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, everybody, to another

episode of ChannelWaves.

I'm your host, Steven Kellam.

Very excited to have Rachel Tuller,

longtime Channel Chief, joining me today.

And we're going to talk about what would you do if

you walked in the door and could start all over.

So Rachel and I have been talking about that.

And first of all, welcome, Rachel. Thank you, Steven.

Happy to be here.

One of the reasons I want to talk about it.

Its the end of the first quarter, and a lot

of people are seeing a lot of changes taking place.

They had these plans for what

2024 is going to look like.

A lot of people got a lot of

surprises towards the end of the year.

And in Q1, either they lost

resources or something changed in their hierarchy

or something changed in their budget.

So one of the things we thought we'd talk about

is, okay, maybe it's time to do a reset.

So you're walking in the door, where do you start?

And as long as it's not, let's do the same thing

all over again and hope for a different result.

No, 'cause that's the definition of insanity, isn't it?

And Lord knows some of us are pretty insane.

Having been in this industry a while.

Well, yeah, super excited to be here, and I think

this is a really hot topic, Stephen, I think a

lot of folks are reevaluating their programs, right.

They came in with maybe a one or two or

three year plan, and a little while into it, it's

like, ooh, hey, maybe this isn't the right plan.

You know, the whole AI genAI, that stuff.

They're getting pressure from above, pressure from

their boards to do things differently, to

leverage AI in their channels.

And I think people are trying to figure that out.

So whether or not that's the catalyst or

whether that's just on the list of things

that have changed this year, people are reevaluating.

So I think, gosh, if I were to start with a

blank piece of paper, I think the first thing I would

do is everybody says, go talk to the partners.

And that is, I think, something that's very valid, understanding

what the partners want from you as a vendor, and

maybe I'm a big fan of stop start, continue.

So I would probably do that exercise

with both partners and internals, my operations

folks, my CRO, my sales leader.

What do you think's working well?

what's not?

But if we could start from scratch, I think one of

the first things I would do is just have a look

at the overall simplification of whatever it is I'm doing.

I think keeping it simple is probably one of the

driving, guiding principles that I've used in the past, and

that has served me well. As a partner.

Two comments, a former partner, two comments on that.

One is, I did want vendors coming to me and

asking me what I thought, but what I really wanted

was a vendor coming to me and telling me, having

already listened, what they were already doing.

And usually at the top of my list was simplification.

Like, I don't need to hire a

headcount just to manage your incentive programs.

This is kind of crazy. Okay.

I come from the incentive world, so

that was where I always went on.

But, yeah, I think simplifying everything. Yeah.

It's about making it easy,

understanding how partners make money.

So if that's what you're talking to partners

about, then absolutely, that should be the first

thing that you do understand their business. Right.

Their business models are changing.

What used to be a traditional reseller is

now both a reseller and an MSP.

And if they're an MSP, they might also be an ISV.

So these lines are getting really blurred.

So if you haven't sat down with your partners lately

or your top partners, I would make sure that you

do that one on one and really understand what's evolving

in their business, because how you're going to help them

make money is really why you have a program.

That's the element of it, right?

They need to make money selling your product.

So what does that look like for them?

And so then you come back to, okay,

what are our customers is asking for? Right?

Because I think that's one thing that we in the

partner world tend to forget is the customer experience and

what the customer needs out of the joint partnership between

me and my partners, I'm a big fan.

You know, win win is the big, you

know, saying all the time, I believe in

win win win, and that includes the customer.

So then I would say, okay, what kind

of partners are my customers working with?

And then let's start to figure

out this ideal partner profile.

That would be step one.

That's something that I have tended to

do midway towards the end and say,

oh, these are all the successful partners.

This must be my ideal partner profile,

instead of really building towards that or

building for that at the very beginning.

So that's something I'd probably, you know, reverse

engineer from how I've done it traditionally.

So you're starting on the external side, and we're going

to get into the internal side and what covers there.

But I think there's so many

moving parts on that external side. Right.

There is the customer. I agree.

And there's a partner we talked about.

Then there is the people that you

co, sell with as well, too.

It's gotten pretty complicated, and you sort of

need to know all of them to be

knowledgeable before you start to manage it internally.

At least that'd be my first thought or idea.

Now, I think that's true.

And the internal piece is not to be underestimated.

I think we all want to be externally

focused, do what's right for the partner.

We also have to remember who we

work for, who signs our paychecks.

And so what are the economics in the partner

economy look like that support our business, right.

That make us successful?

Is it front end discounting?

Is it backend rebating?

Is it different kinds of incentives

that don't actually cost money?

Yes, it's all of those things.

And so what's the magic mix

for you and your vendorship?

The other thing I would do differently is I

would include all of my finance ops and internal

sales leaders from the beginning, not go to them

and say, here's our new program.

How can you help me?

I would say, hey, would you like to

help me create our new program and, you

know, make sure that they're part of that?

I think we spend a lot of time

selling ourselves internally when we don't have to.

Why do you think that seems like

a logical way to do things?

Why did, why does, is this territorial?

Is it because of the way the data flows?

Is it because different MBOs?

What is it that's kind of, that

has kept us from getting there?

Because it seems very, very logical, at

least you think that it would be.

And there are some people that do

that and do it really well.

So I'm not saying, you know, all vendors are like

that, but there tends to be, I don't know about

you, but when I'm in a partner community inside my

company, I often feel like an island.

I often feel like my partner business is isolated

from the rest of the world because I've got

partner ops and partner marketing and partner strategy, which

is all separate from or at least adjacent to

the overall, go to market ops, go to market

strategy, go to market finance.

And while it may be adjacent

or attached, it's not central.

And so my objective would be to be more

central in the conversations with my leadership of those

groups, not just the folks who are actually turning

the dials and pushing the buttons.

Sit down with your CFO, sit down with your

VP of Finance, sit down with your VP of

Operations and say, how are you going to help

support my partners in this new program?

And let's see if we're all rowing

in the same direction, first of all.

So how do you get the sales

and marketing people on the same page?

Well, I think you understand what

is important to them, right.

Anytime you want to get somebody on your

same page, it's like, what works for you?

What are your goals and objectives?

What are you measured on?

And then once you have that level of understanding, it's

easy to then talk to them about, oh, well, if

you helped me with these joint marketing campaigns, that would

help joint drive pipe, which you get credit for, and

that's what you get paid on.

So being able to tie your activities back to

how they're measured, I think is really key.

It seems like a one on one thing, doesn't it?

It does.

I'm curious what you think.

A lot of times I see this

around systems or a lack of data.

And if you don't have transparency, it's really

easy to talk about attribution and accountability.

But if you can't, if you don't

have the data to prove it.

I've seen really good friends on something fall

apart because they can't make their case or

they don't have the data and everything just

breaks when that falls apart. Yeah.

You know, having just come from a data

company, it's some interesting conversations that we've had.

Right.

So you can use data to build your case

or define what your case is, or you can

use data to support it after the fact.

I think a lot of us in the channel tend

to lead with experience and intuition and then go try

and find the data to back it up.

My thinking recently has been around, let's leverage the data

to glean insights from to help us shape our program,

shape our approach, shape what we want to do, tells

us where products are being sold, who's selling them.

Let's leverage that at the beginning, glean those insights, and

then we can build a program based on that versus

sticking with what we've always known and then trying to

shoehorn the data to fit our story.

Yeah, I live in the automation

world and we're a platform.

That's what we do.

But even I know, and I've seen that the

best, most success we had is when there was

an emphasis on build the program, build the process,

and then put the automation behind it.

And I'm actually completely fine being the

third piece coming on board on that.

Because as an automation platform, we want

to be there for ten years. Right?

And this cycling of not having the programs in place

and not having the processes in place before they get

there and not having that data in place is probably

what causes more headaches than anything else.

Yeah, I agree, I agree.

And automation is key because as we look

to simplify, streamline, all of those things, we're

all dealing and having to do more with

less bodies, less people, less partners.

Some take cases because we're getting

more refined in our approach.

We've got to have that automation to be able to

scale, I think including that in the overall design at

the beginning versus it being a bolt on later that

says, here's our process and maybe we should automate it.

Let's start with the automation for a change.

Let's look at, you know, what are the tools out there

that maybe I haven't looked at in two or three?

And I'm saying even last year, even if you were

looking for, say, a PRM last year, go look again.

Because there's new players, there's new features,

there's new solutions, there's ecosystem plays.

What you think you know, you might not know

is something that I've been telling myself, right.

Like, just go get educated because there's so

much out there that you don't even like.

They build the process for you, right.

You don't have to reinvent the wheel.

It's already there.

Okay, we made it 15 minutes into the podcast.

We haven't said AI yet, but once you did say ecosystem.

So let's talk about ecosystems for a second.

How is that affecting you today?

By the way, this is a plug for Larry Walsh.

He actually did a really nice little

podcast recently defining what an ecosystem is.

I'm telling you, the whole ecosystem thing.

I was talking about ecosystems inside of a

little incentive world ten years ago for me.

I have a place to go and a reference point.

I see people rolling their eyes when they

talk about ecosystems because it's so strangely defined.

But it's incredibly important in

all of its layers, right?

Yeah, an ecosystem, I mean, anytime you think of

a system or a, you know, solar system or

so, it's like all these moving parts that eventually

bump into each other and roll into each other.

To me, that's an ecosystem right now.

And it's like I shared earlier

about the different partner types even. Right.

What we used to have defined, very, very clear

definition of partner types are not much anymore.

They're ecosystem players.

They're an SI who does services, who is

an MSP, who builds their own technology, and

yet they also have services and consulting practice.

So I think those types of, and then

cobble all of those together in a co

sell environment to deliver solutions to the customer.

And that's your ecosystem.

That's how I define it.

Multiple partners working together

to serve the customer. In a nutshell.

And I can't remember if that's what Larry said or not.

I think it's pretty close.

And it's funny how they all go

back to the buyer in the end.

So how are they buying and how

is that service going to be delivered?

It's from an ecosystem, from an ecosystem

of partners that have an ecosystem of

vendors that are coming together.

It's fascinating for me because I

live in the content world.

So in that content world, as it gets more complicated,

it's actually interesting for us now because of AI.

Maybe we can jump into AI for a second.

Because you think about that, you got a buyer

at the end, you got four people selling to

them, and you got four vendors selling to them.

It gets pretty complicated to get that message across.

Right.

So what are you seeing in the AI world?

So I think what's super exciting there is,

there's an interest and a desire to do

more of this better together messaging.

I mean, we've been saying better together

for like 20 years now, right?

One partner plus one partner equals three.

But in crafting that messaging, we're

telling the whole story now.

We're not just telling our little piece of

it, cobbling it on besides somebody else's. Right.

Like, the experience can be more

melded, as can the message.

And I think that's probably where

the art of AI comes in.

And it's super, super powerful because we

used to have to, you typically would

come together at, say, disti, right?

Disti works with a hardware vendor,

they work with the software.

They were the platform vendor, they

work with a cloud provider.

They would typically pull all that stuff together.

And it's a very manual process.

Well, now any one of us can do it

with your product and others just to point it

to different sources of content and say, hey, I

would like a message that looks like this.

And there's my prompt, and there's my

email, and there's my banner, and there's

everything else that goes with it.

I mean, it just makes it so

much easier for the rest of us.

And it removes some of those layers of

administration and of support that we need.

And I think in the end we're honing better

messages that resonate with the customers around their use

cases, their industries, their needs versus what our needs

are and what we're trying to see sell them.

Well, I mean, that is, I think that's

one of the goals, by the way.

I think it's pretty good for disti's, too.

Think about what a disti has to do to try

to pull all those vendors together and all that messages.

For a lot of these long

tail partners, that's been pretty complicated.

They probably have aggregated more content that's just

sitting out there that hasn't been able to

be pulled together than probably anywhere, right.

If you look at the big

three distis for sure, that's true. That's for sure.

I know they're taking advantage of it.

So on the AI side, kind of last one on the AI.

Once again, you're walking in the door, you're

looking at talking to the partner, you're looking

at selling internally, you're looking at leveraging data.

Maybe we can finish up with the AI side.

So where do you go?

What do you look at?

Everybody's talking about, okay, I have an AI agenda,

or I need an AI agenda, you know, where

do you go in the channel for that?

I think one of the things that

we're looking at building out as an

industry would be there's specializations, there's security

specializations, there's platform specializations, there's cloud specializations.

Is AI going to be a specialization?

I don't think unto itself it's too broad of a category.

I think we're going to have to get even

a couple levels down around specializations, around that.

I'm not a huge fan.

I do believe in specializations.

I've had them in my last three programs.

I think the customers like to see that

specialization from a partner that, hey, they've got

the qualifications and credentials to go do this.

But how valid is it in the AI world?

I think what we're really looking for is

we need some partners with experience that have

done this and then can tell us what

they've done to help solve problems for customers.

And so that's more storytelling, that's more use

cases, that's more, here's what I've done for

them and I can do for you.

And I know in the marketing world, we love use cases.

We get them out there all the time because that's what

rings a bell with customers trying to find partners that can

tell that story really well has been a challenge.

We can tell it as vendors

because we know what we're doing.

We need partners to go tell

those stories, and that's been hard.

It's been really hard for partners.

I believe that AI is going to change

what partners are able to do very quickly.

It's really interesting on that storytelling piece.

There's a lot of big picture around AI.

This is what's interesting.

You walk in, you want to program.

Where do I use AI?

What's it effective?

I think the low hanging fruit

is actually in the storytelling.

I think that's going to be one of the easiest

places for people to really get value out of. Yeah.

And shameless plug, that's where

you guys definitely win.

I didn't mean it to be a shameless plug. Well, not for you.

I can say it.

You can't say it, but I can say it.

You can say it because it's been...

Look, what's the number one truism

of 95% of the partners?

They're bad at what? Marketing.

There we go.

So we know that.

I think, I think, I think anybody. Yes.

And it's just absolutely bad.

And even if they're good at it, they don't have.

They don't have.

They don't have the time, the resources.

I think pulling all these things together, in

the end, if you want to shorten the

time to revenue, you make them better storytellers.

I totally believe on that.

And just one more thing on AI internally, like using

it to run your business, I think it's something that

we as Channel Chiefs need to take a look at. Right.

Our CROs are asking us for all kinds

of really great data, us for insights.

They're asking us to be smarter, glean these

kind of stories ourselves from our business.

And I think that we, as Channel Chiefs need to

figure out how to put AI into our channel programs

for the benefit of the partners and our own organizations.

A couple different ways to do that, but I think

that that's something that we need to start thinking about.

That's a really interesting comment.

Four years ago, I used to run around, I was

working for a very large incentive company, and I used

to say, hey, if you don't have a data scientist

to figure out, how do you make decision grades if

you don't have a data scientist? Right.

Because you got to pull up data. That's great.

I've got all this data. It wasn't me.

And that was like the ring the bell data scientist.

Got to have a data scientist.

I think now, what's really interesting, what you were

talking about is that the data scientists taking that

AI, is it a combination of the two?

I really like what you're talking about there and

figuring out where in your systems and your processes

you can get more out of that data.

I mean, it's just machine learning or whatever.

It's just quickly getting to the answer. Right?

The right answer.

We were having that conversation the other day

when we were talking about co-sell.

So co-selling has been around forever, right?

The whole meet in the market concept, being

able to multiple vendors selling into a customer

who's the tip of the spear.

But we've taken it to the next

level lately with joint incentives, joint marketing.

It's the whole stack now.

It's from joint messaging and selling all

the way down to joint services delivery.

We have all of that data inside our CRMs and inside of

our PRMs as to who's bought from who in previous years.

We're just now learning how to get at all of that.

And I think that's where the data science, that's

where the AI comes in, because we can ask

some prompts of the data that we have.

Who are the top partners that have

sold into manufacturing using "x" product?

Let's pull that data out of our

PRM and build a campaign for them. Yeah.

And why and how long and what's the ROI?

All of this data that you can start to pull in.

Like, not only were they successful,

but how were they successful?

What were their steps involved in it?

You can sort of see the whole path. Right.

I think it's going to be pretty fascinating.

Wrapping this thing up, Rachel.

Okay, here's the things that I heard.

You start with the buyer, right?

And you move through the partners, then you move

to the vendors, then you move to all the

data, and then you pull the AI in there.

And those are sort of the steps in the process.

Did I hear that correctly?

You want to make any changes on that?

If there are five things that you could

advise as you move through that process. Oh, I forgot.

Selling internally and getting everybody internally

in automation, that I would add. I think that would add.

Sorry.

So please go right ahead and wrap it up.

Yeah, I think if I were to expand on that,

like, circle back to what we talked about by checking

out your vendors first, your third party vendors with all

the tools that are out there in the marketplace. Right?

See what's out there, see what's happening, see

what you can plug and play, right?

Let's not invent the wheel by the way, when

it comes to partner portals and platforms and everything

else, you all know that only 10% to 20%

of your partners are using them.

So let's not overbuild them. Right?

Let's make it MVP.

Let's make it V1, let's make it automated.

And I think that keeping it simple, you know, as

your core tenant, is really the place to start.

I talked to three vendors at a VP level

of not just channels, but channel marketing, channel sales,

even into the sales operation, even getting it a

little bit into the direct side a little bit

over the past couple of weeks.

And all three of them said they wanted

their partner experience to be like one click.

And I keep hearing this over and over

again, how do we make this experience?

And I know we talk about shortening time to

revenue, we got all these things to talk about, but

this is what I'm hearing is how do I tie

those dollars in their incentives or whatever and make it.

You said simplify, I think that was, yeah, I've

been telling my teams for years, if a partner

can't figure out on one slide how they make

money for you, then it's way too complicated. Right?

So if that's one click, one slide, one page,

one something, make it super simple. Now to do

that its super complex on the backend because you might

have a couple different, four different platforms or services

that you're using to simplify it for the partner.

So let's not be crazy and say that it's easy

to do, but it does need to be simple.

Okay, that's a whole separate podcast.

We could actually do a podcast.

We could talk about that because I keep

hearing about, okay, we've got these MDF dollars,

we got these incentives, we've got a marketplace.

How do we get them there?

Look, with APIs and AI today and the

technologies out there, if the programs and the

processes are right and you got that automation,

I think you can accomplish that.

But I think it's a lot of work.

I agree with you to make something really simple, but I

do think that's the, that's the North Star, that is.

Okay, Rachel, once again, thank

you for joining us listeners.

Thank you for listening in.

If you have any questions for Rachel, the

best way to find her is LinkedIn on

LinkedIn or rtuller@gmail.com for my personal email.

Okay, thanks Rachel, you have a great day.

Thanks listeners, have a great day. Thanks, Steven.