In this episode Adam, Aaron and Jessie explore how important it is for Partnerships to understand the entire sales process, how sellers are positioning their products to their customers so that they can translate that into a proper better together story for partners to understand and re-articulate.
In this episode Adam, Aaron and Jessie explore how important it is for Partnerships to understand the entire sales process, how sellers are positioning their products to their customers so that they can translate that into a proper better together story for partners to understand and re-articulate.
hello, hey, hey guys. Oh okay, I was like hello.
Speaker 2:I'm wondering that awkward pause. You can see us here, but it's also yeah, I'm like say things.
Speaker 1:We were saying things before I said hello um Sprint, don't do that, aaron. Uh, don't freeze. I tried to pretend freeze listeners.
Speaker 2:I forget, this is not a visual video, visual format, that we published it only is in certain aspects.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm actually grateful because I washed my hair today so I could go get it cut. And now it's washed and cut and it's just looking a little not my favorite. It takes like two or three days of unwashed hair for it to really do what I wanted to do, and I should be wearing a hat, but I'm not. So, anyway, we're back to talking about my hair, which was episode I don't know one through five.
Speaker 2:Can we also talk about LinkedIn, Corey's approach to partnering?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we can choose different things today.
Speaker 4:I'm going to, for sure, talk about none of those things. None of those things are on my mind right now.
Speaker 1: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 in 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.
Speaker 4:None of those things, yeah, none of those things.
Speaker 1:But, adam, what is on your mind? Oh, should we just jump right into it, or do you want to take another? Where are we at? We're at a minute 18. We got to get at least three minutes of banter and then we can move on to the topic and go from there. I feel like this is a solid idea. Yeah, you were talking about spring. You were talking about springtime.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Like this is a solid idea. Yeah, you were talking about spring. You've been talking about springtime.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was just saying that, like spring has sprung, so it snowed like four or five inches, uh, two days on Saturday and then, uh, and then it was all gone by Sunday and it was 60 degrees and the lilacs are blooming and the peonies have sprouted. And my parents I think I mentioned this, but my parents moved into my backyard. I know that's weird. They live in a very nice RV on a pad in my backyard, but my dad is like a gardener. He loves to garden, he's very successful at it, like he can grow some stuff, and I'm very excited because I will get to reap all the benefits of the garden while only having to provide the land. It's the best, yeah, so today was tilling day and Tony is out there putting the last little bits. We have to fence our garden here, otherwise the deer will eat everything instead of the humans and that sucks. So we had to build like a special, like fenced in garden. But, guys, I got chickens.
Speaker 4:No, yes, no, I'm very anti chicken. My neighbors got chickens. Here's my story with urban chickens. My neighbors got chickens. I got mice. So like, but we don't have so like, but we don't have. These mice ate all the chicken feed that fell on the ground and stayed on the ground.
Speaker 1:Well, the chickens are supposed to eat the mice.
Speaker 4:These failed. They were fired, but this was a self-correcting problem because we need to put up fences around gardens here to keep the raccoons out. They did not close their coop door one night and I didn't have a mice problem anymore.
Speaker 1:No, they did not have any eggs after that.
Speaker 3:You have to put fences on the ground to keep the moles out, yes, and the birds and the skunks and the raccoons out. We don't even need them, but jalapeno plants do really well. In my yard that's been the most successful crop. Every year Two jalapeno bushes, they go nuts. Pickled jalapenos for days.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I'm going to have you mute and reconnect your disconnect and reconnect your microphone and then come back.
Speaker 4:Tech support level one achieved.
Speaker 1:All right, adam, that's enough banter, let's get into it you have the topic of the day.
Speaker 4:I do, and it is a it's a half formed topic so that we can go in many different directions with it. I want to see where you go. So in partnerships, we have to know hopefully we all know this that we need to know what we sell and who we help, how we generate interest via marketing in our own organizations to be able to then guide the similar sales and marketing with our partners. If we don't know our sales and marketing, if we do not know our go-to-market, how are we supposed to create a go-to-market with our partners? The question then is how do you know? How do you present that to your partners? How do you know what aspect of it to show to your partners?
Speaker 1:to start the conversation, Okay, so I feel like that there's more context to this question. Totally Okay, can you maybe give more context to the question?
Speaker 4:Can you maybe give more context to the question? Yeah, so, okay. So the context behind this situation, or the question, is I find a lot of early partner program, the first like head of partnerships, it's like the sole partner manager. These like teams of one, two, three. They get going and they actually don't really have a good understanding of their own sales and marketing go-to-market arm. They're out there based on product and feature and trying to find product-feature match because we're following the.
Speaker 4:If we're a tech company, we're following the tech integration ecosystem and trying to create revenue partnerships off of the framework of integration partnerships. And then just what I see as the most common trap is now we get three, six months down the road and we figure out wait a second, I don't actually understand my own ICP, my best fit target prospects, how we position with them so that I can just tweak it with partners, and then what ends up happening then is nothing ends up coming from the partnership, because you framed it in an unactionable way, both you and the partner and so now no one knew what to do. It was just death by silence.
Speaker 1:It's like the beginning of the partner island.
Speaker 4:right, that's right Like you kind of think about it and I think it's a side effect of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you kind of think about it as like partnerships is sort of brought in as like, hey, we got to, we need to scale right Like we got to, we've done all we can. We need to scale right Like we gotta, we we've, we've done all we can or we're doing all we can with our, our, our marketing motion, and then you know sales led growth is failing and so like, let's bring it into like scale and get in in front of more eyes.
Speaker 4:Well then, maybe the marketing is doing great and sales is doing great, but they want to pour more gas on the fire, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, but, like to your point, it ends up being really focused. If the first focus so this is kind of what we were talking about a little bit last week in my mind if the first focus is on your integration marketplace, uh, your functionality or product and how it integrates with other companies, I feel like that's like if you're on uh, in my mind it's a little antarctic right, so like there's floating ice right and it's sort of that first like boom, you put your pole into the ice and like a crack starts, and then all of a sudden you're like floating away from the rest of the go to market organization. If, like, you haven't created like a really strong ties across the entire organization, is that what you sort of mean?
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, I don't think I would have been able to say it in that way, but that's the. I think it's a very good picture for what happens. It felt good, you've planted the flag, you're moving out on it, but that initial plant actually is what those initial cracks that end up into chasms and it becomes the self-fulfilling prophecy that we've sadly seen far too many times.
Speaker 2:So are you saying you need to have all that locked instead before you go to market with partners?
Speaker 4:I'm saying we have to have at least a strong theory behind it that is backed by something that we can reference if it's not working later. Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you've got my wheels spinning on like by the time ops shows up. We are way past those flags being planted. Oh yeah definitely those cracks that you're talking about, jesse like it is it is.
Speaker 2:But I can literally envision like, like I see those cracks and like the words, that for me it's like architecture, program management, contact management, data hygiene, like all of these practices for how you manage databases and systems are not in play and that's creating some of the chaos for you. And even though marketing, like partner marketing, tends to show up before partner ops, partner marketing is like the harbinger of partner operations. They were, they've been doing partner ops. Some of the partner ops people that I know started in partner marketing and then got more operationally minded and less marketing minded. Right, that's not uncommon, but yeah, that's interesting because I show up with organizations of partner ops and I feel that same thing of like, oh, I'm over here on this little island and I'm floating and I need to go tether back in and pull it in. And if you go through the sales and marketing rhythms, I definitely see that Like.
Speaker 2:I can think of times where I was doing enablement, where I would show up to do an enablement with a partner and we'd be like great, let's do some enablement, here's the product and here's the marketing plan and here's your thing.
Speaker 2:And they're like we don't know how to sell software. We've only ever sold hardware and I was like, oh great, so I actually have to do a whole like SaaS enablement training. We did not have good alignment. We shouldn't saying, hey, I need an extra four weeks because I have to teach them how to do demos. I have to teach them what a SaaS sales rhythm looks like and how to get that aligned, like we were doing like transformation work. I think that lands kind of what you're talking about, like the sales and marketing approach wasn't nailed down and then it was just brought to partners Like it's just going to work with partners without ever no one really thought through how is this really going to align with how our partners actually do business? So they may have had the messaging, but at a very high level and not aligned to partner expectations.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and I don't think that, like there's a crawl, walk, run here, right, and so I don't think that you necessarily have to have all of this architected out originally, that you've got to turn your initial successes into that architecture faster than people really do, but to stay nimble, upfront.
Speaker 4:But how can we?
Speaker 4:I see so many partner people that now I look back on my own early days and just really did not have a very clear understanding of what makes our target market our target market. The specific organizations, what's unique about it technographic, firmographic who are the actual personas of the people that are going to be involved in the use cases that we have and really being able to articulate some of their jobs to be done. So that way it actually brings us to the value gap, value bridge conversation, because now I understand where there are gaps in my go-to-market and that's where not only do we have to figure out the joint value proposition for the mutual customers right, got it, I'm taking that as a for granted but to really find and prioritize the partners that have gaps, where we're strong and where they have strengths around our gaps, and that being the actual foundation of the partnership. Yes, we then also have to have a really strong joint value prop, but I think that we keep missing this point of getting into the better business economics internally between the two orgs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, scott Pollock calls this the power-up story. So you have the better together story, which is what you tell your customers that you do better together. But the power-up story is actually a much more interesting story that the two companies are telling between each other's go-to-market teams about why it's beneficial for each one of them to be working with the other. And I think that piece often gets completely missed or it gets muddled with whatever the better-together story is, or it ends up well, you're going to earn 20% if you just refer right Like that's the bet, that's the total power up, and that always, always falls short, right Like we just know historically that that is a fall. That is not a great strategy If you want people to actually talk about you. I think we're. Um.
Speaker 1:What this starts spitting for me is most go-to-market organizations only really have momentum in that motion for about 18 to 24 months, and this is why there's like a 16-month tenure.
Speaker 1:The average tenure of a CRO or a CMO is about 16 to 18 months, like they're just not lasting very long because somebody is like well, let's bring in a new person and that news person has a thing, and they have literally like six months to completely turn a revenue organization around before somebody starts questioning whether they were capable of doing it, and then their stuff finally starts to get implemented and it doesn't work right away, and then they just get rid of the leader and then you have to start all over again.
Speaker 1:So what that really like, what that brings up for me as a partner person is like if you start to go digging into those methodologies and they haven't been established or around for a really long time you could start to understand what those are, then start to apply them to the partner motion, only to have them ripped out as soon as you're ready to go to your partner with it. And so I'm like is there a way to work simultaneously on both Right? So instead of like waiting or understanding, waiting on or understanding what the motion is internally like, can you understand the strategy or like where that leader is headed and then form your partner motion based on that overarching strategy, rather than like the nitty gritty of how that works in the day to day? I don't know.
Speaker 1:I'm just postulating.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think you absolutely do it based on the strategy, because the individual tactics of the campaigns that the marketing team are running and the channels that they're choosing, far less critical to this power up, as is the core strategy that's going to be in there, regardless of content, message, channel. Uh, you know, if it's, if they go from doing bant to medic to medpick, to spice, to whatever, like those tactics and frameworks don't matter. When there's like a clear overall sales strategy and where we have challenges in our sales conversion funnel, where we have challenges in our sales conversion funnel, where we have challenges in our marketing funnel, just like where those things are and where we're trying to grow Like it's those strategies and those hangups are where we build this off of. And then, yeah, once we're with our partners and then now we can figure out the mutual tactics where those things align. And even if the tactics don't align, it's almost OK as long as the strategy is still aligned.
Speaker 1:Today's podcast is brought to you by Fluency. Driving referral revenue can be daunting for both partners. Whether you're a tech company struggling to get inbound leads or your channel partner struggling to know which partner to refer to, Fluency can help. Fluency helps drive referral revenue through everyday conversations. Using a simple setup and seamless workflow integration, Fluency suggests the right partner for the right customer and provides the referral information in a timely and simple message. If you're an agency looking to increase your referral revenue or a tech company looking to drive referral business through your channel, get in touch today at Getfluencycom. That's G-E-T-F-L-U-I-N-C-Ycom.
Speaker 2:So how much of this also ties to partner program though? Because, adam, as you talk, I hear like integration partner technology partner, product market fit. We need to get aligned on gaps and features. And how do we work together, right that story better? Together story power up, story right Looks a little bit different. It needs a lot more work than hey. We are running an agency program where volume is a part of our game and we have an asset management library here, and so here's what we're running, here's our spiffs, here's our play.
Speaker 2:To your point, jesse, if it's just always yours, 20%, that's not interesting in the long run. It's more like quarter by quarter. You might have unique plays that are strategic. So it's still a mass market. We're still going to use the asset management and co-branded management and give our partners tools, but we don't just want to have it always be. Well, here's your blank set of marketing content and your goal is 20%. Have fun like quarter over quarter, maybe driving something in to those specific types of partners, and then I can see that varying based on program.
Speaker 2:I just hear different programs as you both talk. You may be wondering if that's in your mindset, but I think the same idea applies is like, regardless of what program you're doing or a partner you're incentivizing, be intentional and be strategic, both with the content, both with your play, both with your incentive. Find a way to drive them in and do something intentional with your marking, instead of throwing a whole bunch of crap at the wall and just seeing kind of what sticks in the long run or being like oh, we have a library together, we're done, we've achieved it. Yay, content, library and the PRM winning.
Speaker 1:What would you, Sorry go?
Speaker 4:ahead. Yeah, what I'm describing doesn't have to be bespoke every time. It can work in a scaled program and that's why it doesn't matter the way that I just described this. It doesn't matter if it's a solution partner, an agency partner, a reseller, an ISV, an MSP, blah, blah, blah, blah blah. It doesn't matter, because it is about aligning the businesses together in that power-up. So this strategy approach of making sure that that alignment happens works for both. And when you can call it a titled program is when we have an addressable market of ideal partner profiles and personas that relate to this and we can have a common partnering message. Now to go recruit a target market of 100, 1,000, however many partners to bring in and run a very similar process of recruitment, enablement and scaling of that partnership. All of that stuff still remains true, whether it's a population of one-to-one or one-to-many.
Speaker 1:Okay. So I would love to hear Aaron, just from like your, I know that you've built partner program or partner, yeah, partner programs. Right, like am I saying that? Right, like the programmatic?
Speaker 2:parts of a Like program terms, incentive structures.
Speaker 3:Well yeah.
Speaker 1:So usually when you talk about programs, you're talking about within a large organization that has a massive channel. We're focused on this piece and here's the pieces of the program. The pieces of the program and what I'm asking, or the question I'm about to ask, that I haven't asked, that I've sort of walked and danced around for the last 30 seconds is like what are the fundamental pieces of what you would consider a program and should those things be in place as you're thinking about an onboarding partners for a particular purpose, because I hear you talk about this a lot and when you say partner program, I think about like Atlassian and I think about Samsara and I'm like you're blowing my mind right now. I have no idea where to start. None of this feels tangible. It all feels enormous. It feels like you're putting things together to sort of like piecemeal bits that are around and like what happens if you're not one of those programs? What happens if you're not one of those organizations?
Speaker 2:So it's just a fine program, right, like this is something that I get into more and more and more and more when you get into architecture. At the end of the day, people talk about partner type and we talk about partner category. All these words, right, that we want to throw at partnerships, but at the end of the day, your partner type doesn't matter. No offense to anybody who's an integration partner and you really like pride yourself in the integration partner. What partners care about is the incentive structure. So what I have really kind of gravitated toward over the past few months especially is that when I talk about programs, I'm talking really specifically about the incentive structure that drives business between you and the partner. So you might have a reseller program Great, yeah, that reseller could be called the partner type, don't care. What's the incentive structure? Is the reseller getting a 35% margin on top? Right, that's the program. Hey, we're going to enroll in this program and that's what I want to see structured and architected in the system, because now I can scale it, I can apply it to multiple partners, I can work across the board, whereas an affiliate program is going to be maybe a 10% Right is going to be maybe a 10%, right.
Speaker 2:So for me, programs have really systematically gotten more and more back to what's the incentive structure. So if I say program, yes, I'm sorry, I has a partner program, it's big, atlassian is a partner program, it's humongous. But within that program there's other programs, right. If you go to Atlassian, the way they manage some of their programs, for example, is like there's a program manager over leads and opportunities. So he's internally, he's just managing all the process and workflow for leads and opportunities. But the partners are not enrolling in a lead and opportunity program. They are enrolling in a reseller program, an affiliate program, oem program right, or, however, or subsidy program or whatever they're doing.
Speaker 2:So that's where I get kind of picky. You've got program management which is just like project management, but then programs for partners is always incentives. For me now, always like great, you have an affiliate program. What are the deals with that program? Well, this partner gets 10%, that partner gets seven and a half and that partner gets four. Like are these tiers? No, they're just bespoke agreements. Okay. So we need an affiliate program record with customizable percentages. And now we know we have that program structured and we can run with that. Does that help?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's super helpful because I feel like so much of sales, sales programs are defined by the seller's incentives as well. Right, so like you would never hire a sales team without understanding forecasting and quota management. Forecasting and quota management and the like they they go to work knowing that when they put in the work that they're going to get X O T E out of it. And I think like it's and it's not as simple as that right Quota, like understanding how to structure quotas and what it's so complex. And yet for partnerships we have a tendency to be like, well, let's just pick a number out of the sky.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and forecasting for partnerships is tough, right, because we don't know. Yeah yeah, forecasting is actually a byproduct of earned business, in my opinion. For partnerships, like, oh sure, we'll put a half a million dollar goal because that'd be nice and that would cover salary and our investment would break even, but we don't actually know if that's tangible or reasonable until we try to go to market, which is why you need your incentives, your programs, structured, because now you can actually measure okay, good, the program is hitting goals. Here's our revenue split, here's what it's costing us. Like, if you don't, if you don't, structure those things, you can't measure programs. The only thing you're measured by is ACV, which is a shot in the dark.
Speaker 2:Did we get proper attribution? Did we tag that partner correctly? Oh, we missed a few deals. Well, like, that's that's what partner teams end up chasing. Once you start getting measured on attribution, without structure for all these things in your system, they spend all their time oh, that deal didn't get tagged, but that deal didn't get tagged. Well, adam said that they didn't contribute on that deal. I'm like I don't care, I know they contribute because they sourced it. Well, did they register a deal? Well, no, I had to put it through email. Well then they don't get credit Like. This is the minutiae that people argue with because you don't have good. Again, I'm going to go up MDF. What do people get MDF budget? How do you justify an MDF budget of a hundred thousand dollars for a new program when you have no idea what that program is going to spend? Like I think it's the same thing. All these things are disconnected right and we don't have good validation, holistic approach to to what all this looks like.
Speaker 4:But one piece I want to go back to on this incentives, because we keep talking about the incentive that that you've got to. Then what I heard was you have to know what your rev share is going to be in order to have any predictability in the pipeline generated from partners. And I don't think it does not only need to be financial incentive-driven partnerships. If we get our strategic alignment right, if we get our power up right to steal a phrase, it doesn't have to have any financial transactional incentive as a part of it. There may be MDF, there may be rev share, but if we really get that alignment right, I can tell you I have partnerships in my current organization that have 0% rev share. The business alignment between both organizations incredibly clear and we know exactly how much everybody's going to be able to make because we do these things together. And so that's just. The piece I want to keep going back to is that it does not only have to be direct financial incentives.
Speaker 1:Well, I feel like the direct financial incentives are just fuel on the fire, like if you, if you dump fuel on a spark, like an active spark, if you dump a whole bunch of gas on that, it just douses the spark, right, it doesn't actually ignite it any further, it just kills it. And so, like you have to have like an active flame and then you add, add the fuel, and like those financial incentives can be the fuel that you might need. And it might be like hey, we're going to give you 25,000 in MDF to go talk about this case study, this joint case study, right, like that's, that's a positive use of MDF, is like hey, go put this in all the places and let's co-brand it and co-market it together.
Speaker 2:There might not be a financial incentive, Adam, but I think like if we're going to market together to open new business for both of us, that is the financial incentive. So your program structure might be like oh, my financial incentive, direct payment is $0, but the focus is deal registration or co-selling. I agree.
Speaker 4:And that's why I just want to make it very clear that it is not only direct. It can be indirect incentives as well. Of course it has to have an incentive around it of some kind.
Speaker 1:Some kind.
Speaker 4:yeah, this was fun and I have to go. It's a good short one. We did it.
Speaker 1:It was a good short one. We bantered. I feel like actually we could keep talking about this. I thought it was really awesome, but I'm one of 13.
Speaker 3:Topic Adam. I thought it was really awesome but I'm one of 13.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to keep. I'm going to keep talking about the lucky 13 until one more person decides to download and listen.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 1:Do you want to? Let's just do real quick gratitudes. What are you grateful for this week?
Speaker 4:I am grateful for a direct time without screens. We were at a gymnastics class and we did not bring our screens and we were very upset and we spent the entire time there having conversations with children and it was wonderful. They, you know, know, they got over the fact that they did not have their screens and we had. I learned about my seven-year-old's uh clothing style that I had no idea beforehand, so that was an interesting thing. We got to have real regular conversation. It was fun.
Speaker 1:I love that so necessary. I don't do it nearly as often. Camping usually helps because there's no internet connection. So, like, what's the point? My oldest turns 13 this week and that is a real mind bleep.
Speaker 1:Uh, you know, you think when you're when your littles are born, and they're just these tiny little nuggets, and you're like thinking about man, when this kid is 13, I'm going to be 40. And like, what will my life look like? And, and you can't, you can't fathom what that. And you're like, eh, like one day at a time, right. And then all of a sudden you're like here, and and she's 13 and she uh, knows how she's learning how to drive stick. And like, uh, and she uh, I let her drive the Tesla up the street the other day and like she can fully like you know, I would never let her drive alone, she's not that old, but like she's getting it and and she just is like this tiny little adult. And I can't even with all of that. But I'm so grateful that we got here and that she's still a kind human being. So that's my gratitude.
Speaker 2:So you're in that phase of like them, becoming real people yeah, yeah, I mean like 13 on is where they really start to like show you who they are.
Speaker 1:I'm just stupid and like the dumbest people she knows and like that's the phase we're in and that's okay um the goal is that by the time she's like you know 23, that she comes back around to knowing phase we're in, and that's okay. Um, the goal is that, by the time she's like you know 23, that she comes back around to knowing that we're the smartest people in the world yeah.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, take that. Um. My gratitudes this week are for uh, opportunity to rest I've got some of that coming up, which is I'm really really grateful for that. Um, and also just antonio. You guys both know antonio. Um, you got the opportunity to chat with him a little bit and I'm excited about um, which is I'm really really grateful for that. And also just Antonio. You guys both know Antonio. You got the opportunity to chat with him a little bit and I'm excited about his adventure and kind of where he's at. But also his voice in the partner ops world is nice because he's another loud, focused on ops talking about it. So it's nice to have somebody else carry that banner a little bit sometimes and he's a great one for it. He's a great one for it. So that's it. There's no gratitudes. Get the scratch out of here, jesse.
Speaker 1:Hey, episode 40, y'all Congratulations. We have done 40 episodes of Literal Scratch. What 40 for 40. Yeah, we're starting to nail it, so we're getting at least slightly more focused. I dig it. I think our audience will be grateful, for we're learning by doing.
Speaker 4:Learning by doing. I'm digging this short format.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I kind of like the short format too.
Speaker 3:Awesome Get in.
Speaker 2:All right, y'all.
Speaker 1:We'll talk to you next week. Bye, bye.