Channel Waves by StructuredWeb

Welcome, everyone, to another episode of Channelwaves.

I'm your host, Stephen Kellam.

I'd like to thank everyone for joining us,

all the listeners for joining us today.

By the time you hear this, it will be the new year.

Obviously, with my background, we are

doing this podcast during the holidays.

So I'd like to welcome in my guests today.

And by the way, this is the first time

I've done a podcast with two individuals, done many

webinars, but first time I've done a podcast.

So should be interesting.

So joining us today is Heather Margolis,

SVP of Marketing at 360 Insights.

Welcome, Heather.

Thanks, Steven.

And Larry Walsh, who is the CEO

and Chief Analyst at Channelnomics. Welcome, Larry.

Steven, how are you?

I'm doing really well.

Hi, Larry.

Hi, Heather.

How are you?

Are we going to go down that route right? No, no, wait.

Let me do this.

Let me know.

Heather and I are from Boston.

Okay, Heather, you're not bettah than me.

Never bettah.

But I'm wicked pissa.

You are wicked pissa. Wow.

Here's the interesting part of doing a podcast.

One, it's not live.

Two, we can edit everything. Three, it lives on.

Are you going to edit that?

No, I'm not going to edit that.

I'm not editing, listeners.

listeners and viewers, we haven't

edited anything throughout this podcast at all.

And that's the whole. How about the deal?

Here's a promise, listeners and viewers, if you stay

tuned and stay through us the whole time, we

promise we're not going to edit anything.

Everything Larry says is going to come out

and we're not going to filter anything.

There's still, however, whatever Heather says, she gets

to say, whether she wants it to show

or not, that's totally up to her.

That's carte blanche, Larry.

One take, buddy. One take, Larry.

One take, Larry.

Sorry, Stephen, what was your third like?

I was just going to know.

Brace for incoming.

I think my, this is being played in the new year.

One of my resolutions is going to be to swear less.

So maybe I'll try in this webinar to start.

You know, Heather, I like that idea

because it could be like carbon offsets.

What you give up, I'll absorb. Exactly. Yeah. See?

Oh, my gosh.

Okay, I'm just going to be the referee on this, right?

So it's interesting, I stopped swearing just in

general, especially with all my kids around.

But now all three of my children

are out of the home for now.

So technically it's fair game.

But I don't think I can go back.

I don't know if I could go back.

What's our code for getting back on topic?

Pineapple.

Safe word is banana. Banana.

Pineapple.

Pick a fruit, whatever. Pineapple. Banana. Let's go.

Pineapple. Lemonade.

Anyways, once again, thanks, everyone,

for joining us today.

Our mission today and what we're going to do is

we're going to talk a little bit about 2024, and

we may even go into a little hindsight because Larry

was just talking while we're waiting for you, Heather.

Don't worry about it. Outing me.

We only waited six minutes. Totally fine.

Listeners don't care. You're here.

That's all that matters.

That Larry said 2023 was a tough year and

it'd be interesting as we go back and we

talk about some of the things that made it

difficult and maybe even during the middle of 2023,

we all thought it was going to be terrible.

I thought after Q1, I was

going, this is going down the drain. Right?

And interestingly enough, for many of

us, it turned out pretty well.

But I think what everyone's looking for

is what's going to happen in 2024.

And hopefully out of this, we'll get a little bit

about what you can expect in 2024 and things you

could look forward to and maybe some things you should

be questions you should be asking and issues you maybe

need to resolve to do well in 2024.

Because, I mean, that's all we're trying to do, right?

Figuring out what do we need to look at, how do we

need to execute and how do we need to work on it,

and how do we need to be successful in 2024?

I think, I don't know.

That's my personal message for me and my organization.

I don't think it's a lot different for most folks.

Right?

If it is, tell me, Larry, you're the. Yeah.

So since I've already been labeled a curmudgeon, I didn't

even have to go down that path, did I? No.

People ask me this all the time, is that what I

think is going to 2024 is going to be like?

And I tell them is that if they

didn't like 23, they're going to hate 24.

24 is still going to be a rough year.

And a lot of it has to do with a

lot of caution and spending on the customer side.

There's still a lot of conservation

by businesses across the spectrum.

SMB and enterprise, most particularly, corporate debt, is

weighing heavily on a lot of vendors.

So that's a lot of pressure on the

channel organizations and that's not going to be

alleviated until the second half of next year.

That's the bad news.

It's the first half of '24 that's going to be rough.

The second half of '24 is going to be a

ramp and that ramp is going to be leading into

what I believe, and this is somewhat the consensus amongst

the economists that I follow and interact with, is that

'25 is going to be a really good year.

The one bit of caution I'd have for everyone is

that if you're looking at the early analyst numbers in

terms of predicting IT spend, Gartner in October came out

and said that it spend in '24 is going to

be up 8% year over year.

It's not just dismiss that number whole

cloth, it's just not going to happen.

AI is not going to have the impact on spending in '24

is going to be a slow ramp in the '25 and '26.

'25 and '26 is when you're going to

see AI have a real impact on spending.

But '24 is going to be another transition year.

But it's going to feel bad like '23 was in the

first half and then it's going to start to really feel

a lot better in the second half of '24.

Hey, look, Larry, can you define that and break that?

Maybe we can break that down.

And then, Heather, you can weigh in on how

you think incentives are going to fit into that

because you said a lot of things, right?

One, you said the first half is going to

be bad and then it's going to turn good.

It a six month bridge is not that long, right?

We're not that far away from it.

So maybe one you can address that.

Are we holding on or are

we investing to get there, right?

So that's one follow up question for you.

The second one is, I think you have to define AI and

what it means and why you think AI will be slow or

why will cause a slowdown and then cause a ramp up, right?

Because people are pretty excited about AI.

So maybe you can address those two things the

first half of the year and then maybe defining

AI a little bit and why it went there.

And then, Heather, maybe you can jump

in on the incentive piece of that.

So look, economic conditions are not that bad.

The problem is that there's a lot of, like I

said, the real big problem right now is debt.

Corporate debt worldwide is double what

it was five years ago.

It's now totaling almost $80 trillion.

And a lot of things that you're seeing

that's happening in the market, particularly with technology

vendors trimming their budgets, trimming their staff.

It's on a daily basis now that I'm hearing about people

being reorganized or what is the one I heard today?

Somebody that we know being reorganized out, which I

thought was a really clever way of describing it.

Is there an investment?

No, there's no investment because you

can't get money right now.

Money is too expensive.

So the only place to get money,

right, the investor community really isn't interested

in putting more money into businesses.

The only place they can go to get

net new investment is through banks interest rates.

Prime interest rates are still remaining high.

The Federal Reserve and the central banks in Europe

are going to decrease the interest rates, but those

decreases are only going to come in the second

quarter and into the next half.

That's why I'm saying the first half

is going to be a little rocky.

But as we start to move up into '25, you're going to

start to see conditions ease up and not to get political.

Once we get past the elections next year, things will start

to feel a little bit more stable in terms of AI.

AI is not a driver of spending. Right now.

A lot of companies are releasing AI tools,

AI features, but this is more around enriching

experiences and it may lead to retention, but

it's not leading to net new spend.

And even when you look at the pc market, for instance,

which is a bit of a bellwether, it is projected to

start ticking back up sometime in '24 and into '25 HP.

Lenovo have already announced that they're going to

be releasing AI enabled PCs, but they haven't

defined what the use cases are yet.

They haven't really said what this is going to be about.

And a lot of companies are holding back on

their net new investments until they actually see what

the AI infrastructure needs are, what the new processes

are going to be, what the new endpoints are

going to have to look like.

So there's still a bit of time before there's

a trigger on net new spending relative to AI.

Okay, well, so, Heather, it's kind of interesting

for me to listen to that, right, because

every call that I'm on, people are talking

about how incentives tie into what we do.

So I understand there's a six month, but

how do we prep through that six months?

To get six months is actually a pretty

short window to get to that 2025. Right.

And so how do we leverage things like

you do what you do to make.

Well, I think if you already have an incentives

program, certainly think about how you're using it to

get your partners doing the things that will help

them get through this challenging time and help you

sell more product in that time.

So instead of running the same old incentive that

you always have on a sales incentive on selling

the same thing, maybe you do a volume incentive,

maybe you add in market development funds or business

development funds to get them to do the things

that will get them in front of people.

Because now you're not just trying to get in front

of the right person who needs your it solutions.

Now you're trying to get in front of the right

person who needs your IT solutions and has budget.

So helping the partners find the right people for

that mix is super important more than ever.

So I would tie incentives to activities like

marketing sales, the things that you're doing with

partners that are helping to get your solutions

instead of your competitor solutions.

It's less about finding the people

who don't have a solution.

And then it is about finding the people who have

a solution they're unhappy with or that isn't going to

serve them in the next year or two.

And then I think it's also super important

that partners are communicating more than ever.

I think when we're in tough economic

times, everyone just slashes marketing right away.

And I think that when you come out on the

other end, the people who kept marketing throughout, maybe they

bootstrapped a little bit more, maybe they were a little

more savvy about where they were spending their money, but

they kept marketing throughout are the ones that come out

on the other end and still have a business and

still have brand recognition and still have customers, versus the

ones who just slash all marketing and say, that's it,

we're not going to market anymore and don't have anybody

at the other end.

If you end up with nobody at the other end, hey,

Larry, I think I'd like both you guys take on this.

The place where I'm seeing AI and it's a part of what

we offer, is so many having to do with more, with less.

How did you say that?

What was the term you used that

they laid some people off out?

What was the reorging out? Reorging out?

Yeah, reorging out.

And while we're all really working hard to help

our community and people find jobs and we're hiring,

I think there is some growth there.

But what I'm seeing is using AI in some simple

forms to do more with less in our world, we're

trying to figure out how do we do that, right?

If you have a small team, how do they

do the things Heather, that you're talking about.

Some of that is changing roles, learning, using

AI or new tools, automation to be successful,

to try to figure out how to get.

So that's where I'm seeing AI being used in

the actual channel and in the tech stack, the

place where I live, because people are trying to

figure out how to be more efficient. Yeah.

So I wouldn't say do more with less,

I would say do more with the same.

That's a timing thing. Right.

Okay, you're right.

Maybe where they used to be at a level set or

where are you going to be at the beginning of 2024?

No, I would say that I run marketing.

Looking at my team, we haven't cut.

We don't have plans to cut.

We're not hiring.

We don't have plans to hire, but

we are using AI right now to.

Oh, that social post shouldn't just go out from

the corporate logo and from me, it should also

go out from our entire sales team.

But they need a little help.

So the sales team can pop a social post

into AI and put it in a different tone.

That's more them.

We're using it to verticalize content.

So instead of writing one ebook

for, we sell into four verticals.

Instead of writing one ebook for vertical one

and a second ebook for vertical two.

Ebooks take about month, six weeks,

lots of different people's time.

We're writing the ebook once and then we're

putting it into an AI tool and having

the tone changed based on a different vertical.

So it's not perfect, it doesn't write it for

us, but it does like 40% of the work.

So instead of it taking us six weeks to do that

second one, it's taking us two weeks and just in general

getting more reach from what we already have today.

Instead, know the same old, same old.

Like I said, you need to be out in front

more than your competitors to make it through a recession.

Yeah.

Look, I want to go back to

something that Heather was saying about marketing.

It's a mistake that companies make is that the first

thing they do is they cut what they consider to

be the soft skills of the cost centers.

It's a problem.

The biggest issue that we're seeing with a number

of the companies that we work with and support,

it's not that they don't have good products, it's

that nobody knows what these products are.

And so it is vitally important to keep

lines of communications not only open, but investing

in them and keeping them strong.

And Heather's right.

As much as I want to disagree with her.

By the way, Larry, you only get to say that once

on this podcast that he wants to disagree with me.

It's the holidays.

I'm being generous anyways.

But there is, you have to keep

feeding that top of the funnel.

This is where a lot of companies are

struggling with because the partners are out there.

They're looking for their next opportunity.

They're looking to their vendors that have

greater capabilities than they do to be

able to help feed their pipelines.

And the customers are looking for real value.

They're not looking for the next

innovation, whatever that might be.

What they're looking for is rational investments that

they can make to make their businesses better.

The problem is that often times customers

don't know what they don't know.

We can sit here and pound on our desks and stand up on

stages all day long and shout AI as much as we want to.

The reality is that you have

to have more directed investments.

And it's not just an AI tool.

It is the things that go on around it.

It's an augmentation that can happen.

And I think that we have to keep that focus.

I like to say that if you're going to use

AI as a tool within your business, whether it's to

augment tech support, use it like Heather's describing for marketing,

even simplifying communication so that even the people who can't

write can actually sound smart in an email.

These tools are there not to replace.

They're there to augment capabilities and to free us, give

us freer more time to interact with other people.

And ultimately, I think that's the thing that the

revolution that's to come is not that we're automating

more, is that we are actually going to be

able to have more contact with each other.

Well, that is ultimately the goal, isn't mean we didn't

actually go through and define what AI is, but everything

that I'm seeing, and Heather, I live in the same

marketing world that you do, is to be able to

give individuals the time to think and to be strategic,

to do more with the same.

I think that's a nice way you put it, Heather.

That's what I'm seeing.

Has the buyer really changed that much?

I mean, we're using AI to help us get that

message across and help us to get that content.

But has the buyer really changed that much

in '23 to '24 to even '25?

Is it still the personal

experience that really matters?

Is that what's going to make the marketing successful?

What do you guys think?

I don't think the buyers changed from '23 to

'24, but I think the buyers drastically changed in

the last ten years just in their behavior.

So what ends up happening is B2B

in general, and the channel for sure, are usually

three to five years behind everyone else.

So if we as consumers are ordering everything online

and getting served up, if you like this, you

may also like that, or because you bought this,

this is the next logical step in your journey.

And I don't think we're doing a

good enough job of that in

B2B in the channel yet.

Larry, I tend to agree.

I think that the changes in

the buyer has already happened.

The millennials are now running the purchasing process

and they have a different set of considerations.

We can see the share shift that's happening to hyperscalers,

and I think that that's going to accelerate now.

I mean, it's not just a matter of convenience.

There's real value that's

being driven through hyperscalers.

And they are evolving their models to ensure that

that experience is translated through the digital platforms as

much as we did through a conventional channel.

I do see a problem with the sellers, though.

I don't think the sellers have necessarily changed.

We are getting more inquiries about how do we

inform, how do we enable, how do we resource

sellers to think differently in terms of the different

options and the different sales models that are available

now that weren't available a few years ago.

And I think it's the sellers are the ones that

are having the hardest time adapting on a company level.

I think that there's still a mindset out there

that I think needs to be cleaned up.

And I'll share with you a conversation I even

just had this morning with somebody was saying, well,

look, we have this innovative, great product.

It layers on to everything else

and it makes everything better.

And that's not an uncommon story.

The customer doesn't want to hear that.

The customer has a lot of change fatigue,

a lot of stacking fatigue that has been

building up over the last few years.

So a lot of what you're seeing in terms of

pullback as a service model, and it's not to say

that we're not spending to continuing to grow as a

service offerings, but the customers are being more deliberate in

the way that they're evaluating service based offerings because it's

becoming just like streaming services.

Okay, we bought Netflix.

Then we got Amazon prime.

Now we got Disney, now we got Apple TV.

And before we know it, we're spending

more than we were on cable.

And that's where a lot of fatigue is coming

in on the business side, on the company side.

And I think that's one of the things that we're going

to have to get around over the next year or two.

Well, Heather, that kind of feeds

right into your wheelhouse there.

If there's change and it's necessary, that's exactly where

incent them to do the behavior you want. Yeah.

For mean, I think to Larry's point, you as a

business, so if you're the software company, the hardware company,

the tech company, working with these partners, you have to

figure out the strategy to help them to make sure

that they aren't overwhelmed and aren't spending more and aren't

pushing their customers in the wrong way.

But once you figure out that path and that strategy, then

it's up to you to incent them to do the behaviors

that will get them going in the right direction.

And I think the onus is, I always say us

because I started my career on the vendor side.

I actually started my career on the partner side,

but very quickly moved to the vendor side.

I think the onus is on the tech companies

to figure out a lot of things right now. Right.

Like partners are now selling through marketplaces.

They're looking to the vendor to say,

how do I make this happen too?

And that is also where something like an

ecosystem management tool, where if their customer is

buying through a marketplace but the partner needs

help setting up services or they're the one

selling through the marketplace.

I know I'm taking us on a tangent.

I'll be right back.

It's important that the education around that, the engagement

around that, the enablement pieces around that are inside

of an ecosystem management tool that has AI and

is serving up, and now you do this.

And now you do that.

Because if nothing else, the way that we buy and

sell today has made us as consumers incredibly lazy.

Like I had to go to the grocery

store the other day, my head almost exploded.

My kids were like, we don't come here anymore.

So once you get the partners and the customers to

a place where they want things served up to them,

you need to make sure you keep doing that.

Hey, Larry, this kind of goes back to

the content side that you talked about.

And this is the world that I live in.

If we look at AI from a big picture, I live in

a world where we're taking AI down to something really simple.

And Heather, you had talked about before, how do

we customize and how do we personalize content?

So the message actually reaches that buyer.

And so, Larry, what do you think?

How do we get that reseller to do that

and get that content, use that AI to actually

match up with what the buyer wants? Right.

I would think that AI would actually make that will.

And I'm going to say this for my big

sister, Heather, that I am conceding defeat, that I

will accept that ecosystems are a thing.

I think everybody gets it wrong.

And part to your question, Steven, is that.

Wait, hold on a second.

They're have been ecosystems.

I've been talking about ecosystem for 13 years. 15.

We do not have time to go

through how Larry got to this conclusion.

Can we just revel in the victory that is?

Victory?

I would call it a minor victory, because

as Steven said, he said 13 years. Hello.

I was talking about ecosystems 20 years ago.

Do you need me to do

my two dimensional versus three dimensional?

Again, I would love to, because that is so cool.

And how.

No, but to your question, Steven, about how to

take that content and get the partners to use

that content, and whether there's a tool or whether

it's AI to get them to use that content.

This is what I mean by some of the systemic

flaws in the thinking around the concept of ecosystems.

Ecosystems, to me, Heather will talk about this, and

I do really appreciate the way that she describes

two versus three dimensional go to markets.

To me, ecosystems is not a go to market model.

It is a concept that describes a variety

of different actions that then flow through channels.

And that's where this really does get

challenged, because we all look at this

from a vendor centric point of view.

And ultimately, when I say the sellers are

the ones that have to catch up, and

sellers, from on high, their management team down,

because ultimately, who they're trying to service, the

sellers, the channel teams, the channel chiefs, their

customers are their executive teams, and ultimately, the

customers of the executive teams are their investors.

And that's what has to get

satisfied from the inside up.

The partner has a voice in all of this.

The partner has a choice.

And if you look at even the smallest

resellers or integrators or msps, they are aligned

primarily with a dozen or so vendors.

And when I say aligned, I meaning

that they are primarily focused around them.

They make their investments, they

build practices around them.

There are another three to four dozen other vendors

that they're dealing with on a continual basis.

It may not be as frequent, it could be opportunistic,

but there's this expectation from the supply side that we

got to get them to use our tools, and we

got to get them to push our narrative, and we

want to be out in front.

And the reality is the partner has their

own imperative, their own mission that they have

to follow, which doesn't always align.

And we have to accept that if we can

sell them on our value, then that's great.

But we can't all sit there and say, yes,

we're going to get them to do this.

Wait, hold on.

So many things that I would pass. We go down.

First of all, that statement is

at least 15 years old, right?

Because MSPs, 15 years ago

sold risk mitigation, business continuity.

They didn't sell Dell and VMware, right?

So they've had their own

statement as a partner forever.

My question to both of you is, is that message?

Because I get in this conversation on a

daily basis, you've got the vendor message, and

then you've got the partner message.

Why aren't we doing a better job making it a

joint message to the customer, coming together and talking about

the value of how they support each other?

Like the one in one equals three sort of thing.

So the buyer is seeing the both best from both sides.

Why are we doing that?

I'll share this with you, and this will

resonate with Heather when she was turning wrenches.

So think about your car.

Your car is the collection or

the epitome of an ecosystem product.

And there are 10,000 on average, more than

10,000 individual parts that go into an average

car coming from an equal number of suppliers.

They all have to come together.

And then at that point, it becomes a

brand, it becomes a product, it becomes marketable.

Up until that point is that

everyone has their own individual missions.

And those individual missions don't always

align themselves to being in that

joint marketing, that joint communications.

It does happen episodically.

And you do see companies that do this on a good basis.

Look, if you look at the GSI relationships with

a lot of the tier one vendors, this happens

very well, but it has to happen.

This tends to happen in isolation.

And that's one of the things that we have to

remember, is that there is a lot of competing interest

in here that we have to work around or work

with in order to get messages to market.

Why can't we take that best

practices and scale it down? Right.

Scale it down and out?

What's in the way of that?

Can I just go back to Steven's question?

Because I would have a different answer for that.

The reason that you can't do the one plus

one equals three anymore is one partners sell.

I used to say they sell

between five and 25 different products.

They sell now between 25 and

hundreds of different and two.

The customer doesn't care as much that it

says Dell EMC on the storage array, because

they're not looking at it every day.

They're not like bringing people in

to show off their raised floor.

The customer doesn't necessarily have the

data center in their office anymore.

And if they do, they still probably don't have someone

who's walking into the data center on a regular basis,

like brushing their shoulders off that they got the cool

blue lights under the floor that move.

That's not the experience that

our customers are having anymore.

So I think it's less about the technology company

and their partner walking hand in hand into a

customer, and more about the three different technology or

the three different, the MSP, the VAR, and the

influencer or systems integrator walking in together and saying,

these are the 20 technologies that we are going

to implement to help you reach this business outcome,

because that's what the customer cares about now, their

business outcome completely.

But Steven, look, no, I completely agree, but that's why

I'm saying about the sellers have to catch up, because

ultimately, once I vendor X realize that I'm in a

deal, then if I'm having to wait for my peers

to get sold into this, I don't want to wait,

I want to get in there.

And that's the problem right now with some of the

shortcomings of the ecosystem concept, is that the nature of

selling within individual vendors is still based around get my

deal first, and then you guys can go next.

And that motion that you're describing, Heather, doesn't happen

as often as people like to think it does.

I would say it happens more than we think, but

it's not something that, it's not orchestrated like that.

It's just happening.

Oh, no, it's opportunistic.

That's the problem.

It's opportunistic, and it only happens in meaningful ways

when it services the interest of the person who's

trying to get the sale in first in 2024.

What I'd like to hear from you, each

of you, is maybe two or three things.

What can people do to be effective?

Because we can have these great high level conversations

about an ecosystem, and why don't we replicate this?

And co-selling is a challenge, but it's the right way to

go, and it works at the GSI and the vendor level.

Why can't we get it down to the smaller partner level?

By the way, my take is if you can see it

and you can make it work up here, you should be

able to figure out how to make it work down there.

It's inevitable whoever does it

is going to be successful.

But all that aside, Larry, top two or

three things you should be looking at to

get through to that second half of 2024.

And Heather, like to know the same thing from you.

Right.

It's a good way to wrap things up.

I guess you don't want me to say abandon all hope.

Okay, hold on.

I don't even know how to say that.

You just said, and it's in here earlier kidding,

if you get through the first half of 2024,

the second half is going to rock.

Two quarters is nothing.

You better be marketing extremely hard and

effectively now so that you can be

successful in the second half of 2024.

Well, first, I'm going to disagree with you.

If you go out and you talk to any

CRO right now, and two quarters are a lifetime.

I am a CRO.

And as an invitation to explore other

opportunities or maybe get reorged out.

Look, I don't think that we

can abandon building strategic relationships and

getting deeper in with those partners.

It's one of the things that needs to

be done in a more meaningful way.

We prescribe joint business planning to do that.

I think vendors need.

Over the past 18 months, vendors have

been paring down their channel programs, limiting

the number of partners that are participating.

They're going to have to actually open up

and bring more partners into the fold because

the partners they have are not growing and

contributing at a fast enough rate.

So they need to go find new opportunities.

And on top of all that, they have to

invest in both targeted and air cover marketing.

One of the things that will help the partners uncover

opportunities and sell more effectively is that if the vendors

are helping to build customer consideration, I'm not even talking

about getting to the point of generating leads, meaning that

if you can warm up the customers to be open

to having a conversation about the brand, about the product,

it will make things much simpler for the partner to

actually initiate that conversation.

I think adding to that, one thing I'm seeing

is a lot of companies reorging out their more

senior channel executives and hiring at a lower rate.

And I just think that is a huge mistake because

they are going to look back in six months and

realize that they don't have the strength that they need

to get them where they want to go in 2025.

It's the same as stopping marketing.

And I shouldn't say a lot.

I'm seeing a handful, like in the last week, but

others who brought people in six months ago are now

bringing somebody back in on top of them.

So I think it's important that you're thinking

about long term, not just like, got to

make it through the next six months.

Yeah, it's going to be hard, six months, but

make sure that you're prepared for the next.

And then I'm also seeing companies that

realize that incentives are what's going to

keep those partners with them.

Think of how much trouble you took to

recruit and enable all of those partners.

If they're not making money with you, and I

mean more money than they are with a competitor,

they're just going to go somewhere else.

It's right back to the nobody's walking into a

data center and getting excited about the blue lights

going back and forth across the floor like.

Partners will sell someone else if they

can make more money with them.

So think about not just margin, but

how are you spiffing the salesperson?

How are you giving rebates to the customer?

How are you helping the business owner?

And also to Larry's point, make sure you're

enabling them to do sales and marketing correctly.

I want to echo something Heather

said, though, about the quality of.

I'm trying to get to eight.

Okay, you got 60 seconds to get to eight.

No, it's true, though.

Is that because a lot of recruiters will call

me looking for the next talent they're looking for?

There's been a palpable shift in what recruiters

are looking for in channel chiefs, and what

they're equating to is not their skill.

They're not looking at their skills,

they're looking at their relationships.

And they think that they can bring in somebody who

can walk into Presidio, walk into WWT or CDW, that

it's going to solve their problems and it's not.

They need more strategic people that

can build for long term success.

And the other thing that vendors tend to do in times

like these is they tend to try to overcomplicate things.

So I appreciate what Heather is saying about

incentives, but we've just reviewed 200,000 partner records,

and what did we find is that ease

of doing business has a greater impact on

partner productivity than even incentives do.

It's not to say incentives aren't important, but

vendors really need to simplify and make things

easier for partners to work, not harder.

Yeah, no, I agree.

And I think my last take on

that is I agree on the simplify.

Look, I've been doing partner surveys for a long time

and always at the top is to make things simple.

And I'm with you, Larry.

I've read the guidelines for the top hundred

companies out there in the tech space, and

I'm not so sure it's actually taken hold.

But I think it has to go a step

beyond, especially in the technology world and the tech

stack, the world heather and I live in.

I think we're all making a

step towards making them simpler. And that's great.

I agree it needs to be easier.

I think we're to the point where you have to add value.

I think there's enough technology coming

out to make it simple.

Look, any good tech stack out there knows

who the partner is, where the partner is,

what the partner is, when the last time

they're there, and what they've been successful.

Those are just table stakes.

So you can make it so simple for a partner that

they look at and go, oh, this is really intuitive.

If you don't have any value, they're never coming back.

What the partners need and want in life, as far

as driving either leads or revenue or the money that

you owe them for something, that hasn't changed.

So I think one of the things I'm seeing

that's going to be successful for a lot of

technology stack is you got to add value.

And whether that's an incentive program, that is the

right kind of incentive program that gets there, or

the way it's taking content and allowing them to

actually finally personalize content in a short period of

time, these are things that are going to lead,

I think, to success.

And that's what's going to have partners going back

and engaging because you can go out and recruit

all day long, you can promise them all these

great things and you can bring them in.

You can make it really simple.

If they don't have value, they're

not going to stay anyways.

Larry, I know you've had a crazy year

and you've flown all over the place.

I appreciate you taking a little

bit of time to join us. Much appreciated.

Heather, I know your life is crazy right now towards

the end of the year, so I appreciate you taking

a little time to join us as well.

Thanks for having us.

Seriously, it was a pleasure. Thank you both.

Have a great holiday and I'll see you guys all soon.

Peace.