David Belove, CEO at Prodly, joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss investing in the channel, compensating your channel sales reps, and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast.

Jen: Hi everybody, welcome to the Allbound Podcast. I'm Jen Spencer here at Allbound, and today I am joined by David Belove, who is CEO at Prodly. Most recently he served as Vice President of Sales Operations and Productivity at Nitro. Welcome David. So good to have you on the show today. Can you share a little bit about yourself and about kind of some of the roles you played in sales operations?

David: Well, first of all, I've had three distinct careers. I started out as a marketing professional and then I had a sales career, and now I’m refocused on sales operations. So that spanned almost three decades. So I’ve been making that transition from marketing to sales to sales operations over the last 10 years, I would say.

Jen: That's great.

David: I'm just going to stay in that process so I moved from selling hardware to software and now I'm to the SaaS software.

Jen: I love that, you know, you've had experience in the marketing side, sales, sales operations. I think it’s great today to have that breadth of knowledge. You know when it comes to SaaS… you mentioned that you are at Nitro, you had roles at Apttus and eFolder and Cloud9 Analytics. You're pretty well-versed in SaaS sales at this point and I'm curious, you know, over the course of your career, what are some consistencies that you've seen that have really created successful SaaS partner channels? Because selling SaaS through partners and with partners can be different from selling traditional software or hardware even?

David: So, several things come to my mind. One of them would be that, vendors in particular but also that channel partners have to have a super clear picture of their go-to-market strategy. So if you think about go-to-market strategy as where you define your market segmentation. And then the way you pursue these segments, you've got to have a really clear picture in mind so that everybody knows what their role is. And the goal is to avoid sending conflicting messages to your partners and to your direct sales team. You want them to play nicely together. So for example, at Nitro, partners play a pretty clear role. Nitro has Geographic and that’s a small company, has geographic and language coverage limitations. And so partners are absolutely crucial in many parts of the world. But also, you know, having a clear picture of which verticals you can cover yourself and which vertical partners have to have expertise to cover for you, or situations like integration. If your product involves integration with other products, partners are going to be really important. It's really hard for a vendor to cover every different instance from an integration perspective. So, in all three of these cases you would have a really clear ROI, and that would make it much easier to explain what your partner’s role is in. But that's one point, it’s understanding the roles.

And then, the second point would be making sure that you have dedicated marketing and sales resources assigned to the channel. And it's kind of hard because, most especially when you first get going, and in particularly in a SaaS environment where direct sales tend to be the first approach to the market and dedicating these resources is kind of hard to justify. It's an investment because the bookings are probably going to be coming from the direct sales initially and so you’re kind of betting on the [come?] that the channels gonna contribute. But if you don't have dedicated channel marketing and channel sales resources you'll never gonna make any progress.

So, one quick story - at Apttus, we were very interested in signing up SI’s to help us with not only opportunity generation but implementation. And so we kicked off the program but we didn't have the implementation training programs put in place, and so nothing really happened. We were disappointed with the results. Once those training programs were put in place everything at the top of the funnel started to fall in place.

Jen: That makes a lot of sense. I was really kind of like really curious about… you made a kind of statement about how channel can allow a SaaS organization to not pivot but to kind of expand into another part of business that maybe they couldn't previously move into. Like, whether that's moving from targeting small and medium size businesses to enterprise or going the opposite direction enterprise down to a more of an SMB market. I know that there's... It's one thing to say, “Okay, let's bring on this partners and they're gonna have this expertise so they're gonna get us into these deals or they're gonna get us into these opportunities.” I wonder if you can share a little bit about what makes that kind of a shift or taking event into that kind of opportunity successful. What does an organization need to do in order to really embrace that kind of opportunity to expand beyond a target market that they've already sort of claimed?

David: Yeah. Well, it's tough but it would be similar to expanding into a new geography or if you are expanding your product line, those are both examples of investments that you have to make. Well, expanding your go-to-market strategy to include channels is similar. You've got to be willing to invest, putting in place that dedicated channel resources and training programs and being willing to essentially share the market with your partners is critical.

Jen: What else do you think is really critical for a channel leader who's working on maybe building out or exchanging a channel partner program? Maybe there's… there’s a lot of folks we talk to who, you know, they've got these channel partner programs. They sort of were created almost organically, maybe not a lot, maybe not very intentional, and now they've got these program and things are maybe a little bit out of whack or a little bit out of sync. What do you think are some of the most critical elements that a leader should consider when going into... I mean, I hate to use the word "repair," but really optimize their channel program?

David: You know, I think there are various reasons why things break down or need to be optimized, to put it in a positive way. One would be having vague agreements with your partners. If partners are not fully committed to your program, if you don’t understand their motivations, there's going to be a problem. The second thing is making sure that you’re properly motivating them. Do you have a compensation program for them that makes sense? I mean, moving into SaaS is hard for everybody. Especially if you are transitioning from software, to perpetual software, to SaaS, all of the sudden your revenues are stretched out over a longer period of time. Well, the same thing happens to the channel. They're going through this transition where instead of booking everything upfront, now their revenues are booked over a long period of time, or recognized over a long period of time. So understanding that there’s going to be some shared pain there, and making sure that your partners are willing to accept that pain that transition is critical. And not everyone is willing to do that and so you’ve got to pick your partners carefully. I think one critical role or one idea is to focus on partners who get it. Focus on partners who have accepted the SaaS model and are compensating their sales people that way and are making the transition themselves.

Jen: Yeah. I think that's really a good advice because you really got to work, you know, with you and your partner, vendor and partner have to work as a team together. You really wanna make sure those partners are really on the same page that you are for certain… that makes a lot of sense. And I'd love to hear a little bit more about... you know, it’s so interesting to me, I sort of started sorting this sentence okay, and how do I frame this? So when I think about sales operations, this is a very growing field right now. I feel like I'm seeing more and more organizations invest in sales operations.

David: Yup.

Jen: And I’m really focusing on being productive, being efficient, maximizing resources. You know, probably a lot of this has to do with things like growing technology stacks, things like geographically dispersed workforces. So I looked at sales operations professionals as being the fixers in an organization, right? So, it’s like, here’s what we wanna do…

David: Yeah.

Jen: … and like, all right? Like, we got to go to this, it's like you're an engineer, like help kind of construct this and make sure we think kind of stays inline. So I'm sure you've seen a lot of challenges. I'd love to know about some of the big challenges that you've seen when it comes to management and collaboration of direct and indirect sale programs. People talk about channel conflict a lot. We talk about, you know, how do you continue to have harmony between your direct and your indirect efforts. But you probably see the pain more than anybody else in operations?

David: Yes. Like you’ve said, we’re often tasked with straightening it out, because in some sense we're the Switzerland in that situation where…

Jen: Right.

David: … we, you know, supporting both the channel group and the direct group. But it comes down to a couple of things. One is we have to be able to integrate a channel into the CRM system, so to speak, with the sale stack. And so, it's an extra complexity when you've got to be able to measure channel leads and channel bookings, and be able to integrate that with the direct channel, and know how things are attributed. So do these come from a channel partner or does it come from a direct source? Which one was inbound, which one was contributing? So there's lots of attribution issues. There are CRM tracking issues. And then there are sales process things like, how do you roll out a new price book? You can't forget the channel.

Jen: Right.

David: You’re gonna have probably two price books instead of just one. And these are things that a lot of times that SaaS providers are not accustomed to. So, during the integration, and thinking about the channel, whenever you make changes and whenever you plan a new enhancement is really important. The second aspect is in terms of compensation. How do you compensate your channel managers? And a lot of times you have to think about these in terms of their contributions. Is the channel the source of the opportunity or is the channel manager essentially reacting to an opportunity that a direct sales person has located or essentially playing matchmaker. In those two cases, you might want to pay them a different amount of money or a different percentage of the deal. So compensation is an issue, integrating the pipeline, the funnels of the two channels, direct and partners. So there are lots of implications.

Jen: Do you have any war stories you can share with us? Anything maybe that you've experienced that was a major lesson learned or at times maybe you painted yourself into a corner?

David: Well, I think the one that comes to mind would have to do with compensation where their quotas have to be aligned with the quotas of the direct team. And there you have to decide whether they’re gonna share that quota or not.

And so, I've seen on a couple of occasions where the quotas for the channel team were aligned more towards run rate business. Say a large number of small deals, and then a large deal comes in. And maybe that large deal is a million dollars or more, and so the channel person blows out their quota but the direct team doesn't. So whoever is in the compensation plan need to be carefully architected to ensure that you don't have a channel manager totally blowing up their number but the direct team doesn't.

Jen: Right, right. That makes a lot of sense. Have you ever experienced any challenges where like internal struggles with revenue share with partners? So you talked about compensation for the channel, the channel manager who works for the vendor.

David: Right.

Jen: What about for partners? Is that something that you’ve experienced, you know, challenges in that area as well? I find that a lot of people… they’re not sure like how much should we be spending, like how much should we be giving and there seems to be like some philosophical battles that I've seen people sort of face when it comes to that.

David: Yeah. There’s a couple of different challenges. One challenge would be that the vendor doesn't wanna part with a piece of their SaaS revenue stream.

Jen: Right.

David: And so they’ll try to get the partner to accept some sort of a finder's fee or a fixed upfront fee and then forgo the annuity. And of course, if a partner accepts that then they're really not participating in the best part of the SaaS business. And so they’re not going to be as committed to you as they would be if they had annuity for an ongoing revenue stream.

Jen: Right, right. So if you want your partners to bring you SaaS business you should be expected to pay them as such, and pay them the commission, is that what you're sharing?

David: That’s right.

Jen: Yeah.

David: Yeah, and it should be not some sort of a fixed finder's fee, so to speak upfront. But we want them to share in the ongoing revenue. And of course a lot of SaaS companies are very direct sales oriented and they see that as a major sacrifice for them. So that's something that everybody has to work through. It's the idea that partners should be sharing in the revenue stream. And so that's one scenario. And then, another scenario would be where partners are having to shift their role in the sale from a software model where they're making their money by doing provisioning and the licensing and installation and upgrade, and things like that, to providing more of a strategic consulting role, where they’re helping their client with business transformation and with integration and security. And that may be… I mean, I don’t think that's new to many established partners today, but five years ago that was a major transformation.

Jen: Right.

David: So essentially they have to upgrade their value to their clients to take into account the difference in the way a SaaS product is delivered, versus a software product.

Jen: I'm just curious also, over the course of your career, and you have mentioned kind of like three decades of working in marketing and sales, and sales operations, let’s just go back five years ago, you know. I mean technology has advanced in the last five years but not so significant. So what's a piece of advice that you would have told yourself five years ago based on what you know now about sales, about the channel, about business, just wondering what you’d like to tell yourself in the past?

David: Well, just to kind of keeping at the theme of this conversation, I would say that five years ago I still probably had some doubts about how the channel would participate in SaaS.

Jen: Yeah.

David: I think I was still unclear about that. But so I would reassure myself, my younger self that SaaS is something that the channel can participate in, must participate in, and that there’s a major role there. Like I've said, it's gonna be different in many cases. They’re gonna have to develop a more essentially business expertise, meaning expertise in their vertical expertise, in system integration, in security; things that are more difficult than just focusing on the delivery of hardware and software.

Jen: Right. And perhaps there's a role that the vendors can play in helping to coach their partners and bring them along for the ride, and treat them like that natural extension of their sales and marketing teams that they have and truly partner together…

David: Yeah.

Jen: … so those partners aren’t kind of felt like left off in an island by themselves.

David: Yeah. So I think this has been going on but essentially the partners contribute their vertical expertise and their integration expertise. Well, the SaaS vendors can share their expertise in how you manage a SaaS business. How do you pay SaaS sales people? How do you make this transition from selling software to software as a service? That's something that vendors have been forced to go through and to figure out and they can share that with their channel partners. That's essentially comes right like a franchise where the franchisor is teaching the franchisees how this sort of business works, how the model works.

Jen: Right, right. Here you go, right. Here's the kit, here it is in the box, right. Here's everything you need to know in order to be successful. I think that's a great example of franchisers have been doing this for decades, really setting their franchisees up for success. I think there’s definitely a lot we can learn from that model for sure.

David: Yeah. There are many of examples of channel partners now that do understand SaaS and are making that transition but there are ongoing lessons to be learned that vendors can share.

Jen: Always, always. Well, David, before I let you go, it's been great talking to you about sales operations and the role of operations in and the channels in SaaS, I do have… at the very end of all my podcast I ask some more personal questions just so we can get to know you a little bit better. Our listeners feel like they get a little bit more of a glimpse into your life. So I got four really simple questions as long as you're willing?

David: Sure. Fire it up, Jen.

Jen: All right, all right. So first question is what is your favorite city?

David: My favorite city, other than my hometown of Los Altos where I’ve lived for most of my life, I would say it’s Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Jen: Oh, nice. I haven't been there yet. But it's one of the places I really like to go. What do you like about Santa Fe?

David: Well, the atmosphere is amazing. For example, if you go in the summer time, the monsoon clouds build up over the Rio Grande Valley and they charge across the valley and move to Santa Fe, you’ll get a 3 P.M. rain shower. And then the whole thing kind of dissolves into bright blue skies again.

Jen: Yeah. Sounds a little bit like the way some of the storm that get into Tucson, Arizona. I went to college there and have amazing, amazing lighting storms. Where amazing monsoons where it just keeps pouring rain and the streets would be flooded and we'd be trudging that from class, with like water up to your knees. And all of the sudden, it just stop and the sun was out and skies are blue, and it look like it had never rained.

David: Yeah. Like nothing happened.

Jen: Yeah, unbelievable. It's really cool, nature is amazing. Second question for you, would you consider yourself an animal lover?

David: Oh yeah, for sure. My dog is sleeping on the couch next to me here.

Jen: What kind of dog do you have?

David: A Goldendoodle.

Jen: Oh, very cute.

David: Yeah. She’s looking at us now, “Are they talking about me.”

Jen: Yeah, that’s right. Okay, next question, Mac or PC?

David: Well, I started out as a big Mac fan and I still first use iPhones and iTunes and all that. But I'm pretty accustomed to using a PC at this point. One short story is that my parents were one of the first distributors for Apple computer.

Jen: Wow.

David: This was in the 70s. They were the distributors from Mexico.

Jen: Wow, that's crazy. So you had a Mac early on, you had an Apple computer early on?

David: Yeah.

Jen: That's interesting. A lot of people I talked to when I ask that question they said, “Well, it was always PC. And then they started working for this company, and they gave me a Mac, and now I'm using Mac.” So I haven't heard a lot of people share the opposite way around. It’s interesting. My last question for you is, if I were able to offer you an all expenses paid trip, where would it be to?

David: Oh gosh. This is really hard. I would say Venice.

Jen: Nice. Have you been there before?

David: I have been to Venice once before, and I remember to this day getting off of the train and looking out across the Grand Canal and seeing the gondolas, that was just magical. I think I would want to go back.

Jen: Excellent, excellent. Well, I would love to join you. I've been to a few different places in Italy but I never made it to Venice, so my only knowledge of Venice is basically like the Venetian in Las Vegas, which is really embarrassing to admit I don’t know why I just said that. But that's all I can picture in my head besides pictures in books. So, one day I'll get there as well. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today. It was a pleasure just chatting channel with you. If any listener would like to reach out to you personally, maybe to dig in, ask you a few follow up questions about your experiences, what's the best way for them to get ahold of you?

David: I would say, just ping me on LinkedIn @davidbelove, BELOVE. And yeah, I'll respond that way.

Jen: All right, perfect, easy enough. Well again, thank you David. I really appreciate your time and thanks to everyone else for tuning in and we'll catch you next week for all new episode.

Narrator: Thanks for tuning in to the Allbound podcast. For past episodes and additional resources, visit the resourcecenter@allbound.com. And remember, #NeverSellAlone.

Jessica Fewless, Vice President, ABM Strategy and Field Marketing at Demandbase, joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss partner matchmaking, the role of partner marketing, enabling partners by focusing on their customers, and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast.

Jen: Hi and welcome to The Allbound Podcast. I'm Jen Spencer and today I am joined by Jessica Fewless, Senior Director of Field and Partner Marketing at Demandbase. Welcome, Jessica.

Jessica: Thanks for having me, Jen.

Jen: Well, it's so good to have you and, you know, before we really dig into your job I'd love to hear a little bit about Demandbase and our listeners I'm sure would love to know a little more about what you guys do over there.

Jessica: Sure. Demandbase is a sales marketing and advertising technology platform designed specifically for B2B marketers. It helps to identify accounts that are most likely to buy from you and the most likely members of the buying committee. And then it helps you attract them to your website and engage them with relevant messaging, once they get there, you know. Last but not least, it allows you to deliver really helpful insights to your sales team in order to help them turn those prospects and customers into revenue for your company.

Jen: I love it. And I also love that, you know, you are in the sales and martech space, and we're seeing so many sales and marketing technology organizations who have traditionally, you know, been selling direct. We're seeing them start to adopt indirect strategies and, you know, when I was preparing to speak with you and I'm looking at Demandbase's website, it seems like you have a really solid strategy in place for your partners in terms of segmentation, you know, you've got your agency partners, technology partners, then you have consulting partners. Can you talk a little bit about how your marketing differs with each one of those groups?

Jessica: Yeah, absolutely. You know in the evolution of Demandbase... So I've been here for four years now, almost half the life of the company, and when I started, I was originally brought on to do partner marketing. But immediately at that point, you know, I would say that our company wasn't quite ready yet for a mature partner marketing function. You know, we did simple things like worked with partners and sponsored their events. You know, and co-sponsored events in the fields and stuff like that, but that was really kind of pretty surface level type of partner marketing. But more recently, you know, as the ABM category has grown, as Demandbase has grown, our maturity as a company and the maturity of our channel sales team has really blossomed. We went from having one and a half people in that role to about four people now, building out on as you alluded to Jen kind of those separate segments: the agency, technology and consulting partners. And, you know, the reason we split them out like that is, you know, it definitely helps scale our efforts as a company.

You know, eventually, you get to a point where your own sales team can only do so much and you really need the help of partners to help scale your efforts from a sales perspective. And so, you know, the reason we split out into three different categories was because our value proposition to them and their value proposition to our customers is very different with each one. You know, with technology partners, those are the partners that we have developed technology integrations with, and so really aiding those B2B marketers to kind of tie multiples of their martech stack together to either deliver additional insights, or deliver additional capabilities that they can have when they use either one of the technologies in a silo. And then when it comes to agency partners, you know, typically this is on the digital agency side or the media agency side. So once again, it's a give and take relationship, we help educate them about account based marketing because that's what their B2B customers they’re talking about. And then on the flip side, they help us because a lot of our customers and prospects are asking, "Okay, you know, typically we've been using, say, B2C advertising techniques, we know there's got to be a better way or a custom built way for B2B." And so we're able to bring those agency partners into our customers and prospects to help them solve that problem.

And then third, is our consulting partners which is kind of a combo of the two, consulting partners and system integration partners, where they can provide some strategy for the client, but they can also help with the selection of and the implementation of technology. So, you know, I think you can see that it really makes sense that we segment them out that way because each one of them is a very different audience for us.

Jen: Right. And, you know, they're gonna need different things from you. But you've really built an ecosystem, a true partner ecosystem there, and which is excellent because I'm sure you've got some of those agency partners that are interacting not just with you, but they are also interacting with certain technology partners that you might have to offer a solution, a custom solution for, you know, that end customer.

Jessica: Yeah. Definitely, I mean, it was really interesting we had our marketing innovation summit, which is our annual conference back in April actually. And, you know, it was really interesting because we had a partner mixer and it was typically those things that are a lot of glasses of wine and bottles of beer to drink and, you know?

Jen: Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica: And as it goes on it gets a little bit chummier, and more fun, and whatnot. But what's really interesting is that this year, myself and the four channel sales folks on our team spent most of the night playing almost, you know, partner matchmaker. You know...

Jen: It's interesting, yeah.

[crosstalk]

Jessica: We had a lot of consulting and agency partners there and they were like, "Well, hey, introduce me to some of your other technology partners so I can start to connect the dots," right? Or it was a technology partner who was like, "Hey, introduce me to some of these consulting partners because I think we are in the same account together and it would be good to like, compare notes." So, yeah, so that was a really interesting kinda evolution in the maturity of our partner ecosystem.

Jen: I love it. I love it. And, you know, you mentioned you've been at Demandbase for four years, but I mean, you've been in marketing for 18 plus years, right? So you've worked in non-profit, which I have too, so, we have those battle wounds together. And companies like you were at Autodesk, you were at Adobe, I'm curious about...what are some of the bigger shifts that you've seen in partner marketing over the years? And this answer might extend beyond partner marketing because I'd love to know what, you know, you're doing today that's different from what you did like even as early as four, five years ago.

Jessica: Yeah. So, I think to kind of draw back a little bit on some of my time at Autodesk and Adobe and more recently now at Demandbase, I think, you know, the role of the partner marketer has really changed. You know, it's one of those things, or it should change, maybe is a little bit more accurate. So, you know, one point, partner marketing was kind of a program or a project management role. It was one where, you know, they kind of stood in between the marketing team and the channels sales team or the partner team, and their sole focus was really on joint marketing with key partners, right?

And so then they would talk to the partner, understand what the partner was trying to achieve and brainstorm, potentially some ideas, and then we’d go back to the marketing team and say, "Hey, marketing team, what can we do here? This partner XYZ is interested in doing “A”, can we fit it in?" And, you know, I don't know about you or any of your listeners, but I found that process to be completely frustrating and unfulfilling, right? Because you'd have all these great ideas and then you take them back to marketing, marketing is like, "No, sorry we don't have the bandwidth or we don't wanna interrupt any of our other programs to fit this in or, you know, or, or, or..." Right? And, you know, now, today I feel like partner marketing managers need to be full blown demand gen marketers. Ones that cannot only brainstorm possible programs, but also be able to execute on them, and be much more proactive and who they're gonna reach out to and partner with. You know, it's definitely one of those things that has been changing although there's still that classic like project manager partner marketing person out there, and when you encounter them, I find them to be ultimately frustrating. Because you're like, "That's great, I wanna work with you but aaah."

Jen: Right. Right. Well, and I think, you know, if you look at, okay, well how did we get there? And, you know, one of the things that we see is that a lot of organizations that say, "Yeah, I wanna build this channel of partners." But they ultimately under resource that channel, and so they look for this one person who can be the 'be all end all’ and like do everything, right? Who can be the operations person, that project management person and oh yeah, they can just do marketing, they can still be responsible for the revenue too. And we just know you would not do that in any other setting. You know, you wouldn't have that one person be responsible for all things related to the direct part of your business. And so, a lot of it just stems I think just from organizations kind of skimping on the resources that need to be put into the human capital to grow a partner program.

Jessica: Yeah. Well, I agree and I think the other thing too is, and I’ve started to describe it as such, is that I kind of looked at the role of partner marketing as a bit of a Venn diagram, which hopefully everybody is not gonna glaze over when I say that but.... And I think that the two circles are the work that you do in service as the channel sales team, the work you do in service as the marketing team, and then that center section is the joint marketing you do with the partners, right? Because it isn't just about joint marketing, or in, at least in most organizations, it isn't or it shouldn't be, right? So on the pure channel side of things there's new partner recruitment, there's on-boarding, there's nurturing of those partners and those sorts of things to help the channel sales team to be successful, and actually helping those partners influence sales for your company, right?

So that's solely dedicated as a channel team and then on the marketing side, you know, there's gonna be some of the somewhat mundane but necessary part of partner marketing role, which is connecting partners with the events team for sponsorships and, you know, working together with partners, or co-sponsoring a field marketing event or those sorts of things. But also, connecting with the right partners for potential thought leadership opportunities and those sorts of things that elevate both your organizations in the eyes of your potential customers. And then in that center section is the true joint partner marketing, right? I think what most people think of when they think of partner marketing and why it's really important if you don't have the other two parts of the role, I feel like that’s part in the middle is what, like you said, gets under resourced and kind of missed.

Jen: Mm-hmm. I love that Venn diagram kind of, like look, as you were talking through it, I was picturing it and we might need to collaborate on some content for the future because I think there's something really there. You kind of touched on this a little bit, but I wanna dig in when you think about like some of the strategies that you've implemented to really help ensure your team is creating the content that's gonna keep those partners engaged, and foster long-term relationships with them. I mean, do you have any guidance or any tips for our listeners on what they can do because a lot of organizations onboard... or I guess the recruitment of partners and their onboarding of partners isn't where they have a challenge, it's then actually engaging them, and truly activating them once they've joined that inner circle.

Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. I think that the biggest thing now is, you know, I think everybody thinks of, "Okay I'm gonna build a partner portal and then I'm gonna put all these things out there about our product so that our partner knows about our products, so that they can go sell our products. And in today's world, I would just call that table stakes like, yes you have to do that stuff but that's the bare minimum. You know, what you really wanna be enabling your partners with is content that's gonna help them be more successful with their clients. And hopefully, that's the benefit of your organization as well, but things that are gonna help them raise the bar. So, in our world, you know, yes we have webinars, and we have data sheets and all that fun stuff about what's going on with our product, but on the flip side of that, we definitely want to help educate them at account based marketing because that's gonna help them rise above their competitors in many cases, because a lot of the agencies and consulting partners aren't talking about account based marketing yet and so if an agency can come in and say, "Oh, account based marketing? Yeah, we're all over that." That's gonna make them look good and that's gonna help them in business which is gonna then, in turn, ingratiate them to us.

Jen: So, in addition to the supporting partners and positioning them so they can be positioned as you know, experts in account based marketing, and giving them content that's gonna help them earn business and is going to set them up for success, have there been any promotional programs or anything unique that you've created to help them be successful and keep those partners happy?

Jessica: Oh, that's a great question. Promotional programs? I wouldn't say so at this point, I think that's partially because, you know, we're just getting to that maturity of our channel sales and partner program, but we had a point this year, like I said at the marketing innovation summit, where we had a mixer and we, I mean, we have no problem getting a hundred people in the room. I think the next evolution for us is in 2018 to have a partner summit, right? An advance of that partner mixer, one where it's definitely an out bound where we can update them on the latest and greatest from us or the ABM industry or those sorts of things, but also for them to be able to provide some success stories, like, "Here's how we found success in working with Demandbase to help with kinda educate the rest of the people in the room." And, you know, then once again to network and make those connections amongst each other.

But I think that's kind of the next evolution for us is getting to that summit phase and I think to your point there around promotions, hey, maybe what we'll start to do is with some of our onboarding and our nurturing, you know, we point people to our partner portal, maybe if they check all the boxes on their onboarding report card, they get free tickets to our conference or that kind of thing. So, I'm sure we can build that kind of stuff and/or, you know, do some gamification around it, but we’ve really haven't gotten to that phase yet.

Jen: Well, it sounds exciting and there's so much time and so many great ideas, so I'm sure there'll be amazing things for your partner program here in the next couple of years. Looking back the last few years, you personally really dedicated yourself to building and executing an ABM strategy and I thought, you know, without... I mean I know we can have a whole separate conversation just about that, but I'm wondering if you can tell a little bit of what you've done and specifically why it's been important for like channel partner success.

Jessica: Yeah. Absolutely. Well, you know, kind of talking about ABM at a really high level it's, you know, understanding the accounts that you want to sell to and then going out and finding them and selling to them, right? That's kind of the pipe dream or the promise, so to speak, of account based marketing, and it's not a dream, it's, in fact, a whole methodology around that, but, you know, when we talk about it, we actually talk about it having three key audiences. One, prospects, so selling to new potential customers. Two, your existing customers, right? They're your existing customers, you know even more about them than you do about your prospects, so you should be able to sell it to them even better, right at that whole 80-20 rule like, 80% of the work goes into getting a customer, 20% is in keeping and up selling them. And then the third audience is your partners, because if you're talking to your partners in the exact same way that you're talking to your customers and your prospects they're gonna tune you out, right? They don't really care what the shiny new widget is, right? What they care about is what you're doing from a strategy perspective, or how that shiny, new widget is gonna help them be more successful, right? So, if you just sent them to a web page that said, "Hey, look, we have this new thing." They'll go, "Interesting." If you send them an email, and you personalize your website to say, "We have a shiny new thing and it's gonna help you and here's why." Now that helps, one, attract new partners, but to also engage the ones that you already have.

Jen: That's perfect. Great. Great. Really great advice. And, you know, I'm thinking about things from their perspective, like I always do, of kind of being the little guy, and you guys have some real members on your list of technology partners. I mean, everything from like IBM, and Salesforce and Oracle to Drupal and WordPress, and Optimizely, and HubSpot, I mean, some big heavy hitters in the martech space, and for a lot of organizations, they might see those types of companies and partnerships and think, "Gosh like there's no way. Like why would these companies partner with me? I'm just kind of starting to build my program." Do you have any wisdom for gaining traction and partnerships with these kinds of tech greats?

Jessica: Yeah. That's an interesting one I think, you know, part of us just building our company is what drew these partnerships together for us. As our company grew, as the ABM category grew, right? We became more and more important to these companies. Now, to your point, when you're just starting out, not everybody has that kind of at their advantage. I think for us what we really went after was, when talking to all these partners was, how can we make your solution relevant for account based marketing, right? So I think for anybody, it's figuring out how is your solution partnered with their solution? How is that gonna make their solution more successful, right? And so, we provided that relevance and a burgeoning category that everybody wanted a part of. So, it was kind of our value proposition to working with those folks, and, you know, paid off in the end.

Jen: Absolutely. Absolutely. Are you guys still, at this point, are you still sort of like, whale hunting for organizations like that or has your focus when it comes to partner recruitment or I guess actually let me say this, are you still actively recruiting new partners? Or is your energy really focused on maintaining and engaging the ones you have?

Jessica: Yup. I would say it's probably 50-50, at this point, kind of where we spend our energy. So yes, absolutely to kind of list that you listed out earlier, those are a lot of the technology partners that we have, you know, there's kind of discrete list of technology partners that we wanna engage, bring on board and work with, and I think at this point we’ve probably got 75% to 80% of them kind of in our wheelhouse. However, on the agency and consulting side, ABM is a new growing business for them, so just like we practice account based marketing and build a target account list for the new business side of our company, where we decide who are the targets we wanna go after? And we build the marketing and sales programs to go after them. We've actually done the same thing on the partner side. So I've sat down with our channel sales team and said, "Okay, who are the next 50 partners you wanna have in both the agency and consulting categories, right? And let's develop, you know, a whole integrated marketing campaign around going out and getting them." So, exactly the same type of strategy and which might seem kind of silly to some. I mean, I don't know if it works for everybody's business model, but for us it's really, really important because just like I said, you know, even if an agency partner influences a million or two million dollars of business in a given year, that's really helping to kind of amplify our efforts, so it's worth it to us to have a broader set of those partners on board.

Jen: It makes perfect sense to me and we have a saying here at Allbound, it's "Partners are people too." And as cheesy as it sounds, sometimes we unnecessarily over-complicate channel partner, you know, that channel partner realm. And just like, you know, you're communicating with people, you're collaborating with them, you're prospecting them, you're engaging with them, same thing goes for those partners that you would like to bring into your world, so makes sense. My last question for you as it relates to channel marketing is, you know, I'm wondering if you have some kind of sound bite, some kind of concise piece of advice that you'd like to offer to other leaders in partner marketing.

Jessica: Wow. I kind of liked your last statement there I feel like that's almost... I don't think of it as a sound bite, but I think that the biggest thing is to think of your partner marketing function as a demand gen function focused on partners. You know, so that you're getting the right set of skills, people who have a marketing background, people who are used to being focused on things like pipeline and revenue because that is gonna incent the right types of behaviors and they're gonna go out and find the right types of partnerships that are really gonna make the company successful.

Jen: Awesome. Awesome. Well, before I really let you go, Jessica, I have a speed round of a couple of more personal questions that I ask all of our guests. And so I'd love for you to play along as well.

Jessica: Okay.

Jen: As long as you're okay with that. So, first question for you is what is your favorite city?

Jessica: Barcelona.

Jen: Woo! you answered that really quickly. Have you been...

Jessica: Off the top of my head.

Jen: Have you been there multiple times or just once or...?

Jessica: I have. I have and everybody talks about, you know, Paris, and these other places and I don't know, like Barcelona to me is just such a vibrant city, and it's kind of the best land of both the east coast and the west coast of the US and then plopped into Europe with all of that richness of culture, I just absolutely love it.

Jen: Wonderful. Okay. Second question, are you an animal lover?

Jessica: Oh, absolutely. Cats and dogs.

Jen: Do you have pets?

Jessica: Two cats and, you know, someday when I stop traveling so much, definitely I will have some dogs.

Jen: Yeah, it's tough to have a dog when you are not home for sure. I love all creatures. It's absolutely ridiculous, but that's great. Question number three, Mac or PC?

Jessica: Definitely a Mac. I am a convert. I was always PC until I came to Demandbase and I showed up on my first day with a Mac, I figured it out and now I look at a PC and I'm like, "Ah, how do I use this thing?"

Jen: Isn't it funny, Apple like they’ve rewired our brains, you know.

Jessica: They did.

Jen: It's unbelievable, between my MacBook and my iPhone, it's like I don't know how to do anything else.

Jessica: Yes, exactly.

Jen: All right and last question for you is, let's say I was able to offer you an all-expenses-paid trip, where would it be to?

Jessica: Wow, that's an amazing question. I think I would love the opportunity to travel and probably South America. Just really dive in and, you know, get to see different wine regions and coastal villages and the mountains, being able to deep into Patagonia and those sorts of places. I think you know, being able to spend a couple of months there would be pretty amazing.

Jen: Sounds great. Sounds like a good vacation. Thank you so much. Thanks for sharing your insights with us. It was such a pleasure just getting to know you and hear about what you got cooking over at Demandbase. If any of our listeners would like to reach out to you personally, maybe ask about using ABM and their channel, or to kind of swap stories with you, what's the best way for them to reach out to you?

Jessica: Yeah, you can definitely look me up on LinkedIn, I'm always happy to make new and more connections there. And then also, I'm on twitter @jfewlessB2B, so I'm constantly posting new stuff there, so feel free to connect with me there, and, you know, direct message me if you have questions on anything that I've posted out there.

Jen: Perfect. Sounds good. Well, I appreciate it and I'm sure our listeners do as well so thank you for your time and thanks, everyone, for tuning in and we'll catch you next week with an all-new episode of The Allbound Podcast.

Jim: Thanks for tuning into The Allbound Podcast. For past episodes and additional resources, visit the resource center at allbound.com and remember, #NeverSellAlone.

John Sekevitch, President of CyberSolutions.io, joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss, conflict between direct and indirect sales, making your partners money, customer experience ownership and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast.

Jen: Hi, everybody, welcome to The Allbound Podcast. I'm Jen Spencer. And today I'm joined by John Sekevitch, who is President of CyberSolutions.io. Welcome, John.

John: Thanks, Jen. It's good to be here. Hi, everybody.

Jen: It's great to have you here. And before we dig into sales leadership and channel, tell me a little bit about Cyber Solutions and what that organization is.

John: Well, Cyber Solutions is a channel. Right now there's roughly a thousand companies representing about 5,000 different offerings in the cyber security space. And each one of them wants to have access to cheap information, like the security officers of major banks and financial services, organizations, large retailers, and other high tech companies with intellectual property to protect. And as a result of the challenges that these companies are having in going to market and getting access to their targeted executives, they work with channel partners such as I in terms of bringing their products to market.

So right now, I'm representing a couple of application security companies, a threat and vulnerability management company, risk management company, one involved with threat intelligence sharing, and finally, another associated with risk scoring and security scoring for cyber insurance purposes. I think what's going on is it's very difficult for new companies to get access to the market. So more and more companies are going right to channel partners rather than trying to field a direct organization first, and then expand into the channels. And I'm sure we'll probably get into some of that later.

For the most part right now what I'm doing is helping these companies and representing their offerings to roughly 100 of those types of companies. So I have established strong relationships over the past 20 years, and I can get them into places they wouldn't be able to get into themselves. And I think that's typically why companies are looking for their channel partners.

Jen: Well, this is a real treat for us. Typically on the podcast, I'm interviewing channel executives who represent a vendor and they're talking about their best practices, and their triumphs and challenges in engaging a channel of partners to help them achieve their revenue goals. And so, what's so great is you bring the perspective of the channel partner, which is a really powerful voice that many of our listeners need to hear. So I'm excited. This is going to be great.

John: Yeah, I've also been on both sides. So I've definitely been that head of sales and marketing who was looking to expand my direct team into places where they weren't able to get into, or to just scale to the market opportunity. So I have recruited and worked with channel partners, and not only in this situation of my own company, but prior to that being a channel partner of IBM and being a channel partner of Oracle, which are two of the biggest that work with channel partners and have a lot of the best practices in the space. So I'm happy to share my perspectives from both sides of the table.

Jen: That's exactly what I wanted to dig into next. Looking at your background, you've had these executive leadership positions that you've held over the last 20 years, companies like IBM, like Net SPI. You've worked directly in sales and marketing like you mentioned. So you have a vast amount of business experience, and so I imagine you understand what works and what doesn't when it comes to channel, but also really business in general. Channel is just one aspect of an entire business. I'd love to hear, what are some of the biggest changes that you've seen in channel sales and marketing?

John: Well, I think the biggest change I've seen is more and more companies starting with the channel, rather than starting with their own direct sales organization. I think that's just symptomatic of what's happening out in the marketplace, which is, it's very difficult to do direct sales these days without spending a lot of money on marketing. For the most part, in my experience everybody's kind of focused on a handful of executives, and those executives don't answer their phone and they don't respond to emails. They get their insights from their relationships, their trusted relationships.

And so more and more, hiring a sales guy just because they have the ability to sell isn't enough anymore. What you're looking for is potentially getting a channel partner who already has those trusted relationships. In the cyber security space for instance, there's a company called Opto, and Opto has relationships with most of the top banks and financial services, organizations and large retailers. So as a result, everybody wants to get their attention so that their products are being represented. What's interesting is that now the channel partner is in power, because of the fact that they have these relationships, and they can try to exact a pound of flesh out of the product or offering provider.

So what's interesting is you'll see things like big commission payouts for the direct side being in the 5% to 10% range, and on the channel side being in the 20% to 25% range, regardless of whether or not they're selling at this price or not. So I’m seeing starting with the channel rather than the direct, and also the power of the channel to be able to dictate economic terms, which hasn't been the situation in the past.

Jen: Well, working for Allbound, where we believe in the power of selling with partners, I'm definitely biased, but we started our own channel partner program very, very early on. It was one of the first things we did as an organization, and I love my partner leads. I talk frequently about how they're my favorite leads, because like you said, they're coming from a trusted adviser. So when I get a lead from one of my agency partners, that is not just a lead, that is somebody who is coming to us because someone that they trust and work with on a regular basis recommended me to them. So it's the warmest hand-off that you can possibly get in sales. I think that's part of why we're seeing these organizations starting those channel partner programs earlier and earlier on in their business.

John: Right. But there's also a lot of challenges in an effective channel program. For instance, you were just mentioning getting those channel leads. Well, one of the things that has to be managed is the channel conflict between the direct organization and the channel. Who has what responsibilities? What account responsibilities? What happens if the channel's not getting the traction that you were hoping to get out of a particular territory? How do you get a channel partner to support all of the sales reps rather than just one or two sales reps? And so these are all things that obviously you need to have executive leadership over. You always need to have somebody who wakes up in the morning caring about whether those deals are being done by the channel or being direct.

I've always had situations where I ran sales and marketing and had responsibility for the whole number. However, I always had somebody who was responsible for that channel. To think that that person who has responsibility for the total can also be the person who has responsibility for the channel number, is just not going to work because they can always get their number with the big number, rather than working through the channel. So you need to have deal headquarters, if you will, to make sure that everybody knows what's going on. And you've got to have trust in the partners to be able to share access to your salesforce.com or whatever CRM system that you're using, and also to have content that's relevant to the channel and not just for yourself.

So one of the things that companies are struggling with is the fact that they barely have enough content to support their own people, much less what's needed by the channel. At the end of the day, the channel still needs to have content. They might have relationships and that might get them access, but they need to have content to be able to share with their relationships to advance the value propositions that they're trying to represent out there.

Jen: Absolutely. They're your volunteer salespeople. They're out there selling on your behalf. They need to be empowered and enabled. So my next question I was going to ask you was, really, how do you determine if and when a company is ready to build a channel partner program? You mentioned a couple of things, you mentioned having a leader who is responsible for that revenue. You mentioned making sure they figured out some of those internal processes to avoid conflict. You mentioned content. So are those really hard and fast signs and if you don't have those three or four things, then you really can't launch a partner program? Is there anything else? What do you think is really the bare minimum for an organization to really start selling through and with channel partners?

John: Well, I mean, if you start with a channel partner program, then you don't have to worry about channel conflict. You're just going through the partner.

Jen: This is true, yeah.

John: So when you hire a person who has that experience, it'd be a different person than you would if you're going to hire the head of an internal sales organization, if you will. The other thing is what are you going to do about leads? Are you going to develop leads for your channel? A lot of companies are looking for both sides. So I remember working as a channel partner for Oracle, and we were a systems integrator for their e-commerce solution, and for a while, that company lived on business given to them by Oracle. But then came to the point where Oracle was expecting them to be bringing business to them. So there's got to be that give and take, if you will. So I would say that, if you're going to start with just a channel, be prepared to use your marketing and inbound resources, and perhaps even some of the inside sales resources to feed the channel, not just looking for the channel to feed you.

Jen: That's really great advice. I think about that, and I think about some of the mistakes that I've seen organizations make mostly around being under-resourced. So an organization, maybe that's been selling direct and then decides to build out a channel partner program, that group decides, "All right, we're going to hire this one person to really spearhead this and own it", except that person might be an operations type of individual, or a sales type of person...

John: Yeah, typically.

Jen: Right. Or maybe marketing but...

John: They're moving the paperwork, they're not moving the market. And that's a mistake. I'm glad you mentioned it.

Jen: Right.

John: I mean, naturally it is important to have somebody who moves the paper because of the fact that these people need to be paid. And if they're not being paid and if it’s not worth their while, they won't put the work into it, and that's bad because sometimes you've given them exclusive territories, and they're not making any money on it, and they decide to walk away from the commitment so then nobody's pursuing these opportunities. So you got to be concerned about whether or not the channel’s making money, because if they're not making money you're eventually going to lose them.

Jen: Are there any glaring mistakes that you've seen executives make in the channel? You don't you have to tell us who they are, or what companies they were. Just wondering if in your experience you've seen any like big failures that maybe, our listeners who are either building channel programs or nurturing them can learn from?

John: Well, there might be some people on the line that are familiar with this company, IBM for instance. So IBM pays 20% to 25% commission to their channel partners. The caveat is the fact that they pay 20% to 25% based on a deal that sold at list price. So the thing is that when it isn't sold at list price, and those of you on the podcast probably understand that there's never an IBM product that gets sold at list price. So consequently, these channel partners are making 5% to 10% instead of 20% to 25% because of the market realities that these IBM products need to be sold at a discount in order to be competitively priced.

So consequently, they lose a lot of the channel traction that they could be getting because even though the 20% to 25% seems like it's a reasonable commission to be paid, it's not actually being paid, and the result is the channel's not making any money, and they eventually lose some of that traction. So that's probably the most glaring example, other than just flat out, taking all the cherry accounts as in-house, and leaving the dogs and cats to the channel. That's again, not paying attention to whether or not the channel's making money. So you may be able to get somebody interested in it to begin with, but when the results don't stand up to their expectations, you eventually lose a channel, and I've seen that happen on a number of occasions.

Then the other thing is that you have to be continually diligent about whose account it is. On the one hand, it's the channel's account, but they're buying your product. And so consequently, you have to have a way of being able to stay involved so that they end up being a happy client. Because when they throw you out, you're going to get the black eye, not necessarily the channel partners. So something that needs to be coordinated is how do you maintain some degree of account ownership and ownership of the customer experience when there's a channel partner involved.

Jen: That's a really great point. That's something that we're seeing grow in importance, particularly in this as a service subscription economy that we're in, and where buyers have more choice than ever before to move from one product to one solution to another. Gosh, I mean, making sure that if you're a vendor you have the ability to easily collaborate with your channel partners or vice versa, so that you could ultimately take care of the customer, because that's what's most critical to your business. I think that's really, really great advice.

John: This is becoming a complication nowadays, because as customers move towards annual subscriptions versus perpetual licenses for many of these solutions, we're talking about paying commissions off of smaller numbers, or you're paying commissions off of just the first year rather than years two and three, type of thing. Again, this is all related to asking “Is my channel making money?” You can imagine if you got a $100,000 deal for a one year deal, and you're getting 25% of it, what do you get? You get a $25,000 doesn't go very far, but if you can pay them up front 25% of a $300,000 deal for instance, now you've got a bigger hit.

However, you don't get your money until years two and three. So you just have to figure out how to do that. So maybe instead of offering 25%, you offer 20%, but you pay the full three years upfront, that type of thing. These are all things that, again, focus on is my channel making money? If your channel’s making money, you're going to be successful. If your channel's not making money, you won't be successful.

Jen: I couldn't agree more. It's perfect, perfect mic drop. Before I let you go, a lot of listeners of The Allbound Podcast are in their partner program infancy, and they're not the IBMs and the Oracles of the world. They are maybe some smaller mid-market SaaS companies that are really setting out to to build a partner program for the first time. Do you have some tips that you could share with folks like them, maybe the CEOs of those types of organizations? What do you recommend they do to really get started? Maybe it's even things they need to think about.

John: Well, I think what you're kind of describing is somebody who's already got a direct sales organization and now they're looking to expand into a channel, because otherwise, if you started with the channel you'd already have it there, so it's a little bit different. So let's assume that there is a direct sales organization, and now you're going to supplement that with the channel. So the first thing I would do is get somebody and invest in that person who is going to worry about the channel. Who's going to work with your inside teams to feed the channel? Who's going to set up the deal center to be able to manage channel conflict? Which accounts are the channel's? Which accounts are the inside team? Who's going to manage that? Who's going to put together the compensation plan that's going to be attractive to the channel, and still help the product company make money?

And then the other thing from a customer experience, is how are you going to share ownership of your mutual client? What are the expectations that you're going to have for your clients, for your channel's clients, and what are the expectations? How are you going to be participating in it? So I think if you take care of who's feeding the channel, who's compensating the channel, and how, and then also, how are you going to manage your mutual client? I think those are the three things that are most important to have a successful channel on your hands.

Jen: Excellent. Excellent advice. Well, this has been so great getting a chance to talk with you. Gosh, I could probably stay on the line even longer, and just pick your brain, but I won't. But before I really truly let you go, John, at the end of all of our podcasts, I have a little bit of a speed round of more personal questions, just four simple questions that I'd like to ask you. Are you open and ready for it?

John: Sure, sure.

Jen: All right. All right.

John: They're all related to channel, right?

Jen: No. They're actually not all related to channel. They're all related to you. So the first question is what is your favorite city?

John: My favorite city is Los Angeles. I like the ocean, and I like warm weather, and it's got a buzz to it. So I'm a Los Angeles type of guy, as compared to all my compatriots who seem to be Silicon Valley guys. So I'm a Los Angeles guy.

Jen: Southern California, awesome. Second question for you, are you an animal lover?

John: I am an animal lover. We have had cocker spaniels for years, and they live a long time, very painful to see them leave. We just had one that passed in the last few months. And so my wife is now in the process of getting a Saint Charles, I think is the type of cocker that she's expecting to get next, so we'll have one soon.

Jen: Aw! Those are so adorable. Will this be a puppy?

John: Oh, it will be a puppy, yeah. We always start from scratch and go through all that pain. But cockers are a lot of work, I'm telling you. So if you're looking for a puppy or a dog that is not a lot of work, I would not recommend cocker spaniels.

Jen: I don't think I've met a puppy that's not a lot of work. So if anyone out there on the internet knows of puppies that are easy, let me know. Okay, question number three, Mac or PC?

John: Mac for sure.

Jen: And last question...

Jen: What's that?

John: The only way I made much affordable, however, is every time I bought one, I bought a share of Apple stock. And so it's been able to keep up.

Jen: There you go. All right, my last question. Let's say I was able to offer you an all-expenses paid trip, where would it be to?

John: All-expenses paid trip would have to be someplace in the US. I'm a US guy. Where have I not been? I've not been to Charleston, South Carolina. And I think I need to go there. My wife and I have thought about doing that and it's like, it never gets to be the right time to go to Charleston, South Carolina. But if you were going to pay for it, I'd go.

Jen: That's the first time that someone has picked Charleston, South Carolina as their destination of choice. So I need to ask you a fifth question which is, what is so amazing about Charleston, South Carolina that I am missing?

John: I think it's just the architecture. They've kind of kept their hands on the old, while still having all of the modern conveniences.

Jen: All right.

John: And it's warm.

Jen: And it's warm, and it's warm. Well, lovely. Thank you. Thanks so much for sharing your time with me today John, talking about channel, talking about South Carolina. If any of our listeners would like to reach out to you personally and just connect with you, what's the best way for them to do so?

John: Just my corporate email's fine. Its jsekevitch, S-E-K-E, V like Victor I-T-C-H@cybersolutions.io.

Jen: Wonderful. Again, thank you so much for your time. And thank you everybody else for tuning in. And I hope you'll join us next week for an all new episode of The Allbound Podcast.

Announcer: Thanks for tuning in to The Allbound Podcast. For past episodes and additional resources, visit the resource center at allbound.com. And remember, never sell alone.

Intro: Effective selling takes an ecosystem. Join host Jen Spencer as she explores how to supercharge your sales and master the art of never selling alone. Welcome to The Allbound Podcast, the fundamentals of accelerating growth with partners.

Kevin O’Brien, Vice President of Strategic Alliances at JazzHR, joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss challenges when starting a channel program, scaling and tiering, creating a culture of partnership and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast. 

Jen: Hi, everybody, welcome to another episode of The Allbound Podcast. I'm Jen Spencer and today I am joined by Kevin O’Brien who is Vice President of Strategic Alliances at JazzHR. Welcome, Kevin.

Kevin: Welcome, Jen. It's great to be here.

Jen: Well, I'm so glad to have you on the podcast today. I think it’d be great if you could just tell us a little bit about JazzHR just so we have a frame of reference of what you do every day.

Kevin: That's great, yes. So JazzHR is a recruiting solution for small businesses. Small businesses all over North America are having the same challenges that a lot of larger businesses have in terms of how do they find talent, how do they get applicants to new roles that they're trying to fill, how do they screen them and interview them and ultimately bring them through to an offer. And Jazz has built an end to end solution that helps them get exposure onto a lot of the well-known job boards that are out there like LinkedIn, Indeed, Glassdoor and more.

So, it allows them to power their own careers page so that they can actually get visibility into their open roles and then provide a series of tools and solutions so that they can easily screen and identify who to call, who the candidates are going to be and then bring them through in an interview process in a very collaborative manner. So, we've helped tens of thousands of small businesses hire about 300,000 employees over the course of our existence. And we're seeing great success in the market today.

Jen: That's wonderful. It's really wonderful to hear. Hiring, recruiting and onboarding are such big business challenges for organizations, so it's great that you're helping them alleviate a lot of those pains. I want to dig into JazzHR’s partner program and also kind of frame the conversation. You and I met at that small business Web Summit and I was sitting in your session.

You were speaking about how to really grow a partner program and how to enable and support partners. So, I immediately went to your partner page on the JazzHR website. And first of all, it's great, it's so thorough, it spells out everything perfectly for any prospective partner hoping to work with you. I mean, it seems like that partner program is very well established. So, can you share a little bit about how long it took to ramp up to where you are now and what had to be in place to get to where you are?

Kevin: Yeah, happy to, happy to. Yeah, the program at JazzHR has been around for just about a year, coming up on a year in May or June. To us a small business is a company that has up to 500 employees. So generally, small businesses have anywhere between 20 and 500 employees to be able to have the need to use JazzHR for their system.

And what we found was a lot of these companies are already working with trusted advisors for their HR needs, so maybe they're working with HR outsourcers, maybe they're working with compensation consultants, maybe they're working with other technology providers like HRIS systems and so forth. And those companies and organizations tended to be in a great position to not only introduce their clients to sort of the next wave of technology that they needed to bring onboard, but also they needed to be able to answer the next question that their clients had which is, ''Hey, can you help me with my hiring needs and help me get my hiring needs from offline to online.''

And so, when we saw this at JazzHR, we knew that we had to have an indirect strategy. And so, we built out a program that was tailored to local consultants who had one-to-one relationships and face-to-face relationships with local businesses. We put a program in place so that it was easy for them to get educated on what are the challenges that their customers have with hiring and have Jazz help to solve them.

And then we also have an indirect strategy around integrations where we built out an API so that we could tie in some of the technology systems that we’re bringing these solutions down to small businesses as well. And so, we had to have all of that in place and then we had to build in sort of a partner portal with a marketing portal so that they could get access to this information and track their customers and then get rewarded for bringing new customers into Jazz.

So, it took a good three, four, five months to get the infrastructure set up and then it's been in place since around May or June of last year. And so, we're 9 or 10 months into it and the program is really growing very quickly and we're having a lot of success in helping these partners bring hiring and recruiting solutions down to their customers.

Jen: Well, you guys have been really busy. You have accomplished quite a lot in a very short period of time.

Kevin: Yeah, yeah. I mean, luckily the solution set for Jazz has been built out over a lot longer period of time than that. So, Jazz is what was founded as a company called the Resumator in 2009. And so, it's a fully functioning end to end suite for recruiting solutions. The whole company really rallied around it and we had support from our executive leadership all the way down to our product, marketing and sales teams. There's definitely a need in the market for these local consultants and technology providers to help their clients move their hiring from offline to online. So, the opportunity was there, the solution was there and we were able to build up the infrastructure to connect the two and really start to ramp the program.

Jen: That's great. Not to go down like a memory lane with you, but you look at your career and you definitely have had a general focus. You were the VP of Partners at HootSuite, you were Senior Director of the app partner program at Constant Contact. I'm just curious, what do you feel you've really been able to bring with you from company to company as you work to scale a channel partner program? Because I see a lot of individuals, a lot of channel professionals and they go and they build something we create something in and they move on maybe to the next company, and I'm just curious from your perspective what you feel you really brought with you?

Kevin: Yeah, that's a good question, Jen. Thank you. All three of these companies have all been focused on delivering solutions into small and mid-size markets. And one of the things that I really developed an appreciation for at Constant Contact from being there as it was able to grow from 100 customers up to 600,000 customers was an appreciation for how small businesses really leverage their own networks and their own trusted advisors in terms of what they need to be focusing on next.

And so, building out channel in partner programs that are able to empower those trusted advisors to be comfortable with your solution to understand how it's going to solve their client's needs and to be able to easily fit it into their existing workflows is something that I think we were we were able to solve really well at a Constant Contact, and I also took that into HootSuite and now into JazzHR and that's the key. It doesn't just have to be a solution that they believe that their customers are going to be successful with, but it also has to have the features and functionality that make it easy for them on a day in and day out basis to see how their customers are operating with it and to understand the challenges they have, so that if they can help overcome certain areas of the product they're able to add value themselves.

And then to also achieve some status with the brand that they're working with so that they can get early access to the content or features or insights and so forth that they can bring it to their clients, and it helps them to strengthen their relationship there as well. So, I think bringing in an appreciation for how small businesses need to be hearing about these solutions from their trusted advisors, as well as some of the more traditional direct marketing that happens in terms of software today is something that I've leveraged and tried to bring with me so that we can scale these programs with different companies.

Jen: That makes perfect sense. I mean you really understand the day to day of that small business, the end user, end customer and you also can put yourself in those partnerships. So, it makes perfect sense to me. I want to dig in and get more nitty-gritty with JazzHR’s partner program because whenever there's a successful program we want to look and see, “Okay, what can we learn from this and how can we apply it to other people’s organizations?” You guys have three tiers of partners and it seems like those are based on the number of bookings. So, can you tell us a little bit more about the tier structure that you've built out at JazzHR?

Kevin: Yeah. Yeah happy to. So, a booking for Jazz is the total cost of a contract that a small business is signing up for. When you think about hiring and recruiting, and this is different than some of the other companies I’ve been at, some of the other companies have been more month to month, but at Jazz we look at it as a more annual contract because hiring is something that you have a hiring strategy for the year and so you need the software for the whole year and the value of that year is the booking. And what we want to establish we put these goals in tiers out on our website so you can see them at jazzhr.com.

And partners are able to come in and understand how much business that they would traditionally need to be bringing to JazzHR in order to be at a certain tier. That typically translates into how many new customers do you think you will be able to introduce JazzHR to? So, whether it's two, three, four or five throughout the year we have a tier for that, whether it’s 20 to 50 throughout the year we have tiers to that, or if it’s a 100 plus we have tiers for that. The goal is to really set the expectations for ''Hey this is what we think you need to be signing up for when you come to JazzHR, and here's the reward you are going to get for doing it.''

So being really transparent is important when you scale any channel program or partner program and it's something that we found to be helpful in getting the Jazz HR channel program off the ground as well.

Jen: Is it safe to assume that those same KPIs that you're using to measure partners are similar to what you're using internally for direct sales or is there a good alignment there as well?

Kevin: Yeah, there is and that's a great point because with any partner program it's always being measured against the direct sales initiative because you really need to be outperforming what a traditional single sales rep can do for the partner program to be successful. So, you really need an apples to apples comparison. So, you're right. The sales teams are measured by bookings, and the partners are measured by bookings, so that the company and the teams at the company are really able to see how one is performing against the other and what efficiencies are we getting through the channel strategy that we don't see necessarily in a direct strategy for this particular product set. And so, that does give us an easy way to measure how each of the programs are working.

There is a lot of cross promotion within the programs, like the sales team is very comfortable if they think that they're talking to a prospective partner of introducing them into the partner program so that they can be serviced a little bit differently and rewarded a little bit differently. But at the end of the day, we are looking at both programs to be able to accelerate the growth of Jazz, so we do try to keep the way that they're measured consistent across the two programs.

Jen: Excellent. Excellent. These are the types of questions that when someone is just setting out to build a channel partner program, these are the things that they've got floating around in their head. And so, I love being able to talk to people who are in the trenches like yourself and share that knowledge forward. Speaking of that, when you think about an organization that's just really embarking on building out a partner program, what do you think are some of the most critical elements that a channel leader should consider, particularly when they're really starting from scratch?

Kevin: Yeah. When starting from scratch, there's internal things and then there's external things that you really need to be looking at. So, externally you really need to identify if the product that you want to develop an indirect strategy for is something that the people of the ears of a small business can easily articulate to their client because that's really what's going to determine whether they're going to align with your product or not. And what I found is most small businesses business applications fall into that category. And so then it's really trying to identify who are the pockets of these different partners that you can easily go after so that they can adopt your solution for their customers.

The bigger challenges tend to be internally focused when you're getting a program off the ground. I think a lot of times people run into headwinds in a new program if they don't have the buy in and the visibility of the program that you really need. And what that means is a lot of people would want to take a program put it in a corner and give it some time to mature a little bit and keep it out of the way. But with a channel or an indirect strategy that's going to be a big part of the business, it really needs to be top of mind across the exec team and top of mind across the product team, the marketing team and the sales organization.

So, having top-level goals that are measured weekly and that are constantly in front of the functional leaders of each of the departments in the company is critical to keeping it at the forefront of everybody's mind. Now recognize it's going to take 12 to 18 months for a program to really start to achieve scale. But if it doesn't have the visibility throughout that period it’s going to get left behind by product, it’s going to get left behind by marketing and it's never going to be able to get that sort of the foundation under it that it needs to achieve the scale. So that's number one.

Number two would be investing in infrastructure early and I think a lot of it is easier now than it was say 12 or 13 years ago when we were doing it at Constant Contact. Now there are a lot of tools out there built specifically for indirect programs so that you can easily set up a partner portal or you can integrate it in an API set into the back end for companies to take advantage of it if you're looking to integrate your system. But investing in that infrastructure to be able to measure and help the partners manage their business with you is critical because if you don't it's going to be a lot of email and wait and email and wait, and they'll just get frustrated and move on.

So those are some of the key things that we try to do when we’re setting up programs with high-level goals that are visible across the whole organization. We also measure them weekly so everybody can see how it's doing and invest in the infrastructure before the program actually launches. So you're really setting it up for success because you're trying to pull that 12 to 18 months data as quickly as you can, and that's the point at which it will start to drive and really accelerate sales for the business going forward.

So those are the things that I've tried to work on in the different programs that I've built. For the folks who have challenges, I think they tend to try to keep it outside of the limelight at the beginning, but it just gets a lot harder to integrate it later on as the program starts to mature. So, doing it right out of the gate is critical.

Jen: I think that's such great advice. When I look at partner programs that never really produced any real results, they were siloed. The organization has to have a culture of partnership, it has to embrace that, and that comes from the top. Right? That comes from the CEO, CFO and trickles down into every single person within an organization.

Kevin: Yeah, and being hand in hand with the sales team is critical as well and making sure that they understand it's a friend, not a foe is going to ensure that it gets the support it needs as well.

Jen: Yeah, and I know that could be challenging, but sales people we like to fight for our turf. So, it's a cultural wave to bring everyone together and work together collaboratively, which actually leads me to my last question for you about collaboration. I'm just wondering if you can talk a little bit about some of the challenges that you see vendor organizations face when they're trying to collaborate with their partners? And then this is kind of a bonus question, but I'm just curious if your partners have an opportunity to collaborate with each other? We're starting to see these partner programs really become ecosystems where different partners might be able to collaborate to solve a business challenge. So, I’d love to hear any feedback you might have on that as well.

Kevin: Yeah, let’s take the first part of the question first, collaborating with the partners is critical. And it's such a great way to get access to new content, new ideas, new case studies and really get behind them and showcase them. In most cases with an indirect partner strategy, you're going to have access to probably more marketing resources than your partners are. So really pointing them out there and leveraging the partners expertise is a great option that we have.

We have a webinar that we're going to be running this Thursday. I don't know when this podcast is going to be accessible, but Thursday is 4/20 and 4/20 is a moniker for pro-marijuana and the partnership is actually with a partner who focuses on what are the rules around marijuana in the workplace for states where marijuana is legal. So, there’s the fun play on sort of timing and content but it's really leveraging partners to bring their expertise so that you can educate the rest of your customers. And if you're open like that, more partners are going to be a lot a lot more interested in working with you if they can see that you're open to helping them demonstrate their expertise in growing their pie as well as growing your pie. That's critical.

And to the second point of your question, you're absolutely right, when your partner programs get big enough you can facilitate this sharing of ideas amongst your partners so that now you can get two, three, four partners involved in helping to solve a single customer's problem. At Constant Contact we saw this where we would have partners who would partner up together. If one was a web developer and another was a content writer they would work together to solve, and we would actually be building up the local networks of those partners through local directors we had. Those directors would work with all these partners and understand skill sets and who to refer customers to for what, but also build a working group so that they could team up and attack customer problems together.

We saw the same thing at HootSuite with technology partners. There are partners who are really good at deep listening and analytics and others who are good at content management and how that all works with the HootSuite platform and then bring them in to solve customer problems. We are not big enough at JazzHR where it's happened yet, but it's certainly where we're going and that’s the point when the word gets out to partners that they can not only be rewarded for bringing in business, but also get new business from participating in your program, that's when it really starts to take off. So, that's another reason why it takes 12 to 18 months to get these things moving, but once they get moving it's like rolling a ball downhill, it'll pick up speed and start to manage itself on its own.

Jen: Oh, that's great. And that's very, very true. I think it's the changing buyer that's also dictating a lot of these collaborative partnerships that are happening because the customer has a challenge and partners can learn from each other and collaborate together. And with the Internet, you can't hide a partnership very easily right? So, the days of this is this exclusive partnership and we don't work with anybody else, today buyers have so many more choices, so, I think that the sun has set on that type of partner program.

Kevin: Yeah. In the small business world we like to say they are time starved and task focused these small businesses, because they also don't have a lot of time. So, if they are very comfortable working with someone and that person can bring another person in it just makes it easier for both for both companies. So, developing that trust is critical early on for sure.

Jen: Well, this has been so great. I've loved digging into this with you and hearing about what you’re working on over at JazzHR. But before I let you go, I like to end the podcast with asking a couple of more personal questions so our listeners can get to know you a little bit better. Nothing too challenging as long as you're open to it. Does that sound okay?

Kevin: Sure, sounds great.

Jen: Okay. All right. So, first question is what is your favorite city?

Kevin: What's my favorite city? Well, outside of the city I live in, I live in Boston, but the one city that I've traveled to multiple times and I would love to relocate to at some point is San Diego. I love the culture and I love the location, so that would be the city I would prefer over Boston.

Jen: That's a great city. Every time I go there, and every time I land and I walk outside and I'm at the airport, I go, “Oh, this place is so beautiful.”

Kevin: Exactly, right.

Jen: Question number two, are you an animal lover?

Kevin: I'm an...

Jen: Is that a no?

Kevin: I have zero pets. How's that?

Jen: You have zero pets, all right.

Kevin: I’ve taken my kids to the zoo before.

Jen: That's awesome. Question number three, Mac or PC?

Kevin: Mac. I was a PC guy till 4 years ago, but now I'm Mac all the way.

Jen: They have a way of rewiring your brain, huh! It's unbelievable.

Kevin: It’s more just how many times I've had to repair the PC and how many times I haven't had to repair the Mac, that was enough for me.

Jen: Yeah, absolutely I agree. Okay, last question. Let's say I was able to offer you an all-expenses paid trip, where would it be to?

Kevin: That's a good question. An all-expenses paid trip probably Australia, I've never been to Australia, I've always wanted to go. And assuming that you can also carve the time off for me to get there for a month that's where it would be.

Jen: Yeah, but this is like a magical pretend land, so yes, I can do that for you. If I had unlimited money to send any podcast episode guest on any trip. So yes, in that world you can take as much time off as you'd like.

Kevin: Great.

Jen: Well, thank you. Thank you again, it's been so great spending some time with you today. If any of our listeners would like to reach out to you personally, what's the best way for them to do so?

Kevin: Yeah, that's great. So, they should reach out to me through my work email. It’s kevin.obrien@jazzhr.com and I'm happy to collaborate on partnerships, make personal connections and help anyone out if I'm in a position to do so. I really appreciate the time you gave me, Jen, this has been great.

Jen: Wonderful. Well, thank you and thanks, everyone else for joining us for an episode of The Allbound Podcast, and we'll catch you next week.

Announcer: Thanks for tuning into The Allbound Podcast. For past episodes and additional resources, visit the resource center at allbound.com. And remember #NeverSellAlone.

Tony Fox, Vice President of Sales and Development of Channel Partners at bswift, joins me, Jen Spencer to discuss protecting your brand by choosing the right partners, solutions partners vs channel partners, business acumen and more on this episode of The Allbound Podcast.

Announcer: Effective selling takes an ecosystem. Join host, Jen Spencer, as she explores how to supercharge your sales and master the art of never selling alone. Welcome to The Allbound Podcast: The fundamentals of accelerating growth with partners.

Jen: Hi everybody, welcome to The Allbound Podcast. I'm Jen Spencer, Vice President of Sales and Marketing here at Allbound. And today, I'm joined by Tony Fox who is Vice President of Sales and Development of Channel Partners at bswift. Welcome, Tony.

Tony: Hi, Jen. How are you doing?

Jen: I am doing great. I'm so glad to have you on the show, and I thought we could maybe kick things off with having you share a little bit about bswift for listeners who maybe haven't heard of the company before.

Tony: Yeah, well, thanks, Jen. And first, I do want to thank you for inviting me on your podcast, so thanks for that. A little bit about bswift, so bswift is primarily known in various industries as what we would call a "benefit administration platform." I think we go a little bit beyond that, and we offer potential partners a great deal in terms of connectivity, so the ability to link out to different vesting class partners and giving the channel partner the ability to take back to their end user. And we really have a top-in-class decision support tool as well. So, again, benefit administration on the whole with a healthy dose of connectivity thrown in for good measure.

Jen: Great. And, so, when we look at your partner program, I know that bswift has two main categories of partners. So you guys have solutions partners, then you have channel partners. So, can you just explain the key differences between those two groups and the role that they play in your sales ecosystem?

Tony: Yeah, sure. So, really, we have, like you said, two different types, and the one I'd probably describe first are our channel partners. And it's really a fairly simple relationship where we reach out to an entity or they reach out to us and we end up licensing our software. It ends up acting for bswift as a distribution channel, we license our software, and then our channel partners take on the effort of selling, implementing, and monitoring the software in an ongoing basis as they deliver it to their end users. End users in this scenario are usually employer groups but can be individuals, but again, mostly employer groups. So that's a channel partnership.

Aside from the distribution pathway, it also acts like, kind of a, I don't want to say free, but it really is a business laboratory. So as we further develop our software, and ours is an evergreen technology that has three full releases per year, we like to take input from our channel partners as they interface with the market, and then they bring back recommendations and suggestions for really how we should innovate going forward. So that's really a channel partnership right there.

Our solutions partnership is slightly different, and really it comes down to aligning ourselves with what we call “best-in-class vendor partners.” So what we would do is identify maybe a best-in-class medical partner, for example, Aetna insurance. We could align ourselves with MetLife, Unum, or, perhaps, Guardian on the ancillary and work-type products. And when we have a solution partner, it has the effect of stocking the shelves, so to speak, for an end user employer group. So as they enter on to bswift, our channel partners have the ability to select from our portfolio and solutions partners and bring their product to their employer groups. It makes implementation much easier, it makes price negotiation much simpler, and it really just enables everything to work properly and as a whole. Does that make sense, Jen?

Jen: No, it makes perfect sense, and it's definitely a true ecosystem that you've got there. And I absolutely love that concept of your channel partners being part of like a laboratory. I think that is so cool because the sales experience, is an experiment. You're constantly experimenting and trying new things, and that's such an awesome way of thinking about how your partners can help contribute to the growth of your organization. Not to put you on the spot, but are there any anecdotes? Is there any story of something that's emerged out of a channel partner engagement from your experience?

Tony: Yeah, absolutely, Jen. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm sorry to talk over you there for a second.

Jen: No!

Tony: But I think, maybe the biggest example is more and more of this grouping of channel partners has informed bswift’s evolution in really our recent interfacing. And I'll talk about this probably a little bit later, but you have to know who your best customers are going to be. We identified very early on that payroll vendors were going to be a pretty good partner for us. Largely speaking, with the advent of the ACA reporting necessity, payroll plus Ben Admin equals compliance. So, as we began to partner with these different payroll companies, we found that, as opposed to our traditional carriers and brokers, payroll companies were much more advanced along the technological spectrum specific to connectivity.

So again, we fancy ourselves very much a connectivity vendor in addition to Ben Admin. And so what we were pushed to do is really accelerate what we call our API interface. And I'm not going to remember what API stands for, but really what API consists of is a real-time data exchange which makes everything look and feel more cohesive with where your partner is in the market, if its a payroll company, or the brokerage, or even with an enrollment firm. So that's an example of how payroll companies on the whole push us to accelerate our API timeframes, and we're going to be releasing a full API published spec in our August release of this year. So that's a perfect example of how channel partners have pushed us to do something, maybe outside of our normal pathway.

Jen: Awesome. And bonus definition for everybody, API stands for "Application Program Interface." So, "Oooh, ahhh."

Tony: I feel like you got points on me for that one. That's fine.

Jen: The information that's in my head...the technical information about web services and APIs that I have in my head from over the course of my career is baffling to me, as somebody who got a degree in English.

Tony: Whenever Jeopardy releases a technology-type of episode, I'll make sure we getcha on it.

Jen: All right, all right. Well that's really cool, thank you for sharing that example. Let's talk about a couple other things. You've been working to grow bswift’s channel program for the last two and a half years or so, but when you look at the course of your career, you've been collaborating with partners even in a more traditional direct sales role. So I'm curious, what do you feel you've brought with you as an individual contributor that you've applied to helping scale a channel partner program?

Tony: Sure. Now, Jen, that's a great question. Without too much back-patting on my part, I think what I bring to the bswift spectrum is really an understanding of, maybe the broadest possible concept at the benefits industry. As I mentioned before, it's not just brokers and it's not just carriers that comprise the, call it the benefit administration spectrum or the universe. Really, you have to understand that payroll companies are in there. Brokers naturally have a very strong presence within that, but you also have things like PEOs and large-scale enrollment firms, and other types of entities that are firmly connected to the employee benefit sphere.

My understanding of that enabled me to come into bswift and really understand what our channel partners need. Now, we have been a very successful company prior to me coming onboard, but what I think I brought was in addition to understanding what we offered, I know why we offer that. And I know why it applies very well to a distributed system. So again, for example, when you have a channel partner, it's one person selling on your behalf. I understand how that works, I understand why that works, and I understand the profit motivation of the different folks within the employee benefits universe. I think that's really what has led this to be a pretty good fit both for me and bswift.

Jen: You've kind of hit on this business acumen that you have. So, you understand the impact that the solution has on the end user, the customer, what it can have on the partner’s business. We're seeing this more and more where channel professionals have to understand the entire business, all the challenges, all of the different levers to pull to increase efficiencies in revenue. And, yeah, I think you've really articulated very nicely how you've been able to kind of translate that over into this channel program at bswift. That's great.

Tony: Yeah, Jen. There's another thing, too, and it kind of goes back to the earlier question you talked about. And if you understand the business as a whole, you're able to utilize the feedback you get from that business, as that kind of laboratory scenario, like we talked about earlier. If you don't understand the industry on a whole, you're not going to understand the small little bits and pieces that come back to you and really how they fit into the bigger whole. If you are a software company dealing with the employee benefits industry and you don't use your channel partnership distribution as a lab, I think you're fooling yourself. I think you're really passing up on a massive amount of potential information that can inform your development process.

Jen: I'd love to see more and more organizations treating their channels that way, and maybe we'll get some feedback from listeners. If anyone is doing that, we'll want you to reach out to us. We'll share some information at the end of the podcast because I'd love to hear more stories just like that. Speaking of kind of thought leadership and new ideas, you'd written a blog fairly recently called "The Unexpected Benefits of a Channel Partnership," and one of the benefits in that blog that you state is "simplify the pivot," and I really love this philosophy. So, if I'm looking to engage in a partnership with another organization, how might the partnership help me simplify the pivot?

Tony: So first, I feel I should probably apologize in advance if I've coined a new corporatism, "simplify the pivot." I figured that's worth at least thirty points in a great corporate-phrase buzzword game. So, my apologies in advance. But by definition, a pivot is changing the way you do business. It doesn't mean you have to move away from what got you to the level of success where you are.

So let's use an example, maybe, a broker, or an enrollment firm, or a payroll company, when you become a partner with a successful channel partnership organization, in a broad sense, or bswift in specific, what you should be entering into is a certain level of market expertise, a certain level of operational expertise, and, without using the word "expertise" again, really knowing how the process works. What it can do if you're a channel partner, and let's say you're a broker, it can ramp up your learning curves, it can help your investment, because we all know that distributed software systems are not free, it can help your investment pay off a lot more quickly.

Now, you have to partner with somebody who has a good product and a good process to go along with it, but your partner also needs to be able and willing to deliver on your organizational expertise. They can know how they're doing it and how to do it successfully. If bswift doesn't pass that on to each and every one of its channel partners, again, there's an opportunity for success there that we've missed.

Jen: So, if I'm an organization... I think these are really good pearls of wisdom, but if I'm an organization that's just embarking on building out my channel partner program... I'm just trying to kind of wrap this all up together, thinking about this idea of experimentation, the idea of the benefits that partnership can bring. I guess, can you maybe summarize for us what you think some of the most critical elements are that a channel leader should consider? You know, really put yourself in the shoes of someone who is really just getting going, starting from scratch.

Tony: Yeah, it's funny. I think probably the two biggest pieces are, you have to understand your audience...and again, these are going to sound strident, they've been repeated a couple of hundred times, but the fact that they're basically synonymous with channel partnership and there's something to that. You have to understand who your audience is and who you sell to, and you have to understand why they should want your product. So, along the lines of who you sell to, benefit administration is a perfect example of as you grow a company and as you grow your channel partnership line of distribution, early on in the process, you want to get ink on paper. You want to get contracts signed. You want to focus on your immediate top-line revenue.

Over time, and as you move away from that immediate urgency to get revenue in the door, you're going to find that there are partners that are better suited to tell your story, than some of those early ones, the ones that you just kind of signed in a mad rush. And maybe they're better at operations and deliverables, and they're going to lessen your chance of brand damage. Because if you damage a brand in the market place to your third-party, you don't have a lot of recourse, and it's very difficult. Probably another facet to that, I call it “over-targeting”, or being so specific in your perceived market that you kind of ignore the rest of the ecosystem to use your word.

And, for benefit administration, the perfect example is focusing so heavily on the brokerage market that you ignore those, I would call them tangential partners, like enrollment companies, and payroll companies, and PEOs, and carriers that need to set up exchanges. The universe is a big thing, and you don't need to focus, or really, over-focus on just that brokerage group. So if you understand what you have and why a certain group wants it, it can come in upon you when you're developing a channel partnership system to mentally try to broaden that out as much as possible. The more targets you have, statistically speaking, the more you're going to land.

Jen: No, that makes perfect sense.

Tony: Does that make sense, Jen?

Jen: Absolutely. Even in your final point there about keeping those options open for the type of partner, it's still grounded with, "Okay, but who is your buyer?" Right? Who is the person who's going to benefit most from using this product? And as long as that's consistent...I mean, there's new technologies, there's new categories, there's new types of companies that are being created every day. And so, to your point, if you kind of keep your head down focused on this one type of entity, like a broker, you might miss out on other complimentary solutions that could be just as beneficial, if not more, to helping you achieve your goals, so yeah, I agree. I think it's a great strategy to keep in mind.

Tony: Yeah, and it's funny, Jen. One thing you hit on there, kind of reminded me of this. You see what your competitors are doing in the marketplace, and obviously, you need to know what your competitors are doing. I don't think you should feel obligated to follow what they're doing. For example, a lot of benefit administration companies start by heavily trying to penetrate that up-market, in that 10,000, 20,000, those big brand name clients. Having said that, there are also newer arrivals on the Ben Admin stage that have done very well in that small group exchange stage.

You have to understand that when you have a potential market or a potential industry that's so deep and broad, there's going to be room for a lot of other people at the table. And your goal is just to make sure you definitely have a seat at the table and then maybe knock over a couple people that are sitting to your left and right.

Jen: Right, sounds good.

Tony: Unless its too aggressive.

Jen: Well, we'll let all of our listeners decide what's too aggressive or not. I think everyone's going to have a different threshold for that. I'd love to know from you, what do you think is the most exciting thing about working in indirect sales? And the reason why I'm asking that question is because, well, I think we could really go backward and say, okay, no kid grows up going, "I want to be in sales." You know? And certainly no kid grows up saying, "I want to be in channel sales." It's not something we go, "I can't wait until..." There's not necessarily a degree that you can get in it in college, but yet, here we are. Right? My day 100% revolves around indirect sales. What do you think is the most exciting thing about doing what you do?

Tony: Well, I think aside from seeing one of your channel partners land a big one or really kind of hook into a fourth gear or something like that, I mean, that's going to excite most people because that's more revenue in the door. Everybody gets excited by revenue. I think, maybe on a smaller scale, when we talk to a channel partner, and maybe even in the discovery phase or when we're contracting or something like that, and you just hear the penny drop, and you just hear it click with that channel partner and...I'm trying to remember what my intro to psychology class back in college called it, I think it was a cognitive flash. That “aha!” moment.

I love when I'm talking to somebody on the phone and they say, "Whoa, that makes a lot of sense, Tony. So you mean not just A, B, and C but maybe D through R." And they start to see that scope expand, and they start to see maybe it's not just software. Maybe it's a way of realigning how their entire business model reports on the business model itself, for example, on a brokerage. Or maybe they perceive a way, if they're a broker, to drive new broker of record letters. Or if they're an enrollment firm, maybe they see a way to lessen their operational investment on a medium size client by using our divisions support tool.

It's really just when what you offer just absolutely clicks with somebody, that's what kind of gets me excited about stuff because I know that we're not a mature industry quite yet, although we are getting there. Eventually, it's going to be a mature industry. And the more that we can kind of form that discussion as we go, both through our product and our discussions with people, the better off bswift and Aetna, our owner, are going to be. So that's what really gets me going, is when they kind of get it.

Jen: I love it, I love it. Because I know the feeling. I can certainly empathize, and I'm sure a lot of our audience can as well. This has been so much fun, and before I let you go, whenever we do the podcast, I have people answer some more personal questions so we can get to know them a little bit more. So, are you ready to answer just four simple questions? Sound good?

Tony: Absolutely. Yes, absolutely.

Jen: Okay. So, first question for you is, what is your favorite city?

Tony: Well, I'm born and raised in Chicago, so it's difficult for me to say anywhere but Chicago. I will say that recently I've become acquainted with the charms of Manhattan. I'm a big city guy. I like the excitement. I like the energy. I like the buzz that a big city brings. So, if I had to live somewhere other than Chicago, it might be Manhattan or oh gosh, pick some island off the coast somewhere because if I'm not in a big city, I probably want to get away from it entirely.

Jen: Great, sounds good. Okay, next question. Are you an animal lover, yes or no?

Tony: I'm absolutely an animal lover. I have two dogs, I have a Border Collie and a suspiciously tall Dachshund, and they take up a lot of my day. So, they're awesome.

Jen: A suspiciously tall Dachshund. Really?

Tony: Yeah, yeah...

Jen: Just a tall guy?

Tony: Yeah, my wife and I only buy from shelters, but they said that she was a Dachshund mix, and she ends up looking a lot like a small German Shepherd, so I'm thinking whatever they use for their DNA might be slightly lost.

Jen: That's great. Next question for you, Mac or PC?

Tony: I'm a PC guy. Without divulging too much of my age, I will say that decades ago at the University of Illinois, Macs really weren't a thing. I guess that the Apple IIe and the Apple IIc were starting to come on.

Jen: Yeah.

Tony: I was born and raised on a PC, and I started learning computers before Microsoft even existed. So, I've been a PC guy, I'm going to be a PC guy. It's just the way it works.

Jen: All right. Sounds good. And my last question for you is, let's say I was able to offer you an all-expenses paid trip, where would it be to?

Tony: As long as it's not within the United States on business, you could tempt me pretty much anywhere. It's funny, there's this TV show, and I forget what channel it is, but it's called "Alone." And the concept is that they take a bunch of survival experts and they kind of dump them on different parts of the globe, and they're expected to kind of make their way to their life for approximately two months and all that good stuff.

The last series of episodes were in Patagonia, South America, down in...I want to say it's in Argentina, it might be Chile. And it was starkly beautiful, and I would just love an opportunity to travel down there with my wife. Maybe do some hiking. Maybe do some fishing unless there's some weird disease I don't know about, and just generally do the "get back to nature" thing. I do love that.

Jen: Very cool. That's awesome. Well, some other time I'll have to have to tell you about my trip to Pucon, Chile, which is at the very, very, very bottom of the country. Let's just say, I was the only individual who exited the bus with a rolly suitcase. Everyone else had a camping backpack and I had a suitcase on wheels, but it was good fun.

Tony: That's hilarious!

Jen: Give you a sense of who I am. But thank you so much. Thanks for sharing your insights with us today, Tony. It was so great. If anyone listening would like to reach out to you personally, what's the best way for them to do so?

Tony: I think probably the best way to reach out to me would be through LinkedIn, initially. I'm Anthony Fox on LinkedIn, and I'm currently at bswift so I should be easy to find. And I would welcome any questions for, "Hey, how about an opportunity?" That would be great too. So, feel free to reach out to me whenever.

Jen: Perfect. Well again, thank you, and thanks everyone for tuning in. We'll catch you next week with an all new episode of The Allbound Podcast.

Tony: Thanks, everybody.

Announcer: Thanks for tuning in to The Allbound Podcast. For past episodes and additional resources, visit the resource center at allbound.com. And remember, never sell alone. #NeverSellAlone