In this episode Ali Spiric, interviews Jisse Plaggenborg, the Channel Sales Leader at Teamleader. Together they discuss:  How the Teamleader partnerships team doubled the internal headcount in four years What the 80/20 rule is (and how to break it) Why you should break up partners into high touch and low touch groups 

In this episode Ali Spiric, interviews Jisse Plaggenborg, the Channel Sales Leader at Teamleader. Together they discuss: <ul> <li>How the Teamleader partnerships team doubled the internal headcount in four years</li> <li>What the 80/20 rule is (and how to break it)</li> <li>Why you should break up partners into high touch and low touch groups</li> </ul>

Breaking the 80/20 Rule with Teamleader

In this episode of the Partner Channel Podcast, Ali Spiric interviews Damiaan Van Zanen, the head of partnerships at Total Synergy. They discusses the types of partners Total Synergy works with and the importance of understanding partnership goals before formalizing contracts. This episode provides valuable insights into Damiaan's partnership journey and finding the right balance between formality and informality.

In this episode of the Partner Channel Podcast, Ali Spiric interviews Damiaan Van Zanen, the head of partnerships at Total Synergy. They discusses the types of partners Total Synergy works with and the importance of understanding partnership goals before formalizing contracts. This episode provides valuable insights into Damiaan's partnership journey and finding the right balance between formality and informality.

Referral Partnerships 101

This week on the Partner Channel Poddcast, Ali Spiric welcomes Enryck Serin, the go-to-market lead of partnerships at Poly.ai, a top-ranked company by Forbes. With Enryck's, they discuss the topic of utilizing resellers to enter new countries or regions. They also touch on the appeal of making the jump to the UK market, its language advantages, and its role as a stepping stone for both US and European companies.

This week on the Partner Channel Poddcast, Ali Spiric welcomes Enryck Serin, the go-to-market lead of partnerships at <a href="http://Poly.ai" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Poly.ai</a>, a top-ranked company by Forbes. With Enryck's, they discuss the topic of utilizing resellers to enter new countries or regions. They also touch on the appeal of making the jump to the UK market, its language advantages, and its role as a stepping stone for both US and European companies.

Breaking Borders with Partnerships How to Enter New Markets with Resellers

In this enlightening episode of the Partner Channel Podcast, we dive deep into the crucial early months of establishing a partnership function within an organization. Join host Palmer Foster and his guest Damiaan Van Zanen as they delve into the important steps involved in onboarding and nurturing partnerships during the initial months. 

In this enlightening episode of the Partner Channel Podcast, we dive deep into the crucial early months of establishing a partnership function within an organization. Join host Palmer Foster and his guest Damiaan Van Zanen as they delve into the important steps involved in onboarding and nurturing partnerships during the initial months.

Building the Partnership Function What do the First 6 Months Look Like

In this episode, join Tori Barlow of Allbound and Julie Koslen Diehl, Director of Global Partner Ops at insightsoftware as they dive into the world of reseller partnerships and unravel the secrets behind tiering strategies. Whether you're a startup seeking to expand your market reach or an established business aiming to optimize your distribution channels, understanding how to effectively categorize and manage reseller partners is crucial.

In this episode, join Tori Barlow of Allbound and Julie Koslen Diehl, Director of Global Partner Ops at insightsoftware as they dive into the world of reseller partnerships and unravel the secrets behind tiering strategies. Whether you're a startup seeking to expand your market reach or an established business aiming to optimize your distribution channels, understanding how to effectively categorize and manage reseller partners is crucial.

How to Tier Reseller Partners for Maximum Efficiency

For this episode of the Partner Channel Podcast, sit down with Tori Barlow, VP of Marketing at Allbound, and her guest Jason Ashman, Senior Director of Strategic Alliances and Partnerships at SaaS Labs. Togther, they're talking all about aligning internally to better enable partner success.

For this episode of the Partner Channel Podcast, sit down with Tori Barlow, VP of Marketing at Allbound, and her guest Jason Ashman, Senior Director of Strategic Alliances and Partnerships at SaaS Labs. Togther, they're talking all about aligning internally to better enable partner success.

Prioritizing Internal Teams to Power Partnerships

This week, on the EMEA Partner Channel Podcast, the voice of the EMEA channel.  Join Palmer Foster who has a conversation with Per Allin, Head of Partnerships Growth at Contractbook.     Together they talk about:       Starting and scaling partnerships: some of the biggest challenges partnership professionals are experiencing, in particular when partnerships are a fairly new function  

This week, on the EMEA Partner Channel Podcast, the voice of the EMEA channel. Join Palmer Foster who has a conversation with Per Allin, Head of Partnerships Growth at Contractbook.   Together they talk about:   <ul> <li> Starting and scaling partnerships: some of the biggest challenges partnership professionals are experiencing, in particular when partnerships are a fairly new function </li> </ul>

Starting and Scaling Partnerships

This week, on the EMEA Partner Channel Podcast, the voice of the EMEA channel.  Join Palmer Foster who has a conversation with Niels Bergmans, Partner Manager Lead at Tracify     Together they talk about:       How Neils started  with a ‘box of partners’ and how he made sense of it all     First fails of going international + communication struggles    Advice to anyone new to channel  

This week, on the EMEA Partner Channel Podcast, the voice of the EMEA channel. Join Palmer Foster who has a conversation with Niels Bergmans, Partner Manager Lead at Tracify   Together they talk about:   <ul> <li> How Neils started  with a ‘box of partners’ and how he made sense of it all  </li> <li> First fails of going international + communication struggles </li> <li> Advice to anyone new to channel </li> </ul>

Working in Partnerships within a Startup Environment

On this episode, host Tori Barlow is back with Shubham Sood, now the Operaions Specialist for Channel at JustCall. It's been a few months since we last caught up with Shubbham and he is excited to share what he's learned, what's changed, and what you should do to see success with your partnerships.

On this episode, host Tori Barlow is back with Shubham Sood, now the Operaions Specialist for Channel at JustCall. It's been a few months since we last caught up with Shubbham and he is excited to share what he's learned, what's changed, and what you should do to see success with your partnerships.

How to Do Partner Operations Right the First Time

 This week, on the EMEA Partner Channel Podcast, the voice of the EMEA channel.  Join Palmer Foster who has a conversation with Guillaume Runser, Head of Sales - Growth Markets and former Head of EMEA Partnerships at Mixpanel.      Together they talk about:       Building and running a partnership program in EMEA: the good, the bad and the ugly    Diversity fostering innovation: how running a partnership program across very diverse regions fosters innovation    Privacy/Data Security - critical topic in EMEA. Privacy is cultural in EMEA  

This week, on the EMEA Partner Channel Podcast, the voice of the EMEA channel. Join Palmer Foster who has a conversation with Guillaume Runser, Head of Sales - Growth Markets and former Head of EMEA Partnerships at Mixpanel.    Together they talk about:   <ul> <li> Building and running a partnership program in EMEA: the good, the bad and the ugly </li> <li> Diversity fostering innovation: how running a partnership program across very diverse regions fosters innovation </li> <li> Privacy/Data Security - critical topic in EMEA. Privacy is cultural in EMEA </li> </ul>

Running a Partnership Program in EMEA Aggregation vs Adaption

In each episode of the Partner Channel Podcast we will focus on a channel leader’s experience, wins, and challenges. We'll also dive into their vision on the future of the channel ecosystem.

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The Partner Channel Podcast

Technology in the Channel

How to Simplify Your Pivot; Use the Channel

Building a Quality Partner Program from the Ground Up 

Building a Channel is a Marathon

Creating a Channel is a Company-Wide Effort

Aligning Systems, Processes and People for Partner Success

Growing a Referral Partner Program

Refine Your Partner Focus

Jeanne Hopkins, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for Ipswitch, joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss respecting partners’ time, the downfalls of un-aligned sales and marketing teams and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast.   It sounds like there's a lot of co-selling or collaboration that's happening between your internal teams and partners. Is that the way it's always been at Ipswitch, or has that evolved over the years?It's not new. I think that we had some hiccups last year, where there were product introductions that were back to back to back to back - and you just don't do that with partners, right? We have updates to three very important products of ours coming up. I was looking at the timelines and one was early June, mid-June, and then end of June. I thought, "You know what, we can't do that to our partners. It's got to be a bundle." If it's going to be 2017 plus and it's going to be all these software upgrades, then we need to release it and be able to tell our partners all at once; because a channel partner has a lot of other customers. We're important and valuable to our partners, but then on the other hand we might only account for $20,000, maybe $50,000, maybe $100,000 worth of revenue. They have big partners that they're working with and we can be an afterthought in many respects. We need to respect their time, we need to respect their need for communication in a very concise way and not keep them from being able to be successful with all the other businesses that they're dealing with.I'm seeing this line blur between what's considered marketing and what's considered sales enablement. A lot of times I'm seeing people refer to sales enablement tools or resources and I'm thinking, "That's marketing." But it's a revenue focused, lead generation focused, demand driven focused marketing. For a marketing team, you're creating all kinds of content, you're trying to get your direct team, your internal teams to engage and use them. That could be really magnified when you're talking about a channel. What are some of the challenges that you face at Ipswitch with getting partners to actually engage with those tools and resources that you're providing? You're doing a lot for them, are they using it all? Are they only using part of it?Within our sales team we have a team of sales enablement people, who create videos and demo.When I joined this company I noticed there were a remarkable amount of marketing projects or programs being done by the sales team. The very first thing that I saw when I joined was a 61 page catalog of 40 products - it was quite a big project. It was presented to the marketing department; they were told to print it. Our marketing team was looking at it saying, "What is this?"   Additionally, sales has their own e-mail program that they use. So they were sending this direct mail piece, sending e-mails to customers ... a whole host of things. It was this whole shadow marketing organization. You have to ask yourself, "Why were they doing that?" It wasn't malicious. This shadow marketing was happening simply because sales was feeling that marketing was not helping them to achieve their objective. I've heard that there was a lot of “we can't”, and now we have a lot more “we can”, in terms of helping sales. I'm trying to grab hold of marketing and own it as a team.  I think back to this particular catalog that was printed in the middle of November. On the cover it said 2016. I said to the salesperson, "It's the middle of November. Why wouldn't you put 2017 on this?" They were trying to get something done, but they didn't have the marketing experience. It wasn't a bad thing, they didn't do anything wrong. However, if they had given us some visibility into the project ahead of time, we might have been able to help. Because after you print 5,000 of these things and suddenly it’s 2017, what are you going to do? Put a sticker on all of them? Think about all the things that you try to do as an organization, in terms of helping. What I've noticed is that we have North America field marketing, we have rest of world field marketing and then e-mail field marketing. They're not necessarily aligned with each other, so we're not necessarily getting the scaling capabilities.  Channel partners are channel partners and they all need the same thing. They want margin, right? They want co-op dollars or some sort of MDF to be able to help them run their programs. They want leads. So, it's not necessarily content, Jen, it really is a financial relationship. But the inverse of that is what are your quotas? What are you delivering? Sometimes the channel partner is used to being successful on their own and not necessarily tying it to the goals and objectives of their partner. One of the things I'm trying to help partners understand is that we are all in the business of sales. How are we going to help them be successful going forward?  What advice do you have for fellow marketing officers whose companies have partner programs and really want to increase their channel partners' contribution?Get involved. What I've observed is most chief marketing officers don't get involved. As a CMO, I've offered to be in meetings, and even if I can only dial in having the credibility of having a C-level person at the table gives the channel manager or the director of channel management so much more power in the relationship.  Often you’re working with a lower level person and the channel partner is holding all the cards, beating the bejeebers out of that poor manager of yours. But if you're able to be on these calls with these billion dollar partners or distributors and say, "We're investing in this program and this is what we're going to do", you can help. I was able to help the director of channel management for North America in a conversation with a partner, where we were making an investment. We received a spreadsheet with options “two of these, and one of those, and three of these...” and so we're going through it and saying, "That has no value, that has no value, that has no value. Can we trade two of these for one of those which is definitely going to have value?" It was something Joan, our channel partner manager, wouldn't have thought because she didn't think she had enough power. But for me to be able to say, " I want to help you Joan and I want to help us be successful with this relationship."  Whenever you make these investments in programs whether it's with MDF, co-op dollars, whatever, you want to make sure that they're used. So many times marketing people have no problem spending money, but don't figure out how to use money that is being handed to them on a platter. If you can make use of those dollars and make them more valuable, if that makes the channel partner happy, that is important as well. I'm going to go back to the two words, get involved, be present, show support. Those are six words, but just trying to make a statement here. As the chief marketing officer, the channel is important to you. To actually be a part of it, is what's going to make a difference for the organization.  

Jeanne Hopkins, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for Ipswitch, joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss respecting partners’ time, the downfalls of un-aligned sales and marketing teams and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast. It sounds like there's a lot of co-selling or collaboration that's happening between your internal teams and partners. Is that the way it's always been at Ipswitch, or has that evolved over the years?It's not new. I think that we had some hiccups last year, where there were product introductions that were back to back to back to back - and you just don't do that with partners, right? We have updates to three very important products of ours coming up. I was looking at the timelines and one was early June, mid-June, and then end of June. I thought, "You know what, we can't do that to our partners. It's got to be a bundle." If it's going to be 2017 plus and it's going to be all these software upgrades, then we need to release it and be able to tell our partners all at once; because a channel partner has a lot of other customers. We're important and valuable to our partners, but then on the other hand we might only account for $20,000, maybe $50,000, maybe $100,000 worth of revenue. They have big partners that they're working with and we can be an afterthought in many respects. We need to respect their time, we need to respect their need for communication in a very concise way and not keep them from being able to be successful with all the other businesses that they're dealing with.I'm seeing this line blur between what's considered marketing and what's considered sales enablement. A lot of times I'm seeing people refer to sales enablement tools or resources and I'm thinking, "That's marketing." But it's a revenue focused, lead generation focused, demand driven focused marketing. For a marketing team, you're creating all kinds of content, you're trying to get your direct team, your internal teams to engage and use them. That could be really magnified when you're talking about a channel. What are some of the challenges that you face at Ipswitch with getting partners to actually engage with those tools and resources that you're providing? You're doing a lot for them, are they using it all? Are they only using part of it?Within our sales team we have a team of sales enablement people, who create videos and demo.When I joined this company I noticed there were a remarkable amount of marketing projects or programs being done by the sales team. The very first thing that I saw when I joined was a 61 page catalog of 40 products - it was quite a big project. It was presented to the marketing department; they were told to print it. Our marketing team was looking at it saying, "What is this?" Additionally, sales has their own e-mail program that they use. So they were sending this direct mail piece, sending e-mails to customers ... a whole host of things. It was this whole shadow marketing organization. You have to ask yourself, "Why were they doing that?" It wasn't malicious. This shadow marketing was happening simply because sales was feeling that marketing was not helping them to achieve their objective. I've heard that there was a lot of “we can't”, and now we have a lot more “we can”, in terms of helping sales. I'm trying to grab hold of marketing and own it as a team. I think back to this particular catalog that was printed in the middle of November. On the cover it said 2016. I said to the salesperson, "It's the middle of November. Why wouldn't you put 2017 on this?" They were trying to get something done, but they didn't have the marketing experience. It wasn't a bad thing, they didn't do anything wrong. However, if they had given us some visibility into the project ahead of time, we might have been able to help. Because after you print 5,000 of these things and suddenly it’s 2017, what are you going to do? Put a sticker on all of them? Think about all the things that you try to do as an organization, in terms of helping. What I've noticed is that we have North America field marketing, we have rest of world field marketing and then e-mail field marketing. They're not necessarily aligned with each other, so we're not necessarily getting the scaling capabilities. Channel partners are channel partners and they all need the same thing. They want margin, right? They want co-op dollars or some sort of MDF to be able to help them run their programs. They want leads. So, it's not necessarily content, Jen, it really is a financial relationship. But the inverse of that is what are your quotas? What are you delivering? Sometimes the channel partner is used to being successful on their own and not necessarily tying it to the goals and objectives of their partner. One of the things I'm trying to help partners understand is that we are all in the business of sales. How are we going to help them be successful going forward? What advice do you have for fellow marketing officers whose companies have partner programs and really want to increase their channel partners' contribution?Get involved. What I've observed is most chief marketing officers don't get involved. As a CMO, I've offered to be in meetings, and even if I can only dial in having the credibility of having a C-level person at the table gives the channel manager or the director of channel management so much more power in the relationship. Often you’re working with a lower level person and the channel partner is holding all the cards, beating the bejeebers out of that poor manager of yours. But if you're able to be on these calls with these billion dollar partners or distributors and say, "We're investing in this program and this is what we're going to do", you can help. I was able to help the director of channel management for North America in a conversation with a partner, where we were making an investment. We received a spreadsheet with options “two of these, and one of those, and three of these...” and so we're going through it and saying, "That has no value, that has no value, that has no value. Can we trade two of these for one of those which is definitely going to have value?" It was something Joan, our channel partner manager, wouldn't have thought because she didn't think she had enough power. But for me to be able to say, " I want to help you Joan and I want to help us be successful with this relationship." Whenever you make these investments in programs whether it's with MDF, co-op dollars, whatever, you want to make sure that they're used. So many times marketing people have no problem spending money, but don't figure out how to use money that is being handed to them on a platter. If you can make use of those dollars and make them more valuable, if that makes the channel partner happy, that is important as well. I'm going to go back to the two words, get involved, be present, show support. Those are six words, but just trying to make a statement here. As the chief marketing officer, the channel is important to you. To actually be a part of it, is what's going to make a difference for the organization.

Sales and Marketing Alignment Can Make or Break your Channel

Partner Up and Be a Chameleon. It’s Magic.

Wendell Black, Vice President of Channels for Five9, joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss creating the optimal team to compete and win with the partner, prioritizing your partner needs, and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast. Five9 is a leading global provider of cloud-based contact center software for sales, marketing, and support, and they facilitate over three billion customer interactions annually.   Welcome, Wendell.   Wendell: Well, thanks, Jen. Glad to be here.   Jen: We're really happy to have you here today, particularly because Five9 has a really robust partner ecosystem, and I want to dig right into that. I mean, you guys have referral partners, system integrators, consultants, resellers, master agents. Is there a primary area of focus for growing that partner ecosystem this year or are you just going after everything all at once?   Wendell: Well, as much as I'd like to say we're just gonna go do it all, Jen, I've been told that you can't have more than three priorities or you don't have really any. So that said, Five9 is very focused in growing the book of business that we have in the master agent, sub-agent community, and growing our reseller partnerships is our two big focus areas. These two areas generated a lot of growth capacity last year, and we're looking to substantially grow our reach this year by continuing to focus on both of these channels to market. We've been very encouraged by the relationships that we've developed, and we look to further invest both time and finances in these communities in 2017.   Jen: Do all of these elements of your partner ecosystem fall under your purview? I know you're focused on growing a couple of these areas, but are you specifically focused on any of these areas individually? I guess what I'm getting to is what is the team makeup really look like over there?   Wendell: Sure. So my team is divided up really into the communities. So the systems integrators is one group, master agents and sub-agents, that line of business is another group, and then resellers is a third team, and all of those roll up to me. And our focus for that is on a global basis. So I have staff not only domestically here in the U.S., but also in Latin America, in Europe, and Asia as we grow in that direction as well.   Jen: Awesome. Now, a lot of times when I'm speaking with channel leaders, they’re very focused on, of course, growing revenue through that partner base. But the more that we've become a very recurring revenue-focused type of world, right, this marketplace, the way the markets change, now the conversation is really starting to transition into what value do all experiences, whether they're from direct sales teams or partner teams, play in that full life cycle customer experience? So, if I'm one of your Five9 customers, can you tell me how would one of your partners actually add value to my experience with your product beyond simply that, "I bought it from that partner"?   Wendell: Sure. So I think, as you know, Five9 has been delivering contact center solutions for 15 years now. But our partnerships, many of these resellers in particular that we're working with have been working in the contact center for twice that long. It's that breadth and depth of experience that the partners bring that is where the real value add is to what the Five9 product does and delivers to its customers. They provide that added value and insight to be able to help a customer really maximize that value. So a customer of a Five9 partner is not only getting the innovative omni channel solution that Five9 offers, but it's getting the years of been there, done that experience that the partner has to offer in this space. That's where the customer really wins.   Jen: Right. And, you talked about your resellers and you mentioned you have master agents, can you sort of talk us through how a master agent program differs from your reseller program? And keep in mind that some of our listeners, are just very new to the concept of Channel, they're just really starting to build out their partner programs, and this might be good for them to think about as they're kind of crafting that blueprint for what's to come in the future for themselves.   Wendell: Sure. So let me, first of all, tell you how they are similar. Both programs work with Five9 sales and sales engineering staff to ensure that we've provided the optimal team to compete and win in the market with the partner. The teaming of the Five9 experts with our partner experts makes for an unbeatable team. The programs are different, though, based on the scope of services that each type is really ready to deliver to a client. So in the agent or master agent kind of a program, they're really focused most of the time on the pre-sale side of a customer's selection of the solution and solving the need, bringing technology and different kind of solutions to bear on that customer problem.   The resale program not only does that, and works in that pre-sale process, but they also want to manage and deliver the solution, they want to train the customer, they want to own the operational consulting and ongoing support with the customer. I mean, the reseller really wants to have a day-to-day operational engagement with clients to continue to grow the success with a joint solution that they're bringing the services and the day-to-day engagement experience along with the Five9 product.   So, when you look at the two ways, one of them is the beginning to end relationship where the other one is really focused on the pre-sale engagement side, and that's why it's a great avenue for people to perhaps start as a referral relationship and be able to grow into the resale kind of soup to nuts delivery of the relationship over time. That makes it an easier way for all of us to get started.   Jen: So if I'm a customer and I come to purchase your product via that reseller program, do I ever have any interaction with anyone on the Five9 team, or is my only interaction with your product with that individual reseller?   Wendell: No, I mean, that's one of the things that, I think, is differentiated value for Five9 in that we team our sales and sales engineering, and frankly all the resources that those people can bring to bear with the partner to be able to put the best foot forward across both organizations. We want to get all the right resources available to ensure that when we're out there in the competitive market space, Five9 and the partner gets to win their unfair share of business.   Jen: I love that, unfair share, perfect. I don't think I have ever heard anyone say that. I think I might have to steal that from you, Wendell.   Wendell: That's okay.   Jen: So, one of the biggest challenges that we hear over here at Allbound when we're talking to organizations who have partner programs is they have a lack of engagement with their current partners. Can you share a little bit about some of the biggest challenges that you've had engaging with partners and maybe what steps you've taken to try to overcome those challenges?   Wendell: Sure. So, as you undoubtedly know, there's a lot of transition going on in the contact center infrastructure market these days. That is both the biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity from where Five9 views what's going on. There's a lot of concern and questions in the minds of the reseller community that've had longstanding relationships with providers in the past but they're changing now. I mean, this is mainly because new ownership is making changes in programs and personnel that they've grown accustomed to and perfectly well understood previously.   So Five9 is the only company in the Gartner contact center as a service leader quadrant that's not currently being assimilated by another company. I believe this makes us a more stable and predictable partner for our resellers to engage with and to help them plan a path forward they can count on. So in helping our partner community be more successful, we're diligently working with them on all aspects of training for a better understanding of how to deliver value to their customers with Five9, and this starts with sales and marketing, it transitions into demand generation, and it continues all the way through implementation and customer service.   We're taking a holistic view of helping our reseller partners make the move to the cloud, and that's what I think really changes our engagement strategy and approach with partners today, because we believe we have to interact with them on every one of those functional areas and put the right people in place to help them in those roles.   Jen: That leads me really nicely on to the next question I have for you. When we look at what makes a successful partner ecosystem, a lot of making the channel part of a strategic part of the business, making sure that there's a culture of partnership within the organization, and really making sure that the partner teams are properly resourced. So can you share with me, what are some of the internal resources or team structures, anything that you've put in place that are there to support Five9's entire partner ecosystem to ensure that you can be successful in engaging with these partners and making this a strategic part of your business as a company?   Wendell: So one of the great things at Five9 is we're on a tremendous growth path over the last five years. I mean, we've been growing roughly 40% a year each of the last years, and that growth means we can hire people and put them in the right position to manage all aspects of our business growth. So we've been giving people that come into the company a partner tattoo as we bring them into our sales and sales engineering teams, also into sales operations, because there's always transactions that are going back and forth between us and our partners.   We've also brought partner resources into our marketing team, because frankly, we're pretty good at the marketing of cloud contact center, and many of our partners, this is a new set of stories to tell. So we can help them in telling a cloud monthly recurring kind of a story versus a premise perpetual licence kind of a story. So there's a lot of learning and experience that we can transition that way. It goes right into our professional services. I mean, we've had to align people in our PS organization to be the point of contact for partners, because as they take on those responsibilities, they need a go-to resource to be able to help them overcome challenges or obstacles.   Our guys have seen a lot of implementations of Five9 and other cloud technologies, and they can help share that insight with our partners. And then finally support. I mean, everything happens through the support organization after the sale, and we want to do a mind meld with our partners so they can deliver those kinds of services the same way we do, which got us the recognition in the Gartner Magic Quadrant as being one of the best at execution in this sector.   Jen: That knowledge transfer piece, I mean, everything you're talking about has to do with that knowledge transfer. How do you get information from one entity to another, especially when they don't work for you, they're not in your building, they're not on your payroll necessarily, and transferring your knowledge down to the partner but then getting the partner's expertise and their customer knowledge back up to you is so critical. So that's great that you were able to create an infrastructure to support that effective knowledge transfer.   Wendell: Yes.   Jen: Oh, go ahead.   Wendell: I was going to say you're right on target with it because it's all about collaboration and we can't ever leave a partner stranded. We've got to be there to provide the safety net for them and for the customer to ensure that we have a continuing great experience with our clients in the base, whether they've come to us directly or through a partner channel.   Jen: One more question for you, and it's kind of a big one, but we mostly are talking to software companies. What do you think is the software industry's greatest opportunity when it comes to Channel? Channel's traditionally been a very traditional sort of like hardware-focused type of industry. So what can software take advantage of with Channel?   Wendell: I've been in the contact center business for over 30 years and I've been in the cloud space for 17 years now. I think we're finally at a place that we've hoped for as evangelists for cloud services back 15 years ago. I mean, we knew we were trailblazing and we knew that we were fighting an uphill battle against the established norm, but the market is right, customers are ready, and the partner ecosystem is also ready to take on cloud services and deliver them to their customers.   The time is now to be able to take the transitional move from perpetual premise licensing to the cloud model and software as a service. So I personally think after my time in the space, it's finally time to write the tsunami of the cloud contact center into the new omni channel paradigm of 2017, and that's why partners are getting excited today, because they see that opportunity too with their customers and now where you had to sell...or in the past when you had to sell people to think about the cloud, now they're asking about the cloud first and having that as being their first choice.   Jen: Right, absolutely, absolutely. I think that's a great way for us to wrap this up, although I don't let anyone go kind of without bugging them with a couple of more personal questions. So, totally unrelated to what you do at Five9 or Channel or software, are you open to answering a couple of questions?   Wendell: Sure, I'm fine with that.   Jen: Okay. I promise they're not too hard. My first question for you is, what's your favorite city?   Wendell: Gosh, it's hard not to be Dallas-biased, and been my home for 30 years and I can't imagine living anywhere else, but I do very much like to visit San Francisco and London and Paris. So I'm kind of a world traveler and I have a lot of favorites for different reasons. So can I cop out on that question kind of like that?   Jen: Sure, sure. The whole point of this is to get to know a little bit more about you, so we did just that. The second question I have for you is, are you an animal lover? Yes or no?   Wendell: I am.   Jen: And do you happen to have any pets?   Wendell: Yes, a white lab that I love and adore. So she is a great friend and a member of the family in every way.   Jen: Awesome. What's her name?   Wendell: Millie.   Jen: Millie, it's a nice name. Okay, question number three, Mac or PC?   Wendell: Both, actually. I have a MacBook Air on one side of my desk and a Microsoft Surface on the other.   Jen: Really? Very interesting. Most people I talk to either like one or the other, right? Like their brain has now been trained to use one kind of device, so that's great. The last question I have for you, let's say I was able to offer you an all expenses paid trip, where would it be to?   Wendell: You know, I would...I think I like to go do Asian coast tour, and so I have a mind that...the Tibet, Vietnam, Cambodia area is one that I haven't spent much time in and would like to go get to know better. So I think that's what I would target today. But a year from now, it could be some place totally different.   Jen: Well, and who knows where the business will take you? You might find new and exciting places that you never even knew really existed. I think that's one of the beauties of Channel, Channel is so geographically dispersed, you get to experience so many different countries, cultures, experiences, so it gives you a lot of opportunity.   Wendell: Couldn't agree more.   Jen: Well, thank you so much for taking some time sharing your insights with us today, it was a pleasure. If any of our listeners would like to reach out to you personally to follow up, ask you any questions, what's the best way for them to reach you?   Wendell: So my email is pretty easy, it's wblack@five9.com, and I would be delighted to engage with the partner community that way. I'm also on LinkedIn, Wendell Black, and would be happy to engage with people out there in the social world as well. Five9.com would be my third recommendation. You can find me in the partner section of our website and would be happy to get connected via that as well. So Jen, it's been a pleasure speaking with you today, and thank you so much for the opportunity.   Jen: Oh, you're very welcome. Thanks for joining us and thanks, everyone, for tuning into The Allbound Podcast.   Male: Thanks for tuning into The Allbound Podcast. For past episodes and additional resources, visit the resource center at allbound.com. And remember, never sell alone.

Wendell Black, Vice President of Channels for Five9, joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss creating the optimal team to compete and win with the partner, prioritizing your partner needs, and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast. Five9 is a leading global provider of cloud-based contact center software for sales, marketing, and support, and they facilitate over three billion customer interactions annually. Welcome, Wendell. Wendell: Well, thanks, Jen. Glad to be here. Jen: We're really happy to have you here today, particularly because Five9 has a really robust partner ecosystem, and I want to dig right into that. I mean, you guys have referral partners, system integrators, consultants, resellers, master agents. Is there a primary area of focus for growing that partner ecosystem this year or are you just going after everything all at once? Wendell: Well, as much as I'd like to say we're just gonna go do it all, Jen, I've been told that you can't have more than three priorities or you don't have really any. So that said, Five9 is very focused in growing the book of business that we have in the master agent, sub-agent community, and growing our reseller partnerships is our two big focus areas. These two areas generated a lot of growth capacity last year, and we're looking to substantially grow our reach this year by continuing to focus on both of these channels to market. We've been very encouraged by the relationships that we've developed, and we look to further invest both time and finances in these communities in 2017. Jen: Do all of these elements of your partner ecosystem fall under your purview? I know you're focused on growing a couple of these areas, but are you specifically focused on any of these areas individually? I guess what I'm getting to is what is the team makeup really look like over there? Wendell: Sure. So my team is divided up really into the communities. So the systems integrators is one group, master agents and sub-agents, that line of business is another group, and then resellers is a third team, and all of those roll up to me. And our focus for that is on a global basis. So I have staff not only domestically here in the U.S., but also in Latin America, in Europe, and Asia as we grow in that direction as well. Jen: Awesome. Now, a lot of times when I'm speaking with channel leaders, they’re very focused on, of course, growing revenue through that partner base. But the more that we've become a very recurring revenue-focused type of world, right, this marketplace, the way the markets change, now the conversation is really starting to transition into what value do all experiences, whether they're from direct sales teams or partner teams, play in that full life cycle customer experience? So, if I'm one of your Five9 customers, can you tell me how would one of your partners actually add value to my experience with your product beyond simply that, "I bought it from that partner"? Wendell: Sure. So I think, as you know, Five9 has been delivering contact center solutions for 15 years now. But our partnerships, many of these resellers in particular that we're working with have been working in the contact center for twice that long. It's that breadth and depth of experience that the partners bring that is where the real value add is to what the Five9 product does and delivers to its customers. They provide that added value and insight to be able to help a customer really maximize that value. So a customer of a Five9 partner is not only getting the innovative omni channel solution that Five9 offers, but it's getting the years of been there, done that experience that the partner has to offer in this space. That's where the customer really wins. Jen: Right. And, you talked about your resellers and you mentioned you have master agents, can you sort of talk us through how a master agent program differs from your reseller program? And keep in mind that some of our listeners, are just very new to the concept of Channel, they're just really starting to build out their partner programs, and this might be good for them to think about as they're kind of crafting that blueprint for what's to come in the future for themselves. Wendell: Sure. So let me, first of all, tell you how they are similar. Both programs work with Five9 sales and sales engineering staff to ensure that we've provided the optimal team to compete and win in the market with the partner. The teaming of the Five9 experts with our partner experts makes for an unbeatable team. The programs are different, though, based on the scope of services that each type is really ready to deliver to a client. So in the agent or master agent kind of a program, they're really focused most of the time on the pre-sale side of a customer's selection of the solution and solving the need, bringing technology and different kind of solutions to bear on that customer problem. The resale program not only does that, and works in that pre-sale process, but they also want to manage and deliver the solution, they want to train the customer, they want to own the operational consulting and ongoing support with the customer. I mean, the reseller really wants to have a day-to-day operational engagement with clients to continue to grow the success with a joint solution that they're bringing the services and the day-to-day engagement experience along with the Five9 product. So, when you look at the two ways, one of them is the beginning to end relationship where the other one is really focused on the pre-sale engagement side, and that's why it's a great avenue for people to perhaps start as a referral relationship and be able to grow into the resale kind of soup to nuts delivery of the relationship over time. That makes it an easier way for all of us to get started. Jen: So if I'm a customer and I come to purchase your product via that reseller program, do I ever have any interaction with anyone on the Five9 team, or is my only interaction with your product with that individual reseller? Wendell: No, I mean, that's one of the things that, I think, is differentiated value for Five9 in that we team our sales and sales engineering, and frankly all the resources that those people can bring to bear with the partner to be able to put the best foot forward across both organizations. We want to get all the right resources available to ensure that when we're out there in the competitive market space, Five9 and the partner gets to win their unfair share of business. Jen: I love that, unfair share, perfect. I don't think I have ever heard anyone say that. I think I might have to steal that from you, Wendell. Wendell: That's okay. Jen: So, one of the biggest challenges that we hear over here at Allbound when we're talking to organizations who have partner programs is they have a lack of engagement with their current partners. Can you share a little bit about some of the biggest challenges that you've had engaging with partners and maybe what steps you've taken to try to overcome those challenges? Wendell: Sure. So, as you undoubtedly know, there's a lot of transition going on in the contact center infrastructure market these days. That is both the biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity from where Five9 views what's going on. There's a lot of concern and questions in the minds of the reseller community that've had longstanding relationships with providers in the past but they're changing now. I mean, this is mainly because new ownership is making changes in programs and personnel that they've grown accustomed to and perfectly well understood previously. So Five9 is the only company in the Gartner contact center as a service leader quadrant that's not currently being assimilated by another company. I believe this makes us a more stable and predictable partner for our resellers to engage with and to help them plan a path forward they can count on. So in helping our partner community be more successful, we're diligently working with them on all aspects of training for a better understanding of how to deliver value to their customers with Five9, and this starts with sales and marketing, it transitions into demand generation, and it continues all the way through implementation and customer service. We're taking a holistic view of helping our reseller partners make the move to the cloud, and that's what I think really changes our engagement strategy and approach with partners today, because we believe we have to interact with them on every one of those functional areas and put the right people in place to help them in those roles. Jen: That leads me really nicely on to the next question I have for you. When we look at what makes a successful partner ecosystem, a lot of making the channel part of a strategic part of the business, making sure that there's a culture of partnership within the organization, and really making sure that the partner teams are properly resourced. So can you share with me, what are some of the internal resources or team structures, anything that you've put in place that are there to support Five9's entire partner ecosystem to ensure that you can be successful in engaging with these partners and making this a strategic part of your business as a company? Wendell: So one of the great things at Five9 is we're on a tremendous growth path over the last five years. I mean, we've been growing roughly 40% a year each of the last years, and that growth means we can hire people and put them in the right position to manage all aspects of our business growth. So we've been giving people that come into the company a partner tattoo as we bring them into our sales and sales engineering teams, also into sales operations, because there's always transactions that are going back and forth between us and our partners. We've also brought partner resources into our marketing team, because frankly, we're pretty good at the marketing of cloud contact center, and many of our partners, this is a new set of stories to tell. So we can help them in telling a cloud monthly recurring kind of a story versus a premise perpetual licence kind of a story. So there's a lot of learning and experience that we can transition that way. It goes right into our professional services. I mean, we've had to align people in our PS organization to be the point of contact for partners, because as they take on those responsibilities, they need a go-to resource to be able to help them overcome challenges or obstacles. Our guys have seen a lot of implementations of Five9 and other cloud technologies, and they can help share that insight with our partners. And then finally support. I mean, everything happens through the support organization after the sale, and we want to do a mind meld with our partners so they can deliver those kinds of services the same way we do, which got us the recognition in the Gartner Magic Quadrant as being one of the best at execution in this sector. Jen: That knowledge transfer piece, I mean, everything you're talking about has to do with that knowledge transfer. How do you get information from one entity to another, especially when they don't work for you, they're not in your building, they're not on your payroll necessarily, and transferring your knowledge down to the partner but then getting the partner's expertise and their customer knowledge back up to you is so critical. So that's great that you were able to create an infrastructure to support that effective knowledge transfer. Wendell: Yes. Jen: Oh, go ahead. Wendell: I was going to say you're right on target with it because it's all about collaboration and we can't ever leave a partner stranded. We've got to be there to provide the safety net for them and for the customer to ensure that we have a continuing great experience with our clients in the base, whether they've come to us directly or through a partner channel. Jen: One more question for you, and it's kind of a big one, but we mostly are talking to software companies. What do you think is the software industry's greatest opportunity when it comes to Channel? Channel's traditionally been a very traditional sort of like hardware-focused type of industry. So what can software take advantage of with Channel? Wendell: I've been in the contact center business for over 30 years and I've been in the cloud space for 17 years now. I think we're finally at a place that we've hoped for as evangelists for cloud services back 15 years ago. I mean, we knew we were trailblazing and we knew that we were fighting an uphill battle against the established norm, but the market is right, customers are ready, and the partner ecosystem is also ready to take on cloud services and deliver them to their customers. The time is now to be able to take the transitional move from perpetual premise licensing to the cloud model and software as a service. So I personally think after my time in the space, it's finally time to write the tsunami of the cloud contact center into the new omni channel paradigm of 2017, and that's why partners are getting excited today, because they see that opportunity too with their customers and now where you had to sell...or in the past when you had to sell people to think about the cloud, now they're asking about the cloud first and having that as being their first choice. Jen: Right, absolutely, absolutely. I think that's a great way for us to wrap this up, although I don't let anyone go kind of without bugging them with a couple of more personal questions. So, totally unrelated to what you do at Five9 or Channel or software, are you open to answering a couple of questions? Wendell: Sure, I'm fine with that. Jen: Okay. I promise they're not too hard. My first question for you is, what's your favorite city? Wendell: Gosh, it's hard not to be Dallas-biased, and been my home for 30 years and I can't imagine living anywhere else, but I do very much like to visit San Francisco and London and Paris. So I'm kind of a world traveler and I have a lot of favorites for different reasons. So can I cop out on that question kind of like that? Jen: Sure, sure. The whole point of this is to get to know a little bit more about you, so we did just that. The second question I have for you is, are you an animal lover? Yes or no? Wendell: I am. Jen: And do you happen to have any pets? Wendell: Yes, a white lab that I love and adore. So she is a great friend and a member of the family in every way. Jen: Awesome. What's her name? Wendell: Millie. Jen: Millie, it's a nice name. Okay, question number three, Mac or PC? Wendell: Both, actually. I have a MacBook Air on one side of my desk and a Microsoft Surface on the other. Jen: Really? Very interesting. Most people I talk to either like one or the other, right? Like their brain has now been trained to use one kind of device, so that's great. The last question I have for you, let's say I was able to offer you an all expenses paid trip, where would it be to? Wendell: You know, I would...I think I like to go do Asian coast tour, and so I have a mind that...the Tibet, Vietnam, Cambodia area is one that I haven't spent much time in and would like to go get to know better. So I think that's what I would target today. But a year from now, it could be some place totally different. Jen: Well, and who knows where the business will take you? You might find new and exciting places that you never even knew really existed. I think that's one of the beauties of Channel, Channel is so geographically dispersed, you get to experience so many different countries, cultures, experiences, so it gives you a lot of opportunity. Wendell: Couldn't agree more. Jen: Well, thank you so much for taking some time sharing your insights with us today, it was a pleasure. If any of our listeners would like to reach out to you personally to follow up, ask you any questions, what's the best way for them to reach you? Wendell: So my email is pretty easy, it's wblack@five9.com, and I would be delighted to engage with the partner community that way. I'm also on LinkedIn, Wendell Black, and would be happy to engage with people out there in the social world as well. <a href="http://Five9.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Five9.com</a> would be my third recommendation. You can find me in the partner section of our website and would be happy to get connected via that as well. So Jen, it's been a pleasure speaking with you today, and thank you so much for the opportunity. Jen: Oh, you're very welcome. Thanks for joining us and thanks, everyone, for tuning into The Allbound Podcast. Male: Thanks for tuning into The Allbound Podcast. For past episodes and additional resources, visit the resource center at <a href="http://allbound.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">allbound.com</a>. And remember, never sell alone.

Never Leave a Partner Stranded

Annette Iafrate, VP of Alliances and Partners for Vidyard, joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss channel alignment, building trust, defining rules of engagement and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast.   Jen: Oh, it's so great to have you on. And for those of you listening who haven't experienced Vidyard yet, Vidyard is a video platform and they provide video hosting, enablement and some pretty awesome analytics. I know you joined the Vidyard team only about six months ago, but you've been negotiating partnerships at Constant Contact, you were helping drive partner revenue at SharpSpring. I mean, you've been connected to this concept of the partner channel for the last six years. And I really wanted to dive into a lot of that channel experience but before we do that, tell us a little bit about Vidyard, about Vidyard's value proposition so we get a sense of why you joined this team.   Annette: Sure, great. Appreciate it. I think the short answer is Vidyard helps companies drive more revenue through the strategic use of video. So, what does that mean? At the moment, the video economy is driving new expectations. Expectations around immediacy, transparency, authenticity, both in the workplace and the marketplace. So, video is now expected content and the statistics are actually staggering. Facebook gets 8 billion views per day for video, 8 billion. Isn't that amazing? But I think what's even more impressive is in B2B technology, 72% of B2B purchasers today are viewing video somewhere in their customer journey, and 50% of them are looking at at least 30 minutes of video. So, for those companies and leaders that want to keep up with the market, if they're not already doing video, they really need to embrace this new communication paradigm, and quickly. And for specific reasons, because it works. What we're seeing is, by having a video appear in your search results, you get 41% higher click-through rates. I think even more impressive is, if you have a video on your landing page or your website and your driving people there, you get an 80% increase in conversion and all of this with a 20% lower cost for leads. So, it's an opportunity that people should be leveraging right now, whether it's from the C-suite, through management, down to the front lines. Video is a very powerful tool, whether it's for communicating with customers, building brand awareness, encouraging employee advocacy or just in general, engaging with the market. And what Vidyard does is we help companies harness this power of video and use it to drive business growth, which is why I'm so excited about joining the team.   Jen: Wonderful. It sounds like you're pretty passionate about the use of video and I love it. I mean, when you're passionate about what you do and about what your organization does, it doesn't feel like work and it's exciting.   Annette: Absolutely, and it's just so powerful. You can see the impact on everyone's business, your own business, the channel business, as well as the end user business, so it's fun having that impact.   Jen: So, when you're looking at, really, the big picture of goals that Vidyard has, just looking at the next year, maybe even the next five years, what role will Vidyard's Alliances and Partner program actually play in helping achieve those goals? Because, Vidyard's a really rapidly growing organization. You guys are taking the the martech world by storm here. Where's channel going to come in this picture?   Annette: Right. Significant. Because the market's growing so quickly and because the company is growing quickly, you really need to prepare to start to leverage channels in order to scale the business. The market is growing, the market's massive. And at some point, you can only scale the direct model so quickly. The other reason is, in some cases, channels are really the best way to get to specific markets. So, there's a significant opportunity and I give the company a lot of credit in investing in channels early. Some companies I think wait a bit too long, because it does take some investment and some time to really ramp up a channel, as you've seen. You know, the recruitment, the alignment, the ramping. And so, in addition to that, the channels themselves just help accelerate the growth of the company. They extend the reach, give us access to more customers and prospects, whether it's through strategic alliances and their base, or market coverage, whether it's coverage of additional use cases, market segments and even geos. So there's a significant opportunity in the explosion of the market itself, and we've started primarily in the marketing and sales segments in use cases, but video goes across. It goes across industries, across market segments, their use cases including things like internal communications and support. So, trying to build a business that can attack all of those at once without leveraging channels is difficult. And as I mentioned, in some markets, particularly geo markets, the preferred mechanism for purchasing is actually through partners. If you're looking at iXAPACK or even LATAM and, to some extent, EMEA, customers prefer working with a trusted advisor that tends to be a partner. So, there's a significant role for the channels to play and, again, there's a variety of roles to be leveraged.

Annette Iafrate, VP of Alliances and Partners for Vidyard, joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss channel alignment, building trust, defining rules of engagement and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast.   Jen: Oh, it's so great to have you on. And for those of you listening who haven't experienced Vidyard yet, Vidyard is a video platform and they provide video hosting, enablement and some pretty awesome analytics. I know you joined the Vidyard team only about six months ago, but you've been negotiating partnerships at Constant Contact, you were helping drive partner revenue at SharpSpring. I mean, you've been connected to this concept of the partner channel for the last six years. And I really wanted to dive into a lot of that channel experience but before we do that, tell us a little bit about Vidyard, about Vidyard's value proposition so we get a sense of why you joined this team. Annette: Sure, great. Appreciate it. I think the short answer is Vidyard helps companies drive more revenue through the strategic use of video. So, what does that mean? At the moment, the video economy is driving new expectations. Expectations around immediacy, transparency, authenticity, both in the workplace and the marketplace. So, video is now expected content and the statistics are actually staggering. Facebook gets 8 billion views per day for video, 8 billion. Isn't that amazing? But I think what's even more impressive is in B2B technology, 72% of B2B purchasers today are viewing video somewhere in their customer journey, and 50% of them are looking at at least 30 minutes of video. So, for those companies and leaders that want to keep up with the market, if they're not already doing video, they really need to embrace this new communication paradigm, and quickly. And for specific reasons, because it works. What we're seeing is, by having a video appear in your search results, you get 41% higher click-through rates. I think even more impressive is, if you have a video on your landing page or your website and your driving people there, you get an 80% increase in conversion and all of this with a 20% lower cost for leads. So, it's an opportunity that people should be leveraging right now, whether it's from the C-suite, through management, down to the front lines. Video is a very powerful tool, whether it's for communicating with customers, building brand awareness, encouraging employee advocacy or just in general, engaging with the market. And what Vidyard does is we help companies harness this power of video and use it to drive business growth, which is why I'm so excited about joining the team. Jen: Wonderful. It sounds like you're pretty passionate about the use of video and I love it. I mean, when you're passionate about what you do and about what your organization does, it doesn't feel like work and it's exciting. Annette: Absolutely, and it's just so powerful. You can see the impact on everyone's business, your own business, the channel business, as well as the end user business, so it's fun having that impact. Jen: So, when you're looking at, really, the big picture of goals that Vidyard has, just looking at the next year, maybe even the next five years, what role will Vidyard's Alliances and Partner program actually play in helping achieve those goals? Because, Vidyard's a really rapidly growing organization. You guys are taking the the martech world by storm here. Where's channel going to come in this picture? Annette: Right. Significant. Because the market's growing so quickly and because the company is growing quickly, you really need to prepare to start to leverage channels in order to scale the business. The market is growing, the market's massive. And at some point, you can only scale the direct model so quickly. The other reason is, in some cases, channels are really the best way to get to specific markets. So, there's a significant opportunity and I give the company a lot of credit in investing in channels early. Some companies I think wait a bit too long, because it does take some investment and some time to really ramp up a channel, as you've seen. You know, the recruitment, the alignment, the ramping. And so, in addition to that, the channels themselves just help accelerate the growth of the company. They extend the reach, give us access to more customers and prospects, whether it's through strategic alliances and their base, or market coverage, whether it's coverage of additional use cases, market segments and even geos. So there's a significant opportunity in the explosion of the market itself, and we've started primarily in the marketing and sales segments in use cases, but video goes across. It goes across industries, across market segments, their use cases including things like internal communications and support. So, trying to build a business that can attack all of those at once without leveraging channels is difficult. And as I mentioned, in some markets, particularly geo markets, the preferred mechanism for purchasing is actually through partners. If you're looking at iXAPACK or even LATAM and, to some extent, EMEA, customers prefer working with a trusted advisor that tends to be a partner. So, there's a significant role for the channels to play and, again, there's a variety of roles to be leveraged.

Define the Rules of Engagement

Hyperfocused Vectorization is the New Verticalization

Joseph Ulrich, Team Leader for US Channels at Hyland Software, joins me, Jen Spencer, on The Allbound Podcast to discuss channel engagement, training partners, and what may or may not be the reason why 80-90% of Hyland's customers are acquired through channel sales. Hello, Jen. Thank you for having me. Glad to be here.  We're glad to have you. So, Joe, tell us a little bit about Hyland and about your technology OnBase. I know when I was doing my research before bringing you on the podcast, I'd type in Hyland, and I'd see OnBase come up. So share a little bit about the organization and the software that your company creates.  Sure. Happy to do so. So how our software works is we're the developers of OnBase, OnBase is our product, and we're headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio. A lot of times we get the question of "what is OnBase?", people hear the word, they do Google searches and things like that, and they're not really sure what it is. Just in the simplest forms, OnBase is a single enterprise information platform for managing content processes and cases within our organization. All of the content an organization may have - maybe it's paper documents that are scanned electronically, or electronic fields into a line of business application - OnBase stores all that information in one central database and then presents it to the users when they need it. So that's what OnBase is, and Hyland software has been around since 1991. OnBase is the only thing that we developed and again, we've been doing it for a number of years now.  I know you've been at Hyland for over 12 years. So, has all of that time been in the channel division?  For the most part, it has. When I first joined Hyland, I was brought onboard to join the channel team. After my training concluded - every employee that joins Hyland goes through weeks long training to have a base understanding of the software - an opportunity came up at our government team, one of our vertical industries that we support. And a specific opportunity came up there for me to transition into that because they had an opening. I'll be quite honest, I didn't know much about the government space at the time, and after about six months in that role we were able to really bring on another resource of ours. We were able to hire one of our prospects who we'd been talking to at the state level, so a state CIO actually joined our team. We found out that she could do the job much better than I could. So then at that point I rejoined the channel, and then for the next 10 years or so I have been an account manager working with a number of our partners. Within the last couple of years, I've primarily been focusing on the partner recruitment. When I was an account manager, my territory was primarily in the upper Midwest states, states like Illinois and Iowa, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Minnesota. So really what I tried to do in terms of the travel involved - most of my travel seem to be between May and October of the calendar year - I tried to avoid those areas as much as I could during the winter months.  Getting back to your original question, I think that other than for about six months, I've spent 12 years of my 12 and a half here in the channel. That is correct.  So you mentioned that you're really focused now on recruitment and those activities that are associated with uncovering and welcoming new partners. Has your partner recruitment strategy changed much over the years, or is the essence basically the same?  No, I would say that it has probably changed quite a bit over the years. When we were first founded back in 1991, we had a need to really expand our presence fairly quickly and try and gain as much market penetration as we could. Any partners who are family, we affectionately call Team OnBase and really what we were looking for at that time were those partners that were capable of a broad range of capabilities. That was vitally important to us because again, we were just trying to expand our reach and expand the name of OnBase. A lot of these included not only our traditional partners but then some OEM organizations as well. As I mentioned before, we're based here in Cleveland, Ohio, so we did a really good job of getting a solid foundation of partners here in the Midwest. So we really did a fantastic job of selling OnBase solutions throughout the Midwest then. A lot of the partners who we brought onboard at that time were growing their businesses right along with us, and OnBase became one of their primary solutions that they were selling to their customers. More recently, I would say that we've become much more strategic, not only from a geographical perspective but maybe more so in the offerings and the specialization of the partners that we're looking for and who we want to add to our Team OnBase. What we’ve realized along with our partners is that having niche offering really allowed us to put a much more laser focus on our prospects and deliver repeatable solutions to them. We've got partners today that specialize in a wide variety of vertical industries, and over the years we have built OnBase solutions that meet needs for those specific industries. So the partners that really I'm focusing on today and talking to are the ones that either have expertise in a specific market, or they may have another business offering that complements our OnBase solution, or, they could offer a competitive product and they just are looking to replace that with OnBase. One of the things that is nice to have is a product that is an industry leader and is well known now for organizations looking to implement an information management solution. So for those partners that we're talking to that are looking to really replace something that they have today with OnBase, it really comes in handy. So really that's what we're looking at today, it’s getting much more laser focused in on types of partners, and what the offerings are that they have that we may not have a lot of coverage in today.  Do you find that you have potential partners coming to you more, just having this established organization and partner program, or are you still out hunting for specific types of partners to fill those needs?  Well, we actually do a lot of both. We do get a fair number of incoming calls for people that want to partner with us. It may be sometimes that they run into us in terms of a customer they are trying to sell and a customer that they might be a mutual customer of ours as well, and so they will reach out to us in terms of what it takes to be a partner of ours. I would say that every week we're getting a fair number of those types of inquiry calls coming in, but what we're trying to do is be much more, again, strategic, in terms of the partner community that we're trying to go after, and who it is that we're focusing on. I would say we’re doing more outbound and more laser focused outbound activities than we are incoming.  If you're looking really broadly, how big of a role does your channel play in the overall company's sales and marketing strategy? Is it the majority? Is it a minority? 50/50? Can you give us a little bit of a sense of what we're talking about when you're looking at that go-to-market strategy?  Are you talking more on the revenue side? Or number of customers? Things like that?  I mean, yes to both. Some organizations are very channel heavy, or even are committed to being eventually 100% channel in terms of how they go-to-market, others are really just starting to dip their toe into the water, and their partner sales that come in are on a much lower end. I'm just wanting to get a sense of how large of a role the channel plays for Hyland Software.  Yeah, that totally makes sense. Talking first from the revenue side of things, from a channel perspective, it's probably very close, maybe 60-40 I'd say, where 60% of our revenue comes in from the channel, and 40% comes in on our direct efforts. From the standpoint of just sheer number of customers that come in, we're averaging - since my time here again, for 12 years - probably adding between 500 to 700 customers per year. And it's probably upwards more of the 80% to 90% of those customers are coming in on the channel side. Just doing the math, I think it indicates that - there's obviously more of those, but the revenue might not be quite as large - our channel reach is much greater than our direct reach in terms of just the presence out there. We are definitely bringing in many more channel customers than we are on the direct side.  Well, that's the nature of the channel, right? You've got this geographically dispersed volunteer, we like to say workforce, people that are out there kind of selling on your behalf. So, you manage these recruitment activities, are you also involved in the onboarding and engagement activation of those partners as well?  Yes, absolutely. One of the great things in terms of my experience and working with the Hyland channel for as long as I have as an account manager, I think I have a pretty good idea of what it takes to be successful as a partner. So, I am heavily involved in our ramp-up program as well. Once a partner signs onboard with us, what we do is we walk them through a very structured process in terms of introducing them to the resources that are available to them now that they're part of the Team OnBase community. Then, we walk them through training. Training is one thing that we have found is vitally important for us and getting our partners up to speed quickly, and that's not just from a technical standpoint, but it's also from a sales training perspective too. We offer multiple opportunities for the partner's sales reps. to get up to speed on our product, our solutions, our selling methodologies and the demo itself. There's a lot of different things that we walk through in terms of the training from a sales perspective to get them up to speed. Then, on the technical side, one of the things that we do is offer tremendous opportunities from a training perspective. I don't mind bragging about this a little bit - but on our education services team in our company, Hyland Software - we have 41 individuals that are assigned to our education services department, and bar none they are one of the best in the software industry, I'd put them up against anybody from an education services sampling. They do a tremendous job of offering on the technical side, certifications to our partners. I think right now there are five different certifications that our partner on the technical side could achieve, and that goes from installing our software, or working with our APIs, or a number of other different areas that they can get their certification. So to get back to your original question, yes, I'm heavily involved on the ramp-up side because the training opportunities, and getting them up to speed, and getting them comfortable with the OnBase software solution is critically important to us in order to get them up to having a little bit more self-sufficiency, in terms of providing our solutions and showing those to their prospects.  This is great. First of all, the fact that as an organization you are providing resources to those partners is pretty significant. There's a lot of companies that partners are sort of left on their own, and only really paid attention to if revenue comes in, right?  Sure.  Then the second piece of what you shared about providing technical training on the product, which is critical, but also providing sales training, how to sell, what the Hyland methodology is as well, honestly, I don't hear that a lot. I talk to people in the channel all the time, and this is one of the few times I've heard a channel professional talk about training the partners on how to sell the solution, not just on the nuts and bolts of the solution. So kudos to you guys.  Well, thank you. Actually, since my time here we've been doing that the whole time, so that's really the only way that we know. So that's encouraging to hear, I'm glad to hear you say that. And one of the things to just expand on that sales training opportunity a little bit is, there's no cost to the partners either, other than their travel and expenses. There's no registration cost to actually attend any of our sales training, and we do two of those in-person here in Cleveland, we actually have one later this month. So the two that we do in Cleveland are two-day events with five or six different solution tracks that they can go to, and learn how to sell the software, what the different solutions are and what the latest enhancements are to the software itself. And then to supplement that, we also offer three times a year two-day courses online that people can attend as well, and it goes through a lot of the same material, but in a webinar fashion. So it's two full days offered three times a year, again, how to sell the OnBase solutions.  Excellent. Some of the people that we talk to and some of the listeners of this podcast are in a similar boat, in that they have some established channel programs, but quite a few don't even yet have channel programs. In fact, they might be tuning in listening to this because maybe a member of their board has said, "You really need to think about channel." Or their executive team has looked at their numbers and gone, "Okay. We're doing 10 million in ARR. We want to be at 100 million, what's the way to get there? Channel is a strategy, let's look into that.” So for someone who's really just starting to explore selling through channel partners, what are some of the things that you think they should consider before they jump in?  Well, that's a good question. I think really one of the biggest things that I would recommend is trying to be in alignment with them as much as possible. Each year we do this with all the partners that we have, we try to agree upon some set goals and objectives together, because that way you are on the same page with your partner in terms of what the expectations are, or setting quotas and the goals internally here at Hyland. It is extremely critical to know what our partners expect for them to do. So again, I think setting agreed upon goals and objectives together, and then there might be some other things that I look at too. If there are organizations out there who's just looking to bring on a channel program, think about it from a partner perspective, what size pipeline are they going to need when they first start offering up your product or solution? What does that look like maybe in terms of, number of opportunities, or look like in terms of sales revenue? If there's a specific number of net new customers that they can realistically expect to close in that first year or if they have an existing customer base how many of those customers can they sell into with add-on orders? What would that existing customer penetration rate might be?  Something else that I would really strongly have them consider is making sure that you, as an organization, have the infrastructure to support a partner program. Some of the questions that I would throw out there around that would be, do you have the sales resources available to support them? Internally here at Hyland, every partner is assigned a specific account manager, they have an inside support sales rep as well, they also have a solution architect that's assigned to them as well, to help with demos or customization of demos if need be. We also have vertical expertise, resources that are available to the partners as well. Make sure that you have training resources available to train them properly. As I've said before, we think training is critically important to us and that's one of the things that sets us apart from some of the other organizations that we compete with. And maybe just one or two of the other things that an organization might want to think about with your product or solution is does it have a price point that's actually going to work with bringing on a partner channel and is there enough margin within that? We've been doing this for a long time now, so I think we're pretty stable from that standpoint, but then also think about the vertical makeup of your existing customers. Maybe one recommendation I would make is seeing if there are any partner organizations out there that might have a vertical niche, a vertical market or presence that you don't currently sell into. It could be something that gives them an opportunity to be unique to your organization, but also you extend your reach as well. So, those are just some of the things I think that organizations should probably think heavily about before pursuing a channel program or for those that are thinking about it.  Those are some really great recommendations. What's been the most challenging aspect of actually growing a channel program?  I think it's finding the right partners, really. One thing that we do here really, really well is we do an awful lot of due diligence when we bring on a new partner, because we really want to ensure that it's going to be a win-win for both organizations. There are some partners that we've had over the years where it just was not a good fit, and recognizing that early is key as well, because we don't want to be a drain on their resources trying to to get OnBase online for them, but we also need to look at our internal resources as well. What we’ve found is, our most successful partners succeed when their owners and their executives are all in on building an OnBase practice. If we have top of mind with the principals at that partner organization, then we find that we're going to have the most success. So having the mind share within the partner community has been a challenge at times, but we've been making a lot of great progress with that.  Well, this has been so great. I appreciate you sharing so much of what you're doing at Hyland. It sounds like it's working really well. I love hearing this. Before I let you go, I have a couple of more personal questions I always like to ask all of my guests, just so we can get to know you a little bit more. Are you up for it?  Yeah, absolutely.  Alright so first question I have for you, what's your favorite city?  Got to be Cleavland, Ohio.  Very loyal.  I know.  Okay, question number two, are you an animal lover, yes or no?  Yes.  Okay, I'm going to ask question 2B then. What kind of pets do you have? Or do you have any pets?  We do actually. We have a ten-month-old puppy. I never thought my wife would ever want a dog, but she just fell in love with this one breed and we bit the bullet. The three kids - the three boys - that we have are very, very helpful.  Oh, that's great to hear. Okay, question number three, Mac or PC?  PC.  Number four, Uber or Lyft?  That'd be Uber.  And last question, let's say I was able to offer you an all expenses paid trip. Where would it be to?  I would say Maui. I’ve never been to Hawaii and that's on my bucket list.  Maui is beautiful, and it's a lot warmer than Cleveland right now.  I'll take your word for it.  Well, thank you so much for joining me and sharing your channel insights with us. Joe, if listeners would like to like to reach out to you, what's the best way for them to do so?  Sure, LinkedIn is the best way and my Linkedin contact is Joseph M. Ulrich, and its U-L-R-I-C-H.  Wonderful. And we'll be promoting this on social media and people can go ahead and click right through and find you really easily. So we'll make sure that we make those connections as well. Again, thank you so much for joining us, and thank you all for listening and I look forward to the next episode of The Allbound Podcast.  Alright, thanks Jen.  Thanks for tuning into The Allbound Podcast. For past episodes and additional resources, visit the resource center at Allbound.com. And remember, never sell alone.

Train for Channel Success

Sunir Shah, founder and president of The Small Business Web, joins me, Nicki Kamau to discuss the partner as a customer, the disconnect between SaaS and the world, the opportunity for channel sales to expand and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast.   What are some of the biggest challenges that you see vendor organizations face when it comes to partner collaboration?   This is my bread and butter right now, because I'm doing a lot of consulting for folks, and it's pretty interesting. So the companies that are doing really well, view their partners as customers of the partner team. And the ones that do poorly view partners as somehow employees in the sense that they feel that the partners owe them something in order for them to get their respect. Like, you work for us to make money. And very few SaaS companies give enough money in commissions to a partner to make a difference. Because partners make all their money, almost, from actually providing professional services on top of the software.   It’s like if I my basement rented out. I'm sure my general contractor made money on the furnace. It was probably $500. But where he made real money is actually doing the work. And so, marketing agencies make all their money from doing the actual marketing communication work, not the software. But a lot of SaaS vendors think they're the most important thing in the relationship. The partners that are doing really well view the customer as the team. They apply the exact same discipline that the product team would apply to the corporate customers of the core product, to the partner program. So they do a lot of customer development, they do a lot of customer interviews, they're very responsive, they have a support desk for the partners, they have a newsletter, they have a dedicated community manager/partner communications person. They have actual metrics they're measuring. They're looking at the finances that is a business line. They'll do Facebook ads at events and try to market to acquire more partners. They don't look at it as a passive source of revenue.   I mean, obviously, if you invest in something, it's gonna grow. And it's also the attitude of thinking of them as customers of your partner team rather than somehow they're your employees. And this is actually a very common thing in channel, it's not just in SaaS, where you look at your channel partners as your sales staff, you treat them as such. If they screw up, you can't yell at your partners and say, "I want more quota." Good luck with that! They'll drop you and find other vendors. They don't need that from you. They're customers, you know.  And so that's really the core attitude that I find is critical. Treat your partners like they're the customers of the partner team. And when you do that, it becomes a lot more obvious what they want. It's like, "Well, we want a heads up on feature changes. We want to have sales collateral. We want to have support, or a once-a-month phone call. When you're in town let us know so we can hang out for a meal/" Simple stuff, right?   What are the biggest opportunities that you're seeing for the market as you dig into your research?   I'm gonna be a little bit controversial. Well, a lot controversial. I've been working on this problem for a long time. In fact, when I ran partnerships at FreshBooks, it was the first time I became aware of how much of a problem it was. When people would call us up and say, "Hey, Sunir, I could sell a lot of FreshBooks to my customers. But I need a cut, and I don't wanna send the customers to you directly. Can I white label it? How do I manage, the visioning and the account management? I want to have an account login." And I'm like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. That's a lot of work. Why don't you try selling a few?"   And we had this problem where I didn't have any resources to build a channel program, or even a channel admin for them. And I didn't see any leads coming from it. And meanwhile, all the resources were going to the core product in the core marketing. Because that's SaaS. And the fundamental gaps between the traditional channel and SaaS is not the disconnect in ideas or concepts. When I was there, I had a lot of strange comments. A couple people said, "Oh, SaaS, that's just what the millennials are using." I'm like, "I don't think just millennials are using SaaS." I wouldn't call Salesforce the millennial tool, or Zendesk. It was a little bit strange to hear that. A couple people were like, "Subscriptions. Who buys that? Who buys subscriptions?" Like, everybody? Everybody. The reason why, I think, is that when SaaS was conceived as a business model, you'd hear this language around it, especially from the futurists and the investors, that it was great because you could sell direct and make a recurring revenue. And when you sell direct, you disintermediate all the middlemen, all the value chain, and take all the gross margin for yourself. It looks like a cash cow. Because the internet, while it was a great marketing machine and you could reach all the customers just yourself. Because thinking that reach means they could reach you. But, actually, the problem is you need to reach them.   What happens was a couple things. One, there is no gross margin in SaaS. It's amazing. Because what happens is when you build one good SaaS product, guess what? The internet is huge. There are lots of competitors. It pushes a lot of the gross margin down. either because you dropped the price, or more likely, for the best products, they put a lot of engineers and designers and support, and customer success in behind the product to to keep the subscriptions going. And so there is a little bit of accounting magic. But if you realize that people won't keep using your software if you cut the engineering budget in SaaS. That's the thing. You'll lose them.   The second problem is because the SaaS companies are spending all their money on a product to be competitive. And so it's very hard to put engineering in the partner per channel. So you can't invest in the channel unless you have a vision.   The third problem is that there's a current view right now in SaaS that it's quite popular to spend a lot of money building a direct sales team inside sales, and more direct marketing to acquire. And that's fine. It works. But the problem with that is you can't literally phone everybody in United States who might want your product. You can't know everybody. You have to work the channel. And so the model of SaaS, it has disconnected itself from the channel. And you'll hear this talking to people who are potential resellers, solution providers, partners. They feel like when they send a customer over to a SaaS vendor, the vendor tries to steal the customer from them. And there's not enough money coming back to the partner.   The economics are not positive working with SaaS. And so there's a disconnect in the fundamental business model and the political economics, if you believe it, of SaaS versus the traditional channel. And I think all the exciting work will happen in order to make SaaS either work or fail will happen in fixing how SaaS can work with partners by providing them value and respect, providing them channel support. I mean, that's why Allbound exists, right? You believe in channel support in order to build up a channel. And I think a lot of the SaaS companies who have gone through the direct sales build that cycle, realizes there's a limit to that. You can only smile and dial so many leads before you've exhausted your relationships. And those people who did direct sales a couple years ago have definitely moved more into partnerships now looking to build the channel. As I was saying earlier, the exciting stuff is that the resources are coming back to partnerships to invest in bigger, chunkier channel programs.There's a couple ways of solving this problem. I don't think SaaS vendors will ever have enough resources that can apply to partnerships to build the middleware, to build a market. If you have a business degree, you know that supply chain management is built on logistic companies, and just SaaS, because the SaaS model broke a lot of the tech logistics. We're gonna have to build some new ones at the model, or work with existing partners like Ingram Micro or ScanSource, or distributors like that. So there are other existing resources coming to market. And the reason I say that is that there's enough SaaS vendors now that are succeeding. There's an overall market size of B2B SaaS that has now reached a sufficient enough size. There's enough fractional resources, per vendor, that you can start paying for these middlewares, so Allbound is a good example. There's an opportunity to start fixing some of these problems. When I was at the ChannelCon, I would say about 20% of the audience there now had a pretty reasonable cloud or SaaS-based parts of their business. And that's a good sign too. So if you have endors like you, and maybe other vendors in the space trying to do channel support, and you have businesses on the other side who are trying to build businesses natural to it, and you have organizations like ChannelCon working on bringing people together, I just feel like a matter of time now. So I think that's the opportunity. And, of course, whoever figures out how to fix the problem stands to make a lot of money, because right now, the industry for SaaS, B2B SaaS, stands around $20 billion roughly, globally, out of $400 billion for all software.   So Microsoft alone made $90 billion. And then Salesforce probably makes $7 billion or something last year. So you could see the huge difference between the size of the SaaS market, which still is very much in the infancy, which is amazing after 13 years. It's only because we broke the business model for the distribution. But when we fix it, then it will go from $20 billion to $100 billion dollars. And so if you think it's like, "Oh, it's not happening." It's going to happen now.

Sunir Shah, founder and president of The Small Business Web, joins me, Nicki Kamau to discuss the partner as a customer, the disconnect between SaaS and the world, the opportunity for channel sales to expand and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast. What are some of the biggest challenges that you see vendor organizations face when it comes to partner collaboration? This is my bread and butter right now, because I'm doing a lot of consulting for folks, and it's pretty interesting. So the companies that are doing really well, view their partners as customers of the partner team. And the ones that do poorly view partners as somehow employees in the sense that they feel that the partners owe them something in order for them to get their respect. Like, you work for us to make money. And very few SaaS companies give enough money in commissions to a partner to make a difference. Because partners make all their money, almost, from actually providing professional services on top of the software.   It’s like if I my basement rented out. I'm sure my general contractor made money on the furnace. It was probably $500. But where he made real money is actually doing the work. And so, marketing agencies make all their money from doing the actual marketing communication work, not the software. But a lot of SaaS vendors think they're the most important thing in the relationship. The partners that are doing really well view the customer as the team. They apply the exact same discipline that the product team would apply to the corporate customers of the core product, to the partner program. So they do a lot of customer development, they do a lot of customer interviews, they're very responsive, they have a support desk for the partners, they have a newsletter, they have a dedicated community manager/partner communications person. They have actual metrics they're measuring. They're looking at the finances that is a business line. They'll do Facebook ads at events and try to market to acquire more partners. They don't look at it as a passive source of revenue.   I mean, obviously, if you invest in something, it's gonna grow. And it's also the attitude of thinking of them as customers of your partner team rather than somehow they're your employees. And this is actually a very common thing in channel, it's not just in SaaS, where you look at your channel partners as your sales staff, you treat them as such. If they screw up, you can't yell at your partners and say, "I want more quota." Good luck with that! They'll drop you and find other vendors. They don't need that from you. They're customers, you know. And so that's really the core attitude that I find is critical. Treat your partners like they're the customers of the partner team. And when you do that, it becomes a lot more obvious what they want. It's like, "Well, we want a heads up on feature changes. We want to have sales collateral. We want to have support, or a once-a-month phone call. When you're in town let us know so we can hang out for a meal/" Simple stuff, right? What are the biggest opportunities that you're seeing for the market as you dig into your research?   I'm gonna be a little bit controversial. Well, a lot controversial. I've been working on this problem for a long time. In fact, when I ran partnerships at FreshBooks, it was the first time I became aware of how much of a problem it was. When people would call us up and say, "Hey, Sunir, I could sell a lot of FreshBooks to my customers. But I need a cut, and I don't wanna send the customers to you directly. Can I white label it? How do I manage, the visioning and the account management? I want to have an account login." And I'm like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. That's a lot of work. Why don't you try selling a few?"   And we had this problem where I didn't have any resources to build a channel program, or even a channel admin for them. And I didn't see any leads coming from it. And meanwhile, all the resources were going to the core product in the core marketing. Because that's SaaS. And the fundamental gaps between the traditional channel and SaaS is not the disconnect in ideas or concepts. When I was there, I had a lot of strange comments. A couple people said, "Oh, SaaS, that's just what the millennials are using." I'm like, "I don't think just millennials are using SaaS." I wouldn't call Salesforce the millennial tool, or Zendesk. It was a little bit strange to hear that. A couple people were like, "Subscriptions. Who buys that? Who buys subscriptions?" Like, everybody? Everybody. The reason why, I think, is that when SaaS was conceived as a business model, you'd hear this language around it, especially from the futurists and the investors, that it was great because you could sell direct and make a recurring revenue. And when you sell direct, you disintermediate all the middlemen, all the value chain, and take all the gross margin for yourself. It looks like a cash cow. Because the internet, while it was a great marketing machine and you could reach all the customers just yourself. Because thinking that reach means they could reach you. But, actually, the problem is you need to reach them.   What happens was a couple things. One, there is no gross margin in SaaS. It's amazing. Because what happens is when you build one good SaaS product, guess what? The internet is huge. There are lots of competitors. It pushes a lot of the gross margin down. either because you dropped the price, or more likely, for the best products, they put a lot of engineers and designers and support, and customer success in behind the product to to keep the subscriptions going. And so there is a little bit of accounting magic. But if you realize that people won't keep using your software if you cut the engineering budget in SaaS. That's the thing. You'll lose them. The second problem is because the SaaS companies are spending all their money on a product to be competitive. And so it's very hard to put engineering in the partner per channel. So you can't invest in the channel unless you have a vision.   The third problem is that there's a current view right now in SaaS that it's quite popular to spend a lot of money building a direct sales team inside sales, and more direct marketing to acquire. And that's fine. It works. But the problem with that is you can't literally phone everybody in United States who might want your product. You can't know everybody. You have to work the channel. And so the model of SaaS, it has disconnected itself from the channel. And you'll hear this talking to people who are potential resellers, solution providers, partners. They feel like when they send a customer over to a SaaS vendor, the vendor tries to steal the customer from them. And there's not enough money coming back to the partner.   The economics are not positive working with SaaS. And so there's a disconnect in the fundamental business model and the political economics, if you believe it, of SaaS versus the traditional channel. And I think all the exciting work will happen in order to make SaaS either work or fail will happen in fixing how SaaS can work with partners by providing them value and respect, providing them channel support. I mean, that's why Allbound exists, right? You believe in channel support in order to build up a channel. And I think a lot of the SaaS companies who have gone through the direct sales build that cycle, realizes there's a limit to that. You can only smile and dial so many leads before you've exhausted your relationships. And those people who did direct sales a couple years ago have definitely moved more into partnerships now looking to build the channel. As I was saying earlier, the exciting stuff is that the resources are coming back to partnerships to invest in bigger, chunkier channel programs.There's a couple ways of solving this problem. I don't think SaaS vendors will ever have enough resources that can apply to partnerships to build the middleware, to build a market. If you have a business degree, you know that supply chain management is built on logistic companies, and just SaaS, because the SaaS model broke a lot of the tech logistics. We're gonna have to build some new ones at the model, or work with existing partners like Ingram Micro or ScanSource, or distributors like that. So there are other existing resources coming to market. And the reason I say that is that there's enough SaaS vendors now that are succeeding. There's an overall market size of B2B SaaS that has now reached a sufficient enough size. There's enough fractional resources, per vendor, that you can start paying for these middlewares, so Allbound is a good example. There's an opportunity to start fixing some of these problems. When I was at the ChannelCon, I would say about 20% of the audience there now had a pretty reasonable cloud or SaaS-based parts of their business. And that's a good sign too. So if you have endors like you, and maybe other vendors in the space trying to do channel support, and you have businesses on the other side who are trying to build businesses natural to it, and you have organizations like ChannelCon working on bringing people together, I just feel like a matter of time now. So I think that's the opportunity. And, of course, whoever figures out how to fix the problem stands to make a lot of money, because right now, the industry for SaaS, B2B SaaS, stands around $20 billion roughly, globally, out of $400 billion for all software.   So Microsoft alone made $90 billion. And then Salesforce probably makes $7 billion or something last year. So you could see the huge difference between the size of the SaaS market, which still is very much in the infancy, which is amazing after 13 years. It's only because we broke the business model for the distribution. But when we fix it, then it will go from $20 billion to $100 billion dollars. And so if you think it's like, "Oh, it's not happening." It's going to happen now.

Partners Are Customers of Your Partner Team

Aaron Ross, Author and Co-Founder of Predictable Revenue, joins Allbound's Director of Sales, Greg Reffner to discuss outbound and the partner channel, empathy and business, balancing inbound and outbound and more on the 43rd episode of The Allbound Podcast.

Aaron Ross, Author and Co-Founder of Predictable Revenue, joins Allbound's Director of Sales, Greg Reffner to discuss outbound and the partner channel, empathy and business, balancing inbound and outbound and more on the 43rd episode of The Allbound Podcast.

Outbound vs. Inbound: Which is Best for Your Channel Program?

Joel Maloff, the Senior Vice President of Strategic Alliances for phone.com, joins Nicki Kamau, Allbound's Director of Marketing, to discuss partner compensation, living channel marketing plans, staying engaged with your partners and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast.

Joel Maloff, the Senior Vice President of Strategic Alliances for <a href="http://phone.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">phone.com</a>, joins Nicki Kamau, Allbound's Director of Marketing, to discuss partner compensation, living channel marketing plans, staying engaged with your partners and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast.

Scale Your Partner Program by Listening

Improve Your Partner Experience

Intimacy at Scale

Not one, but two channel thought leaders share the spotlight today: Larry Walsh, CEO and Chief Analyst at The 2112 Group and Scott Salkin, CEO and Founder of Allbound. Larry and Scott chat about driving more revenue with the right partners on this episode of The Allbound Podcast. Larry, you wrote an article called "Scale Matters, but the Channel has Size Limits" and you state that if an organization wants to double its channel-generated revenue then its number of partners will need to increase by 115%. Can you explain?  What I was saying in that blog post is there are natural limits to productivity. And if you accept that the 80/20 rule is alive and well in the channel, then you've also accepted that there's a speed limit to the number of partners, or the potential growth that you can get out of any side. Let's start by looking at the tenants of what the channel is supposed to do. The channel's supposed to extend market coverage, and particularly get you into niche markets. The other purpose is to create points of presence to create points of sales for customers to come in. Now, that theory works well, but there's a certain point after you start to exceed capacity, which is the reason why we actually have such an exaggerated 20% rule in the channel. So, the notion of squeezing more value out of the long tail, particularly, the extreme end of a long tail, becomes less advantageous. If you start pushing down the long tail, and you want to start growing your channels and thinking that you're going to double your channel revenue just by adding more partners, then you actually have to over-subscribe and get lesser value out of your partners over time, which is the reason why we come to a 115% increase just to double revenue rather than just a pure one over one increase.     Scott, reruitment has an enormous influence on channel program success. What should channel leaders be doing today when it comes to recruitment so they can focus on quality over quantity?  Today's channel leaders have so much more access to data now that can tell them which partners are having the most success and also predict which partners are best postioned for success. We've got to get smarter with new more modern day KPI that doesn't just measure success based on how many partners you're bringing in, but exactly on what those partners are —  things like velocity rate, and how they're actually growing the business with you.    What advice can you give leaders who would like to transition into a more account-based partnering strategy?  Larry: Start at the end.  When you make recruitment a metric, then it's all about bodies, or it's all about the number of companies. Stop making recruitments, or the number partners important. Make productivity of it important. When I say "start at the end," one of the other tenants of the channel is that it has to be a net contributor to the vendor or to the enterprise, and enterprise in this case, means business venture.  Scott:  Channel has to be aligned with your entire business. if you don't have the education, enablement, empowerment and training nailed down for your channel partner program, it's going to be hard to drive more revenue, create more margin, and add more logos to the business. You've got to take care of the partners you have, and you've got to help them be more successful.  To learn more about driving more revenue with channel partners, tune in to episode 39 of The Allbound Podcast.

Not one, but two channel thought leaders share the spotlight today: Larry Walsh, CEO and Chief Analyst at The 2112 Group and Scott Salkin, CEO and Founder of Allbound. Larry and Scott chat about driving more revenue with the right partners on this episode of The Allbound Podcast. Larry, you wrote an article called "Scale Matters, but the Channel has Size Limits" and you state that if an organization wants to double its channel-generated revenue then its number of partners will need to increase by 115%. Can you explain? What I was saying in that blog post is there are natural limits to productivity. And if you accept that the 80/20 rule is alive and well in the channel, then you've also accepted that there's a speed limit to the number of partners, or the potential growth that you can get out of any side. Let's start by looking at the tenants of what the channel is supposed to do. The channel's supposed to extend market coverage, and particularly get you into niche markets. The other purpose is to create points of presence to create points of sales for customers to come in. Now, that theory works well, but there's a certain point after you start to exceed capacity, which is the reason why we actually have such an exaggerated 20% rule in the channel. So, the notion of squeezing more value out of the long tail, particularly, the extreme end of a long tail, becomes less advantageous. If you start pushing down the long tail, and you want to start growing your channels and thinking that you're going to double your channel revenue just by adding more partners, then you actually have to over-subscribe and get lesser value out of your partners over time, which is the reason why we come to a 115% increase just to double revenue rather than just a pure one over one increase.     Scott, reruitment has an enormous influence on channel program success. What should channel leaders be doing today when it comes to recruitment so they can focus on quality over quantity? Today's channel leaders have so much more access to data now that can tell them which partners are having the most success and also predict which partners are best postioned for success. We've got to get smarter with new more modern day KPI that doesn't just measure success based on how many partners you're bringing in, but exactly on what those partners are —  things like velocity rate, and how they're actually growing the business with you.   What advice can you give leaders who would like to transition into a more account-based partnering strategy? Larry: Start at the end.  When you make recruitment a metric, then it's all about bodies, or it's all about the number of companies. Stop making recruitments, or the number partners important. Make productivity of it important. When I say "start at the end," one of the other tenants of the channel is that it has to be a net contributor to the vendor or to the enterprise, and enterprise in this case, means business venture.  Scott:  Channel has to be aligned with your entire business. if you don't have the education, enablement, empowerment and training nailed down for your channel partner program, it's going to be hard to drive more revenue, create more margin, and add more logos to the business. You've got to take care of the partners you have, and you've got to help them be more successful.  To learn more about driving more revenue with channel partners, tune in to episode 39 of The Allbound Podcast.

Driving Revenue First with the Right Partners

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