Podcasts about smb sales

Erin Gertner, vice president of the Partner Organization and SMB sales at Cisco Canada The Cisco 360 Partner Program launched in January after roughly eighteen months of co-development with the partner community. It represents one of the most significant overhauls to Cisco’s channel model in more than two decades – replacing the Gold/Silver tier structure with architecture-specific “Preferred” designations, consolidating multiple incentive programs into the new Cisco Partner Incentive, and fundamentally shifting how partner value is measured, from transaction volume toward capability depth and lifecycle engagement. Three months in, Erin Gertner, vice president of the Partner Organization and SMB Sales for Cisco Canada, says the Canadian response has exceeded internal expectations – including on metrics Cisco had set internal targets around, like the percentage of partners achieving Preferred status. The surprise wasn’t just the numbers. Partners, she says, have been telling Cisco they appreciate the accountability around technical certifications. The Partner Value Index requirement to maintain certification levels gave partner leadership internal cover to prioritize training investments they already knew they needed to make. On the end of Gold: Gertner acknowledges the market education challenge, but argues Preferred is actually a more accurate signal than Gold ever was – since Gold could historically be earned through volume in a single area, while Preferred reflects genuine architectural depth. On the incentive shift: the current structure remains 90% weighted toward the “land” motion, with 5% each for adopt and renew. The rebalancing is coming, the timeline isn’t confirmed, and Gertner’s advice to partners is consistent: start building adoption and managed services practices now, because it takes years, and waiting for the incentives to change is waiting too long. Read Full Transcript Hello and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel community for the last sixteen years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca, and as always, your host for the show. Cisco’s 360 Partner Program was a long time coming. Eighteen months of co-development with partners, significant changes to how Cisco recognizes, rewards, and incentivizes its channel, including the end of the Gold designation that partners have built their brands around for more than two decades. The program launched in January and we’re now at roughly the three-month mark, which means it’s a good time to ask: how’s it actually going? Erin Gertner is vice president of the Partner Organization and SMB Sales for Cisco Canada, and she was closely involved in rolling 360 out to the Canadian market. We get into what surprised her most about how Canadian partners have responded – and some of the feedback wasn’t what she expected. We talk about what the end of Gold actually means for partners who built their reputation around it, where the incentive math is landing, and what the shift towards rewarding capability depth and lifecycle engagement looks like in practice for partners of all sizes. There’s also a practical question at the heart of this. If you’re a Canadian partner who’s still figuring out how to position yourself in the new program, what should you be doing right now? Let’s get right into it. My chat with Erin Gertner. ROBERT DUTT: Erin, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it. ERIN GERTNER: Thank you for having me. ROBERT DUTT: 360, the partner program – long awaited, rolled out I’m going to say eighteen months or so ago, but has been live now for a quarter. How’s it going? What surprised you on the upside, and what’s been harder in getting the program out there than you expected? ERIN GERTNER: Yeah, it was a long eighteen months, but I’m glad we did it that way. I was telling somebody yesterday, I think we very intentionally took the hard road on evolving our partner program. As you’re well aware, our previous partner program had been in place for over twenty years, and was very beloved by our partners. And candidly, it was wildly profitable for many of them. So I think there was a lot of angst in the machine around changes, but there came a time where we really did have to go out and evolve our program as the market has changed. So we intentionally took the harder road, which was to co-innovate the program with our partners, versus us creating a program and pushing it out to the partner community. Early days, we got a ton of feedback from partners. We certainly made a few mistakes, but I really do think we did a great job listening to feedback from the partners and making adjustments where necessary. Obviously, the Canadian market is quite different from my peers in the US, as an example – same thing as EMEA and APJC. And it’s hard to make a program that fits for everybody. But I do think we’ve done a good job of creating a model, and having the ability to adjust a model that takes care of the majority of our partners. What surprised me the most was: we tried to take a really strategic approach in Canada. As I said to my team, my biggest fear at the end of this is that we have partners who say “I wasn’t ready” or “I didn’t know.” And we really operated with that in mind. So our goal was to have the majority of our partner community as ready as they possibly could be, earning either the same, if not more, with us. We did workshops with all of our partners. We enabled our distributors. We spent a really long time sitting in front of our partner community, helping them understand what investments they would need to make to be successful, as well as what would be the payoff on those investments. Some of the asks around training and other elements of the program did require investment from the partners. So we wanted to make sure we could demonstrate to them that there was a strong outcome – that there was profit to be made should they make those investments alongside us. The thing that actually surprised me the most is that our partner community in Canada is in very good shape in terms of being able to earn with us in the future. We had some metrics and some targets that we aspired to – a certain percentage of our partners achieving Preferred, for example – and we were able to exceed those metrics. But actually, the thing that surprised me the most is that a lot of our partners came back to us and said, “I like the accountability you have around our technical capabilities, because a lot of this does center around getting Black Belts, as an example.” And one individual said to us, “Behind the curtains, I don’t know if our team was spending as much time as they needed to on training and maintaining our certification levels. And this has really compelled our team to ensure that they are certified in all the right technologies, and we’re having better conversations with customers.” So I thought there would be a little more noise in the machine, and there certainly was at different points – we made those adjustments along the way – but the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive from the Canadian community. I think the team did a really good job of making sure we were hand-in-hand with our partners, because their success is so critical to us. We know if they’re not making money with us, they have choices in the market and they won’t continue to lead with Cisco. ROBERT DUTT: So to that point – CRN in the States surveyed partners heading into the launch and found about 40% were positive, about the same number were in the wait-and-see camp, and very few – I think it was about 7% – were actively unhappy with the way things were looking going into 360. Now that the program’s live and partners have actually had a chance to see their PVI and the incentives and how it all looks to them, have you seen the mood trend in Canada? Have you started to see those wait-and-sees move toward the positive camp, or what are you seeing in terms of that momentum? ERIN GERTNER: I mean, I think our big partners were sort of a no-brainer. A lot of them had a lot of the skills, depth, and capability that were going to be required to get them into Preferred in all the categories. So a few of them grumbled early on because they had to do a little bit more training and enablement, but they quickly hit the thresholds and they’re all in good shape. What we’ve actually seen is our distributors took a really strategic approach to our two-tier partners, and they’ve been running a lot of workshops and working hand-in-hand with some of our smaller partners. And we’ve actually seen quite a few new partners come on board because they have the ability to be specialized in certain architectures. For example, we’ve been recruiting more security partners, and the distis have done a great job of working alongside those security partners to help get them up and running. Because a piece of feedback we used to hear in our old program was: “It’s really hard to earn with you because we don’t want to be a network reseller. That’s not interesting for us. We’re a pure-play security partner and we’d like to continue to be a pure-play security partner. And just because it fits for you, it doesn’t fit for me.” I think this evolution of the program has allowed partners who are pure-play security partners, or great data centre partners, to come on board and start earning rebate pretty quickly, as well as get the designation so customers know that they are deeply skilled and deeply qualified in that particular architecture. ROBERT DUTT: From your comments a bit earlier, it sounds like partners who you expected to be hitting Preferred are hitting Preferred, and in some cases folks who you maybe weren’t expecting to hit Preferred are hitting Preferred – which is a nice little bonus. But as PVI becomes the engine of the new model, do you find that Canadian partners are generally landing where they expected? ERIN GERTNER: Yeah, for the most part. We do have a few partners who do a lot of business with us but are smaller – just have a few employees – and they’re very critical to our business because they serve some small subsegment of the public sector, for example. Those are the corner cases that we’ve been taking back to our global team, and they’ve provided some flexibility in how we treat those partners. Because again, when we looked at our partner landscape, we wanted to make sure everybody who plays a critical role in how we deliver our business for Cisco Canada was taken care of. For the most part, the program has fit the good majority of our partners in the Canadian landscape. For the ones where there are exceptions, or where the program doesn’t make full sense, we’ve been working with them in the background to try to figure out: can we help make an investment, or can we look at treating some of those partners in a bit of a different way to make sure they’re going to be successful with Cisco and continue to earn with Cisco? So some of that is still underway, even though the program has already launched. We’re still continuing to tweak it and take feedback. ROBERT DUTT: VIP was for so long the thing that partners watched most closely – the best indicator of where Cisco thinks we should be pointed. How is CPI, the Cisco Partner Incentive, actually landing now that it’s out there? Before launch, I think anytime you switch something like that, there’s always going to be the “what if we used to get X millions in rebates and now we get half of that?” Now that it’s live, how’s the math working out? And do you find partners are generally at least at parity with where they were with VIP? ERIN GERTNER: We haven’t gotten to a point where we’ve given anybody a check yet, because we’re still in the infancy of the program. But all the feedback I’ve heard from partners so far – and we have a few partners who sit on our advisory board, so they were early in testing out those calculators and have a really good sense of where they’re going to land – the majority of those partners have said they’re tracking to the same or better from a profitability perspective. Again, to your point around VIP, it’s always very clear where we’re leaning in and where we’re trying to go as a company based on the back-end rebates and the accelerators that follow alongside that. So I think our partners do have a good understanding of where they need to focus and what the outcome will be of that focus. So far the feedback has been very positive from the calculator, but I guess we shall see in a few months from now. ROBERT DUTT: Let’s talk about the end of Gold. It was such a standard for such a long time. It was well understood by partners and I think it was well understood by customers. Longview was one of the first Canadian partners to achieve Preferred in all five of the architectures, but they still flagged some concern with the fact that there’s not an easy way to signal that multi-architecture depth the same way that Gold used to in one easy packaging. For a Canadian partner that’s kind of built their brand around Gold or included that in their messaging, what’s the practical guidance in positioning their expertise to their customers now, especially looking across architectures? ERIN GERTNER: I think you said part of it in the question, right? The fact that they are the first, and that they are Preferred in all the categories, is actually better than Gold. I was talking about this to somebody yesterday. What is interesting about Gold – and I was actually on the sales side of our business for the majority of my career – there was always this perception that if you were a Gold partner, you were great at everything. And that was a market perception for a really long time. When in fact, when you pulled back the covers, you could be a Gold partner just by selling a lot of one thing. So we’ve actually embarked on a marketing campaign that’s been live for a few months now – I think you probably heard about it at Partner Summit – talking about some of the change in our branding. Now when customers are evaluating our partners, or when our account teams are evaluating when to bring in partners, the fact that it’s very clear which partners have the right expertise, the ones who have made the right investments and who’ve got really deep technical depth – that’s now very clear with Preferred status versus what used to be Gold. I think we still have some market education to do around what it means to be Preferred and the amount of investment that partners need to make to get into Preferred status in each of those architectures. There was quite a bit of chatter at some of the advisory boards about Gold going away and what they felt that meant to their business and their market. But I actually like where this program has gone because their expertise is very clear now, which wasn’t the case with Gold. ROBERT DUTT: Gold did have this great market perception of being good at everything. It was easy to capture in kind of one word, one concept. But your point there then is that it’s easier with Preferred to express where you’re good and the breadth of that. That’s an interesting takeaway for partners. The philosophy in the program has shifted even more so than in the previous shift – away from rewarding transaction volume, towards rewarding capability depth and lifecycle engagement. Sounds great conceptually, and I understand why it’s important, but for a partner whose business model has been built around those big infrastructure deals and landing them, what does that transition look like in practice? Is there a smooth ramp to getting that worked into the business, or is there potentially a cliff here?ERIN GERTNER: So it’s a multi-year journey to getting to a true place where our incentive programs are going to be aligned to full lifecycle. The intent of the program is to work with partners to build those skills and capabilities around lifecycle, adoption, managed services, and all the other things we’re asking them to build. But we know for some partners that is a multi-year journey, and that’s okay. When we look at our back-end rebate structure, we are taking a slower approach. On the surface, we’re asking partners to do all these things with us and come along for the ride – but we are still incenting them very heavily on hardware resale in the near term. We want to make sure they have a very clear path and that they do understand that we’re evolving the business and we’re evolving the way we incent for good reasons. We need to do that. Adoption – especially as software continues to be a larger portion of our overall business – and lifecycle becomes even more critical over time, as well as the renewal business. But we aren’t just flipping a switch. The intent of this program was never to punish, and it was never meant to save Cisco money. We talked a lot about how partners are so critical to our success – we want to make sure they are continuing to be very profitable with us. So we’re trying to take them on a longer-term journey and we’re not trying to make it hurt. ROBERT DUTT: The engagement metrics right now are sitting at 90% land and 5% each to adopt and renew. I think Tim Coogan has said that that will shift over time as the market dictates, but how fast do you see that coming? Should partners be building those adopt-and-renew muscles now in anticipation of the bigger shift, or is there still some runway there? ERIN GERTNER: I would say we need to get started now. Some of those certifications take a year or two, and building those practices – for partners who have historically sold hardware, building out an adoption practice – I mean, we did it, and it took us a couple of years to get that up and running. So building out those practices is really critical for partners. What’s interesting about this program is that we had partners asking us to shift away from paying solely on hardware, because they were saying, “You’re asking us to go out and do all this extra work with customers to help them deliver the outcomes they’re looking for. We should be incentivized around that as well.” So I would say: get started now. I don’t think I can speak to when our back-end programs are going to shift more to adoption and renew, because nobody has shared that with me. I’m not sure we even know – I think we want to see where our partners are on the journey. But I would say get started now. Get yourself in a place where that makes sense. And candidly, you’re going to yield better outcomes from your customers and better renewal rates if you’ve got a great practice around that. I was talking to a partner a few weeks ago who said, “We love the whole adoption motion. It has us having conversations we’ve never had with customers, and we’re much closer to the executives at our customer base because we’re talking about use cases and talking about whether we’re seeing success or whether we need to pivot. We’re having quarterly touchpoints and QBRs talking about whether or not what we sold them is working and they’re seeing value from it.” So I think it’s a good motion for partners to build regardless. It will drive a different level of engagement and conversation with their customers. When we’re going to fully incentivize around it, I’m not entirely sure – but I know it’s coming. Be ready, start building that expertise now. There’s hopefully limited downside to doing so. ROBERT DUTT: One of the things that analysts have noted about the program change is that it’s really a bet on skills first – that partner value is measured by what you can do, not how much you sell. That’s a big cultural shift, not just a programmatic one. Acknowledging that there are going to be some partners who are maybe a little bit behind the curve, and some who are ahead of you saying “what took you so long?” – how far along are Canadian partners in making that mental shift themselves? ERIN GERTNER: I can feel [they’re] pretty far along. I think it was a bit of a shock early on because we never had any accountability in our programs around maintaining certification levels and technical depth. But our best partners have great technical expertise and a really strong understanding of our solutions and what they can deliver to customers. And as I said earlier, some of the feedback we’re getting from partners is, “I’m glad you’re doing this – it’s holding us accountable to making sure we’re staying on top of the solutions.” Our portfolio has moved so quickly over the last couple of years. Our best partners are the ones who have great understanding of the technology and what it can deliver. So I think early on there was a little hesitation from some partners around that, but the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive in the last little while. ROBERT DUTT: Let’s talk about SMB. The Canadian channel in market skews toward small and mid-size, and this happens to roll into your line of work as well. I’m seeing two different takes on what 360 means for smaller partners. Tiffani Bova from Futurum warned that smaller or resource-constrained partners may be sort of specialized out of the ecosystem. But Cisco’s analysis with Techaisle argues that 360 dismantles the bias toward big partners. Those are two very different reads. I’m curious what you’re seeing in the market in Canada and what’s closer to the truth in practice. ERIN GERTNER: It’s so funny when you ask – we were joking about this yesterday on a call. When you ask one set of partners, they’ll say 360 was created for the big partners. And then you ask another set of partners, they’ll say 360 was created for the small partners. So it was really created for everybody. I think the distis have done a really good job of leaning in with some of our SMB partners and helping them figure out where they want to play and what they need to do to be successful. They also have a lot that they can bring to bear to some of the smaller partners – for example, they’ve got a really good EA practice, and they can help augment some of those skill sets that are required for the SMB partner. So if there is an SMB partner out there that wants to work with us, distis are really well equipped to help them get on board. And we’ve also got some incentives, programs, and specializations that are offered specifically for the SMB market. Still, a good majority of our business happens with our big partners, but also through that two-tier channel and distribution. And we need those partners to be successful alongside us. We’ve made a lot of investments to ensure that’s the case. Is it going to be perfect for everybody? Maybe, maybe not. But we certainly did craft the program to make sure that SMB would have an equal chance at success. ROBERT DUTT: One of the big promises of 360 is that managed services is now treated as a standard earning motion rather than kind of an exception to the rules. How’s that landing? Are you seeing Canadian MSPs that have their operational maturity and lifecycle engagement reflected in PVI, or is there still friction to be resolved there? ERIN GERTNER: I think it looks a little bit different, but we actually are seeing a lot of our partners go out and build Cisco Partner-Powered managed services, which I love. Due to the shift in 360, I was working with a partner a few weeks ago who’s building out a managed Meraki practice, and we’re also seeing a lot of partners starting to build up managed security with us as well. Going through the certifications can be a little bit cumbersome, but we’ve also made quite a few investments in our partners to help ease some of that transition – especially partners who are building really great, highly relevant managed services for SMBs or for any customer base. We’re trying to offset the cost or do what we can to help them through that journey, because I know in some instances it is a heavy lift. But the focus around managed services has actually been really good. Partners are getting thoughtful around where they can deliver value to their customer base, where there’s opportunity, and they’re coming to us proactively to build, which I love. ROBERT DUTT: One of the neat things about the program is the fact that Meraki CMNA and CMSS certifications now actually count towards Black Belt, and that’s an important part of the program. CMNA, CMSS – it feels like a big deal for SMB-focused partners. Are you seeing Canadian partners taking advantage of that pathway and getting represented better because they have those certifications? ERIN GERTNER: Again, everybody’s path looks a little bit different. I was just working with a small partner who’s going out and getting his CCNA and getting himself certified so he can improve his PVI score. And that’s been awesome. Having more technical people at our partners who know a lot about Cisco has been an interesting journey for them. He was sort of grumbling a little bit at the beginning doing it, and then he said [it was rewarding [? – unclear in audio**]], being able to have a little more depth to conversations when he’s sitting in front of a customer. So we’re seeing partners take all different types of paths to get to where they need to be from a certification perspective. But again, it is certainly holding them accountable and encouraging them to get more technical depth and capability into their organization, which ultimately will serve the customer better over time. ROBERT DUTT: The Secure AI Infrastructure specialization drove three times the enrollment of any previous specialization, from what I’ve read. What does that tell you about where partner investment is heading? Is there a risk that everyone rushes toward AI and neglects the bread-and-butter networking and security competencies? Or are we pretty much so well entrenched there that there’s the opportunity to build into the next thing and still defend the home base? ERIN GERTNER: I keep saying to partners: there’s no AI without a network. And when we left Partner Summit, I had three partners come up and say to me, “That was my biggest aha moment of this whole thing.” Even if you’re not selling Cisco servers – which we encourage them all to do – whatever you’re doing is built on the foundation of a secure network. So I love that people are gravitating more toward AI, because it does pull through. If I go back to the days of IP telephony, we used to joke when I was in the field, if somebody bought a phone, it pulled through PoE ports – I think AI is going to be the same opportunity for a lot of our partners. It’s going to pull through observability, it’s going to pull through security, it’s going to pull through networking. So I almost think those things very much go hand in hand together, versus standing on their own and being autonomous. ROBERT DUTT: Finally, if you’re a Canadian partner listening to this and you’ve been in the program and getting used to it for coming up on a quarter now – what’s the one thing you should be doing right now to position yourself as the program matures? What’s the one thing you can differentiate yourself by year end? ERIN GERTNER: That’s a great question. I think it’s going to end up being a few things. One: make sure you have a good understanding of the program and how it works. Because again, it was intended to make sure our partners are making money working with Cisco. Profitability is number one for us in the channel. We value our partners so much. I have a partner who always jokes, “The thing I love about working with Cisco is you guys always ask us about our profitability” – and we really do care deeply and immensely about the profitability of our partners. So to your point around VIP, you can always sort of tell where Cisco is going. I hope all of our partners have a pretty good understanding of where we are going – and if you don’t, reach out to us directly or to our distributors. If you follow the bouncing ball on that one, make sure you are leading with a secure networking conversation, and make sure whoever you’re working with has a lot of depth and knowledge in how to leverage the program and how to work within the confines of it. Go out there and be loud and proud of where you are with your PVI score and where you are focusing from an architecture perspective. We love that there’s a really large breadth of partners who are good at many things, or really good at one or two things – and that works for us. Again, if you need help to be successful, reach out to our teams, because we love working with our channel partners. ROBERT DUTT: All right. Erin, thanks for taking the time, and congratulations on getting the program out there, getting it launched, getting it established. Good luck on quarter two and beyond. ERIN GERTNER: Thank you. Thank you for the conversation. I really enjoyed that. ROBERT DUTT:There you have it – Erin Gertner from Cisco Canada. I’d like to thank Erin for her time on this one. A few things worth sitting with. The feedback from the Canadian partner community has apparently been more positive than even Cisco expected – including partners who said they actually appreciated being held accountable to their certification levels because it gave them internal cover to make the training investments they knew they should have been making anyway. That’s a more honest answer than most vendor channel chiefs would volunteer. The other thing I’d keep in mind: the incentive structure is still heavily weighted toward hardware resale in the near term – 90% land, 5% adopt, 5% renew. But Erin was pretty clear that the shift towards adoption and managed services is coming. The timeline just isn’t set. Her advice was simple: start building those muscles now, because it takes a couple of years to get an adoption practice up and running. Don’t wait till the incentives force your hand. If you’re enjoying the In The Channel podcast, you can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and most podcast directories. Follow, subscribe, leave a rating and review if you’re feeling generous – it all helps. Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.

Erin Gertner, vice president of the Partner Organization and SMB Sales at Cisco Canada When Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins told investors the campus and data centre refresh is at “the top of the first inning” of a multi-year, multibillion-dollar opportunity, it raised an obvious question for Canadian partners: what does that inning look like here? Erin Gertner, vice president of the Partner Organization and SMB Sales at Cisco Canada, says Canada is tracking with the global trend – and that the opportunity is being driven by a “perfect storm” of three converging forces: the largest last-day-of-support (LDOS) wave Cisco has seen in years, growing urgency around AI readiness, and increasing pressure around data sovereignty. The AI readiness gap is particularly striking. Only 7% of Canadian organizations say they’re fully prepared to deploy AI – down from 9% the previous year – while 96% say the urgency has increased. That tension is creating real opportunities for partners who can lead with outcomes rather than product. Gertner says the partners winning the biggest deals are those taking a consultative approach – running assessments, broadening the conversation beyond a like-for-like swap, and helping customers understand their full security and AI readiness posture. In one example, a security assessment nearly quadrupled the deal size compared to a straight hardware refresh. The conversation also touches on where vertical demand is hottest (financial services and healthcare are leading), how the Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA translates for mid-market partners, the role of data sovereignty in driving on-prem modernization, and what smaller MSPs should be doing to get in the game. Gertner’s advice to partners who haven’t started? Reach out to your Cisco partner account manager or distributor and get access to the PXP data – the opportunity is there, and Cisco wants to make it easy to find. Read Full Transcript Robert Dutt: Hello and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel community for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca, and as always, your host for the show. On Cisco’s most recent earnings call, CEO Chuck Robbins called the campus and data centre refresh the top of the first inning of a multi-year, multi-billion dollar opportunity. Double-digit growth in networking, six consecutive quarters. But that’s the global picture. What does the first inning look like in Canada? My guest today is Erin Gertner, VP of the Partner Organization and SMB Sales for Cisco Canada. Erin sees what she calls a “perfect storm” converging right now – a massive wave of aging infrastructure hitting last day of support, growing urgency around AI readiness, and increasing pressure around data sovereignty. We get into what Cisco Canada is seeing on the ground, where partners are finding the most traction, and what separates the ones winning those deals from the ones leaving the door open for somebody else. Let’s get right into it. My chat with Erin Gertner. Erin, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it. Erin Gertner: Thank you so much, and thank you for having me, Robert. It’s nice to see you. Robert Dutt: Nice to see you as well. It’s been a little while since Partner Summit when last we sat down, but I wanted to chat because of Chuck’s comments on the earnings call, talking about the top of the first inning on a multi-year, multi-billion dollar opportunity around campus refresh. Double-digit growth in networking for six consecutive quarters. That’s the global picture. I guess to throw it open, what does that top of the first inning look like from where Cisco Canada sits? Are we tracking with the US on this one? Are we still back in spring training? What does the Canadian opportunity look like in this moment? Erin Gertner: I think we’re seeing something very similar to what Chuck spoke about on the earnings call. We are seeing a multi-year, multi-billion dollar refresh cycle taking place here in Canada. And I think it is the perfect storm of three things coming together. One, we have a lot of aged infrastructure out there. Sometimes we call it last day of support, or LDOS. When we look in our portfolio, we’ve got the largest LDOS opportunity that we’ve had in many, many years this year and next year. We’ve been working with many of our partners as well as our account teams to start going out and pursuing those opportunities because we really do need to get in front of them. But we’re also seeing the dynamics of a few other things taking place. One is AI readiness. I think you probably heard in our earnings call, Chuck talk about the success that we’re having in AI. A lot of that today is really centred in the world of the hyperscalers. In our last earnings call, I talked about doing over $2 billion worth of infrastructure with the hyperscalers. So there’s this huge influx of demand around AI. But where we haven’t really scratched the surface is AI in the enterprise. The hyperscalers are very well prepared, but now we’re starting to see this big wave of enterprise deployment, or at least enterprises thinking about the use cases and the ROI, because it is a board-level conversation. And then lastly, and this is probably a topic you hear a lot about working in Canada, is around digital resilience and data sovereignty. You need a modernized, secure network in order to deploy AI, and the network is more critical than it’s ever been as you think about the role it’s going to play in the next few years. The ability to fuse together security into the network is really unique and core for Cisco and driving refresh. I often talk to partners about the LDOS opportunity, and we used to get the question a lot of, “Why would a customer upgrade?” or, “How do I have this conversation with a customer?” because their response is often, “It all still works. Why bother?” I think AI especially is really giving them that reason to modernize, because while their network may work, it wasn’t necessarily built to run the applications that they’re going to need today and in the future. So it’s a really compelling conversation, and we’re seeing huge uptake and demand in networking. Robert Dutt: You touch on the customer size, especially on the AI side of things. Looking across the Canadian market in terms of customer size, vertical, geography – is the refresh opportunity relatively evenly distributed, or is it concentrated? Where’s the heat at right now? Erin Gertner: It’s been interesting. All of our account teams, some of which are verticalized, others which are organized geographically, talk a lot about where they’re seeing refresh opportunity. A great example is what we’re hearing from financial services organizations. We had that long period of COVID, and then there’s been a ton of conversation around return to office. Our financial services team will tell you that there’s massive demand because if you listen to what the banks or insurance companies are doing, they’re asking people to come back to the office. Those networks, many of which were built in 2018 or 2019, can’t support the applications that are being driven in today’s world. They can’t even support the number of people they have anymore. [A lot of those organizations saw a boom.] So there’s a huge network refresh taking place right now in that specific vertical. We’re also hearing a lot about mission-critical verticals like healthcare, where uptime is hugely important and security and resilience are top of mind. But it’s really spread throughout. Many companies had a long period of time where they spent a good majority of their budget on work from home and getting people set up for different use cases. Now that we’re living in this hybrid world, or a lot of organizations are back to work, that’s putting a huge change in demand on what is being asked from the network, plus everything that’s happened from the AI perspective. Robert Dutt: You bring in a lot of different threads in terms of things that are driving this – AI readiness at the top of the list, aging infrastructure, data sovereignty, security modernization, probably a few more. What’s actually leading the charge in this moment for the conversations you’re having with Canadian partners and customers? I’m curious if one of those things is the leader and the others follow, or if there’s really a convergence where this is a big pile of conversation topics at the same time. Erin Gertner: I think it’s a big pile of conversation topics at the same time, and it also depends on the partner you talk to and how they’re approaching a customer. Every partner has got a really interesting and different approach, especially when it comes to AI, and I love that about our partner community. A lot of them are taking, for example, an advisory services-led approach, or they’re taking the approach of – I hate this expression, but it’s one that makes sense – eating your own dog food. I was with a partner last week and they were talking about a lot of the work that they had done to embed AI into their own workflows. Then they were taking their success out into the market and starting new conversations with customers they hadn’t historically had access to. All of that was leading to a network refresh conversation, because customers are excited about the opportunity with AI, and then the partner was able to embed the question around, “Well, are you ready? Do you have the right infrastructure in place?” The conversation often is bigger than that, and obviously security is a huge area of concern when it comes to AI. I think that’s where Cisco is very uniquely positioned to win in this space. We’re seeing a lot of our competitors try to bring network and security together, and we’re really the only organization who can truly embed network and security together and then traverse it from the campus to the data centre. Robert Dutt: To your point on dog food, I learned from a partner years ago that the way to phrase it is “drinking one’s own champagne.” Erin Gertner: Oh, I like that expression a lot better. Thank you for that. Robert Dutt: Let’s talk about the AI side of things. Cisco’s own AI Readiness Index showed that 7% of Canadian organizations feel they’re fully prepared to deploy AI, and that’s actually down a couple of points from 9% in 2024. 96% say it’s more urgent than ever. That’s a pretty big gap. How’s that tension showing up in the conversations that partners are having with their customers? Erin Gertner: I’ve spoken to a lot of partners in the last little while, and again, each are taking a very individual approach. I think leading with outcomes and that consultative mindset – and it looks very different for each partner – but they’re all trying to understand what outcome a customer is trying to deliver, or what is the ROI, or what is that metric that’s going to help move a CEO’s agenda forward, or help them understand how they can build a true business case to build out a full AI deployment. It’s hard, right? We’re going through our own transformation at Cisco. We’ve got a team of individuals who work with us internally building out our AI workflows, and even on my own team, we’re trying to do all these things to help our team adopt AI tools to make their lives easier and more efficient. You often hear that somebody’s job is not going to be taken by AI – it’ll be taken by somebody who knows how to use AI. It is even more critical than ever that organizations figure it out. A lot of our partners have deployed some interesting things for themselves or worked through really interesting consulting engagements where they have use cases they can take out to market and help customers build that business case for themselves. They need to start small, they need to define what success looks like, and I think many customers have a long road there, but there’s certainly hope that we’re headed in the right direction. Robert Dutt: Raj, the president of Cisco Canada, wrote an op-ed recently saying that Canadian businesses risk – I think the quote was – “Blockbuster-style failure” without having the right AI infrastructure. For a partner who’s sitting across the table from a customer who feels that urgency but hasn’t really started yet, what do you counsel that partner to advise the customer on? What’s the practical starting point? Where do you begin? Erin Gertner: It’s tough. Again, it depends what type of customer they are and what their use case looks like. But I think for that customer, it’s really leaning back to outcomes – what is going to demonstrate success for that organization? The last thing you want anybody to do is go out and deploy an AI application and see absolutely no success out of it. That will move that executive’s agenda back probably a couple of years. But we are also really encouraging partners to talk through: Are they ready? You can have the best use case out there, but do you have a good data strategy? Do you have a good security strategy? Have you thought about modernizing your network? Is sovereignty important to you? And if it is, do you want to start thinking about potentially building that on-prem, or taking a different approach than maybe what you have historically done, because there are new considerations being layered on top of all of that. Robert Dutt: Talk to me about the Secure AI Factory side of things. Tim Coogan called it the partner opportunity of this year. I’m curious how that translates practically for Canadian partners. Is this a play mostly for the big SIs, or are you finding mid-market partners who are finding a role in the AI infrastructure buildout? Erin Gertner: I think it’s a little bit of both. We’re having conversations around Secure AI Factory with some of our largest partners because it is really unique. Our relationship with NVIDIA is truly one of a kind, and we’re actually creating products together. I know everybody has done a great job of partnering with NVIDIA in the market, but our relationship with them is a little bit different. What I love about the whole notion of Secure AI Factory is the fact that it’s everything built together. We make it really easy. We’ve pre-built all the CVDs. We’ve essentially created a blueprint for partners and customers to go out and deploy an entire AI pod. That includes everything from networking to servers to security to observability. We can even include storage, even though we don’t make it – we’ve got a bunch of great storage partners. Is it going to work for a small customer being serviced by a small partner? Probably not. It might be outside the scope of what they’re doing. But for mid-sized customers who are running interesting workloads and they want them on-prem, and especially for bigger customers who want to scale and deploy really quickly, or partners who have a ton of depth and capability in that space, the Secure AI Factory is a great solution. Robert Dutt: For a Canadian partner who’s looking at this refresh opportunity, where are you seeing the most traction in terms of the technology stack? Is it campus switching, data centre modernization, Wi-Fi, security? What’s the entry point that’s helping partners produce pipeline right now? Erin Gertner: We’ve done a lot of work with partners. We’ve got a tool called PXP – I think you’ve probably had some exposure to it – but we’ve been doing quite a few workshops with our partners to help them understand where their opportunity is. PXP does a great job of being very data-rich and data-centric. As we go through the enablement with partners, it gives them a good sense of what their refresh opportunity looks like. Then we are trying to make sure we enable them around the broader conversation. You don’t want to just be refreshing a switch for a switch. Our best partners are taking that data and – again, to your question, some partners, let’s say their history was really in the data centre – data centre networking is probably their biggest opportunity because that’s where they’ve sold the most in the past. For more broad-scale partners, it could be a combination of two or three different things. What we’re really trying to coach them to do is take that opportunity and don’t refresh a switch for a switch. Help the customer understand what outcome they’re trying to achieve. Do they have the right security posture? What’s their Wi-Fi strategy? What’s their device strategy? We’re trying to help them take that data and broaden the conversation into something that’s more outcome-driven. Our best partners are doing an excellent job of that and building really big, interesting deals alongside their customers. Robert Dutt: In doing that, when you’re looking at the services layer, are there any particular areas that you find are especially productive? Assessments, design, migration, managed services post-deployment – where are partners getting the most return from focusing their energy? Erin Gertner: Consulting services has been a huge one. We’ve got a great assessment program and we have some partners who are doing a great job leveraging it and seeing a ton of success. I was in a partner QBR the other day and they were giving an example of having done a security assessment with a customer that significantly broadened the scope of the deal and helped the customer understand where they had some vulnerabilities in their current infrastructure. That deal almost quadrupled in size. Partners are doing a great job with that. What we’re really trying to encourage partners to do is make sure we’ve got an adoption plan for every software deal out there upfront, because we want to make sure anything our customers buy from our partners, they have a great experience with. If they aren’t doing a good job of adopting that and showing value all the way throughout the chain, we’re not going to see a renewal at the end. The other thing we’ve been talking a lot about with our leadership team is some of what’s happening in the industry right now with some of the shortages that are industry-wide. In COVID, we saw something similar happen – a lot of supply chain constraints. Then there was this really long ingest period that happened afterwards because customers just had so much technology. We are really encouraging our partners and our teams to make sure we’re leading with services, so there is an outcome attached to the end and there is a plan with the customer to consume the technology so they can get the most out of what they’ve bought from us. Robert Dutt: We talked a little bit about the big guys, the SIs, and the opportunity around AI Factory. For the smaller partner, that long-tail 15-to-20-person MSP that’s living in Meraki and maybe doing some security, is this a real opportunity for them, or is this fundamentally a larger VAR and SI play? Where it is accessible to that SMB-focused partner, what does the on-ramp look like? Erin Gertner: It’s absolutely accessible for that SMB partner. I also have the SMB part of our business, so this conversation is very close to my heart. Given the IT skills shortage that is very dominant in the Canadian market, we are seeing a lot of customers who don’t want to manage their own network. As customers grow – let’s say they were a very small customer four or five years ago and they chose more of a consumer-grade solution at that time – as they want to move into a more enterprise-type solution with security and all the other bells and whistles embedded in it, a lot of those customers are choosing not to manage that themselves. But they want to be in the same place as their competitors, because the expectation is they grow and scale just as fast, probably faster in fact, as a big company. A lot of those companies are born in the cloud, leveraging tons of cloud applications, so the way they create their foundation is even more critical than ever. We have a bunch of great small to mid-size partners who are doing awesome things in that space and growing pretty significantly, actually gaining a lot of market share because of their agility and their ability to manage something at a cost-effective price. Robert Dutt: You mentioned the importance of data sovereignty in the conversation. The federal government has launched a call for proposals for sovereign AI data centres of over 100 megawatts, and we’ve seen Cohere get a lot of federal backing for their data centre build. Is data sovereignty a driver in this enterprise refresh, or is it a parallel conversation that’s happening at the same time? Erin Gertner: I think it’s a bit of a parallel conversation, but it’s certainly driving a huge – not even refresh – just huge modernization effort. A lot of it is centred around Canadian organizations who are worried about data sovereignty, or who are worried that sovereignty requirements might hit them in the next few years. They’re trying to prepare themselves by building out new types of data centres on-premise – new data centres to support applications coming back on-prem. While maybe they haven’t built everything on-prem today, we are seeing a massive surge in companies starting to think about what that might look like. For customers who had almost all of their applications in the cloud previously, their data centre network didn’t necessarily support the low-latency, really high-bandwidth requirements that would come into play if they start putting mission-critical applications back on-prem. We are seeing a lot of customers starting to think about what they would need to build to support sovereignty requirements, or if they’re going to continue to live in a hybrid world – which, let’s be honest, the majority of Canadian organizations are probably going to live in that world, and that’s all good – the network they have today probably doesn’t support that in the way they’d like either. Robert Dutt: Let’s talk about what you’re doing to support partners through this process. What are the incentives, enablement resources, the programs that are particularly relevant to Canadian partners who are looking at this opportunity and going after it? Erin Gertner: I think we’ve been pretty declarative about wanting to be the critical infrastructure for the AI era. We’re doing a lot of enablement with our partners. We’ve aligned our incentives, both front-end and back-end, to this opportunity. We’re doing a lot of workshops to help our partners understand where those opportunities lie and help them understand how to go out and capture them. We’ve also been running a lot of demand generation alongside our partners around our AI strategy, what that looks like, as well as showcasing the innovation that Jeetu has put forward in our portfolio around network and security coming together, because I do think it’s a great story and one that maybe not everybody knew. Some people probably think we’ve still got two different platforms with Catalyst and Meraki, where the truth is those have come together in the last year. With our acquisition of Splunk, there’s a lot that’s been infused into the network. Jeetu has also done a fantastic job of creating a really innovative security portfolio, a lot of which is actually embedded into the network layer. So there’s been a lot of education that we’ve had to do with both our partners and our customers to make sure they’re able to go out and tell that story to the market. I think Tim Coogan said this best – our job is to create that innovation, and then our job is also to help enable our partners to go out and be an extension of our sales force and help them deliver value to customers based on that innovation. Robert Dutt: What do you see as separating the partners who are winning these refresh deals from those who aren’t? What are the best partners doing differently? Erin Gertner: Again, I think really leading with that outcomes-based conversation and not just doing a like-for-like refresh. The ones who are going out and really taking a consultative approach, they’re winning a lot more and they’re winning much larger deals. I was on with a partner yesterday who was showcasing some of the work they’d been doing around AI and sharing with us some of the success they had just recently had, and they’re winning amazing deals by taking a very consulting-led approach. What we have seen in the past from certain partners is they go in and focus very much on that refresh opportunity, and then they almost leave the door open for another partner to come in and have a conversation around networking, observability, and all the other aspects around that critical infrastructure. So the best partners are the ones who are leading with the whole portfolio. I know we’re going to talk about 360 as well, but we’re really trying to incentivize our partners to build a lot of skills and technical depth around our solutions, and the ones who are really good at being able to tell the story of how our whole portfolio comes together – that “One Cisco” story that we often talk about – they’re the ones who are winning the most. Robert Dutt: If I’m a Canadian partner listening to this and I haven’t really started leaning into that refresh opportunity yet, what should I be doing about this on Monday morning when I show up to work? And looking further out, we’re in the top of the first – what do you see the second and third innings looking like here in Canada? Erin Gertner: Firstly, reach out to us. However you engage with Cisco, whether it’s through one of our distributors – who are amazing and have access to all of our tools – or reach out to your partner account manager at Cisco. We can provide all the training required on how to have the right conversation, as well as access to all the data you need to help you figure out where you should start and which customers are due for a refresh or have a refresh opportunity in the next six months. We can make it really easy for our partners to know where to spend their time and get a pretty fruitful payoff, both on the front-end and the back-end with us. What do I think the second and third innings might look like? I think we’re still really at the infancy of that. We’ve seen a few customers go down the refresh path – probably our largest customers have gone down the refresh path. Some of them have modernized networks or they’ve gotten to where they think they need to be to support AI applications. But I do think we’re going to see some of our smaller customers start to catch up. I also think we’re still really at the infancy of the success of AI. We talk a lot about the role of agentic AI and how that’s going to proliferate through organizations in the future. I don’t know that many customers have figured that out yet today. There are some who are really at the edge of innovation and who’ve done an amazing job with that, but it isn’t mainstreamed yet. As agentic AI really starts to roll out, the demands on your network and the demands around security especially become even more complex and even more critical. I think that’s going to be the next wave. A lot of companies have done a good job of finding one or two use cases, maybe small ones, that have delivered value for them in AI. But there are very few organizations – and we talked about it through the AI Readiness Index – very few organizations who have really found tremendous value from AI today, but they will in the future. Robert Dutt: I think you’ve done a great job of setting up the game for Canadian partners here. Good luck with the rest of the ballgame, and thanks so much for taking the time. Erin Gertner: Thank you. Robert Dutt: There you have it, Erin Gertner from Cisco Canada. I’d like to thank Erin for her time on this one, and thank you for listening. A couple of things that stood out to me. First, how strongly the consulting and assessment-led approach is paying off. Partners who are going in and helping customers understand the full picture – security, AI readiness, network modernization – aren’t just winning deals. They’re winning deals that are three and four times the size of a like-for-like refresh. And the other is something Erin said that I think is worth sitting with: there’s no AI without a network. Simple statement, but it reframes the entire refresh conversation for partners who aren’t sure where AI fits into what they do. If you’re enjoying In The Channel, you can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and most podcast directories. Follow, subscribe, leave a rating or a review if you’re feeling generous. It all helps. Till next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.

On this week's episode, Wade and Gavin will dig into the good, the bad, and the ugly with Brokers featuring the Founder & CEO of SMB Sales & Marketing, Shawn Berg. Shawn has an extensive background in consumer goods, and natural sales at conventional grocers. He is a veteran broker in the CPG industry with previous brokerage experience at; Presence Marketing, iLevel, and now his own company, SMB Sales & Marketing. Shawn has grown in the brokerage world from AE, to SVP, and to Founder/CEO. SMB Sales & Marketing is a regional southeast focused brokerage with a current team of four teammates.

Small businesses are benefitting from the resiliency and a rise in consumer spending, but how much is really the impact of higher prices? Gene Marks shares the latest data in this episode. He also looks at the top 3 reasons why employers are getting sued by employees, and two of them never seem to change. Big-time corporations such as AT&T and Microsoft have mandated new return-to-office policies. Gene leans toward flexibility as the key to making it work. A recent survey found that nearly three-quarters of employees aren't hunting for jobs, but what that will mean for talent acquisition. DISCLAIMER: The information presented in this podcast, and that is further provided by the presenter, should not be considered legal or accounting advice, and should not substitute for legal, accounting, or other professional advice in which the facts and circumstances may warrant. We encourage you to consult legal counsel as it pertains to your own unique situation(s) and/or with any specific legal questions you may have.

In this episode, Jake engages in a conversation with Mike Kavanagh, the RVP of SMB Sales at Zendesk, recognized for his deep expertise in technology sales and GTM strategies. They discuss the evolving challenges of outbound sales, highlighting common pitfalls such as overly product-centric messaging rather than customer-centric solutions. Together, they explore the necessity of strategic planning adaptations, the impact of AI tools like CustomGPTs, and the crucial role of data-driven optimization in boosting outbound effectiveness in today's competitive B2B sales landscape.______________________________________________Follow Mike Kavanagh:Connect with Mike Kavanagh on Linkedin:https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikejkavanagh/______________________________________________If you use Outreach, you need Performance Pulse: https://skaled.com/services/performance-pulse/______________________________________________What will it take to innovate your sales organization for the modern buyer and consistently stay at the forefront with technology and AI?Order your copy of the book and join The Innovative Seller Community: Book: https://www.jakedunlap.com/the-innovative-sellerCommunity: https://www.jakedunlap.com/the-innovative-seller-community______________________________________________DM or book time with Jake to discuss your current sales processes and best practices: https://savvycal.com/Jake-Dunlap/innovative-seller-live______________________________________________AI Unleashed: https://bit.ly/ai-unleashed-seriesAI Sales Prompt Pro: https://skaled.com/insights/ai-sales-prompt-pro/AI Sales Accelerator Workshops: https://skaled.com/insights/ai-sales-accelerator/Custom GPTs for Sales: https://skaled.com/insights/custom-gpts-for-sales/Workshop + Prompt Pro: https://bit.ly/accelerator-and-prompt-pro______________________________________________Sign up for the Modern Leader newsletter for more tips and talks from Jake:Email: https://skaled.com/modern-leader-sign-upLinkedIn: https://bit.ly/modern-leader-newsletter______________________________________________Follow Jake:LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/jakedunlapInstagram: https://instagram.com/jake_dunlap_Twitter: https://twitter.com/jaketdunlapWebsite: https://jakedunlap.com

SaaStr 737: How to Build Go-to-Market Efficiency in SMB Sales with Owner.com CRO Kyle Norton How do you build GTM efficiency in SMB sales? The CRO at Owner.com, Kyle Norton, shares his learnings and strategies for building better efficiency into your GTM motion. While this title is SMB-oriented, the advice applies to Mid-Market and Enterprise, too. The three topics we'll cover in today's podcast are:  The importance of staying focused and how to say no. Ways to scale that don't include rampant inefficiency and burn. How to build operational excellence into your organization at different stages of the growth curve. Full playbook, video and recap of this session here on saastr.com.  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet. Join us in 2024 at: SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on final Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20 SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This episode is sponsored by Pendo, the all-in-one product experience platform. Pendo helps your users do the things you really want them to do. You can try Pendo for free at Pendo.io/saastr and check out Mind The Product, the community for product people like… us. This episode is sponsored by: Remote.com Are international payroll regulations giving you a headache? Remote.com is your solution. With our best-in-class interface and expertise, we consolidate payroll for your employees, whether in one country or a hundred. Trust us with swift, secure payments for your team while you focus on scaling markets and driving business growth. This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent Get more when Northwest Registered Agent starts your business. They'll form your company fast and stand up your entire business identity in minutes. That means business free domain, business email, website, hosting, address, mail scanning, business phone app, all within minutes. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

Summary: In this episode of the Revenue Circus Podcast, Dominic engages in a conversation with Natalia Granada from Microsoft. They delve into Natalia's professional background and her responsibilities in Enterprise Sales. The discussion touches upon the distinctions between Enterprise Sales and SMB Sales, featuring humorous anecdotes from the working world. Natalia provides insights into her future plans for the podcast and discusses the challenges in Enterprise Sales. They explore the collaboration between Sales and Pre-Sales and the future landscape of the Sales industry. The episode concludes with a conversation about the integration of artificial intelligence in Sales and Natalia's personal desire to spend a day with an artist. Takeaways: 1. Enterprise Sales requires a distinct approach compared to SMB Sales. 2. Collaboration between Sales and Pre-Sales is crucial for success in Enterprise Sales. 3. The Sales industry will evolve in the future, particularly with the integration of artificial intelligence. 4. The Revenue Circus Podcast offers valuable insights and tips for Sales professionals. Chapters: - **00:00** Introduction and Presentation - **01:05** Professional Background and Responsibilities at Microsoft - **03:14** Differences between Enterprise Sales and SMB Sales - **05:16** Career Path and Onboarding at Microsoft - **07:26** Humorous Stories from the Working World - **09:25** Future Plans and Guests of the Podcast - **11:48** Challenges in Enterprise Sales - **15:08** Collaboration between Sales and Pre-Sales - **16:28** Future of the Sales Industry - **18:43** Integration of Artificial Intelligence in Sales - **21:15** Personal Question: Artist Natalia would like to spend a day with - **24:57** Conclusion and Invitation to the Podcast Apply now as a guest for the podcast: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://forms.gle/C6FsHp2CKS37NkdL9⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ -- The podcast is presented by ARRtist Circus - the Tomorrowland for Sales & Customer Success Teams in Europe. Don't miss the event of the year - On April 19, 2024, in Berlin. Find all information and tickets at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.ARRtist-circus.com

In the second of two bonus episodes, listen to more golden nuggets of entrepreneurial wisdom from the stars of this year's London Business Show. Your host, Bulent Osman, engages in-the-moment with keynote speakers, exhibitors and the show's organisers, who offer their insights and advice to all entrepreneurs and business owners. In this episode, Bulent speaks with: Daniela Tabor - Head of SMB Sales, Spotify  Holly Sawyer - Marketing Manager, The Business Show Sukhi Wahiwala - Chairman, Inspired College of Education Anna Wood - Deputy Editor, Startups Magazine Craig Kelly - Founder & MD, Iconic Media Solutions Brian Horsburgh - SMB Country Manager, Dell Technologies Corresta Galaviz (Bus Ops Mgr) & Eric Kleinsorge (CEO), GSLI Kelly Bagla - Founder, Bagla Law Firm Simon Squibb - Founder & CEO, HelpBnk   Follow this show on your podcast app and join us on The Startup Sensations Podcast LinkedIn page. Watch video highlights on YouTube. We love hearing your feedback, so email us at hello@startupsensations.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joining us today is a true trailblazer in the sales arena, Evan Wolf, Reddit's Head of Mid Market and SMB Sales for North America. With a proven track record of building powerhouse teams that drive remarkable business expansion, Evan brings a wealth of knowledge in sales strategy and technology. Not only is he a creative problem solver, but he's also a passionate storyteller who revels in the art and science of sales.In this episode, we sit down with Evan to explore the fascinating evolution of Reddit's advertiser landscape. Discover how Reddit's advertiser composition has transformed in recent years and the driving factors behind this shift. We'll also uncover the tailored offerings Reddit has in store for SME clients, along with the platform's strategic investments to enhance usability and efficiency for both new and existing clients within this dynamic segment.

SMBs are the heart of Asia's economy. They make up more than 96% of all Asian businesses, providing two out of three private-sector jobs in the region. Winning in Asia means cracking the code of how to sell to SMBs. But SMB is a tough segment to crack -- dispersed audience, lower budgets and ACV, and the demand for immediate gratification often make the growth equation tricky. In this episode, we speak to Sanjiv Razdan, the Global Head of SME Business & B2B Commercial Payments at Instarem (Nium). With over hundreds of SME clients across various industries ranging from manufacturing, trading, logistics, fuel, payroll services, consulting services and more, Nium has a longstanding track record of successfully serving SMBs. Together with Sanjiv, we explore the SMB opportunity in Asia, key differences between selling to SMBs versus enterprises, and how to win the SMB market in this region. Mentions: https://www.adb.org/publications/role-smes-asia-and-their-difficulties-accessing-finance https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/smb-sales Connect with Sanjiv Razdan at https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanjiv-razdan-44b2b012/ Connect with the hosts at Romka Walkowiak: https://www.linkedin.com/in/romka-walkowiak and Adarsh Noronha: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adarshnoronha/ Thank you for tuning into Asia Growth Forecast! Don't forget to hit subscribe and follow us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify (so you never miss an episode)! If you love this show, please leave us a 5-Star Review https://ratethispodcast.com/asiagrowthforecast and share your favorite episodes with friends.

Do you feel that SMB sales don't hold the same weight as enterprise sales? Think again! In this show, we aim to redefine your perspective on SMB sales and demonstrate how they can be as rewarding, if not more, than their Enterprise counterparts.This is not just about challenging common misconceptions; it's about imparting you with real, practical tactics employed by top SMB reps to close deals faster and more frequently. If you're a sales rep looking to boost your performance and results, this show is the answer! You'll Learn:Unmask the hidden potential in SMB salesApply strategies top SMB reps use to manage their pipeline effectivelyImplement proven methods to speed up your sales cycle and increase your close rateThe Speakers: Jed Mahrle, Miranda Morrison and Troy BarterIf you want to catch The Daily Sales Show live, join here:https://hubs.la/Q01yLCGf0Follow Sell Better to get the latest actionable tactics from sales pros at the top of their game:https://hubs.ly/Q01tLYNJ0Explore our YouTube Channel:https://hubs.la/Q01N39ks0

EPISODE DESCRIPTION  My guest in this episode is Shawn Berg, a highly experienced retail broker and advisor who has brought hundreds of brands to traditional retail shelves. Shawn is the founder of SMB Sales & Marketing, a grocery broker trying to do things differently in the East Coast. He brings years of experience getting brands on shelf at Publix and other East Coast grocers like Harris Teeter, Ingles, Food Lion, etc. In this interview he provides actionable insights to get your startup brand into retail, and more importantly, how to stay, and grow on shelf.  SHOW NOTES  We start the interview with what is the right time for a startup brand to get into traditional retail. Shawn details some pre-cursors to bagging that lucrative retail account. We also talk about data, how to use effective substitutes when syndicated data is not accessible to small brands, and how to tell the story using data.  Learn all about Shawn Berg and SMB Sales & Marketing at https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawn-berg-7944829/  CALL TO ACTION  Thank you for listening! Leave us a rating and feedback, please!  Follow me on Linkedin at  https://www.linkedin.com/in/chandhrika/  Sharing is caring! Spread the word about this show to your network  Email me at chandhrika@source-refresh.com if you would like to be a guest on my show   

Turn your sales approach on its head with the Bigly CRM app! More details at https://biglysales.com/ Bigly Sales, Inc. 11197 Blackhawk Blvd. , Davie, FL 33328, United States Website https://biglysales.com/ Phone +1-561-254-4007 Email tom@biglysales.com

The Modern Selling Podcast Episode #234:Evolution of Selling: Generative AI's Impact on SMB Sales with Ketan Karkhanis In recent years, the world has witnessed a tremendous shift towards an all-digital way of doing things, especially after the Pandemic. From remote work to virtual meetings, the digital age has changed the way we do business. In this new era, web pages have become the main selling point for any company. With the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI), web pages can now be personalized to cater to the specific needs of individual buyers. This personalized approach to selling has proven to be highly effective, and it is revolutionizing the way companies approach sales.

On this episode of the RepVue podcast, Darin and Jordan from RepVue talk with KnowBe4's VP of SMB Sales Ted Baturin. Learn more about how he got his start at KnowBe4, what traits he looks for in ideal candidates, what to expect during the ramping process, and more.

Andrew Sage joins us for the eleventh episode of the Cisco Leadership Podcast. Andrew is a Global Vice President by day -- musician by night. He brings a fresh perspective on leadership through the lens of a musician. He emphasizes the true power of understanding a team, the impact of enrolling each individual towards a collective goal and the concept of "bloom where you're planted."

Blumira is targeting an underserved part of the market; SMBs. Brian, the VP of Sales at Blumira, joins us to discuss how he is successfully running the sales team and growing revenue.  His background is in Enterprise selling and he highlights what is similar and also what is different with selling to SMBs. In this episode, you'll learn:The average length of a sales cycle working with SMBs and what we can learn from that on the enterprise side Advantages of having a rigorous POC process while also being flexible when neededImportance of having enough discipline to say no to some dealsBlumira: www.blumira.comBrian: On LinkedIn or bpenney@blumira.comYou might also like the following:162: Eric Appel, CRO @ Island: why stealth is sexy and the different way Island has built the sales team143: How to answer the “What does your company do?” question without being boring or using buzzwords109: Hot trends in cybersecurity with Amit Karp, Partner at Bessemer Venture PartnersSupport the show

Ingram Micro's SMB Alliance empowers the growth of technology-focused solution providers, creates an invaluable community and offers unmatched resources.2022 was a great year for the SMB Alliance, with a highly effective hybrid events calendar that brought members together from all over the world. Devaughn Bittle and Patrick Cash speak with Darren Gottesmann, executive director of U.S. SMB Sales and Partner Communities, Kelly Sander, director of U.S. SMB Sales, and Kellie Wischerath, senior SMB field sales manager, for an entertaining look at the past year and what 2023 holds:The growth of peer groups, vendor sponsorship and member engagementDeveloping exciting fresh content for next yearEmbracing hybrid culture To join the discussion, follow us on Twitter @IngramTechSol #B2BTechTalkListen to this episode and more like it by subscribing to B2B Tech Talk on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. Or, tune in on our website.

IN THIS EPISODE, WE COVER: 01:59 - What is the best investment an early career sales person can make for themselves and why? 08:54 - How has Sofie's view on sales changed over her career and why? 13:22 - One mistake Sofie made early in her career and how it impacted her 21:42 - Who has had the greatest impact on Sofie's career? 26:51 - If you could go back in time what would you do differently? 30:02 - Closing thoughts and how to reach out to Sofie MORE ON SOFIESofie Peedu is currently Senior Director of SMB Sales at Box, overseeing an organization of Account Executives, Managers and Directors. She started her Box career in 2012 as an Account Executive, and through the years moved through a number of different roles and took on a number of challenges including being a founding member of the renewals team, relocating to Europe to build out the renewal motion overseas, and managing across varying segments from the Enterprise to Emerging. Along the way, she has been a President's Club winner 5 times and has helped grow the SMB segment 30%. Seeing the company grow in both revenue, from ~$200m to ~$900m, and employee count, from ~400 to ~2100, has given her a deep understanding of how a company and a sales organization evolves into a mature operation in the Tech space. Prior to Box, she has 5 years experience selling hardware and SaaS at Granicus, a San Francisco start up. Sofie is passionate about coaching and developing her team to become future sales all-stars and leaders, making customers wildly successful and creating a top performing, highly collaborative and engaging place to work. She received her education - a Masters of Political Science - from the University of Uppsala in Sweden, where she was born and raised. A 29 year resident of the Bay Area, she currently lives in San Francisco with her partner, Esteban, and in her free time enjoys going to see live music, being outdoors camping, hiking and skiing, and visiting her sister, niece and nephew in Southern California.MORE ON RAMPED: Check us out at www.rampedcareers.com Interested in becoming a Ramped Professional? Sign up here: https://www.rampedcareers.com/onboarding/signup Interested in becoming a Ramped Corporate Partner? Email us at sales@rampedcareers.com

Ryan Reisert, Brand Ambassador @Cognism speaks to Marc Wendling, Global VP SMB Sales @Snowflake all about change in sales. In this episode, Ryan and Marc discuss how people, processes and technology change when a company is scaling from series C to IPO, defining each stage of growth along the way, how to optimise the 5 key pillars of outbound and more.

The future of sales is here. Sales leaders must adapt to the changes it's bringing because they're only widening the gaps between enterprise and high-velocity SMB selling. Listen to the latest episode of Ask A Sales Leader to hear Phil interview Bill Kiriakis, chief revenue officer of Adjust, who shares insights on the differences between enterprise selling and high-velocity SMB selling.

The future of sales is here. Sales leaders must adapt to the changes it's bringing because they're only widening the gaps between enterprise and high-velocity SMB selling. Listen to the latest episode of Ask A Sales Leader to hear Phil interview Bill Kiriakis, chief revenue officer of Adjust, who shares insights on the differences between enterprise selling and high-velocity SMB selling.

In this episode we are taking a turn to explore the business of law from the legal technology side of things. Melissa Chambers (Vice President of Enterprise Solutions, LawPay/Affinipay) and Mike West (Vice President of SMB Sales, NetDocuments) unveil the real truth behind the uniqueness of law firms and the real pain points that they have. Now, imagine yourself with only 2 minutes to make your pitch to a firm. What is the first thing you lead with? You're going to have to listen to find out because Mike and Melissa said it best. 

Sam Shoolman is the Director of SMB Sales at HubSpot. He currently leads a team of 8 Sales Managers and 60 Account Executives. Sam is responsible for revenue growth in the North American SMB market. He is also responsible for Recruiting/hiring, onboarding, training, the rollout of new playbooks/initiatives, regular data analysis, cross-functional projects.Sam is a consultative and growth-driven sales leader focusing on emerging SaaS technologies that improve marketing, sales, and customer service. Sam had Hands-on experience in North America, EMEA & APAC markets.You can learn more and follow Sam Shoolman on the following links below.Twitter - ​​https://twitter.com/samshoolmanLinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/samshoolman/If you're listening to the Peak Performance Selling Podcast, please subscribe, share, and send us your feedback.LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanbenjamin/Website - http://mycoreos.com/Podcast - https://www.mycoreos.com/podcastEmail - jbenjamin@hubspot.comTwitter - https://twitter.com/jbenj09

Matt Bullock, VP of Sales and Marketing at Prodatix turns the table on us this week and asks the questions he has been jousting with for some time. Question like:How does my growth strategy determine how to on-board my sales team?How can I drive my company to the next level?What should I be asking my sales team to do on a daily basis?The conversation is a lot of fun, and Matt keeps it interesting as he tries to consolidate the last few years into a growth strategy that will take his company into the future. Matt's scenario isn't unique and neither is his personality! Join us for a three-part off-the-cuff session of counseling and coaching mixed in with a great conversation.If you have insights, comments, or suggestions for us, please email us (Mike@thesellingpodcast.com, Scott@thesellingpodcast.com) and let us know! We would love to hear from you

Gary Swart is a General Partner with Polaris Partners, and until April 2014, he was the CEO of oDesk  (now UpWork, NASDAQ; UPWK). Gary is a thought leader in entrepreneurship, how best to hire and manage teams, and the future of work, including online work. He is passionate about helping small businesses thrive, fueled by his extensive experience working with startups and small businesses and mentoring entrepreneurs and business school students. Gary has spoken at the Inc. Leadership Conference, The Economist’s Ideas Economy panel, South by Southwest, TechCrunch 50, TiECon, GigaOM’s Net:Work Conference, and at Harvard Business School, which teaches a case study on oDesk. His commentary has appeared in various publications, including Forbes, TechCrunch, The Washington Post, and The Next Web. He has also appeared on TV and radio shows, including the BBC, National Public Radio, CNBC, and Bloomberg TV and Startups Uncensored. Previously, Gary led SMB Sales for the Americas at IBM’s Rational Software Product Group and also served as VP of Worldwide Sales and Operations at Intellibank. Gary holds a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of Maryland.

After surviving 2020, it’s time for SMB partners to grow and thrive in 2021. Fortunately, Ingram Micro offers numerous opportunities for SMBs to collaborate and learn from one another. In episode 160, Keri spoke with Darren Gottesmann, the Executive Director of SMB Sales at Ingram Micro. The two discussed: The investments Ingram Micro is making in training and resources for SMBs How SMBs can better engage with the President’s Club What 2021 is going to look like for the mid-sized market Where technology is going in the next year Learn more about the SMB Alliance here. Learn more about Ingram Micro’s six Channel Chiefs who were honored by CRN here. To join the discussion, follow us on Twitter @IngramTechSol #B2BTechTalk Listen to this episode and more like it by subscribing to B2B Tech Talk on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Stitcher. Or, tune in on our website.

We're taking a look at what it means to Be Helpful at Paychex with Tami Duncan, Vice President of SMB Sales, who shares with us how critical the partnership is between Sales and Service when trying to be helpful to our customers. Tami also shares some of her favorite reminders on being a more active listener, while also introducing us to...squirrels at a rave? All this and more on this fresh episode of Culture: Unfiltered!

Nick Fedotoff is the VP of SMB Sales at Salesforce. Nick recently celebrated his 10-year anniversary at the company, as he's climbed the ranks from BDR to AE all the way up to sales management. Nick was also the 3rd guest of this podcast almost 3 years ago. This is a great episode for anyone looking to sell more, climb into sales leadership or just geek out on personal development. In this conversation, we discuss: Nick's path from BDR to VP Sales at Salesforce What "Principles" by Ray Dalio has meant to him Tips for selling on a monthly quota The time Nick clinked beers with Marc Benioff (!!!) You can connect with Nick on LinkedIn. For more content, check me out on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. All other content is also hosted on MillennialMomentum.net. If you enjoyed today's conversation, please subscribe, leave a review and tell a friend.

Nick Fedotoff is the VP of SMB Sales at Salesforce. Nick recently celebrated his 10-year anniversary at the company, as he's climbed the ranks from BDR to AE all the way up to sales management. Nick was also the 3rd guest of this podcast almost 3 years ago. This is a great episode for anyone looking to sell more, climb into sales leadership or just geek out on personal development. In this conversation, we discuss: Nick's path from BDR to VP Sales at Salesforce What "Principles" by Ray Dalio has meant to him Tips for selling on a monthly quota The time Nick clinked beers with Marc Benioff (!!!) You can connect with Nick on LinkedIn. For more content, check me out on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. All other content is also hosted on MillennialMomentum.net. If you enjoyed today’s conversation, please subscribe, leave a review and tell a friend.

What is the future of work, collaboration, virtual teams, distributed workforces, and work from home? The Chief Operating Officer of Dropbox shares her views and offers practical advice for managing remote employees and building distributed teams. Thank you to Productiv for making CXOTalk possible. Visit https://www.productiv.comOlivia Nottebohm serves as the Chief Operating Officer at Dropbox, where she oversees sales, customer experience, business development, marketing and communications, and the people team. Read the full transcript: https://www.cxotalk.com/episode/future-work-2021Prior to joining Dropbox in 2020, Olivia spent six years with Google Cloud, where she was VP of SMB Sales and GTM Operations. In that role she led go-to-market efforts, driving revenue for a portfolio of business products that included G Suite. She helped build and scale Google Cloud’s business, overseeing a cross-functional operations team of sales, customer engineering, business development, operations, and professional services. Before that, Olivia was a partner at McKinsey, where she worked with companies to build and execute against successful go-to-market strategies at scale. This conversation includes: -- What is the future of work in 2021? -- Remote jobs and distributed work -- Planning for the future of work -- Enabling diverse teams -- Dropbox enables distributed teams -- Designing collaboration tools at scale -- Customer experience and software design at large scale -- Building a remote work environment and culture -- Describing the future of work -- How to plan for the future of work -- Advice on managing the transition to distributed and remote work

What is the future of work, collaboration, virtual teams, distributed workforces, and work from home? The Chief Operating Officer of Dropbox shares her views and offers practical advice for managing remote employees and building distributed teams. Thank you to Productiv for making CXOTalk possible. Visit https://www.productiv.comOlivia Nottebohm serves as the Chief Operating Officer at Dropbox, where she oversees sales, customer experience, business development, marketing and communications, and the people team. Read the full transcript: https://www.cxotalk.com/episode/future-work-2021Prior to joining Dropbox in 2020, Olivia spent six years with Google Cloud, where she was VP of SMB Sales and GTM Operations. In that role she led go-to-market efforts, driving revenue for a portfolio of business products that included G Suite. She helped build and scale Google Cloud’s business, overseeing a cross-functional operations team of sales, customer engineering, business development, operations, and professional services. Before that, Olivia was a partner at McKinsey, where she worked with companies to build and execute against successful go-to-market strategies at scale. This conversation includes: -- What is the future of work in 2021? -- Remote jobs and distributed work -- Planning for the future of work -- Enabling diverse teams -- Dropbox enables distributed teams -- Designing collaboration tools at scale -- Customer experience and software design at large scale -- Building a remote work environment and culture -- Describing the future of work -- How to plan for the future of work -- Advice on managing the transition to distributed and remote work

When it comes to building brands and helping large companies improve, not many are better than Joe Escobedo. As an international branding consultant, he's worked with many Fortune 500 companies to help them improve their processes and achieve better results. In this insightful discussion, we discuss:Methods for getting your foot in the door of giant companiesDifferences in approaches for different sized organizationsHow to define where you want to focus your effortsEvery time I talk to Joe I really enjoy it. We just have a good time while discussing cool business ideas.To learn more about Joe , visit: https://joe-escobedo.com/Find Joe on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-escobedo/--For more about how host Matt Wolach helps software companies achieve maximum growth, visit https://mattwolach.com/.As part of the founding team in his first SaaS product, Matt owned the sales & marketing processes. But he struggled to sell and gain traction for the company. It took years of learning and tweaking before Matt created The Perfect DEAL Process, an innovative yet easy to implement method for closing more software deals. To find out more, visit https://mattwolach.com/about-matt.

Join host Adam Michalski as he interviews Ty Lingley, Director of Partnerships at Unbounce. Ty offers some great advice on how to build and scale an SMB-focused partner program.Topics Covered:How Unbounce structures and runs their SMB-focused partner programWhat differentiates an SMB partner program from an Enterprise partner programHow to leverage Zapier to do a lot of the "heavy lifting" with your initial integrationsWhy you need to get to product-market fit before you  start thinking about partnershipsHow to embed a "partner centricity" mindset into your organization Partner with Unbounce:UnbouncePartner with UnbounceSponsors:Partnership LeadersPartnered.ioSubscribe at www.partneredpodcast.com.Interested in joining the podcast? Reach out to hello@partnered.io. 

A fireside chat with Carolee Gearhart, VP of Worldwide Channel Sales and Global SMB Sales at Google Cloud, recorded at SADA’s 2020 All Hands Kickoff. In this special episode, hosted by Tony Safoian, Carolee shares with us her journey so far and her appointment to the new global role at Google Cloud focusing on Channel success. Carolee also describes Google’s mission to democratize data and how their strategy has shifted under Thomas Kurian’s leadership, as well as important discussion around diversity, inclusion and empowering women in the tech industry. Host: Tony Safoian Guest: Carolee Gearhart Connect on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/cloudnclear https://www.twitter.com/SADA https://www.twitter.com/Safoian https://twitter.com/CaroleeGearhart Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sada/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/safoian/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/caroleegearhart/   To learn more, visit SADA.com.

The first step in success with SMB clients is to recognize that it’s not a one size fits all scenario. Companies need a specialized approach for SMB accounts, different than the tactics used for Enterprise. Andrei Brasoveanu will sit down for a conversation with Agnes Bazin Doctolib on how to create a targeted and effective sales process tailor-made for SMB.

As the end of the decade fast approaches, Sarah Rochkind, Director of Mid Market & SMB Sales at Axiom, breaks down the kinds of questions everyone in sales should be reflecting on. Sarah and Jeremey hold a magnifying glass up to weighty topics like territory strategy, career pathing, and organizational complexity. Visit SalesLoft.com for show notes and insights from this episode. 

Part of the huge April wave of feature releases for Dynamics 365, were some license tweaks and a some new license types. I already discussed the new Dynamics 365 for Marketing license here, but in this post, I want to focus on the new Dynamics 365 Sales Professional License. A Little History Bear with me, but we need to take a short walk down memory lane to get back to today. When Dynamics CRM Online first launched in 2011 it was aggressively priced at $44/user/month. Compared to Salesforce this was a real bargain. It was also one offering that included multiple workloads, including Sales and Service. Some time later the price was increased to $65, or $50 as an addon to Office 365. I think there was some customer concern that the price was actually too low for the product to be very good. If the competing product is more than double, then this must be a lesser product. When the brand consolidation to Dynamics 365 took place, the Sales app was renamed Enterprise Sales app and the price shot up to $95. Still less than Salesforce, but not so much less that customers were leery of it. To offset this jump several "transitional" licenses were introduced to "step up" existing customers over time. In addition, a new "Promo" license was introduced specifically for Small and Midsized Businesses (SMB) Sales at $40. Shortly after that a second SMB Sales and Service license was added for $65. The sale of these "promo" licenses to new customers ended the first of this week. Evolution of Business Edition to Pro You may have heard the term "Business Edition" floating around, and in fact it still pops up on some Microsoft documentation that has not yet been scrubbed. Business Edition was conceived as a plan for SMB Customers. The first, and only, product that launched under the Business Edition concept was a light version of NAV that had been SaaSified. In the pipeline were also Business Edition Sales App, Service App and a new Marketing App. These "Apps" were intended to be lower cost (+/- $40), and would have limited features, parsing out the Enterprise stuff that SMB did not need. Seemed like a great idea! But, well into the development of the Business Edition apps, Microsoft had an epiphany. "Why develop a specific app to target a customer by size? We should really focus on a solution that targets users with simpler needs, regardless of size." As big a fan of the SMB idea as I was, I could not argue with this logic, and it still worked for SMB, even if SMB was no longer the specific target. For the Marketing App, this meant any size customer could use it, if it met their needs, and why not. But what happened to this Simpler Business Edition Sales App that was being built? The idea of a limited App for users with more basic needs still made sense, regardless of customer size. But did it still need a specific "simplified" App? Could they not just use the same sales app as Enterprise, with some limitations placed on it? It is certainly one less thing to support. And the Dynamics 365 Sales Professional License was born. It is a new app, but it is the same app as Enterprise, but with some limitations placed on this new app. Limitations are fair, since it is priced at $65 vs $95. So as you absorb the information below, remember, there is a difference of $30/user/month. Limitations Whenever you attempt to apply any kind of limits to anything, partners and customers will bitch and complain. Nevermind that it costs less.. "why can't it cost less, and be the same as the full priced one?" This seemed to be the prevailing argument that I was hearing, which makes no sense at all of course. "Why isn't the Big Mac on the Dollar Menu?" I get that nobody likes limits, but even Mercedes Benz sells a shitload of their entry-level vehicles... so clearly there is a market. The better question to ask, is how many of my customers' users can fit within these limits, allowing me to help lower their total cost... where it makes sense. This is really no different than the exercise we undertake for the Team Member license, a severely restricted, but very low cost, license. Who can get by with it? I watched Microsoft over the last year or so, tweak and fiddle with these limitations, trying to get the recipe just right. They needed to balance providing enough capabilities, while not so many capabilities that they cannibalize the full Enterprise license/app. Clearly there will be some cannibalization, but there is an alternative goal.  To revisit the Mercedes Benz analogy, some people who bought the entry-level car, might have bought a more expensive Mercedes if it did not exist. However, most of the buyers of that entry-level car would probably not have bought a Mercedes at all, if the entry-level did not exist. Mercedes opened up their brand to an entirely new audience, many of which will upgrade from the entry-level car eventually. So let's dive into these "limitations". Excluded Completely There are quite a few features of the full Enterprise Sales License/App that are not included at all in the Sales Professional License/App. A few that you should be aware of, that might help your decision process are, Sales goals and Territory Management. For most SMB customers this will not be an issue, but for larger customers these may be important. A few of the other completely excluded existing features are Social Engagement, Gamification, Voice of the Customer (surveys) and Mobile offline Synchronization. A brand new feature called Dynamics 365 for Sales Intelligence is also not included. One more item that is not included, that could be a key point, depending on your plans, is PowerApps. This one bothers me a bit for SMB, as I saw PowerApps coming not play there in the near future. But Microsoft can always adjust this later if it makes sense. The Case for a New Case The Customer Service capabilities of Dynamics 365 are quite significant. They are also part of a separate license/app. A license that might make sense for your Customer Service Organization, but what about the occasional case that needs to be created by a Salesperson. A missing part, or some other issue the customer shared with the Salesperson. The Salesperson certainly does not need the full Customer Service capabilities, but they do need some way to engage and initiate simple cases. Microsoft recognized this need and created a new "Lite" case management capability, specifically for this scenario. It is included with either the Professional or Enterprise Sales license/app. A Salesperson can create, assign and resolve these types of cases themselves, without needing the full-blown Customer Service license. This is an important factor to consider. Specific Limits Microsoft took a two-pronged approach to the Sales Professional limitations. The first was to completely eliminate some features that they felt their target user would not need. The second was to apply some "limits" to other features. This is probably where most of the partner controversy came from. But again, partners would like a full-blown product at a lower cost, because it's easier to sell. Duh. This is also the area where Microsoft spent the most time refining. I recall a conversation where someone on the team told me, and I am paraphrasing here, "We can always raise a limit that is determined to be too low, but we could not easily lower one that was too high". So consider this a test for a brand new license/app, if it does not accomplish the goals, Microsoft can adjust the levers. Freaking out is not required... yet. Custom Entities are limited to a maximum of 15. Business Process Flows are limited to a maximum of 5. Custom Workflows are limited to a maximum of 15. You can install a maximum of 10 3rd party apps (ISV solutions). Each entity can have a maximum of 2 forms. You are also limited to 5 custom reports. I will take credit for the 2nd form, as I reacted almost violently to an earlier plan with a single form. There are some further caveats to understand. 3rd party ISV solutions do not count against the limits of custom entities, process flows or workflows... however those third party apps may be subject to those limits in their own solution. I am seeking clarification on that now. But, if that is the case, then an ISV solution that you install, could itself have no more than 15 custom entities, 5 business flows or 15 workflows. Why might this be the case? Because partners and ISVs are sneaky. Without these limits an ISV would just backfill a customer's Sales App with all of the things that were limited out, and we're right back to cannibalization of the full product license. That's cheating. But again, I am seeking clarification, and will update this post when I get the official public answer. How will this work? This is a question I posed to Microsoft. You can mix-and-match Enterprise Licenses with Professional Licenses. This got my head spinning. If half of my users have limits, and the other half do not, how does that work in a single instance? With different App modules. So beyond just a specific license for Sales Professional, there is also a specific app for Sales Professional. A person who has an Enterprise Sales License can access a Sales Professional app, however, they will be subject to the same limitations, because the Limitations are being applied at the app level. This particular caveat will make you think a little harder about this. Why have an Enterprise Sales license at all for a Sales Professional app? The thinking here is that an Enterprise customer might have people in multiple roles. For example a full app for the main business unit, and maybe a Sales Pro app for another business unit, as one example. An Enterprise user could access both; a Sales Pro user could not access all of the mothership from their app. How will these limits be applied to the Sales Pro App? It will be your responsibility to not expose within your Sales Pro App, any more capabilities than are allowed. Eventually, there will be some telemetry to let you know if you strayed out-of-bounds. Of course, Microsoft will have this telemetry also, so cheaters beware. Upgrading For many customers the Sales Professional License/App will be a great long-term solution. For others, it will be a great introduction. So there will absolutely be circumstances where a customer who started on the Sales Professional License/App will want upgrade to the Enterprise Sales License/App. What does that look like? Simple, just apply an Enterprise Sales License to the user, and give them access to the Enterprise Sales App. This is way better than an earlier discussed concept of separate instances. So that's all I got on the new Sales Professional App. I'll update this post when I have the other answers. Update: 04/09/18 I got the answer from Microsoft. While it was discussed previously, there is no limit on the size of the actual solutions that are installed from AppSource, just a limit on the number of them.

ChannelPro Weekly is back for season two, and it’s bigger and better than ever! No, really, take it from Matt and Rich. They’ll tell you so themselves. Then they’ll chew over IBM’s big push into the SMB space, a new IoT management solution from TeamViewer, and ConnectWise’s acquisition earlier this month of HTG Peer Groups. That’s followed by chatter about ChannelPro’s 2018 tech industry preview article, an interesting new security vendor named ID Agent, some portable scanners, excerpts from an exclusive interview Rich conducted last December with Datto CEO Austin McChord, and a peek at a keyboard drawer, safely preserved in Matt’s tech museum, that dates to the dawn of the PC era. All that plus a lively discussion about donuts. Do you know what a bismark is? Neither do Matt and Rich. Subscribe to ChannelPro Weekly!    Look for us in your favorite podcast app. If you don't see us (yet) then you can subscribe via RSS in almost any podcast app using this link: http://www.channelpronetwork.com/rss/cpw Show Information: Episode #: 065Title: Dollars to DonutsDuration: 1:36:50File size: 44.4MBRegulars: Regulars: Rich Freeman - Executive Editor, Matt Whitlock - Technology Editor Topics and Related Links Mentioned:  IBM Unveils Major Partner-Led Effort to Boost Cloud and SMB Sales TeamViewer Launches IoT Remote Access and Monitoring Tool ConnectWise Acquires HTG Tech Preview 2018: IT as It Is and Ought to Be Vendor to Watch: ID Agent A Tale of Two Scanners: Epson DS-320 and Visioneer RoadWarrior 4D ChannelPro Exclusive: Austin McChord on What’s Next for Datto and Autotask, Part 1 ChannelPro Exclusive: Austin McChord on What’s Next for Datto and Autotask, Part 2 Matt's Museum Pick:  Keyboard SpaceSaver Matt's tech pick: Designer Suites DeskReady Keyboard Drawer Rich's ICYMI preview and peek ahead at the news week to come

Dannie Herzberg, Head of SMB Sales at Slack, joins the Bowery Capital Podcast to discuss "Moving Upstream: How to Build a Sales Org in Freemium SaaS."

Dannie Herzberg, Head of SMB Sales at Slack, joins the Bowery Capital Podcast to discuss "Moving Upstream: How to Build a Sales Org in Freemium SaaS."

An interview with Sam Roden, Director of SMB Sales at SecurityMetrics. Could you share the story of SecurityMetrics with us? In 1998, CEO Brad Caldwell recognized the need for affordable data security for the masses after his former company’s website was hacked. At the time, the only organization qualified to help his business through the... The post First Healthcare Compliance Podcast- SecurityMetrics appeared first on First Healthcare Compliance.

An interview with Sam Roden, Director of SMB Sales at SecurityMetrics. Could you share the story of SecurityMetrics with us? In 1998, CEO Brad Caldwell recognized the need for affordable data security for the masses after his former company’s website was hacked. At the time, the only organization qualified to help his business The post First Healthcare Compliance Podcast- SecurityMetrics appeared first on First Healthcare Compliance.

Sales is the universal language of business. Closing deals – and closing them efficiently – is key to the growth and success of any small business. But, according to a study done by PipeDrive, a cloud-based application aimed at helping SMBs close sales deals more efficiently, countries like South Africa, Brazil, Chile and others are finding higher levels of success closing deals than US-based SMBs. Timo Rein, co-founder and President of PipeDrive, shares with us more findings from the survey, including which countries close deals fastest, and are able to do so with minimal effort. He also shares why he feels US small businesses lag so far behind other countries in sales efficiency and effectiveness.

May 12, 2014 Big Data Patrick Schwerdtfeger & Great SMB Apps Bartosz Gonczarek

Gary Swart is the CEO of oDesk, the world’s largest online workplace—which has more than 4 million freelancers, and on which more than $1 billion of work has been done. Gary is a thought leader in entrepreneurship; how best to hire and manage teams; and the future of work, including online work. He is passionate about helping small businesses thrive, fueled by his extensive experience working with startups and small businesses that use oDesk, as well as by mentoring entrepreneurs and business school students. Gary has spoken at the Inc. Leadership Conference, The Economist’s Ideas Economy panel, South by Southwest, TechCrunch 50, TiECon, GigaOM’s Net:Work Conference in 2010 and 2011, and at Harvard Business School which teaches a case study on oDesk. His commentary has appeared in a variety of publications including Forbes, TechCrunch and The Washington Post. He has also appeared on numerous TV and radio shows, including BBC, National Public Radio, and the Fox Business program “After the Bell.” Previously, he led SMB Sales for the Americas at IBM’s Rational Software Product Group, and also served as VP of Worldwide Sales at Intellibank, where he was responsible for leading the sales organization.