Channel Waves by StructuredWeb

Welcome to ChannelWaves, the podcast where channel leaders

share success strategies, best practices, and emerging trends,

brought to you by StructuredWeb.

Here's your host, Steven Kellam.

Welcome everyone to ChannelWaves

StructuredWeb's view into everything channel.

I'm your host, Steven Kellam, and today we

are going to be talking about Generative AI.

And I'm very excited to have Chris Lamborn join us.

Welcome, Chris. Hey, Steven.

Great to be here.

So Chris is a former channel chief and now is

the Principal at Channel XLR8, which is well, actually, I'm going

to let you tell us a little bit about XLR8.

Thanks.

So Channel XLR8 is essentially an advisory

business that works with emerging vendors to

help them maximize the channel.

There's a lot of complexity and potentially

a lot of cost in that.

And we're about helping them build a robust

business that they can then continue to grow.

Generative AI might actually come

in very handy on that.

Generative AI, and you start to look at

all of the modern technologies is really about

helping others do more with what they have.

And so I think most definitely you're looking at companies

now making leaps and bounds of progress that they couldn't

have done before because they can use some of the

newer technologies, generative AI being one of them.

Right.

Well, you and I have talked about this many

times, and there's two sides to generative AI, right?

There is the side that you're talking about where

it could be incredibly helpful, but then there's also

the side where people are a little wary.

So maybe we start with that side. Right.

Some of the challenges.

So what are the big challenges out there

and the people that you talk to?

Simply put, what are people afraid

of in regards to generative AI?

Steven, I think when you cut through it all,

primarily most of the concerns are based around it

being seen as a threat to somebody's job, particularly

in channel marketing or channel in general, because it's

often seen as the redheaded stepchild anyway.

And as generative AI is very often

because it's new, probably more than reasonable,

now positioned as taking over the world.

This is going to make people nervous, I think.

Also there is that stance that says

particularly channel is complex, which it is.

So there's the assumption that there's no way that generative AI

can help or that as soon as you start using generative

AI, your leadership team is going to think that channel is

really easy if a bot can do it.

And I think when you look

through it, there's also another one.

And that's the generational difference.

I didn't come into this world with a cell phone in

my hand, and I grew up with TikTok being a noise

that a clock made rather than something that you video.

And so I've had to deliberately work

to understand, accept, and adopt the benefits.

And so it wasn't natural to me.

And so I think, like with all technologies, and

particularly new technologies, people really have to work out

how they can use them to improve what they

do or to make themselves more efficient.

They really have to embrace it.

They have to be responsible for

helping to define its role.

And the reality is those concerns about people

who are at risk of losing their jobs,

they may be, but it's not going to

be the generative AI that makes them redundant.

It's going to be the people who take

them on board and become more skillful and

more advanced in what they're doing.

And I think history has proven itself with people

that adopt technologies and move faster and move further.

We've had conversations about the difference between

a digital native and a digital adopter.

And I think both of us are

definitely on the digital adopter side, right?

I don't think we have a choice.

And I don't know about you, but I'm seeing that

play out in conversations when I'm talking to vendors.

I see an excitement level at one end on what

it can do, so there's a positive approach to it.

And on the other end, I see trepidation.

On the positive side, I hear people going, oh

my gosh, it's going to save me time.

I'm going to do my job better.

I can be smarter.

And the other side, people are going, they're

just throwing up security, take my job.

Inaccuracies everything.

You could talk about any technology

they're just throwing out there, right? They are.

And I think this is where

there's a responsibility of companies.

You put new technologies out there, it's great.

People will naturally adopt and

people will deflect from them.

It happens with everything.

But I think companies have a responsibility to

help their employees and those around them become

educated in these new technologies and to really

proactively bring the technologies in.

The day-to-day rhythm of the business

really concerned me, actually, this morning talking with somebody,

and they're working with an organization that has

essentially banned AI from its employees.

Okay, we should talk afterwards because

I have the same conversation.

But the thing is, what does that create?

You really don't want to

create closet generative AI teams.

That creates friction, creates impacts

across your whole organization.

So the key thing is making it acceptable to

use generative AI to help you versus being seen

as cheating or putting yourself at risk and setting

the guidelines and the boundaries around that.

It's a bit like your kids are growing up.

Never tell them not to do something

because what are they going to do?

They're going to go and do it, but they probably

won't tell you they're doing it or they've done it.

And so it's this thing, it's not this crazy

dangerous environment, but help people use it to maximize

not just them, but also you as a business.

Well, I completely agree.

I think that the vendors need to do that and

they need to have a game plan for that. Chris right.

They need to know what to

talk about, what the issues are.

I also think they need to talk with their

solution providers, people in a tech stack, people like

us who are doing something like ChannelGPT.

And as we've talked to our clients and

our prospects, we're literally listening to them.

We're really trying to listen to what their fears

are and then we're able to address them.

Some are pretty logical, right?

We need to protect privacy and we have

boundaries and we need to deal with accuracy.

And all those are pretty straightforward.

It's when it starts to get out into the world of

like really getting serious, as you said, started going down that

path of it's going to change the world or ruin the

world, we're going to start World War Three.

are the thing that people start to go

a little bit off the deepend.

Yeah, I think that kind of comes back to that

piece, is really being as clear as you can, but

also showing people how it can benefit them.

You take channel marketers as an example and you

go, okay, they're the ones that may be concerned,

but you also go, how could it actually help?

And I'm quite a simple person, the engineer

at heart, so you break it down.

And when I look at it and it's doing an

injustice to ChatGPT, but in its simplest form, kind

of this proactive and instantaneous way, gather the relevant information

off the Internet and put it into a useful form.

It's a language tool, right?

It's not a search engine, it's a language tool

and it's searching the Internet to complete your sentence.

That's all that it's doing.

We've spoken about this before and I kind of

challenge anybody to say that not a day goes

by when they're trying to write a plan, or

create some marketing priorities, or gather information on potential

partners, or even look up competitors where they are

not searching input from something.

You do a Google search, you search your old emails,

you pull up something you wrote before, you send a

coworker a message of something you saw them write.

ChatGPT can save you hours, literally, and

it also opens your mind and it enables

you to get those sources of information quickly.

But this is where the reason why this

shouldn't be feared, because this is where you

need the intelligence specialist people to come in,

because not everything you're given is 100% relevant

and the nuances are often missed.

But I'll tell you, I use ChatGPT almost

every time I'm looking to do something new.

Not for the final version, but to give me a

really quick outsider's view, a broad data dump, if you

want to call that that's really easy to work with

and saves me easily half a day at a time.

And I think this you and I was

think this is the point we're pushing towards

generative AI, if adopted correctly, is an aid.

It's an aid to do your

job faster, better, more efficiently.

And you and I, the total hours of

the day when we're emailing dictates this.

But I don't know a person in the technology

space especially who wouldn't turn down an extra half

a day a week just to do what they

would really like to do and to breathe right.

And so this is where I think, yes, there

are some elements that need some structure, but it

really can help change how people do things instead

of replacing how people do things.

And I think the other piece to it is

it opens up an opportunity for a new generation

of people, particularly in the channel space.

We've all been here a long time and

it's quite hard to bring new people into

something that is quite challenging, is quite complex.

And if we can use these types of technologies to

help people get involved in the channel more and evolve

their own skill set, I think that's an added benefit.

But something that we need as a market.

I've been in the tech stack for a long time

in this space and anytime that you can take something

that's somewhat redundant and allow someone to be more strategic,

I mean, I go back to MDF and do you

want to be dealing with prior approvals pop right?

Or would you rather have it automated or someone

else do it so I can be more strategic?

Makes a ton of sense and to

me it's kind of the same thing.

I wrote three blogs last week in 3 hours and

it usually takes me much longer to do that.

And I use chat GPT to give me the basic outline I

had to rewrite it still took me hours to rewrite it and

put my own impressions on it, my own words, but I've got

it trained in my voice and I can get it much better.

So basically it's just coming alongside for

me and helping me create content, right?

But you're right, it's not that finished product.

I think we will get closer to that

finished product as things like our ChannelGPT

or ChatGPT continue to evolve.

But I think right now I'm just trying to tell

people start simple, think a subject line on an email,

think a simple email content or maybe a blog.

We don't have to get super carried away

about some of the legal issues like copying

code, encoders, all that sort of stuff.

I'm trying to keep it narrowed in on channel

marketing but I think to your point around it

can become better as it moves along.

I think that's part of the opportunity.

You look at how vendors and partners

engage with each other and historically partners

have been much more advanced than vendors

have new technologies and methodologies.

But you play that statement through that

you had that you could enable partners

to be able to almost instantaneously.

Take content, take marketing materials, take pieces from you as

a vendor and turn it into something that is relevant

for themselves, with their own benefits, with their own unique

positioning, relevant to their skills, and have it in market

in less than a few hours.

That's the benefit of it becoming personalized

for one to the better world.

Because what would you normally do?

You wouldn't support half of those partners because

you don't have the resources to do it.

And so therefore, you're losing the

opportunity to grow your business.

Look, as a former partner and a sub $10 million

partner, when piece of content came in and my team,

which is very small, had to reach, let's say we're

in the wine business, we're in Napa, and we had

to reach these wineries and the COO there, we need

to position one of our vendors there.

I mean, you freeze as a partner.

It's like, oh my gosh, what's

my subject line look like?

Oh, how do I take this

content that's about this big vendor?

And how do I make it about risk mitigation and

business continuity for me to this vertical, there is no

way, Chris, that people have been able to do that.

And I think this opens up that world.

Here's the interesting piece for it.

If you let partners do it on their own, what you

just talked about, if the vendor says, okay, here's I'm out

there, I'm just going to let my partners do this.

I give them this tool and they go and search.

Remember, there's some things you have to pay attention depending

on which is open AI, when did it stop? Right?

And how relevant is how far does it go back?

Which is why training, I think it's a huge opportunity

for vendors, for consultants, for anyone to have input.

What we do is we train whoever the vendor is.

We would train that instance, that private instance,

to make sure everything is accurate, right?

Whatever that vendor wants is inside of it.

And then the partner comes in there and

they know then that data is correct.

And then the partner can even input

the most relevant data on there.

And then you, Chris, can come in and say, hey,

I'm an expert on ChannelGPT or generative AI.

Here's the IP.

I am added to it to make it what we're building out.

And I'm sure other people can do this about

StructuredWeb, it's just the direction we're going.

We're building inputs, spaces where the

right input can go in.

And then you're going to

create experts at generative AI.

It's going to be a whole field

of people that are knowledge base.

They're going to be able to help build this stuff out.

But the thing is, Steven, that those people are emerging

now, and not just because of generative AI, because of,

as you said, all of the other functions.

Digital marketing is not new.

Everybody's been singing on about it

for kind of nearly a decade.

So they've already got the head start about

needing to do things in a different, more

proactive and a more automated way.

Unfortunately, you've got a lot of companies having

to reduce number of heads they have, having

to be careful on costs, and that will

ebb and flow as it does naturally.

But to enable yourself to recover faster

and continue that revenue growth, you can't

just stop what you're doing.

And so what this helps is companies who are having

to just put more work on the remaining individuals now

can give that work life balance by bringing in technology

to an area, we all live most of us lived

with cell phones and what is it?

60% of us live with something like Alexa. Why?

Because it makes our lives easier. Okay?

And by the way, do you remember and throw the

whole privacy, ethics, out the window. Don't even go there,

I've got a good friend.

Oh, my God, I can never do this because it's just good.

I know you get a better what is this?

Although you laugh with it.

So I've got a good friend

banned Alexa from their house, okay? Banned it.

However, they use facial recognition to get into their iPhone,

which takes a photo in every 4 seconds of your

face and says where you are and your surroundings.

But that's fine.

That's fine because it's apple.

Look, we could have conversation and people don't even

know where their food source is anymore, right?

You ask a kid, what does a

chicken look like versus a pig? Right?

And all they know is it comes.

So I think humans were a little attuned to

that and we sort of get over that sort

of stuff, but I think it's fascinating.

Let me ask you this.

Do you believe partners are just

going to use it anyways? Right?

Here's the thing.

Do you think people are just going

to use it no matter what?

Do you know what?

I think there will be a group of people

that use it no matter what the forward thinking

and what you find is particularly in the channel,

it's a very small market of people.

It's a very close-knit environment, so it will spread.

And the reality is that those partners

adapt a lot faster than vendors do.

And so where a partner won't necessarily have

to go out to proactively, start to use

generative AI, they're naturally going to do it

because the people they employ will use it.

A vendor may not take it on at

that speed because there's structure, there's process, there's

everything else that we've just discussed in there.

So I think that's where I think the vendors that are

going to win with this are those that are take that

stance, as we said earlier, of helping partners guide.

Maybe that's a good way of putting it, because

they've got the skills, they've got the desire.

So let's work in the right place together

because, yes, you're not going to stop people

using advanced technology to advance their own businesses.

I mean, that's been my premise all along.

If partners are going to use it,

take it to its simplest core.

What are partners worst at?

What's the worst thing that they do?

I'm not going to get drawn into this one. Steven

I'll get kind of like it's.

It's marketing, okay.

Everybody thinks in the tech space sales certifications,

the studies of feeds, they got that down.

They could talk about, you know, why marketing?

You know, why marketing?

Because most organizations, most partners that drive

marketing don't have the investment and can't

make the investment in the broad set

of marketing skills that are needed.

And vendors can't always support your argument earlier,

the broad selection of partners that come across.

So you're kind of setting marketing people up to

fail out the gate on that side, except for

large, large organizations, large partners and large investment.

And I think that's why people use agencies.

People use marketing automation tools.

This is just another tool to go in that

tool bag to help you get further, faster.

No, it's a game changer.

I think it's going to be you're either plugged into it,

or you're going to have a real challenge catch up.

And you either going to let your partners kind of run

with it, like the Wild West, and by the way, they're

going to get some stuff wrong, or you're going to come

in and you're going to race it with them and learn

to be whether you're a digital native or a digital adopter.

Chris it doesn't matter.

I met people who are digital adopters

who are just as smart and talented

in the digital world as digital natives.

They just had to open their minds.

Little hard at it, right?

It really doesn't matter.

And I think that's what's going to have the

biggest impact of its overall evolution and its adoption.

I do think generative AI will still probably be

seen for the next year or so as a bit

of an underground movement or a guilty pleasure.

And you'll be reading things.

Every time I read something you write now, I'm going

to wonder how much of it you actually wrote, but

you're going to be reading things and wondering about why

because you haven't accepted it as part of the norm.

But the people who are really going to benefit over

the next year are those who really do adopt it

early and recognize it as a powerful tool to help

them deliver that higher quality, faster outcome.

And I think you said it earlier, the key thing with this

is you don't have to be a geek to benefit from it.

Yeah, you can evolve it yourself.

It's not like going and working out

how to do major excel calculations.

It's about leading people through.

And I think that's the real benefit of generative AI.

End of coming after the first AI trance

because that's made the usage of stuff the

ability to use technology much easier.

Okay, so two last questions.

One is in your shoes as a consultant.

What are, like, the three things

you would recommend to a vendor?

Now, that's question number one.

And question number two.

What do you think this thing looks like in five years?

Wow. All right.

So vendors, look at now look at how

generative AI can make your business, the functions

of your business, particularly your marketing functions, more

scalable, more efficient, and more effective.

You will still need your specialist people there to

make it relevant and true to your business.

Also look at how you can engage the partners with

this so that it becomes what generative AI is a

true round source of information to get an outcome.

Because to your point, start to put some

guidance, put restrictions, but start to give guidance.

Now if you want to travel somewhere in a car,

you go into a GPS and you follow them.

You don't get the map out.

Give people that guidance.

However, it's your fault if you jump

off the end of the cliff.

It's that kind of piece.

And I think you start to look at five years.

And it's funny, I was having this discussion the other

night about the impact that generative AI could have on

the world as whole and how exciting it was.

But I think when it comes

to the channel universe, it's similar.

I hope it's going to become an integrated

and accepted part of how we at work,

just like the Internet is now, nobody questions

whether you looked something up on the web.

So don't start questioning, but take it for what it is.

Accept it for what it's helped people do and appreciate.

I think we got all this.

I do appreciate there do has to be some

structure and controls put around how it's used.

That balances some of this piece out and

some of that has to be technology based

and some of that is company based.

Okay, sure.

But I kind of come back to this thing, the

channel business, as you've grown up and I've grown up

with it, they're built around people building relationships.

Now, generative AI doesn't

replace the personal connections.

Avatars don't replace personal connections.

But what they should do is enable us

to spend more of the time building those

relationships and enjoying those relationships than being SaaS

sucked behind laptops and with keyboards trying to

get information that's readily available from us.

That's a pretty good point, right?

More time to think and more time to

interact, more time to do something that's going

to benefit you and benefit the business.

Because isn't that what technology is about?

That's what it's supposed to be about.

So it's supposed to be about if

people adopt it and use it.

And I think that's the exciting thing that for

me is the piece that goes okay, yes.

I get same concerning as automation, same as probably

when the abacus moved to a calculator, people were

concerned they'd lose their jobs making abacuses.

They moved to making calculators.

And I don't demise the threat in

certain industries that generative AI can bring.

But I think in our world, it's very hard to

see where it doesn't give people an opportunity to add

more of the value that they inherently have than the

negativity that it may bring into it or the conflict.

That it may bring into it, but does have

to be accepted and it has to be acknowledged

that it's part of what's there and not this

hidden gem that only a few people use. Agree.

So, Chris, thank you for joining us.

Much appreciated.

So really quickly, what's the best way for

people to get in touch with you?

It's easy, Chris@channelxlr8.com.

Make it easy for everybody.

And this is a big passion of myself, as you

know, Steven, which is kind of why we're doing this.

And seeing the evolution of these technologies of AR

VR and those pieces across, I think it's going

to be game changing for the world, but for

channel as well in pretty short term.

Cool.

All right, thank you. Steven. Thanks a lot.

Everybody have a great day.