Episode 2 - Sitting Still Sucks

In this episode we'll discuss:

• The anxiety of doing nothing
• The ELG alliance
• Leading and Lagging Metrics

Check out our sponsor for this episode SuperGlue!

https://www.superglue.io/scratch

Transcript

0:00

Today's episode is brought to you by superglue. How would you rank the relationship between you and your partner teams and their sales teams on a scale of one to five? If you're at like a one or a two, or asking yourself what relationship. You need to check out superglue. Super glue is a partnership's workflow automation tool that takes out all the friction of engaging partners, onboarding them and co-selling with them. It takes out all the mystery of who and when to engage, to take advantage of all the benefits of ecosystem selling. Imagine that you just got a new lead in your system. In the past, if there was an overlap with your partner, you might find that out in CRM or perhaps through a slack message. But what do you do from there? Superglue solves this problem by automating the right content for the right partner at the right time. The way that they want to receive it. Superglue is automating trust and keeping you top of mind. Check out superglue today at superglue.io/scratch. That's super glue. Dot IO slash scratch.

A-A-Ron: 1:06

Record.

Jessie Shipman: 1:08

Hit record.

A-A-Ron: 1:09

Yeah,

Jessie Shipman: 1:09

I don't know what that

A-A-Ron: 1:10

a whole company. He started a whole company called Hit Record. It's like a collaboration of artists and you can, you can do pieces in different parts of different types of like, uh, art or music. It's really interesting and fascinating.

Jessie Shipman: 1:20

I have never

A-A-Ron: 1:21

thing that he does on the

1:22

This is literal, scratch the podcast where three friends brought together by partnerships. Dig deep into that world with authenticity, vulnerability, and a touch of humor. We're here to share our experiences, challenges, and successes, and to help each other grow in the partnership space. Whether you're a seasoned pro and partnerships, or just starting out. Join us as we navigate the twists and turns of our professional lives, sharing insights and learning from each other along the way. Welcome to literal. Scratch.

Jessie Shipman: 1:54

hey guys, how are

A-A-Ron: 1:55

you say it, I think about that Good intro. We're here.

Jessie Shipman: 1:57

Good. Um, Yeah, I'm exhausted. Uh, speaking of, speaking of family trips, I literally rolled in the door, uh, from the mountains like 30 minutes ago, like just enough time to like take a shower and hop on with you. Also, I did not warn my husband that this is what I was going to do because I didn't want him to be like, oh my God, we have to rush and get back because if we weren't gonna get back in time, y'all would be waiting because like a rush. Tony is like not a happy Tony. And so like we were not We are not even gonna play that game. So like, I don't know, 15 minutes ago I was like, uh, I'm gonna go record a podcast. I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to rush because for all the reasons I just said. And he was like, okay, So I like sat down in front of the tv. He's like, I'm tired. I was like, that's totally fine. Do whatever you need to do.

A-A-Ron: 2:53

I told my wife, uh, yet again, like 30 minutes ago. I was like, Hey, I'm gonna finish this prep and then I'm gonna go do the podcast. And she was like, okay. I'm like, I've mentioned it to you twice already, so that. Like, you haven't heard me talk about that as a thing today. Oh no, I remember. So yeah, here we

Jessie Shipman: 3:11

I, um,

A-A-Ron: 3:11

a ice break for the day for me.

Jessie Shipman: 3:13

I headed up to the mountain. So there's two ways you can go in Colorado, right? Like so you head up, we, we head up C four 70 and you can either keep going to I 70 and go west, or you can get off just a little bit before I 70 on 2 85 and go west that way. 2 85 kind of takes you south and 70 kind of takes you straight through the middle of the state. Uh, we choose 2 85 because it's the road less traveled, Um, and if you keep going and going for another two hours or so, you get away from all the people. Uh, and that's our favorite place to go is to like, and, and there's no service. Like there's no service. Um, your battery will just die searching for service. And so I have literally had my phone off since Sunday morning, uh, and it's now Tuesday afternoon.

A-A-Ron: 4:02

Is this like you guys car camping, right? Like all your stuff's in your car. You got that fancy pullout thing you shared about a couple weeks ago, and you're in a tent sleeping on the ground.

Jessie Shipman: 4:13

So, so, uh, my children sleep in a tent on the ground,

A-A-Ron: 4:16

I

Jessie Shipman: 4:18

Um, they used to sleep in the back of the truck. Um, but my daughter is, uh, 12 now and my son is nine. And, uh, my, they're both really wiggly and so the truck was pretty cramped and they would hit each other and my daughter was like, I hate this, and I would rather sleep on the ground than sleep next to my brother. And I was like, that's fair. Um, and so, We set up a tent and they sleep on the ground. And then we have a, a rooftop tent that we sleep in. So,

A-A-Ron: 4:44

Oh, that. Those look so cool. I have wanted to get a car just to get one of those. And then you realize you're all in investment is like$30,000 to get the car to do the thousand, and I can't, haven't got there yet, so

Jessie Shipman: 4:56

Yeah. Um, I don't think our investment is quite$30,000, but it is

A-A-Ron: 5:00

I'm not doing it without the Jeep. I'm sorry. I mean, I've seen the right? It looks the coolest on top of a Jeep. So

Jessie Shipman: 5:06

it looks the coolest on top of an xera to be fair. Uh, and you don't have to spend 50 grand on a Jeep to get an over landing rig. The Xterra is pretty dope. Uh, but to be fair, I would never, ever over land it in Arkansas. So you're good.

A-A-Ron: 5:19

You usually know how great it is here. It's beautiful here. I'm up in the mountains, I say mountains, hills, mountain ish. It's nice, it's beautiful. It's trees. Uh, it's wet. And that's what I've been working on today. My weekend has been really busy up until then, back one day of work, which is so quiet and beautiful yesterday. And then today it has been yard work because people are coming today. So my backyard looks really nice. The pool is ready for guests. Um, prepping. We're gonna do stir fry for the 4th of July. Doing little different. Very excited about that. I have a nice big flat top grill and it's my favorite thing to cook on. So, um, yeah, that's my weekend rundown. Adam, how was your weekend? How excited are you for the holiday?

Jessie Shipman: 6:40

All right, so I'm sitting around. Uh, we, we, we bring a propane fire with us. Um, cuz starting up like a wood fire in a pit in the morning is just the worst, uh, cuz all you want is just to be warm and it's just so much easier to just flick on a propane fire pit. And it is to try to build a wood fire and get warm enough. Um, and by the time it's warm enough, it's warm outside. So we bring them, we're sitting around the propane fire. I'm sitting with my friends and, uh, I'm literally feeling like anxiety, you know, that like chest anxiety that kind of just like sits on you and you're like, don't know what to do with myself, but if I don't get up and be productive, like I might come outta my skin. Um, I, I was literally sitting around this campfire, no phone, no service, no work, no distractions. And I was in just the most beautiful, serene, there's like a creek that's babbling behind me and the birds are singing and it's so beautiful, and I'm like, Like, why do I feel this way? Why do I feel this way? Why I, I was like, I seriously have a problem, y'all. I said it out loud. I was like, I have a problem I need to work through. Like there's no reason that I should not be able to sit and do nothing. Uh

A-A-Ron: 7:59

find any triggers in all? Like did you, did you, did you come to anything that was like resting on you that you felt like you just needed to be working on? Or was that, was it that general sense of I should be productive right now because I haven't earned this time? That's like how my mind works. It's

Jessie Shipman: 8:12

mm

A-A-Ron: 8:12

this downtime. I need to go do something.

Jessie Shipman: 8:15

Okay, so, uh, here, here's how it starts. So this was Monday morning, right? We left on Sunday morning. Sunday's like a productive, cuz you get there and you set up the camp and then like, you know, you gotta make the dinner and the gotta make sure the kids are good and like, it's not really, the day you get there isn't super relaxing.

A-A-Ron: 8:35

How far of a drive, let me, let me get, let me get some metrics. How far of a

Jessie Shipman: 8:38

Uh, it's like between three and a half and four hours.

A-A-Ron: 8:41

Okay, so you guys both did like three and a half, four hour trips this weekend. Okay, good on ya. We just stayed home. Okay, so that's pre, okay, and a half hours.

Jessie Shipman: 8:49

okay, so on Sunday morning I woke up at six 30 and my mind was like, problem solve, Jessie, solve the problem. So here's the problem, right? Here's the problem that was, that needed to be solved. So we got our first customer at fluency. They're amazing. Right? Amazing people. Um, we're watching on the back end. The things kind of start to work cuz now, now it's real, right? So it's been this idea for a really long time and now we actually have it in a customer and now we can start to kind of watch some of the things in the backend that in the pa in the past we're a hypothesis. There were just this idea and we're like, this should work. Um, but now we get to actually like watch and see it work. And the problem that we're having is actually like a human behavior problem, which is, uh, we, we use Google meet. In Google Meet transcription does not turn on automatically the way that it does or recording doesn't turn on automatically the way that it does in Zoom or the way that it would if they were using Gong. And so they're using Google Meet and the human who has to actually transcribe so that the transcription can then get to us, has to actually click the transcription button, which is a new behavior for them, and they're not doing it because we're not getting any transcripts. On our end, we're watching it and the ones that come through do send messages, but we've only gotten like two in two and a half weeks. And I'm like, how do I change their beha? Like this is a behavior problem that has to be changed. And so at six 30 in the morning on Sunday, I'm like, how can we fix this? Is this a noti? Like can we notify them? Can we put like a flash screen up? Can? Is it something that we can do in Google Meet Like Right. Just like my brain will just not shut up. And then I have to get up and pack the car and pack the kids. And, and, uh, Tony's amazing. And he was, he was actually doing most of this because he knows that this is a huge trigger for me and that I'm just like a ball of anger the entire time that we're camping if I have to take care of any of this. Um, and so he's really doing it all. But like my, the whole time, I'm just like, problem solve problem. Like what can we do? What can we do? Right? So we finally like, sit down in the car. I get, you get about 45 minutes of driving through Denver until you lose service, and then you'll get it again in another 5 45 minutes for about five minutes, and then you'll get it again in another 45 minutes for about five minutes, and then it's gone and so on, like 15 minutes into the 45 minutes of service. I'm like, oh my God. We build a Chrome extension, what if we just build a Chrome extension? And so I'm like, I got 30 minutes I'm like, how did we do this? And I'm like, me, I'm messaging one of my developers and like, I wanna try your hand at a Chrome extension. And like, I sent him what I found on CR Chat, G B T, and then service is gone. Right? Like I give him like two sentences of context and then I'm out. Like I, I can't contact him again. And meanwhile, He had messaged me some at some point over the weekend, but like on Monday morning, as I'm sitting around the campfire, this is what I'm thinking about and I'm like,

A-A-Ron: 11:53

It's,

Jessie Shipman: 11:54

I can't, why? I gotta be able to let

A-A-Ron: 11:57

wanna point out, I wanna point something out though, context from perspective for you, right? A year ago, your concern wasn't, how do I solve a problem for an active customer? It was, how do I get a customer to give us a real shot to really get involved? So, perspective wise, having talked to you about this stuff for over a year, I'm working with you now. Like, I think that's like, it's, it's, it's encouraging to me cause I'm like, that's fantastic cuz you're actually you, you're now triggered by real, tangible things that you need to go out and do. Not hypotheticals, not what ifs, but like, no, here's a real problem that I need to solve. And then you can up with the solution. I think for me, the stressors that you came up with a solution and you send it into the void and now you have to sit. Wondering, did they get the message? Are they gonna work on it? Are they excited about it? Do they think it's possible? Like, cool, let me just sit by this propane fire that doesn't even have a smell to distract me thoughts

Jessie Shipman: 12:51

Yeah.

A-A-Ron: 12:52

continue to dwell on that while I sit around people. Yeah.

Jessie Shipman: 12:55

Yeah, for sure. I even brought books with me and just like couldn't get myself to read them. Ultimately, I ended up like laying in a hammock and taking a nap for three hours because I just like couldn't figure out how to sit in my own skin.

A-A-Ron: 13:08

you sometimes, right? I have a son, I'm my oldest son. He's like, I'm bored. I'm like, I can find things for you to do. Like I'm starting to see, I hear my dad just roll right outta my

Jessie Shipman: 13:17

Oh, my dad used say that too. Yeah.

A-A-Ron: 13:20

so crazy. Like, don't tell me you're bored. I'll make you miserable. Don't tell me you're bored. Um, but I also, I'm also the same way. And yesterday at work was one of those days and um, I finally got focused like at two 30 and then that ran until about three o'clock this morning. So for me it was like, it was all work stuff, all these problems and things that I have to solve at work that are just really boring and work I don't wanna have to do that I have to make myself focused on. And then last night it was, I got the kids to bed and I'm like, what if I build a job board? I'm do So I built a job board last night using like free point tools and started, started part of populating it with partner ops jobs. And I'm like, cool, this will be a new thing that I don't, that nobody asked for that I'd feel compelled to do for, um, few weeks. And if we could, we'll see how it goes. Um, that's, that's the struggle I have is like the ideas just keep coming. And then there's the full-time gig. I was actually thinking about it this morning. I was like, it's frustrating to talk to you two, not because I don't like you, but because you're living. A completely different type of lifestyle, right? Like you guys are you, you're founder and Adam, I guess, are you considering yourself a founder? I mean, I know a little bit about what you're after right now, but not a whole lot. And so I don't, I'm I'm not sure if you'd say, yeah, I'm a founder, or if you're entrepreneur, I'm not sure what you would use. Right. And then I'm over here like, sorry guys. I can't meet on Friday because I have a work meeting, um, for a project that's going sideways that ultimately I'm not even sure I really care that much about, but it's cool. It's cool. We'll talk on the holiday instead.

Jessie Shipman: 14:41

That's okay. get it.

A-A-Ron: 16:49

Hmm.

Jessie Shipman: 17:05

So, um, I love that I, I know that about you, um, that that's where you're at, is just sort of trying to figure out like baseline who Adam is and what Adam is apart from his work. Uh, and I, I do really love, uh, that you're taking some time to, to figure that out. You deserve it. Um, I got I, I get cold outreached on LinkedIn. Not a lot. Uh, I'm not. A big enough deal to get cold outreached a lot. Uh, but I do get it on occasion and, um, I got one and I, I usually just ignore them. Um, even though every part of me wants to be like, just don't pitch slap me. I hate that. Um, and I, but I've learned to just ignore them. It, it's easier that way. And, uh, but I, I got one and the guy, he, he came back at me again and he said, okay, it seems like this might not be a good fit for you right now, but could I get some feedback from you about like, why this isn't so that I can better understand my market? And I was like, oh, yes you can. Uh, and so I messaged him and was like, okay, number here's some great, here's some feedback. I was like, number one. Don't pitch. Slap me on LinkedIn when you haven't engaged with with me on any of my content. And I accepted your connection and then you immediately pitched me, don't do

A-A-Ron: 18:33

Immediate drives me nuts

Jessie Shipman: 18:35

I was like, show me. And then I used a, a Sam McKenna ism and I said, show me. You know me. I actually think Sam McKenna actually trademarked that. Show me, you know, me as Sam McKenna is like trademark. So tm, Sam McKenna, um, Sam Sales, uh, case Um, and, uh, And then I was like, number two, it, what he was selling was essentially like, uh, pay for leads. And like cold outreach optimization. And I was like, I, I actually don't know that there's a market for what you're selling in the next like 12 months Um, I was like, number two. And then I was like, and number three, uh, I was like, I'm so early for the thing that you're selling, and if you'd done a modicum of research, you would understand that I am not ready for cold outreach. That that is not what I should be doing at my stage of business. And you have, I am not your target market. Uh, and I was like, have a nice day. I was trying to be as nice as possible, but like do are, are y'all ever getting any of this like pitch slappy, like cold outreach stuff? Like how do you react? I.

A-A-Ron: 19:45

All the time. I have an ops mindset, though. It's like what you, what I, what I know about LinkedIn InMail credits is that if I don't respond, they don't get the credit back. But if I respond in any way, positive or negative, they get the credit back and they can use it. For something else. When I do sales ops training, I'm like, Hey guys, the the, what you need to do is, do you wanna get connected? Right? But all the things you just said, clearly, don't be blind outreaching people with pitches and call like aim to get some kind of response. Because even from a credit management standpoint, that allows you to reach out to more people. E, even a no right? Make it easy for them to say no, whatever. It's, so I always think about that and I'm like, Hmm, am I offended enough that I wanna burn your credit Because

Jessie Shipman: 20:25

Well, it wasn't, it wasn't even in mail, so he had people connect. I, I am those, like I was, I'm one of those like connect unless it's obvious that they're trying to sell me something. Right. Because I.

A-A-Ron: 20:37

I have the same, yeah, I'm a little bit wary on that too. Right now my new, my new thresholds is getting really deep in partnership. Community is like, how many mutual connections do we have? Is it 15 or more? Because if it's 15 or more, you're kind of an auto connect. And if it's less than 15, I'm probably gonna look a little bit. And if it's like less than five, I'm like, I'm probably just gonna ignore it for right now.

Jessie Shipman: 20:57

I guess for me, like.

A-A-Ron: 20:58

threshold I have.

Jessie Shipman: 21:00

Yeah. I guess for me, like my audience, like the audience that I'm going after right now is kind of nichey, it's, it's, you know, the partner people who are interested in partner, uh, enablement. But the reality is, is that like, this is partnerships is making a real turn into like, Mainstream and gtm and more salespeople are going to have to understand like the nature of partner enablement, the nature of partner operations, the nature of, of co-sell and co-marketing. And so like the more of those people that I have as part of my audience, the better I feel about how that information will get out into the mainstream, like G T M. Uh, communities. And so like even if people are going to pitch slap me, I still kind of feel like I wanna connect with them whether we have mutual connections or not. And so I'm like, yeah, okay. Like, it, it, that feels worth it to me. It feels worth it to ignore their pitch, that they are then potentially seeing some things that I'm putting out into the world. Oh, really? Okay.

A-A-Ron: 23:26

Yeah. I think that's interesting. So, um, you know, right when you, when you, when you try to connect with somebody, you automatically follow them as well. So every connection request I get is an auto follow. So if you care about following, you don't have to accept connections cuz those people become a follower. By the sake of just reaching out to connect with you, but I also think you two are both in a position to buy things. I think people look at who I like. They look at my title in the company and they hope I'm in a position to buy things. But I am in absolutely no position to spend any money on technology for the company that I work for. Not me. Not gonna happen. I'm in an architectural and can't even convince'em to deprecate technology. That's bad for the architecture because I've been directly told I have, I won't influence 99% of the company. So like these are the things I'm fighting, right? So when I get a pitch slap, it's very much like, I agree with you. I'm like, wow. You didn't see anything. You maybe saw a post I had that was like, that went well, had a bunch of interaction, or you saw my article or you saw somewhere else where I got invited somehow to do something and you've just responded kind of on the gut. I think a lot of what I get right now, I'm seeing a lot of, uh, from the partnership perspective, a lot of like programmatic connection. And I write, I'm in a niche. I'm, I'm in partner ops and I've focused a lot about this. I talk a lot about this. So I, I get a lot of connections from partner ops people. Those tend to have messages and outreach. Uh, one of the coolest ones was meeting somebody who said, Hey, like, I'm reaching out to connect because I've got a job in partner ops. I don't know what I'm doing. And when the company hired me for this job, I told him that. I said, where can I learn about this? The HR manager pointed me towards your podcast and I was like, you can have all the time of mine you want. That's amazing. Literally nobody has ever, that's fantastic. So like, that person will always get my time. Um, and I'm happy to sit and help and chat and work through stuff, but, uh, I think, I think there's context there, right? Like if I move into. Again, it's coming back to like what's frustrating about visiting with you too is I have this spirit, like this entrepreneurial bug where I have all these things I want to do and I'm not quite there yet. I think Adam, I'm, I'm in that same journey you're in of understanding that niche of part, right? It's really crystallized, and Jesse, what you said really hit toward that a minute ago, like landed really hard with me around like partnerships is moving forward to the front of the GTM rhythm. And so when I think about partner operations, that's just this past week having conversations where people are saying, man, Your audience is not partnerships. It's not program leads. Your audience is CROs, you're speaking to CROs. Your, your effort to build partner rhythms, even on the operational side is all about stab, like, stabilizing, foundational revenue growth opportunities through operation. And I was like, like this has been like revolutionary stuff for me, helping me have that same conversation like, great. What are my principles? What are, what is it that I really care about? What do I really want to do? What could I really help people with? Um, and so y'all keep me thinking about that, which is great, because if not, I would be like going nuts at work, just like trying to move this like giant ship, you know, an inch to the left, toward, you know, the 90 degree turn we need to make. So,

Jessie Shipman: 29:16

Well, I feel like we're doing it just so like dis like we, we not like the three of us, but like we as like a community of partner leaders or people who have been doing this are just doing it so desperately. So, I mean that actually like brings me to another topic of like who, Aaron, I'm not sure if you heard this announcement, I'm using air quotes here. Uh, I guess it was officially an announcement, but like at Supernode, Bob Moore, the CEO of Crossbeam, talked about the E L G Alliance. Did you hear about this? The E

A-A-Ron: 29:48

did, saw, I saw some of the content come out like the next week, but again, running 50 hours a week, I

Jessie Shipman: 29:54

Yeah, totally.

A-A-Ron: 29:55

to really go into it. So

Jessie Shipman: 29:56

Yeah, no worries. Um, I mean, it's nothing you haven't heard before, right? Um, but essentially like a bunch of companies including, uh, led obviously by Crossbeam, um, but also including like Pavilion, right? Which, which is like a huge, uh, revenue community where like, The top revenue leaders in SaaS are like hanging out and, and uh, sharing ideas and, uh, thought leadership and, um, and so they're, they're on board too. But the idea behind E L G, the E L G Alliance rather, is that there, there's common language, there's common metrics around sales, there's common language and metrics around marketing, but there's really, like, I. No common language or metrics around partnerships,

A-A-Ron: 30:52

Mm-hmm.

Jessie Shipman: 30:52

um, and. I, I kind of keep going back to this in one of these themes that keeps coming to, to mind when I talk. Like channel has been around forever and channel sales has been around forever. And, and I think for a little while there, uh, when partnerships was sort of having a moment and, you know, Jay McBain declared like the decade of the ecosystem or whatever, everybody was like poo-pooing channel as like this old school, uh, you know, Boys club kind of situation, which to a certain extent is true and uh, is, is still around. Um, but there's a lot about partnerships that we can understand from what channel was a long time ago. But there's still not a lot of common metrics or what around what makes a, a successful channel that we can then talk to and measure against and have benchmarks for. And so like what are your thoughts around companies coming together? Well, A lot of, truthfully, a lot of the companies in the E L G are partner tech companies and so it serves them well to have metrics. Um, but the inclusion of something like Pavilion, I feel like gives us a little bit of traction. Um, and so like what are your thoughts on getting some of these common metrics? What do you think that they should be? What should be some of the common language? And then how do the rest of us sort of come together if our companies aren't part of the E L G? How, how do we help to, to build this lexicon, um, and the arithmetic around it, um, in a way that we can all start talking the same language?

A-A-Ron: 32:31

That's a fun, it's a fun question. It comes up in other ways too, right? When you talk about E L G and the commonality of it and working in multiple companies in operational capacity so far. It's like we're solving the same problems at all of these companies. And when you say channel, right, even channel has specific context for people, just depending on their own experience of what they've done with partnerships. For me, when you say channel, I think resellers, I think legacy, perpetual licensing, I think transition to cloud like these are, these are problems that these companies have to deal with. And so I can point to a real specific example. When you go from like a perpetual licensing model to a cloud, Licensing model with a reseller group. The challenges you face in that transition are the same for every company. It doesn't matter what your industry is, you have the same hurdles, but there's no playbook for it. I'm somehow at the third company I've worked at since 2008, not even since like. There should like, right? Like that's not that long. And I've worked at three different companies who have faced this transition and had to, how do we move partners from, from the legacy perpetual reseller model to a cloud reseller model? What does the infrastructure look? Right? Right. So I've seen it really clearly exemplified in that when I go to each company and they're all challenging these problems and looking for ways to solve these problems, and now I've done it enough where I can feel like I can point to and be like, Hey, that's maybe not you're gonna have this problem and this problem. Like there's really a playbook to your point. Um, and hopefully those companies don't, we don't have a lot of those companies left, but it is ubiquitous. I think maybe part of the problem is also that. We have all these new program types that maybe have always existed, like OEM has been like white label in the past, but still it's a reseller model where you take a, a white label copy of our software and sell it as your own. Um, I think the conversations we're having right now, I think the, the inclusion of more and more partnership people, right? As we build community. In different spaces and have more conversations because we've all, all of us have kind of felt like the, like the, the unwanted child, that third or fourth or fifth or sixth child that just shows up and we have to make it work. Like we all have that, that like, we've been a little burned and we need each other in our own community because the company doesn't even understand us kind of feeling. I think that's paving the way for these metrics. For me operationally, I've seen that really reflected in architecture too. I'm having so many conversations very consistently with rev ops companies who are trying to understand partner tech with partner tech companies who are saying, Hey, we are hitting, you write about architecture. We're going into company after company, and they don't know what to do about this stuff. W how, you know, are there opportunities there to work and collaborate? So I think it's those things. It's, it's recognition, it's people having those conversations. Beginning to drive those things. And for me it's, it's all about simplicity. Right. And you guys have probably seen this too, in your own work. There's like, I don't know, like selling is a process, no matter what you call it or how you approach or like challenge yourself, whatever, like. You have a process where you move somebody from point A to point B. It doesn't have to be rocket science, it doesn't have to be difficult. You don't need 15 points, like, you know, that's the stuff that kind of gets in the way. And I've yet to see a company go, let's just keep it as simple as possible at all points with as little, with as limited friction as possible, right? Anytime you ask for a data point from a new sales rep, I want you to show me what metric, for example, you think it's gonna impact, and then we're gonna test it for six months. And if there's no impact, we're taking the field out. Like that stuff doesn't exist to make sure there's no friction in the sales process. So I think all, I dunno if I'm answering the question, but I think all of that speaks to your point, right? We need things like the E L G, we need these companies coming and asking and helping and create a better standard. And I think the metrics have to just be really, really simple. They're no different than anything else. For me, it's a R R R R, churn, t l v. Great. I wanna see that. I have a whole article about this. For me, it's great. I wanna see those same numbers by partner and by program. If your architecture can do that. What else do you really need? Right? I can look at ARR for partner. I can look at Churn for Partner. I can look at T L V for partner based on their customers and how we associate them. Like that's not rocket science. That's about as simple as I think I can make it for most people. Um, and that begins us to, that begins to marry those pieces together so we can have, to your point, the sales conversation and the partnership side, and share that language from the sales makes and ops side. Yes. Hmm. Hmm.

Jessie Shipman: 39:02

So what are the leading measurements in some of the other, like revenue generating, uh, departments? Like what are, what would you say are like the le cuz I only ever hear about the lagging metrics, right? Like, to Aaron's point, like l t v, uh, ARR, r r uh, you churn, uh, payback period. Like there are e everything that anybody has ever KPId on is a lagging metric. And so like what are some of the leading metrics that you, you are thinking about in those other spaces that. People, baby, our metric, Don, that I'm not thinking about. Okay. Well, but does that we. So as one of the things that we've learned over the last 10 years, like at we're, we're starting to recognize people are starting to recognize, like in, I, I just use that people are saying, uh, uh, that the, uh, Traditional predictable revenue motions of, if I call this many people, then this, I will get this much engagement and this much engagement equals this LA I'm able to actually have a line, a very clear line from leading metric to lagging metric and everything in between. That actually helps me to know when to spend money, how to spend money, who to spend money on, and I is what we're missing the metrics on both ends, right? And so we're actually saying like, Uh, we don't know where or when or how to spend money in partnerships because we don't know what the leading metrics are. We don't know what the lagging metrics are, and so we're afraid to toss money at any of it. Is that essentially, like, do you feel like that's the case? Like, Erin, you probably see this more than anybody, uh, because you, you actually are, you're, you're formulating the data, um,

A-A-Ron: 42:29

I'm actually thinking really specifically about, um, like partner recruitment and, and Adam hinted toward this at one point, right? Like and you already know that this too enablement, right? That getting a partner signed. How many signed partners? That's a lagging metric. Okay, good. We signed 50 partners last year. Okay. But have you done any, any analysis to know how those 50 performed and how quickly they performed? Um, I worked with an agency manager once and he's working on. Like I can, agencies producing like a million dollars in sourced revenue. His close rate, uh, you know, for his deals is like 45 or 50%, which is still higher than the direct side. Um, like it's all fine. And I was like, great. If somebody asked you how you would double your revenue next year, what would you do? He's like, oh, well, um, I guess, and he didn't keep up. Like he had agencies kind of come in and come out of flow. He didn't keep up. He didn't, he didn't know why some had dropped off. Like we had one, one go from like a six figure referral source to like nothing. And he hadn't done any, like any follow-up work. And I was like, great. Well, how many new agencies would you need to bring in next year? If everything stays the same, how many new agencies do you need to double your quota to hit 2 million next year in source revenue? And he's like, what do you mean? I'm like, okay. So this is part of the challenge is like program leads is what I'm seeing. They have to start thinking strategically and down funnel and up funnel. Like cool. If part of my job is recruitment is growth is bringing in new partners, well one, I need to identify that ideal partner profile. And this is one of those things like, who do I need to work with? That's not just any agency that shows up. Let me look at my top 10 agencies. Let's build a profile around those folks and then let's go target some new ones and ring them in and test these hypothesis. And then start to measure my activity, my engagement. Let's get a referral, like a, a recruitment rhythm in the lead funnel. Like these are all things that. Lots and lots of companies don't have that I think are really simple. I was talking with somebody just this morning about this, like just messaging back and forth, like we need to try to get more value out of our current tools as well. So I think you're gonna see this impact our, our tech ability, our tech selection, everything else. We don't really need more tech. We need to try to use the tech we have to accomplish more, and I think specifically in partnerships. Those get us to, those indicate like those, those front end indicators, right? Those driving metrics as opposed to lagging metrics and one that I'm trying to study. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this cuz I'm, I'm, I don't, I'm not super familiar with it. I don't think, I've worked at a company that's actively used this metric for how they measure their direct sales. And I'm always looking like, for me it's like, great, what is direct counting? How do I get a partner view of the exact same data? Because if you wanna speak to direct, I need to be able to go to direct and say, Hey, your close rate last year was 40%. Your close rate with tech partner source deals was 65%. Would you like me to open that funnel up a little more and send more of those your way? Let's get you equipped on how to work with those partners more effectively. Right. I would be signing up all day long. One of those other metrics is deal velocity. I think it's such a fascinating concept. It takes a little bit more effort to get to, um, but I'm, I've been thinking a lot this past year, right? It's, again, it's one of those ideas that kind of noodles around back here, and every now and then I'll spend like a couple of days just writing and, and try to formulating and study and get a handle on what it is. Um, but that ability, in taking that, what is the deal velocity of partner sourced, partner influence? What's the deal velocity of partner recruitment, like taking that concept and applying it. I think there's some really interesting things there, but I've never been able to work with it directly in an organization. Is that one that the two of you are familiar with? Have heard Adam started shaking his head. Jesse, you can, you're going up and down as well, so I assume, yeah

Jessie Shipman: 45:47

Yeah, I mean, not, not, Adam probably has a lot more to say about it than I do. Um, based on his head nod.

A-A-Ron: 45:56

it It was more vigorous. That

Jessie Shipman: 45:58

was very vigorous. Yes, I've definitely heard of deal velocity, but I think Adam has actually dealt with it directly. I.

A-A-Ron: 47:01

But we should someday.

Jessie Shipman: 47:03

We definitely should. Yeah. Oh, I love that.

A-A-Ron: 47:46

Yeah. Yeah. So for, uh, for anyone who has not heard of that term, right? My general understanding of deal velocity, and I, I really had to be careful there. By the way, guys, I'm a Smartless fan and so I said, oh, by the way, Tracy, um, I dunno if you guys have listened to Smartless, but Tracy is Sean Hay's sister, and they're constantly explaining the movie industry to her on the because she's unfamiliar. So they just use her as their, like their McGuffin, right? Like, oh, hey Tracy, by the way, this is what that is, right? So I had to pause and then I corrected it. Um, I also don't wanna go too far without a doubt. Let's just say like, how, like hilarious and, um, like throwaway, you were like, oh, in my defense contracting days, like that's Jesse saw me laughing Like that's, what I was, I was like, he just, who just, who just says that? Like, I've been done that Um, but Leo Velocity to the point is right, how quickly a deal moves through stages and how quickly a deal moves toward. Close. And so you want to see a higher velocity. Generally you want to get your velocity up and there's actually things within the metric that you can tweak to try to increase your velocity and move deals faster through the funnel. And really I think a lot of that for me comes back down to qualification, right? Like how fast are we qualifying people out? I love that mindset, like my goal isn't to actually sell to you. My goal is to is to qualify you out of my funnel as fast as possible, because that's honestly good for you. That's good service. From my part, but it's also good for me because my time is heavily based on how many deals I can close and who I can help the most. And if I can't help you, when we spend seven weeks trying to figure that out, what a waste of time. Deal

Jessie Shipman: 50:16

Yeah, that's, that's like medic 1 0 1 for sure. That's like sales. Yeah. The sales philosophy 1 0 1 is like, just qualify, qualify out fast possible. Um, but in the, the contrast of that would be like partner led deals or partner influence deals are often qualified in much faster.

A-A-Ron: 50:36

percent. They show up, they should show up ready. Right. And I think that that comes back to enablement. That's your bag, right? You see like that comes back down to saying, I. Cool. What are you asking your partner for? Are you asking them to throw their trash over the fence? Because another company I've worked with, other companies, they're like, oh, you know what? We're literally gonna give you all the stuff. We don't wanna work. Well, your partners don't wanna work those either. You can't just continue throw garbage over the fence and expect your partners to act like raccoons and be about this, right? Like they need, they need real food to survive just like you do. And so you want that inbound to be pre-qualified. Get your partner equipped on that so that when their stuff shows up, Your AEs are ready to go. They're like, oh, good. Adam sent another one in. He is killing it. His stuff's closing at 90%. I want his, I want to be his dedicated AE kind of thing.

Jessie Shipman: 51:21

Hundred percent. LA last thought.

A-A-Ron: 51:26

Has it been that long already? And everything. Yeah. But everything you just said is also predicated on the idea that as a company, we care about our partners too, as opposed to what I've experienced, which is all of our SMB stuff hits a funnel that's randomly assigned to all of our partners in the US Doesn't, they're not looking at. Which partner's best gonna serve this industry? Which partner's best gonna serve this customer? Which partners gonna, like, they're not doing any of that work. So I'll say that. I agree. If you're doing that, good on you. You, if maybe you have a target like, uh, like, uh, Marco Depa, who's got goals, like one of his KPIs is how many leads are we sending away? How many, how much business are we giving to partners? That's a business kpi, right? That's a mindset piece. I agree with you a hundred percent, but you know what, that also requires, you already said it. Enablement. How do you train your people to make sure they know what they're doing, or operational automation to make sure that when you kick it outta your funnel, we can look at the data organically and automatically send that to the right person. All that requires investment in things that don't bring necessarily tangible revenue to the business like, like back to metrics and back to leading versus lagging and the whole thing we talked about today. It all takes strategy right from the top to the bottom. Full engagement across the board. Every person is a part of partnerships. They just don't know it yet.

Jessie Shipman: 53:50

See, I said last thought and then you gave a last, last thought. You gotta just let me,

A-A-Ron: 53:55

to it

Jessie Shipman: 53:56

me make sure uh, no, but all, all really good things. No more from you, Adam Pash, uh, except for maybe your gratitude, which I know you've been thinking about all week.

A-A-Ron: 54:26

Do I have to go now? You still get to

Jessie Shipman: 54:27

Yeah, I always go last

A-A-Ron: 54:29

right. That's just not, I mean, ladies last I guess is the saying, right?

Jessie Shipman: 54:33

No, that's not the saying, but that's fine. carry on

A-A-Ron: 54:36

Uh, I'm, gonna grateful for community. Um, in particular, uh, I, a couple people I wanna call out, um, Greg Meyer, who used to be at Syn, he is now working freelance and data. He's had some really good content come out around some of the stuff that we're talking about today, like visualizing metrics. That makes sense. But also he's been a good friend conversation, helping me with these same conversations and thinking through like, yeah, how do we get to c r o? And then, uh, Tom Single, who's trying to, he's also a founder. Over at, at Partner Rise, and he's been thinking, actually, he's, he's been thinking deeply about these exact same things and we've had some good conversations that have helped me process through and, and elevate my own thinking about, great, what, how does, you know, my skillset, experience, knowledge, how can I best help people around me? How outside of these deeply technical things, what, what's the larger purpose? So I'm very grateful for those two people this week.

Jessie Shipman: 55:24

Amazing. Um, I have, I have an easy one, but I'm gonna go with maybe the harder one. So, um, Uh, yeah, no, I, this week I'm also, I'm, I feel like I'm frequently grateful for community. Um, but this week in particular, I'm grateful for the partner, tech founder community, uh, this small, uh, It's very small. Um, but we are out there and, uh, and we're all sort of playing in this same space where we're like, we know we're on the verge of something amazing, uh, but in this time, like, what can we do to help each other? As we're sort of like on the bleeding edge of what could be a really big and impactful set of softwares, um, we're all sort of treading this uncharted territory of like, what does this look like and, and how do we go to market? And in the meantime, how do we help each other? So, uh, special shout outs to Rob, uh, at Super Glue. Um, Then, um, also, uh, Scott at, at Furio. So it's Rob re Holz in case you wanna follow him on LinkedIn. Uh, and then, uh, um, Scott Pollock is the CEO over at Furio. Um, they, we have found a way to kind of synergize, ooh, I use that word again. I'm gonna use it every podcast. I'm always gonna hate it. It just comes outta my mouth and I absolutely hate that word. Uh, but we've found a way to, to help each other, uh, them. They, they have some resources. I don't have, I have some, uh, skills that, that they need. And so, uh, they have been, uh, super generous with me and it's been an absolute pleasure to, to work with them and, and continue to work with them in the future. So grateful for you, Rob and Scott. That's it. We did it. The gratitudes.

A-A-Ron: 57:15

Yes, score. Hey, happy 4th of July.

Jessie Shipman: 57:17

Hey, happy 4th of July. Try not to burn anything down or hurt anybody. Okay.

A-A-Ron: 57:22

Yeah. Yeah. I only get ground fireworks. I don't like this. I'm, you heard one boom earlier in, you heard one big boom. I couldn't even do a podcast recording last night because I listened to it after the fact. And it sounds like I'm sitting in a war zone just casually talking about like, partner operations and, and

Jessie Shipman: 57:37

Oh, no.

A-A-Ron: 57:37

bad Um, yeah, it's, it's my least favorite holiday. Um, but we, we will, we will have all ground fireworks and sparklers today. Keep it simple.

Jessie Shipman: 57:49

Yep.

A-A-Ron: 57:49

love that.

Jessie Shipman: 57:51

Yeah, I think we're going to, uh, put a fire in the chia and because we sit on top of a hill, we can actually watch four cities fireworks from on top of our hill. So we'll just do it that way, and then we'll go to bed and not have to deal with any of the traffic.

A-A-Ron: 58:05

Yeah. Our plan is to float in the pool and watch'em in our neighborhood, cuz it'll be, it'll be us everywhere. So y'all have a good one. Until

Jessie Shipman: 58:12

right, y'all. We'll talk to next week. That's it. We'll talk to you next week. Do you want a better sign off?

A-A-Ron: 58:19

I just feel like we should have something more. We can work, we can workshop it.

Jessie Shipman: 58:24

You workshop it.

A-A-Ron: 58:26

I,

Jessie Shipman: 58:26

You workshop it

A-A-Ron: 58:28

I know, I will. I'll bring you something

Jessie Shipman: 58:30

at three o'clock in the morning, you'll be texting us. I just

A-A-Ron: 58:33

most likely. Yeah. It'll be, it'll crystallize and I'll have to record it and send it out, and then we can just, yeah. Okay. Good deal. Okay. Bye.

Jessie Shipman: 58:40

All right, everybody. we'll talk to you next week. Bye.

A-A-Ron: 58:45

Bye.