Podcast appearances and mentions of jen spencer

To build strong relationships with existing customers, research shows 84% of B2B marketers are relying on content marketing. With modern customers demanding personalization, relevance and value in every post-sale interaction, even the savviest marketers struggle with developing long-term relationship-building strategies and demonstrating the ROI of retention-focused content.It's all about creating a content strategy that goes beyond the initial sale and keeps customers interested and involved throughout the entire customer lifecycle. In this episode of the B2BMX Podcast, we're kicking it back to B2BMX in Scottsdale to replay an action-packed panel discussion, featuring some of the industry's greatest minds.Hear from Jake Sanders of NinjaCat, Dana Harder of Unreal Digital Group, Jen Spencer of SmartBug Media and our very own Kelly Lindenau as they discuss the power of content in customer retention, with a focus on:How to strike the right balance between educational, informative content and cross-sell/up-sell promotions;How to think about campaign strategies and make use of it for demand throughout the entire customer lifecycle;The importance of incorporating and aligning diverse content formats with customers' preferences to maintain their interest;How to ensure that content remains relevant to changing needs and the customers' challenges, as well as the top strategies for measuring the impact of retention-focused content; and So much more! Don't miss out on hearing one of our highly rated B2BMX sessions in the comfort of your home, office or commute! RELATED LINKS: Get all the information you need about our new event, B2BMX East, here;Register for B2BMX East using this special 15% off code just for our listeners: MXPOD15; andFollow us on LinkedIn and X.

In this episode of "Do This, Not That", host Jay Schwedelson interviews Jen Spencer, CEO of SmartBug Media, about the concept of the marketing "flywheel" and how to build company culture with a fully remote team. Listeners can expect to learn what a flywheel model is, why it's important for business growth, and practical tips for implementing it. The discussion also covers best practices for maintaining strong remote work culture.=================================================================Best Moments:(05:02) What is a marketing flywheel and how can it help you?(07:55) Practical example of a flywheel (15:42) Maintaining culture with a 300+ person remote team(20:08) How often do people on stage screw up?=================================================================Guest Bio:Jen Spencer is CEO of SmartBug Media, a digital marketing agency and HubSpot Elite Partner that helps businesses optimize their customer lifecycle. She has 15+ years of experience spanning education, nonprofit marketing, and SaaS companies. Under Jen's leadership, SmartBug Media has received numerous awards and recognitions.=================================================================PARTNER WITH JAY AND GURU Media Hub HERE:www.GuruMediaHub.comPartner with Jay or have Jay on YOUR podcast:www.JaySchwedelson.comJay's Agency:www.OutcomeMedia.com=================================================================MASSIVE thank you to our Sponsor, Marigold!!Marigold is a relationship marketing platform designed to help you acquire new customers and turn them into superfans with their best-in-class loyalty solutions. Don't take my word for it though, American Airlines, Honeybaked Ham, Title Boxing, and Notre Dame University are also customers!Regardless of your size, check out Marigold today to get the solution you need to grow your business!Check out this free content Jay has loved digesting, Marigold's 2024 Global Consumer Trends Index.

Here's Jen's story from her website: https://turtleshelterproject.org/jensstory "My addiction led me to being homeless on several occasions throughout my life, and during that time I personally knew seven people who froze to death. When I first learned about this lifesaving technology, my mind flooded with ideas on how many people's lives this could save. I'd recently been homeless during an extreme winter. It had been one of the coldest winters Utah had suffered in a long time, so the misery of surviving the bitter cold was still very fresh in my mind. While I was homeless I remember feeling the chill all the way to my bones. I couldn't even think or function. It completely zapped me of my energy so much that I was losing my will to live. Everything felt beyond overwhelming. Simple tasks, like finding a bathroom, seemed to feel like huge obstacles. The crazy thing about it was: I had a car I was living in; I had a storage unit I could hang out in during the day and at night; and I had an income that was sufficient for my needs. But being homeless completely broke me - even with all of the resources I had available to me.

I began thinking that if homelessness crushed me, even with all that I had, then what would it do to someone who had much less, or even nothing?  I wanted to do something to help people with this burden. When I learned about foam clothing, I knew without a doubt that God was telling me -"THIS IS HOW YOU CAN HELP!"

After a lot of prayer and asking God to put the right people in my path, I started talking to everyone about my desire to make foam clothing for the homeless. Eventually I told the right person and that is how I met Marian Edmonds-Allen. At the time Marian, an ordained minister, was the executive director for the Utah Pride Center. Prior to that she had served as the Executive Director of OUTreach Resource Centers and in 2015 was named a Petra Fellow for her work with LGBTQ homeless youth.   Marian was particularly interested in my idea for getting foam clothing into the hands of the homeless and arranged a meeting to hear more. But it was still just an idea.  The truth is I had no idea how to make the project happen, and at the time I had only been clean and sober for 7 months.  Things were put on hold for a while because Marian took a new job at Parity in New York and resigned from the Pride Center.  I had been in drug rehab, but I needed to finish getting clean, sober, and stable.  My recovery sponsor kept telling me that this was God's project, not mine, and I needed to let go and let God make this happen in HIS time.   

After about 2 years, in January 2017, God led me to Angela Roth.  Angela is someone who not only knows how to create a pattern but can sew like a rock star! Coincidentally, when I met her she had been praying for an opportunity to use her sewing and patterning talents to do something truly meaningful for people with a genuine need.  We teamed up and started the Turtle Shelter Project! We decided to make vests because we thought a simple vest would be able to keep a person's core warm.  If your core is warm, the rest of you stays warm longer.  We came up with a vest pattern that would be fairly easy for volunteers to make and keep production cost down.  After purchasing materials for 50 vests, we had only spent $30 for each one. The goal was to use labor donated by volunteers. This would give people the opportunity to serve in any capacity, whether it be time or money, and to truly do something meaningful that can help save lives. 

Between September 2017 and January of 2018, with the help of many volunteers, we produced 50 TSP vests.  We handed some out to people experiencing homelessness to do some field testing for us and let us know how they worked.  The response has been excellent!  As a result of their feedback, we have made improvements to the vests.  We have added hoods, pockets, and a sturdy belt to help them fit better. We have also used some of the vests to do field testing by ourselves and friends and family who were willing. The results have been very encouraging!!! We want these vests to go to people living outdoors or who don't have access to shelters, because they are the ones who need this technology the most.  The vests are called "Turtle Shelters" because they are a portable shelter - just like a turtle taking its shelter with it.  Wearing a Turtle Shelter Vest makes having a source of heat a nicety, but not a necessity because the foam insulation in the vest will harness the body's heat and conserve it.  The vests are very well made to provide durability, wind resistance, insulation, and comfort.  They are a very effective way to help provide life-saving warmth."  

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Jen Spencer (CEO of SmartBug) shares how they've grown by serving the right clients, with the right services, managed by the right team. Learn how this segmentation has been a huge factor in their success, and get insights you can use at your company.Links Explore Databox Benchmarks Follow Jen Learn more about SmartBug If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

What is up PartnerUp!Today's episode is a crossover episode from the Marketing Together podcast hosted by Logan Lyles. Jen Spencer is the CEO of SmartBug, a full-service revenue-driving digital agency. She shares essential tips for partner marketing. She touches on things like balancing multiple partners and analyzing the reasons for success or failure of a partner marketing campaign.Hope you enjoy!Never miss an episode of the world's number 1 podcast on partnerships by subscribing to PartnerUp on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're a visual person, sub to our YouTube, and see the full recording of us learning out loud.Share the episode with your commentary on LinkedIn or Twitter and we'll highlight your commentary. We love to hear your thoughts on each episode, and always comment back or respond to emails/dms. Hey! We're real people. You can check out all past and future PartnerUp episodes and subscribe to the world's number 1 partnerships newsletter, PartnerHacker Daily (PhD) at https://partnerhacker.com/.

You'll learn so much from Jen Spencer! Jen's hope-filled, courageous story will fill your heart as she openly shares about her journey of addiction and homelessness to that of healing and hope. Hear her witness of the Savior and of His love as well as her desire to share this witness again and again. You'll also be introduced to the Turtle Shelter Project and how it came to be. It is saving lives and you can help too! Thank you Jen for being you - GLORIOUS YOU!!!  To learn more about Jen and the Turtle Shelter Project: 1. Turtle Shelter Project  2. Just Serve - Turtle Shelter Project 3. Email at turtleshelterproject@gmail.com 4. The Addiction Recovery Program of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Other help and resources shared by Jen: 1. Jen made reference to this 2019 talk by Tad R. Callister, "The Atonement of Jesus Christ". 2. She talked about how the song "Glorious" by David Archuleta helped her.  3. Brad Wilcox's 2021 General Conference talk, "Worthiness Is Not Flawlessness" Help for you or a loved one please take a look at: Mothers Who Know we are sponsored by Life Changing Services Join our FREE MOM POWER TRAINING --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/motherswhoknow/support

With Scott Salkin, senior vice president and general manager of Gainsight's Customer Success Platform In today's economy, companies are getting scrappy. They're searching for new ways to do more with less, optimizing their software and leaning into technological advancements for support. But prioritizing efficiency and productivity shouldn't come at the expense of your customers. And, as Scott Salkin explains, it doesn't have to. Companies like Gainsight are developing new and innovative strategies to leverage their tech stack and better serve their customers. It's about finding the right tools to invest in and exploring how these investments will ultimately serve you and your customers better. And with the advent of AI and other game-changing technologies, companies shouldn't forgo the opportunity to experiment with and implement new ideas and assess their effect on customer success. Still, sometimes organizations overcomplicate the most impactful strategies to foster long-term customer satisfaction and engagement. As Scott puts it, if companies want to reach higher levels of customer success, they need to explore how to connect with their biggest advocates and greatest champions. And from there? Where will companies find the perfect balance between high-touch human interactions and the digital world? Only time will tell. Jen and Scott chat: Exploring new strategies to serve customers holistically (4:27) Maintaining connections with your biggest advocates and champions (10:35) Leveraging software to better understand your business and your customers (18:22) Finding the balance between high-touch customer success and digitally led customer engagement (19:50) Looking ahead: investing in the right tools to drive customer success (29:09) Resources: HubSpot Attribution Reporting Readiness Assessment Sales and Marketing Bootcamp for SaaS Marketers The Tech Marketer's Guide to Achieving Inbound Success SaaS Marketing Strategies: Getting Quick Wins and Building for Long-Term Victory

With Jake Randall, Chief Operating Officer at Common Room As COO of an early-stage company, Jake Randall understands the importance of building community and solving complex problems with listening and empathy. In fact, that's exactly how Common Room came about. Common Room is an intelligent, community-led platform that helps businesses deepen their relationships, build better products, and drive impact for their customers. As Jake points out, companies often try to solve their most complex problems in silos. By pausing to listen to internal teammates and external customers, you become better equipped to overcome your community's greatest challenges, wherever that community resides. And when you leverage platforms like Common Room, you can gather impactful, qualitative data about the problems people are solving and the strategies they're using to solve them. As Jake puts it, “Customer empathy is our No. 1 value. Everyone has a community; [they're] just not always listening.” Find the people who are talking about the problem you're trying to solve. Then, find a better way of solving it. Empathy and awareness extend beyond an organization's thought leaders and industry experts. Customers want to feel listened to, too. Focus on customers' greatest needs and their biggest challenges, Jake says. Then, scale that approach as you begin to tackle today's biggest economic and industry-related challenges. What's next? Speaking like a true innovator and problem solver, Jake says, “Remain agile.” Don't make the mistake of trying to solve the same problem with the same solution over and over again. If it's not working, find a new way. Test, pivot, execute. The rest will fall into place. Jake and Jen talk about: Building community to nurture authentic connections (3:12) How collective problem-solving breeds collaboration (8:19) “Everyone has a community; you're just not listening” (14:32) How to mitigate risk and prepare for shifts in your industry (25:32) What? So what? Now what? Leading with authenticity and building trust with your team (29:09)

With Lindsay Tjepkema, CEO and co-founder at Casted On this episode of the Intelligent Inbound Podcast, Jen sits down with Lindsay Tjepkema, CEO and co-founder of Casted, to explore why she started the company and what other organizations can learn about building audience engagement through creative storytelling. As Lindsay explains, Casted is a software platform made specifically for B2B marketers who want to both maximize and measure the impact of audio and video content. Although it hasn't always been easy to convince people to invest in the marketing power of podcasting, the team at Casted has found education to be the key to success. Literally and figuratively, it's about keeping the conversation going, so both your target audience and key investors can join you on the journey toward your marketing goals. Whether they're focused on podcasting or another kind of content creation, Lindsay describes how marketers all too often become consumed by the idea of building new content each time for every campaign. Instead, she encourages marketers and organizations alike to focus on “shopping [their] closets first”—that is, repurposing and repackaging existing content before reinventing it completely. Ultimately, whatever marketing approach you and your team pursue, as Lindsay goes on to say, you have to find a way to humanize the message, the medium, and the methodology to make the biggest impact. Jen and Lindsay discuss: Meet Casted (2:04) Measuring engagement in the podcasting space (6:54) Making listener data actionable (8:37) Keeping conversations going as you scale (15:10) Shopping your closet: upcycling your content (20:00) The power of demand generation and content marketing (30:27) Humanizing your marketing approach (31:47) Resources: Inbound Marketing Quick Wins for Lead Generation The Only Inbound Marketing Guide You'll Ever Need HubSpot Implementation Checklist

With Amy Hutchins, Chief Marketing Officer at WesleyLife Industries evolve as market needs shift and cultural attitudes change. The senior living space, or what WesleyLife has reimagined as the health and wellbeing market, is no exception. In fact, it's one of the most rapidly-evolving markets as the general population ages and cultural norms evolve about what it means to grow old, both joyfully and gracefully. As the CMO of WesleyLife, Amy Hutchins explains, crafting the organization's brand and disseminating a progressive message about the future of senior living is all about meeting people where they're at. Paid media efforts and SEO initiatives are just a few of the ways WesleyLife relays this message. Sometimes this means using the language your customers use, if only as a tool to dispel common misconceptions about your industry and to steer those same customers in the direction of your tailored marketing and branding. It's about working with, not against, the algorithm. In fact, attracting potential customers who only know you as one thing, whether that's “senior living,” “nursing home,” or whatever the equivalent in your industry might be, opens the door to education, opportunity, and ultimately larger cultural shifts in the way your customers understand your mission. After all, as Hutchins further explains, you don't need what you don't know. After that, the sky's the limit. Jen and Amy discuss: How to meet customers where they're at (1:55) The power of paid media efforts and SEO initiatives (2:35) Changing the way customers see your industry (7:42) Turning challenge into opportunity (11:46) Working with, not against, the algorithm (19:27) “You don't need what you don't know.” (22:50) The best metrics for measuring your success (25:17)

With Daniel Graff-Radford, CEO of Allbound On this episode of the Intelligent Inbound Podcast, Jen and Daniel talk about how businesses can build better customer relationships by asking the right questions up front. As a former founding member of Allbound, Jen opens the conversation with a full circle moment. She's once again leveraging Allbound's software solutions, but this time, from the vantage point of SmartBug's CEO. Since those early days, as Allbound's CEO explains, a lot has changed within the industry, yet the company has managed to stay on top of the trends, all while retaining top-tier talent. For businesses to remain competitive, especially as rumors of economic uncertainty loom, they'll also need to invest in real, tangible solutions to their customers' most pressing challenges. As both Daniel and Jen point out, it's about posing the right questions, to the right stakeholders, at the right time. And in order to truly measure the success of those initial inquiries and proposed solutions, companies must deliver reliable, relevant, and pointed metrics so that customers and executive boards alike can make data-informed decisions to end the year on a high note and enter 2023 with confidence. Jen and Daniel discuss: Facing economic uncertainty with poise and agility (07:08) Nurturing partner relationships (12:24) Thriving in a digital world with a remote workforce (16:20) Asking your customers the right questions (22:36) Measuring your organization's health (25:42) Investing in content that connects with your customers (31:31) What should Saas CEOs invest in next? (36:34)

Welcome to the Woman in Tech Series from the Global Tech Leaders Podcast. Today we are speaking to Jen Spencer CEO at SmartBug Media, HubSpot Partner of The Year. SmartBug Media is a globally award-winning intelligent inbound marketing agency that helps businesses grow revenue by generating leads, engaging accounts and building brand loyalty through inbound marketing, sales enablement, revenue operations, web development, digital strategy, marketing automation, and public relations. We kick off by asking Jen to share her career journey and what has led her to where she is today. “I wanted to be in charge.” Volunteering time. Teacher. Public Relations and Digital Marketing. Tech start-up. Joined as VP of Sales. We then ask Jen what drew her to sales and what makes a rockstar salesperson. Marketing ROI. Buying persona. Extension of marketing. Next, we ask Jen what is she seeing out there with marketing budgets. Pressure. Not a lot of room for experimentation. Technology stacks. The promise that some technology makes. Doing more for less. Audiences are changing. Mapping the journey. Then we ask Jen how they gain new clients at SmartBug Media. “We drink our own champagne.” Intelligent inbound marketing. “We wanna be our own best case study.” 5M to 500M Klaviyo Partner. HubSpot. Salesforce. We ask Jen about being a leading woman in tech and what is her perspective on diversity. Girls in Tech. Volunteers. Woman led. Infinity Groups. Lady Bugs. Woman in Leadership. Then we ask Jen how intentional they are in their process of hiring. How and where. Who you have now is who you are attracting. Removing barriers. Global team. Lastly, we ask Jen what tools or productivity hacks can't she live without. Executive Assistant. Organised email system. Calendar with colour coding. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gloabl-tech-leaders/message

With Christina Rice, COO at Pyx Health On this episode of the Intelligent Inbound Podcast, Jen and Christina talk about meeting customer needs, even—or perhaps—especially, in the midst of a pandemic. Pyx Health offers patients a leading solution for loneliness and social isolation through technology and human connection. Today, they're offering both patients and healthcare providers an innovative and scalable solution to address this U.S. health epidemic. As COO Christina Rice explains, most healthcare companies are actually quite traditional in their approach to marketing. In fact, there was a time when Pyx Health was too, sending out direct mailers and meeting with prospects at conferences to spread the word and nurture leads. But as so many companies quickly discovered, COVID-19 turned that strategy on its head. With nowhere to gather in person, Pyx Health pivoted its efforts to a digital and inbound marketing strategy. Inbound marketing allowed the team to make data-informed decisions about its customer relations and future business ventures based on real-time results. And the value hasn't stopped there. In fact, as Christina describes, the marketing and sales teams at Pyx Health are now leveraging this captured data to make cohesive, collaborative decisions backed by evidence to strategize their next business moves as they continue to scale from the group up. Listen in as Jen and Christina discuss: The impact of COVID-19: how to pivot according to industry trends (4:12) Leading with a fast-paced, high-growth mindset (6:14) “Clarity with kindness”: extending care to the most vulnerable health populations, especially in times of economic uncertainty (12:32) Creating synergy between sales and marketing teams (15:21) Using data as a universal language for trust and collaboration (20:33) Placing “inbound marketing on surround sound” (31:22)

With Graeme Watkins, CEO of Valutrades On this episode of the Intelligent Inbound Podcast, Jen and Valutrades' CEO, Graeme Watkins, discuss the power of inbound in the FinTech space. As a company that provides online trading in foreign exchange, commodities, and index CFDs, Valutrades is always looking for new ways to enhance the customer experience and build a brand that users trust. In the early days, as Graeme explains, the company was hyper-focused on the dollar-for-dollar value of both its paid media and inbound marketing strategies. But over time, that outlook evolved, as did market trends. Now, CEOs like Graeme understand the power of a handcrafted inbound marketing strategy to create a seamless digital path for users and build a brand that customers can trust, no matter which stage of the buyer journey they find themselves in. Listen in as Graeme and Jen discuss: The power of inbound strategy in the FinTech space (02:59) Enhancing the customer experience (07:38) Partnering with marketing agencies for success (14:03) Dollar in, dollar out marketing metrics (18:42) Building a trustworthy brand (25:02) Tracking engagement with HubSpot analytics (30:27) Creating a seamless digital path for your users (40:11)

®With Brandon Voss, President of The Black Swan Group On this episode of the Intelligent Inbound® Podcast, Jen sits down with Brandon Voss, President of The Black Swan Group, as they discuss the art of skillful negotiation and the power of inbound methodology to reach new audiences. Founded by former FBI lead hostage negotiator, Chris Voss, The Black Swan Group teaches companies, teams, and individuals how to navigate complex communication hurdles with real-life hostage negotiation strategies. As Brandon explains, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, The Black Swan Group, like many live events companies, had to pivot. And so they began to track customer engagement and nurture trust with their audience in an ever-changing market. Thanks to The Black Swan Group's inbound-first approach, what could have been a catastrophic shift in the market, became the team's next great success. Now, with the help of inbound marketing, the team has expanded its reach while building trust with its audience. In doing so, they've created better listeners, and better leaders, one negotiation at a time. Listen in as Jen and Brandon discuss: Pivoting marketing strategy during the COVID outbreak (4:47) Measuring long-term customer engagement (11:43) Build trust in an ever-changing market (17:15) Negotiate as if your life depended on it (19:25) Getting your message out in the world with inbound marketing (24:33) Effecting cultural change at the corporate level (33:01)  The power of Tactical Empathy™ (35:20)

Jen Spencer, CEO, SmartBug Media®, and Rob Giglio, Chief Customer Officer at HubSpot On this episode of the Intelligent Inbound Podcast, Jen and Rob Giglio, Chief Customer Officer at HubSpot, sit down to chat all things inbound. The secret sauce to any successful marketing strategy is made with equal parts quality content and a commitment to authenticity. In times of economic uncertainty, as Rob explains, customers turn to the brands they know and trust. So how can you become your customers' go-to, even when money is tight? Jen and Rob break it down: "The most worthy deed helps someone else succeed." (0:45) Orchestrating an exceptional customer experience (7:05) Navigating uncertain economic conditions (11:14) Building trust through consistent, quality content and authenticity (15:23) Meeting and surpassing user expectations (22:23) Wellness check: Tracking customer engagement and satisfaction (31:38) Final Takeaways: What do marketers need to know? (45:44)

On this very special episode of The Intelligent Inbound® Podcast, recorded at INBOUND 2022, Jen talks with Stephanie, Chief Revenue Officer of SmartBug, about what it's like to be a woman in a C-suite executive leadership role today. The path to success hasn't been easy for either of these women, from first launching their careers, to working their way up the corporate ladder. But with equal parts grit, gumption, and determination, they've learned how to take big risks and make big moves without letting adversity get in the way of their next great audacious goals. Listen in as Jen and Stephanie chat: Gender and racial disparities at the C-Suite level (02:48 ) Stephanie's early days as a working mom (04:08) Jen's first career ambitions in the non-profit sector (11:26) “Can I pull up a chair?” Learning as you go (12:56) Client > CRO > President > SmartBug's CEO (16:30) Navigating male-dominated workspaces (19:29) Overcoming imposter syndrome (23:58) “You've got to take a risk.” (27:57)

Welcome to Season 2 of The Intelligent Inbound Marketing podcast, a conversation with industry leaders who challenge the status quo for inbound marketing and believe in pushing the boundaries. Intelligent Inbound® is a game-changing approach to building high-growth, customer-centric organizations. Your host, Jen Spencer, brings a wealth of knowledge to this space as the Chief Executive Officer at SmartBug Media®. And she's joined by guests from a variety of industries and backgrounds, exploring innovative ways to break through the noise and drive big results in sales, marketing and revenue operations.

In this episode of the Startup Selling Podcast, I interviewed Jen Spencer.   Jen Spencer is the CEO of SmartBug Media®, a leading Intelligent Inbound® marketing agency that assists both B2B and B2C e-commerce businesses in growing revenue by generating leads, scaling revenue operations, and building market awareness through digital content, design, and web development. Jen is an influential thought leader in the sales, marketing, and revenue operations space, regularly speaking at B2B conferences as well as serving as a mentor for revenue leaders through Pavilion's Rising Executives Program. She also started and hosted a weekly podcast called SmartBug on Tap for several years before launching the new Intelligent Inbound Podcast® aimed at challenging the status quo for inbound marketing with inspiring stories from some of marketing's most innovative and successful players. Jen subscribes to the notion that “we're all in this together,” and great communication leads to a great partnership. She loves animals, technology, the arts, and really good Scotch. Some of the topics that we covered are:   At what stage of your business should you consider hiring a Marketing Agency? What is the importance of having sales-minded marketing people or marketing-minded salespeople? What can you do as a startup in terms of marketing; if you are not ready to hire a marketing agency as yet?  What are the signals to know it's time to hire a marketing agency?  Links & Resources:    Website: https://www.smartbugmedia.com/   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenspencer/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/jenspencer   The Intelligent Inbound® Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/1MV0CnkTDtCupFnPJzJLFG?si=2452443647174d73 Listen & subscribe to The Startup Selling Show here:   BluBrry | Deezer | Amazon | Stitcher | Spotify | iTunes | Soundcloud | SalesQualia   Thanks so much for listening! Tell a friend or ten about The Startup Selling Show, and please leave a review wherever you're listening to the show.

Friday Fundamentals 171: Jen Spencer

Friday Fundamentals 171: Jen Spencer

In this special two-part episode, we've got Jen Spencer with us. Jen is the new CEO of SmartBug Media, and is joining us to share her journey to becoming the CEO and how she is leading the organization. Join us for a raw conversation about leadership, organizational alignment, and how the marketing landscape is continually evolving.What You'll LearnHow Jen became the CEO of SmartBug MediaThe balance of keeping things the way they are with instituting new directionWhat marketing tactics are and aren't working anymore Show Agenda and TimestampsAbout Jen's journey to CEO [2:45]What it's like being a CEO [06:52]Organizational realignment [11:21]Strategies for talent acquisition, retention, and inclusivity [14:50]New marketing innovations [19:14]Sam's Corner [23:31]

In this special two-part episode, we've got Jen Spencer with us. Jen is the new CEO of SmartBug Media, and is joining us to share her journey to becoming the CEO and how she is leading the organization. Join us for a raw conversation about leadership, organizational alignment, and how the marketing landscape is continually evolving. What You'll Learn How Jen became the CEO of SmartBug Media The balance of keeping things the way they are with instituting new direction What marketing tactics are and aren't working anymore  Show Agenda and Timestamps About Jen's journey to CEO [2:45] What it's like being a CEO [06:52] Organizational realignment [11:21] Strategies for talent acquisition, retention, and inclusivity [14:50] New marketing innovations [19:14] Sam's Corner [23:31]

Jen Spencer spent many years dealing with issues of self-esteem, self-harm, drug addiction and suicidal ideation. Through God's amazing grace, she found her way back to peace and happiness and now gives back through her amazing charity work. Jen's story is one you will never forget.

On this episode of The Intelligent Inbound® Podcast, Jen talks with Jignesh Shah, Head of Integrated Incentives at Rybbon, a Blackhawk Network business.  Rybbon is the leading digital rewards management platform used by 1,000+ companies like Lyft, Pandora, RedHat, and SmartBug to boost customer acquisition and lead generation programs. Jignesh has been building and marketing products for 20 years at start-ups and enterprises and was previously the CMO at Metalogix and Vice President at Software AG. Jen and Jignesh discuss how to use digital rewards to drive better marketing performance across the customer journey and more.

On this episode of The Intelligent Inbound® Podcast, Jen talks with Sam Oh, Head of Inbound at Lessonly, a training enablement and coaching software built for frontline teams. Jen and Sam discuss: The importance of allocating budget for branding How a strong brand supports Demand Gen Why marketers should take risks and not stick with what's currently successful How SEO was one of the most successful channels at a previous startup How to get buy-in from your team to run an experiment using thoughtful data storytelling

On this episode of The Intelligent Inbound® Podcast, Jen talks with Alex Wright, Head of Marketing for Arcade, a gamification performance engagement solution. Alex brings cross-industry marketing experience and revenue execution in her role as a performance marketing leader, and her digital and growth strategies just continue to drive organization growth and brand equity at Arcade. Jen and Alex discuss: Why performance management is about to erupt How Arcade drives growth as a startup in a newer category The importance of knowing your personas and creating campaigns around pain points Tactics used for an email campaign that generated a 44% open rate and a 5.4% click rate How rebuilding and rebranding their website became Arcade's most successful revenue generating inbound marketing effort

On this episode of The Intelligent Inbound® Podcast, Jen talks with Natalie Gullatt, Marketing Manager at HubSpot and Founder of the Black Marketers Association of America . Natalie is an experienced marketing leader with a focus on marketing strategy, and social media marketing, digital marketing, and customer marketing. Jen and Natalie discuss: Why she created Black Marketers Association of America The role of customer marketing in an inbound organization Why customer marketing starts before the customer becomes a customer The work she does on the Customer Evidence team as the Lighthouse Merchandising Marketing Manager How she enables marketers within HubSpot to use customer advocacy to bring in more prospects and close more deals.

On this episode of The Intelligent Inbound® Podcast, Jen talks with Carrie Hopkins, Executive Director of Marketing at Southern Nazarene University in the School of Professional and Graduate Studies. In her role as a marketing leader, Carrie owns demand generation for adult, graduate, doctoral and online programs. Jen and Carrie discuss: Results from experimenting with Growth-Driven Design. How Carrie and her team cut their student acquisition cost in half. How SNU became a thought leader by ungating all of their content. How consistent blogging became their most successful inbound marketing effort.

On this episode of The Intelligent Inbound® Podcast, Jen chats with Gaetano DiNardi, Head of Growth and Demand Generation at Nextiva, a leader in cloud communications. Gaetano's core specialty is in full funnel demand generation with a focus on new customer acquisition via inbound channels and website optimization Jen and Gaetano discuss: How blogging about his experience in the music industry led him to marketing His hyper-specialized team structure How his team has doubled their MQLs without gating content or webinars to collect leads How affiliate marketing is his team's most successful inbound marketing effort And more!

On this episode of The Intelligent Inbound® Podcast, Jen talks with Andrea Kayal, Chief Marketing Officer at Electric, an IT solutions company. In her role as a marketing leader, Andrea is and has been responsible for go-to-market execution and growth, and she has over two decades of experience. Jen and Andrea discuss: Affiliate marketing Push marketing tactics How to properly run an experiment How the give mentality works for Andrea's organization And more!

Dan Slagen is the Chief Marketing Officer at Tomorrow.io. Dan is a four-time startup executive, specializing in scaling global go-to-market functions from early stage to over 100 million in ARR. He's also the author of Understanding Startup CEOs.  Jen and Dan discuss: His most successful inbound marketing effort (Hint: It's not blogging or webinars)  How his team launched a virtual conference in six weeks during COVID  How his team inserts themselves directly into the conversations of their target audience  The one dashboard he would use every morning as a CMO to know how healthy his department is  And More!  If you want to learn more about Dan and what he's up to, connect with him on LinkedIn and check out his book “Understanding Start-Up CEOs” on Amazon.

Mike Tatum is a Demand Generation Manager at Momentive , formerly known as SurveyMonkey. Mike is a growth marketing expert who obsesses over the possibilities that automation brings to marketers. Jen and Mike discuss: How his time in the Army impacts his approach as a marketing professional The one dashboard he would view every morning His most effective personalization tactic to increase open rates and clicks How to personalize the Buyer's Journey The perfect example of a product led growth campaign  If you want to learn more about Mike and what he's up to, visit his website at www.mikektatum.com.

Christine Bottagaro is the Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer at Resurface Labs, a software company that gives you insight into your APIs. She has a deep marketing experience, everything from product marketing and customer programs, to sales enablement and demand generation. Christine shares with Jen: Why she left her successful CMO career to build a startup The challenge of juggling sales and marketing Her most successful inbound marketing effort How to approach experimentation And More! If you're interested in working with Christine, you can reach her at Christine@resurface.io or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Welcome to The Intelligent Inbound Marketing podcast, a conversation with industry experts who challenge the status quo for inbound marketing and believe in pushing the boundaries.  Intelligent Inbound is a game-changing approach to aligning revenue teams. It is how you build a high-growth, customer-centric organization.  Your host, Jen Spencer, brings a wealth of knowledge in this space as the Chief Revenue Officer at SmartBug Media. And she's joined by guests from a variety of industries and backgrounds, exploring innovative ways to break through the noise and drive big results in sales, marketing and revenue operations. 

Jen Spencer is the VP of Sales and Marketing at SmartBug Media and a stellar human. In today's episode, Manoj and Jen discuss what kickstarted her career in sales. They touch on her commitment to learning and embracing data, why she ties sales and marketing closely together, her competitive drive, and how to advocate for yourself in the workplace. We are honored to host Jen as our inaugural guest on The Ramped Podcast & How I Sell.

Jen Spencer shares how she learned to sit in the moment of lonliness and pain knowing and trusting that it will pass. Even with the most devistating blow of death by suicide of her beloved brother, she was able to stay clean and to keep trying.This episode Is brought to you by Cairn for Health, our sister site for tips on wellness and gut health.Also continue following us on Facebook and Instagram over at Cairn the Load where we create opportunities to Inspire, grow, and connect with each other. We're better together. Take care!

Jen Spencer joins Annette In a captivating conversation about the struggles and hope and determination she has faced In her life. Annette and Jen met through The Turtle Shelter Project last fall.If you have (or haven't) struggled with drug addictions, suicide, finding yourself, discovering hope-- this podcast Is for you! This episode Is brought to you by Cairn for Health, our sister site for tips on wellness and gut health.Also continue following us on Facebook and Instagram over at Cairn the Load where we create opportunities to Inspire, grow, and connect with each other. We're better together. Take care!

After a marketer puts in the work to send a lead over to sales, is there job finished, so they can move onto generating more leads?  A Marketer, Podcast Host, named one of the Top Sales Women to Watch in 2019, and the VP, Sales and Marketing at SmartBug Media, Jen Spencer, challenges marketers to continue to nurture their buyers along every step of the buyer's journey. A marketer's job is never done. This episode is full of strategy for marketing to partner with sales, takeaways on podcasts in marketing, and career advice for every marketer. Check it out!   Takeaways: If you are supporting people where they are in their buyer's journey with your content, you should never stop nurturing them. “Just because you have lead nurture campaigns set up does not mean they are good.” - Jen Spencer Set goals for your nurture campaigns then analyze them, for what's working and what you can improve. Marketers, listen to what sales tells you. Are you sending too much of one message or too little of another? Take the time to target your messaging, what works for one segment of your database, may not work for the next. Have a strong arsenal of valuable content and tools that the client can use to do their job better. If you're offering an incentive, make sure that it is relevant to your buyer. Marketing should work with sales to create nurture campaigns catered to each opportunity stage. For example, if an opportunity is stalled, what can marketing do to help that deal move through the pipeline? Podcasts help build relationships at scale, with people that listen to them and with the people interviewed on the show. Using the download data from a podcast can be an indicator for what content is valuable and popular to your audience. Sales is harder than most people think. Jen's advice to marketers for working with sales: “Think about how you can make it easier for sales to be effective in helping that person transition from being in the hands of marketing into the hands of sales.” - Jen Spencer You are worth more than you think you are and you know more than you think you do. Do not create non-existent barriers for yourself. Marketers need to sit on more sales calls, especially in their early career, they will learn so much.   Links: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenspencer/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/jenspencer SmartBug Media: https://www.smartbugmedia.com/ Podcast: SmartBug. On tap: https://www.smartbugmedia.com/podcast B2B Marketing Exchange: https://b2bmarketing.exchange/speakers/jen-spencer/   Busted Myths: Marketing should stop nurturing leads when they become an opportunity. - This is NOT the case, marketing should be nurturing buyers throughout the entire journey. The messaging and content should be purposed specifically to match each stage of the buyer's journey.   Shout Outs: 13:12 AtriumHQ  

It can be intimidating to shift from 100% inbound marketing to ABM. You're probably not entirely positive on how you'll prove to leadership that ABM works for your organization. Lucky for you, we recently discussed ABM metrics with two industry experts. Jen Spencer, Vice President of Sales & Marketing at SmartBug, and Todd McCormick, CRO right here at Terminus give us some industry-leading advice on measuring ABM success Here's what we cover: Setting KPIs that matter Mixing inbound and ABM Finding the best SaaS product Testing different verticals To listen to this episode and more like it, you can subscribe to #FlipMyFunnel on Apple Podcasts or tune in on our website.

Narrator: Effective selling takes an ecosystem. Join host Jen Spencer, as she explores how to super charges your sales, and master the art of never selling alone. Welcome to the Allbound Podcast, The fundamentals of accelerating growth with partners. Jen: Hi everybody. Welcome to the Allbound Podcast. I'm Jen Spencer. And today, I am joined by Travis Smith who is Technology, Global Channels and Regional Vice President for HMI Performance Incentives. Welcome Travis. Travis: Hi Jen. Thanks for having me. Good to be here. Jen: It's great to have you. And for those of you listening who don't know Travis has a lot going on. So, in addition to his role at HMI Performance Incentives, he's also the CEO and Founder of Move the Channel, which we're gonna talk about, and CEO and Founder of TribeVest. So we're gonna get into a lot of good channel talk. But first, can you tell us a little bit about Move the Channel, because I know that's something you're really passionate about. I'd love to get a quick overview of what this is. Travis: You bet. Absolutely. Again, thanks for having me Jen, and good to be here with all your listeners. Move the Channel, absolutely is something I'm passionate about, and it's hard to believe it started eight, almost nine years ago. And in the way that it came to be was…of course, you know, I come from the technology space. So worked with a number of manufacturers and developers, worked for some distributors, was even a VP of sales for a system integrator and re-seller. So, along the way I had met a ton of friends. You know, colleagues, partners, and people I liked and really respected in the channel marketing and channel sales space. And, as you know in technology, there's a lot of moving that goes around, so it's sometimes hard to keep track of everybody. And so, I was playing around in this new thing called LinkedIn. You gotta remember this is 2010. Jen: Right. Travis: So it was kind of a very new...it's hard to believe. Jen: Right. Travis: In particularly, groups were even more new or more foreign to some of us. What I saw was that it was an opportunity to create a group, a community of old friends that I had met and worked with over the years. And so, I came up with the name. I'm convinced it's dumb luck, but it's a little bit of the genius of what has become Move the Channel community, and that's the name, Move the Channel. And we...I invited probably 40, 50 of these people in my network. Again, as a way to kind of keep in touch, and really, not just keep in touch but it turned out to be this network of friends that supported each other, collaborated, opened doors for each other. We even went as far as calling ourselves the Move the Channel Mafia, which I'm glad we didn't do. Sounds exciting doesn't it? Jen: I know. Travis: But, you know, it didn't take long. Here was this tight-knit group of 50 of us. And before we knew it we had 50, and then we had 100, and 1,000, and then, you know, 4,000. And now we have over 6,000 channel marketing, channel sales professionals worldwide. Jen: It's awesome. Travis: And that's how we came to be. Jen: I love it. And I just love, you know, your mission, the vision of it, you know, really trying to cultivate a community. And a lot of people try, and it doesn't always work. And so, I think you got in early like you said. You've kept it very helpful, it's organic. And I think that it's authentic. And I think that's part of why it's been so successful. Do you have like a success story about channel leaders who have been part of this community? Anything that you can share, like an anecdote of something really cool that's come out of it? Travis: You bet. And you nailed it. If you were to go try to start a group today, there's just so much noise and so much out there, it's hard to stand out. So, you know, credit a lot to the name, which I think captured a lot of people's attention and creativity. And the timing of it, getting in first, was obviously a big deal. I think we were, if not the first, one of the first groups dedicated to channel marketing and channel sales. Over the years we've really just been blown away by the impact that Move the Channel, and the reach that Move the Channel has been able to have. And there's...you know, I think about the successes out there, and all the channel leaders in the community. I mean, every time you see these lists of the channel chiefs, the women in the channel, at anytime they're kind of recognizing leadership in channel marketing and channel sales. There's a really good chance that they're a part of this community, whether it's in a Move the Channel group, or our movethechannel.com. But, you know, what we're probably most proud of is just all of the connections that have led to business successes in this group. It's impossible to measure, but I can't tell you how many stories I hear about two people, two leaders getting together, you know, connecting, finding each other from the group or Move the Channel community, and connecting and helping each other. Look at their respective channels from a different angle, through a different lens. And so we don't take credit for these big events that happen, or huge successes, but we like to take a little bit of credit when they actually...those connections were made in the Move the Channel. And a lot of, you know, finding new hires, more teammates, and even vendors. Finding vendors that have helped them achieve their goals, getting referrals to vendors that have helped them achieve their goals. So, you know, there's a lot of specific people that come to mind, but I think highlighting the success of the community is what I'm most proud of. Jen: Well, I think it's definitely something to be proud of. And maybe people listening here, well, if they haven't found Move the Channel yet, they'll go join that community and start reaping the benefits of it as well. Let's talk about HMI Performance Incentives as your, kind of that's your day job, right? That's your main gig. So tell us a little bit about that. And I really wanna learn how you've seen incentives really put to use in the channel. Because it's a big question, you know, people talk about incentivizing sales reps, gamifying experiences, incentivizing your channel. Channel sales reps are, you know, they're just their sales reps that are just not working all the time for you, right. So I'll stop talking. You tell me more about HMI. Travis: You bet. Absolutely. Yeah, you're right. You know, and there's a lot of buzz words out there. It's tough to know what's the appropriate strategy when it comes to engaging, not with just your channel partner, right? And I think of the channel partner at the organizational level. And then there's the channel sales person, the person, the human that works for the partner organization, or the partner sales engineer, or customer support. And HMI, gosh, it's such an exciting company right now. Even though we've been around for 35 years, we really are at an exciting point. We continue to innovate and move the incentive world forward. You know, Jen, when most people think of incentives, they think of the reward. And don't get me wrong, the reward is so critical. If you don't have the right reward, and the reward isn't motivating, your strategy is dead on arrival. Jen: Yeah. Travis: And more than ever, the reward options are more compelling to your target audience. You know, we're seeing huge trends towards experiences, and sporting events. You know, pick out not just merchandise or things like that. You can actually pick out the event, the theater, the summer concert. And don't just stop there but pick the date, the venue, the seat. And what about booking a hotel, and a shuttle to the show, you know, all this online in the incentive program, real time. And it's really, really cool. But let's be honest, I mean, compelling rewards are the baseline, you know, that's just the beginning. And I think what's most exciting that we're seeing at HMI is how channel incentives are solving big problems, you know, big challenges in the channel. And again, most people don't think of incentives like solving challenges. Jen: Right. Do you have an example, like an interesting use case you've seen for a particular partner program? Travis: Yeah, there's a lot of them that come to mind. You know, when I think of these challenges that we're solving, I think of…you know, the three that come to mind that are most common out there is the manufacturer distributor, either, A, doesn't know who's selling their stuff. They might know the partner that they've signed up to distribute or sell their solutions, but they don't necessarily know the sales person on the front line. And so, you know, they don't even have a database to communicate to them. And that's one challenge. The second challenge is you know who these people are. At least you have their contact information, but you don't really have any insight into them. You don't know how they're selling it, or what else they might be selling, or how your solutions might be complimenting their total solution that they're bringing to their customers. And then, C, you know, the third would be insight. They know who the customers are, they have a pretty good insight into their business, but they don't have...are they really winning the engagement, you know, the mind share, and grabbing the mind share and wallet share of these partners? And, you know, HMI has a pretty, really cool story to tell around solving these problems through channels and incentives. So for example, if you were looking to bring in a new, you know, someone that you didn't know. You don't have their information, but they're supposed to be selling your stuff, but you wanna communicate to them. It's much easier to get them to come sign up and register for an incentive program than it is a partner portal or something like that. Jen: Right. Travis: Right. And I know you guys understand why the indirect sales force are just not going to those types of applications. And therefore, you can't really engage with them very well with the traditional partner portal. But anyway, you know, an incentive program, it's pretty easy to not only get them to come register, but to surrender all sorts of information. Even maybe competitive information on who else they're selling. But anyway, back to your main question, you know, I think if I was gonna kind of single out one impressive program out there that just comes to mind, it's with my buddy Todd Owens over at QLogic and Cavium. Who's probably one of the...Jen, I've got to introduce you to him if you don't know him. He's one of the brightest and most strategic thinkers in the channel as far as I can tell. But what he did was he took HMI and his program and turned a traditional incentive program on its head, where most incentive programs are at the core incentivizing for sales. He doesn't reward for any actual sales but rewards all for engagement and enablement. So things like watching a 90-second video and taking a quick quiz, setting an appointment with one of his sales engineers in the region. So there's all these kind of other things that he's measuring and tracking, and ultimately giving rewards out for, which has been really cool. Of course there's a direct correlation between the people that are engaged in doing these things, and the sales that come in the end. Jen: I love that. Yeah, you have to introduce us, because I love the idea of incentivizing. Not the end result, but the behaviors that you know are gonna lead to the end result. So that's awesome. Love it. I want to ask you about your time at ProfitStars. So you were at ProfitStars before you joined HMI. When you were there, you were really in the thick of it, living, you know, day-to-day strategic alliances, identifying, recruiting, on-boarding, and then managing those partners. I'd love to hear some of the biggest struggles that you had in executing your job effectively, because a lot of our listeners are living that life right now. Travis: You bet. Yes. You know, but before HMI and Move the Channel, that was my world. You know, that was the world I was living. And I mentioned working for a number of manufacturers and distributors. And so, a few years ago, I was actually recruited back to that world where they wanted me to run their strategic alliances and roll out partner programs. And was just an incredibly awesome and exciting initiative…for those of you who don't know ProfitStars, it's part of Jack Henry, the $1.8 billion software company that sells through banking channels, so banks and credit unions. And then ProfitStars is the division that sells through all the other partners. So everybody that's not a bank or credit union. And that was the division I was in. And it was pretty easy, because the name was so well-known and they're so respected. You know, getting a meeting with the owner or CEO to sign them up as a partner wasn't a difficult part. And, you know, the CEO and the partner got the value prop that ProfitStars and Jack Henry were bringing to the table. So closing the partner, and you know, recruiting partners was a little bit the easy part. I know that not everybody has that luxury, but that was the case. And it turned out that, you know, the biggest challenge wasn't finding and signing up the partner. It was, you know, how can we engage with that new partner's front line. The sales people, the account managers. Jen, as you know, they're the ones that have the influence over the sale. Jen: Yeah. Travis: So that was our challenge, you know, and that was the fun part. And had a lot of good success, and very proud of the work there. But, you know, it's not something you solve and say, "Oh, we're engaged with the front line and sales people check." Jen: Yeah. Travis: It's something that you're always working on. Jen: Right. Travis: You're always, you know, making sure that you continue to engage and have their mind share. Jen: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think, you know, speaking of that kind of engagement and results that you get. You know something we talk about quite often here is that 80/20 rule in the channel where, you know, right, 80% of revenue comes from 20% of partners, or even more. You know, even 90/10 sometimes, or more often, lately it seems that we're hearing that. And a lot of that goes back to recruitment, and then how you're engaging, how you're maintaining mind share. You know, what are your thoughts on this principle? Is it something we just have to accept, that this is just the way it's gonna be? Is there a way to avoid it? Love to hear your thoughts on that topic, because I know there are people that definitely fall into both camps. Travis: Sure, sure. Yep. There are people out there that just accept it, and the statistics would be tough to argue that. But, gosh, great question. We've seen though, HMI specifically. I think we're uniquely positioned to help with this dilemma. You know, here's the thing, it's way easier to move up, you know move up an existing customer, a partner, than it is to find and train a new one. And, you know, recruitment and out there finding new partners always needs to be part of your plan. But, if we could just take a look at that middle 60, you know that middle 60%, and focus on them. You know, there's a great opportunity to move them up to that next level. And the challenge has between with performance incentives and channel incentives is a lot of companies kind of roll out these blanket reward programs, right? And when you do that, you have the same 20% hitting those goals and enjoying the rewards, or the president's club trip to Hawaii. And, you know, taking a page out of Allbound's book here, you know, it's all about…today, it's all about personalizing it, and customizing it to each individual person. So, to be honest, the technology wasn't there five years ago. But today, literally, each person that logs in to, you know, an HMI system for example, has a completely unique experience. You know, they see their unique goal or threshold, or unique promotion that's available to them because they sell a certain product or in a certain region, or there's unique rewards available to them. You know, all depending on their demographics or how we've segmented the customer/partner database. So, and then those goals are based on how much they sold from the previous quarter, or how much they sold from the previous year. It's not this, you know, "You have to sell this for us to get our attention," it's, "If you show us progress, we're gonna invest back in you." Jen: Awesome. Travis: And we call this intimacy at scale. You like that? Jen: I do like that. I do like that. Travis: I'm trying to get it to stick. Jen: No, I like that because I think it's something that; you've hit on something that really plagues, you know, a lot of sales and marketing professionals. And the tactics that really work well tend to be ones that are very hard to scale. Because as soon as you start scaling something, you start automating it, it makes it impersonal. And then, you lose that effect, right? Like, you think about the experience, the feeling you get if someone takes the time to write a handwritten note to you, right? And so, I like getting this note, right? Well, then it becomes, let's just e-mail everybody, right? And then it's just another piece of noise in your inbox. And so I like that, I like that idea of intimacy at scale. Yeah. I'm a fan. Travis: Right on. No, that was an awesome perspective. You're right. You know those things that work we try to scale them, and then in the process, we lose the personal touch. And that's usually what it is. It's the personalization that we lose. But, you know, I think technology is finally there. We can still personalize and have the user feel special, because they are, if you're using the right systems out there. Jen: Yeah. Travis: And as a result, you know…so getting back to the 80/20 rule, you know, if we kind of segment our partner, customers in your A tier, and B tier, and C tier, you know, we're all about moving those C tier customers to B, and the B's up to the A tier. And then...now, the only problem is how do we create a new tier for those A's because we've run out of letters. Jen: Right. Right. So I've one more, like channel question for you. And I'm gonna ask you to kind of look through your crystal ball here. Wondering about the future of partner programs, you know, you think about like the last 10 years or 20 years, and then where we are today, they've definitely evolved. If you were to look ahead, where do you see the future of partner programs going? And what are you most excited about for the next decade or two of this world of strategic alliances? Travis: Gosh, that's a fun question. Good question. You know, partners...it used to be…I mean, I guess if we were going to look back before we look into the future, it used to be, you know, the strategy was build it and they will come. And that included all these resources. And they would build these things and kinda put these libraries in place. And back in the day when there was only a handful of vendors doing that, they actually had a little bit of success. They would actually get their partners to come and use these resources. But today, there is just so much noise. Everybody has these resources that they expect their channel partners to come to and access and use. And it's not happening, and it's not gonna happen in the future. It's not build it and they will come. Jen: Right. Travis: It's not the field of dreams. And so, you know, what we're seeing now is...and where I see the future is, it's not getting all these assets and resources. It's how can you integrate with your partner? How can you integrate? And you've always tried to integrate your product into theirs. You know, you've got to keep doing that. You've got to integrate your marketing into theirs. You've got to keep doing that. And you've got to keep doing it better. But the real advance is gonna be, how can you integrate with the buying experience? And can you help your partners be more effective out there selling, and help them through the journey? And, you know, we don't have all the answers there but it's starting to crystallize. Again, companies like Allbound are doing things in ways that people had never seen before or considered just a couple few years ago. And those are areas of advancement that are starting to show us the future of channel marketing programs. And on the HMI side, five years ago we weren't having intimacy at scale, and customizing each participant's experience in the channel incentive program. Today we are. There's a long way to go, but that's where it's heading. Those are gonna be the vendors that win. The ones that can integrate into the buying experience. Jen: I agree, because it's all about the customer. That's exciting. I'm looking forward to seeing that all transpire along with you. So thanks for this. Thanks for sharing a lot of your time today with me about incentives and channel programs. This has been awesome, and I do hope that folks who haven't had a chance to participate in Move the Channel will get over to LinkedIn and join that group and start contributing to that group's success. Thank you for starting that. I think it's...I'm glad, I'm very glad you did. Travis: Also, I think it's where we first crossed paths, virtually. Jen: Yep. That's right. So, but Travis before I do let you go, like, really, I have some more personal questions that I always ask our guests. Just so we can get to know you a little bit better. So I'm gonna put you through that rigor now. So, my first question for you is, what is your favorite city? Travis: Gosh, great question. Cleveland, Ohio. Jen: Really. Tell me why you love Cleveland? Travis: You don't get that answer very often, do you? Jen: No, I don't. I don't. I've been there once, and I liked it when I was there. But why do you like Cleveland? Travis: You know, I'm a little bit from Ohio, and a little bit from California. I always joke my parents when I was really young, so there was a lot of back and forth. I was born in California, more raised in Ohio. But growing up in Mansfield, Ohio, which is about an hour south of Cleveland. I became the biggest die hard Cleveland Browns, Cleveland Indians, Cleveland Cavs, and everything Cleveland. And it was always such a big trip to go to the big city. And so, I have really fond memories of it. And to this day, it's still one of my favorite cities to go visit. Jen: That's great. That's wonderful. Okay, next question for you. Do you consider yourself an animal lover? Do you have any pets? Travis: I do. I'm not a cat person, although my wife is. Jen: Okay. Travis: But fortunately, she's also a dog person. And we saved a mutt from the pound, about seven years ago, and it's part Boxer, part Lab, part Golden Retriever, and a few other things that we're not quite sure. But it is still a puppy today. Seven years later, it has not calmed down a bit. And her name is Honu, which is turtle in Hawaiian. Jen: Yeah. Travis: So, we call her a dog turtle. Jen: What inspired that? I've never met a dog named turtle. Travis: We went on our honeymoon in Hawaii, and went swimming with some honus, some sea turtles. And we found ourselves kind of calling them, and trying to get their attention like you would a dog. Jen: Okay. Travis: And so, we said, "When we get a dog we're gonna call him or her Honu." Jen: That's great. Oh I love it. Okay, next question, Mac or PC? Travis: Oh gosh, I"m sitting here looking at both right now. Jen Spencer: Oh, you're one of those. Travis: I have both, and I love both of them. I have recently been turned onto Mac, and that's where I run a number of my businesses. But, you know what, I have the Microsoft Surface Pro. Jen: Okay. Travis: And, pretty sweet, I have to say. They've come a long way. Jen: Yeah, I've heard great things about that. Okay, last question for you. Let's say I was able to offer you an all expenses paid trip, where would it be to? Travis: It would be to Sydney, Australia. Jen: All right. Have you been there before? Travis: I have. I spent a summer abroad over there. And I've been trying to get back ever since. Jen: Well, I hope you have a chance to return. Travis: Well, should I expect that package in an e-mail after this, or? Jen: No, not any time soon. Travis: No, I was just curious. Jen: Never. It was just hypothetical. Let's say, I was able to offer this. Travis: Yeah. I would say there or Patagonia, Chile, which is another place I've been before, but I'm dying to go back. Jen: Well good. Travis: How about you? I'm curious, what's your answer on that one? Jen: I wanna go to Greece. I really wanna go to Greece, because I want...my background is in theater, and there's a lot of history there, and I want to be able to experience that. But then, I also just love to like just chill on a beach and do nothing. And as far as I can tell, I can do both of those things in Greece. And so that's what I would like to do. Travis: Beautiful. Jen: Yeah. Travis: You've almost made me change my mind. Jen: Oh. Travis: Now, I want to go to Greece. That sounds awesome. I've never been, and that's definitely one high on my list too. That's cool. Jen: Well, thanks for again spending some time with me today. It was awesome. So if anyone wants to reach out to you personally, obviously, they can go to LinkedIn and they can join the Move the Channel group. Is there another way for them to get a hold of you if they want to chat, maybe about HMI or anything that we've talked about here on the show? Travis: You bet. You can go to movethechannel.com and reach me there by submitting just an e-mail, which is perfect. And also, at my HMI e-mail, tsmith@hmiaward.com. And I look forward to it. I love this stuff. I'm kind of nerdy when it comes to channel marketing and sales programs, as you can tell. Jen: Perfect. That's what I like to hear. Thanks again. Thanks Travis for joining me, and thank you everyone else. And we'll catch you next week with an all new episode. Narrator: Thanks for tuning in to the Allbound Podcast. For past episodes and additional resources, visit the resource center at Allbound.com. And remember, never sell alone

Sue Fernand, VP of Channel Sales at Cirrus Insight joins us to discuss how smaller businesses can scale quickly and effectively with both the right channel partners and the right tools on this episode of The Allbound Podcast.   Effective selling takes an ecosystem. Explore how to supercharge your sales and master the art of never selling alone. Welcome to the Allbound Podcast, the fundamentals of accelerating growth with partners.   Jen: Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Allbound Podcast. I'm Jen Spencer and today I am joined by Sue Fernand, VP of Channel Sales at Cirrus Insight. Welcome, Sue. Sue: Thank you, Jen. Happy to be here.   Jen: Well, I'm really glad to have you, and especially I wanted to share a little bit about your background because you've been working in a channel for about 18 years, and you've pretty much had almost every role within the channel. So, from like being strategic accounts director at Esna Technologies to different specialized director of channel roles, and I know you also serve as a strategic advisor, focused on like I.E partnerships and channel for the small business web, so you definitely know channel inside and out. We are just really, really, really glad to have you here on the show. Sue: Well, thank you. I'm glad to be here.   Jen: So let's dive into some questions I have for you. You know, you've got a lot of experience, not just in channel, but in tech, and we think about like rapidly growing software companies and the software industry and SaaS. Would love to hear from you where you think the software industry has the greatest opportunity, specifically when it comes to channel, and knowing that channel has been more of a traditional hardware type of go-to market strategy for many, many years.   Sue: Yeah, that's definitely a good question, because you're right, and in my early years of being in sales and being in channel sales, it was. It was all hardware. You know, in the OEM space a little bit, as well as, you know, just being an additional product in like a telecom vendor's portfolio. And then SaaS is a little bit different.   I think the partnership story and channel story, you know, changes a little bit, but I think the greatest opportunity is really for growth, right? I mean a lot of the, like you mentioned, small startups, you know, they don't have the scale out the gate. So trying to get the word out on your own about what your product does or getting in front of, you know, customers that would be a good fit, it's oftentimes challenging, and you can spend a lot of money doing events and, you know, you might blow through any sort of VC, let's say, that you have. But you can get a really strong partner ecosystem that knows your product, sees the value in it, sees the value for their clients, I think that's a really great way to scale.   I mean, again, a lot of these companies that you would sign up to be a partner, they have clients already and it's, you know, super...I think it's a great place to start, and that's one of the things I always do when I bring on a new partner. It's like, "Let's get some webinars or events or things like that set up with your existing clients. Let's get in front of those clients." I think it's always easier for customers to sell to their existing customers, right? So it's a really great way to kick off the relationship and it's a great way to have some initial wins.   I think, you know, getting success out the gate is a good way to do it. You know, even if you have to maybe spoon-feed a couple of deals to your partners, I think that that kind of creates a good environment when the relationship kicks off, instead of spending a ton of time training and creating awareness and creating, you know, collateral, and then it's like there's no opportunities, so things just sit there. But I think, you know, being able to get in front of, you know, whatever channel you choose, get in front of their existing clients and make sure that you can kind of have some pipeline right away. Jen: That's such a good point, and you know what it makes me thing of, it reminds me of when we recently promoted one of our BDRs to be an account exec, right? And when we did that, we didn't just kind of set him free, right? Actually our director of sales kind of worked with him and, you know, did those sort of ride-alongs and got a win under his belt, right, and really helped him see that and taste it, right, and be hungry for more.   And it's an approach I see a lot of sales leaders taking when it comes to their direct business, but when it comes to channel, I mean, they're still just...they're salespeople. So how do you teach them how to have a win and get that win for them, help get that win for them, and then let them go and do it on their own after that? So I think it's just something I hadn't really thought of before and then you mention this, and it's like that makes perfect sense to me.   Sue: Yeah, exactly. It kind of started out with a positive. That way, the story can kind of resonate throughout the company, and people will pay a bit more attention to, you know, your offering. Jen: So, you know, I try to be a really good social listener and pay attention to some of the really great content that's being shared in the space. And you had shared an article that was written by one of your colleagues at Cirrus Insight. It was called "Why Small Businesses Are Struggling Without Sales Software," and I really liked that piece. We'll link to it in the show notes. So in it, the author says that only around 50% of all businesses survive 5 years or more and only about one third make it a full 10-plus years. And if you want to be a success now, it's such a key to work carefully, so it was pretty eye-opening.   And, you know, from our perspective, you know, here over at Allbound, we 100% agree sales software, partner sales software can make a world of difference in those companies being successful. I would love to hear from you what you think a business needs, you know, for their channel to create a path that's gonna lead a business to that 10-plus year mark, given the fact that so many small businesses are, you know, struggling to survive. Sue: Yeah, definitely, and that article was super interesting because some of the statistics in there were just crazy. You know, it said, you know, of the people that were polled, 74% of those companies were managing things manually, and only 16% even leveraged CRM, which just seems surprising in this day and age. But, you know, that's true, obviously, and you do see it. I mean, I think being in the sales and tech world, sometimes we tend to live in a bubble and we assume everybody's using all these really cool things and managing their business in the most effective manner, when, in reality, that's not the case.   And I think small businesses, in general, sometimes try to do a lot of things manually to maybe cut some corners and save some money, or they'll like patch together a bunch of free apps, let's say, but I really think that's where you fail, right, because you're not getting any of the tracking data either, so how do you even figure out what's working or what's not working, and those types of investments, they definitely pay off. And I think when you're managing a channel, you have to have a really good system in place of how that's gonna work from beginning to end. Otherwise, it would be just a big mess because, again, it's probably gonna be, you know, one or two people managing an ecosystem of partners, so you need to have some automation. And you absolutely want to track the data, track performance, so that you really can figure out where your efforts are best served, right, which partners are bringing you the most leads. That's hugely important. Which partners are maybe bringing you the bigger size deals, so you're gonna want to put your efforts there, or which partners are just not getting it, they're just not engaging, and, you know, what can you do to get them engaged or maybe that's just not a good fit, and you move along. But I think it's really important to invest in sales or partner enablement software because there's a definite investment upfront, but it's going to pay off.   Jen: And, you know, I think you'll agree with me when I say that successful partners and salespeople, successful salespeople, tend to be really happy. They're gonna be your happy partners. They're going to continue to drive business for your organization. And if they're unhappy, that probably means they're not making money, right? So, you know, how do you do it? How are you enabling your partners to sell more efficiently? Are you running promotional programs? Are you producing any types of materials or marketing tools? You know, love to hear a little bit about what you do to ensure that those partners are well enabled to sell. Sue: Absolutely, yes. I kind of have three different channels within the channels that I focus on. The majority of the channels that I'm focusing on now with my current role at Cirrus are Salesforce consulting partners. So they're actually referral partners. They're not actually selling our licensing, but, you know, they are involved with their Salesforce deployments, all of their clients, our Salesforce users, so it's really, really important for them to know about what our product does. So one of the things we do for them, and I think it's a really smart move, is give them the software to use in-house. So they're using it, and it's a great app. They love it and they know that it's going to help increase Salesforce adoption, so it makes natural sense to recommend it.   Then, obviously, we also pay referral fees and we launch, you know, different types of promotions from time to time, you know, that will offer the ability to maybe win a trip or get a gift card, or something like that. But constant engagement and having a really easy way for them to get to that content too. Like, we've got a landing page with resources, so we've kept up-to-date, but it's got all of our marketing materials, tape studies, tutorials, everything, you know, is right there so that they're not having to, you know, go all over the place to kind of figure out what they need.   As well as we've done what we call micro-sites, so when someone signs up to be a partner, we'll create a custom branded page with their logo and a little description. We'll also list them as a partner on our site, but they are referring people to us. It has that really nice look. You know, we've got their logo on there, and it just, you know, shows that there's a relationship there. So I think that that's, you know, important, to make sure that you not only have a program, but make sure that it's easy and continually, you know, query the partners too, like, "Is this working for you? Is this a mutually beneficial relationship?" And if you need to make changes or you need to maybe launch something as a promo, then you can, you know, go ahead and do that just to kind of keep that engagement going. Jen: That's a good point. And I'm wondering, have you ever created something or worked for a company where you guys put something together, whether it was a promotion or it was some, you know, content or something that you did that just fell flat, that you thought like, "Oh, this is gonna be great," and the partners just not respond to it? Has that ever happened? Sue: Oh yeah, definitely. You come up with this great promotion, let's say, and you're like, "People are gonna be signing up left and right, and we're gonna get so many leads or so many referrals out of this," and it just doesn't take off. I think you really need to figure out what's important to their business, because, you know, their business has needs, right? And I think for us, like with our consulting partners, their business is services, they're implementing, so that's what's hugely important to them.   Retail partners, they're selling something else, and we're a bolted-on attachment, so that's a little bit different because they're making potentially a little bit more money off of it. So I think you almost have to continually, before you launch a promotion, really understand what's gonna drive them. It's gotta help their business, not necessarily the actual prize at the end of the day, but it's got to be something that's gonna overall effect and allow them to have more business out of the promotion that you're offering.   Jen: I'd love to hear a really great partnership story. I'm wondering, from your experience, whether it's at Cirrus or maybe at Esna, you know, really anywhere you've worked over the course of your career, if you have just, like, one of your favorite partnership stories, whether that's like the most revenue, or a really big accomplishment, or some like amazing strategic alliance that you were able to build. Do you have any anecdotes for us? Sue: Yeah, definitely. I think probably like the most challenging but exciting time in my career of managing in channels was when I made the switch, when I was, you know, with the previous employer, Esna. We'd kind of switched from working with like traditional telecom hardware vendors to trying, you know, working in the SaaS base. Even though we were technically still equipment, we were repositioning and attaching ourselves to SaaS products, like Google and, you know, Office 365, and other, you know, cloud based platforms. So we had to seek out a different kind of partner, and that was an exciting time, challenging time, because it was very different, and a much, much different approach, but it allowed me to really get involved in a lot of the early on enterprise companies, you know, moving to the cloud.   One of the deals I worked on with one of our partners was with LinkedIn, and that was a super exciting opportunity, super exciting deal. We were very critical in that decision of moving that entire company over to Google. I know they've now been acquired by Microsoft, but it was a very exciting deal, and it really solidified the relationship with that partner, because, you know, it's pretty obvious without our piece of it, maybe that deal would not have gone down, and we really worked very strategically together on it, so that when it came through, it was very, very exciting. So it was a real success and a win, and I think it left a better engagement for both parties, because that was so much investment on both ends and it was a very long process, but it was definitely a big accomplishment. Jen: I think, you know, recruiting the right partners is so important, and it's something that we've talked about a great deal on this podcast or other content that we created at Allbound about, you know, who you decide to partner with and build those alliances with. And, you know, ideally, it's all of your partnerships all result in these amazingly successful relationships, you know, like the one you shared. You know, but realistically there are partnerships that fall flat, you know, that don't quite get to where we had hoped they want to. And then there are some that we consider like those diamonds in the rough, right, where you didn't know how amazing it was gonna be, and then it just blossomed into a really great partnership. Do you have an effective recruiting tool or a strategy that you've used to really help gain meaningful partnerships? Sue: Yeah, definitely, and that's hugely important, because I think, you know, there is the challenge of knowing who the people are, the players, and their respective base that you want to get into. And I think sometimes we all want to go right to top, right? We want the biggest ones, like, you know, in the Salesforce ecosystem that would be like the Accentures. You know, we want to go right to the top. And I think that for my purposes, what I found is going right to the top isn't always the best way. Yes, they're very, very big companies, and they have lots of clients, but it's very, very hard to get mind share in those large organizations, because, you know, there may be potentially even a lot of red tape to even get that partnership going, and then once you're there, you know, it's really hard to get mind share.   So I think kind of going for, you know, more of a smaller business, but maybe if you're looking for particular verticals, a business that focuses entirely on that vertical, that makes sense, or more of a boutique type, you know, partner, and a lot of times can be that diamond in the rough, right? Like, maybe it's only a two- or three-person operation, but they've got this reputation, where they're just bringing you these really big deals.   I really like to, you know, take a look at people's websites quite honestly and see what kind of work they've done, what kind of content they're putting up. I like to see people that are kind of thought leaders, because then I know that they're gonna get the ROI and the story that we're gonna bring to the client. So I like to do a little bit of investigation, not just knowing, "Hey, this is a big partner, this is a successful partner," but let's see what kinds of clients they have, what's on their website, what's on their blog, what are they putting out there, what's important to them. So certainly bringing social into the mix is a lot about how I do the recruitment or seeking out additional partners. Jen: Well, I think that's really smart because I've seen culture make or break a partnership, right? So you can have two organizations. You might be both targeting a similar, you know, that same ideal customer profile or you might be focusing on the same buyer percentage. But culturally, if you're extremely different in your approach, that could definitely impede the success of that partnership. So, I mean, I think that's really, really wise, but there's not always a clear-cut way of figuring that out, right? That takes time. Like you said, going onto someone's website, consuming some of the content that they're creating, looking at what they're posting on social media. I mean, do you have a team that helps you with that, or are you kind of doing that on your own? How do you scale that kind of...yeah. Sue: At Cirrus, we're small, we're a startup, but yeah, it's kind of on me. But in the past, gosh, I mean I remember back in the early days of my career, you know, going and getting like the phone books and going through and finding like all the interconnect companies in a particular area, you didn't have, you know, as many online resources, so you had to go a little bit, you know, more old school on that. But I think that, in general, you're right, the culture thing is super important, and you also need to understand the rules of engagement, too. That's big as well.   You know, some partnerships will want you to be very hands off. You know, they'll want you to entirely enable their teams, but they don't want you talking to their customers. They want to own the deal and they're just gonna kind of come to you, you know, to order it, let's say, or if they have technical questions. Where other partners are gonna really want you kind of side by side in the deal, especially the larger strategic ones. So I guess knowing, you know, what the rules of engagement are and how much, you know, visibility you're gonna want into their pipeline, let's say, you know, these are all things that you kind of need to find out when you identify what types of partners you're looking for.   Jen: Oh yeah, I agree 100%, and it's like it's not a one size fits all, right? So you have to adjust that communication. Sue: Yeah, definitely not, definitely not. And I've even worked in OEM relationships too, where you can't even...it's not even something that you're publically saying that it's your product, even though it is your product. So that's a whole other different partnership, where it is, really, truly hands off, and you're just kind of managing, you know, the actual relationship between the two companies, but there's not gonna be any sort of a forward facing discussion with the client.   In my experience, I prefer it when it's more of a, you know, collaborative approach. I think it's more successful, and maybe that's just the types of products that I've sold, but I think no one can tell the story better than you can. You can definitely enable your partners, and they can tell that story, but when it comes to a really large strategic deal, I think having, you know, both people there, them selling their company and their services, and you coming in as, you know, supporting them as the expert on your technologies. For me, that's been the recipe for success.   Jen: Before I let you go, I was just thinking, Cirrus Insight's a younger company, like you said. You've got this partner play. Maybe you can kind of take a step back and share a little bit about the company, you know, so all the listeners have an idea of like, okay, who is Cirrus Insight, right? And then also, you know, love to know when the organization decided to make that go-to market, to make that partner play and have a go-to market strategy around channel partners. Was it right out of the gate? Did it come later? Can you just shed a little bit of light on how you did that? Because I know we have a lot of listeners who are in similar situations or maybe even like a year or two behind where you are, I think it would be great to hear your story. Sue: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I mean, I joined them almost...so it'll be two years next month. So when I came onboard, they already did have, you know, partners. I think out the gate, they focused on the partner model right away, because they knew that was gonna be the way to scale, and Salesforce partners were the way to go because they owned the relationship, and building a name and a brand in that ecosystem, that's where you had to go.   In terms of, you know, the company and the history, it's kind of a funny story actually. I was one of the first users of Cirrus Insight when I was at Esna, so I actually found the product. We were a Gmail shop. We used Salesforce and, you know, quite honestly we were struggling with our adoption, and I found it, and I used it, and I was a huge fan. I have posted one of the first reviews on the app exchange, so I knew about them for quite some time and was a big fan.   So when I was looking into new opportunities, it made sense for me to reach out to other products that I loved and used and I knew made my life easier because I think, you know, that adds a lot of credit and validity to your story when you can say, like, "Hey, I've been there, I've seen the transformation, and I use this," or it's not like you're just selling a product, so to speak, if you have a little bit of history on it.   But yeah, they've been partner focused before my time. I know that's how they grew the company. So when I came in, there were already some established partners, and now I've just taken that process and just grown it even further and brought in some additional relationships with OEM Salesforce partners and building up a little bit more on the resale side and getting a better handle on tracking, the referral partners that we have and just having a point person that's just engaging with them on a regular basis.   I think, in general, with any channel, it's just about enablement and engagement. And, again, the thing that we were talking about earlier, having a system in place that allows you to do that, not manually, but having something in place that allows you to use some software so that you can have the data that you need, and be able to track that, and track the metrics on it, and figure out what's working and what's not working. Otherwise, I don't think, you know, it's going to be a successful channel if you don't do it right. Jen: Absolutely. It's like, you know, if you were a DemandGen marketer and you never paid attention to what marketing efforts produced the most number of leads, right? If you did that, you know, that would be very foolish, right? So putting the same approach, the same thing we're all doing with the direct sales and marketing efforts, putting those same processes and holding those same standards, you know, with indirect sales and indirect marketing as well. So it's a big passion point of mine for sure.   Sue: Yes, definitely. I agree.   Jen: So before I totally let you go, I do like to ask a couple of more personal questions so the listeners can get to know you a little bit better and maybe bond with you over some other commonalities besides just channels, because we are more than our jobs, right? So my first question for you is, what is your favorite city? Sue: My favorite city, oh gosh, that's a good question. You know, I hate to say it, because it's so close to home, but New York City. I just always find something new and exciting to do there, and I'm pretty close to New York. I'm in Connecticut, so I get there quite often. So I've been in a lot of places in the world, but I do have to say New York City is definitely my favorite city. Jen: Awesome. Okay, question number two, do you consider yourself an animal lover? Do you have any pets? Sue: You know, it's funny. If you asked me this like five years ago, I would say no, but I have a dog now, and I'm like a complete convert. I was against it. My children really wanted a dog, and, of course, made all sorts of promises that they were gonna take care of the dog, and that's really not what happened. I take care of her, but I am like...I just like ride or die for that dog.   Jen: What kind of a dog is it? Sue: She is a long-haired Chihuahua. So she's like a little, you know, a little lap dog, but she's adorable, and I just adore her, and I didn't anticipate myself feeling this way about a dog, but I do. Jen: I'm a very similar story, and actually he's like five-eighths Chihuahua. There's a couple other things in there. We did the whole like doggie DNA thing. So, yeah, I have a Chihuahua, and I swear I think he would be most happy if he was in a Baby Bjorn attached to me at all times. Like, if he could get inside my skin, he would be happy, right? It's so funny. They're funny dogs. Okay, question number three, Mac or PC? Sue: Mac all the way. In fact, you know, I think I used like a PC laptop like once in my life. I've been a Mac user since I was a child. Jen: Awesome. Last question for you. Let's say I was able to offer you an all expenses paid trip, where would it be to? Sue: Ooh, I would go to Italy. Jen: Ooh. Anywhere particular in Italy or just like see it all? Sue: I would just like to go. I would like to see it all and eat my way through Italy.   Jen: Yeah, sounds good. Sue: And drink wine as well.   Jen: Sounds really good. I know I went to Italy a number of years ago, like a good, you know, like, I don't know, 14 or 15 years ago, and I think I remember it being actually cheaper to drink wine than anything else, and so that was what I did. Sue: Nice. Jen: But I do hope you get to Italy, even if I'm not the one who has the opportunity to send you there. Sue: There you go, exactly. Jen: Well, thank you. Thanks for joining me and joining us in the Allbound Podcast. If anyone wants to reach out to you, maybe they're interested in becoming a Cirrus Insight partner, maybe they kind of want to pick your brain about some of the thoughts you've shared, what's the best way for them to get a hold of you? Sue: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, feel free to follow me, obviously on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram. But if you want to, you know, directly communicate with me, you can just e-mail me at S, as in "SAM," fernand, F-E-R-N-A-N-D, @cirrusinsight.com, and I'm happy to talk channel. And then hey, if we happen to be in the same town, have a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, whatever works, I'm happy to share thoughts. Jen: Great. I'm sure folks will appreciate that, especially considering the experience you have and what you're building over there at Cirrus. So, again, thank you, Sue, for joining us, and thanks everyone else for joining us for the podcast, and we'll catch you all next week.   Sue: Excellent. Thank you so much, Jen. Male: Thanks for tuning into the Allbound Podcast. For past episodes and additional resources, visits the resource center at allbound.com. And remember, never sell alone.

Vince Menzione, Founder of Cloud Wave Partners, join me, Jen Spencer to discuss long-term relationships with partners, compensating partners, collaborating with the competition and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast. Effective selling takes an ecosystem. Join host Jen Spencer as she explores how to supercharge your sales and master the art of never selling alone. Welcome to the Allbound Podcast, the fundamentals of accelerating growth with partners. Jen: Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Allbound Podcast. I'm Jen Spencer, and today, I am joined by Vince Menzione, who is founder of Cloud Wave Partners. Welcome, Vince. Vince: Jen, thank you. I'm just so excited to be here. I've listened to some of your episodes. You've had some amazing guests, and just delighted and honored to be here. Jen: We're glad to have you, as well, especially because your business experience just screams channel, and I love getting a chance to chat with people who have seen all aspects of channel sales and marketing. I mean, you were VP of Sales at General Dynamics, you were a general manager of Partner Sales Strategy at Microsoft, you host your own podcast, "The Ultimate Guide to Partnering." You're truly ingrained in the partner ecosystem. Can you share a little bit about what drew you to and what has really kept you working in the channel? Vince: That's a really great question. You know, I think it all started, Jen, because when I started off in selling right out of college, and I had a degree in marketing and wound up in sales because that's where the big money was. I saw that the people in my organization were making most of the money in the sales organization. And so I worked with companies, in four companies, that were, kind of, underdogs in their market, and candidly, I hated cold-calling. And so, you know, being a Marketing major and realizing that I needed to create credibility for my company in my offering, I started early hosting events and inviting complimentary companies to present their solutions along with my company's solution in order to build our credibility and our brand, and that led to a lot of, sort of, ad hoc collaboration with organizations that grew over time and then formalized into relationships, alliances, channel partners, and the like. And the one company that I was with at the time, we took that company from about 6 million in sales to about a 125 million. And then I did a turn-around where I was actually asked to start the government sales business and build a channel from scratch for that business, and that was a pretty interesting time. It was right after 9/11, we were selling to the government ruggedized computers, and we had a very unique offering, but we're underpenetrated our market. And so, I leveraged the relationships that I was building. I leveraged PR, events. I even spent time on Capitol Hill trying to get our message out through local congressmen and the staffers and the like. And so, this resulted in an amazing success that led to my joining Microsoft to lead the channel strategy all up for public sector. And so, I've always believed in the philosophy of one plus one equals three or more and mutual success and collaboration and at my core, I'm a connector. So I guess partner is just really ingrained in my system. Jen: Yeah, absolutely. I love that. I love that philosophy, and you wrote this article. It was called "The Three P's and how every partner needs to think in the Third Wave," and those three P's were partnership, policy, and perseverance. And you talk about driving business outcomes, you talk about shareholder value and market share. I'd love if you could elaborate a little bit. It was such a great piece but elaborate, for this audience, about, you know, how does partnership really fit into what you're referencing as being the third wave, the Internet of Everything, and then we'll link to the article in the show notes also, but, you know, can you give us the Cliffs Notes version? Vince: Sure, happy to. And that article was a direct result of seeing Steve Case speak, actually, at an event, a Microsoft event, hearing him being interviewed by my leader at the time and then also then reading his book "The Third Wave." And what really resonated for me there was just this evolution, you know, from the Internet to the app economy to the internet of things, and that there was this need that I still believe is under-appreciated around working across policymakers about just the amount of cooperation and collaboration that needs to take place between government agencies and private business. We're moving into a whole nother economy right now as you know. I mean, this disruption in the cloud is changing everything, and the Internet of Everything is all about, you know, things like smart cars, the ability to monitor for, you know, police officers to monitor things like gunshots and doing gunshot detection that ties into how a police officer responds to how municipalities deal with water and wastewater management to, you know, traffic lights, all kinds of things that were not part of the computer ecosystem in the past. And it requires this collaboration, again, between the agencies as well as just a common working knowledge on policy and things like that that those policies...some of those policies need to change or be updated to support this 21st-century environment that we live in. I'll give you an example actually. I was thinking about this. Jen: Yeah, that'll be great. Vince: Yeah, so you know Uber? I mean, you know, an incredible disruptive technology, right? But Uber has, kind of, built itself on disrupting and not collaboration. And I think about this at times because, you know, you'll go into certain cities, you'll land at an airport, and you'll realize you can't get an Uber, right? Because the city has basically blocked them because they feel like it's predatory and competitive to what their cab services do and what they feed off of that, their tax revenue dollars to that. But what if Uber had gone to those agencies, to those municipalities in a spirit of cooperation rather than fighting them, and said, "Hey, you know what? We can collaborate more effectively together. Why not have it so that Uber can then communicate to the mass transit systems in those cities?" Think about things like this, I take the train to my exit or my stop, I should say, and my Uber is then waiting for me because Uber has created a bridge or a collaboration technology to that municipal transit system and knows when that train or bus or you know, other motor transportation will arrive at that stop and you know, calls an Uber and my Uber shows up for me automatically. I mean, these are the type of things that you could see happening with the closer collaboration in what a lot of people are calling smart cities or cities of the future and those kinds of technologies where municipalities and private industry come together for the greater good. Jen: That's a great example, and it's that we really...I think that the crux of it is that we have to evolve in terms of that policy, our business practices. And far too often, I see organizations trying to kind of shove tomorrow's collaboration into today's or yesterday's practices, and it's hard. I mean, what you're suggesting is innovative and it's optimistic. It's challenging, right? This isn't something that's gonna come very easily. Vince: It is challenging, and also, the companies don't always get it, you know? I talked about the need for not just the collaboration, the cooperation but the patience and persistence that are required, and I might have mentioned this in the article. I was reminded of this because it takes a long time...If you're going to work in a regulated industry like healthcare or government, the sale cycles might be longer, the hurdles that you have to face or overcome like, you know, regulations, like HIPAA compliance and health care, or maybe just the fact that you're selling to a government entity and you have to have the right contracting vehicles, and the sales cycle is longer, those things take longer. And I was reminded of an example from that company that I built the government practice for. We initially had a CEO running the business who didn't get that. He didn't understand the government sales cycle and how long it took to build the government practice. Often, government agencies look at you and they frowned upon companies just coming in and kinda poaching business in their market. They wanna know that you're gonna be in that business for the long haul, and they wanna see a track record of proof and success for a period of time before they'll award business to you. And so that particular CEO didn't get it. He didn't wind up staying in that role very long, but we persisted and the business took off from there. And so, again, you have to have the patience and persistence to drive forward if you wanna achieve an objective. Jen: You had some really, you know, great experiences and successes in managing channel for Microsoft's public sector. I was really hoping you might be willing to, sort of, share, recount one of your best partnership stories with our listeners. Maybe a time you achieved a great revenue goal together, there was some big accomplishment or some strategic alliance that was able to be formed. Do you have anything for us? Vince: You know, I have a lot of stories for you, and if we've got time, I can tell you, actually, more than one great example. I kind of paint a couple of stories for you here. But there was one particular instance where, you know, we were getting into the cloud space and competing directly against Google for email business, and this was at a time when Google was going into the cities, and they were the cool, new, you know, shiny, new object, I guess, if you will, and Microsoft was just moving...I don't even think we called it Office 365 yet. It might have just been called BPOS which was Business Productivity...That was the original name for Office 365. And we were looking for partners to help us be successful in that market and recruited a partner of Google's, one of their launch partners for the Gmail product to the Microsoft ecosystem, but I had trouble getting that partner engaged with the sellers in the public sector business because they were averse to working with anybody that worked with a competitor. And so, I really had to break down some barriers. My team had to break down some barriers to demonstrate that that partner would firewall their Google business from our Microsoft business and that they wouldn't share information between the entities so that if they were gonna work with us on an account, they would not work with a competitor and vice versa and that they would firewall any information they knew. And it took some time, but that partner wound up being very successful, being a Partner the Year, getting elevated in status. They're now what they call a National Solution Provider or NSP, and they won Partner of the Year Award in Education, and they were just spotlighted in the healthcare business for a great success that they've had in the healthcare business this past year. And so that was one example. Jen: That's great. Vince: I had another example too that I wanted to share, too. Jen: Yeah, please. Vince: I was thinking about this one, and this one was, again, in the government space, but it was a large systems integrator, whose name will, you know, go unmentioned here. But this systems integrator was an influencer in their market but very vendor-agnostic. They didn't partner with other organizations, but they became a big fan of Microsoft, and this led to...And again, this was persistent. This was like years and years of working with them, meeting with them, getting them in to engage with our teams that they really became the big fan of the technology when we released Surface, when we started moving to Azure and the cloud. And we developed this strategic alliance and started to co-develop some very cool technology around security, and it was through some of those agencies and government that we really can't talk further about, but you know who they are, and they went from being very vendor-agnostic to being raving fans and creating an alliance and strong partnership with Microsoft that took off. And I was actually reminded that when I was trying to kinda bring this partner along. I had a very senior Microsoft sales leader at the time say to me, don't waste my time with them. "They're not gonna partner with us. That's not their approach." And that person's no longer with Microsoft, but we persisted. Again, persistence, trying to drive the right outcome for the business, and you know, just having the end in mind in terms of what we need to do in order to be successful. Jen: It's actually a really good segue. I love hearing success stories. The benefit of having channel sales and marketing professionals on this show is also to hear about some of the problems, some of the mistakes that have been made over the years, so that we can make sure, you know, we teach those and those mistakes aren't made again. Are you willing to share any mistakes or problems you've seen business leaders have to deal with when managing alliances for their business? Vince: Yeah. That's quite a bit of what I do on "The Ultimate Guide to Partnering" is I try to uncover the pitfalls as well as the success stories. And on both sides of this equation, it comes down to not really understanding or having a common vision of what the outcome needs to be and not understanding each other's operating model. So in the case of partners that are looking to engage with companies like Microsoft, and this is true of other tech giants, is it's just not understanding, you know, the cadence of the business like when is a good time to engage, when it's not a good time because it's the end of a quarter or end of the fiscal year. It's thinking that just because you are a partner that "you're just going to get all these leads and access to customers where these big companies have lots and lots and lots of partners," and they can't just open up the doors. It would erode their customers' confidence in them if they did that, so it's understanding how to best engage with a field organization. And again, it comes back to this kind of being in it for the long haul, understanding the mutual outcomes that you're looking to drive, and being in it together. In the case of Microsoft...Again, it comes back to...I'd mentioned that one partner, particularly Google partner. Sometimes, the field sales organizations don't want to collaborate with a partner that they see as being somewhat competitive to them because they offer other offerings. And in today's world in this time of rapid transformation, you need everybody, actually, to help drive your business, and so you have to be a little bit more open to the conversation and maybe firewall the conversation so that we're specifically going after this particular outcome together, and maybe we're competitors someplace else. Jen: I think, you know, a lot of what you touched on regarding, you know, those challenges or the way to really approach an alliance or a partnership, it's really cultural in nature. And you know, for me, I see that as this is...that's top-down, right? That's the leadership of the organization and from the CEOs level going down into the organization of making sure that there is a culture of partnership, that there's the understanding of "why," why are we doing this, learning from each other, looking at the KPI's that we're gonna be holding our team accountable to and ensuring that they are the right sort of KPI's, you know? But also, I talk to people all the time who go, "Wait a minute. I'm just a cog in this machine. I have a job to do." And so, do you have any advice you would give somebody for, you know, who really wants to build partnerships successfully, build partnerships with transparency, and the way that you're suggesting, when they've been inserted into and organization and maybe don't have the opportunity to craft that culture from the onset? 16:20 Vince: That's a really good question, and I think you're right. It comes from the top-down in the organization. And I see this way too often where sellers are very good at one specific function, and that's calling on the end customer. And in many cases, some of those best sellers, bestselling people, best sales people are the ones that are also, I'll call them control freaks for lack of a better term here, and they don't want anybody else involved with their account, and anything that's introduced into the account is an issue. I would say to those sellers or sellers that are in an organization that thinks that way is that you have to think differently, right? You have to really think about the adage of, you know...I can't think of this term. I'm gonna come back to that one. But just the adage that I mentioned earlier about one plus one equals three or more because it really is a collaboration leads to a greater set of outcomes for you and for the customer. And it leads to raving fan customers as well as a partner that will collaborate with you and bring you into opportunities later on versus kind of having the blinders on and saying, "No, I want to control this account. I don't want the partner involved." Not being willing to kinda give up the reins or give up control of the outcome or the time frame for the outcome to happen is a reason why a lot of people are unsuccessful working in partnerships with other organizations. Jen: Well, there's certainly a lot of fear. I think that that control freak, sort of, nature, you know, that you're talking about comes from this fear of, "I'm not gonna be successful," or "Someone's gonna encroach on my work or what I'm doing." And I guess, it's up to those leaders to, you know, set the culture but also identify the processes, procedures, provide the tools and resources so that everyone's worst fears, whatever they are, get them all out on the table, "Okay, what are you most worried about happening? And let's make sure that those things don't happen," or "Let's just dispel this rumor, okay? This is not...That is never gonna happen. Don't worry about that." Because I think, it just comes down to trust, and people want to feel like, you know, they're being taken care of by their organization. And when you bring a partner into the mix...sometimes, if you haven't had experience working collaboratively with partners, you know, I think that could be a little bit daunting for some folks. Vince: It is, and then it's also knowing just that this is a relationship. This is an ongoing long-term relationship. It's not transactional. Before Microsoft evolved the cloud business, there were some people at Microsoft that only engage with the partner that was transacting the Enterprise Agreement. And so, I would get the phone call around this time of year, which is the end of Microsoft's fiscal year, and that was the only time the sales person wanted to talk to the partner person. And of course, it was really...they were really ready to just jump on them because the order hadn't come through yet. Rather than building that relationship, having lunch once a month to discuss account strategy and account planning, all the things that should have happened, these people were just really in the moment for the transaction to happen. And it was just about that time of year or that time of the cycle versus having this ongoing relationship. You mentioned trust, building trust, having transparency, a mutual respect for each other's business, and business cadence and you know, set of outcomes. What's in it for me? Knowing each other's wins is so important, right, that that radio station, WIIFM, you know, What's In It For Me, that both organizations have, right? Each organization has its own business and set of outcomes that they're trying to drive against, and understanding that mutual respect is just so important to success. Jen: There's something else I want to ask you about, and a lot of the people that we talk to, you know, here at Allbound are either, they're in one of two camps...they either are have been hired to enter an organization and literally breathe life back into the channel partner program. So in those cases, it's typically the company has some kind of a partner program that really wasn't very well architected. Maybe they kind of fell backwards into it, right? Someone comes to them, and says, "I wanna refer your business," or "Let's cut a little bit of a deal." And the beginnings of a partner program are put into place and other folks kinda jump on board, and then it becomes its own living beast, and now, someone's got to come in and wrangle it. So we talk to a lot of people that are in that kind of world, and then we talk to folks who mostly, you know, at rapidly growing SAAS companies that have gone...their go-to-market strategy has been direct, but now, they have these goals to start a channel program. They're starting from scratch, and it's just this open field, like of, you know, what do they want to build? And I'm wondering if you have any advice for either one of those people. I don't know if that advice would be different or if it would all be rooted in the same. If you can kind of like think back to sort of the beginnings of what it's like to start building something. What advice do you have to give these people who are setting out to build a successful channel partner program? Vince: It's a really great question. I think about just how, culturally, the organization has to think differently, right? And in both of those examples, right? So we had a program, why wasn't it working, you know? Maybe it was that conversation we're just having earlier about mutual trust and respect. A lot of times, I see organizations, they wanna go fix something, and they think that one particular individual could come in as the new channel chief and just that person will create some type of magic or hocus-pocus on the situation. It's much more ingrained in the culture of the organization that tops down approach. It has to be buy-in from everyone in the company especially from the financial acumen, the chief financial officer CEO level, all the way down into the field organization. Compensation has to be structured so that sellers win when partners win. That's an important aspect. Compensation drives behavior, right? So if I were to look at a program, an existing program, I want to look at a few things. I would want to interview the partners. I'd wanna interview the sales people. I'd wanna understand where the cultural imbalance was and then design programs and readiness tools and compensation incentive models that drove the right behavior both for internal sellers as well as for partners. And so, that's how I would think about that. I think from this SaaS model, I think it's fairly similar, as well, again for companies that are moving from the Direct model, they're trying to grow through their channel. Again, they have to take a look at their current business model, their revenue streams. You know, what could be changed to drive this mutual behavior, this behavior that drives to a successful outcome ultimately for both the sellers, the partners, and for the customers? Jen: Great, that's wonderful, wonderful advice. And I love that you mentioned compensation because it is what drives, you know, everyone. And if those compensation structures aren't aligned, that can really cause a lot of headaches with the partner program and making sure that program is successful. This has been so great chatting channel with you. Before I let you go, I do put all of our guests through a little bit of a speed round of more personal questions. Are you ready? Vince: I'm ready for this. I've listened to a few of your episodes. I don't know what's coming my way but go for it. Jen: All right. Okay. So first question is, what is your favorite city? Vince: That's a good one. My favorite city is Philadelphia. Jen: Okay, tell me why? What do you love about Philly? Vince: Well, we lived outside of Philadelphia for about 26 years. My kids love Philly. My daughter went to Temple University. It's a city that's on the rebound which is what I love about it, and it's become my new favorite place. Although I love Washington DC and spend a lot of time there, Philly has got this new exuberance about it, and I love the phoenix rising from the ashes. And I see Philly in much the same way. They're building new skyscrapers, Millennials are moving back in the city at a pretty high clip. It's still an affordable city and a very livable city, and they have great, great restaurants. Lot of great BYOBs, and just they're underrated in many ways but just a great little city. Jen: And pretty much...I went to Philly once and all I did was eat when I was there. Vince: It's a common thing to do in Philly. Jen: Right. Okay, question number two, would you consider yourself an animal lover? Vince: I am. I am, actually. I didn't grow up an animal lover, so that's a great question. I didn't have a dog until about 15 years ago, and we had 2 dogs up until a couple weeks ago. We'd lost...one of them just, you know, passed, and so I've learned to love dogs. And I've learned a lot about life through dogs and just giving back to them and just getting all that love and loyalty that you get from a dog. Jen: Yeah. Sorry to hear about that loss. What kind of dogs? What breed? Vince: Shih Tzu and Shih Tzu-Bichon blend were the two dogs we had. Jen: Oh, yeah. Fluffy, fuzzy. Vince: Fluffy, fuzzy. And the other reason why I didn't have dogs when I was younger, I had really bad allergies as a kid, and so they're hypoallergenic and they're just, you know...they're terrific dogs. Jen: Yeah. Okay, next question, Mac or PC? Vince: Well, PC. Jen: I should've known, right? Vince: Yeah, you know, I do...I'm a huge fan of the Surface, and I knew Panos Panay at Microsoft when he released it and just, you know, still a super fan. Although, I will tell you that I have iOS. I have an iPhone, and I do love the apps and the finished quality of the apps. Jen: Excellent, and last question, let's say I was able to offer you an all-expenses-paid trip, where would it be to? Vince: I'm a real beach person, so, you know, it's probably gonna be Saint Barths, but there's this other piece of me that wants to be on the coast of like Sicily right now...and eating great Italian food, so I'm gonna go with Sicily instead of Saint Barths, how's that? Jen: Yes. Well, Sicily, right? So you can...there's water, right, and the food. You get the best of both worlds. Vince: That's right. Beautiful blue water and great Italian cooking, so, you know... Jen: Perfect. Vince: Well, thanks so much for taking some time with me and with our listeners today. It was great. If anyone would like to reach out to you personally, what's the best way for them to get a hold of you? Jen: So I have become a fan of social, and in fact, just...really getting the hang of Twitter but my Twitter handle is @vincemenzione, that's V-I-N-C-E-M-E-N-Z-I-O-N-E. I can also be reached at LinkedIn and Facebook at the same handles and on Instagram, as well, and then my email address is vincemenzione, without any dots or dashes, @gmail.com. Vince: Perfect. Jen: Thank you, Jen. This has been a great pleasure. Thanks for inviting me. Vince: Again, thank you for your time today, and thanks to everyone for listening, and we'll catch you next week with an all-new episode. Man: Thanks for tuning into the Allbound Podcast. For past episodes and additional resources, visit the resource center at allbound.com, and remember, #NeverSellAlone

Liz Stuart, Vice President of Operations - Partner Alliances and Customer Experience at Advanced Systems Group, joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss the view of the channel from the reseller side, how to be successful reseller, what it means to have a good relationship with your vendor partner and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast. Transcription   Announcer: Effective selling takes an ecosystem. Join host, Jen Spencer, as she explores how to supercharge your sales and master the art of never selling alone. Welcome to The Allbound Podcast: The fundamentals of accelerating growth with partners. Jen: Hi and welcome to The Allbound Podcast. I'm Jen Spencer here at Allbound, and today I'm joined by Liz Stuart, who is Vice President of Operations of Partner Alliances and Customer Experience at Advanced Systems Group. And I'm really excited to have Liz on the podcast today because she is bringing us the perspective of the partner. And we've only had that one other time before with Justin Gray from LeadMD. Normally, where I'm talking to channel sales and marketing leaders, but I think this is such a great way for our audience to really step into their partner shoes. So, to start it off Liz, you've been there for about 17 years. You probably know every nook of the place. Can you tell us a little bit about Advanced Systems Group? Liz: Sure. First, I'll say thank you for inviting me to be on your podcast. I'm a huge fan, so I'm really honored to be here today and talk about kind of what the partner experience looks like. ASG, we've been in business for 37 years. We started off as a Computer Land franchise and pretty quickly turned into a value-added reseller or solution provider. We have historically focused in the storage space, and today we're really looking at object storage, and software-defined networking, and kind of software-defined everything. Jen: Wonderful. I wanna dig into some of your experience and some accolades actually. You were named one of CRN's 2016 Women of the Channel for your role in driving profitable growth and facilitating stronger channel alliances for ASG. Can you share a little bit about how you've grown these relationships with your vendors? Liz: Sure. So, one of the things that we did as a company about 10 years ago, or maybe a little bit longer than that was we developed a role or a group of people that we align with our strategic partnerships. And basically, that's the vendor alliance manager, strategic alliance manager. These folks are aligned to our partners and their purpose is to have a deep understanding of who the partner is, their people, meaning their org charts, and that changes a lot, the processes, the programs, certifications that are required, and to bridge the gap between the vendor partner with our sales and engineering teams and then onto operations as well. This role is critical to our successful with our vendor ecosystem because that changes often and trust with our vendor ecosystem is so very important and that person helps keep that continuity and keep the repeatability of the consistency and the repeatability of the relationship and how we go to market. Jen: Excellent. I want, you know, to get some partner perspective from you. You know, ASG is a reseller for a lot of companies like HP, and Oracle, VMware, Cisco, NetApp, and Hitachi. Can you share a little bit about your relationships with those vendor partners? I'd love to hear what those partners have done to help you be successful in selling their solutions and products. Liz: Sure. So we have a mix of what I would call the industry giants. Some of the ones that you just mentioned and we also have our boutique-type partnerships or the smaller-type partnerships. And I think having a mix of those is the recipe for success. You know, from the industry giants, you're gonna have consistency in their programs and go-to-market. There won't be a lot of surprises there. They're gonna be very process-driven, and probably move a little bit slower than some of these…some of the boutique-type on partnerships. Now, on the smaller and boutique-type vendors, they're gonna bring agility and focus. They tend to move faster. They provide great service. And it's nice partnering with them because they're not gonna get processed...they're not gonna let process slow them down or getting the way of providing great service, and they tend to be a little bit more scrappy. Jen: Great. I love that. Liz: Yeah. Jen: And, you know, are there any trends that you've seen? You know, thinking about those different vendors, whether they are those larger organizations or those smaller scrappy ones, any trends you're seeing some of your vendors moving towards as a whole? I mean, just in the time that you've been working in like a channel operations type of a role, what shifts have you seen these organizations making to help support you? Liz: So, one of the things that I think we're all hearing about is, you know, the buyer journey is evolving. And I think it makes sense that the partnership journey should also evolve too. And vendor partners that we're having a lot of success with, get that. So they're looking at unconventional ways of partnering and meeting the customer, a lot of times that's us, right? Where we are, meaning they're continuously educating on solutions, and processes, and programs. It's not a one and done, right? They're not gonna show up and do a lunch and learn and not see them again till the next QBR. The ones that we're seeing a lot of success with are the ones that come to you, they set an agenda, they...we agree to mutual of our goals, we have a mutual understanding of what their KPIs are, what we need from them and what their expectations of us are. And then we can deliver to that and then they can do the same. And I think it's that transparent and open reciprocal conversation that's just going on all the time with the partners that are...that we're really successful with. Jen: Do you have a...I'm just, you know...I'm curious about this. Do you ever have experiences with one particular vendor that you're like, "This work so well," and then do you share that with another vendor or do you try to really compartmentalize your interactions? Liz: I think it's important to share. And yes, we do wherever we can share it and try to repeat that if we're having great success. And we ask for the same of our partners. So one of our questions I have, when I'm on boarding a new vendor, is, "What have you seen work?" Or if we're struggling with a vendor, if a vendor feels like they're struggling with us, I'll go to them and say, "What does your best partnership look like? And what does that...who is that partner or what does that partner look like? Do they have the same DNA as us," right? And one of the things that I find is, you know, vendors because you're a large solution provider, will want you to sign up with them. They expect that all of your sales and engineering teams are gonna sign up to sell their solutions, and they're disappointed when they don't. And I think a lot of times it's because the homework hasn't been done to make sure that there's a good match between us as a solution provider and what their...the vendor solution is. And a lot of times that is...that's where the relationships tend to go sideways or not necessarily bloom the way the vendor expected them to bloom. Jen: Oh, that makes perfect sense. There's an article that you wrote that was called "Tips for Building a Mentor-Mentee Relationship." And it digs into some best practices for really getting the most out of those relationships, and it spoke to me because you wrote it with the intended audience of women in technology, and which is something that's a passion of mine. I'm, you know, on the board of Girls in Tech Phoenix group here in Phoenix, Arizona, but when I was reading it, I really believed that your tips can be applied to partnerships as well. And, you know, from the view of the partner, how can your tips for working with a mentor, how do you think those can translate to working with the vendor? Liz: So, when you're working with a mentor or a mentee basically you're building a relationship that's based on trust and mutual respect. And I think that's very, very important when you're building relationship with a vendor partner, building that trust, building that mutual respect. And that usually comes when you spend time getting to know each other, right? So the tips, I think, are being respectful of each other's time. So when you do meet with each other, you have an agenda for your meeting, you set goals, and you assign ownership to each other, right? So the vendor will have some goals that they want us to meet. They'll assign it to specific people. Vice versa, we'll have some goals that we want the vendor to meet, and we'll make sure that there's follow-through there. And the biggest thing is the follow-through. I mean, one of the things that I tend to see is, you know, a vendor comes in, say, "Here's what we need to do for the next quarter," and then you just don't hear that much from the vendor until the next quarter. So, I really strongly believe in having a cadence and the vendors meeting us where we are, meaning, you know, being in our offices, officing in our offices. That's they're gonna get the most thing for their buck when they're highly visible to our executive leadership as well as sales and operations, and engineering. So in doing, that those are the key components of building that trust and the mutual respect. And I really just really, really believe that a great partnership is when the relationship is reciprocal. Jen: Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's so critical. And, you know, if you think when organizations build these partnerships, I don't think...you know no one sets out to do it poorly, right? Like, no one sets out going. Liz: Right. Jen: "I'm gonna set these goals and then I'm not gonna follow through on that." So everyone, you know, will have these, like, aspirations of what we want this to be. And you mentioned kind of having these sort of cadences. So is it best for the vendor to have sort of a prescribed sort of system that they will go...they go through? I mean, how do you hold each other accountable for that follow-through? Liz: I think that's the best ways when there is a set prescribed system, you know. And we...every vendor is a little bit different. Whenever my vendor alliances folks are meeting with their vendors, we basically tell them, "This is what we see working. This is what works. And if that works for you, we'd love to build a cadence with you, whether that's once a week, once a month, whatever that might look like." And depending on their role at the vendor, it may or may not work, right? So it just depends on who we're working with. But, yes, I do believe having something that's repeatable and consistent is a key. Jen: And, you know, because it's so...it's just so great having kind of your perspective on here, I'm wondering, you know, if you could give sort of a piece of advice to someone who's trying to manage all of the information that comes in and the processes that are part of being a value-added reseller. I mean, what advice would you give that person? Liz: I would give, the advice that I would give is to do a deep dive. There are so many ways that we can be profitable working with our vendor partners. So deep-dive into all of their programs, their financial programs, their deal reg programs, every single program that they have and understand who they are and understand your partner managers, what their KPIs are, and make sure they understand what yours are and what your goals are for the future. And make sure you can tell your company's story, because you're selling your company as much they're selling their company, and you want them to work with you as much as you wanna work with them. So, as much as they want to work with you, so, I think that it's critical to have open dialogue and be transparent in that way and make sure that your goals align with each other, and always be working on building that relationship and making it more successful. And if there are areas that fail, you know, learn from those mistakes, move on and try new things. I mean, I think one of the things that I...one of the other things that I'm seeing a lot is trying to think outside of the box about how you partner and how you go to market with vendors or partners. You know, trying to think unconventionally and thinking about what the customers' needs are. And our customers, they're going a million miles an hour just like we are, so thinking about what are their needs, right? Do they really wanna attend another basketball game or is there something that I can provide to them where I can get in front of them, that maybe they can have their family with them because they wanna be spending time with their family? So just thinking outside of the box. If they're passionate about doing community work or volunteerism then maybe you partner with them in that way. And, man, that's...you know, what a way to build the strong partnership is by volunteering together. So, I think there are so many unique ways that you can partner with vendors and your customers for that matter, that we just have to kind of think outside of the traditional box. Jen: You know I love that. And because what you're saying is, you really have to understand and get to know this person. I mean, it's a relationship. It's just like when you… Liz: Exactly. Jen: …meet a new friend or when you start dating somebody. You're going to engage in activities and do things that are going to be, you know, shared and enjoyed, you know, among that group. And so, that makes perfect sense. And so, we do kind of have to throw away some of our old playbooks of, you know, delivering over, you know, logoed, logo with polo shirts or… Liz: Yeah. Jen: You know, yeah, or the boxes at a basketball game like, you know, you were referencing. Is that something that the customer or that the vendor or, you know, your team actually cares about? And I think in order to do that, in order to actually execute on this advice, gosh, there's gotta be like cultural alignment, right? Like, you've gotta have...at your level, you know, you've gotta be part of an organization that's culturally open to that transparency and that collaboration. And then the vendor has to have that same kind of culture as well. And its how do you make sure that before you start engaging with a partner on that level, that you've got that culture alignment? I mean, do you have any advice for that? Liz: That's the million-dollar question, right? And that is...that's part of what my vendor alliances team work so diligently on, right? And they spend so much time getting to know the vendor, understanding our internal data. You know, where the vendor might be a fit. It might not be a fit in one region, but it might be a great fit in another region because of their product mix or their cultural mix. And we're pretty consistent across the board, but there is some tendencies in different...there's different tendencies in different regions. So, that's part of what the vendor alliances team does is they...you know, they operate on data and they look at who the vendor is, what changes have been happening at the vendor, what changes have been happening internally, and really work hard to bridge that gap. And hopefully, the trust that our internal team has with our field sales team will help build the trust with the vendor partner so that that cultural connection happen easier, faster, better. Jen: Excellent. Awesome. Okay, Liz, before I actually let you go, you know, you listen to the podcast, so you know what I'm gonna do right now. I'm gonna ask you some... Liz: Yes I do. Jen: ...random personal questions. Okay. So my first question for you is what is your favorite city? Liz: San Francisco. Jen: Okay. So because that's my favorite city also I'm gonna ask you why. Why do you love San Francisco? Liz: So, I grew up in the East Bay, and I love all things Northern California, but specifically around San Francisco, there is just an energy in that city. Every time I go there it just...it feels like home, it looks like home. It's just a great city. And the food is excellent too. So, I mean, it's just...it's beautiful. It's just everything about it. Jen: Awesome. Well, from one East Bay girl to another I agree. Agree 100%. Liz: I love it. Jen: Okay, second question, are you an animal lover? Liz: Of course. I love all animals, but for pets, I love dogs that don't shed, so I have a Shih-Tzu Poodle mix and he is the best little companion for our family. He is great. And he's been with us for eight or nine years and loves kids and he's just as easy...so yeah, that definitely, I'm a dog lover. Jen: Wonderful. Oh, what's his name? Liz: Charger. Jen: Charger, cute. Liz: Yeah. Jean: Okay, question number three, Mac or PC? Liz: PC. Jen: All right. And question number four. If I was able to offer you an all-expenses-paid trip, where would it be to? Liz: So, I am feeling a little nostalgic, so I'm gonna say I would go to the Azores islands. They're a group of nine volcanic islands west of the continental Portugal. And I've been to one of the islands, Terceira Island, twice. My parents are both from that island. And one of the things that I've always kinda dreamed of doing is going to all nine of those islands and immersing myself in that, in my culture, as it is my culture. So, that's one of the places I'd love to spend some time and take an extended vacation. Jen: That sounds wonderful. Well, thanks so much for taking the time to chat with me about channel and share a little bit from a reseller's perspective. It was great. If any of any listeners wanna reach out to you personally, maybe they have more questions, you know, what's the best way for them to get hold of you? Liz: They can email me at liz@virtual.com or I'm on LinkedIn at Liz Stuart, and it's S-T-U-A-R-T. Jen: Wonderful. Well, thanks again for your time, and thanks everyone for tuning in. And we'll catch you next time with an all-new episode of The Allbound Podcast. Have a great day. Announcer: Thanks for tuning in to The Allbound Podcast. For past episodes and additional resources, visit the resource center at allbound.com. And remember, #NeverSellAlone.

Zach Selch, VP of Global Sales at PharmaJet joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss partner channel goals, growing a channel, educating your partner sales reps and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast.   Announcer: Effective selling takes an ecosystem. Join host Jen Spencer as she explores how to supercharge your sales and master the art of never selling alone. Welcome to the "Allbound Podcast," the fundamentals of accelerating growth with partners. Jen: Hi everyone, welcome to the "Allbound Podcast." I am Jen Spencer and today I am joined by Zach Selch who is the VP of Global Sales at PharmaJet. And if you don't know Zach, he's been working in sales for the last 30 or so years, and with a lot of that time spent in the channel we're gonna have a ton to talk about with him. Zach, you've just recently transitioned into your role as VP of global sales at PharmaJet, and I know you're working on building up new channels, expanding, and empowering existing channels. Before we get into all the meat we're gonna talk about today, can you share a little bit about PharmaJet and about your role in the company? Zach: Sure. So PharmaJet is a company that was put together to develop and sell needle-free injection technology for the vaccine market. And the basic idea is that you have literally billions of people getting vaccines, and there are a lot of dangers involved with the needles. They make it a little bit less safe. There are issues with disposing of needles. There are issues of accidental sticks, those types of things. And there's also advantages with vaccine to where in the flesh, where in the layers of the skin or the muscle you deliver your vaccine. So if you can make it easy to deliver the vaccine in the right part of the body, you can make it more effective with less training. So that's essentially what we do. And right now our focus really is in growing the international vaccine market as well as the domestic flu market. Jen: That is very, very interesting. And I love this innovative approach to medicine. So channel comes up in this? I think there's so many different interesting applications of growing a channel. You know, what's kind of the overview of your role there? What are you setting out to achieve for PharmaJet? Zach: This is an interesting product for a couple of reasons. When we're dealing with the international market, we're looking really at ministries of health; government. And, you know, when you're selling to a government, they're...it can be a long sales process. You don't really have a relationship, you're looking at a very, say, long investment in the issue of developing trust. And when you're dealing with a channel, you're essentially onboarding the trust and the relationship that that channel's already developed with your customers.   So if you know who your customer's going to be...and in this case I do, it's a very specific part of the Ministry of Health of countries and you can find the right channel. So you find somebody who's actually selling to them another product today has been delivering the trust, they know that they're delivering good product and, you know, they're honest and so on and so forth. If I could get those type of channels, that accelerates my sales process, it cuts down my cost of sale because I don't have to be there 20 times. You know, I can manage the ongoing sales process through my channel. So that's the focus of what I'm doing.   Now, domestically, I have a similar thing...or actually, you could say it's similar but almost opposite. In the United States the people who are making decisions about vaccines are much, much more localized and much smaller, and it then goes back to the cost of sale. "Can I actually get out to every clinic or every place where they're going to make...where they're going to be delivering vaccines and make a presentation, develop the relationship, build rapport and trust. Well, if I'm dealing with distributors, our channel partners that have those relationships, they're getting out there, then that is gonna make my sales process a lot easier. Jen: The beauty of a channel. That's great. Zach: Exactly, right. Jen: So, actually, let's dig into that a little bit more, and I'm gonna start by going backwards. So your most recent company, AMETEK, you worked within the Rauland-Borg Division. And when you were there, you grew annual sales from less than $1 million to more than $12 million in 7 years, and you did it without adding any headcount, products, or resources, which that's pretty substantial, right? That's a big accomplishment. So you gotta tell us how were you able to grow your sales that much without adding that headcount and those resources. Zach: Well, so when I came on board to Rauland, which was the division of AMETEK that I was part of, they'd been trying for 40 or 50 years to sell internationally without any real luck, mostly because, you know, they were doing what a lot of companies do. They were taking a regional manager from the US market who thought it might be fun to sell internationally and putting them in the role, right, but without any real experience. And we were locked into probably the wrong model of partners, the wrong profile. And what I like to do in a new role is I always start by asking a few questions: who are we selling to, why are they buying it. And that might sound really elementary, but a lot of people don't do that, and that really is going to define your channel. And as an example with some companies...and this was the case with Rauland. We had a very difficult - not difficult - a complicated product to install and to maintain, and keeping happy customers is very important. So the philosophy from the beginning, had been "Let's find partners who we can trust to handle this very complicated technical installation and provide good technical support. And can they sell what's sort of an afterthought?" So the first thing I did was I looked at this, I said, "Okay, we need people who can do this type of level of technical support." That's great, but you can always buy an engineer. If a distributor doesn't know how to sell, you can't teach them how to sell. But if you tell them you need this type of technical person, "If you wanna be our distributor, you have to have such and such technical person and they have to do this training," then you'd wanna hire him, and in some countries they can hire him for $15,000 or $20,000. In some countries, it might be 50, 60 or $80,000 a year, but those numbers are nowhere near the cost of getting really good sales people.   So the first thing I did was totally revamp what the profile of distributor I wanted was. Now, one thing that I did that was interesting - and it wasn't my choice, but I'm not unhappy I did it - was we decided as a company that in order to maintain our reputation and our credibility, I wasn't going to fire any of the distributors even if I thought they weren't the right distributors. So I inherited something like eight distributors, probably none of whom I would have chosen, and I let one of them go simply because they had nowhere near the bandwidth to cover the territory that was assigned to them, and that was the one distributor I had reason to let go. But everybody else, I really focused on turning them around and we were able to get them, on average, to increase their sales by about 400% and some of them even more than that through, you know, the next step. So after we brought on board new distributors and identified a new paradigm or new model of distribution, I really started off with everybody saying, "Okay, now you're part of our sales organization." This isn't the situation where you are a customer where we're selling you something, you buy it and you do what you want with it. I look at channel as part of my sales organization, which means I wanna know what they're doing, I want information about the funnel, I wanna know who their sales people are, I want either myself or my regional managers to actually know and evaluate the sales people, know how much they're actually working for us. And I started off with, like, KPIs from the beginning of saying, "We have X man hours of selling time around the world. I wanna increase that by about a hundred-fold within three years." And the idea there was that if our distributors were just not really getting out and focusing on us, the existing ones had to increase their sales hours with the product, and the new ones had to commit. And either myself or my regional managers were keeping track of this very diligently, which sometimes isn't that common.   Some people look at the channel and they say, "Well, I'm gonna find a channel in a country and I'm gonna ask them to buy 100 pieces a year and they're gonna buy 100 pieces a year," and they'll sell them and that's all I really need to know. But what I wanted to do and the way I liked to work was really know how they're selling, how the different people are, and it goes really in-depth. I mean, we would do evaluations all of their salespeople on a regular basis for training needs. We would do a lot of sales training and we would push people to take different courses. I would send out summaries of business books that I've read and I'd say, "Okay, I believe this is a little piece that could help you out."   On a regular basis, I would talk to distributor owners and I would say, "Look, John just isn't really the right guy. You don't have to fire him, but you have to take him off my product and replace him with somebody else." And I would do that, and about two years into the job I had a little rebellion by the existing distributors.   Jen: Oh, really? Zach: And I said, you know... Oh, yeah. They said... And what's funny is at this point after 10 years, they loved me and they were making a lot of money. But for the two-year mark, they all actually got together, the old distributors, the ones I inherited, they actually got together and they decided that they were gonna go to my boss and say that they didn't wanna work with me anymore. And, you know, my boss supported me on that, and then I went to them and I said, "Look, I'm gonna fire one of you. I don't know which one yet, but you don't either. And if you guys don't wanna work according to the way I say, there's a good chance you're gonna lose our line. So you'll have to decide if it's worth it, you know, because you wanna exert your independence if you wanna lose the line."   And it was a big, you know, standoff, got a little tense, but then they all decided that they would change the way they worked, that they would cooperate. And, you know, some of them ended up making a great deal of money afterwards because they were selling more. And all I really wanted from them was to do things to help them sell more, but at the time they thought, you know, I was really intruding into their independence, right. They didn't like that I was asking them for too much information, I was pushing them too much.   So that's really, that's the short of it, was finding the right new distributors. You know, and being my distributor, the ones I recruited, I would probably interview anywhere from 6 to 10 distributors for every territory before choosing one. We would really give them instructions in terms of how much training they had to do, how many sales hours, what type of reporting they had to do and that kind of thing. And, you know, they always thought this was a little much, but on the other hand by asking for them for a lot, they understood how serious we were. And then we would do things with them like get them together for periodic trainings. We would do...we divided up the world into four territories, so we would get the groups of people together on a regular basis. On odd years, we would get the local groups together. So we would have a South American Sales Conference one year and then we would have a global sales conference on the second year, and that gave a lot of opportunities for the distributors to talk to each other and exchange information.   And because I was pretty aware between myself and my RM's, of the different people's strengths and weaknesses, we could do things like say, "Okay, Turkey has the same problem that Australia's having now and they overcame it. I'm gonna have them sit together at dinner and I'm gonna, you know, throw out a little introduction and mention that problem and see if I can get them to have a conversation about it," and those type of things. And we really got different channels to support each other and share information and become very, very friendly, and also really have a feeling of belonging to a family.   And that, I think, was very powerful, because there were expenses involved. You know, we were flying people to global sales conference every two years and we were flying to a regional sales conference every two years and we would ask them to send their people to sales training and stuff like that, but you know, by asking them for that investment we made them really buy into our system and they sold a lot. That really drove sales.   Jen: Well, I mean, like you said, you looked at your channel partners and these distributors as an extension of your sales team, which is great, and that's exactly what everyone should do. And what I really like about, you know, your story is that you went in, you did research, you gathered data from these new partners to see what was working and then used that to coach the existing partners, because I think the situation that you were in where you had these partners that you inherited, right, that use it and go and sort of prospect and select, it's very, very similar to somebody walking in and now managing a sales team and inheriting reps. You know, this story, we could take out the word 'channel', take out the word 'distributor', we're just talking about managing expectations with the sales team. But I think there's a lot of people that have been in your shoes or are in them now, and for some reason when we talk about people selling for us, with us, partners, most folks tend to be a little bit hesitant to be that aggressive, because it's almost like firing a volunteer, right? So people get a little anxious about it, but you have limited time and resources. Zach: Right, and what's really interesting, I always say, is almost every case...and you could even say every case. I mean, almost every case, your distributor, if he's any good, if he or she are any good, they're richer than you are, they make a lot more money than you are, they might have more experience in exactly what they do, right. So, you know, when I try and explain this to people I say, "Yeah, I'm having a conversation with this guy and I say, you know, I really want you to do this, because you're gonna be more successful," and he says, "Zach, how did this year go? My boat's 100 feet long, how long is your boat? Don't tell me..." right? And that's the type of thing it's a very sensitive point. You know, I had a distributor who I love now and I was able to get their sales up by almost 400%, and he was 75 when I took over at Rauland, and he was the only sales asset for his company covering a large country, and he was great. I said to him, I said, "Look, if you die, your company is worthless to me, and your family is gonna be in trouble. So I need you to start hiring sales people and training them, because you wanna be able to sell your company to leave something for your family." And he was furious with me, right? But I was able to drive him to hire professional sales people and other people and build his company, and we ended up building up by 300-400% of sales, which was good for me, and then when he wanted to retire he had something to sell. But you get that, and he was looking at me like I'm his kid. Why should I be telling him what to do?   Jen: Right, it's great. And you know, between building these teams and...you know, you were talking before about putting partners together at the same table, getting them to learn from each other. It reminds me of...there was a blog post you wrote that was on LinkedIn, it was called "Hobbies and Selling." So for everybody, after you're done with the podcast, go to LinkedIn, connect with Zach, you can see this article. But you talk about the benefits of seeking help from sources other than your own. And in this particular piece you talk about weight lifting, how you were able to really break a plateau, a sales rep who was able to outsell his peers two to one, all by innovating, right, and listening to other people, to someone else's innovation, then using their expertise to kinda change a tactic to fill a need. I'd love to know, you know, how do you see this translate in the channel, because today, channels are not as much two-way streets anymore, they're becoming these very complex ego systems. Love to hear your thoughts on this. Zach: So just to repeat the story, sort of, I learned when I was probably 25 or so. I had a channel and there was this guy, a salesman, who was taking notes in a very unusual way. And none of this...and his boss had sent everybody to this class to learn how to take notes, and he was the only one who adopted it. And then later on in the year I found out that he was by far the best performer in his team, right. Like, he outperformed everybody else in his team by at least two to one.   And I really learned from that the idea of you should always be learning, you should always be honing your skills, taking yourself up, even something as small as note-taking, right. I mean, how many...we all take notes, we all say, "Well, you should ask people questions, you should gather information," right? But if you're not documenting that well, you're not doing your best job, but how many of us go out and really work at note-taking? So I took that as a really important lesson, and that was almost 25 years ago, more or less. So what I try to do every year is, first of all, I try and read probably between 6 and 10 very specific business books every year, and they're usually on a subject, open-ended questions for instance, or you know, a certain type of way to prepare a slide deck, different things like that. And I'll read the book and, you know, I'll go to a couple of seminars or workshops every year. And what I try and do is then take that stuff and prepare it into training for my channel sales organization, and sort of I see that as part of my job. So what I'll do is I'll say, "Okay, you know, I'm gonna take this 300-page book. I'm gonna take two ideas from it, and then I'm going to set up a webinar, and I'm gonna first train my regional managers, and then I'm gonna train all of the salespeople." And now this also brings another value to the owner or manager, because if I teach them a good trick that isn't related to my product, they're gonna be able to use that selling other products too, right.   So I'm giving them an advantage. I'm increasing my importance and my mind share with the partners, but I'm also giving them a tool that might help them sell a little bit more. And, you know, what I've heard from that is also sometimes it even drives people... You'll have sales people who say, "You know what? I sort of felt that I had everything I really needed, and then you taught me this and I thought, 'Maybe I should be reading my own 10 books a year.'" And it sort of helps convince people to get back onto the self-educating type of path, because that can be...you know, sales people really should be constantly learning, in my opinion, to develop their skills.   Jen: Excellent. I agree. I don't think there's...I mean, think most people do agree with that completely. I wanna pull us...let's pull in, going back to the present. So we've been talking a lot about a lot of your past experience. You're at PharmaJet now, we got to understand a little bit more about what that company's doing. You're partnering with some interesting organizations like the Serum Institute, and its really innovative healthcare. Can you get into a little bit more detail about how your partner program is set up? Because I imagine there's this one layer of education marketing that's going on, there's the distributors, there's like the in-office sales that are happening. I just would love to know, you know, how are you organizing this to really maximize collaborative partnership?   Zach: Well, so it's very interesting. We are essentially selling tools to help deliver vaccines, and vaccines are purchased in a very unusual way. And again going back to what I said before, I really like to try and think from the beginning that your sales organization should be a mirror of how people are buying your particular type of product. So internationally, the people who are buying vaccines and things that have to do with vaccines are a very limited number of people. You have a country that might have 200 million people and the decisions for all their vaccines are being made by 1 or 2 people who are part of their central government. And so what's really important to me is to be able to find those people, give them the information they need, help them understand that they can trust us and then help move forward the sale, right? That's key to me. But I also need... You know, what's gonna happen as I go...you know, let's say I go to Bolivia and I meet with the right person and he loves the product, and then I come back or I go to another city, and then he remembers he has another question, right? He wants to know more information. Well, I don't wanna have to go there 20 times over the course of the sales process.   Now, if I have the right channel who has a good relationship with that guy already and I can make sure that my channel handles all that ongoing questions and the issues and the back and forth along the sales process, that really takes a lot off of me that simply would make the whole sales process not cost-effective. So that's really what I'm looking for.   So, internationally, I'm looking for a very specific, focused type of partner. And of all the products I've ever sold, this is probably the most focused type of partner that I'm looking for in that sense. Now, domestically, there's tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of potential customers for my product in the United States and I need to be able to reach them. I can't afford to do it directly. So again, I need the right channels for that and it will probably involve multiple channels because if you think about who vaccinates in the United States, well, your pharmacy chains vaccinate, your doctors' offices vaccinate, your employers vaccinate, right? And those are probably going to be separate channels, so I need to find the right channels to reach those types of people.   What's very interesting about this is people make decisions about vaccination in a very focused way, time-frame wise. It's almost like selling Christmas trees. You know, if you offer a Christmas tree for $3 in May, nobody's gonna buy it, right? No matter how fantastic the tree is and how great the deal is. People have a very specific timeline where they say, "Well, I have to figure out what I'm doing about flu shots, you know, and I'm gonna make that decision...for the 2018 flu season, I'm gonna make that decision in April of 2017." So what I really need is my channel to be talking to the customer during, you know, a 60-day period about my product, which is on one hand good, because if you say to your channel, "Look, what we really want from you is, every time you go into the customer to remind them about our product, that's asking a lot of the channel. But if you basically say to your channel partner, "Look, once a year during this six-week period, we want you to present our product," that's a very different ask from your channel. The other thing is the starting price of this, you know, a doctor or a pharmacist can really start using this for very little money. So the cost of buy-in for the customer, for the end-user customer, is very low and the return on investment is very clear. So from a channel perspective, I think what I believe has happened with us is, in the past we've made the wrong asks from the channel partners in the United States, which has sort of slowed down our sales. But I think what we really need to be asking from them is a very, very doable, reasonable, focused sales process, you know, very, very reasonable, and the return is, in my mind, very obvious.   So, well, that's sort of where I am. I've been getting a lot of very positive feedback from both international and domestic channels that see this as a great addition to their portfolio.   Jen: Yeah. Well, it sounds like you've made a ton of headway in a short period of time, and I'll be anxious and eager to catch up with you a little bit later down the road and see how things are going. Maybe we can have you back for a recap of what's transpired. Zach: Oh, that would be great. Jen: Wonderful. Well, before we wrap this up, Zach, at the end of my podcast, I like to ask folks some more personal questions about themselves just so we can get to know you a little bit better. So if you're up for it, I've got four simple questions for you. Zach: Sure! Jen: All right. So first question is what is your favorite city? Zach: Oh, wow. You know what? I live in Evanston, Illinois, and having traveled around a lot...like, I've done business in more than 100 countries, I've lived in 4 or 5 countries. This is a very, very comfortable place to live. So if you're asking me what's the best place to live, I'm very happy at Evanston, Illinois. Jen: Okay. That works. Second question, do you consider yourself an animal lover? Zach: I have a corgi, and yes. So I did not think that I would love a little furry dog, but I am very, very fond of my corgi, yes. Jen: What is your corgi's name? Zach: Wingate.   Jen: Oh, nice, very nice. Zach: Yeah, Wingate was a British World War II general, so I gave my kids a list of potential generals they could choose from and they chose Wingate. Jen: That's hysterical. The way that I name pets in my house is authors' names. I was an English major, and so... Zach: There you go. Jen: Always funny hearing how people come up with their pets' names. Okay, next question, Mac or PC? Zach: PC. I have never been a Mac fan. Jen: All right, and last question. Let's say I was able to offer you an all-expense paid trip. Where would it be to? Zach: Oh, wow. Probably Cambodia. I have never been, and it's someplace my wife really wants to go, is probably Cambodia. Jen: I like that the decision is based on where your wife would like to go. I think that's a great answer, Zach. Zach: You gotta keep your wife happy. There you go. Jen: Awesome. Well, thanks so much for sharing your experiences, your insights, it was a pleasure. If any listeners want to reach out to you personally just to kinda follow up, connect with you, what's the best way for them to do that?   Zach: So I would just suggest reaching out to me on my LinkedIn profile, there's contact information there. You can send me an email or a personal message through LinkedIn. Just to make sure it's clear, because I don't know how this appears on your site, my last name is Selch. That's Sierra, Echo, Lima, Charlie, Hotel, and my first name is Zach. So if you look me up on LinkedIn, you'll find me and you can reach out to me.   Jen: Perfect, yeah. Be sure when you reach out to Zach, let him know you heard him on the podcast so he has frame of reference. That will help, and you'll wanna do that so you can also check out that article, and he's got others up there too that are great as well. Zach: Yeah, thank you. Jen: So thanks, Zach, go ahead. Zach: Oh, I was just gonna say I put up a series of articles about hiring a regional manager that I'm very proud of. So that's something...you know, I'd suggest people...if they wanna read it, they're more than welcome to.   Jen: Wonderful. I recommend that as well. So thank you again for joining us, and thanks everyone else for listening in, and we'll catch you next time with an all-new episode of the "Allbound Podcast." Have a great day. Announcer: Thanks for tuning in to the "Allbound Podcast." For past episodes and additional resources, visit the resource center at allbound.com, and remember, #NeverSellAlone.

Brian Signorelli, Director of the Global Sales Partner Program at HubSpot, joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss adding value to your partners, channel best practices, identifying good partners from the start and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast.   You spent the last 5 years at HubSpot in various partner roles, really climbed up into the role that you're currently in now, I think it would be great if you could share a little bit about HubSpot for people who are not very familiar with the company, and what your role is there today.   So, real simply, we're a software company. We sell software to mostly small and midsize businesses generally up to about 100 employees; they could also be divisions of larger enterprises as well and the software that we sell helps teams generate more traffic to their website, convert that traffic into leads and ultimately convert those leads to customers and that is through our sales and marketing software platform itself. That's Hubspot in a very very small nutshell. I'm focused on building HubSpot's kid of second partner program. Listeners might already know about our agency partner program, that was founded in 2008-2009 by Pete Caputa who is now the CEO of a company called Data Box, ironically their office is in the same office as HubSpot, and so I had the opportunity to learn what it takes to build a successful partner program directly under him. That was the first partner program that HubSpot built. We've grown that up to over $100 million in revenue, 2k partners globally and it accounts for a significant chunk of HubSpot's overall business, I started this late in 2016, early 2017 a project to build out HubSpot's second partner program which is tied directly to our sales products, whereas the agency partner program was originally designed around our marketing platform which is our flagship piece of software from 2006-2014 until we brought out the CRM and sale products in late 2014. So that's what I'm focused on now   I think it's really important that you've identified that the partners we've been working with for our marketing solution, may not be the same partners who we're going to work with to bring our sales solutions to market. One of the frequent conversations we have on the podcast is about building our your partner personas, and really understanding the most appropriate partners to be working with to help you achieve common goals together, So this is beautiful. Since you began working on  the partner programs over at HubSpot, I'm curious about some of the biggest changes you've seen occur.   - --   Our value prop for partners has changed over time. Kind of ironically, sometimes the success of a business can mean the failure of a partner's business, or at least the health of the overall ecosystem. Back in 2012 it was different as a marketing agency to be an inbound marketing agency. It was a novel concept. Today it's not a novel concept. And so we have to kind of rethink exactly what was our value prop, or how were we helping partners. And so we have a significantly different value prop today than we did 5 years ago. Part of that too is a reflection of the fact that HubSpot is a multi-product world, and for the most part CEO's and just willing to accept website traffic and leads being generated by a marketing agency hired, they're expecting that agency to own the entire customer lifecycle, and we've had to adapt our own value prop to match that reality of what the market is demanding.   There was a blog post you wrote that was really great, titled “7 Things I Wish I Knew Before Becoming a Sales Manager”, where you share your hindsight. What are some of the key things you have learned about scaling partner programs that you wish you knew when you first started being involved with partner programs?   So I joined at an interesting time. I kind of jumped in midstream. The agency partner program at HubSpot had already been around for 3 or 4 years. By the time that I joined so I didn't see it from the very beginning but for any business thinking about building a partner program there are some things that you should give some really serious thought to Voice break in some way shape or form you'd want to run up against different types of things will touch on some of them we've overcome some of them we haven't. If you have not have a channel sales program today give really deep consideration as to why you're building a channel in the first place. Sometimes businesses do this to enter new markets, Sometimes they do it to run the entire still sometimes to replace an entire Services Division and sometimes it's just about grabbing as much market share as you possibly can. Those are all very different things, and the primary motivator as to why you're building a channel in the first place is going to impact every single decision about building that program You're going to be moving towards so give it some serious consideration and realize that this is not something that happens overnight. This is a very long term very long time to payback type of play, this is not something that you will Start in January and finish in June. This is something you will start in January and will see results in 12 to 24 months that you're seeing significant Revenue contribution. This stuff takes a lot of time.   ---  There are plenty of businesses out there too that have 100% of sales through the channel and if so just stick to that because if you start double dipping, you can start to erode your program. You can alienate your entire partner base.   Another article I saw you wrote just last month was titled “How We've Started Building HubSpot's Second Channel Sales Program”.  In the article you said something that really stuck with me, you said “add value to Partners first and worry about extracting value later.” I would love for you to share a bit about the Sales Partner Program you're working on building now and what you do to add value to Partners. --   How can partners apply Inbound Sales and Inbound Marketing to grow in the channel? Can you share some of the best practices you have implemented at HubSpot?   This is going to sound silly, but the absolute best partners, are the best students first. If they're going to partner with us, they need to understand what inbound marketing and selling is. They're awesome students, they get certified, they take our sales training. It shows the partners' commitment to how serious they are to working with us, and it enables to all speak the same language. The best partners do three or four things on a really consistent basis. They create content on a regular basis. Literally the easiest way to create content is to answer the questions your prospects are asking. Every single time you write a blog post to answer those questions, it gives you another opportunity to get found.   The second is that, when these partners are starting to generate more website traffic, and generate leads. The best partners actually contact those people. We're getting all of this data, and message etc, but we're not calling them. Why aren't you calling them? The good partners proactively engage.   The best partners, they understand what a marketing funnel looks like.   I've got one more “official” question for you. Where do you see the future of partner programs going? What are you most excited about for the upcoming decades of sales and marketing in the partner world?    The businesses that provide a disproportionate amount of value to their partners first, and really treat them as an extension of their own team, will win and have richer, more thriving networks.   The future of partner programs is going to look much more like a B2C relationship than a B2B relationship. Partners are people, and I think that what we're seeing, is that we are all living today in this on-demand economy. In our personal lives, the on-demand economy is right in our face. When it's so easy to get whatever you want in your personal life, and then it's so difficult to get what you want in your business life… there's a disconnect.

Aaron Schmookler, Co-Founder and Trainer at The Yes Works, joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss collaboration, culture, the importance of building relationships and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast. Jen: Welcome to The Allbound Podcast. I'm Jen Spencer, and today I'm joined by Aaron Schmookler, Co-Founder and Trainer at The Yes Works. Welcome, Aaron.   Aaron: Well, thank you, Jen. It's an honor to be here.   Jen: Well, I'm glad to have you. I've gotten to learn a little bit more about The Yes Works and I think that's a really good place to start. Would you mind just telling our listeners a little bit about The Yes Works?   Aaron: Sure, if I can take a page from Simon Sinek's book, I'll tell you why we exist. A little more than three years ago, my wife called me on the phone and she said, "I'm pregnant," and my relationship changed. And certainly, my relationship with her changed. But what I'm referring to is my relationship with the rest of the world changed and that actually changed a lot more profoundly. I started looking at everything in terms of, "How will this be for my daughter and how is that going to be for my daughter?" And one of the things that struck me the hardest is the work culture that we live in.   The TGIF bumper stickers and the "I Hate Monday" mugs and the fact that when you ask somebody how they're doing, a very common answer is, "I'll be better in an hour and a half when I get off work." It became immediately intolerable to me that we live in this culture where my daughter is more likely to find affinity with people when she enters the workforce by hating work, rather than in taking pride in the work that she does and the honor that it is to make a contribution.   So I set about to try to figure out, "What can I do to make a change in the entirety of work culture in our country, if not the world?" I took that tiny little ambition and started this company with a friend. Our mission is to make work good for people and to make people good for work. And more specifically, we do that by training teams to work effectively together, to communicate and collaborate like nobody's business.   Jen: Great, well, hold on. So you're saying that the rest of the world isn't as obsessed with work as I am? I mean, I absolutely love my job. I can't even imagine going into work every day and not being 100% in love with what I'm doing. So I'm glad that you're helping people get to that place because it's a great place to be.   Aaron: Yeah, it is. One of the things that I love about it is, clearly people like you and me gravitate together. So we can actually start to form the idea or the impression that everybody is like us. But in fact, the statistics say that the majority of people do not like work, hate their jobs, hate their bosses, want to quit. There are very scary statistics out there.   Jen: I'm sure. When I look at kind of how you represent yourself and your role at The Yes Works, you're a Co-Founder and Trainer. But you also refer to yourself as a Company Culture Engineer, a Team Building Improv Trainer, a Keynote Interactive Speaker. I got to ask, what exactly does a Team Building Improv Trainer do?   Aaron: Well, thanks for asking. We work with leaders to help them lighten up the interpersonal machinery in their companies. So we have a training model that's based on tools and techniques of theater improvisation. We use those tools and techniques to drill the teams that we're working with to help them build powerful communication and collaboration habits. It's not about information. I'm sure you have experiences like I do. I'm not too ashamed to admit that my wife and I occasionally raise our voices with one another. We don't do that because we know that it's a good idea, in fact, we do that despite the fact that we know that it's not a good idea.   But when we're under duress some of our worst habits come out. So we help teams to develop good habits so that even under duress, you're ready and able to do what's effective. Then we help sales teams to transform sales habitually from something you do to people to something you do in collaboration with buyers. And that also is a matter of having good interpersonal habits.   Jen: Absolutely. You mentioned something that definitely piqued my interest. You said the word “theater”, I don't know if you know this about me, but my career got started actually as a high school English and theater arts teacher. I was a theater kid growing up and played a lot of improv games over the years. So what I'd like to know is where do you see the role of an improviser's mindset when it comes to partnership and sales and co-selling together? I'd love to know more about that.   Aaron: Sure. Well I think Asher and Liz from the Avalara said it really well in an episode that they did with you on this podcast. I don't remember exactly what they said, but they said that they really pursue and work to generate deeper relationships with their partners. They do things socially with them. They work on the relationship, it's not just about the transactions. One of the core principles of improv is the idea that it's never about the thing, it's always about the relationship. So you and I for example, right now we're making a podcast. We're talking about partnership and we're talking about business.   At the same time, and more importantly, we're building a relationship. The things that I say on your podcast in the long run, for your business, and for mine, and for our relationship, are going to be more important in terms of how they help to construct or destroy the relationship that we have together. So if I start tearing apart things that are important to you, that's going to be destructive to our relationship, and if I affirm things that are important to you that's going to build our relationship.   Jen: Right. And I guess, from the improv perspective, there's only so much preparation that you can do, right? So let's talk more about theater. This is great. So if you're in a stage play there's a script and you follow that script. And you think about in sales there's a mentality of following a sales script, following something that's been pre-written for you to lead to success. In improv it's much more give and take, you have to be a good listener.   You have to really collaborate with that partner that you are on stage with, or in this case, that you're working with. So I love that. I'm actually kind of upset with myself that I didn't make that connection before now, but I appreciate you shedding a light on this.   Aaron: Well, let's take it even further. Certainly, I think there are a lot of people out there who know, "Okay, it's good to know what it is that I'm going to be talking about, it's good to have a script to fall back on." I think most sales people these days know that you can't just straight up follow your script.   Jen: Right.   Aaron: But they still may have an outline laid out for them, which I think is also a really great idea. But what do you do when the prospect in front of you doesn't want to follow those steps? Are you simply going to push? Are you going to ignore the fact that they keep trying to steer the conversation in a different direction? Are you going to hear them ask for something that is against policy and just simply say, "No" and the conversation is over at that point? Or do you have the flexibility of mind to do something different, to go in the directions that they want to go? A sales guy at BP asked me once, “What do you do when a prospect hijacks the conversation in a sales call?"   For me, the question itself is an oxymoron. I can't have the sales conversation hijacked. I'm there to serve the needs of my buyer or my prospect if I can in any way. Even if they start talking about the weather halfway through the conversation, they can't hijack the conversation. I instead would probably ask questions after that like, “We were talking about these problems that you're having with your business, tell me how the weather connects to that?" Rather than saying, “It's so cloudy, I really would like to see the sun too, but let's get back to the topic at hand, I only have 30 minutes."   If we go back to that principle that I was talking about earlier, remember it's never about the thing, it's always about the relationship. I've now done something to deteriorate the relationship. I have essentially rejected what in improvisation we call their offer. The offer that they made was, “I want to talk about the weather." Now, that doesn't mean that I'm going to talk about the weather. I'm not here to talk about the weather. I am going to validate that there is a relevant reason that the weather came up. The customer isn't always right, but the customer is always valid.   Jen: That's a good point. What you're talking about here I feel is very collaborative, and communication is collaborative. Actually, I have a quote from you about collaboration, it's just kind of something that stuck with me. You said, “When collaboration is defined by those who don't understand it everyone loses. Collaboration is an ad hoc or hodgepodge. True collaboration is systematic and effective, it creates that which no individual would have created on their own because there's more information among us than there is collected between us. And some problems are solved, some ideas are generated only when your peanut butter is mixed with my chocolate."   Maybe I really liked it because I was hungry, I don't know. But I love this picture that you've painted about what collaboration truly is. I would love to hear from you how have you seen this really put into practice when you talk about selling and working with channel partners? When there are people who are really selling on your behalf and they're not on your payroll, they're not within your four walls, they might be across the world from you, how do you effectively collaborate with them?   Aaron: Well, I think it starts with having an open mind. The greatest insights and the greatest innovations are not always revolutionary, there are more often smaller evolutions. For example, Airbnb, which created a revolution was itself a small evolution on things that were already out there. So it starts with having an open mind, our brains are an incredible association making machine. It really is associations that create innovation, and there's a reason that the words “partnership” and “association” are almost synonyms. The idea of making connections between different ideas, and the word for making connections between different people, both is association.   So when your mind is relaxed we make associations. Archimedes solved this incredible problem of determining the gold content of the crown in the famous story where he said, “Eureka.", not while he was agonizing over the problem, though he spent time doing that. But when he finally took a break from the problem and immersed himself in the tub and the water level rose he shouted, “Eureka," and the solution to the problem of measuring the gold and the crown was in displacement. So he made this association between the water level rising in his bathtub, and the water level rising if you were to immerse a crown in a measured beaker.   So what does this have to do with partners and channels? Well, it has to do in part with how to identify partners, how to identify potential channels, and what is going to be the nature of the partnership. So I think we have ideas about who would make a good partner for our company, we make ideas about how our product relates to other products, but those ideas are most often what our executive mind was able to come up with.   The executive part of the brain, the one that agonizes over problems, is not nearly as effective at making creative associations as a much looser network called the “default mode network”, which comes alive when we play and that executive mind is distracted, the editor is distracted. For example, if you're networking among people who serve the same people that you do and you've got only your executive mind on, you're going to miss incredible associations if your mind is narrowly focused.   Jen: Let's talk about that for a second because there was a piece that you wrote where you talked about how the best networking night of your life was when you were in a large room full of business people for two hours and you left without a single substantial lead and you said it was one of the best nights, right? A lot of sales people might say, “Well, that sounds horrible." So why was that experience one of the best networking nights of your life when you left without any leads? I mean, don't we go to networking events to get leads?   Aaron: Great, okay. If you go to networking events to get leads you're doing it wrong. It's not a lead getting event, there's a reason it's called the networking event, it is an event for building your network. If you think about any network, it's not that the hub, you or me, is connected to everyone in the network. It's that there is this living, breathing, series of connections. Like this is connected to that, connected to that, connected to that, connected to that, connected to that, or I am connected to you or connected to that other person, connected to that other person. LinkedIn is, in fact, a really good example of this, it shows you whether you're a 1st connection, 2nd connection, 3rd connection or further.   It was a great night of networking for me because I tightened the weave. I went out and made a lot of connections, I connected myself to other people...none of whom were leads but that doesn't mean that the connection is any less present. I also connected people that I was meeting with to people who were already in my network, so I expanded my network and also tightened the weave. The night in question that I wrote a blog article about hasn't yet led to any business that I can trace. There was a similar networking event that I went to about a month later that I could have just as easily written about. At this similar event, I made a ton of connections for someone in my network named Rhonda, who happened to also be at that event and we were walking our separate ways.   I kept meeting people whom I knew she should meet, and so I would grab them by the elbow, gently, and say, “You've got to meet my friend Rhonda, she's doing stuff that you're going to want to know about." And I would walk them across the room and find Rhonda, and I connected her probably to 10 different people that I met that evening. So none of that is likely to come back to me, none of those people are likely leads for me, but she wrote a Facebook post that mentioned me and talked about how many people I had connected her to and somebody else responded to that and said, “That's the kind of guy I want to meet” and so I met somebody else named Trisha.   Now, Trisha is like I am, an associative thinker and a connector. We met simply through me connecting Rhonda to a lot of people and Rhonda finding it remarkable. Rhonda remarked and Trisha then wanted to meet me. Trisha has now connected me to people who are definitely going to do business with me, in fact, I've already served some of the people in Trisha's network. That is the kind of thing that happens when you're out there. So I went to a couple of networking events, and I went and gave because that's what there was for me to do that day. I'm not saying that I never get leads when I'm actively networking, I also certainly have my eyes open for that but it's not my sole purpose.   Jen: One of the things you're talking about makes me think about the way that I treat my partners. We have a partner program here at Allbound and my goal is that I want to know as much as I can about my partners. I want to know where they shine, who they can help, what's going to make things better for them, so that I can help make those connections for them, and I have to say I am somewhat selfish because I know that that's going to ultimately come back to me in some way, shape or form, right? But the idea of being this networker I think is very much aligned with building a partner ecosystem where you have a number of individuals and entities that are working together and collaborating to help solve a customer's problem ultimately, and that's why we have the hashtag #NeverSellAlone. So I definitely see that connection.   The other thing that you're talking about is very cultural. You've talked a lot about this, “Got Your Back” culture, about the six different levels of commitment with this idea of “I've got your back”. I think it's really interesting, and I think it could be applied to determining the kind of relationships that partners have and the levels of practice that even align with partner tiers. I'd love if you could explain a little bit about what those levels of supportive behavior look like in this idea of the “Got Your Back” culture.   Aaron: I've talked about six levels of the got your back mentality, and that's really not even all there are, there are more, and I won't go through all six. I will point out something that you were just talking about, trying to support and understand how to help your partners thrive is a way of having their back. To tie it into networking...there are two ways of doing it wrong. One is to go out and be a go-giver, and just give and give and give. You also have your mind narrowed to, “How can I make everybody else's lives better?" And if you don't also have your mind open to, “And what's in this for me?" you're going to miss all those opportunities and you're going to fail that way as well.   So what I hear you saying that I really applaud is that you've got your mind open for how to generate value between you. Sometimes that value is generated in the form of creating for them and sometimes it's in the realm of creating for you, and sometimes it's in the realm of creating for both of you. So that's a pretty advanced, “got your back" level of play. In the article that I think you're talking about I started with level one of “got your back” which is, “I'm not going to throw you under the bus." I think that when we get in bed with the wrong partners and the people who are really in it for themselves, when there's a problem, when there's a customer complaint, if you're in bed with the wrong partner who only operates at this level of “I won't throw you under the bus," when there's duress, maybe they will throw you under the bus and say, “That's not our fault that's Jen's fault. Jen over there at Allbound created this problem that you're having."   Level one would be really even under duress, you're not going to throw them under the bus. Level two, gets up to, “If you're in distress I'm going to help you out." Now let's skip some levels. The really high level of play in, “got your back" that you were talking about is really knowing what are your strengths, what are your weaknesses as my partner, and as a part of my team. This isn't about transaction, this is about really aligning to support our customers.   I'm going to develop my skills, I'm going to develop the features of my product to complement yours, I'm going to find resources to eradicate the weaknesses between us and really serve our customers to the best of our ability. I'll look for ways to fill in the gaps, I may even look for ways to bring in third partners that are going to fill in the gaps that really are outside our areas of expertise. And I've always got my mind on that question of, “How do we build value between us?" Not just for me, not just for you, but how do we build value between us in ways that really support our mission?   Jen: I think it's a really powerful message. I think many of us have experienced managers, internally, that always have your back, that will always go to bat for you, and managers that will be the first to throw you under the bus, right? And that can be extremely crippling to an organization. If you think about that mentality extended exponentially to an entire partner organization that maybe has 10, 100, 1000, sales reps and all the damage that can be done by literally throwing that partner under the bus.   I know I've seen it, I've seen it in organizations I worked in. People pass the buck and want to blame the partner, whether it's the reseller blaming the vendor, or the vendor blaming the implementor, there's a lot of accountability that's being passed around. So I think that that's an extremely powerful behavior, and if you can harness it and you can focus it in the in the right place, you can get to that higher level like you were talking about. I think it's really exceptional to think about.   Aaron: When anybody throws somebody under the bus, everybody loses. If I throw you under the bus Jen, I get a momentary sense of winning because I've dodged a bullet, but what happens if you and I are partners is the first person who loses is actually the customer. Nobody is actually addressing the customer's problem, nobody is solving whatever it is that I threw you under the bus for. So the customer loses and you obviously lose because the customer now thinks ill of you. And in the end, I also lose because now you don't trust me, and if the customer has a brain in their head they also don't trust me because they just watched me throw you under the bus. Even if they didn't watch me throw you under the bus, they did notice that I didn't solve their problem.   I was listening to another podcast recently by a friend of mine, Jody Mayberry, who was talking about his experience at Disney. He went there with his kids and forgot to connect his day pass to his ticket or something like that. He had failed to follow directions, and that led to him having a problem getting into a certain attraction. And instead of pointing a finger at him and saying, “Okay, you did this, you're going to have to go fix it." or instead of sending him to customer service, the Disney employee that he first encountered took that problem on themselves and said, “Your problem is now my problem" and stuck with him for 10 minutes until the problem was resolved.   Compare that to the kind of customer service experience that we usually have. For example, if I were to call my CRM right now, it would drive me nuts if they did not have the proper customer service and passed me from one company to the next because some kind of software integration wasn't working properly.   We've all had experiences like that, even if it's just between departments within a single company. If the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing it's a customer service nightmare. On a rare occasion you might get somebody who says, “I'm going to stay on the phone with you, I'm going to be the shepherd of your problem. Even if I can't solve it I am going to stick with you until we find a solution." That's somebody having your back as a consumer, it's having the back of your own company by making sure consumers have a seamless experience, and it's having the back of the partners of that company so that everybody comes out smelling like roses.   Problems are inevitable. No client that any of us wants is going to expect a problem-free solution, all we want is somebody to say, “Your problem is my problem, we're going to get this solved."   Jen: Absolutely, I think you're 100% right there. Now, I have one more official question for you. A lot of people who listen to the show are building partner programs, maybe they've got small programs and they're really looking to expand and it's a strategic initiative for them within the next year. What advice would you give to leaders that are looking to grow their partner programs? I mean, we've kind of served them quite a bit of food for thought today, if they can walk away with one thing, what would you like the one thing to be?   Aaron: Well, I'll tell you a quick story, I know I can get a little long winded. I met a woman recently with a company called Big Smarty, and what they do is they take executive teams through an intensive process in a boardroom to revamp their mission, vision and values so that everything is aligned and passions are re-engaged and the company has fresh life breathed into it. I thought she'd be a fun person to meet, but while having a conversation with her we found together that there's this kind of incredible chemistry between her product and ours. If we were to go in before she begins with her work around the table, and do the kind of mind loosening stuff that we do, her work is going to be much more efficient and potentially even more powerful than it already is. Now, I didn't go into that conversation looking for a partner, I just went into that conversation looking for sparks because the person who introduced us said, “Hey, there are going to be sparks. I don't know what the connection is I just know I met you and I met her, there are going to be sparks here."   So to answer your question more explicitly, go expand and tighten the weave of your network, keep your mind open. There is a time for narrow focused deliberate purpose and there is a time for broad thinking and just allowing the loose connections in the default mode network of your mind to play and make connections that your intellectual mind, your editor, never would be able to make. It's actually hard work for me to shut off my critic, to shut off that editor, to shut off the executive mind, but there are always rewards when I do. So don't stop charging but do take breaks.   Jen: Great advice and I'll have to take that to heart. I think I'm very guilty of that editor mind so I'm going to be more conscious of that. Thank you, this has been so great. You listen to the podcast, so you know I'm going to ask you a bunch of personal questions. So I'm not going to ask you permission to do it, we're just going to get right into it, okay?   Aaron: Yeah.   Jen: So, first question I have for you is what is your favorite city?   Aaron: No question is easy for me until I actually have to go there, but I'm going to say Jerusalem.   Jen: Oh, I haven't heard that yet. Okay, so I have to ask, why?   Aaron: It is unlike any other city I have ever been in, it's got all of the modern constructions that that we're used to and it's also got this incredible antiquity. But the antiquity isn't a museum, the antiquity is still a living thriving part of the city. So, for example, there's a market in the Old City of Jerusalem that's hardly wide enough to walk down with people hawking their wares just as it would have been ages and ages ago.   Jen: Very cool. I haven't been there yet, but I hope it's someplace that I'll be able to travel to at least once in my life, that's a very interesting favorite city. My next question is are you an animal lover?   Aaron: Yes.   Jen: Do you have pets?   Aaron: Actually, I have a service dog. I'm grateful for the ways in which my life has been made easier and less painful through the service of an animal, and I've had pets my whole life so I love them all.   Jen: Wonderful. Okay, question number three, Mac or PC.   Aaron: For me, PC. I like to learn new things but my brain was trained on a PC and all my attention goes to learning new things in other areas. I'm not opposed to Macs, I've just chosen not to spend my time learning that language.   Jen: Makes perfect sense. All right, last question. Let's say I was able to offer you an all expenses paid trip, where would it be to?   Aaron: My wife has been talking since I met her about how we should go to Italy together and we haven't made that happen yet, so that would probably be it.   Jen: All right. Well, I have been Italy, I haven't been to Jerusalem but I've been to Italy and it is beautiful. I don't know if I'm ever going to have all of the funds to send all my podcast guests on all of their all expenses paid trips, so in the event that I can't do that for you, I do encourage you to take that trip. But thank you so much for sharing some of your insights with us Aaron, it was so great. A little bit of a departure from what we normally get into but I loved kind of being up in this very cerebral space with you, it was awesome.   If any of our listeners would like to reach out to you personally, what's the best way that they can get hold of you?   Aaron: There are a few ways, probably the most effective ways are LinkedIn or email. On LinkedIn I'm Aaron Schmookler, and that's S-C-H-M O-O-K-L-E-R, and I promise I'm the only one there. Or you can email me, my email is Aaron, A-A-R-O-N, aaron@theyesworks.com.   Jen: Wonderful. Well, thank you, everybody for tuning in. There were a lot of different blogs and articles I've referenced, so we'll be including those in the show notes so you'll have a quick link to access them. Thank you, again, Aaron, and to everyone else, we'll catch you next week on an all new episode of The Allbound Podcast.   Man: Thanks for tuning into The Allbound Podcast. For past episodes and additional resources visit the resource center at allbound.com. And remember, #NeverSellAlone.

Allison Pickens, Chief Customer Officer at Gainsight, joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss customer success, aligning vendor and partner relationships and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast. Jen: Hi, everybody. Welcome to The Allbound Podcast. I'm Jen Spencer, and today I'm joined by Allison Pickens, who is the Chief Customer Officer at Gainsight. For everybody who doesn't know Allison, she's been recognized as a top 50 sales leader. She's an Ivy League graduate. She's worked for and advised multiple SaaS companies and has been featured on a variety of podcasts, and even hosts her own. So I'm very happy to have her here with me today. Welcome, Allison. Allison: Thanks so much for having me, Jen. Jen: Oh, I'm so glad to have you here, and I think it would be great if we could just get started with you sharing a little bit about Gainsight and what you guys do.  Allison: Absolutely. Gainsight is a customer success platform, which means that we help you orient all the different departments at your company around the successes of your customer in order to generate higher retention rates, higher expansion rates, and stronger new business through really strong advocacy from your customers.   Jen: Awesome, such a critical element in any SaaS organization. One of the reasons I'm most excited to have you here today is because there has been so much talk in the SaaS industry about customer success and about the intersection of customer success and channel partners. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about where you think customer success can really meet the channel in today's modern SaaS market?   Allison: The topic of aligning with your partners around the success of your customer is one of the hottest topics in the customer success industry right now, everybody is talking about it. I don't think anyone has figured it out quite yet. It's probably one of these trends that will fully emerge, I think, a few years from now. That's probably when we'll see it really widespread. But there are a number of companies that are at the forefront, pushing on their vendor relationship, and the way that they describe their vision for partnering with their channel involves a few elements. So one of them is developing, first of all, a shared sense of accountability for the outcomes of your client, which is a new thing. Expecting partners to be accountable for customer success is a new thing, so that's the first pillar. The second one is they're realizing that in order to work more effectively with their channel partners they have to have a shared 360-degree view of data on their customers. And then, from there, the third element is they want to make sure that they have a shared definition of target for those metrics. What are the KPIs that matter, and what thresholds do we expect our channel partners to achieve with their clients? Finally, the fourth one is about having shared, prescribed playbooks for each stage in the customer journey. As a vendor, what do you expect your channel partners to do at each step?   Some of the leading companies out there that are thinking about this are actually training their partners on these playbooks and ensuring that there's strong buy in. So that's what the vision tends to look like. Again, some of the leading companies in this area are pushing on a few initiatives to try to get to that end stage. One of them involved is first defining the return on investment that your channel partners should expect from investing in customer success. For example, in the SaaS industry and increasingly in other industries, folks take it for granted that you should make your customers happy. If you're a channel partner with a razor-thin reseller margin, it may not be obvious that this is an investment that you should make.   So customer success organizations are helping them put together that ROI model to justify that investment. Secondly, vendors are thinking about, "How do we make sure that we're prioritizing which channel partners we work with to start?" Some channel partners are boutique firms that don't have a ton of resources. Others are large with a robust executive team, and sometimes they have a customer success executive on staff. As you think about profiling your partners, it's worth identifying what are those major attributes that would define a partner that would be most inclined to be successful working with you on this and piloting this customer success initiative so that eventually you can roll it out to a much larger percentage of your channel partners.   Vendors are also thinking about, "How can we develop that shared view of data on our customers? For example, how can we share the upcoming renewals that a channel partner should be focused on? How can we make sure that they're aware of the Net Promoter Score ratings that the end customers have submitted?" So actually, at Gainsight, one of our big focus areas this year when we think about our product roadmap is allowing that type of information sharing to take place.   Finally, on the KPI side, a lot of vendors are thinking about, "How can we actually encourage our partners to think about a customer health score as being a primary measure of customer outcomes that they should aim for?" And even some companies are pushing the envelope and starting to think about, "Should we have dynamic margins for paying partners that are contingent on different levels of health score?" So this is a provocative idea. I haven't seen anyone roll it out yet. I think we're going to see some major changes in these dimensions over the next couple of years.   Jen: It's very exciting. I love how Gainsight is really at the forefront of driving this message and working with these best of breed organizations who are focused on aligning those partners with customer success. You actually recently wrote a blog called "Aligning with Partners on Customer Success." and we're going to make sure we include that in the show notes here. And in it, you talk about the shared responsibility for positive customer outcomes between a partner and the vendor. For a CEO who might be listening to this podcast, or maybe a board member, or somebody who is really thinking about the overall success and health of an organization, can you share your thoughts about the value in aligning those vendor and partner relationships?   Allison: It's hugely important. For so many organizations, they can only afford to hire customer success managers for a portion of their customers, that's the reality. We'd all like to say we've got infinite budget to invest in customer success, but there are real pressures that we have from our executive team and our board. So, especially for large enterprises, we typically see them start to assign customer success managers to their largest customers or maybe the strategic ones mid-market. But often the SMB customers are covered by resellers. So if I'm thinking as a board member of one of these large companies, one of my questions might be, "How do we make sure that we drive up our retention rate in spite of not having people assigned to some segment of our customer base?” And for that reason, actually working with your channel to drive higher retention rates, higher expansion rates is a very powerful initiative. I expect that a lot of executives are going to be focused on this going forward.   One of our clients actually is a really fast-growing SaaS company, and they've grown largely through working with channel partners. They have a pretty small sales team, so their partner organization internally is very critical. They have invested heavily in partner success managers, as well as the partner account manager team, which is focused on helping these partners drive more sales and deals. So, apart from that, they're thinking,"How can we make sure that these end customers are achieving certain milestones along the customer journey?" And the partner success managers are working really closely with the channel partners on that.   Jen: Do you have any specific recommendations for the customer success professionals in these SaaS companies who are beginning to work with partners to help drive customer success, any tips, tricks, feedback you can provide for them?   Allison: Jen, that's a great question. I would say check out the blog post that I wrote together with Chris Doell from Cisco OpenDNS, we've laid out a recommended playbook for steps that you can take right now to start aligning more effectively with your channel. The key is you don't have to boil the ocean from the start. You can pick just a handful of partners that you want to pilot this new initiative with, and they can help you actually prove out your model, iterate, and ultimately roll it out to more partners. I'm a big fan generally of the agile approach to operations, and I think, especially in customer success where we're often figuring things out for the first time, it's especially important to run thoughtful experiments so you can learn very quickly and ultimately, decide on the best practice for your company.   Jen: I think that's really great advice. Being able to really test and prove something out is extremely valuable, especially when we all seem to be going a million miles a minute in all parts of our business. Looking at channel as a whole, I'm wondering if you could comment on some of the biggest challenges or maybe even mistakes that you've seen leaders make when they're growing their channel and maybe the impact that's had on customer success perhaps? Just based on your wealth of experience, what can we learn from?   Allison: I would say don't underestimate how valuable customer success can be for the channel. I mentioned earlier a lot of resellers are struggling with razor-thin margins, but the reality is that many of them are also trying to build services businesses, which tend to have much higher margins, maybe in the 30% or 40% range. So what that means is, if they can develop a customer success program where they become more embedded with their account, the likelihood that they will be able to sell more services actually increases, because given that they're really close to these accounts at this point, they'll be able to identify new opportunities where they can add value and charge for it. Additionally, of course, there's the other value prop which most vendor-based customer success teams tend to see, and you can drive up net retention by a meaningful amount. We see as vendor organizations rise in maturity from stage to stage as we track it at Gainsight, they will experience an 18% point increase in net retention. That's super powerful, and I would imagine that, especially as we start to collect data on this, we will see a similar trend in partner organizations that start to adopt customer success best practices. So I think the key is for us to educate our channel partners on the real nature of this ROI and then start to collect the data afterward.   Jen: Gosh, I can't wait to see that data. That's going to be amazing. One more question for you, and it's pretty simple. What's the most exciting thing about working in a customer success environment?   Allison: For me, the most exciting thing is seeing how many people are succeeding in their careers and achieving new levels of success because the customer success industry has taken off. There are so many people that I've met who were previously in other functions, who perhaps were customer success managers in the really early days, 5 or 10 years ago, who are all now actually in leadership roles, thriving, building large teams and building careers for other people. I think that the career momentum in this space is really powerful, and ultimately I think that's been embodied, especially lately, in the instance of customer success leaders becoming CEOs. We're actually seeing Chief Customer Officers become CEOs. I think ultimately that's such a strong mark of the importance of this function, and also a sign of the really dramatic career growth that a lot of people are experiencing. I find it really inspiring.   Jen: I agree with you as well. It's an exciting time. It's a really innovative space, and I can't wait to see what comes next. This has been so great. Before I let you go, at the end of all our podcasts I ask a couple of more personal questions just so we can get to know you a little bit better. So, I've got four more questions for you if you're ready, really quick.   Allison: Let's do it.   Jen: All right, so first question is, what is your favorite city?   Allison: Honestly, I would say my favorite city is San Francisco. I live in San Francisco, and I really do love it. I think the open-mindedness of folks out here and the innovative spirit are unmatched, and I feel grateful to live here.   Jen: Absolutely, I agree. Question number two, are you an animal lover?   Allison: I am, I love animals.   Jen: Do you have any pets at home?   Allison: I don't, no. I travel a lot to see clients, so it's a little bit tricky to take care of a pet. But I often think about getting a dog actually. If I did get a dog, I would say it'd be a labradoodle. I just think they're adorable. They're fluffy, they're energetic, they're happy, and at some point, I would love to have one.   Jen: Oh, they are adorable. Okay, question number three, Mac or PC?   Allison: Definitely Mac. I used to work in finance actually, and for that PCs at the time were actually far superior to Macs. But nowadays, now that I'm no longer in spreadsheets all day, I'm very happy to be using my MacBook Air.   Jen: Awesome. Okay, last question. Let's say I was able to offer you an all-expenses-paid trip. Where would it be to?   Allison: I would really love to go to the Galapagos. I've been reading a lot about animals lately. I'm actually reading this book that's about how it's very difficult for us as humans to assess accurately the intelligence level of animals. And when you look at the research, it shows that animals are actually a lot more intelligent than we give them credit for. So, over the years, as you mentioned, actually I've become a big animal lover, and I would love to go to the Galapagos, where you can see all sorts of species that you can't find anywhere else and just really appreciate them.   Jen: Oh, that sounds wonderful. Well, thank you so much. Thanks for sharing a little bit about yourself, your insights about customer success and channel partners. It was so great having you. If any of our listeners would like to reach out to you personally after the podcast and maybe connect with you, learn more about customer success and channel, what's the best way for them to reach you?   Allison: You can reach me at my profile on LinkedIn. Feel free to add me to your network. I accept pretty much all customer success-related invitations that I receive, so feel free to connect there.   Jen: All right, wonderful. Make sure you add that personalized invitation. Let them know that you heard Allison on the podcast, so she has a frame of reference. I think that's always helpful. But, again, thank you, Allison. Thanks, everyone else, for tuning in, and we'll catch you next week with an all-new episode.   Allison: Thanks so much, Jen.   Man: Thanks for tuning in to The Allbound Podcast. For past episodes and additional resources, visit the resource center at allbound.com. And, remember, #NeverSellAlone

Justin Gray, CEO and founder at LeadMD, joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss partner relationships and breakups, trusting data, success in the channel and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast. Transcription   Man: Effective selling takes an ecosystem. Join host, Jen Spencer, as she explores how to supercharge your sales and master the art of never selling alone. Welcome to The Allbound Podcast, the fundamentals of accelerating growth with partners.   Jen: Hi, everybody. Welcome to The Allbound Podcast. I'm Jen Spencer, Vice President of Sales and Marketing here at Allbound, and today I am joined by Justin Gray, who is CEO and founder of LeadMD. Welcome, Justin.   Justin: Thanks for having me.   Jen: Well, it's so good to have you, and for those of you who are listening who don't know, Justin brings a lot of expertise, I'm really excited to have him on the podcast. In addition to being the CEO and founder of LeadMD, he's also a weekly columnist at Inc., the CEO and cofounder at Six Bricks, managing partner at Gray Matter Ventures, partner at Grayson Organics, and CMO and cofounder at PaidSuite. That's a lot. You're a busy, busy man.   Justin: It's a mouthful.   Jen: Yeah. I'm sure our listeners are going to be able to gain a wealth of knowledge from you. So, Justin, tell us a little bit about these companies that you work with.   Justin: Sure, I've kind of picked different organizations up along the way almost by accident, but, really, the centerpiece organization that I'm a part of is LeadMD, a digital marketing consultancy. Out of that kind of sprung the need to educate and match great marketers with employers, and that's what Six Bricks does. I've since formed a little venture, a very little venture organization called Gray Matter Ventures that I'm using to feed organizations, including Six Bricks. Then I've got some other ventures in the payments world, and then a very unprofitable labor of love known as Grayson Organics, which is actually my family's farm that we converted into organic in 2008 and have been running small field crops ever since.   Jen: That's awesome. So, what we talk about here on the show is partner programs and partner channels. And, so being a founder, a cofounder, on the executive team of these organizations, you have a lot of experience running companies and contributing to these organizations. In your experience, when do you think the best time is to start a partner channel program?   Justin: Yeah, it's kind of like that old question of when's the best time to plant a tree? Twenty years ago, the second best today. Obviously it does depend on the business model. The payments business that I'm a part of operates exclusively through the channel, so we started that organization with the notion that we would be managing and maintaining a completely outsourced sales channel to sell and implement our products. So, look at the model through which you want to sell, if that's going to be totally outsourced to the channel, or if that's going to be a blend.   Have a consorted channel strategy right from the beginning and tackle really difficult questions like who's going to market on behalf of the organization, are you going to do it from a corporate level, are you going to shove that down to and empower the franchisees or channel partners to do that on their own behalf? Those are decisions that are always best made right upfront, and so I think just as with anything, developing a really strong strategy from the beginning and executing towards that consistently is what we see as a recipe for growth.   Jen: Would you mind sharing why you decided to sell exclusively through channel for that organization?   Justin: Yeah, so sales is all about trust, and that particular organization, which is PaidSuite, sells integrated payment products. So we looked at the marketplace and we could've formed our own inside sales channel and tried to penetrate the market from scratch, but, instead, we chose to actually partner with software organizations and ISOs that already had existing relationships and add our suite of products to their repertoire. So, it just really allowed us to break down those trust barriers, accelerated our speed to market, and led to a good deal of success within that business. I think, had we chosen to try to kind of brute force it and spin up our own inside sales channel, it would've been a much longer time to market. It would've been a lot more investment on education and training, and just empowering that force. So, again, it was the right decision for us based on what we wanted to accomplish in the business within our first 24 months.   Jen: Oh, it makes perfect sense, absolutely. I think what's really cool about you and your perspective is that you have that business where you are going to market through these partners, but then with LeadMD, you are a partner of many technology organizations that I know a lot of our listeners would know about. And, so you get to see both sides of it, and that, I think, brings this other layer of expertise to you that a lot of people don't have. Most people pretty much live on one side of the fence or the other.     Justin: Right. Yeah, actually, one of our strongest verticals is channel sales. We've got organizations like Blue Cross Blue Shield, we've got a lot of med device organizations, Mobi, just organizations that are dependent upon that extra layer of support, and again that provides a lot of interesting challenges from a marketing standpoint. It presents a lot of opportunities to empower those sales channels, educate them, and, obviously, we got to keep them up-to-date on the quickly evolving world that we all live in. So, definitely a huge amount of opportunity, and then we really do see the folks that are empowering their channel partners through marketing and through education. That's a strategic advantage for our organization, absolutely.   Jen: Let's talk more about that. With all of your experience, I'm sure you've created a number of strategic alliances that have been fruitful. Maybe you've even seen some that have fell flat, whether they're partnerships that you've been a part of or that you've been supporting from an agency perspective. I'm wondering if there was any sort of recipe or repeating factor that you could recognize in a partner or in a partnership that would signal this makes sense, this is a mutually beneficial alliance.   Justin: Yeah, and that's always a really difficult prediction to have right upfront. My crystal ball is broken, so what may seem like a great partnership where everyone's aligned and we're going to go to market together and achieve this awesome amount of success is often not the case. You really need to be careful about whether this is going to be truly a value equation, as we term it, presenting equal value on both sides. And, so we've tried to get more formalized throughout the years at LeadMD as we've taken a look at the types of partners that we would potentially want to work with, the types of partnerships that have worked well in the past, and really gauge new potentials on that scale. So, we've actually kind of developed a partner evaluation framework that we leverage when we're looking at a new partner.   Having worked with over 3,000 B2B technology organizations, we have a lot of folks that want access to our customer base, but that isn't always a as I mentioned a balanced equation. We're often not getting the same amount as we're putting in there, so we've kind of tried to really hone in on what makes a successful partnership. For us, it really does come down to the fact of can we wrap services around that partner offering? Does it lead to more work, frankly, for our organization? We're a time and materials billing organization, so we need to figure out a way to build clients and provide value. And if the partner solution doesn't enable us to do so, it's a difficult partnership for us. We definitely need to be enabling our customers, and if we can't do that in the form of providing that solution and wrapping our best practices around it, it's not a good solution for us.   Jen: Right, and that's great food for thought for a lot of businesses that are creating these agency partner programs, I'm glad to have that kind of feedback to share with folks. Can you also kind of tell us when you think about the most successful partnerships that you've had, where did they come from? For people that are just starting out and just starting to build their program, is there anything we can learn from some of your most successful endeavors?   Justin: Yeah, our most successful partnership to date is obviously Marketo, and like anything successful in business, I think it comes with a healthy dose of luck. So, there is some unrepeatability around that as well, but I would say that what is a constant between all of our good relationships is we're using that solution in house. We have a relationship with them, they're aligned with our culture and we know that we align from a methodology standpoint. So, I was Marketo's 20th customer way back in 2006. I started using the platform before I was ever a partner at a payments organization, I sold my piece of that payments company, and kind of went out on my own and didn't really know what I wanted to do.   Some folks hit me up and said, "Hey, would you help us build a sales and marketing engine?" and I said, "Yeah, that sounds great, but you're going to have to implement some technologies that I know how to run. So, let's go ahead and implement salesforce.com, let's implement Marketo, and let's really get all of the text back in place to support that repeatable engine." Throughout the years, we kind of grew with Marketo and formed a really strong partnership with them to the point where they would outsource a lot of their work to us. We were participating in deal cycles with their sales reps. We were empowering them where they needed kind of that value engineering consultative approach. A lot of their sales reps just aren't marketing experts, and our folks are. So, we were willing to slot in within that sales process, provide that marketing expertise, and, of course, as a result, we were able to win business.   So, again, it was a win-win throughout that entire life cycle, and that really is why that's our flagship partnership. We've been able to repeat that with a lot of core digital marketing platforms and sales platforms that we brought on. Engagio is probably the newest member of that stable, and, again, we use the software, we see the value in it. We have the expertise in house to really ensure success within the partner orgs that we board on that platform. So, I would say that you can't discount the value of relationships. Relationships really drive everything that we do. I love the way that marketing is currently going, in kind of this quality over quantity aspect, finally. And, at the center of most of those relationships and partnerships is a really tight understanding and alignment that you just don't get when you start taking all-comers.   Jen: Well, I'm glad you mentioned this because you wrote an article fairly recently, and it was called "How to Avoid Getting Eaten Alive by Your Partner Ecosystem." I loved it. If anyone hasn't read it, I recommend when you're done listening, go check it out. It's at leadmd.com/marketplace, we'll also link to it in the show notes. In the article you say, if you want to get to the heart of how well your potential partner performs, become a client first. And, it is really great advice, and I understand from your Marketo story, even from the Engagio perspective, I understand it. Is it a hard and fast rule that you have to use that technology in order to find value? Could you see partnering with an organization if you weren't actually using that product first? Or, is that part of that evaluation criteria that you have?   Justin: I mean, it's one that we feel really strongly about. There's exceptions to every rule, obviously. I would say that there's no better way to really get an understanding of how well that partner treats its customer base, and, therefore, my customer base, than to experience that firsthand. So, we view that as something that's really important to our business. Now, we're also a sales and marketing consultancy who can use all of these products, if a product doesn't have the fit within your stack or within your go-to-market strategy, then I certainly understand that.   It is absolutely my pet peeve when we're up against a competitive deal, and we're up against an agency that doesn't use Marketo themselves. I mean, it's as simple as navigating over to their site and looking at the scripts that are contained on the site. It's like hey, great, you're up against us and a HubSpot partner. Why is the solution that they're proposing to you not good enough for them to use? That's fundamentally part of our sales strategy. We've been using this, we know the ins and outs of it, we don't support any other marketing automation platform, so we feel strongly enough about it to make it an exclusive partner of ours as well. So, we kind of put our money where our mouth is, and, eat our own dog food, drink our own champagne, make up our own bad analogies. It's core to our business. It works for us.   Jen: Yeah, it definitely makes sense. So, back to that article. You mentioned to avoid partnerships where you stand nothing to gain.   Justin: Sounds obvious, right?.   Jen: Yeah, it's obvious. Obvious, right, but, I mean, no one goes into a partnership going, "Well, I'm not going to get anything out of this. Let's jump right in," right? So, it's possible at the start of the relationship everyone's like, "This is going to be amazing," but then as the companies maybe grow, you evolve maybe a partnership becomes one-sided. Maybe you end up doing the heavy lifting without anything in return. Do you have any advice for folks on how to handle that kind of situation? Do you break up? How do you not burn a bridge? Do you hang on hoping there might be something in the long-term that will keep this alive? What advice do you have?   Justin: Yeah, I think there's obviously a couple of facets to that. So, as I mentioned, it sounds super obvious, right, but I would say that there is kind of this aspirational partnership that exists out there. I feel like this happens a lot with big logos. Like, we know they've got a ton of customers and their customers kind of look like our customers. Thinking putting out a press release and putting this logo on our site is going to add so much credibility, but we don't take that extra step to really drill into what are we going to do together? How are we going to realize this value?   I find asking those uncomfortable questions yields the best result. So, yeah, we both operate in the same space, and we've got similar customers, but what are we going to do together, explicitly, tomorrow? Are we going to market together? Are we going to create content? Are we going to do some account planning and alignment exercises? What is success going to look like in 6 months, 12 months, 18 months? How many deals are we going to have boarded? When we board a deal, what is that process going to look like? Am I going to run the majority of the implementation? Do you want to own some as the technology provider?   So, having those really difficult conversations upfront I feel helps to avoid the very difficult conversation down the road where you've been a part of that partnership, you've had the logo on your site for two years, and there's never been anything that's precipitated from that agreement, and now you've got to go back and say, "Hey, this isn't working out." I mean, breaking up is hard to do, so I would say the more that you can really drill in, get explicit, and set up a plan right from jump street, the less you will have to go back and revisit and have those uncomfortable conversations.   So, that's first and foremost. Now, if you haven't done that or things change, conditions change, the landscape looks different, and suddenly you find yourself in that bad position, I think it's best just to use real world data there. Let's look back at the pipeline we've generated together, it's weak to nonexistent. The types of customers that we've boarded maybe are no longer customers, or maybe we weren't able to make those customers happy because of the misalignment of expectations. One of our core tenets is we track everything. If I'm boarding a new partner, I'm tracking that all within CRM. What deals are we working on together? What deals did we swing and miss? What deals did we win? And, then I can pull those reports.   The Marketo partnership has not been all roses and champagne either. Marketo's gone through some pretty big market shifts. During the course of our partnership, they've gone from 20 employees to 1,500 employees. They've gone public, and then they were taken back private. There are major continental shifts that we've seen within that organization, and the org today behaves fundamentally differently than it did when we first rolled out our partnership and I wrote a contract on the back of a napkin. So, as it's progressed, the data has really enabled me to come to those partner conversations and say, "Look, this is data from 2013. Look at the data from '15. You're my largest competitor right now," which at one point Marketo was my largest competitor.   So, you have to be able to back up those shifts with actual data, and what I actually find, certainly within larger organizations, is they're often not well-positioned to gather that data themselves, or there's been so much turnover or process shift internally that they're actually using my dataset as law to describe the success of the partnership. So track everything, and that makes those conversations a little bit easier as you get into that data, and everyone can look at the same thing and agree that, yeah, this isn't working and maybe there's a solution to that, or maybe it's time to go our separate ways. But regardless, we can't blame it on emotion at that point, we want to blame it on something that's tangible, that's real.   Jen: That makes a lot of sense. I'm sure there are a lot of organizations that you've partnered with that have benefited from the fact that you are gathering that kind of data. Unfortunately, for a lot of companies that are growing a million miles a minute it does seem sometimes like an afterthought, just this extra thing to do. But, it is extremely important, especially when you're balancing those resources and trying to figure out where to spend your time. So, do you also use that data that you might have with one partnership to help determine what success looks like in another partnership? Do you keep that internally and leverage that as a baseline?   Justin: Yeah, so we'll introduce that baseline in partnership conversations. We're potentially looking at a new partnership right now, and normally the first question out of my mouth is what does your most successful partnership look like? You can get a big feel for how that process is going to go by the data that they're able to present. If they're more on the fluffy side of, "Well, we do some activities together. They sponsor our trade show every year or our conference. We do some marketing together," I'll know that this is not as data-driven as we want it to be because I want to see sales pipeline.   I want to see the amount of revenue that you've closed together in the last 18 months. What does the joint sales cycle look like? So, absolutely, we've taken that data collection and turned it into a benchmark to which we hold other potential partnerships. The question always exists out there of there's this new company and they don't have a long track record, but we think there's a lot of potential. And, those are going to exist.   When we partnered with Engagio, they were less than 12 months old at that point, but, fortunately, they were made up by the who's who of previous Marketo employees. So, there was some faith that was included within that partnership as well, knowing that Jon Miller's not going to start an organization that's going to tank. Again, that's where you have to kind of leverage those relationships, whether it's data-driven or it's relationship-driven, insight is the key out of either one of those points.   Jen: All right. You could say that that relationship originally came out of good data as well, so that was definitely a very, very, very safe bet. Okay. So, I have one last official channel question for you, and that is, what's one piece of advice you'd give to someone who's really trying to breathe life back into their channel partner program? We see this a lot, we see a lot of organizations who start a program. And they probably under-resourced it, or they expected to do one thing, it does something else, and now they're kind of back at it ready to reinvest. If you could give that person, that organization, or that leader advice, what would it be?   Justin: Yeah, I really do love data, but, moreover, I love getting to the why. I don't just want to hop on a phone call or go to a meeting and ask that question. I want to see it firsthand. So, my number one piece of advice to our internal folks or anyone that's in charge of managing partner relationships is get out there and get embedded within that partner. We love to go out into bullpens and just work for a day and see what those conversations look like at that partner organization. Are they mentioning us? Are they having conversations that we could be assisting but we're not being tapped to come in and be that resource?   I love getting embedded within those environments and just seeing how their process works. Is another partner there when you show up? We've had that happen before. I had one of my competitors literally officing out of Marketo for a while, and we were like, "Wow, we really need to up our game," because they've got a level of access that we're just not taking advantage of right now. So we immediately said, "We'd love to get a cube here and park ourselves two days out of every week." And we flew someone over, and I actually eventually lit up a sales team in San Francisco to be closer to them. That insight would've never come about if I hadn't made a trip over there and just said, "I'm going to sit in your bullpen and see what these conversations sound like." Ultimately, you want to understand what does that sales pitch sound like? Where do they struggle? Where do they need help? Where can I provide some value? Simply saying, "You need to help me sell into your customer base," or, "You need to sell my services," is not going be effective.   Communicating “We have to have a solution-based message. So, when you're running up against this objection, we can help, and I heard your sales reps combat that objection a dozen times when I was out onsite.” So, I really do think that kind of that employee exchange approach is a highly valuable exercise, and, regardless of whether that has to do with partner or any other aspects of the business, I really do encourage our employees to get out there, get embedded with the partner, and understand why aren't we more successful in this partnership? I guarantee you will learn something that you would not have had you not been in that close proximity.   Jen: Absolutely. Gosh, that collaboration is unbelievable. Such good advice, and such an awesome story, too. Now, before we totally wrap this up, at the end of the podcast I always ask people some more kind of personal questions to get to know them a little bit. I make it a speed round, but I don't know how fast we end up really going, but just four questions. Are you up for it?   Justin: Yeah, absolutely. Let's do it.   Jen: Okay, okay. So, first question is what is your favorite city?   Justin: My favorite city is San Francisco, California.   Jen: Me too. I'm going to ask you why. See, I do this, I make it not be speedy because I want to ask more questions.   Justin: I lived in San Francisco for two years, really for the purposes of assisting in LeadMD's growth, and, I was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, so probably not the most culturally diverse epicenter in the world. It just blew my mind to be able to walk down the street and get the best food in the world, walk into a networking group and everyone's leaning forward and engaged, and participating in these conversations. It just seemed like everyone wanted to be there, and that's kind of how I describe San Francisco.   You could throw an event in Arizona, and struggle to get five people to show up. I was part of a Bulldog meet up when I was over there, and like 30, 40 people would show up with their Bulldogs every week. And, I was like, "Jesus, I can't get this level of engagement when I'm giving away free training, much less trying to get Bulldogs to show up to a meet up." So, it just seemed very intentional, and I love intentional things.   Jen: So, side note...I'm gonna help you. We're going to lobby together for, like, a high speed train between Phoenix and San Francisco.   Justin: Yeah, absolutely.   Jen: So, that'll be a pet project in our free time, Justin.   Justin: Hyperloop.   Jen: Yeah. The next question for you was going to be are you an animal lover? You mentioned the Bulldogs, so is that a yes?   Justin: I am. Yeah, I love bull breeds, and I love English Bulldogs. I have a 10-year-old English Bulldog named Chubs. It's a girl. I wanted to give her a complex early in life. When that dog's no longer around, I will absolutely be heartbroken. So, yeah, I love animals, love dogs.   Jen: All right. Question number three. Mac or PC?   Justin: Mac, a thousand times.   Jen: Yeah. And, question number four. Let's say I was able to offer you an all-expenses paid trip. Where would it be to?   Justin: Oh, that's a really good one. I've got this weird philosophy on life that I love really new experiences in really comfortable places. So, I would actually probably go to St. Thomas. It's my favorite spot on earth, but I'd love to try to figure out some new stuff when I was down there. The last time I was down there we found this little secluded pool that is in this outcropping of rocks on one of the many islands that surround St. Thomas. So, I think it's just one of those places where you can go and find something new every single time, and definitely one of my favorite places on earth.   Jen: Sounds wonderful. Well, thank you so much for spending some time with me today. It was so awesome getting a chance to talk to you about channel, about partnerships on both sides of that fence. If anyone who's listening would like to reach out to you personally, what's the best way for them to get a hold of you?   Justin: I'm looking forward to being the only guest on this show ever that actually loves using Twitter, so you can hit me up at @jgraymatter on Twitter, or you can check us out. Our site leadmd.com. I'd like to say we give away more best practices than most agencies have. So, all of our content's there available for free, and, of course, my contact information is there as well.   Jen: Wonderful. Well, again, thank you, and thank you all for joining us for The Allbound Podcast. We'll catch you next week with an all-new episode.   Justin: Thanks, Jen.   Man: Thanks for tuning into The Allbound Podcast. For past episodes and additional resources, visit the resource center at allbound.com. And, remember, #NeverSellAlone.

David Belove, CEO at Prodly, joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss investing in the channel, compensating your channel sales reps, and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast. Jen: Hi everybody, welcome to the Allbound Podcast. I'm Jen Spencer here at Allbound, and today I am joined by David Belove, who is CEO at Prodly. Most recently he served as Vice President of Sales Operations and Productivity at Nitro. Welcome David. So good to have you on the show today. Can you share a little bit about yourself and about kind of some of the roles you played in sales operations?   David: Well, first of all, I've had three distinct careers. I started out as a marketing professional and then I had a sales career, and now I'm refocused on sales operations. So that spanned almost three decades. So I've been making that transition from marketing to sales to sales operations over the last 10 years, I would say.   Jen: That's great.   David: I'm just going to stay in that process so I moved from selling hardware to software and now I'm to the SaaS software.   Jen: I love that, you know, you've had experience in the marketing side, sales, sales operations. I think it's great today to have that breadth of knowledge. You know when it comes to SaaS… you mentioned that you are at Nitro, you had roles at Apttus and eFolder and Cloud9 Analytics. You're pretty well-versed in SaaS sales at this point and I'm curious, you know, over the course of your career, what are some consistencies that you've seen that have really created successful SaaS partner channels? Because selling SaaS through partners and with partners can be different from selling traditional software or hardware even?   David: So, several things come to my mind. One of them would be that, vendors in particular but also that channel partners have to have a super clear picture of their go-to-market strategy. So if you think about go-to-market strategy as where you define your market segmentation. And then the way you pursue these segments, you've got to have a really clear picture in mind so that everybody knows what their role is. And the goal is to avoid sending conflicting messages to your partners and to your direct sales team. You want them to play nicely together. So for example, at Nitro, partners play a pretty clear role. Nitro has Geographic and that's a small company, has geographic and language coverage limitations. And so partners are absolutely crucial in many parts of the world. But also, you know, having a clear picture of which verticals you can cover yourself and which vertical partners have to have expertise to cover for you, or situations like integration. If your product involves integration with other products, partners are going to be really important. It's really hard for a vendor to cover every different instance from an integration perspective. So, in all three of these cases you would have a really clear ROI, and that would make it much easier to explain what your partner's role is in. But that's one point, it's understanding the roles.   And then, the second point would be making sure that you have dedicated marketing and sales resources assigned to the channel. And it's kind of hard because, most especially when you first get going, and in particularly in a SaaS environment where direct sales tend to be the first approach to the market and dedicating these resources is kind of hard to justify. It's an investment because the bookings are probably going to be coming from the direct sales initially and so you're kind of betting on the [come?] that the channels gonna contribute. But if you don't have dedicated channel marketing and channel sales resources you'll never gonna make any progress.   So, one quick story - at Apttus, we were very interested in signing up SI's to help us with not only opportunity generation but implementation. And so we kicked off the program but we didn't have the implementation training programs put in place, and so nothing really happened. We were disappointed with the results. Once those training programs were put in place everything at the top of the funnel started to fall in place.   Jen: That makes a lot of sense. I was really kind of like really curious about… you made a kind of statement about how channel can allow a SaaS organization to not pivot but to kind of expand into another part of business that maybe they couldn't previously move into. Like, whether that's moving from targeting small and medium size businesses to enterprise or going the opposite direction enterprise down to a more of an SMB market. I know that there's... It's one thing to say, “Okay, let's bring on this partners and they're gonna have this expertise so they're gonna get us into these deals or they're gonna get us into these opportunities.” I wonder if you can share a little bit about what makes that kind of a shift or taking event into that kind of opportunity successful. What does an organization need to do in order to really embrace that kind of opportunity to expand beyond a target market that they've already sort of claimed?   David: Yeah. Well, it's tough but it would be similar to expanding into a new geography or if you are expanding your product line, those are both examples of investments that you have to make. Well, expanding your go-to-market strategy to include channels is similar. You've got to be willing to invest, putting in place that dedicated channel resources and training programs and being willing to essentially share the market with your partners is critical.   Jen: What else do you think is really critical for a channel leader who's working on maybe building out or exchanging a channel partner program? Maybe there's… there's a lot of folks we talk to who, you know, they've got these channel partner programs. They sort of were created almost organically, maybe not a lot, maybe not very intentional, and now they've got these program and things are maybe a little bit out of whack or a little bit out of sync. What do you think are some of the most critical elements that a leader should consider when going into... I mean, I hate to use the word "repair," but really optimize their channel program?   David: You know, I think there are various reasons why things break down or need to be optimized, to put it in a positive way. One would be having vague agreements with your partners. If partners are not fully committed to your program, if you don't understand their motivations, there's going to be a problem. The second thing is making sure that you're properly motivating them. Do you have a compensation program for them that makes sense? I mean, moving into SaaS is hard for everybody. Especially if you are transitioning from software, to perpetual software, to SaaS, all of the sudden your revenues are stretched out over a longer period of time. Well, the same thing happens to the channel. They're going through this transition where instead of booking everything upfront, now their revenues are booked over a long period of time, or recognized over a long period of time. So understanding that there's going to be some shared pain there, and making sure that your partners are willing to accept that pain that transition is critical. And not everyone is willing to do that and so you've got to pick your partners carefully. I think one critical role or one idea is to focus on partners who get it. Focus on partners who have accepted the SaaS model and are compensating their sales people that way and are making the transition themselves.   Jen: Yeah. I think that's really a good advice because you really got to work, you know, with you and your partner, vendor and partner have to work as a team together. You really wanna make sure those partners are really on the same page that you are for certain… that makes a lot of sense. And I'd love to hear a little bit more about... you know, it's so interesting to me, I sort of started sorting this sentence okay, and how do I frame this? So when I think about sales operations, this is a very growing field right now. I feel like I'm seeing more and more organizations invest in sales operations.   David: Yup.   Jen: And I'm really focusing on being productive, being efficient, maximizing resources. You know, probably a lot of this has to do with things like growing technology stacks, things like geographically dispersed workforces. So I looked at sales operations professionals as being the fixers in an organization, right? So, it's like, here's what we wanna do…   David: Yeah.   Jen: … and like, all right? Like, we got to go to this, it's like you're an engineer, like help kind of construct this and make sure we think kind of stays inline. So I'm sure you've seen a lot of challenges. I'd love to know about some of the big challenges that you've seen when it comes to management and collaboration of direct and indirect sale programs. People talk about channel conflict a lot. We talk about, you know, how do you continue to have harmony between your direct and your indirect efforts. But you probably see the pain more than anybody else in operations?   David: Yes. Like you've said, we're often tasked with straightening it out, because in some sense we're the Switzerland in that situation where…   Jen: Right.   David: … we, you know, supporting both the channel group and the direct group. But it comes down to a couple of things. One is we have to be able to integrate a channel into the CRM system, so to speak, with the sale stack. And so, it's an extra complexity when you've got to be able to measure channel leads and channel bookings, and be able to integrate that with the direct channel, and know how things are attributed. So do these come from a channel partner or does it come from a direct source? Which one was inbound, which one was contributing? So there's lots of attribution issues. There are CRM tracking issues. And then there are sales process things like, how do you roll out a new price book? You can't forget the channel.   Jen: Right.   David: You're gonna have probably two price books instead of just one. And these are things that a lot of times that SaaS providers are not accustomed to. So, during the integration, and thinking about the channel, whenever you make changes and whenever you plan a new enhancement is really important. The second aspect is in terms of compensation. How do you compensate your channel managers? And a lot of times you have to think about these in terms of their contributions. Is the channel the source of the opportunity or is the channel manager essentially reacting to an opportunity that a direct sales person has located or essentially playing matchmaker. In those two cases, you might want to pay them a different amount of money or a different percentage of the deal. So compensation is an issue, integrating the pipeline, the funnels of the two channels, direct and partners. So there are lots of implications.   Jen: Do you have any war stories you can share with us? Anything maybe that you've experienced that was a major lesson learned or at times maybe you painted yourself into a corner?   David: Well, I think the one that comes to mind would have to do with compensation where their quotas have to be aligned with the quotas of the direct team. And there you have to decide whether they're gonna share that quota or not.   And so, I've seen on a couple of occasions where the quotas for the channel team were aligned more towards run rate business. Say a large number of small deals, and then a large deal comes in. And maybe that large deal is a million dollars or more, and so the channel person blows out their quota but the direct team doesn't. So whoever is in the compensation plan need to be carefully architected to ensure that you don't have a channel manager totally blowing up their number but the direct team doesn't.   Jen: Right, right. That makes a lot of sense. Have you ever experienced any challenges where like internal struggles with revenue share with partners? So you talked about compensation for the channel, the channel manager who works for the vendor.   David: Right.   Jen: What about for partners? Is that something that you've experienced, you know, challenges in that area as well? I find that a lot of people… they're not sure like how much should we be spending, like how much should we be giving and there seems to be like some philosophical battles that I've seen people sort of face when it comes to that.   David: Yeah. There's a couple of different challenges. One challenge would be that the vendor doesn't wanna part with a piece of their SaaS revenue stream.   Jen: Right.   David: And so they'll try to get the partner to accept some sort of a finder's fee or a fixed upfront fee and then forgo the annuity. And of course, if a partner accepts that then they're really not participating in the best part of the SaaS business. And so they're not going to be as committed to you as they would be if they had annuity for an ongoing revenue stream.   Jen: Right, right. So if you want your partners to bring you SaaS business you should be expected to pay them as such, and pay them the commission, is that what you're sharing?   David: That's right.   Jen: Yeah.   David: Yeah, and it should be not some sort of a fixed finder's fee, so to speak upfront. But we want them to share in the ongoing revenue. And of course a lot of SaaS companies are very direct sales oriented and they see that as a major sacrifice for them. So that's something that everybody has to work through. It's the idea that partners should be sharing in the revenue stream. And so that's one scenario. And then, another scenario would be where partners are having to shift their role in the sale from a software model where they're making their money by doing provisioning and the licensing and installation and upgrade, and things like that, to providing more of a strategic consulting role, where they're helping their client with business transformation and with integration and security. And that may be… I mean, I don't think that's new to many established partners today, but five years ago that was a major transformation.   Jen: Right.   David: So essentially they have to upgrade their value to their clients to take into account the difference in the way a SaaS product is delivered, versus a software product.   Jen: I'm just curious also, over the course of your career, and you have mentioned kind of like three decades of working in marketing and sales, and sales operations, let's just go back five years ago, you know. I mean technology has advanced in the last five years but not so significant. So what's a piece of advice that you would have told yourself five years ago based on what you know now about sales, about the channel, about business, just wondering what you'd like to tell yourself in the past?   David: Well, just to kind of keeping at the theme of this conversation, I would say that five years ago I still probably had some doubts about how the channel would participate in SaaS.   Jen: Yeah.   David: I think I was still unclear about that. But so I would reassure myself, my younger self that SaaS is something that the channel can participate in, must participate in, and that there's a major role there. Like I've said, it's gonna be different in many cases. They're gonna have to develop a more essentially business expertise, meaning expertise in their vertical expertise, in system integration, in security; things that are more difficult than just focusing on the delivery of hardware and software.   Jen: Right. And perhaps there's a role that the vendors can play in helping to coach their partners and bring them along for the ride, and treat them like that natural extension of their sales and marketing teams that they have and truly partner together…   David: Yeah.   Jen: … so those partners aren't kind of felt like left off in an island by themselves.   David: Yeah. So I think this has been going on but essentially the partners contribute their vertical expertise and their integration expertise. Well, the SaaS vendors can share their expertise in how you manage a SaaS business. How do you pay SaaS sales people? How do you make this transition from selling software to software as a service? That's something that vendors have been forced to go through and to figure out and they can share that with their channel partners. That's essentially comes right like a franchise where the franchisor is teaching the franchisees how this sort of business works, how the model works.   Jen: Right, right. Here you go, right. Here's the kit, here it is in the box, right. Here's everything you need to know in order to be successful. I think that's a great example of franchisers have been doing this for decades, really setting their franchisees up for success. I think there's definitely a lot we can learn from that model for sure.   David: Yeah. There are many of examples of channel partners now that do understand SaaS and are making that transition but there are ongoing lessons to be learned that vendors can share.   Jen: Always, always. Well, David, before I let you go, it's been great talking to you about sales operations and the role of operations in and the channels in SaaS, I do have… at the very end of all my podcast I ask some more personal questions just so we can get to know you a little bit better. Our listeners feel like they get a little bit more of a glimpse into your life. So I got four really simple questions as long as you're willing?   David: Sure. Fire it up, Jen.   Jen: All right, all right. So first question is what is your favorite city?   David: My favorite city, other than my hometown of Los Altos where I've lived for most of my life, I would say it's Santa Fe, New Mexico.   Jen: Oh, nice. I haven't been there yet. But it's one of the places I really like to go. What do you like about Santa Fe?   David: Well, the atmosphere is amazing. For example, if you go in the summer time, the monsoon clouds build up over the Rio Grande Valley and they charge across the valley and move to Santa Fe, you'll get a 3 P.M. rain shower. And then the whole thing kind of dissolves into bright blue skies again.   Jen: Yeah. Sounds a little bit like the way some of the storm that get into Tucson, Arizona. I went to college there and have amazing, amazing lighting storms. Where amazing monsoons where it just keeps pouring rain and the streets would be flooded and we'd be trudging that from class, with like water up to your knees. And all of the sudden, it just stop and the sun was out and skies are blue, and it look like it had never rained.   David: Yeah. Like nothing happened.   Jen: Yeah, unbelievable. It's really cool, nature is amazing. Second question for you, would you consider yourself an animal lover?   David: Oh yeah, for sure. My dog is sleeping on the couch next to me here.   Jen: What kind of dog do you have?   David: A Goldendoodle.   Jen: Oh, very cute.   David: Yeah. She's looking at us now, “Are they talking about me.”   Jen: Yeah, that's right. Okay, next question, Mac or PC?   David: Well, I started out as a big Mac fan and I still first use iPhones and iTunes and all that. But I'm pretty accustomed to using a PC at this point. One short story is that my parents were one of the first distributors for Apple computer.   Jen: Wow.   David: This was in the 70s. They were the distributors from Mexico.   Jen: Wow, that's crazy. So you had a Mac early on, you had an Apple computer early on?   David: Yeah.   Jen: That's interesting. A lot of people I talked to when I ask that question they said, “Well, it was always PC. And then they started working for this company, and they gave me a Mac, and now I'm using Mac.” So I haven't heard a lot of people share the opposite way around. It's interesting. My last question for you is, if I were able to offer you an all expenses paid trip, where would it be to?   David: Oh gosh. This is really hard. I would say Venice.   Jen: Nice. Have you been there before?   David: I have been to Venice once before, and I remember to this day getting off of the train and looking out across the Grand Canal and seeing the gondolas, that was just magical. I think I would want to go back.   Jen: Excellent, excellent. Well, I would love to join you. I've been to a few different places in Italy but I never made it to Venice, so my only knowledge of Venice is basically like the Venetian in Las Vegas, which is really embarrassing to admit I don't know why I just said that. But that's all I can picture in my head besides pictures in books. So, one day I'll get there as well. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today. It was a pleasure just chatting channel with you. If any listener would like to reach out to you personally, maybe to dig in, ask you a few follow up questions about your experiences, what's the best way for them to get ahold of you?   David: I would say, just ping me on LinkedIn @davidbelove, BELOVE. And yeah, I'll respond that way.   Jen: All right, perfect, easy enough. Well again, thank you David. I really appreciate your time and thanks to everyone else for tuning in and we'll catch you next week for all new episode.   Narrator: Thanks for tuning in to the Allbound podcast. For past episodes and additional resources, visit the resourcecenter@allbound.com. And remember, #NeverSellAlone.