helps partners achieve greater success through increased competence and market opportunities.
7. Facilitation of Partner Collaboration:
   Recognizing diversified partner business models, the program supports and encourages collaboration between different types of partners. While the formal influencer fees might not be in place, the program ensures partners can easily find and engage with each other, enhancing overall service delivery.
8. Telemetry and Data Utilization:
   Sharing telemetry data with partners is crucial for enhancing customer adoption and success. Barracuda emphasizes the importance of providing partners with insights into product usage and customer satisfaction. This data-driven approach helps partners to provide better support and foster deeper customer engagement.
9. Strategic and Transparent Evolution:
   Since its launch, the program has seen enhancements and iterative improvements based on partner feedback. Introductions such as premier partner rebates and increased enablement initiatives demonstrate Barracuda’s commitment to evolving the program to better meet partner needs.
10. Multipliers Over Margins:
    Research into service multipliers has shown that, on average, Barracuda partners achieve a 3:1 service revenue to product revenue ratio, with top performers achieving even higher. This insight drives the focus on enabling partners to achieve high multipliers, reinforcing the notion that overall service revenue potential is more critical than product margins.

LINKS & RESOURCES* Connect with Jason on LinkedIn * Read more about TSIA’s LAER: The Roadmap for Revenue Growth * Hear Hope Galley on How to Leverage Partners to Drive Customer Success * Try Impartner Partner Management

The post How to Build the Ultimate Partner Success Program with Jason Beal first appeared on Channel Journeys.

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If you’re brand new to the channel world, how can you quickly get up to speed on what partnering is all about? That’s exactly what today’s guests had to figure out. In the podcast episode, I’m speaking with Vandan Jain and Mani Bansal, the authors of a new book titled “Maximizing the Impact of the Channel.” They interviewed 15 partner professionals and summarized their channel experience and wisdom into 3 powerful chapters on partnering. We talk about the key lessons in their book and dive into their journey, the purpose behind writing the book, and key insights they’ve gained along the way.

KEY TAKEAWAYSHere are the top 10 things I learned about Vandan and Mani’s new book:

1. Purpose of the Book: The book was written to explore and educate on the evolution and best practices of channel partnerships, emphasizing real-world insights from industry experts.
2. Foundation in Relationships: Successful partnerships rely heavily on strong, long-term relationships rather than just transactional incentives.
3. Niche Focus: Both vendors and partners should focus on niche areas to provide specialized value and avoid becoming generalized, which can dilute their offerings.
4. Consultative Selling: Partners need to adopt a consultative approach, becoming trusted advisors who understand and solve clients’ problems comprehensively.
5. Technological Trends: Key trends highlighted include the rise of marketplaces, solution-based partnering, increased outsourcing, and incorporating emerging technologies like AI and cybersecurity.
6. Importance of Agility: For service partners, being agile and adaptable is crucial in the fast-paced tech ecosystem to continually deliver value to customers.
7. Vendor Engagement: Effective vendor-partner relationships are built on consistent, intentional engagement and mutual trust, not just incentive programs.
8. Partner Mindshare: Just as vendors seek mindshare from their partners, partners also strive to gain greater engagement and commitment from their vendors.
9. Efficient Use of Content: Partners should focus on high-impact activities and efficiently repurpose content across multiple platforms instead of spreading themselves too thin.
10. Ongoing Learning and Adaptation: The authors and their interviewees stress continuous learning and staying updated with industry changes to remain relevant and effective in channel partnerships.

LINKS & RESOURCES* Be one of the first 25 people to ask Vandan via LinkedIn for a free copy of the book * Connect with Mani on LinkedIn * Purchase a copy of Maximizing the Impact of the Channel * Read Jay McBain’s list of The top 55 channel ecosystem books for vendor and distributor partner leaders * Try Impartner Partner Management

The post Maximizing the Impact of the Channel with Vandan and Mani first appeared on Channel Journeys.

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What is the top challenge you are facing today? Changes in buyer behavior, increased competition going after fewer dollars, longer buying cycles – these changes are driving a huge amount of stress and strain on partner leaders. Today’s episode looks at these challenges and what you can do to address them.

Joining me is Mark Rogers, SVP of Global Partnerships at Impartner. Working for a partner technology firm, Mark gets to speak with a wide variety of partner leaders. Over the past year, he has noticed a big shift in their top challenges and concerns. There is increased scrutiny on every channel dollar spent. Partner leaders are having to justify the existence of their partners and their partner team.

Mark delves deep into the scrutiny on channel investments, the evolving partner landscape, and the critical importance of partner experience (PX). From fostering strong partnerships to embracing humility and gratitude, this episode is packed with valuable advice for anyone navigating the channel ecosystem.

KEY TAKEAWAYSHere are my top 10 takeaways from my chat with Mark. By focusing on these areas, channel chiefs can better face the increased scrutiny and set their partner programs up for success.

1. Channel Scrutiny: In the current environment, there is increased scrutiny on every channel dollar spent. Proving the channel’s value is more critical than ever.
2. Changing Roles: Channel chiefs are facing shorter tenures due to rising expectations. Entire channel organizations are being reevaluated and, in some cases, overhauled.
3. Visibility and Metrics: Leveraging analytics and AI to track and validate partner contributions is essential. You need to demonstrate a clear ROI to justify channel investments.
4. Best Practices: Implementing best practices in the channel, including proper incentive structures, can significantly improve partner performance and outcomes.
5. Importance of Partner Experience (PX): The partner experience should be a priority, ensuring it’s easy for partners to do business with you.
6. Adaptability: As market conditions shift, like the rise of marketplaces, vendors and partners need to adapt. Reinventing your ideal partner profiles to match the changing landscape is crucial.
7. Communication: Regular, open dialogue with partners, including feedback loops through partner advisory boards, helps align goals and improve partner satisfaction.
8. Support Systems: Leveraging channel advisory services and channel tech partners for their expertise can provide critical insights and streamline processes.
9. Empathy and Gratitude: Showing humility and gratitude towards your partners builds trust and long-term relationships. Acknowledging and rewarding their efforts can drive mutual success.
10. Validation: Workshops and ROI validation sessions can be run with the help of channel tech vendors and their partners, enhancing the effectiveness of channel strategies across the board.

LINKS & RESOURCES* Connect with Mark on LinkedIn * Listen to Peter Thomas on 5 Steps to Maximizing Your Channel Marketing ROI * Try Impartner Partner Management

The post Mark Rogers: The Number One Challenge of Partner Leaders first appeared on Channel Journeys.

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For this 4th of July holiday week, I’m going back in the archives to replay this story of a sailing adventure. This one took place during the summer of 2021 when we were still under the grip of the covid pandemic. I took a break from the covid madness to sail from Bermuda to New York with my sailing hero, Tania Abei, the author of Maiden Voyage, and 4 other crew I’d never met before. We’ve got 800 miles of open ocean and a Berudua High to cross, giving us plenty of time to get to know each other and enjoy the ever changing mood of the blue ocean. My trip is filled with drama and uncertainty, and that’s before I even get to the boat!

HIGHLIGHTSAvocation – our Swan 48 for the weekApproaching the Town Cut – only 3300 miles to Morocco!Sunset in the Bermuda HighLoving life!LINKS & RESOURCES* + Find Rob on LinkedIn + Listen to A Sailing Journey Through Covid + Read more about Tania Abei and get a copy of Maiden Voyage + Learn more about Offshore Passage Opportunities + Try Impartner Partner Management

The post Rob Spee: Sailing the Bermuda High in a Covid Low first appeared on Channel Journeys.

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What does co-selling mean to you? Is your company co-selling at scale with your partners or are you still at the stage of random acts of co-selling? The changes in buyer behavior that we’ve all been talking about is making co-selling more important than ever. And the advent of automated partner mapping technologies is enabling co-selling at scale.

In this episode I’m speaking with Cassandra Gholston, CEO and Co-founder of PartnerTap, about her playbook for co-sell transformation. Cassandra shares a robust framework any organization can leverage to enhance its co-selling efforts. These steps underscore the necessity of strategic leadership, clear communication, and the proper use of technology and data in driving successful co-selling. If you’re looking to enhance your co-selling capabilities, these strategies from Cassandra’s playbook are an excellent place to start.

KEY TAKEAWAYSHere’s what I learned from Cassandra about the 11-steps to co-sell transformation:

1. Change Agent Leadership: Identify and empower internal champions who advocate for and can lead co-selling transformation across your organization and with your partners.
2. Co-Selling Strategy – The Why: Develop a compelling reason for co-selling that reflects market shifts and operational changes, ensuring that everyone understands its importance and the key measures of success.
3. Design the Program Around Customers: Shift your focus from partners to shared customers, ensuring your co-sell strategy prioritizes customer success.
4. Automation: Utilize technology to automate and scale co-selling efforts, reducing your reliance on spreadsheets and manual processes.
5. Update Roles and Responsibilities: Redefine roles, making your Channel Account Managers (CAMs) and Partner Account Managers (PAMs) more proactive and strategic.
6. Training and Enablement: Implement robust training programs for sellers, partners, and internal teams to embrace and effectively execute the co-sell strategy.
7. Running Sales Plays: Define specific sales plays that align with partner capabilities and market opportunities, making it clear what actions to take, by whom, and when.
8. Attribution: Ensure you have clear tracking and attribution of activities and results to measure the success of co-selling initiatives.
9. Change Management: Implement structured change management processes to support the new co-sell roles and responsibilities throughout the organization.
10. Identify More Deals with Real-time Account Mapping: Use live data connections to keep account mappings up to date, providing a constant feed of relevant opportunities.
11. Co-Sell Quarterbacks: Develop a centralized co-sell desk or team to coordinate and manage co-sell activities across partnerships, ensuring alignment and efficiency.

LINKS & RESOURCES* Connect with Cassandra on LinkedIn * Read The 11-Step Co-Sell Transformation Playbook * Try Impartner Partner Management

The post Maximizing Co-Sell Success: Cassandra Gholston’s 11-Step Playbook first appeared on Channel Journeys.

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Many software vendors and solution providers are still making the digital transformation to the SaaS business model. This transformation impacts just about every facet of your business – sales, marketing, finance, product development. And it absolutely impacts your channel strategy – in fact your entire go-to-market strategy will likely change.

In this episode, Lisa Citron, VP of Global Partner Ecosystems at F5 Networks, shares her extensive knowledge and insights on modernizing channel strategies. Lisa shares new partnership dynamics and leveraging innovative technologies for partner success as F5 transitions to a SaaS model. This episode is packed with actionable strategies and expert advice for anyone navigating their own SaaS transformation or looking to enhance their SaaS partner ecosystem.

KEY TAKEAWAYSHere’s are 5 things I learned about F5’s SaaS channel transformation:

SaaS Transformation and Channel Strategy

Lisa Citron shared insights into F5’s ongoing transformation to a Software as a Service (SaaS) model. This transformation involves not only product changes but also significant organizational adjustments to support modern go-to-market strategies including maintaining their commitment to hybrid models that include both hardware and SaaS offerings.

Importance of Trust in Channel Partnerships

Trust was emphasized as a cornerstone of F5’s channel strategy. Lisa discussed how consistent support and genuine partnership with channel partners over the years have built a strong foundation of trust, essential for successful collaboration and mutual growth.

Digital Transformation and Partner Enablement

F5 is going through its own digital transformation, modernizing systems and processes to better support its channel partners. This includes leveraging CRM tools like Salesforce to provide partners with better data visibility and consumption analytics, enabling them to add more value to customer relationships.

Adapting to Evolving Market Needs

F5’s approach includes offering flexible consumption models and motivating partners and customers to adopt new solutions. The focus is on addressing diverse business requirements with tailored product and commercial solutions, maintaining a blend of on-premises and SaaS offerings.

Channel and Services Integration

F5 maintains a 100% channel sales strategy with a low single-digit attach rate of its own professional services, emphasizing partner-driven managed services. The company’s strategic acquisitions are enhancing their services landscape, creating more opportunities for partners to offer comprehensive application security, optimization, and delivery solutions.

LINKS & RESOURCES* Connect with Lisa on LinkedIn * Listen to Lana King on What do Saas Companies Need from the Channel? * Try Impartner Partner Management

The post How to Transform your Channel for SaaS Success with Lisa Citron first appeared on Channel Journeys.

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Are you aware of the impact customer discounts are having on your partner ecosystem? Are you wondering how to break the never-ending cycle of discounting and find a better way to drive growth? In this episode, Colin Puckett, SVP of Global Channel and Field Operations at Appfire, talks about their groundbreaking approach to sales discounts. Colin shares insights into Appfire’s non-negotiable, no discount strategy that has transformed their channel sales.

You’ll hear why traditional discounting practices can erode trust and impede scalable growth. And how Appfire’s focus on quality products, ecosystem citizenship, and strategic partner enablement has fueled their successful growth without relying on discounts. This episode offers valuable lessons for channel professionals looking to navigate the complexities of the modern sales landscape while fostering sustainable growth and stronger partner ecosystems.

KEY TAKEAWAYSHere’s what I learned from Colin about the benefits of their no-discounts strategy:

1. Sales reps offering customer discounts can erode the value of partner programs and diminish trust within your partner ecosystem.
2. Colin’s success in implementing a strategy of no customer discounts at Appfire transformed channel sales and enhanced value creation in the ecosystem.
3. Maintaining a fair and transparent pricing strategy across all partners allows you to avoid negotiation-based business wins and focus on the value of services provided.
4. Appfire’s no discount policy encourages partners to focus on providing added value rather than competing on price, fostering a healthier, more sustainable partner ecosystem.
5. Transparent pricing aligns with modern consumer expectations and its critical in ensuring global consistency for multinational customers.
6. Forgoing a traditional sales team in favor of investing in partner relationships supports profitable growth without direct sales expenses.
7. Building strong, trust-based relationships with partners over time brings you long-term benefits over short-term transactional gains.

LINKS & RESOURCES* Connect with Colin on LinkedIn * Listen to Frank Rauch on Driving Growth & Profitability with a 100% Channel Strategy * Try Impartner Partner Management

The post Breaking the Discount Cycle: Colin Puckett’s Playbook for Partner Success first appeared on Channel Journeys.

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Looking to amplify your partner marketing strategies? This episode of Channel Journeys features Rick van den Bosch, founder and CEO of the Channext partner marketing platform and co-host of the Partnerships Unraveled podcast. You’ll learn 5 steps you can take to unleash to power of ecosystem-centric partner marketing. And proving that startup CEOs do not shy away from a challenge, Rick shares a personal challenge he undertook: training for the Amsterdam Marathon with his team.

KEY TAKEAWAYSHere are 5 things you can do to unleash the power of ecosystem marketing:

1. Gather data on your partners to segment them based on their business model, which of your alliance partners they represent, and the markets they are serving.
2. Merge your alliance marketing with channel marketing to leverage a larger budget and create a joint value story that is more interesting for your partners and your customers.
3. Look at the overlap between your alliance partner’s partners and your channel partners and run alliance campaigns with those overlapping channel partners.
4. Recruit more of your alliance partners’ partners using a Nearbound strategy for introductions and your alliance campaign to generate interest.
5. Leverage your alliance partnerships and automation to create and execute campaigns with your overlapping partners who are targeting the SMB market. Apply an Opt-Out rather than an Opt-In strategy.

LINKS & RESOURCES* Connect with Rick on LinkedIn * Listen to Tricia Atchison: How to Build an Award Winning Channel Marketing Program * Check out Rick’s podcast Partnerships Unraveled * Try Impartner Partner Management

The post 5 Steps to Unleashing the Power of Ecosystem Marketing with Rick van den Bosch first appeared on Channel Journeys.

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Is your channel business loosing steam? Classic channel programs and partnering strategies were meant to serve one purpose. Drive more revenue. The world has changed. Focusing solely on more revenue for your company doesn’t fly with your partners or your customers. In this episode, I explore the art and science of building partnerships that drive enhanced customer value that in turn drives growth.

Joining me is Barrett King, Sr. Director of Revenue at New Breed and host of the Outcomes podcast. Barrett worked at a partnering powerhouse, HubSpot, for 8 1/2 years before taking a leap to join their top partner. Barrett knows all about successful partnering. You’ll learn key success factors including the importance of collaboration, active listening to customers, and prioritizing meaningful relationships over traditional sales tactics in today’s evolving market landscape.

KEY TAKEAWAYSHere are some of the things I learned from Barrett about building partnerships that drive customer value:

• Partnering is ultimately about the value triangle, you plus another organization, combined to deliver more value for your customer. If you keep the customer at the nucleus of everything that you do, then your go to market should always be about making their experience, their value, their outcome better.
• It’s easy to say things like ecosystem or community as a word. It’s harder to build them into your go to market, into your business at an organizational level. The companies and people that have done a good job are the ones that listened really well in the beginning.
• No one actually owns the customer the way that they think they do. When you think about ecosystem, it’s about the shared value. It’s about blend. Blend in terms of the fact that it’s going to be give and get and someone may do more and someone may do less. But at the end of the day, if we keep it about the customer, then we all win.
• If you look at the best ecosystems, the best programs right now, are the ones that recognize that we need to do more than just call up our business and say, what are you going to sell this month? What are you going to service this month? If we actually work with them and to go to market through better marketing, better selling, through servicing, then we all win because again, the customers, are at the nucleus of everything we do.

LINKS & RESOURCES* Connect with Barret on LinkedIn * Hear Tiffani Bova on 5 Paths to Consistent Channel Growth * Check out Barrett’s podcast Outcomes: Where Partnerships and SaaS Meet * Try Impartner Partner Management

The post Building Partnerships that Drive Customer Value with Barrett King first appeared on Channel Journeys.

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Wondering how you can transform your company to drive more business through the channel and greater partner engagement across your organization? In this episode, Sam Valme, Sr. Director US Channels at Ave Point, shares how they are ramping up sales through Resellers, Integrators and MSPs. Sam unveils the pivotal moments and strategies behind AvePoint’s thriving channel ecosystem, emphasizing the crucial role of product development, enablement, and agile marketing.

KEY TAKEAWAYSHere’s what I learned Sam did at AvePoint to drive channel transformation:

• After AvePoint went public, Sam gained the support of the AvePoint founders to invest in the R&D required to go after the SMB space aggressively through the channel.
• AvePoint shifted how they do product development to provide a better solution for MSPs, including providing a single pain of glass to see all their customers and manage customers’ licenses within a matter of months.
• As Global Program Manager, Sam had monthly calls with every region around the world to get their feedback and earn trust as he was building the partner program.
• Sam standardized the program with consistent discounts around the world. The requirements for the different program tiers was adjusted to meet market conditions in different regions.
• One of the biggest things they had to establish was comp neutrality to get sellers, who are coin operated, to engage the channel. It took the support of the Executive Leadership Team to get this in place.
• Rules of engagement are critical for handling the exceptions that will come up.
• Make sure you have executive alignment on the metrics you’ll be using to measure success for the year, and stick to those metrics throughout the year.

LINKS & RESOURCES* Connect with Sam on LinkedIn * Hear how Dark Cubed transitioned to a 100% SaaS channel model * Try Impartner Partner Management

The post Your Blueprint for Successful Channel Transformation with Sam Valme first appeared on Channel Journeys.

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One thing I hear almost every day is “how can we get our partners to bring us more business?” The shift to the SaaS model and a partner ecosystem approach is designed to add more partner value throughout the buyer journey. More influence, more customer success, more account expansion. The good news is that when done right, the ecosystem can also bring you more partner sourced business. In this episode, I share five partnering levers you can use to drive more partner originated business.

KEY TAKEAWAYSHere are levers you can pull to drive more partner sourced business:

1. Shift your low margin, low value-add passthrough business to higher margin, higher value-add co-selling.
2. Drive as much implementation and adoption services to your delivery partners as they can handle.
3. Engage your Global System Integrators in co-selling and high-value services work.
4. Include your Technology Alliance Partners in your go-to-market activities for the better together story.
5. Run more business through the hyperscaler marketplaces and co-sell with their sales reps on every deal.

LINKS & RESOURCES* Connect with Rob on LinkedIn * Learn How to Amplify Customer Experience with Nancy and Norma * Try Impartner

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How does your company view partnering? Is it a functional department siloed from the rest of the organization? Perhaps it’s integrated into your sales strategy. But it stops there. One of the messages I’ve been promoting discussing with ecosystem leaders and analysts is that partnering has to be much, much more.

My thinking on this topic was actually inspired by today’s conversation with Jill Rowley, Strategic Advisor for Nearbound. Jill shares why partnering needs to be not just a department, but a fully integrated business strategy.

KEY TAKEAWAYSHere are some of the key things I learned from Jill:

• When social networks exploded, buyers now had access to peers and communities with whom they’d rather engage than a pushy salesperson.
• The ecosystem isn’t just partners, it includes peers, analysts, everything outside your four walls that your customer trusts and is influenced by.
• Like Inbound and Outbound, Nearbound is the term coined to describe a sales and marketing play. It’s a strategy of surrounding the customer. How can you get nearer to those who are nearest to the customer?
• People don’t want to be targeted, hunted, prospected, and interrupted. They are overwhelmed and inundated with content. They want to go to the people they trust for information.
• We’re moving from the how economy to the who economy. Find out who is surrounding the customer, who can help the customer along the complete buyer journey. Go fish where the fish are swimming. Find out where your customers are swimming and become part of that network.
• To execute a Nearbound strategy, starts with knowing your ideal customer profile, who else do they work with, what other technologies do they use, who are the partners who sell and implement those other technologies?

LINKS & RESOURCES* Send a personalized connection request to Jill on LinkedIn * Get a copy of the new book Nearbound and the Rise of the Who Economy * Try Impartner Partner Management

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There’s a lot of talk about the demonstrating the ROI of the partner ecosystem as we transition to the SaaS model. The SaaS recuring revenue model is so different than the perpetual world most of us came from. How should we be thinking about the impact and ROI of a SaaS channel? To find some answers, we’re going back to my conversation with Angus Robertson who was Axcient’s Chief Revenue Officer. Angus shares how Axcient redeveloped and executed their 100% MSP channel strategy and the 4 key performance indicators he used to measure their SaaS channel success.

KEY TAKEAWAYSHere are 4 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of a successful SaaS channel strategy:

1. LTV to CACLTV to CAC compares the Lifetime Value of your customers to your Customer Acquisition Cost. Investors look at this ratio to see if you have product market fit and how smart you are with your marketing spend.

2. LTV is impacted by three variables; gross margin, churn, and how much your customers spend on your service

3. CAC is how much are you spend on sales and marketing divided by the number of new customers you acquire in a given period of time

4. A benchmark LTV to CAC ratio is 3:1

5. Demand WaterfallThe Demand Waterfall is your sales funnel that traces a buyer from inquiry to close. It looks at both the quantity of leads that you can bring in and the quality of those leads.

6. Look at impressions on social media. Impressions can be how many people see your ad or look at a post on one of your social media channels, and then how that translates into visits to your website and into leads.

7. Categorize your leads in two different ways; a thought leadership awareness, nurture type lead, and a lead that is already in a buyer cycle or has a funded project.

8. Build a dashboard pulling data from your marketing and sales automation tools to see the whole demand waterfall and measure your lead conversion ratios.

9. Sales VelocitySales velocity looks at how quickly leads are moving through your pipeline and how much value new customers are providing. It’s a key sales measurement as it tells you how quickly you are making money.

10. To calculate your sales velocity, look at your number of sales opportunities you’re working in each period, multiplied by the average deal size, and then multiply it again by the win rate, and divide that number by the length of your sales cycle.

11. Compare your sales velocity in different sales territories, from different campaigns, or even different channels. From that you can determine which territories, campaigns, or channels are doing better than others.

12. Net Promoter ScoreNPS, or Net Promoter Score is used to measure customer satisfaction and loyalty. It also measures your ability to create advocates or champions in your customer base or in your channel.

13. NPS comes from the question “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely is it that you would recommend our organization to a friend or colleague?”

14. Based on the number your customers or partners choose, they are classified into “Detractors,” “Passives,” and “Promoters.”
15. At NPS above 50 is excellent. Above 70 is world-class.

LINKS & RESOURCES* Follow Angus on LinkedIn * Hear Joe Golemba talk about his KPIs for the Modern Partner Ecosystem * Try Impartner Partner Management

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Cloud marketplaces have gotten a ton of buzz, but what’s going on in distribution? How are the classic value add distributors (VADs) responding to the rapid growth of the AWS, Azure, and Google marketplaces? One VAD who’s not resting on their laurels is Ingram Micro.

Ingram is rolling out a new digital platform that is a game change for partners and vendors. Today’s guest, Jennifer Anaya, is Ingram’s SVP of Global Marketing. Jen shares the new norm of distribution driven by Xvantage, their digital experience platform enhanced with AI and machine learning.

KEY TAKEAWAYSHere’s what I learned is possible in the new norm of digital distribution with Xvantage:

• A new digital experience. Xvantage is Ingram’s new digital experience platform that is aimed at providing a seamless, unified experience for partners and vendors, removing complexity and freeing up more time to service customers.
• New buyer data. There are six different brands on every purchase that is made by partners from Ingram Micro. Ingram is capturing this data that tells the story of what products partners and their end customers are buying together.
• More personalization. Xvantage is powered by a global real time data mesh containing years of transactional data, with proprietary engines enhanced by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning for a personalized experience.
• A single pane of glass for partners. Partners get faster configure / price / quoting, recommendations on what else to include in the order, automated order tracking, and view across all their business with Ingram in a single pane of glass.
• Greater visibility for vendors. Vendors gain visibility to quote and order status, recommendations on other vendors to work with, and the ability to do more personalized and integrated marketing at scale.
• Targeted marketing automation. Xvantage helps vendors achieve 3 marketing objectives: acquire new partners, acquire net new logos, and engaging partners to gain more mindshare and loyalty. Make sure you know what you’re looking to accomplish.

LINKS & RESOURCES* Connect with Jennifer on LinkedIn * Hear Frank Vitagliano on How to Use Distribution to Drive Innovation * Try Impartner Partner Management

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Your gut probably tells you that partners amplify the customer experience, but you’ve lacked the data to prove it. Now I have the data you’ve been looking for and some tips on how you can drive customer success.

In this episode, Nancy Ridge and Norma Watenpaugh share the findings of their groundbreaking research on Partner Experience. They are the authors of an eBook titled Partners are the Customer Experience, brought to you by the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals, also know as ASAP.

KEY TAKEAWAYSHere are just some of the key findings of their research:

• The Ecosystem Experience. It’s more than just partner experience. It’s about ecosystem experience. Different partners touch customers at every point of the customer journey. And the end of the day, the product you’re offering is a business outcome. And many times you need other partners to complete the solution, and a systems integrator to pull them all together.
• Hidden Influence. There’s a lot of unseen influence taking place. 87% of customers would say the partner identified the opportunity, but only 60% of the opportunities are transacted by the partner. Attribution of influence partners continues to be a massive challenge, both for the C-Suite who don’t see the influence and the sales reps who don’t always want that attribution to be recognized.
• The Ecosystem Orchestrator Advantage. Partners who take a more holistic ecosystem orchestrator role, orchestrating the value proposition around the customer and the business case, have an advantage over a narrowly defined vendor or partner providing a single product.
• Customers Say Partner Enablement is King. Partner enablement is the number one thing customers want vendors to be providing to their partners, highlighting their view of the importance of partner success. Customers realize better business outcomes with partners, especially when they have expertise and specialization in the customer’s industry.
• Partners Are the Customer Experience. With the transition to the subscription-based world, customer success is everything for retention. Partner success is customer success is vendor success. All three go hand in hand. Benefits of the partner ecosystem approach include increased deal size, higher close rates, higher retention, and stronger customer lifetime value

LINKS & RESOURCES Connect with Nancy and Norma on LinkedIn * Get your copy of Partners Are the Customer Experience* * Learn how to gain Capital Efficient Growth with Partnerships * Hear How Customer Experience Drives Partner Success * Try Impartner Partner Management

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A big challenge almost everyone in the channel has to face is how do you get direct sellers to embrace partners? Whether you’re just starting in building a channel or you’ve got a long-standing partner program, you’re going to have sellers who don’t understand the value partners bring, or don’t know how to engage partners effectively. That’s the question we’re going to answer today.

Jules Johnston, SVP of Global Channels, faced this challenge at Equinix, a massive digital infrastructure company with over $7 billion in revenues. Jules stood up a global channel organization in a company that had been selling 100% direct for 20 years. It was a monumental task, both from a human and systems perspective, with everything designed for direct sales. Learn how she succeeded in gaining the mindshare of both her direct sellers and the partner community.

KEY TAKEAWAYSHere are some great tips from Jules on how to get your direct sellers to embrace channel partners:

• Understand your seller’s motivation. Direct sellers aren’t against the channel or against you. They are just for themselves. You have to make the channel impactful and helpful for them.
• Align with your sellers’ compensation model. Start with a comp neutral strategy so the partner discount doesn’t impact the seller’s compensation. Or, better yet, provide an incentive that makes it more lucrative for your sellers to work with channel partners.
• Align your sellers with the right partners. Make sure you are aligning your sellers with the right partners who have overlapping customers, offer a strong value proposition, and have adjacent products and services to offer.
• Start with what your customers need. Make sure your customers see the benefit in your sellers co-selling with your partners.
• Hire channel savvy sellers. When hiring new direct sellers, hire those who have partner co-selling in their DNA.
• Know the partner close plan. Teach your sellers how to work with partners to build a “path to paper”, understanding what it takes to close the deal, where the partner sees it in their forecast, and all the steps to get a PO from the partner.
• Celebrate your heroes. Make heroes out of your sellers who are early adopters of the channel. Make sure all the other sellers are hearing of their successes with partners to spread channel DNA across the company.

LINKS & RESOURCES* Connect with Jules on LinkedIn * Check out the Top 5 Ecosystem Plays for 2024 with Jay McBain * Hear 10 Ways to Measure Partner Ecosystem Performance * Try Impartner Partner Management

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We have entered the ecosystem economy where partners are critical for growth and resilience. Direct sales are suffering losses. Yet despite all the headwinds, partner confidence is high. Partners are hiring and almost two-thirds of partners are looking at revenue and profit growth. What is going on? Find out in this interview with Jay McBain, channel influencer and Chief Analyst at the technology channel analysis firm, Canalys. Jay shares his partner ecosystem predictions and more importantly, how you can position yourself to leverage the partner ecosystem in 2024.

KEY TAKEAWAYSHere are five things you can do in 2024 to grow your business in the ecosystem economy.

1. Develop your Services Multiplier. Partners are looking at the services multiplier; how much more can they make delivering services on the software you’re offering. Find out what your service multiplier is and what enablement your partners need to increase that multiplier.
2. Surround your buyers. To select vendors, customers rely on friends, eBooks, trade events and associations, and trusted partners who will likely have nothing to do with the transaction. Have an intentional strategy to make sure they’re endorsing your solutions during the 28 non-transactional moments in the buyer journey leading up to the point of sale.
3. Reimagine your Partner Program. The market value of resell has been dramatically lowered by Marketplaces who have now set the market rate at only 3%. If you haven’t already, you should be migrating your partner program to a points system that rewards partners for their contribution, rewarding their impact on post-sale success as much or more than point-of-sale success.
4. Catch your share on digital Marketplace. Customers are sitting on $303 Billion in future commitments to the hyperscaler marketplaces. Get your products on these marketplaces and develop your co-sell muscle to get your share of those enterprise credits.
5. Embrace the new age buyer. By the end of 2024, the majority of technology buyers will be millennials. And the average SaaS deal will have 7 layers, meaning 7 different vendor solutions. Learn how to sell to these buyers who are heavily influenced by brand reputation, available integrations, and an ecosystem team approach.

LINKS & RESOURCES* Connect with Jay on LinkedIn * Read about the Strength in Partner Confidence going into 2024 * Listen to the McKinsey Company podcast on Strategies to win in the new ecosystem economy * Get McKinsey’s take on Growth and resilience through ecosystem building * Find out How to Turbocharge Your Channel Career * Sign up for ImpartnerCon’24 * Try Impartner Partner Management

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Only 5 days from Christmas. You know what that means…time for another Christmas Special podcast! This year I’m sharing my latest catamaran sailing adventure in the Grenadine Islands. I’d dreamed of visiting the Grenadines for years. This past October, I finally made it with my sailing buddies. Enjoy my tales of sailing, snorkeling, and fishing while getting to know the islands and the islanders from our 42 foot catamaran.

HIGHLIGHTSRelaxing dip off Grand Anse Beach, GrenadaSunset in Tyrell Bay, CarricouLittle Sandy Cay off CarricouChatham Bay, Union Island, home of the Shark AttackTobago CaysClifton, Union IslandSunset at the St. George’s University Club, GrenadaLINKS & RESOURCES* + Find Rob on LinkedIn + In case you missed it, Christmas Special 2022: Catamaran Cruising in the Caribbean + Listen to A Sailing Journey Through Covid + Hear Sailing The Bermuda High In A Covid Low + Save $15 on any NauticEd Sailing Course. Use ‘cjpromo’ as a promocode. + Sign up for ImpartnerCon’24 + Try Impartner Partner Management + Isaiah 7:14

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One of the last things you want to hear from partners is “why do you make it so hard to work with you?” That’s not evidence of a great partner experience. But what can you do about it? This episode’s guest knows all about that challenge. Crystal Ferreira, Global Head of B2B Channel & Alliances at Logitech, was on the receiving end of that scary news from partners. Hear how she succeeded in removing friction and built a world-class partner program, becoming a better vendor to their partners and customers.

KEY TAKEAWAYSHere are five things you can do to be a better vendor to your partners:

1. Speak with your partners to uncover their pain points, then build a partner program with a uniform global framework that removes points of friction. Allow for some regional differences in your program.
2. Create tiger teams that focus on things like the processes, incentives, and enablement to identify opportunities to re-engineer for a better partner experience.
3. If you have both consumer and B2B products, take a close look at pricing and if it’s creating direct versus indirect channel conflict.
4. Offer partner enablement aligned to the specializations they want and need to be successful. Consider both technical product specializations as well as vertical industry.
5. Listen to your partners, listen to your customers, and listen to your team to spot areas for improvement.

LINKS & RESOURCES* Connect with Crystal on LinkedIn * Read more about Logitech’s Partner Connect Program * Hear how Honeywell was able to Simplify to One Partner Program * Sign up for ImpartnerCon’24 * Try Impartner Partner Management

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Wondering what partner leaders are doing around the globe to drive the transition from channels to ecosystems? Asher Mathew, CEO Partnership Leaders and Chip Rodgers, Chief Partner Officer at Workspan, have been on a global tour to find out. Listen and get some tips as they share how partnership leaders are growing ecosystems around the world.

KEY TAKEAWAYSHere are the ten things I learned from Asher and Chip about growing partner ecosystems around the globe:

1. Going out on a global tour to meet your partners and partner managers can be a great way to research what people are struggling with and what enhancements you need to make to your partner program and partner business.
2. Communities are based on connections, and if you want to build depth in your relationships, you need to meet face to face, multiple times, over a long period of time.
3. There are still many different definitions of a partner ecosystem. Yet the framework for success for developing partners is no different than developing a product. Don’t overcomplicate it.
4. You need to look at the people, process, and technology sides of the partner ecosystem equation.
5. The ecosystem is bringing larger partnership events than we’ve ever seen before.
6. The trend towards efficiencies in companies is uplifting the partner ecosystem conversation.
7. Co-sell, co-build, co-market with multiple partner types at the same time is where the value proposition is magnified.
8. Driving an ecosystem strategy requires higher, C-Level, stakeholder alignment.
9. A new generation partner leader must rise up and lead this transformation. A channel chief who specializes only in channel can’t do it.
10. Partnership Leaders’ Catalyst event is all about unlocking the value of the diverse ecosystem.

LINKS & RESOURCES* Connect with Asher and Chip on LinkedIn * Learn more about Partnership Leaders * Hear 10 Ways to Measure Partner Ecosystem Performance * Try Impartner Partner Management * Give thanks with Psalm 100

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Change is difficult. And driving the shift from a channel mindset to a partner ecosystem mindset within your organization is a big task. Rob Spee, SVP Global Channels at Beyond Trust, shares why shifting from a channel to a partner ecosystem strategy can be difficult to manage. Rob offers five things you can do, whatever your role, to drive the change to this partner model in your organization.

KEY TAKEAWAYSHere are five things you can do to drive the change to a partner ecosystem strategy:

1. Get educated. You need to really understand all these changes, the impact they are having, and what changes you and your company need to make for sustainable growth.
2. Educate others in your organization on this channel shift. If you’re a partner manager, educate your sales team. If you’re a partner chief, educate your senior and executive leadership. Make sure everyone understands the major shifts taking place.
3. Drive internal alignment. Depending on the audience, that’s going to be a balance between why it’s best for the customer, why it’s best for your company, and why it’s best for the individual.
4. Drive external alignment with your partners and your customers. Your entire go-to-market team can assist in this.
5. Be ready to jump in. Not a spectator sport. Whatever role you play, you can help drive change. Get ready to role up your sleaves and jump in.

LINKS & RESOURCES* Connect with Rob on LinkedIn * Listen to CRO Brent Thurrell on Driving Growth with a Partner Ecosystem * Try Impartner

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This is a great time of year to evaluate your partner program and see if it’s serving the needs of your partner community. But what can you do better when you have a broad and diverse product portfolio? And how can you build a program to support the diverse partner ecosystem needed by your customers? Find out in this conversation with Mike Day, VP Global Partner Sales at GoTo. Mike shares his approach to build a partner program that scales for both a diverse range of products and partners.

KEY TAKEAWAYSHere’s what I learned from Mike about building a diverse partner ecosystem partner program:

1. Categorize your partners based on the motion of how they want to go to market.
2. Reach those partners by creating elements in your partner program that supports each of those motions.
3. Those elements include partner enablement, marketing, support, and contracts that allow them to be successful.
4. Structure your program to encourage partners of different types to work together.
5. Shift your thinking and branding from Channel Manager to Partner Manager, from Channel Program to Partner Program, from a Channel Network to a Partner Network.
6. Measure your Partner Net Promoter Score (NPS) to gauge partner experience with your program and your company.
7. Push for simplification and consistency in your programs, both internally and externally.
8. Allow for regional differences while still making your program predictable for partners.
9. Upskill your team by encouraging everyone to take 10 minutes a day to learn something new. Multiply that by 365 days and think how far ahead of the competition you’ll be, simply by investing 10 minutes in yourself.
10. Don’t be afraid to fail. Just fail fast, correct, and move on.

LINKS & RESOURCES* Connect with Mike on LinkedIn * Listen to Olli Fleischhut on How to Simplify to One Partner Program * Try Impartner

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After hearing author and thought leader, Tiffani Bova, speak at a recent Ingram ONE event, I decided to repost this interview I did with Tiffani soon after the launch of her first book, Growth IQ. Driving consistent channel growth in this era of digital transformation requires new ways of thinking. We discuss 5 paths to channel growth, applying the strategies from her bestselling book . You’ll learn that the path to growth is never about doing just one thing. Successful companies execute a combination of Growth IQ paths in a well thought out sequence.

KEY TAKEAWAYSThese 5 channel growth paths can be used in combination very effectively. Just make sure you apply them in a logical sequence.

1. PARTNERSHIPSThe question is not whether you should have partners. The question today is, what kind of partner do you need? Do you need an ISV partner? Do you need a resale partner? Do you need an integration partner? Do you need a referral partner? You may need all of these types. As business models evolve, we have to continue looking at new partner models.

2. CO-OPETITIONMany vendors have a protectionist, shortsighted view that prevents them from partnering with companies perceived as competitors. Zero-sum game thinking prevents companies from achieving faster growth. You have to believe that 1 + 1 = 3. And you have to take the customer’s perspective. Figure out what and who it takes to provide the end-to-end solution that gives your customers the business outcome they are seeking.

3. MARKET ACCELERATIONMarket acceleration is about expanding into new markets with existing products. Leveraging local sales and delivery partners is an excellent way to open new markets without the heavy investment of doing everything yourself. But first you have to make sure you have everything in place to support those partners. Do you have your website and documentation translated? Can you provide product support? Do you have partner enablement resources?

4. PRODUCT EXPANSIONProduct expansion is about selling new products into existing markets. Leveraging partners to build new offerings on top of your product or platform allow you and your partners to both focus on what you do best. Salesforce does a great job of this with their app exchange program.

5. OPTIMIZE SALESStreamlining your sales efforts to increase productivity can be even more effective than adding more sales resources. In the channel, look for ways to automate the administrative tasks that can consume over 60% of your channel manager’s time.

LINKS & RESOURCES* Pick up a copy of Growth IQ * Check out Tiffani’s podcast What’s Next! * Follow Tiffani on LinkedIn * Try Impartner

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I’ve been placing a bet on distribution. How about you? What role are distributors playing in your partner ecosystem strategy? Is it the right bet? Find out in this episode with Frank Vitagliano, CEO of Global Technology Distribution Council. Frank shares the results of their recent report titled The Innovation Enablement Guide, based on research with IT distributors and suppliers. Learn all the ways distributors can drive growth and accelerate innovation by bringing emerging technologies to market.

KEY TAKEAWAYSHere’s what I learned from Frank about the GTDC and their distribution research:

1. The GTDC is a non-profit trade association built to promote and educate the IT market on the role of distribution.
2. Many emerging technology companies have technical smarts but haven’t figured out how to go to market. The GTDC, funded by distributors, offers a free service to help technology vendors figure it out.
3. The Innovation Enablement Guide is based on research from the distributor and supplier communities.
4. Distributors have built specialized technology groups to provide better service to their suppliers and their customers (the partner community).
5. Distributors still play the traditional and vital role of bank and a warehouse, but now they also provide demand generation, technical support, partner onboarding and enablement, and much more.
6. Distributors help suppliers address the labor shortage by providing skilled sales and technical talent to drive sales and provide technical services to augment what the supplier or partners can provide.
7. No vendor’s single product is solving the customer’s issue, it takes multiple vendors’ products. Distributors can pull together all the components and the support associated for their solution providers to offer to end customers.
8. As the requirements of Managed Service Providers (MSPs) evolve, distributors offer valuable services to help the MSP provide expanded capabilities.
9. Distributors are developing marketplace platforms that offer the end-to-end approach to acquiring products, including provisioning, testing, back-end billing and collections, across multiple products.
10. Often underestimated is the data that distributors can provide on acquisitions of products over the past 25 years. Suppliers can use this data to identify sales opportunities based on adjacent products already sold and build a sales pipeline.

LINKS & RESOURCES* Connect with Frank on LinkedIn * Download a copy of The Innovation Enablement Guide * Listen to Daren Finney on How to Use Distributors as Cloud Service Brokers * Hear Ryan Walsh on What’s so different about Cloud Distribution? * Try Impartner

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What is your CRO really looking to accomplish with your partners? Gaining alignment with your executive leadership team, especially your Chief Revenue Officer, is critical to the success of your partner strategy. In this episode, Brent Thurrell, CRO at BeyondTrust, shares why the partner ecosystem is a vital element of his go-to-market strategy to drive …

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There’s a lot of buzz around ecosystems and the next era of partnering. Is it just a fad driven by the tough economy? Dave Taylor, Chief Marketing Officer at Impartner, explains why this next era is here to stay. Find out how you can weave partnering into your go to market strategy and improve the overall business health of your company.

KEY TAKEAWAYSHere’s what I learned from Dave on this next era of partnering:

• Inefficiencies in the direct sales model in a tough economy are driving a shift to a new era of partnering. Like the shift to remote work and hotel cleaning service every other day due to the pandemic, it’s here it stay.
• The conversation has changed from saying “how efficient is our channel” to “how efficient is your business?” The old question was can I win the deal better with a partner. The new question is my overall business healthier with partners.
• End users have become more sophisticated in purchasing a solution, not a product. They are looking to partners pre-sale for information and consultancy. And partners have more trust built up with customers than vendors.
• Where do you start? With a comp neutral strategy, where reps get paid the same whether a deal goes direct or indirect. And where your partner program is more lucrative, balancing the margin between the vendor and the partner.
• Building partnering into your go-to-market strategy starts with building your partner program and clearly defining your rules of engagement.
• If you want to get your C-Suite and Board on board with you, you have to speak their language. Speak to them in terms that they care about.
• Buyers are a dozen steps down their journey before they ever come talk to your sales rep. You want to enable your partners to make sure those first dozen steps go really well. Train your partners to say what you want them to say about your solutions.
• The most important element of partnering is having a reward program that recognizes all types of partner contribution, including origination, referral, influence, and other assistance.

LINKS & RESOURCES* Connect with Dave on LinkedIn * Hear Janet Schijns on the Top 10 Skills of Ecosystem Leaders * Check out Dave Taylor on How to Build a Shadow Channel Program

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I recently had the opportunity to host a live SaaS Partnership Podcast with channel programs and enablement expert, Lana King. We discussed what SaaS companies really want from channel partners, what it takes to be successful, and how to create a better partner experience.  KEY TAKEAWAYS Here are just a few of the takeaways from …

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At some point every company outgrows it’s partner program and even some of it’s partners. For ZoomInfo, that point came after concluding a very successful IPO during the height of the Covid pandemic. Katie Landaal, AVP Global Partnerships and Ecosystem at ZoomInfo, shares how ZoomInfo was able to revamp their partner program to make it …

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Building a partner ecosystem requires a substantial investment in your channel team and your partners. How do you know if you’re making progress? How can you measure the performance of your partner ecosystem with so many different partner roles and types? Knowing what to measure and setting goals on those key performance indicators (KPIs) drives …

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In celebration of summer vacations, I’m taking a break from our usual channel topics to share my story of sailing 1500 miles across the Atlantic Ocean. This is a replay of episode 60, A Sailing Journey Through Covid. Hear what it’s like to sail from the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean to Rhode Island in …

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Wondering what role the three cloud hyperscalers, AWS, Microsoft, and Google can play in your partner strategy? Today I invite my fellow podcast hosts, Vince Menzione of the Ultimate Guide to Partnering podcast and Paul Bird of the Ultimate Channel Sales podcast, for a channel panel chat. We talk about the impact of hyperscalers on …

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If you’re like me, you’ve been testing out the unbelievable capabilities of generative AI on sites like ChatGPT and DALL-E. Their ability to generate text and images from natural language defies comprehension. While new technology is always a threat to the status quo, smart folks are thinking about how to leverage this technology to develop …

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As the IT channel transitions from large on-premise deals to smaller recurring revenue SaaS deals, customer success is more important than ever. And while vendors are very accustomed to using partners to drive new sales, many have not yet realized the important role partners can play in customer success.

In this podcast reboot, Hope Galley shares how Cisco is enabling partners to drive customer success through an innovative partner program. At the time of this interview, Hope was Sales Director of Software and Services in Cisco’s America’s Partner Organization. She is now the Cisco Meraki Global Sales Leader.

KEY TAKEAWAYSCisco places a huge importance on customer success. Here’s what I learned from Hope on how they are transforming their channel to play a front-seat role.

• Customer success is a lot more than the initial sale. It’s about what comes after that. Post-sales support, adoption, and expansion are vitally important to you and your customers’ growth and success.
• As many companies move to the SaaS model, customer obsession is even more important to reduce churn and, better yet, reach negative churn.
• Start by looking at your partners and your partner ecosystem as a whole. Look at their staff, their business processes, their financial incentives, how they recognize revenue, how adaptive they are, and how open they are to change.

• Cisco created the Lifecycle Advantage Program to enable partners to drive customer success. The purpose of the program is to align the partner’s services to the customers’ software life-cycle.

• With the Lifecycle Advantage Program, Cisco provides opportunities and incentive rewards to help partners land, adopt, expand, and renew business.

• Partners are evaluated for the program based on how committed they are to meeting with Cisco, going through the metrics, and whether they have some sort of customer success motion where they’ve been successful.

LINKS & RESOURCES* Follow Hope on LinkedIn * Pick up a copy of Customer Success. * Read about the Cisco’s Lifecycle Advantage Program or watch the video * Check out the TSIA blog to look at what they’re talking to customers about their leading industry indicators.

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Last week I was busy enjoying the BeyondTrust Go Beyond partner and customer event in Miami. The theme, tied to the Formula One race taking place, was Accelerate. We kicked off the event with Partner Connect day, discussing how we can accelerate our partner ecosystem to drive faster growth and faster time to value for customers.

I sat with three of our partners to talk about our Partner Connect day and the impact of our partner ecosystem strategy. Joining me is Justin Christiansen, Enterprise Account Executive at Amazon Web Services (AWS), Michael Fleming, Practice Manager – Security, Identity & Access Management at XMS Solutions, and Sean Remnant, Chief Strategy Officer at Ignition Technology.

KEY TAKEAWAYSHere are five takeaways on our partners’ view of our partner ecosystem strategy:

1. Partners of all types can see the value of bringing different partners into an account to sell and deliver the full solution and drive a business outcome.
2. Hyperscalers like AWS depend on their partner network to co-sell and deliver the full solution running on their platform.
3. The role of the distributor is changing to more of an orchestrator of the partner ecosystem, bringing in all the partners needed for customer success.
4. Distributors are also expanding their capabilities on the technical side, helping with pre-sales demonstrations as well as post-sales delivery to capture higher margins.
5. Delivery partners want to work more closely with the vendor sales reps, and other partner reps, to be a team player in the ecosystem. LINKS & RESOURCES* Connect with Justin, Sean, and Michael on LinkedIn
6. Listen to the last Partner Panel on How to Build a Modern Partner Ecosystem
7. Find out the Top 10 Skills of Ecosystem Leaders

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Where do you look for completely new partner types to add to your ecosystem? How do you build a SaaS partner program that attracts new partners? To answer these questions, I went back to an earlier podcast with channel veteran Taylor Macdonald. In this episode reboot, Taylor shares how he won big with a modern partner program and a less conventional sales channel as channel chief at Sage Intacct.

Taylor describes what many vendors are doing wrong and what a best-in-class partner program and philosophy, that he calls “Channel 3.0” , looks like. He provides a long list of ways you can catapult your channel sales. It all boils down to focusing on one singular priority; making your partners successful.

KEY TAKEAWAYS* Taylor uses alternative channels to find partners who truly understand customers’ business and accounting challenges. * Partners do not like programs with tiers and get tired of spiffs and incentives. Instead, they want a program that rewards all partners equally. * Be selective in who you allow into your program. Don’t be afraid to ask more of them, as long as you’re providing more. And weed out the bottom performers every year. * If your partners ask for additional discount, ask for something in return, like requiring them to follow your sales process. * If you believe your number one goal is to make your partners successful, you have to ask if your organization is aligned to that goal.

LINKS & RESOURCES* Find Taylor on LinkedIn * Check out Taylor on How to Double Revenue with a Hybrid SaaS Channel

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Driving the transformation to a partner ecosystem strategy requires new skills and new conversations. How do you enable your CAMs, your sales reps, and your partners to behave differently, to work together in new ways? Bart Fanelli, CEO and Founder of Skillibrium, recently shared how leaders and managers can shift from command and control to coaching and collaboration in an interview with Karen Mangia. In today’s podcast, Bart shares how to apply his five step approach to turn channel leaders and managers into effective coaches to drive the ecosystem transformation.

KEY TAKEAWAYSHere are the five coaching steps channel leaders and channel managers can use to execute your partner ecosystem strategy:

1. Establish a role-based sales methodology baseline. Your baseline is the grounding mechanism for coaching. Be sure to include how to work with your partner ecosystem in one cohesive methodology.
2. Ask the person you’re coaching for an outline of the problem in a simple framework such as “current situation, challenges occurring, desired situation.”
3. Offer to schedule time to “strategize and determine our next actions” grounded on your baseline methodology. This helps determine the person’s willingness to be coached.
4. Let the person you’re coaching lead the scheduled meeting and determine the appropriate actions. That way you’re developing the skills the person needs to do it on their own.
5. Recap the meeting and who is responsible for the next actions and hold them accountable to the outcome. LINKS & RESOURCES* Connect with Bart on LinkedIn
6. Read Karen’s interview with Bart On How Leaders and Managers Can Become Better Coaches
7. Sign up for the Murph Challenge

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Many times I’ve come across the beginnings of a partner business that lacks the discipline to really take off. How do you take a fledgling partner business from a bumpy dirt road into a high capacity freeway? Darren Bibby, CEO and Founder of AlignedPartner, shares the five top things you can do to scale your partner business to maximize growth and value add from your partnerships.

KEY TAKEAWAYSHere are Five Things That Will Make the Difference to Scale Your Partner Business

1. “Programatize” Everything. You need to transition from one-off agreements and discretionary discounts to a formalized partner program and consistent rules of engaging partners of different types.
2. Document Everything. Put all your legal terms and conditions into a standard partner agreement and all your program benefits and requirements into a partner program guide for your external partners. Create field guides and rules of engagement for your internal teams.
3. Build Partner Support Teams. Whether they sit in the partner organization or distributed within other departments, partners need people who provide sales, technical, and marketing support. One lower-cost way is to build an offshore channel operations and program support team that can do all of the back-office work like cleaning up partner data records, checking data quality, and making sure the portal is working as expected.
4. Harmonize with Direct Sales. Getting your sales team working with your partners can be the most challenging item, but also the most rewarding. Make it as easy as possible to work with partners and lower the barriers. Provide comp neutrality so the reps can earn the same amount whether they work with a partner or not, both for sales and services.
5. Automate your Systems and Processes. Much of the daily administrative work can be automated through an ever growing number of channel technologies including a partner portal, partner performance dashboards, and account mapping tools. LINKS & RESOURCES* Connect with Darren on LinkedIn
6. Learn about the Murph Challenge
7. Hear How to Build an Ecosystem Partner Program

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With all the focus on building partner ecosystems, we can’t forget about driving partner performance. This interview was recorded four years ago when Josh Lewis was the Vice President of Global Channels at Alteryx, an analytics firm on hyper-growth. The lessons learned are just as relevant and impactful today.

The channel strategy that got Alteryx to a $50M company wasn’t going to scale and continue fueling hyper-growth. The channel program reached a plateau. As a result, Josh needed to take a different approach to accelerate channel performance.

KEY TAKEAWAYSHere are five tips I learned from Josh on how to accelerate partner performance:

1. Cull non-productive partners who aren’t willing or able to re-engage and commit.
2. Take a data-driven, targeted approach to recruit new partners who have vertical industry or functional area expertise.
3. Having a channel-friendly culture makes it easier to accelerate growth. Likewise, so does recruiting partners with cultures that match your company culture. Seek ways to fuse your brand experience into your partner program.
4. Align your channel teams and partners to the sales teams to gain sales relevancy. Coach your channel managers to develop trust internally with your sales team and externally with your partners.
5. When you’re looking to double the business you need to hire partner managers who have intellectual curiosity, are interested in the big picture, and have both a direct and indirect sales background. Then empower and enable them to think as general managers running a franchise.

LINKS & RESOURCES* Connect with Josh on LinkedIn * Learn about the Murph Challenge * Don’t forget your KPIs for the Modern Partner Ecosystem

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Over time, many vendors have created multiple partner programs to cater to different partner types, markets, and business units. But partners want simplicity, predictability, and ease of doing business. Multiple partner programs do just the opposite. Olli Fleischhut, VP Marketing at Honeywell Building Technologies, faced this very challenge. He shares how they simplified and consolidated a vast number of partner programs into one global program that drives partner success.

KEY TAKEAWAYSHere are ten tips I learned from Olli on how to simplify and consolidate down to one global partner program:

1. Consolidating your programs starts by taking the partners’ perspective and determining how they define success.
2. Learn what partners need to be successful and build your program benefits and partner enablement to meet those needs.
3. Determine what KPIs really define growth for your partners’ success.
4. Leverage your advisory boards. Honeywell has technology advisory boards, distributor advisory boards, and customer advisory boards
5. Automate and standardize. Your partner technology stack needs to support your program and your partners.
6. Start small. Honeywell started in a particular country with a small group of 20 people. They ran the new program for a while, got the feedback and then improved before rolling out the global program.
7. Don’t sacrifice quality for speed in rolling out your program improvements.
8. Partner enablement and continuous feedback loops on your enablement for improvements is vital.
9. Change is never easy. Make sure you bring everyone in the company along on your transformation journey.
10. At the end of the day, the success of a partner program is if partners are successful and end customers are happy.

LINKS & RESOURCES* Connect with Ollie on LinkedIn * Learn about the Murph Challenge * Hear How to Build a Modern Ecosystem Partner Program

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What’s a partner ecosystem leader? Who can become one? What are the most important traits? Those are questions I posed to Janet Schijns, CEO of the JS Group. Janet shares the top ten skills sales and channel leaders need to become ecosystem leaders. If you’re a sales rep looking to leverage the ecosystem or a channel leader with your eyes on becoming a Chief Ecosystem Officer, this podcast is for you.

KEY TAKEAWAYSChannel pros, just because you’ve worked in the channel for years, it doesn’t mean you’re getting that top ecosystem leader job. Here are the ten critical skills you need to not only to stand out but to succeed as an ecosystem leader:

1. Understand what’s happening with partner programs and have the skills to know what’s needed to develop an ecosystem partner program.
2. Shift your strategic focus from the channel as an expansion or replacement of sales to a strategic focus on co-selling. Sellers need to get the notion of owning an account out their head. Don’t block your partners from engaging you on an account. Embrace them.
3. Train your sales reps to become managers and influencers of their ecosystem. And train your Sales RVPs to become Ecosystems RVPs, levering the full partner ecosystem to drive sales growth.
4. The technology expertise you need now as an ecosystem leader is to understand the tools that will aid your ecosystem to do the job better. That includes PRM systems, account mapping tools, and automated partner services orchestration.
5. Gain the financial acumen to read an annual report, understand how EBITDA is calculated, and be able to have financial conversations with your partners and their business models.
6. Learn how to use digital marketing to stimulate demand. Today’s B2B buyers rely far more on digital information in their buying journey, spending less and less time with sales reps. Companies that provide customers the information they need, when they need it, through the channels they prefer, are best positioned to drive success.
7. Gain the ability to see the future that others haven’t seen yet by spending time with the folks who are going to influence the behavior of tomorrow. Don’t spend your time with the same partners at every event. Go out and meet the influencers in your industry.
8. Practice proactive listening. You need to get to the right watering holes and listen to what end customers, analysts, and partners are saying. Dedicate 20 or 30 minutes a day of going to the online watering holes like Reddit, LinkedIn, and Facebook, or hire an intern or an agency like JSG to do it for you.
9. Build communities bottoms up instead of top down. Who will be the most important ecosystem leaders 3 year, 5 years, 10 years from now? Start by asking where will your customers be? What communities will they be listening to?
10. Last, but not least, gain the skills to build your own brand and become a partner ecosystem influencer. This is the decade of ecosystem influence!

LINKS & RESOURCES* Connect with Janet LinkedIn * Read how Traditional B2B Sales and Marketing Are Becoming Obsolete * Gain financial acumen by signing up for free finance courses on Corsera * Learn How To Become Channel Influencer in 3 Easy Steps

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Last episode, I spoke with Jay McBain about how to turbocharge your channel career. In this episode, I join Maciej Danielski, host of the Channel Voices podcast, to discuss my role as Global Channel Chief at BeyondTrust. I share my channel journey, the responsibilities of a channel chief, and some practical advice for those who aspire to sit in the top channel seat.

LINKS & RESOURCES* Connect with Maciej on LinkedIn * Subscribe to the Partner Voices Podcast * Learn How To Turbocharge Your Channel Career

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After years of non-stop growth and massive hiring by the big tech companies, we’re suddenly seeing large-scale layoffs. Amazon, Meta, and Salesforce together have announced 29,000 people being let go in just the past 3 months. What impact will this have on your channel career? What impact with it have on your partners? Jay McBain, Chief Channel Analyst at Canalys, shares how to turbocharge your channel career and thrive in this new brave world of layoffs and massive channel transformation.

KEY TAKEAWAYSHere are 10 things I learned from Jay about how to navigate your channel career in 2023:

1. Mass tech layoffs, not seen in years, are back. Salesforce just announced they’re letting 10% of their workforce go.
2. The channel stands to benefit. Partners have had a hard time competing for talent with the tech giants who offered massive salaries and lavish benefits.
3. Tech companies are realigning talent with strategies and priorities that have shifted over the past year due to economic conditions including massive inflation, high interest rates, and supply chain shortages.
4. Channel programs are going through transformational changes, creating new opportunities for channel pros.
5. Start looking around and learn what others are doing, find out who’s playing leading roles in this transformation, read what the leading consulting firms are writing about the ecosystem. You need to think beyond the transaction and think more broadly about partnerships.
6. If you’re early in your career, build your peer network. Build strong relationships with up and comers your age, rather than trying to bond with today’s executives. You’re going to move up with your contemporaries. Ten, twenty years from now they’ll be in leadership roles.
7. Connect and engage with the partner and channel communities. Build a voice and brand for yourself.
8. Partner leaders are joining the C-Suite, but it’s not who you might think. Of the 20 Chief Partner Officers appointed in 2022, not one has ever been a channel chief. Most are coming from top strategic consulting firms.
9. These CPOs have a different set of KPIs. They’re measured on things like co-innovation and creating customer value rather than on transactions.
10. Channel Chiefs need to move past empire building to a distributed approach. Embed partner-led people in all teams, sales, marketing, customer success, product management, HR, every line of business. Makes sure you don’t own your own silo.

LINKS & RESOURCES* Connect with Jay on LinkedIn * See which tech companies are having layoffs * Subscribe to the Partner Hacker daily email * Join Partnership Leaders

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It’s the last week of 2022 and time to take a break from the channel. In this Christmas special episode, I share the story of my sailing adventure in the US and Spanish Virgin Islands. This time I’m on a 40′ catamaran with three sailing buddies to explore the islands and teach ourselves how to sail a cat. Hear the joys and risks of sailing during hurricane season and what we learn on our first bareboat catamaran charter.

HIGHLIGHTSQuadra Jeepi – our home for the weekOur private Buck IslandMorning rainbow points the way to CulebraPlotting our course – 100 miles in 7 daysOur private little CulebraLighthouse view of Quadra JeepiLINKS & RESOURCES* + Find Rob on LinkedIn and Twitter + Listen to A Sailing Journey Through Covid + Hear Sailing The Bermuda High In A Covid Low + Learn more about Allbound

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Go-to-market strategies keep evolving, but one thing that hasn’t gone away is the ever present challenge of channel conflict. This is especially true in regions or market segments where you co-sell with your partners. How do you get your own reps to give up control in exchange for the powerful returns partners can bring? Rich Blakeman, author of The Hybrid Sales Channel, shares how to drive revenue and profits through a sales methodology that reduces conflict and leverages the unique strengths of direct and channel sales.

KEY TAKEAWAYSHere are 5 things I learned from Rich about effective co-selling with partners:

1. The hybrid sales channel is like a hybrid vehicle that has a battery, a gas engine, brakes. All are designed for a very specific purpose that don’t overlap each other at all. Apply the same principle to in sales to take advantage of the unique strengths of the vendor and the partner.
2. Selling is all about how the customer buys and not how you want to sell. Align your resources and capabilities, and those of your partners, with what your customer needs.
3. The partner account manager focuses on the partner, not in the weeds with transactions. Meanwhile, the direct rep can act like a sales manager with a team of partner reps.
4. The seagulls in Finding Nemo chirping “mine, mine, mine” are a great analogy to direct reps who are so reluctant to let go and leverage partners. Acting that way they lose more often than they win.
5. Change doesn’t happen without executive commitment and alignment to the hybrid channel strategy. But it falls to the first line manager to make that change happen.

LINKS & RESOURCES* Find Rich Blakeman on LinkedIn * Read the book: The Hybrid Sales Channel: How to Ignite Growth by Bridging the Gap Between Direct and Indirect Sales * Listen to Frank Rauch on How to Drive Growth & Profitability With A 100% Channel Strategy * Learn more about Allbound

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There’s no doubt that customers are increasingly making their technology purchases on B2B marketplaces. I wrote about the impact of this shift recently in my blog on Channel Predictions: 2023 and Beyond. To learn why marketplaces are gaining so much steam and how ISVs and partners can take advantage of this shift, I turned to Felipe …

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One challenge channel managers still face is finding time to sit down with partners and develop proper business plans. But it’s not just an issue of time. Channel managers struggle with the skills needed to talk about business goals, document goals and action plans with their partners, and effectively meet to review progress. To address …

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It’s been almost four years since I launched Channel Journeys, on a mission to help all of us become better channel professionals. From day one I’ve been talking with channel experts, hearing their real life stories of what works and what doesn’t, learning about their own channel journeys, and what they do on and off …

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One of the common mistakes we make in channel marketing is expecting our MSP partners to use our self-serving marketing content. MSPs don’t sell individual services. They sell a complete offering. Getting your MSP to sell more of your solution requires helping them sell more of their of their complete offering. Dan Tomaszewski, EVP Channels, …

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When you need to build a channel from scratch or create a new channel on top of existing partnerships, where do you start? Nancy Sperry, VP of Strategic Partnerships and Business Development, shares how Allego is creating a greenfield channel in the emerging market of sales enablement technology. KEY TAKEAWAYS Here are the top 3 …

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Executive buy-in is always at the top of the list of key success factors for a successful channel strategy. Dave Thomson, Chief Revenue Officer at Allbound, describes what you can do to gain that executive support. Apply these tips to gain buy-in for your partner strategy, your channel budget, and for reseources you need to …

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When stepping into a channel chief role, you’re hired for one of three missions. Run a channel, build a channel, or rebuild a channel. The rebuild is often the most challenging. Someone before you built a channel then lost it. And now you’ve got to step in and regain the trust of your partners.  Lynn …

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How many channel chiefs do you know who have successfully climbed to the top of Mt. Everest? I’ve only met one, Louise McEvoy, who applys lessons learned from mountain climbing to her role as a channel chief. Louis, VP of US Channels at Trend Micro, loves adventure and thrives on change, both on and off …

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You’re probably tracking Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for your transactional partners. These are the traditional metrics like partner sales, partner originated pipeline, and win rates.  But what are the right metrics to track the performance of the modern partner ecosytem such as system integrators, cloud hyperscalers, and strategic consulting firms? Joe Golemba, VP, Global Ecosystem …

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A year ago, I interviewed Lana King, VP of Partner Programs, Training and Enablement, on how Mitel is helping partners and their customers adopt the cloud business model through their unique partner managed program. A few months after that interview, Mitel struck a strategic partnership where RingCentral became their exclusive UCaaS partner. In this episode, …

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Buyer and worker behavior changed dramatically during the pandemic. Lynn Smurthwaite-Murphy, CEO of Plugable Technologies, discusses the impacts of the remote worker, digital buyer world on the channel and how to achieve success. The answer is surprisingly simple.  KEY TAKEAWAYS Here are 5 things I learned from Lynn about the shift to a remote digital …

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Last week I had the wonderful opportunity to participate in our first live Partner Advisory Board (PAB) as the SVP Channels & Alliances at BeyondTrust. The setting was beautiful Monaco overlooking the Mediterranean Sea and the format was highly interactive. While there, I took the opportunity to record a live podcast to hear what our  …

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In the SaaS world, customer experience is king. Drive a great customer experience and customers will expand and renew their subscription to your service. Deliver a poor experience, and customers will quickly switch to a competitor and likely share their bad experience online. Genesis Lee, VP of Global Customer Experience at Allbound, shares how a …

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We often think of channel partners, the ones selling our products, as the most vital element of our partner ecosystem. Nima Badiey, Global VP of Alliances at GitLab, shares why alliances are an invaluable component of your partner strategy and how to make them successful. KEY TAKEAWAYS Here are 10 things I learned from Nima …

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Have you ever heard your partner ask “You have great products, but why do you make it so difficult to buy?” Daren Finney, SVP Global Channels at Mitel, is on a mission to make it easier to buy their business communications and collaboration offerings. In this episode, Daren shares how he is leveraging distributors as …

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Managed Security Services Providers (MSSPs) are a vital component of a cybersecurity vendor’s partner ecosystem. When I wanted to learn how to build a best in class MSSP program, I turned to Stephan Tallent, VP of North America MSSPs at Cybereason. Stephan shares the details behind Cybereason’s new ‘Pay As You Grow’ program designed to …

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Partner ecosystems are the new channel, so much so that channel chiefs are now taking on the name “ecosystem” in their titles. Andrew Habgood is the VP of APAC Partner Ecosystems at Red Hat. In this episode, Andrew shares how he’s building a modern partner ecosystem across the Asia Pacific region. KEY TAKEAWAYS Here are …

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Vendors, customers, and partners need an easier way to find the skills needed to implement and integrate multi-vendor solutions. That requires a next generation open ecosystem where all players can see and find each other. John Guido, founder and CEO of P2P Global, shares how partners are becoming ecosystem orchestrators and leveraging a P2P marketplace …

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CompTIA is a non-profit trade association that provides IT channel education, training, and certifications. They also provide valuable market research on the IT industry and channel, which is where today’s guest, Carolyn April, comes in. Carolyn is the Senior Director of Industry Analysis. Each year she works on the IT Industry Trends Report, based on …

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For SaaS vendors building a stream of annual recurring revenue (ARR) with low churn, partner experience and partner success are increasingly more important than partner transactions. And a diverse, modern partner ecosystem is more important than just attracting resellers with shiny tiers of higher discounts.  My guest today is Tim Mackie, VP of Worldwide Channels …

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When you’ve got a horizontal platform, how do you provide customers with solutions tailored to their business? When you’re a partner looking to drive up your valuation, what do you do? Put these two needs together and the answer is partner IP (Intellectual Property).  Karl Fahrbach, Chief Partner Officer at SAP, explains how SAP is …

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With all the talk around the modern partner ecosystem, we may mistakenly neglect an entire segment of the channel traditionally known as the Direct National Resellers, or DMRs. These national sales giants, like CDW, SHI, and Insight, have transformed their business models to look much more like sophisticated solution providers than box resellers. And now …

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In this year end special episode, I took a look back at all the knowledge shared by the awesome Channel Journeys guests in 2021. It’s always fun for me to listen to prior podcasts and remind myself of their advice that I can apply in my own role as channel chief.  KEY TAKEAWAYS Here are …

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It’s that time of year when we’re mapping out our channel strategies for the new year, making our wish lists for what want our CFO and CEOs to approve, and what we want from our channel partners. And it’s that time of year when Jay McBain, Forrester’s Analyst for Channel, Partnerships, and Ecosystems, comes back …

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We are all seeing the impacts of supply chain shortages, from empty shelves to higher prices on just about everything. I’ve been waiting over a year for the bike I want to become available, and it’s hard to find the parts to keep my existing bike in top performance. In this episode, Chanan Greenberg, SVP …

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How do you build a channel team to support and drive explosive channel growth? Ally Murtlow, Director of National Channel Sales at Dialpad, shares how they grew their channel team by over 400% to manage and drive their channel bookings that are growing 150% year over year. KEY TAKEAWAYS Dialpad expanded their channel team from …

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Signing a new partner is often celebrated with great fanfare, but driving successful engagment is the real challenge for most partner managers. Daniel Graff-Radford, CEO of the PRM company Allbound, discusses a study of partner portal engagement and key indicators of successful partners.      KEY TAKEAWAYS Allbound observed their software users’ behaviors and tracked …

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This is the story of my sailing adventure in the summer of 2021 from Bermuda to New York. I’m out on the high seas once again with my sailing hero, Tania Abei, the author of Maiden Voyage, and 4 other crew I’ve never met before. We’ve got 800 miles of open ocean and a Berudua …

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We’ve all heard how the global pandemic has accelerated cloud adoption. Analysts report that 90% of enterprises with over 1000 employees and 50% of government agencies use the cloud. But why are some partners and customers still hesitant to make the shift? In this episode, I’m speaking with Lana King, VP of Partner Programs, Training …

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What do partners want more than discounts and rebates? That’s the question I posed to Balaji Subramanian, SVP and Global Channel Chief at Igel. Before this interview, I didn’t know much about this successful edge computing company. They have a very interesting channel story of transformation. Igel launched 21 years ago as a hardware company …

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There’s a wide range of partners and influencers who can help you find and win new customers. The trick is finding what motivates them to recommend your solution. Learn how Chris Westfall, VP Channels and Alliances at Paylocity, built a partner referral program with creative non-cash rewards to drive partner sourced business. KEY TAKEAWAYS Here …

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What percentage of your channel partners are achiveing their sales targets? Recruiting partners who are non-productive or a bad fit with your company is a costly waste of time. Paul Bird, Salesforce enthusiast and portal wizard at Magentrix, comes back for another Channel Journeys interview to share how you can find the right channel partners …

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When creating or transitioning your technology offering to the software subscription as-a-service model, the traditional tiered channel program is going to look as old and outdated as the lump sum perpetual license. In this episode, I share how and why we updated our channel program at OutSystems to benefit our partners, customers, and internal sales …

Rob Spee: It’s Time to Ditch Your Channel Program Read More »

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What exactly is a hybrid SaaS channel and what can it do for your company? That depends on who you ask. I spoke with channel pro Taylor Macdonald, SVP of Channel Sales at Sage Intacct, to get his view. Taylor built an indirect SaaS channel that now contributes 50% of the company’s overall revenue. Learn …

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Customer experience is the name of the game for technology vendors. And when you’re counting on partners to grow your business, partner experience and customer experience go hand in hand. Today’s guest is Jeff McCullough, Global Vice President of Channel Sales at Park Place Technologies, a leader in data center services. Jeff describes how to …

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This episode takes us on a journey exploring the mental health aspects of our new work environment. Marc Monday, head of Citrix’s Global Partner Go-To-Market Strategies, talks about lessons learned from a study on the impact of the lockdowns in the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. KEY TAKEAWAYS Lockdowns brought us the benefit of …

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According to Larry Wash, CEO and Chief Analyst at Channelnomics, the only thing that’s certain moving forward is more change. The Covid pandemic may have accelerated Digital Transformation, but we’re still more at a point of digitalization and haven’t even started the transformation yet. And that’s the next evolution that’s going to be coming over …

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Mark Brigman is the founder of the company and author of book Partnernomics. After a career leading partnerships with Sprint, Mark studied the economics of partnering, wrote a book, and took the leap to launch a company focused on helping others drive successful partnerships. In this episode, he shares the five phases of a successful …

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When is the right time to introduce your B2B software solution into international markets? How do you attract your first customers in foreign countries when you have a great product but only a small budget? International channel expert, Hans Peter Bech, author and founder of TBK Consult, shares his B2B software channel expertise and lessons …

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When I want to know what’s happening or going to happen in the channel, I turn to Forrester’s Principal Channel Analyst, Jay McBain. In this year-end special episode of Channel Journeys, Jay shares channel lessons from 2020 and makes his predictions for what we need to plan for in 2021. KEY TAKEAWAYS Here are five …

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How often does the Founder and CEO of a high tech company come out of the gate with a 100% channel strategy? And how often does that same founder remain steadfast in that strategy, year after year, for 27 years, while taking the company public and driving consistent profitable growth? Frank Rauch is the head …

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Channel Management is more of a sales game than you may think. As a channel manager, you constantly have to persuade. You have to sell your company, your products, and your channel program to your partners. You continuously have to convince your sales teams and your management why you need the channel. That’s why the …

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For episode 60, I’m taking a break from our usual channel topics to share my story of sailing 1500 miles across the Atlantic Ocean. Hear what it’s like to sail from the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean to Rhode Island in the middle of the global pandemic. This is my “little big one” with 5 …

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At this time when we’re not doing trade shows or in person events, we have to find creative ways to reach and connect with our partners.  And knowing what not to do is as important as knowing what to do. Paul Bird, Salesforce Enthusiast and Portal Wizard at Magentrix, shares the top channel management mistakes …

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Even before Covid, Managed Service Providers (MSPs) have been one of the fastest growing channels for SaaS vendors. New work-from-home mandates have driven the demand for outsourcing to even higher levels. But building a well-functioning Managed Service Provider channel isn’t easy. In this episode, Tony Beller, SVP Worldwide Partner Ecosystems at TIBCO, shares a wealth …

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Covid-19 has driven an unusual economic crisis. For certain industry and technology sectors, companies are doing as good or better than pre-Covid. But many companies are struggling, including IT vendors. Steve Benson, CEO of Badger Maps and field sales pro, shares how to lead an IT Channel Sales team through this time of economic crisis …

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How do you build a partner program that will succeed in our new remote world? Believe it or not, there are many advantages of working 100% remote, as I learned from Michelle Hodges, VP WW Channels at GitLab. This is a company that has been 100% remote since it was founded. They have written over …

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Why is a services-led channel so important? Software-as-a-service has forced vendors to think differently about their customer engagement model. TSIA (Technology Association of America) describes this new model as LAER which stands for land, adopt, expand and renew. Sales-led partners may be great at the land part; uncovering new opportunities and getting a customer to …

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Where do the hyper-scale cloud marketplaces from the likes of AWS, Microsoft, and Google fit in your channel strategy? Forrester predicted that 17% of the $13 trillion in B2B spend will flow to marketplaces by 2023, and that was before we were hit by the global Covid-19 pandemic. If you are a SaaS vendor and …

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Three years ago, two-time Channel Journeys podcast guest, Jay McBain, wrote that the channel is aging and that 40 percent of channel owners plan on retiring by 2024. That comment lit a spark for today’s podcast guest, Linda Rose. Following Jay’s prediction, Linda embarked on a new mission and wrote the book “Get Acquired for …

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Given everything happening this year, it’s an understatement to say that we are living in uncertain times. Uncertainty creates fear and can wreak havoc on any organization. What does it take to lead a successful partner business as a vendor or as a partner through uncertain times? I took that question to channel chief and …

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Understanding the challenges your partners face can create opportunities for channel managers. It can also create an idea for a company. That’s the case for today’s guest, Joseph Landis, who is the Chief Revenue Officer for Nerdio, a Chicago-based startup helping MSPs create successful cloud practices in Microsoft Azure. Joseph shares the top 3 challenges …

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How do we stay connected and build our network while being forced to stay home by a global pandemic? That’s the question I had to ask Social Media guru Sally Jo LaMont of Social Sales Link.  In this 50th episode of Channel Journeys, Sally eagerly shares how we can leverage LinkedIn to build and strengthen …

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This podcast takes us to Bali, Indonesia where I caught up with channel globetrotter Greg Eckstein. Greg is the founder and CEO of Channel Sales World, a channel consulting firm based in Singapore. It took a global virus to slow him down, presenting an opportunity for us to chat about changes in the IT channel …

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What can you learn from an Air Force veteran who worked for the Pentagon, Homeland Security, and the White House? Quite a lot I found out in this week’s episode with Vince Crisler. Vince is the founder and CEO of Dark Cubed, a cyber security SaaS company. Chris successful navigated two major transformations. First, he …

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There’s a lot of talk about moving from traditional on-premise selling to the as-a-service model. This remains a big challenge for traditional vendors and partners alike. I’ve always thought of this as shifting the sale of technology (software and hardware) from a big upfront sale to a much smaller recurring revenue stream. But as I …

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It’s not your grandma’s channel marketing. That’s my take on my conversation with channel maven Heather Margolis. We explore the journey of channel marketing and the massive changes in demand generation from just 11 years ago when Heather launched Channel Maven Consulting. These changes prompted Heather to embark on an entrepreneurial mission to create a …

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Are you tired of the same old channel conversations that take place at channel conferences year after year? Channel veteran and entrepreneur Dave Sobel sure is! He’s the guest on this super fun podcast where he insists on asking challenging, stimulating, controversial questions. The type of questions that everyone is afraid to ask. Why? As …

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How do you drive Technology-as-a-Service through the channel? That’s the question Anne McClelland is tackling as the VP of Research of a new TSIA practice, XaaS Channel Optimization.  If you haven’t heard of TSIA, the Technology Services Industry Association, they are on a mission to help technology companies leverage services to drive profitable growth. In …

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Seeing what’s coming in the channel in 2020 and beyond doesn’t require a crystal ball when you have Forrester’s Principal Channel Analyst Jay McBain in the room. In this episode, Jay and I talk about the top 10 things he sees coming in the channel based on his conversations with hundreds of companies and loads …

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We’re kicking off a new year in the channel with a look at what it takes to achieve channel success in 2020. Channel Chiefs have an almost endless list of things to do, from figuring out how to keep existing partners productive to launching new initiatives to attract new types of partners. I share my …

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What makes a successful company decide to shift their business from direct to channel? In the case of 8×8, it was the vision of the CEO who saw the channel as the way to take the company to the next level. In this episode, the last one of 2019, I have the real pleasure of …

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This episode marks the one year anniversary of Channel Journeys! I’m honored to welcome Tiffani Bova, the growth and innovation evangelist at Salesforce and one of the top influencers in IT as my guest. Driving consistent channel growth in this era of digital transformation requires new ways of thinking. Tiffani is a thought leader on …

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The “SaaSier” your business, the more likely you need non-traditional channels. And the non-traditional channel everyone is talking about is the “shadow channel”.  This week I’m talking with Dave Taylor, Impartner’s gregarious Chief Marketing Officer. We discuss how to reach and motivate this emerging influencer channel through referral-based programs. KEY TAKEAWAYS What exactly is the …

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Think you know what it takes to become more influential? To find out, I interviewed Janet Schijns, CEO of the JS Group and winner of the Channel Partners 2019 Channel Influencer of the Year award.  We talk about social influence and why it’s hugely important for your personal and professional brand. Janet shares the three …

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Building a successful SaaS channel can mean the difference between success or failure of your company. A great example of finding channel success out of multiple mergers and acquisitions is Recovery as a Service company, Axcient.  In this episode, Angus Robertson, Axcient’s Chief Revenue Officer and Vice-Chair of the CompTIA Business Applications Advisory Council, shares …

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Just as online shopping and review sites have changed the way we buy at home, the technology buyer’s journey has also seen massive change. The shift from products to services, new ways technologies are sold and delivered to the market, and the focus on customer experience are having a profound impact on both buyers and …

Jason Bystrak: The Role of the Channel in the Technology Buyer’s Journey Read More »

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There’s a lot of complexity to building a successful marketing strategy. One of the biggest challenges is that partners have all levels of marketing expertise. Some partners are even better at marketing than their vendors. But many more have limited capabilities, and some have none at all. Most have a deep desire to do good …

Tricia Atchison: How to Build an Award Winning Channel Marketing Program Read More »

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We talk about changes in the channel often, but a huge one I have seen take place over the years is the switch from the traditional reseller model to the Managed Service Provider (MSP) model. Partners have transformed their business models from one-time product and service sales into recurring-revenue contract-based services. MSPs combine white label …

Rob Rae: How to Find, Engage, and Inspire MSPs Read More »

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In this age of exponential growth and innovation, we are all at risk of being disrupted by new competitors and new business models. Yet most of us are driving into the future spending more time looking through the rearview mirror than through the windshield. But what if you could anticipate the future? What kind of …

Daniel Burrus: How to Create an Anticipatory Channel Organization Read More »

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I feel very fortunate to have such great channel talent on this podcast. It’s hard to keep up with all of the invaluable tips provided by my guests, who collectively represent centuries of channel experience.  In this episode, I highlight my top 10 channel tips from the first 10 episodes.   KEY TAKEAWAYS Rob has a …

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Customer success is more important than ever with the transition to the Software as Service (SaaS) recurring revenue model.  With the traditional on-premise license, the large upfront sale is of primary importance. With SaaS however, it’s all about renewals and reducing churn. And while vendors are used to using partners to drive new sales, many …

Hope Galley: How to Leverage Partners to Drive Customer Success Read More »

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The channel partner ecosystem is expanding with the digital transformation. And with that, many traditional partners have evolved with the times while many of them haven’t, or just simply can’t. This has caused the channel to be increasingly difficult to navigate. Vendors need to examine how their partner ecosystem has changed and develop a modern …

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As exponential innovation continues to disrupt the market, blockchain certainly comes to mind as a key player. While we think of blockchain as the system behind cryptocurrency, it has many more potential uses for market disruption. For example, it has the power to improve inefficient business processes and remove third party transactions that slow down …

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Tips on Navigating the Evolving MSP Channel The MSP Channel is evolving, creating challenges for vendors and MSPs (Managed Service Providers). With the popularity of the cloud, new technologies, and the exponential rate of innovation, vendor and partner companies need to dig in on their own domain expertise and keep the end customer in the …

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How to Drive Higher Partner Engagement and More Effective Channel Marketing Channel Marketing is a big investment. And you want to get as large and predictable return on your channel marketing efforts as possible. This is getting even more difficult with new partner types emerging. Different types of partners require different types of incentives to …

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Tips for Building Successful Application Platforms and Developer Channels Application platforms provide a framework and a marketplace for a community of developers to create solutions on top of a SaaS vendor’s technology. Salesforce has been hugely successful in growing their business by offering the App Exchange platform for partners to develop custom applications on top …

Avanish Sahai: The 5 Myths of Application Platforms Read More »

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Are You Asking the Questions to Get the Answers You Need or the Answers you Want? Business models are constantly changing and evolving. And companies that adjust and adapt are the ones that survive. Doing things the way we have always done them is what can leave our channel programs and our companies stagnant or …

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How to win in this era of vendor and partner convergence   The agent/master agent channel of communications vendors is being disrupted by the convergence of IT and Communications. Telecom and communications suppliers are moving up the stack to offer more complex data and SaaS solutions. As a result, they are moving into the Managed …

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Pax8’s mission to redefine cloud distribution What is the role of distributors in this age of Cloud and SaaS? That’s the question we answer in this episode with Ryan Walsh, Chief Channel Officer and co-founder of Pax8. Ryan and his fellow co-founders took a different approach in building Pax8 to support every piece of the …

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Valuable tips for moving from a traditional channel model to a SaaS Partner Program Transitioning the channel to the cloud and SaaS subscriptions is still a massive challenge. This week’s episode features Jeff Mattan, a channel veteran who has extensive experience in this channel transformation.  Over the course of his channel careers, Jeff has worked …

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Rob shares why he launched the Channel Journey Podcast and plans for the future   After 19 episodes of Channel Journeys, I’m going solo and taking a leap back to introduce you to the show. Instead of interviewing a guest, I share my own channel journey and why I’m so passionate about the channel.  Learn …

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Solving the Partner Prisoner’s Dilemma to Drive Partner Success One of the biggest sales frustrations, for both the partner and the vendor, is when there’s a lack of cooperation in sharing account data. This episode features Bob Moore, a serial entrepreneur, CEO, and Co-Founder of Crossbeam. Bob is on a mission to help companies that …

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Why SaaS Channels are Vital to SaaS Growth This episode on SaaS Channels features Sunir Shah, founder of three SaaS organizations. He has his own SaaS company, AppBind. He runs the SaaS Connect conference. And he founded the Cloud Software Association, a network of over 2,000 companies building the market and channel for cloud software …

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How to accelerate growth using Agents and Managed service providers This episode features Craig Schlagbaum, Vice President of Indirect Channels for the business solutions side of Comcast. Craig is an industry veteran and decorated channel chief. He shares why the telecom agent model has been so successful, but why MSPs are vital to his channel …

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Keys to Success with Managed Service Providers CJ16. This episode features Karl Palachuk, founder and CEO of Small Biz Thoughts. Karl’s mission is to train IT consultants and Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to be better at the business side of their business. He accomplishes this by writing, speaking, blogging, podcasting, coaching, and consulting. And that’s just …

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5 Ways to Improve Your Channel Marketing CJ15. This episode features Heather Margolis, Founder and CEO of Channel Maven Consulting. Heather shares how her company helps IT and telecom vendors improve their channel marketing to and through their channel partners. Heather provides at least 5 valuable channel marketing tips in this podcast. Start using these …

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How to accelerate channel growth with alternative channels CJ14. This episode features a top channel chief, Taylor Macdonald, who is SVP of Channel Sales at Sage Intacct. Taylor shares a wealth of learning and knowledge in this podcast.  You’ll learn how he is successful in driving rapid sales growth of their SaaS accounting software using …

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The continued growth of channel partners in the age of disruption CJ13. This episode features Lorna Garey, Editor-in-Chief of Channel Partners and Channel Futures. She is also the producer of the Channel Partners events including the CP Expo 2019 in Vegas where the theme is Channel Disruption. Lorna launched her journalism career in the Army …

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How to Accelerate Channel Performance in Hyper-Growth CJ12. This episode features Josh Lewis, Vice President of Global Channels at Alteryx, an analytics firm on hyper-growth. The channel strategy that got Alteryx to a $50M company wasn’t going to scale and continue fueling hyper-growth. The channel program reached a plateau. As a result, Josh needed to …

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How to find the right partners and drive more sales on a SaaS marketplace CJ11. This episode features Dina Moskowitz, founder and CEO of SaaSMAX, a multi-tier distribution channel for SaaS vendors. Dina tells how she is solving two key problems channel chiefs face. The first is finding partners who will provide the greatest return …

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How to get more channel sales from your Channel Marketing Investment CJ10. This episode features Laz Gonzalez, thought leader and Chief Strategy Officer for the channel tech company Zift Solutions. Laz has a unique channel journey that begins in Cuba and stretches across a wide variety of channel leadership roles. And he likes to spice things …

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Do you have what it takes to make the leap to channel partner? CJ9. This episode of Channel Journeys features Gary Lowe.  Gary is an adventure seeker, a channel pro, and now he’s the CEO of his managed services company called Think IT Ai. He earned his channel chops at the value-add distributor Tech Data …

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How to Increase partner engagement with social channel marketing CJ8. This episode of Channel Journeys features Jacqui Rand, co-founder of Channeliser, a platform for finding and getting social with partners. Learn about Jacqui’s channel journey and how she met Peter Norton and Bill Gates. Find out how she’s helping vendors find the right partners and …

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What does it take to create a Channel Profession? CJ7. This episode features Mike Kelly, founder of the Channel Institute. Inspired by entrepreneurs like Richard Branson and Elon Musk, Mike loves Big Hairy Audacious Goals like scaling mountains and running marathons. But these adventures look easy compared to Mike’s most audacious goal yet. He is …

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Talking partner transformation with the founder of SMB Nation CJ6. This episode features Harry Brelsford, founder of SMB Nation, ski racer, and cycling enthusiast. Harry is a long-time advocate, consultant, and spokesperson for partners and is passionate about helping them succeed. Harry is on a new mission to help MSPs through partner transformation. Find out …

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Channel transformation insights from the founder of channel Focus CJ5. This episode features Rod Baptie, the founder of Channel Focus – the world’s largest community of channel professionals. Rod shares his channel journey that took him from London to Colorado to Scotland. Hear  how customers are driving channel transformation – having a huge impact on …

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Jay’s Channel Analysis, Insights and Predictions CJ4. This episode features channel rock star Jay McBain, a super-connector and channel analyst with Forrester Research. Jay shares his analysis, insights, and predictions on the channel, including a wave of channel automation that could turn Channel Chiefs into Chief Channel Officers, just as marketing automation has turned Marketing VPs into …

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Creating Value-Added Distribution  CJ3.  This episode features Matt Reaves, channel chief, distribution veteran, and long-distance swimmer. Matt tells how his career went from drilling for oil to creating a value-added distribution model and becoming a leading distributor for IBM.  Hear Matt’s view on the role of distribution today and learn about his personal journey from …

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Bridging the Gap Between Direct and Indirect Sales CJ2.  Our first episode of 2019 features Rich Blakeman, a channel chief, consultant, and author of The Hybrid Sales Channel.  Rich explains why direct sales reps are often so hesitant to work with partners. Then he lays out how you can overcome channel conflict through a hybrid …

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Improving Channel  Manager Performance through Automation CJ1. Welcome to the first episode of the Channel Journeys podcast. My guest is an entrepreneur who has developed an innovative solution to a classic problem – how to increase the performance of channel managers.  Gary Morris is the founder and CEO of Successful Channels and the creator of …

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